Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Her voice was even and he would have smiled, as at a witticism, but when he looked at her he saw that her face was tight with anger.

“Vidiadhar and Shivadhar!” Chinta shouted. “Come here at once. Stop interfering with what doesn’t belong to you.”

As at a signal the sisters pounced on their children, threatening horrible punishments on those who interfered with what didn’t belong to them.

“I will peel your backside.”

“I will break every bone in your body.”

And Sumati the flogger said, “I will make you heavy with welts.”

“Savi, go and put it away,” Shama whispered. “Take it upstairs.”

Mrs. Tulsi, rising, patting her lips, said, “Shama, I hope you will have the grace to give me notice before you move to your mansion.” She laboured up the stairs, and Sushila, the widow who ruled the sickroom, followed solicitously.

The affronted sisters drew closer together, and Shama stood alone. Her eyes were wide with dread. She stared accusingly at Mr. Biswas.

“Well,” he said briskly. “I better go back home-to the barracks.”

He urged Savi and Anand to come with him out to the arcade. Savi came willingly. Anand was, as usual, embarrassed. Mr. Biswas couldn’t help feeling that, compared with Savi, the boy was a disappointment. He was small for his age, thin and sickly, with a big head; he looked as though he needed protection, but was shy and tongue-tied with Mr. Biswas and always seemed anxious to be free of him. Now, when Mr. Biswas put his arms around him, Anand sniffed, rubbed a dirty face against Mr. Biswas’s trousers, and tried to pull away.

“You must let Anand play with it,” Mr. Biswas said to Savi.

“He is a boy.”

“Don’t worry.” Mr. Biswas rubbed Anand’s bony back. “You are going to get something next time.”

“I want a car,” Anand said to Mr. Biswas’s trousers. “A big one.”

Mr. Biswas knew the sort he meant. “All right,” he said. “Going to get you a car.”

Immediately Anand broke away and ran back through the gate to the yard, riding an imaginary horse, wielding an imaginary whip and shouting, “And I going to get a car! I going to get a car!”

He bought the car; not, despite his promise, the big one Anand wanted, but a clockwork miniature; and on Saturday, after the labourers had been paid, he took it to Arwacas. His arrival was noted from the arcade and, as he pushed the side gate open, he heard the message being relayed by the children in awed and expectant tones: “Savi, your pappa come to see you.”

She came crying to the doorway of the hall. When he embraced her she burst into loud sobs.

The children were silent. He heard the stairs creaking continually, and he became aware of a thick shuffling and whispering in the black kitchen at the far end.

“Tell me,” he said.

She stifled her sobs. “They break it up.”

“Show me!” he cried. “Show me!”

His rage shocked her out of her tears. She came down the steps and he followed her through the gallery at the end of the hall into the yard, past a half-full copper reflecting a deep blue sky, and a black riveted tank where fish, bought alive from the market, swam until the time came for them to be eaten.

And there, below the almost bare branches of the almond tree that grew in the next yard, he saw it, thrown against a dusty leaning fence made of wood and tin and corrugated iron. A broken door, a ruined window, a staved-in wall or even roof-he had expected that. But not this. The doll’s house did not exist. He saw only a bundle of firewood. None of its parts was whole. Its delicate joints were exposed and useless. Below the torn skin of paint, still bright and still in parts imitating brickwork, the hacked and splintered wood was white and raw.

“O God!”

The sight of the wrecked house and the silence of her father made Savi cry afresh.

“Ma mash it up.”

He ran back to the house. The edge of a wall scraped against his shoulder, tearing his shirt and tearing the skin below.

Sisters had now left the stairs and kitchen and were sitting about the hall.

“Shama!” he bawled. “Shama!”

Savi came slowly up the steps from the courtyard. Sisters shifted their gaze from Mr. Biswas to her and she remained in the doorway, looking down at her feet.

“Shama!”

He heard a sister whisper, “Go and call your aunt Shama. Quick.”

He noticed Anand among the children and sisters.

“Come here, boy!”

Anand looked at the sisters. They gave him no help. He didn’t move.

“Anand, I call you! Come here quick sharp.”

“Go, boy,” Sumati said. “Before you get blows.”

While Anand hesitated, Shama came. She came through the kitchen doorway. Her veil was pulled over her forehead. This unusual touch of dutifulness he noted. She looked frightened yet determined.

“You bitch!”

The silence was absolute.

Sisters shooed away their children up the stairs and into the kitchen.

Savi remained in the doorway behind Mr. Biswas.

“I don’t mind what you call me,” Shama said.

“You break up the dolly house?”

Her eyes widened with fear and guilt and shame. “Yes,” she said, exaggeratedly calm. Then casually, “I break it up.”

“To please who?” He was losing control of his voice.

She didn’t answer.

He noticed that she looked lonely. “Tell me,” he screamed. “To please these people?”

Chinta got up, straightened out her long skirt and started to walk up the stairs. “Let me go away, eh, before I hear something I don’t like and have to answer back.”

“I wasn’t pleasing anybody but myself Shama was speaking more surely now and he could see that she was gaining strength from the approval of her sisters.

“You know what I think of you and your family?”

Two more sisters went up the stairs.

“I don’t care what you think.”

And suddenly his rage had gone. His shouts rang in his head, leaving him startled, ashamed and tired. He could think of nothing to say.

She recognized the change in his mood and waited, at ease now.

“Go and dress Savi.” He spoke quietly.

She made no move.

“Go and dress Savi !”

His shout frightened Savi and she began to scream. She was trembling and when he touched her she felt brittle.

Shama at last moved to obey.

Savi pulled away. “I don’t want anybody to dress me.”

“Go and pack her clothes.”

“You are taking her with you?”

It was his turn to be silent.

The children who had been shooed away into the kitchen pushed their faces out of the doorway.

Shama walked the length of the hall to the stairs, where sisters, sitting on the lower steps, pulled their knees in to let her pass.

At once everybody relaxed.

Sumati said in an amused voice, “Anand, are you going with your father too?”

Anand pulled his head back into the kitchen.

The hall became active again. Children drifted back, and sisters hurried between kitchen and hall, laying out the evening meal. Chinta returned arid started on a light-hearted song, which was taken up by other sisters.

The drama was over, and Shama’s re-entry, with ribbons, comb and a small cardboard suitcase, did not have the same attention as her exit.

Offering the suitcase with outstretched hand, Shama said, “She is your daughter. You know what is good for her. You have been feeding her. You know-”

He set his mouth, pulling his upper teeth behind his lower.

Chinta broke off her singing to say to Savi, “Going home, girl?”

“Put some shoes on her feet,” Shama said.

But that meant washing Savi’s feet, and that meant delay; and, pushing away Shama when she tried to comb Savi’s hair, he led Savi outside. It was only when they were in the High Street that he remembered Anand.