Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“Savi,” the children said, “something happen to your pappa.”

And they stuck pins in the wicks of lamps to keep misfortune and death away.

In the verandah and in every bedroom upstairs beds were made earlier than usual, lamps were turned low, and the children fell asleep, lulled by the sound of the rain. Downstairs the sisters sat silently around the long table, their veils pulled close over their heads and shoulders. They played cards and read newspapers. Chinta was reading the Ramayana ; she continually set herself new ambitions and at the moment wanted to be the first woman in the family to read the epic from beginning to end. Occasionally the card-players chuckled. Chinta was sometimes called to look at the cards one sister had; often the temptation was too great, and Chinta, adopting her frowning card-playing manner, and not saying a word, stayed to play the hand, tapping each card before she played it, throwing down the winning card with the crack she could do so well, then, still silent, going back to the Ramayana . The midwife, an old, thin, inscrutable Madrassi, came to the hall and sat on her haunches in a corner, smoking, silent, her eyes bright. Coffee simmered in the kitchen; its smell filled the hall.

When the men returned, dripping, with Anand sleepily and tearfully walking beside them and Govind carrying Mr. Biswas in his arms, there was relief, and some disappointment. Mr. Biswas was not wild or violent; he made no speeches; he did not pretend he was driving a motorcar or picking cocoa-the two actions popularly associated with insanity. He only looked deeply exasperated and fatigued.

Govind and Mr. Biswas had not spoken since their fight. By carrying Mr. Biswas in his arms Govind had put himself on the side of authority: he had assumed authority’s power to rescue and assist when there was need, authority’s impersonal power to forgive.

Recognizing this, Chinta looked solicitously after Anand, drying his hair, taking off his wet clothes and giving him some of Vidiadhar’s, giving him food, taking him upstairs and finding a place for him among the sleeping boys.

Mr. Biswas was put in the Blue Room, given dry clothes and cautiously offered a cup of hot sweetened milk with nutmeg, brandy and lumps of red butter. He stilled remaining fears by taking the cup without accident, and drinking carefully.

He welcomed the warmth and reassurance of the room. Every wall was solid; the sound of the rain was deadened; the ceiling of two and a half inch pitchpine concealed corrugated iron and asphalt; the jalousied window, set in a deep embrasure, was unrattled by wind and rain.

He knew he was at Hanuman House; but he couldn’t assess what had gone before or what was to come. He felt he was continually awakening to a new situation, which was in some way linked to the memories he had, as instantaneous as snapshots, of other happenings that seemed to have spread over an unmeasurable length of time. The rain on the wet bed; the trip in the motorcar; the appearance of Ramkhilawan; the dead dog; the men talking outside; the thunder and lightning; the room suddenly full of Seth and Govind and the others; and now this warm, closed room, yellowly lit by a steady lamp; the dry clothes. As he concentrated, every object acquired a solidity, a permanence. That marble topped table with the china cup and saucer and spoon: no other arrangement of those objects was possible. He knew that this order was threatened; he had a feeling of expectation and unease.

He lay as still as possible. Soon he was asleep. In his last moments of lucidity he thought the sound of the rain, muffled and regular, was comforting.

It was still raining next morning, steadily, but the wind had dropped. It was dark, but there was no lightning and thunder. The gutters around the house were full and muddy. In the High Street the canals overflowed and the road was under water. The children could not go to school. There was excitement among them, not only at the unusual weather and unexpected holiday, but also at the overnight disturbance. Some had memories of being awakened briefly during the night; now Anand was with them and his father was in the Blue Room. Some of the girls pretended to know all that had happened. It was like the morning after a birth in the Rose Room: the mysteries were so well kept and everything carried out so secretly that few of the younger children knew what was afoot until they were told.

“Savi,” the children said, “your pappa here. In the Blue Room.”

But she didn’t want to go to the Blue Room or the Rose Room.

Outside, naked children splashed shrieking in the flooded road and swollen canals, racing paper boats and wooden boats and even sticks.

Towards the middle of the morning the sky lightened and lifted, the rain thinned to a drizzle, then stopped altogether. The clouds rolled back, the sky was suddenly blinding blue and there were shadows on the water. Rapidly, their gurgling soon lost in the awakening every day din, canals subsided, leaving a wash of twigs and dirt on the road. In yards, against fences, there were tidemarks of debris and pebbles which looked as though they had been washed and sifted; around stones dirt had been washed away; green leaves that had been torn down were partly buried in silt. Roads and roofs dried, steaming, areas of dryness spreading out swiftly, like ink on a blotter. And presently roads and yards were dry, except for the depressions where water had collected. Heat nibbled at their edges, until even the depressions failed to reflect the blue sky. And the world was dry again, except for the mud in the shelter of the trees.

The news about Mr. Biswas was broken to Shama. She suggested that the furniture from Green Vale should be brought to Hanuman House.

The doctor came, a Roman Catholic Indian, but much respected by the Tulsis for his manners and the extent of his property. He dismissed talk about having Mr. Biswas certified and said that Mr. Biswas was suffering from nerves and a certain vitamin deficiency. He prescribed a course of Sanatogen, a tonic called Ferrol with reputed iron-giving, body-building qualities, and Ovaltine. He also said that Mr. Biswas was to have much rest, and should go to Port of Spain as soon as he was better to see a specialist.

Almost as soon as the doctor had gone the thaumaturge came, an unsuccessful man with a flashy turban and an anxious manner; his fees were low. He purified the Blue Room and erected invisible barriers against evil spirits. He recommended that strips of aloe should be hung in doorways and windows and said that the family ought to have known that they should always have a black doll in the doorway of the hall to divert evil spirits: prevention was better than cure. Then he inquired whether he couldn’t prepare a little mixture as well.

The offer was rejected. “Ovaltine, Ferrol, Sanatogen,” Seth said. “Give Mohun your mixture and you turn him into a little capsule.”

But they hung the aloe; it was a natural purgative that cost nothing and large quantities were always in the house. And they hung the black doll, one of a small ancient stock in the Tulsi Store, an English line which had not appealed to the people of Arwacas.

That same afternoon a lorry brought the furniture from Green Vale. It was all damp and discoloured. The polish on Shama’s dressingtable had turned white. The mattress was soaked and smelly; the coconut fibre had swollen and stained the ticking. The cloth covers of Mr. Biswas’s books were still sticky, and their colours had run along the edges of the pages, which had wrinkled and stuck together.

The metal sections of the fourposter were left unmounted in that part of the long room which had once been Shama’s and Mr. Biswas’s; the boards and the mattress were put out to dry in the sun. The safe stood in the hall, near the doorway to the kitchen, looking almost new against the sooty green wall. It still exhibited the Japanese coffee-set (the head of a Japanese woman at the bottom of every cup, an embossed dragon breathing fire outside), Seth’s wedding present to Shama, never used, only cleaned. The green table was also put in the hall, but in that jumble of unmatching furniture was scarcely noticeable. The rockingchair was taken to the verandah upstairs.