Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“Talk about bad blood,” Mr. Biswas said. “Talk about bad blood!”

Disappointed in Govind, Mr. Biswas began to find virtues in brothers-in-law he had disregarded. There was Hari, a tall, pale, quiet man who spent much time at the long table, working through mounds of rice in a slow, unenthusiastic but efficient way, watched over by his pregnant wife. He spent even more time in the latrine, and this made him feared. “They should ring a bell when Hari decide to go to the latrine,” Mr. Biswas told Shama, “just as how they ring a bell to tell people they cutting off the water.” It was generally accepted at Hanuman House that Hari was a sick man; his wife told with sorrow and pride of the terrifying diagnoses of various doctors. No man looked less suitable for work on the estate; it was hard to imagine that thin, gentle voice ordering labourers about, reproving the idle and shouting down the argumentative. He was in fact a pundit, by training and inclination, and never looked so happy as when he changed from estate clothes into a dhoti and sat in the verandah upstairs reading from some huge, ungainly Hindi book that rested on a stylishly carved Kashmiri bookrest. He did the puja when the gods were away and he still conducted occasional ceremonies for close friends. He offended no one and amused no one. He was obsessed with his illnesses, his food and his religious books.

Between his estate duties, his reading in the verandah and his visits to the latrine, Hari had little free time, and was open to approach only at the long table. But then conversation was not easy. Hari believed in chewing every mouthful forty times, and was a noisy and preoccupied eater.

Sitting next to Hari one evening, receiving a brief ruminant glance from him and a concerned stare from his wife, Mr. Biswas waited until Hari had champed and ground and squelched through a mouthful. Then he hurriedly asked, “What do you feel about the Aryans?”

He was speaking of the protestant Hindu missionaries who had come from India and were preaching that caste was unimportant, that Hinduism should accept converts, that idols should be abolished, that women should be educated, preaching against all the doctrines the orthodox Tulsis held dear.

“What do you feel about the Aryans?” Mr. Biswas asked.

“The Aryans?” Hari said, and started on another mouthful. His tone declared that it was a frivolous question raised by a mischievous person.

A look of anguish came over the face of Hari’s wife.

“Yes,” Mr. Biswas said, despairingly filling in the pause. “The Aryans.”

“I don’t think much about them.” Hari bit at a pepper, baring sharp little white teeth, like a rat’s, and surprising in such a tall and sluggish man. “I hear,” he went on, the merest hint of amusement and reproof in his voice, “that you have been doing a lot of thinking about them.”

Mr. Biswas was almost an Aryan convert.

It was Misir, the idle journalist, who had encouraged him to go to hear Pankaj Rai. “He is not one of those illiterate Trinidad pundits, you know,” Misir said. “Pankaj is a BA and a LLB into the bargain. The man is a real orator. A purist, man.” Mr. Biswas had not asked what a purist was, but the word, pronounced with reverence by Misir, appealed strongly to him, suggesting not only purity and fastidiousness, but also elegance and breeding.

He had an additional inducement: the meeting was to be held at the home of the Naths. The Naths owned land and a soap factory, and were the Tulsis’ most important rivals in Arwacas. Between Naths and Tulsis of all ages there was an enmity as established and unexamined as the enmity between Hindu and Muslim. The enmity had grown more acrimonious since the Naths had built a new house in the modern Port of Spain style.

Purist, Mr. Biswas thought, when he saw Pankaj Rai. The man is a purist. He was elegant in a long, black, close-fitting Indian coat; and when he shook Mr. Biswas by the hand Mr. Biswas surrendered to his graciousness, at the same time noting with satisfaction that Pankaj Rai was as short as himself and had an equally ugly nose. He also had unusually heavy, drooping eyelids which could make him look comic or sinister, benevolent or supercilious. They dropped a fraction of an inch and converted a smile into a faint but devastating sneer. This was particularly effective when he began to ridicule the practices of orthodox Hinduism. He spoke without flourish, and slowly, as if tasting the phrases beforehand, like a good purist; and it was a revelation to Mr. Biswas that words and phrases which by themselves were commonplace could be welded into sentences of such balance and beauty. He found he agreed with everything Pankaj Rai said: after thousands of years of religion idols were an insult to the human intelligence and to God; birth was unimportant; a man’s caste should be determined only by his actions.

After he had spoken Pankaj Rai distributed copies of his book, Reform the Only Way , and Mr. Biswas asked for his to be autographed. Pankaj Rai did more. He wrote Mr. Biswas’s name as well, describing him as a “dear friend”. Below this inscription Mr. Biswas wrote: “Presented to Mohun Biswas by his dear friend Pankaj Rai, BA LLB.”

He showed book and inscriptions to Shama when he got back to Hanuman House.

“Go ahead,” Shama said.

“Let me hear what you have against him. You people say you are high-caste. But you think Pankaj would call you that? Let me see. I wonder where Pankaj would place the Big Bull. Ha! With the cows. Make him a cowherd. No. That is a good job.” He remembered his own cowherd days. “Better make him a leather-worker, skinning dead animals. Yes, that’s it. The Big Bull is a member of the leather-worker caste. And what about the two gods? Where you think Pankaj would place them?”

“Just where you would place your brothers.”

“Road-sweeper? Little washerboys? Barber? Yes, little barbers. Pankaj would just look at them and feel that he want a trim. And what about your mother?” He paused. “Shama! It just hit me. Pankaj would say that your mother ain’t a Hindu at all! I mean, look at the facts. Marrying off her favourite daughter in a registry office. Sending the two little barbers to a Roman Catholic college. As soon as Pankaj see your mother he would start making the sign of the cross. Roman Catholic, that’s what she is!”

“Why don’t you shut your mouth?” Shama tried to sound amused, but he could tell that she was getting angry.

“Ro-man Cat-o-lic! Roman cat, the bitch. You think she could fool Pankaj? And here you have Pankaj bringing the woman a message of hope, saying that Hindus should take in converts and treat them like their own, saying that it is not necessary to be born a high-caste to be a high-caste. A message of hope, man. And what? Your mother running the man down, when she should be grateful like hell, kissing the man foot. Gratitude, eh?”

“I just hope this Pankaj Rai come to lift you out of this gum-pot you surely going to land yourself in. Go ahead.”

“Shama.”

“Why you don’t wrap your little tail up and go to sleep?”

“Shama, we have another problem, girl. You think any good Hindu would get married to a Roman Catholic girl, if he was really a good Hindu? Shama, you know what? It look to me that your whole family is just one big low-caste bunch.”

“You should know. You married into it.”

“Married into it. Ha! You think that make me happy. I look as if I happy?”

“Why you should look as if you happy? It should make you miserable. Is the first time in your life you eating three square meals a day. It giving your stomach too much exercise, I should say.”

“Licking up my stomach, you mean. My biggest item of food and drink in this house is soda powder and water.”