Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

It was not for this reason alone that his attitude to Hanuman House changed. The House was a world, more real than The Chase, and less exposed; everything beyond its gates was foreign and unimportant and could be ignored. He needed such a sanctuary. And in time the House became to him what Tara’s had been when he was a boy. He could go to Hanuman House whenever he wished and become lost in the crowd, since he was treated with indifference rather than hostility. And he went there more often, held his tongue and tried to win favour. It was an effort, and even at times of great festivity, when everyone worked with energy and joy, enthusiasm reacting upon enthusiasm, in himself he remained aloof.

Indifference turned to acceptance, and he was pleased and surprised to find that because of his past behaviour he, like the girl contortionist, now being groomed for marriage, had a certain licence. On occasion pungent remarks were invited from him, and then almost anything he said raised a laugh. The gods were away most of the time and he seldom saw them. But he was glad when he did; for his relationship with them had changed also, and he considered them the only people he could talk to seriously. Now that he had dropped his Aryan iconoclasm, they discussed religion, and these discussions in the hall became family entertainments. He invariably lost, since his telling points could be dismissed as waggishness; which satisfied everybody. His standing rose even higher when there were guests for important religious ceremonies. It was soon established that Mr. Biswas, like Hari, was too incompetent, and too intelligent, to be given the menial tasks of the other brothers-in-law. He was deputed to have disputations with the pundits in the drawingroom.

He took to going to Hanuman House the afternoon before these ceremonies, so that he spent the night there. And it was then that he was reminded of an old, secret ambition. As a boy he had envied Ajodha and Pundit Jairam. How often, of an evening, he had seen Jairam bath and put on a clean dhoti and settle down among the pillows in his verandah with his book and spectacles, while his wife cooked in the kitchen! He had thought then that to be grown up was to be as contented and comfortable as Jairam. And when Ajodha sat on a chair and threw his head back, that chair at once looked more comfortable than any. Despite his hypochondria and fastidiousness Ajodha ate with so much relish that Mr. Biswas used to feel, even when eating with him, that the food on Ajodha’s plate had become more delicious. Late in the evenings, before he went to bed, Ajodha let his slippers fall to the floor, drew up his legs on to the rockingchair and, rocking slowly, sipped a glass of hot milk, closing his eyes, sighing after every sip; and to Mr. Biswas it had seemed that Ajodha was relishing the most exquisite luxury. He believed that when he became a man it would be possible for him to enjoy everything the way Ajodha did, and he promised himself to buy a rockingchair and to drink a glass of hot milk in the evenings. But on these evenings when Hanuman House was bright with lights and hummed with happy activity, when he was able to sit among the cushions on the polished floor of the drawingroom and call for a glass of hot milk, he experienced no sharp pleasure, and was instead nagged by the uneasiness he had felt when he visited Tara’s and read That Body of Yours to Ajodha. Then he knew that as soon as he stepped out of the yard he returned to nonentity, the rumshop on the Main Road and the hut in the back trace. Now it was the thought of the shop in darkness at The Chase, the shelves of tinned foods that wouldn’t sell, the display boards that had lost their pleasant smell of new cardboard and printer’s ink and had grown flyblown and dim, the oily drawer that rocked in its socket and held so little money. And always the thought, the fear about the future. The future wasn’t the next day or the next week or even the next year, times within his comprehension and therefore without dread. The future he feared could not be thought of in terms of time. It was a blankness, a void like those in dreams, into which, past tomorrow and next week and next year, he was falling.

Once, years before, he was conducting one of Ajodha’s motorbuses that ran its erratic course to remote and unsuspected villages. It was late afternoon and they were racing back along the ill-made country road. Their lights were weak and they were racing the sun. The sun fell; and in the short dusk they passed a lonely hut set in a clearing far back from the road. Smoke came from under the ragged thatched eaves: the evening meal was being prepared. And, in the gloom, a boy was leaning against the hut, his hands behind him, staring at the road. He wore a vest and nothing more. The vest glowed white. In an instant the bus went by, noisy in the dark, through bush and level sugarcane fields. Mr. Biswas could not remember where the hut stood, but the picture remained: a boy leaning against an earth house that had no reason for being there, under the dark falling sky, a boy who didn’t know where the road, and that bus, went.

And often, among the pundits and the cushions and the statuary in the drawingroom, eating the enormous meals the Tulsis provided on these occasions, he was assailed by this sense of utter desolation. Then, without conviction, he counted his blessings and ordered himself to enjoy the moment, like the others.

And while he made greater efforts to please at Hanuman House, with Shama, at The Chase, he became increasingly irritable. After every visit he abused the Tulsis to her, and his invective was without fantasy or humour.

“Talk about hypocrisy,” Shama said. “Why you don’t tell them so to their face?”

He began to think that she was plotting to get him back to Hanuman House, and he wondered whether she hadn’t encouraged him to believe that The Chase was temporary. She had never urged him to make improvements, and was always interested when something was done at Hanuman House, when the famous clay-brick factory was pulled down or when awnings were put up over the windows. More and more The Chase was a place where Shama only spent time; she had always called Hanuman House home. And it was her home, and Savi’s, and Anand’s, as it could never be his. As he realized every Christmas.

The Tulsis celebrated Christmas in their store and, with equal irreligiosity, in their home. It was a purely Tulsi festival. All the sons-in-law, and even Seth, were expelled from Hanuman House and returned to their own families. Even Miss Blackie went to her own people.

For Mr. Biswas Christmas was a day of tedious depression. He went to Pagotes to see his mother and Tara and Ajodha, none of whom recognized Christmas. His mother cried so much and with so much feeling he was never sure whether she was glad to see him. Every Christmas she said the same things. He sounded like his father; if she closed her eyes while he spoke she could imagine that his father was alive again. She had little to say about herself. She was happy where she was and did not want to be a burden to any of her sons; her life was over, she had nothing more to do, and was waiting for death. To feel sympathy for her he had to look, not at her face, but at the thinness of her hair. It was still black, however: which was a pity, for grey hair would have helped to put him in a more tender mood. Suddenly she got up and said she was going to make him tea; she was poor, that was all she could offer. She went out to the gallery and he heard her talking to someone. Her voice was quite different; it was firm, without a whine, the voice of a woman still energetic and capable. She brought tea that was lukewarm, with too little tea, too much milk and a taste of woodsmoke. She told him he needn’t drink it. Dutifully he put his arm around her. The gesture caused him pain, making him feel his own worthlessness. She didn’t respond, and wept and talked as before. She said she was going to give him tomatoes and cabbages and lettuces to take home. When she went out her voice and manner changed again. He gave her a dollar, which he could scarcely afford. She took it without showing surprise and without a word of thanks. He was always glad when he could leave the back trace to go to Tara’s.