Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“M-m-m-m. Mm !” Miss Blackie made a loud purring noise. She was offended. She was a Roman Catholic and went to mass every morning, but she had seen the Hindu rites performed every day for many years and regarded them as inviolate as her own.

“Idols are stepping-stones to the worship of the real thing,” Mr. Biswas said, quoting Pankaj Rai to the hall. “They are necessary only in a spiritually backward society. Look at that little boy down there. You think he know what he was doing this morning?”

The god stamped and said shrilly, “I know a lot more about it than you, you-you Christian !”

Miss Blackie purred again, now deeply offended.

Sushila said to the god, “You must never lose your temper when you are doing puja , Owad. It isn’t nice.”

“It nice for him to insult me and Ma and everybody else the way he doing?”

“Just give him enough rope. He will hang himself.”

In the long room Mr. Biswas gathered his painting equipment and sang over and over:

In the snowy and the blowy,

In the blowy and the snowy.

Words and tune were based, remotely, on Roaming in the Gloaming , which the choir at Lai’s school had once sung to entertain important visitors from the Canadian Mission.

Yet almost as soon as he had left Hanuman House through the side gate, Mr. Biswas’s high spirits vanished, and a depression fell upon him and lasted all day. He worked badly. He had to paint a large sign on a corrugated iron paling. Doing letters on a corrugated surface was bad enough; to paint a cow and a gate, as he had to, was maddening. His cow looked stiff, deformed and sorrowful, and undid the gaiety of the rest of the advertisement.

He was strained and irritable when he went back to Hanuman House. The aggrieved and aggressive stares he received in the hall reminded him of his morning triumph. All his joy at that had turned into disgust at his condition. The campaign against the Tulsis, which he had been conducting with such pleasure, now seemed pointless and degrading. Suppose, Mr. Biswas thought in the long room, suppose that at one word I could just disappear from this room, what would remain to speak of me? A few clothes, a few books. The shouts and thumps in the hall would continue; the puja would be done; in the morning the Tulsi Store would open its doors.

He had lived in many houses. And how easy it was to think of those houses without him! At this moment Pundit Jairam would be at a meeting or he would be eating at home, looking forward to an evening with his books. Soanie stood in the doorway, darkening the room, waiting for the least gesture of command. In Tara’s back verandah Ajodha sat relaxed in his rockingchair, his eyes closed, listening perhaps to That Body of Yours being read by Rabidat, who sat at an awkward angle, trying to hide the smell of drink and tobacco on his breath. Tara was about, harrying the cowman (it was milking-time) or harrying the yard boy or the servant girl, harrying somebody. In none of these places he was being missed because in none of these places had he ever been more than a visitor, an upsetter of routine. Was Bipti thinking of him in the back trace? But she herself was a derelict. And, even more remote, that house of mud and grass in the swamplands: probably pulled down now and ploughed up. Beyond that, a void. There was nothing to speak of him.

He heard footsteps and Shama came into the room with a brass plate loaded with rice, curried potatoes, lentils and coconut chutney.

“How often you want me to tell you that I hate those blasted brass plates?”

She put the plate on the floor.

He walked round it. “Nobody ever teach you hygiene at school? Rice, potatoes. All that damn starch.” He tapped his belly. “You want to blow me up?” At the sight of Shama his depression had turned to anger, but he spoke jocularly.

“I always say,” Shama said, “that you must complain only when you start providing your own food.”

He went to the window, washed his hands, gargled and spat.

Someone shouted from below, “Up there! Look what you doing!”

“I know, I know,” Shama said, running to the window. “I know this was bound to happen one day. You spit on somebody.”

He looked out with interest. “Who it is? The old she-fox, or one of the gods?”

“You spit on Owad.”

They heard him complaining.

Mr. Biswas took another mouthful of water and gargled. Then, with cheeks puffed out, he leaned as far out of the window as he could.

“Don’t think I not seeing you,” the god shouted. “I marking what you doing, Mr. Biswas. But I standing up right here and if you spit on me again I going to tell Ma.”

“Tell, you little son of a bitch,” Mr. Biswas muttered, spitting.

“Man!”

“O God!” the god exclaimed.

“You lucky little monkey,” Mr. Biswas said. He had missed.

“Man!” Shama cried, and dragged him from the window.

He walked slowly around the brass plate.

“Walk,” Shama said. “You walk until you tired. But wait until you provide your own food before you start criticizing the food other people give you.”

“Who give you that message to give me? Your mother?” He pulled his top teeth behind his lower teeth, but his long floursack pants prevented him from looking menacing.

“Nobody didn’t give me any message to give you. It is just something I think of myself.”

“You think of it yourself, eh?”

He had seized the brass plate, spilling rice on the floor, and was rushing to the Demerara window. Going to throw the whole damned thing out, he had decided. But his violence calmed him, and at the window he had another thought: throw the plate out and you could kill somebody. He arrested his hurling gesture, and merely tilted the plate. The food slipped off easily, leaving a few grains of rice sticking to streaks of lentils and oily, bubble-ridden trails of curry.

“O God! Oo-Go-o-od!”

It began as a gentle cry and rose rapidly to a sustained bawling which aroused sympathetic shrieks from babies all over the house. All at once the bawling was cut off, and seconds later-it seemed much later-Mr. Biswas heard a deep, grating, withdrawing snuffle. “I going to tell Ma,” the god cried. “Ma, come and see what your son-in-law do to me. He cover me down with his dirty food.” After a sirenlike intake of breath the bawling continued.

Shama looked martyred.

There was considerable commotion below. Several people were shouting at once, babies screamed, there was much subsidiary bawling and chatter, and the hall resounded with agitated movements.

Heavy footsteps made the stairs shake, rattled the glass panes on doors, drummed across the Book Room, and Govind was in Mr. Biswas’s chamber.

“Is you!” Govind shouted, breathing hard, his handsome face contorted. “Is you who spit on Owad.”

Mr. Biswas was frightened.

He heard more footsteps on the stairs. The bawling drew nearer.

“Spit?” Mr. Biswas said. “I ain’t spit on anybody. I just gargle out of the window and throw away some bad food.”

Shama screamed.

Govind threw himself on Mr. Biswas.

Caught by surprise, stupefied by fear, Mr. Biswas neither shouted nor hit back at Govind, and allowed himself to be pummelled. He was struck hard and often on the jaw, and with every blow Govind said, “Is you.” Vaguely Mr. Biswas was aware of women massing in the room, screaming, sobbing, falling upon Govind and himself. He was acutely aware of the god bawling, right in his ear, it seemed: a dry, deliberate, scraping noise. Abruptly the bawling ceased. “Yes, is he!” the god said. “Is he. He asking for this a long time now.” And at every cuff and kick Govind gave, the god grunted, as though he himself had given the blow. The women were above Mr. Biswas and Govind, their hair and veils falling loose. One veil tickled Mr. Biswas’s nose.