Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“If it wasn’t for the children, what?”

She continued to chew with a loud and morose deliberation.

In one corner Savi and Anand were rolling out sacks and sheets on which to sleep.

“You come,” Shama said. “You come, you didn’t look right, you didn’t look left, you start getting on, you curse me upside down-”

It was the beginning of her apology. He didn’t interrupt.

“You didn’t know what I had to put up with. Talking night and day. Puss-puss here. Puss-puss there. Chinta dropping remarks all the time. Everybody beating their children the moment they start talking to Savi. Nobody wanting to talk to me. Everybody behaving as though I kill their father.” She stopped, and cried. “So I had to satisfy them. I break up the dolly-house and everybody was satisfied. And then you come. You didn’t look right, you didn’t look left-”

“Charge of the Light Brigade. You think Chinta would break up a dolly-house Govind buy? If you could imagine Govind doing anything like that. Tell me, what does that brother-in-law of yours use for food, eh? Dirt? You think Chinta would break up a dolly-house Govind buy?”

She wept over her plate.

Later she wept over the washingup, repeatedly interrupting her tears, first to blow her nose, then to sing sad songs softly, and finally to ask about Savi’s behaviour during the week.

He told how Savi had thrown away the old woman’s food. Shama was gratified, and told other stories of the girl’s sensibility. Savi, still anxiously awake and only pretending to be asleep, listened with pleasure. Again Shama told of Savi’s dislike for fish and how Mrs. Tulsi had overcome that dislike. She also spoke of Anand, who was so sensitive that biscuits made his mouth bleed.

Mr. Biswas, his mood now soft as hers, did not say that he thought this to be a sign of undernourishment. Instead he began to talk about his house and Shama listened without enthusiasm but without objection.

“And as soon as the house finish, going to buy that gold brooch for you, girl!”

“I would like to see the day.”

They had come on Saturday. On Monday Savi had to go back to school.

“Stay here,” Mr. Biswas said. “They don’t teach much on the first day.”

“How you know?” Savi said. “You ever went to school?”

“Yes, miss. I went to school. You are not the only one to go to school, you know.”

“If I stay I will have to have an excuse to give Teacher.”

“I will write one for you in two twos. Dear Teacher, My daughter Savi is unable to attend school for the first week because she has been staying with her grandmother and is suffering from serious undernourishment.”

On Sunday evening Shama took Savi and Anand back to Arwacas. She went to Hanuman House again. And so for the rest of the term she came and left; and he never ceased to feel that he was alone, with the trees, the newspapers on the wall, the religious quotations, his books.

One thing gave him comfort. He had claimed Savi.

At Easter he learned that Shama was pregnant for the fourth time.

One child claimed; one still hostile; one unknown. And now another.

Trap!

The future he feared was upon him. He was falling into the void, and that terror, known only in dreams, was with him as he lay awake at nights, hearing the snores and creaks and the occasional cries of babies from the other rooms. The relief that morning brought steadily diminished. Food and tobacco were tasteless. He was always tired, and always restless. He went often to Hanuman House; as soon as he was there he wanted to leave. Sometimes he cycled to Arwacas without going to the house, changing his mind in the High Street, turning round and cycling back to Green Vale. When he closed the door of his room for the night it was like an imprisonment.

He talked to himself, shouted, did everything as noisily as he could.

Nothing replied. Nothing changed. Amazing scenes were witnessed yesterday when . The newspapers remained as jaunty as they had been, the quotations as sedate. Of him I will never lose hold and he shall never lose hold of me . But now in the shape and position of everything around him, the trees, the furniture, even those letters he had made with brush and ink, there was an alertness, an expectancy.

Seth announced one Saturday that there were to be changes on the estate at the end of the crop season. Some twenty acres which had for many years been rented to labourers were to be taken over. Seth and Mr. Biswas went from hut to hut, breaking the news. As soon as he entered a labourer’s hut Seth lost his briskness. He looked tired and sounded tired; he accepted a cup of tea and drank it wearily; then he spoke, as though the matter was trivial, burdensome only to him, and the land was being taken from the labourers purely for their benefit. The labourers listened politely and asked Seth and Mr. Biswas whether they wanted more tea. Seth accepted at once, saying it was very good tea. He played with the thin-limbed, big-eyed children, made them laugh and gave them coppers to buy sweeties. Their parents protested he was spoiling them.

Afterwards Seth said to Mr. Biswas, “You can’t trust those buggers. They are going to give a lot of trouble. You better watch out.”

The labourers never spoke about the land to Mr. Biswas, and while the crop was being reaped there was no trouble.

When the land was bare Seth said, “They will want to dig up the roots. Don’t let them.”

It was not long before Mr. Biswas had to report that some roots had been dug up.

Seth said, “It looks as though I will have to horsewhip one or two of them.”

“No, not that. You go back every night to sleep safe and sound in Arwacas. I have to stay here.”

In the end they decided to employ a watchman, and the land was prepared, without further trouble, for the new crop.

“You think the whole thing worth it?” Mr. Biswas asked. “Paying watchman and everything?”

“In a year or so we wouldn’t have any trouble,” Seth said. “People get used to everything.”

And it seemed that Seth was.right. The dispossessed labourers, though they saw Mr. Biswas every day, contented themselves with sending him messages by other labourers.

“Dookinan says that he know you have a kind heart and wouldn’t want to do anything to harm him. Five children, you know.”

“Is not me,” Mr. Biswas said. “Is not my land. I just doing a job and drawing a salary.”

The labourers’ acceptance, at first touched with hope, turned to resignation. And resignation turned to hostility, directed not against Seth, who was feared, but against Mr. Biswas. He was no longer mocked; but no one smiled at him, and outside the fields he was ignored.

Every night he bolted himself in his room. As soon as he was still he felt the stillness around him and he had to make movements to destroy the stillness, to challenge the alertness of the room and the objects in it.

He was rocking hard on the creaking board one night when he thought of the power of the rockers to grind and crush and inflict pain, on his hands and toes and the tenderer parts of his body. He rose at once in agony, covering his groin with his hands, sucking hard on his teeth, listening to the chair as, rocking, it moved sideways along the cambered plank. The chair fell silent. He looked away from it. On the wall he saw a nail that could puncture his eye. The window could trap and mangle. So could the door. Every leg of the green table could press and crush. The castors of the dressing-table. The drawers. He lay face down on the bed, not wanting to see and, to drive out the shapes of objects from his head, he concentrated on the shapes of letters, working out design after design for the letter R. At last he fell asleep, with his hands covering the vulnerable parts of his body, and wishing he had hands to cover himself all over. In the morning he was better; he had forgotten his fears.