Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

In a tremendous temper Mr. Biswas began packing his brushes and clothes.

“Yes, take up your clothes and go,” Shama said. “You came to this house with nothing but a pair of cheap khaki trousers and a dirty old shirt.”

He left Hanuman House and went back to Pagotes.

He felt unchanged, unmarried. He had simply had a good fright, but had managed things well and escaped.

In Pagotes, however, he found that his marriage was not a secret. Bipti welcomed him with tears of joy. She said she had always known that he wouldn’t let her down. She had never said it, but she had always felt he would marry into a good family. She could now die happily. If she lived she had something to brighten her old age. Mr. Biswas must not reproach himself for his secrecy; he was not to worry about her at all; he had his own life to live.

And despite his protests she put on her best clothes and went to Arwacas the next day. She came back overwhelmed by the graciousness of Mrs. Tulsi, the diffidence of Shama and the splendour of Hanuman House.

She described a house he hardly knew. She spoke of a drawingroom with two tall thronelike mahogany chairs, potted palms and ferns in huge brass vases on marble topped tables, religious paintings, and many pieces of Hindu sculpture. She spoke of a prayer-room above that, which, with its slender columns, was like a temple: a low, cool, white room, empty except for the shrine in the centre.

She had seen only the upper floors of the concrete or rather, clay-brick, building. He didn’t tell her that that part of the house was reserved for visitors, Mrs. Tulsi, Seth and Mrs. Tulsi’s two younger sons. And he thought it better to keep silent about the old wooden house which the family called “the old barracks”.

He spent two days in hiding at the back trace, not caring to face Alec or Bhandat’s boys. On the third day he felt the need of greater comfort than Bipti could give, and that evening he went to Tara’s. He entered by the side gate. From the cowpen came a familiar early evening sound: the unhurried stir and rustle of cows in stalls laid with fresh straw. The back verandah outside Tara’s kitchen was warm with light. He heard the steady drone of someone reading aloud.

He found Ajodha rocking slowly, his head thrown back, frowning, his eyes closed, his eyelids palpitating with anguish while Bhandat’s younger boy read That Body of Yours .

Bhandat’s boy stopped reading when he saw Mr. Biswas. His eyes became bright with amusement and his prognathous smile was a sneer.

Ajodha opened his eyes and gave a shriek of malicious delight. “Married man!” he cried in English. “Married man!”

Mr. Biswas smiled and looked sheepish.

“Tara, Tara,” Ajodha called. “Come and look at your married nephew.”

She came out gravely from the kitchen, embraced Mr. Biswas and wept for so long that he began to feel, with sadness and a deep sense of loss, that he really was married, that in some irrevocable way he had changed. She undid the knot at the end of her veil and took out a twenty-dollar note. He objected for a little, then took it.

“Married man!” Ajodha cried again.

Tara took Mr. Biswas to the kitchen and gave him a meal. And while, in the verandah, Bhandat’s boy continued to read That Body of Yours , with the moths striking continually against the glass chimney of the oil lamp, she and Mr. Biswas talked. She could not keep the unhappiness and disappointment out of her face and voice, and this encouraged him to be bitter about the Tulsis.

“And what sort of dowry did they give you?” she asked.

“Dowry? They are not so oldfashioned. They didn’t give me a penny.”

“Registry?”

He bit at a slice of pickled mango and nodded.

“It is a modern custom,” Tara said. “And like most modern customs, very economical.”

“They didn’t even pay me for the signs.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“Yes,” he lied. “But you don’t know those people.” He would have been ashamed to explain the organization of the Tulsi house, and to say that his signs were probably considered contributions to the family endeavour.

“You just leave this to me,” Tara said.

His heart sank. He had wanted her to declare that he was free, that he needn’t go back, that he could forget the Tulsis and Shama.

And he was no happier when she went to Hanuman House and came back with what she said was good news. He was not to live at Hanuman House forever; the Tulsis had decided to set him up as soon as possible in a shop in a village called The Chase.

He was married. Nothing now, except death, could change that.

“They told me that they only wanted to help you out,” Tara said. “They said you didn’t want any dowry or big wedding and they didn’t offer because it was a love match.” Reproach was in her voice.

“Love match!” Ajodha cried. “Rabidat, listen to that.” He punched Bhandat’s younger boy in the belly. “Love match!”

Rabidat gave his contemptuous smile.

Mr. Biswas looked angrily and accusingly at Rabidat. He held Rabidat, more than anyone else, responsible for his marriage and wanted to say it was Rabidat’s taunt which had made him write that note to Shama. Instead, ignoring Ajodha’s chuckles and shrieks, he said, “Love match? What love match? They are lying.”

In a disappointed, tired way Tara said, “They showed me a love letter.” She used the English word; it sounded vicious.

Ajodha shrieked again. “Love letter! Mohun!”

Bhandat’s boy continued to smile.

Their mood seemed to infect Tara. “Mrs. Tulsi told me that she believed you wanted to go on with your sign-writing and that Hanuman House was the best place to work from.” She had begun to smile. “Everything’s all right now, boy. You can go back to your wife.”

The stress she gave to the word “wife” wounded Mr. Biswas.

“You have got yourself into a real gum-pot,” she added, more sympathetically. “And I had such nice plans for you.”

“I wish you had told me,” he said, without irony.

“Go back and get your wife!” Ajodha said.

He paid no attention to Ajodha and asked Tara in English, “You like she?” Hindi was too intimate and tender.

Tara shrugged, to say that it was none of her business; and this hurt Mr. Biswas, for it emphasized his loneliness: Tara’s interest in Shama might have made everything more bearable. He thought he would show an equal unconcern. Lightly, smiling back at Ajodha, he asked Tara, “I suppose they vex with me now over there, eh?”

His tone angered her. “What’s the matter? Are you afraid of them already, like every other man in that place?”

“Afraid? No. You don’t know me.”

But it was some days before he could make up his mind to go back. He didn’t know what his rights were, didn’t believe in the shop at The Chase, and his plans were vague. Only, he doubted that he would return to the back trace, and when he packed, he packed everything, Bipti crying happily all the while. As he cycled past the unfinished, open houses on the County Road, he wondered how many nights he would spend behind the closed facade of Hanuman House.

“What?” Shama said in English. “You come back already? You tired catching crab in Pagotes?”

Despite the adventurousness and danger of his calling, the crab-catcher was considered the lowest of the low.

“I thought I would come and help all-you catch some here,” Mr. Biswas replied, and killed the giggles in the hall.

No other comment was made. He had expected to be met by silence, stares, hostility and perhaps a little fear. He got the stares; the noise continued; the fear was, of course, only a wild hope; and he couldn’t be sure of the hostility. The interest in his return was momentary and superficial. No one referred to his absence or return, not Seth, not Mrs. Tulsi, both of whom continued, as they had done even before he left, hardly to notice him. He heard nothing about the visits of Bipti and Tara. The house was too full, too busy; such events were insignificant because he mattered little to the house. His status there was now fixed. He was troublesome and disloyal, and could not be trusted. He was weak and therefore contemptible.