Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

She urged Prasad, Dehuti and Mr. Biswas to behave with dignity and to keep out of the way, and she ordered Dehuti to see that Mr. Biswas was properly dressed. As the baby of the family Mr. Biswas was treated by the mourners with honour and sympathy, though this was touched with a little dread. Embarrassed by their attentions, he moved about the hut and yard, thinking he could detect a new, raw smell in the air. There was also a strange taste in his mouth; he had never eaten meat, but now he felt he had eaten raw white flesh; nauseating saliva rose continually at the back of his throat and he had to keep on spitting, until Tara said, “What’s the matter with you? Are you pregnant?”

Bipti was bathed. Her hair, still wet, was neatly parted and the parting filled with red henna. Then the henna was scooped out and the parting filled with charcoal dust. She was now a widow forever. Tara gave a short scream and at her signal the other women began to wail. On Bipti’s wet black hair there were still spots of henna, like drops of blood.

Cremation was forbidden and Raghu was to be buried. He lay in a coffin in the bedroom, dressed in his finest dhoti, jacket and turban, his beads around his neck and down his jacket. The coffin was strewed with marigolds which matched his turban. Pratap, the eldest son, did the last rites, walking round the coffin.

“Photo now,” Tara said. “Quick. Get them all together. For the last time.”

The photographer, who had been smoking under the mango tree, went into the hut and said, “Too dark.”

The men became interested and gave advice while the women wailed.

“Take it outside. Lean it against the mango tree.”

“Light a lamp.”

“It couldn’t be too dark.”

“What do you know? You’ve never had your photo taken. Now, what I suggest-”

The photographer, of mixed Chinese, Negro and European blood, did not understand what was being said. In the end he and some of the men took the coffin out to the verandah and stood it against the wall.

“Careful! Don’t let him fall out.”

“Goodness. All the marigolds have dropped out.”

“Leave them,” the photographer said in English. “Is a nice little touch. Flowers on the ground.” He set up his tripod in the yard, just under the ragged eaves of thatch, and put his head under the black cloth.

Tara roused Bipti from her grief, arranged Bipti’s hair and veil, and dried Bipti’s eyes.

“Five people all together,” the photographer said to Tara. “Hard to know just how to arrange them. It look to me that it would have to be two one side and three the other side. You sure you want all five?”

Tara was firm.

The photographer sucked his teeth, but not at Tara. “Look, look. Why nobody ain’t put anything to chock up the coffin and prevent it from slipping?”

Tara had that attended to.

The photographer said, “All right then. Mother and biggest son on either side. Next to mother, young boy and young girl. Next to big son, smaller son.”

There was more advice from the men.

“Make them look at the coffin.”

“At the mother.”

“At the youngest boy.”

The photographer settled the matter by telling Tara, “Tell them to look at me.”

Tara translated, and the photographer went under his cloth. Almost immediately he came out again. “How about making the mother and the biggest boy put their hands on the edge of the coffin?”

This was done and the photographer went back under his cloth.

“Wait!” Tara cried, running out from the hut with a fresh garland of marigolds. She hung it around Raghu’s neck and said to the photographer in English, “All right. Draw your photo now.”

Mr. Biswas never owned a copy of the photograph and he did not see it until 1937, when it made its appearance, framed in passepartout, on the wall of the drawingroom of Tara’s fine new house at Pagotes, a little lost among many other photographs of funeral groups, many oval portraits with blurred edges of more dead friends and relations, and coloured prints of the English countryside. The photograph had faded to the lightest brown and was partially defaced by the large heliotrope stamp of the photographer, still bright, and his smudged sprawling signature in soft black pencil. Mr. Biswas was astonished at his own smallness. The scabs of sores and the marks of eczema showed clearly on his knobbly knees and along his very thin arms and legs. Everyone in the photograph had unnaturally large, staring eyes which seemed to have been outlined in black.

Tara was right when she said that the photograph was to be a record of the family all together for the last time. For in a few days Mr. Biswas and Bipti, Pratap and Prasad and Dehuti had left Parrot Trace and the family split up for good.

It began on the evening of the funeral.

Tara said, “Bipti, you must give me Dehuti.”

Bipti had been hoping that Tara would make the suggestion. In four or five years Dehuti would have to be married and it was better that she should be given to Tara. She would learn manners, acquire graces and, with a dowry from Tara, might even make a good match.

“If you are going to have someone,” Tara said, “it is better to have one of your own family. That is what I always say. I don’t want strangers poking their noses into my kitchen and bedroom.”

Bipti agreed that it was better to have servants from one’s own family. And Pratap and Prasad and even Mr. Biswas, who had not been asked, nodded, as though the problem of servants was one they had given much thought.

Dehuti looked down at the floor, shook her long hair and mumbled a few words which meant that she was far too small to be consulted, but was very pleased.

“Get her new clothes,” Tara said, fingering the georgette skirt and satin petticoat Dehuti had worn for the funeral. “Get her some jewels.” She put a thumb and finger around Dehuti’s wrist, lifted her face, and turned up the lobe of her ear. “Earrings. Good thing you had them pierced, Bipti. She won’t need these sticks now.” In the holes in her lobe Dehuti wore pieces of the thin hard spine of the blades of the coconut branch. Tara playfully pulled Dehuti’s nose. “Nakphul too. You would like a nose-flower?”

Dehuti smiled shyly, not looking up.

“Well,” Tara said, “fashions are changing all the time these days. I am just oldfashioned, that is all.” She stroked her gold nose-flower. “It is expensive to be oldfashioned.”

“She will satisfy you,” Bipti said. “Raghu had no money. But he trained his children well. Training, piety-”

“Quite,” Tara said. “The time for crying is over, Bipti. How much money did Raghu leave you?”

“Nothing. I don’t know.”

“What do you mean? Are you trying to keep secrets from me? Everyone in the village knows that Raghu had a lot of money. I am sure he has left you enough to start a nice little business.”

Pratap sucked his teeth. “He was a miser, that one. He used to hide his money.”

Tara said, “Is this the training and piety your father gave you?”

They searched. They pulled out Raghu’s box from under the bed and looked for false bottoms; at Bipti’s suggestion they looked for any joint that might reveal a hiding-place in the timber itself. They poked the sooty thatch and ran their hands over the rafters; they tapped the earth floor and the bamboo-and-mud walls; they examined Raghu’s walking-sticks, taking out the ferrules, Raghu’s only extravagance; they dismanded the bed and uprooted the logs on which it stood. They found nothing.

Bipti said, “I don’t suppose he had any money really.”

“You are a fool,” Tara said, and it was in this mood of annoyance that she ordered Bipti to pack Dehuti’s bundle and took Dehuti away.