Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

He knew then that he hadn’t intended to go back, ever. He said nothing.

“You better sleep here then.”

As long as there was floor space, there was bed space.

Some sisters came into the hall. Packs of cards were brought out; the sisters split into groups and gravely settled down to play. Chinta played with style. She fussed with her cards, rearranged them often, stared blankly and disconcertingly at the other players, hummed and never spoke; before she played a telling card she frowned at it, pulled it up a little, tapped it down and kept on tapping it; then, suddenly, she threw it on the table with a crack and, still frowning, collected her trick. She was a magnanimous winner and a bad loser.

Mr. Biswas watched.

Shama made a bed for him in the verandah upstairs, among the children.

He woke to a babel the next morning and when he went down to the hall found the sisters getting their children ready for school. It was the only time of day when it was reasonably easy to tell which child belonged to which mother. He was surprised to see Shama filling a satchel with a slate, a slate pencil, a lead pencil, an eraser, an exercise book with the Union Jack on the cover, and Nelson’s West Indian Reader , First Stage, by Captain J. O. Cutteridge, Director of Education, Trinidad and Tobago. Lastly Shama wrapped an orange in tissue paper and put it in the satchel. “For teacher,” she said to Savi.

Mr. Biswas didn’t know that Savi had begun to go to school.

Shama sat on a bench, held Savi between her legs, combed her hair, plaited it, straightened the pleats on her navy-blue uniform, and adjusted her Panama hat.

Mother and daughter had been doing this for many weeks. And he had known nothing.

Shama said, “If your shoelaces come loose again today, you think you would be able to tie them back?” She bent down and undid Savi’s shoelaces. “Let me see you tie them.”

“You know I can’t tie them.”

“Do it quick sharp, or I give you a dose of licks.”

“I can’t tie them.”

“Come,” Mr. Biswas said, shamelessly paternal in the bustling hall. “I will tie them for you.”

“No,” Shama said. “She must learn to tie her laces. Otherwise I will keep her at home and beat her until she can tie them.”

It was standard talk at Hanuman House. At The Chase Shama had never spoken like that.

As yet no one was paying attention. But when Shama started to hunt for one of the many hibiscus switches which always lay about the hall, sisters and children became less noisy and good-humouredly waited to see what would happen. It was not going to be a serious flogging since ineptitude rather than criminality was being punished; and Shama moved about with a comic jerkiness, as though she knew she was only an actor in a farce and not, like Sumati at the house-blessing in The Chase, a figure of high tragedy.

Mr. Biswas, his eyes fixed on Savi, found himself tittering nervously. Still wearing her Panama hat, Savi squatted on the floor, tangling laces and watching them fall apart, or knotting them double, tight and high, and having to undo them with her nails and teeth. She, too, was partly acting for the audience. Her failures were greeted with approving laughter. Even Shama, standing by with whip in hand, allowed amusement to invade her playacting annoyance.

“All right,” Shama said. “Let me show you for the last time. Watch me. Now try.”

Savi fumbled ineffectually again. This time there was less laughter.

“You just want to shame me,” Shama said. “A big girl like you, five going on six, can’t tie her own laces. Jai, come here.”

Jai was the son of an unimportant sister. He was pushed to the front by his mother, who was dandling another baby on her hip.

“Look at Jai,” Shama said. “His mother don’t have to tie his shoelaces. And he is a whole year younger than you.”

“Fourteen months younger,” Jai’s mother said.

“Well, fourteen months younger,” Shama said, directing her annoyance to Savi. “You want to defy me?”

Savi was still squatting.

“Hurry up now!” Shama said, so loudly and suddenly that Savi jumped and began playing stupidly with the laces.

No one laughed.

Stooping, Shama brought the hibiscus switch down on Savi’s bare legs.

Mr. Biswas looked on, a fixed smile on his face. He made phlegmy little noises, urging Shama to stop.

Savi was crying.

Sushila, the widow, came to the top of the stairs and said authoritatively, “Remember Mai.”

They all remembered. Silence for the sick. The scene was over.

Shama, trying too late to turn comedy into tragedy, developed a sudden temper and stamped off, almost unnoticed, to the kitchen.

Sumati, the flogger at The Chase, pulled Savi to her long skirt. Savi cried into it and used it to wipe her nose and dry her eyes. Then Sumati tied Savi’s laces and sent her off to school.

At The Chase Shama had seldom beat Savi, and then it had been only a matter of a few slaps. But at Hanuman House the sisters still talked with pride of the floggings they had received from Mrs. Tulsi. Certain memorable floggings were continually recalled, with commonplace detail made awful and legendary by its association with a stupendous event, like the detail in a murder case. And there was even some rivalry among the sisters as to who had been flogged worst of all.

Mr. Biswas had breakfast: biscuits from the big black drum, red butter, and tea, lukewarm, sugary and strong. Shama, though indignant, was dutiful and correct. As she watched him eat, her indignation became more and more defensive. Finally she was only grave.

“You see Mai yet?”

He understood.

They went to the Rose Room. Sushila admitted them and at once went outside. A shaded oil lamp burned low. The jalousied window in the thick clay-brick wall was closed, keeping out daylight; cloth was wedged around the frame, to keep out draughts. There was a smell of ammonia, bay rum, rum, brandy, disinfectant, and a variety of febrifuges. Below a white canopy with red appliquй apples Mrs. Tulsi lay, barely recognizable, a bandage around her forehead, her temples dotted with lumps of soft candle, her nostrils stuffed with some white medicament.

Shama sat on a chair in a shadowed corner, effacing herself.

The marble topped bedside table was a confusion of bottles, jars and glasses. There were little blue jars of medicated rubs, little white jars of medicated rubs; tall green bottles of bay rum and short square bottles of eyedrops and nosedrops; a round bottle of rum, a flat bottle of brandy and an oval royal blue bottle of smelling-salts; a bottle of Sloan’s Liniment and a tiny tin of Tiger Balm; a mixture with a pink sediment and one with a yellow-brown sediment, like muddy water left to stand from the previous night.

Mr. Biswas didn’t want to talk to Mrs. Tulsi in Hindi, but the Hindi words came out. “How are you, Mai? I couldn’t come to see you last night because it was too late and I didn’t want to disturb you.” He hadn’t intended to give any explanations.

“How are you?” Mrs. Tulsi said nasally, with unexpected tenderness. “I am an old woman and it doesn’t matter how I am.”

She reached out for the bottle of smelling salts and sniffed at it. The bandage around her forehead slipped down to her eyes. Adapting her tone of tenderness to one of distress and authority, she said, “Come and squeeze my head, Shama.”

Shama obeyed with alacrity. She sat on the edge of the bed and undid the bandage, undid Mrs. Tulsi’s hair, parted it in several places, poured bay rum into her palms and from there into the partings. She worked the bay rum into Mrs. Tulsi’s scalp and the soaked hair squelched. Mrs. Tulsi looked comforted. She closed her eyes, screwed the white medicament a little further up her nostrils, and patted her lips with a thin shawl.