Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“Hear them!”

Anand, watching the ants, his mouth pressed on his goose-fleshed arm, didn’t reply.

“Boy!”

The anguish, the loudness of the voice rising above rain and wind made Anand jump. He stood up.

“You hear them?”

Anand listened, trying to pick up the component parts of the din: the rain, the wind, the running of water, the trees, the rain on walls and roof. Talk, indistinct, a bumble, rising and falling.

“You hear them?”

Anything could sound like talk: the gurgle of water, boughs rubbing against one another. Anand opened the door a little way and looked down through the spars of the drawingroom. The ground ran with shining black water. Below the unfloored front bedroom, where the ground was higher and not so wet, two men were squatting before a smoking fire of twigs. Two large heart-shaped leaves of the wild tannia were near the men. They must have used the leaves as umbrellas when they had been caught by the heavier shower. The men stared at the fire. One man was smoking a cigarette. In the weak firelight, in the stillness of the scene in the midst of turmoil, this act of smoking, so intense and unruffled, might have been part of an ancient ritual.

“You see them?”

Anand closed the door.

On the floor the winged ants had a new life. They were possessed of scores of black limbs. They were being carted away by the biting ants. They wriggled and squirmed, but did not disturb the even solemnity of their bearers. Bodiless wings were also being carried away.

Lightning obliterated shadows and colour.

The hair on Anand’s arms and legs stood straight. His skin tingled.

“You see them?”

Anand thought they might be the men from the day before. But he couldn’t be sure.

“Bring the cutlass.”

Anand put the cutlass against the wall near the head of the bed. The wall was running with water.

“And you take the walking-stick.”

Anand would have liked to go to sleep. But he didn’t want to get into bed with his father. And with the floor full of ants where it was not wet, he couldn’t make up a bed for himself.

“Rama Rama Sita Rama , Rama Rama Sita Ram a .”

“Rama Rama Sita Rama ,” Anand repeated.

Then Mr. Biswas forgot Anand and began to curse. He cursed Ajodha, Pundit Jairam, Mrs. Tulsi, Shama, Seth.

“Say Rama Rama , boy.”

“Rama Rama Sita Rama .”

The rain abated.

When Anand looked outside, the men under the house had gone with their tannia leaves, leaving a dead, hardly-smoking fire.

“You see them?”

The rain came again. Lightning flashed and flashed, thunder exploded and rolled.

The procession of the ants continued. Anand began killing them with the walking-stick. Whenever he crushed a group carrying a living winged ant, the ants broke up, without confusion or haste, re-formed, took away what they could of the crushed body and carried away their dead. Anand struck and struck with his stick. A sharp pain ran up his arm. On his hand he saw an ant, its body raised, its pincers buried in his skin. When he looked at the walking-stick he saw that it was alive with biting ants crawling upwards. He was suddenly terrified of them, their anger, their vindictiveness, their number. He threw the stick away from him. It fell into a puddle.

The roof rose and dropped, grinding and flapping. The house shook.

“Rama Rama Sita Rama ,” Anand said.

“O God! They coming!”

“They gone !” Anand shouted angrily.

Mr. Biswas muttered hymns in Hindi and English, left them unfinished, cursed, rolled on the bed, his face still expressing only exasperation.

The flame of the oil lamp swayed, shrank, throwing the room into darkness for seconds, then shone again.

A shaking on the roof, a groan, a prolonged grinding noise, and Anand knew that a sheet of corrugated iron had been torn off. One sheet was left loose. It flapped and jangled continuously. Anand waited for the fall of the sheet that had been blown off.

He never heard it.

Lightning; thunder; the rain on roof and walls; the loose iron sheet; the wind pushing against the house, pausing, and pushing again.

Then there was a roar that overrode them all. When it struck the house the window burst open, the lamp went instantly out, the rain lashed in, the lightning lit up the room and the world outside, and when the lightning went out the room was part of the black void.

Anand began to scream.

He waited for his father to say something, to close the window, light the lamp.

But Mr. Biswas only muttered on the bed, and the rain and wind swept through the room with unnecessary strength and forced open the door to the drawingroom, wall-less, floorless, of the house Mr. Biswas had built.

Anand screamed and screamed.

Rain and wind smothered his voice, overturned the lamp, made the rockingchair rock and skid, rattled the kitchen safe against the wall, destroyed all smell. Lightning, flashing intermittently, steel-blue exploding into white, showed the ants continually disarrayed, continually re-forming.

Then Anand saw a light swaying in the dark. It was a man, bending forward against the rain, a hurricane lamp in one hand, a cutlass in the other. The living flame was like a miracle.

It was Ramkhilawan from the barracks. He had a jutebag over his head and shoulders like a cape. He was barefooted and his trousers were rolled up above his knees. The hurricane lamp showed glinting streaks of rain, and, as he climbed the slippery steps, his footprints of mud, instantly washed away.

“Oh, my poor little calf!” he called. “Oh, my poor little calf!”

He closed the drawingroom door. The lamp illuminated a wet chaos. He struggled with the window. As soon as he had pulled it a little way from the wall to which it was pinned, the wind, rising, gave a push, and the window slammed shut, making Ramkhilawan jump back. He took off the dripping jutebag from his head and shoulders; his shirt stuck to his skin.

The oil lamp was not broken. There even remained some oil in it. The chimney was cracked, but still whole. Ramkhilawan brought out a damp box of matches from his trouser pocket and put a lighted match to the wick. The wick, waterlogged, spluttered; the match burned down; the wick caught.

A message had to be sent to Hanuman House. The labourers always responded to the melodramatic and calamitous, and there were many volunteers. Through rain and wind and thunder a messenger went that evening to Arwacas and dramatically unfolded his tale of calamity.

Mrs. Tulsi and the younger god were in Port of Spain. Shama was in the Rose Room; the midwife had been attending upon her for two days.

Sisters and their husbands held a council.

“I did always think he was mad,” Chinta said.

Sushila, the childless widow, spoke with her sickroom authority. “It isn’t about Mohun I am worried, but the children.”

Padma, Seth’s wife, asked, “What do you think he is sick with?”

Sumati the flogger said, “Message only said that he was very sick.”

“And that his house had been practically blown away,” Jai’s mother added.

There were some smiles.

“I am sorry to correct you, Sumati sister,” Chinta said. “But Message said that he wasn’t right in his head.”

Seth said, “I suppose we have to bring the paddler home.”

The men got ready to go to Green Vale; they were as excited as the messenger.

The sisters bustled about, impressing and mystifying the children. Sushila, who occupied the Blue Room when the god was away, cleared it of all personal, womanly things; much of her time was devoted to keeping the mysteries of women from men. She also burned certain evil-smelling herbs to purify and protect the house.