Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“What are you doing?” she said in Hindi. “Look, you will damage yourself.”

He was aware of Tarzan, Savi and Anand below the window. Tarzan was wagging his tail, barking and leaping up against the wall.

Shama came closer.

He was on the sill.

“O God!” he cried, winding his head up and down. “Go away.”

She was near enough to touch him.

He kicked at her.

She gave a yelp of pain.

He saw, too late, that he had kicked her on the belly.

The women from the barracks rushed up when they heard Shama cry out, and helped her from the room.

Savi and Anand came round to the kitchen area in front. Tarzan ran in puzzlement between them and the women and Mr. Biswas.

“Pack up your clothes and go home,” Dookhnee, one of the barrack-women, said. She had often been beaten and had witnessed many wife-beatings; they made all women sisters.

Savi went into the room fearfully and, not looking at her father, started to pack clothes into a suitcase.

Mr. Biswas stared and shouted, “Take your children and go away. Go away!”

Sharna, surrounded by the barrack-women, called, “Anand, pack up your clothes quick.”

Mr. Biswas jumped down from the sill.

“No !” he said. “Anand is not going with you. Take your girl children and go.” He didn’t know why he had said that. Savi was the only child he knew, yet he had gone out of his way to hurt her; and he didn’t know whether he wanted Anand to stay. Perhaps he had spoken only because Shama had mentioned the name.

“Anand,” Shama said, “Go and pack your clothes.”

Dookhnee said, “Yes, go and pack your clothes.”

And many of the women said, “Go, boy.”

“He is not going with you to that house,” Mr. Biswas said.

Anand remained where he was, in the kitchen area, stroking Tarzan, not looking at Mr. Biswas or the women.

Savi came out of the room with a suitcase and a pair of shoes. She dusted her feet and buckled on a shoe.

Shama, only now beginning to cry, said in Hindi, “Savi, I have told you many times to wash your feet before putting on your shoes.”

“All right, Ma. I will go and wash them.”

“Don’t bother this time,” Dookhnee said.

The women said, “No, don’t bother.”

Savi buckled on the other shoe.

Shama said, “Anand, do you want to come with me, or do you want to stay with your father?”

Mr. Biswas, the stick in his hand, looked at Anand.

Anand continued to stroke Tarzan, whose head was now upturned, his eyes partly closed.

Mr. Biswas ran to the green table and awkwardly pulled out the drawer. He took the long box of crayons he used for his placards and held it to Anand. He shook the box; the crayons rattled.

Savi said, “Come, Anand boy. Go and get your clothes.”

Still stroking Tarzan, Anand said, “I staying with Pa.” His voice was low and irritable.

“Anand!” Savi said.

“Don’t beg him,” Shama said, in control of herself again. “He is a man and knows what he is doing.”

“Boy,” Dookhnee said. “Your mother.”

Anand said nothing.

Shama got up and the circle of women around her widened. She took Myna, Savi took the suitcase, and they walked along the path, muddy between sparse and stubborn grass, to the road, scattering the hens and chickens before them. Tarzan followed, and was diverted by the chickens. When he was pecked by an angry hen he looked for Shama and Savi and Myna. They had disappeared. He trotted back to the barracks and Anand.

Mr. Biswas opened the box and showed Anand the sharpened crayons. “Take them. They are yours. You can do what you like with them.”

Anand shook his head.

“You don’t want them?”

Tarzan, between Anand’s legs, held up his head to be stroked, closing his eyes in anticipation.

“What do you want then?”

Anand shook his head. Tarzan shook his.

“Why did you stay then?”

Anand looked exasperated.

“Why?”

“Because-” The word came out thin, explosive, charged with anger, at himself and his father. “Because they was going to leave you alone.”

For the rest of that day they hardly spoke.

His instinct had been right. As soon as Shama had gone his fatigue left him. He became restless again, and almost welcomed the familiar constricted turmoil in his mind. He returned to the fields, taking Anand with him on the first day. Anand, dusty, itching, scorched by the sun and cut by sharp grass, refused to go again, and thereafter remained at the barracks with Tarzan.

He made more toys for Anand. A round tin-lid loosely nailed to a rod provided something that rolled when pushed and gave Anand a deep satisfaction. At night they drew imaginary scenes: snow-covered mountains and fir trees, red-hulled yachts in a blue sea below a clear sky, roads winding between well-kept forests to green mountains in the distance. They also talked.

“Who is your father?”

“You.”

“Wrong. I am not your father. God is your father.”

“Oh. And what about you?”

“I am just somebody. Nobody at all. I am just a man you know.”

He showed Anand how to mix colours. He taught him that red and yellow made orange, blue and yellow green.

“Oh. That is why the leaves turn yellow?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, look then. Suppose I take a leaf and wash it and wash it and wash it, it will turn yellow or blue?”

“Not really. The leaf is God’s work. You see?”

“No.”

“Your trouble is that you don’t really believe. There was a man like you one time. He wanted to mock a man like me. So one day, when the man like me was sleeping, this other man drop an orange in his lap, thinking, ‘I bet the damn fool going to wake up and say that God drop the orange.’ So the other man woke up and began eating the orange. And this man come up and say, ‘I suppose God give you that orange.’ ‘Yes,’ the other man said. ‘Well, let me tell you. Is not God. Is me.’ ‘Well,’ the other man said, ‘I prayed for an orange while I was asleep.’ “

Anand was impressed.

“Now, look,” Mr. Biswas said. “See this matchbox. You see me holding it in my hand. Oops! It fall down. Why?”

“You leggo, that’s why.”

“Not that at all. It fall down because of gravity. The law of gravity. They not teaching you children anything at all these days.”

He talked to Anand about people called Coppernickus and Galilyo. And it gave him a thrill to be the first to inform Anand that the world was round and moved about the sun.

“Remember Galilyo. Always stick up for yourself.”

He was glad that Anand was interested. It was the week before Christmas and he was fearing the result of Seth’s visit.

He told Anand, “On Saturday we are going to make a compass.”

And on Saturday Seth said, “Why you don’t come home, Anand boy? Come home and hang up your stocking. What you doing here with your father?”

“He is not my father. It just look to you that he is my father.”

Seth evaded the theological issue. “They going to make cake and icecream, boy.”

Mr. Biswas said, “Remember Galilyo.”

Anand stayed.

Using the batteries of his electric torch Mr. Biswas magnetized a needle and stuck it on a disc of paper; in the centre of the disc he inserted a cap of paper and rested the cap on the head of a pin.

“Where the eye of the needle points, that is north.”

They played with that until the needle lost its magnetism.

Sometimes Mr. Biswas said he had ague. Then, wrapped up tightly and shivering, he made Anand recite Hindi hymns after him. And at these times, though nothing was said, Anand became affected by his father’s fear and repeated the hymns like charms. The barrackroom, its door and window closed, its edges in darkness, became cavernous and full of menace, and Anand longed for morning.