Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“Well, as I was saying,” Mr. Biswas said, “this job I have is steady. And I am beginning to build a little house.”

“O good, Mohun,” Tara said. “Very good.”

“I don’t know how you managed to live at Hanuman House,” Ajodha said. “How many people live in that place?”

“About two hundred,” Mr. Biswas said, and they all laughed. “Now, this house is going to be a proper house-”

“You know what you should do, Mohun?” Ajodha said. “You should take Sanatogen. Not one bottle. Take the full course. You don’t get any benefit unless you take the full course.”

Tara nodded.

Rabidat came out of the kitchen again. “What is this I hear about a house, Mohun? You build a house? Where you get all this money from?”

“He has been saving up,” Ajodha said impatiently. “Not like you. You are going to end up living in a hole in the ground, Rabidat. I don’t know what you do with your money.” It was only indirectly, like this, that Ajodha referred to Rabidat’s outside life.

“Look. You!” Rabidat said. “I wasn’t born with money, you hear. And I don’t have the scheming mind to make any. My father neither.” He was being provocative, since any mention of his father, like any mention of Mr. Biswas’s sister, was forbidden.

Ajodha frowned and rocked violently.

And Mr. Biswas realized that the time to ask had gone for good.

Ajodha’s look wasn’t the one he assumed so easily, of worry and petulance, which meant nothing, though it filled his employees with dread. It was a look of anger.

Ignoring Ajodha and smiling at Mr. Biswas, Rabidat asked, “A dirt house?”

“No, man. Concrete pillars. Two bedrooms and a drawing-room. Galvanized roof and everything.”

But Rabidat wasn’t listening.

“Tara!” Ajodha said. “If I didn’t take him out of the gutter, where would he be today? If I didn’t feed him all that food”-rising so swiftly that the rockingchair shot backwards, he went up to Rabidat and held his biceps-“do you think he would have these?”

“Don’t touch me !” Rabidat bawled.

Mr. Biswas jumped. Ajodha whipped away his hand.

“Don’t touch me!” Tears sprang to Rabidat’s small eyes. He closed them tightly, as if in great pain, lifted one foot high and brought it down with all his strength on the floor. “You didn’t make me. If you want to touch children, make them. What you want me to do with the food you feed me? What?”

Tara got up and passed her hand on Rabidat’s back. “All right, all right, Rabidat. It is time for you to go to the theatre.” One of his duties was to go to the cinema twice a day to check the takings.

Breathing hard, almost grunting, and chewing up his words into incomprehensible sounds, he went up the two steps that led from the back verandah to the main section of the house.

Ajodha pulled the rockingchair towards him, sat on it and began to rock briskly.

Tara smiled at Mr. Biswas. “I don’t know what to do with them, Mohun.”

“Gratitude!” Ajodha said.

“Tell us about your house, Mohun,” Tara said.

“You take them out of a barrackroom and this is what you get.”

“House?” Mr. Biswas said. “Oh, is nothing really. A small little thing. Is for the children sake that I really building it.”

“We want to build over this house,” Tara said. “But the trouble! The moment you want to put up anything good, so many forms, so many people’s permission. When we built this house we had nothing like that. But I don’t imagine you have that worry.”

“O no,” Mr. Biswas said. “No worry about that at all.”

With those light, precise motions on which he prided himself, Ajodha jumped out of his chair and went through the half-door into the yard.

“Those two,” Tara said. “Always quarrelling. But they don’t mean anything. Tomorrow they will be like father and son.”

They heard Ajodha in the cowpen abusing the absent cowman.

Jagdat, Rabidat’s elder brother, came in and asked in his cheerful way, “Something eating your husband, Aunt?” and chuckled.

Whenever Mr. Biswas saw Jagdat he felt that Jagdat had just come from a funeral. Not only was his manner breezy; there was also his dress, which had never varied for many years: black shoes, black socks, dark blue serge trousers with a black leather belt, white shirt cuffs turned up above the wrist, and a gaudy tie: so that it seemed he had come back from a funeral, taken off his coat, undone his cuffs, replaced his black tie, and was generally making up for an afternoon of solemnity. His eyes were as small as Rabidat’s, but livelier; his face was squarer; he laughed more often, showing rabbitlike teeth. With a hairy ringed hand he slapped Mr. Biswas hard on the back, saying, “The old Mohun, man!”

“The old Jagdat,” Mr. Biswas said.

“Mohun is building a house,” Tara said.

“Has he come to invite us to the housewarming? We only see you at Christmas, man. You don’t eat the rest of the year? Or is because of all the money you making?” And Jagdat roared with laughter.

Ajodha came back from the cowpen and he and Mr. Biswas and Jagdat ate in the verandah. Tara ate by herself in the kitchen. Ajodha was silent and sullen, Jagdat subdued. The food was good but Mr. Biswas ate without pleasure.

He had hoped that after the meal he would get Tara alone. But Ajodha remained rocking in the verandah and after a little Mr. Biswas thought the time had come to leave. The girl had finished washing up in the kitchen, and the night silence made it seem later than it was.

Tara said he should take back some fruit for the children.

“Vitamin C,” Ajodha said, in his irritable voice. “Give him lots of vitamin C, Tara.”

She obediently filled a bag with oranges.

Then Ajodha went inside.

As soon as he had gone Tara put some avocado pears into the bag, large purple-skinned ones such as, at Hanuman House, were set aside for Mrs. Tulsi and the god. “They will get ripe soon,” she said. “The children will like them.”

He didn’t want to explain where the children lived and where he lived. But he was glad he hadn’t asked her for money.

“I am sorry your uncle was in such a temper,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean anything. The boys are being a little difficult. They want money from him all the time and you can’t blame him for getting angry sometimes. They are spreading all sorts of stories about him, too. He doesn’t say anything. But he knows.”

Mr. Biswas went to say good-bye to Ajodha. His room was in darkness, the door was open, and Ajodha was lying on his pillowless bed with all his clothes on. Mr. Biswas knocked lightly and there was no reply. The ledges on the walls were littered with papers. The room had only four pieces of furniture: the bed, a chair, a low chest of drawers and a black iron chest, the top of which was also covered with papers and magazines. Mr. Biswas was about to go away when he heard Ajodha say gently, “I am not asleep, Mohun. But these days I always rest after eating. You mustn’t mind if I don’t talk or get up.”

On the way to the Main Road to get a bus Mr. Biswas was hailed by someone. It was Jagdat. He put his hand on Mr. Biswas’s shoulder and conspiratorially offered a cigarette. Ajodha forbade smoking and for Jagdat a cigarette was still an excitement.

Jagdat said breezily, “You come to squeeze something out of the old man, eh?”

“What? Me? I just come to see the old people, man.”

“That wasn’t what the old man tell me.”

Jagdat waited, then clapped Mr. Biswas on the back.

“But I didn’t tell him anything.”

“The old Mohun, man. Trying out the old diplomatic tactic, eh. The old tic-tac-toe.”

“I wasn’t trying out anything.”