Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Mr. Biswas thought of Govind as a fellow sufferer, but one who had surrendered to the Tulsis and been degraded. He had forgotten his own reputation as a buffoon and troublemaker, however, and found Govind wary of his approaches. On a few evenings Govind suffered himself to be led outside by Mr. Biswas. Sitting under the arcade, nervously swinging his long legs and smiling, sucking his teeth and exploring them with his jagged, dirt-stained fingernails, Govind didn’t appear at ease. There was little to talk about. Women, of course, could not be discussed, and Govind didn’t wish to discuss India or Hinduism. So Mr. Biswas could talk only of the Tulsis. He asked what it was like to work under Seth. Govind said it was all right. He asked what Govind thought of Mrs. Tulsi. She was all right. Her two sons were all right. Everybody was all right. So Mr. Biswas talked of jobs. Govind showed a little more interest.

“You should give up that sign-painting,” he said one evening, and Mr. Biswas was surprised and even slightly annoyed that Govind, of all people, should offer him advice, and so positively.

“They looking for good drivers on the estate,” Govind said.

“Give up sign-painting? And my independence? No, boy. My motto is: paddle your own canoe.” Mr. Biswas began to quote from the poem in Bell’s Standard Elocutionist .

“What about you? How much they paying you?”

“They paying me enough.”

“So you say. But those people are bloodsuckers, man. Rather than work for them, I would catch crab or sell coconut.”

At the mention of his former profession Govind gave a nervous laugh and swung his legs agitatedly.

“You wouldn’t see the little gods in the field, I bet.”

“Lil gods?”

Mr. Biswas explained. He explained a lot more. Govind, smiling, sucking his teeth and laughing from time to time, didn’t say anything.

Late one afternoon Shama came up with food for Mr. Biswas and said, “Uncle want to see you.” Uncle was Seth.

“Uncle want to see me? Man, go back and tell Uncle that if he want to see me, he must come up here.”

Shama grew serious. “What you been doing and saying? You getting everybody against you. You don’t mind. But what about me? You can’t give me anything and you want to prevent everybody else from doing anything for me. Is all right for you to say that you going to pack up and leave. But you know that is only talk. What you got?”

“I ain’t got a damned thing. But I not going down to see Uncle. I not at his beck and call, like everybody else in this house.”

“Go down and tell him so yourself. You talking like a man, go down and behave like one.”

“I not going down.”

Shama cried, and in the end Mr. Biswas put on his trousers. As he went down the stairs his courage began to leave him, and he had to tell himself that he was a free man and could leave the house whenever he wished. In the hall, to his shame, he heard himself saying, “Yes, Uncle?”

Seth was fixing a cigarette in his long ivory holder, an exquisiteness which no longer seemed an affectation to Mr. Biswas. It no longer contrasted with his rough estate clothes and rough, unshaved, moustached face; it had become part of his appearance. Mr. Biswas, concentrating on the delicate activity of Seth’s thick, bruised fingers, could feel that the hall was full. But no one was raising his voice; the whispers, the sounds of eating, the muted and seemingly distant scuffles, amounted to silence.

“Mohun,” Seth said at last, “how long you been living here?”

“Two months, Uncle.” And he couldn’t help noticing how much he sounded like Govind.

Mrs. Tulsi was there, sitting on a bench at the long table. Unusually, the two gods, unsmiling boys, were there, sitting together in the sugarsack hammock, their feet on the floor. Sisters were feeding husbands at the other end of the table. Sisters and their children were thick about the black entrance to the kitchen.

“You been eating well?”

In Seth’s presence Mr. Biswas felt diminished. Everything about Seth was overpowering: his calm manner, his smooth grey hair, his ivory holder, his hard swollen forearms: after he spoke he stroked them, and looked at the hairs springing back into their original posture.

“Eating well?” Mr. Biswas thought about the miserable meals, the risings of his belly, the cravings which were seldom satisfied. “Yes. I been eating well.”

“You know who provide all the food you been eating?”

Mr. Biswas didn’t answer.

Seth laughed, took the cigarette holder out of his mouth and coughed, from a deep chest. “This is a helluva man. When a man is married he shouldn’t expect other people to feed him. In fact, he should be feeding his wife. When I got married you think I did want Mai mother to feed me?”

Mrs. Tulsi rubbed her braceleted arms on the pitchpine table and shook her head.

The gods were grave.

“And yet I hear that you not happy here.”

“I didn’t tell anybody anything about not being happy here.”

“I is the Big Boss, eh? And Mai is the old queen and the old hen. And these boys is the two gods, eh?”

The gods became stern.

Looking away from Seth, and causing a dozen or more faces instantly to turn away, Mr. Biswas saw Govind among eaters at the far end of the table, going at his food in his smiling savage way, apparently indifferent to the inquisition, while C, bowed and veiled, stood dutifully over him.

“Eh?” For the first time there was impatience in Seth’s voice, and, to show his displeasure, he began talking Hindi. “This is gratitude. You come here, penniless, a stranger. We take you in, we give you one of our daughters, we feed you, we give you a place to sleep in. You refuse to help in the store, you refuse to help on the estate. All right. But then to turn around and insult us!”

Mr. Biswas had never thought of it like that. He said, “I sorry.”

Mrs. Tulsi said, “How can anyone be sorry for something he thinks ?”

Seth pointed to the eaters at the end of the table. “What names have you given to those, eh?” The eaters, not looking up, ate with greater concentration.

Mr. Biswas said nothing.

“Oh, you haven’t given them names. It’s only to me and Mai and the two boys that you have given names?”

“I sorry.”

Mrs. Tulsi said, “How can anyone be sorry-”

Seth interrupted her. “So we want someone to work on the estate. Is nice to keep these things in the family. And what you say? You want to paddle your own canoe. Look at him!” Seth said to the hall. “Biswas the paddler.”

The children smiled; the sisters pulled their veils over their foreheads; their husbands ate and frowned; the gods in the hammock, rocking very slowly with their feet on the floor, glowered at the staircase landing.

“It runs in the family,” Seth said. “They tell me your father was a great diver. But where has all your paddling got you so far?”

Mr. Biswas said, “Is just that I don’t know anything about estate work.”

“Oho! Is because you can read and write that you don’t want to get dirt on your hands, eh? Look at my hands.” He showed nails that were corrugated, warped and surprisingly short. The hairy backs of his hands were scratched and discoloured; the palms were hardened, worn smooth in some places, torn in others. “You think I can’t read and write? I can read and write better than the whole lot of them.” He waved one hand to indicate the sisters, their husbands, their children; he held the other palm open towards the gods in the hammock, to indicate that they were excepted. There was amusement in his eyes now, and he opened his mouth on either side of the cigarette holder to laugh. “What about these boys here, Mohun? The gods.”