Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Mr. Biswas took down the spike from the nail between the shelves where it hung above a faded advertisement for Cydrax, a beverage which had not caught the village’s fancy. The spike was now a tall, feathery, multi-coloured brush, with the papers at the bottom as brittle and curling as dead leaves.

“Pappa!” Moti said, and became graver and graver as he looked through the papers. He could not look very far because to get at the lower papers he would have had to remove those at the top altogether. He turned away from Mr. Biswas and contemplated the blackness outside, staring past the doorway against which the rear wheel of his decrepit bicycle could be seen. Sadly he sucked his Paradise Plum. “Pity you don’t know Seebaran. Seebaran woulda fix you up in two twos. He help out the man before you. Otherwise the man would be a pauper now, man. A pauper. Is a funny thing, but you don’t expect to find people getting fat and rich on credit while the poor shopkeeper, who give the credit, not getting enough to eat, wearing rags, watching his children starve, watching them sick.”

Mr. Biswas, seeing himself as the hero of one of Misir’s stories, could scarcely hide his alarm.

“All right, then, man.” Moti fixed his bicycle clips around his ankles. “I got to go. Thanks for the chat. I hope everything go all right with you.”

“But you know Seebaran,” Mr. Biswas said.

“Know him, yes. But I don’t know whether I could just go and ask him to help out a friend of mine. Busy man, you know. Handling nearly all the work in the Petty Civil.”

“Still, you could tell him?”

“Yes,” Moti said, without conviction. “I could tell him. But Seebaran is a big man. You can’t.go troubling him with just one or two little things.”

Mr. Biswas brushed his hand up and down the papers on the spike. “It have a lot of work here for him,” he said aggressively. “You tell him.”

“All right. I go tell him.” Moti got on his cycle. “But I ain’t promising nothing.”

Savi was asleep when Mr. Biswas went to the back room.

“Going to settle Mungroo and the rest of them,” Mr. Biswas said to Shama. “Putting Seebaran on their tail.”

“Who is Seebaran?”

“Who is Seebaran! You mean you don’t know Seebaran? The man who handling practically all the work in the Petty Civil.”

“I know all that. I hear what the man was saying too.”

“Why the hell you ask me then for?”

“You don’t think you better get advice before you start bringing up people?”

“Advice? Who from? The old thug and the old she-fox? I know they know everything. You don’t have to tell me that. But they know law?”

“Seth bring up a lot of people.”

“And every time he bring somebody up, he lose. You don’t have to tell me that either. Everybody in Arwacas know about Seth and the people he bring up. He don’t know everything.”

“He used to study doctor. Doctor or druggist.”

“Used to study doctor! Horse-doctor, if you ask me. He look like a doctor to you? You ever look at his hands? Fat, thick. Can’t even hold a pencil properly.”

“He cut open that boil Chanrouti had the other day.”

“And yes. That is another thing I want to tell you, eh. In advance. In advance . I don’t want Seth cutting open any boil on any of my children. And I don’t want him prescribing any blasted sulphur and condensed milk for any of them either.”

Mungroo was the leader of the village stick-fighters. He was a tall, wiry, surly man, made ferocious in appearance by a large handlebar moustache, for which the villagers called him Moush, then Moach. As a stickman he was a champion. He had reach and skill, and his responses were miraculous. He converted a parry into a lunge so fluently it seemed to be a single action. He fought every duel as though he had rehearsed its every development. It was Mungroo who had organized the young men of The Chase into a fighting band, ready to defend the honour of the village on the days of the Christian Carnival and the Muslim Hosein. Under his direction and in his yard they practised assiduously in the evenings by the light of flambeaux. The village boys went to watch this evening practice. So, despite Shama’s disapproval, did Mr. Biswas.

As much as the game he liked the making of the sticks. Designs were cut into the bark of the poui , which was then roasted in a bonfire; the burnt bark was peeled off, leaving the design burnt into the white wood. There was no scent as pleasant as that of barely roasted poui : faint, yet so lasting it seemed to come from afar, from some immeasurable depth captive within the wood: as faint as the scent of the pouis Raghu roasted in the village like this, in a yard like this, in a bonfire like this: bringing sensations, not pictures, of an evening meal being cooked over a fire that shone on a mud wall and kept out the night, of cool, new, unused mornings, of rain muffled on a thatched roof and warmth below it: sensations as faint as the scent of the poui itself, but sadly evanescent, refusing to be seized or to be translated into a concrete memory.

Afterwards, the sticks, their heads carved, were soaked in coconut oil in bamboo cylinders, to give them greater strength and resilience. Then Mungroo took the sticks to an old stickman he knew, to have them “mounted” with the spirit of a dead Spaniard. So that the ritual ended in romance, awe and mystery. For the Spaniards, Mr. Biswas knew, had surrendered the island one hundred years before, and their descendants had disappeared; yet they had left a memory of reckless valour, and this memory had passed to people who came from another continent and didn’t know what a Spaniard was, people who, in their huts of mud and grass where time and distance were obliterated, still frightened their children with the name of Alexander, of whose greatness they knew nothing.

By profession Mungroo was a roadmender. He preferred to say that he worked for the government, and he preferred not to work at all. He made it plain that because he defended the honour of the village, the village owed him a living. He exacted contributions for pitch-oil for the flambeaux, for the “mounting” fees, and for the expensive costumes the stick-fighters wore on days of battle. At first Mr. Biswas contributed willingly. Then Mungroo, the better to devote himself to his art, abandoned the road-gang for weeks at a time and lived on credit from Mr. Biswas and other shopkeepers. Mr. Biswas admired Mungroo. He felt it would be disloyal to refuse Mungroo credit, unbecoming to remind him of his debts, and dangerous to do either. Mungroo became steadily more demanding. Mr. Biswas complained to other customers; they told Mungroo. Mungroo didn’t reply, as Mr. Biswas had feared, with violence, but with a dignity which, though it struck Mr. Biswas as hollow, hurt him as deeply as the silences and sighs of Shama. Mungroo refused to speak to Mr. Biswas and spat, casually, whenever he passed the shop. Mungroo’s bills remained unpaid; and Mr. Biswas lost a few more customers.

Earlier than Mr. Biswas had expected, Moti returned and said, “You are a lucky man. Seebaran has decided to help you. I told him you were a friend of mine and a good Hindu, and he’s a very strict Hindu himself, as you know. He is going to help you. Even though he’s busy.” He took out the papers from his shirt pocket, found the one he wanted and slapped it down on the counter. At the top a mauve stamp, slightly askew, said that L. S. Seebaran was a solicitor and conveyancer. Below that there were many dotted lines between printed sentences. “Seebaran going to full up those for you as soon as he get your papers,” Moti said, using English, the language of the law.

Unless this sum , Mr. Biswas read with a thrill, together with One Dollar and Twenty Cents ($1 ,020), the cost of this letter, is paid within ten days, legal proceedings shall be instituted against yo u . And there was another dotted line below that, where L. S. Seebaran was to sign himself yours faithfully.