Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Savi was pained to see the furniture so scattered and disregarded, and angered to see the rockingchair being misused almost at once. At first the children stood on the cane-bottom and rocked violently. From this they evolved a game: four or five climbed into the chair and rocked; another four or five tried to pull them off. They fought over the chair and overturned it: that was the climax of the game. Knowing that to protest was to make herself absurd, Savi went to the Rose Room, with its basins and quaint jugs and tubes and smells, and complained to Shama.

Shama, always gentle with her children when she was alone with them, and especially gentle during her confinements, stroked Savi’s hair and told her that she was not to mind, she was being selfish, and if she complained to anybody else she would certainly cause a quarrel. Mr. Biswas was sick, Shama said; and she herself was sick. Savi ought not to behave in a way that would annoy anyone.

“And where have they put the bureau?” Shama asked.

“In the long room.”

Shama looked pleased.

Some of Mr. Biswas’s most elaborate placards had also been brought from Green Vale. They were considered beautiful; though the sentiments, from a man long thought to be an atheist, caused some astonishment. The placards were hung in the hall and the Book Room, and when the children said, “Savi, your pappa did really paint those signs?” the pain at seeing the furniture scattered was lessened.

The children said, “Savi, so all-you staying here for good now?”

Lying in the room next to Shama’s, perpetually dark, Mr. Biswas slept and woke and slept again. The darkness, the silence, the absence of the world enveloped and comforted him. At some far-off time he had suffered great anguish. He had fought against it. Now he had surrendered, and this surrender had brought peace. He had controlled his disgust and fear when the men had come for him. He was glad he had. Surrender had removed the world of damp walls and paper covered walls, of hot sun and driving rain, and had brought him this: this worldless room, this nothingness. As the hours passed he found he could piece together recent happenings, and he marvelled that he had survived the horror. More and more frequently he forgot fear and questioning; sometimes, for as much as a minute or so, he was unable, even when he tried, to re-enter fully the state of mind he had lived through. There remained an unease, which did not seem real or actual and was more like an indistinct, chilling memory of horror.

Further messages had been sent and visitors came. Pratap and Prasad, abashed by the size of the house and conscious of their own condition, felt obliged to be kind to all the children. They began by giving each child a penny; but they had underestimated the number of children; they ended up by giving out halfpennies. They told Mr. Biswas exactly what they had been doing when they got Message; it seemed that they both nearly missed Message; they had both, however, had some signs on the night of the storm that something was wrong with Mr. Biswas and had told their wives so; they urged Mr. Biswas to get confirmation from their wives. Mr. Biswas listened with a sense of withdrawal. He asked after their families. Pratap and Prasad construed this as pure politeness, and though there was little to talk about, dismissed their families as worthless of serious consideration. And after making occasional solemn noises, looking down at their hats, examining them from various angles, brushing the bands, they got up to go, sighing.

Ramchand, Mr. Biswas’s brother-in-law, was less restrained. He had acquired a city brashness that went well with his uniform. He had left the country and the rum-factory years before and was now a warden at the Lunatic Asylum in Port of Spain.

“Don’t think I shy of you,” he told Mr. Biswas. “I used to this. This is my work.”

He spoke of himself, his career, the Lunatic Asylum.

“You ain’t got a gramophone here?” he asked.

“Gramophone?”

“Music,” Ramchand said. “We does play music to them all the time.”

He spoke of the perquisites of the job as though the Lunatic Asylum had been organized solely for his benefit.

“Take the canteen now. Everything there five cents and six cents cheaper than outside, you know. But that is because they not running it to make a profit. If you ever want anything you must let me know.”

“Sanatogen?”

“I will see. Look, why you don’t leave the country, man, and come to Port of Spain? A man like you shouldn’t remain in this backward place. No wonder this thing happen to you. Come up and spend some time with us. Dehuti always talking about you, you know.”

Mr. Biswas promised to think it over.

Ramchand walked heavily through the house and when he came into the hall shouted at Sushila, whom he didn’t know, “Everything all right, maharajin ?”

“He looks like a real chamar -caste-type,” Sushila said.

“However much you wash a pig,” Chinta said, “you can’t turn it into a cow.”

That evening Seth went to the Blue Room.

“Well, Mohun. How you feeling?”

“All right, I think.” Mr. Biswas spoke with something like his humorous high-pitched voice.

“You thinking of going back to Green Vale?”

To his own surprise, Mr. Biswas found himself behaving in the old way. With an expression of mock-horror he said, “Who? Me?”

“I glad you feel that way. As a matter of fact you can’t go back.”

“Look at me. I crying.”

“Guess what happen.”

“All the cane burn down.”

“Wrong. Only your house.”

“Burn down? You mean it insuranburn.”

“No, no. Not insuranburn. It burn fair and square. Green Vale people. Wicked like hell, man, those people.”

Seth saw that Mr. Biswas was crying and looked away. But Seth misunderstood.

An immense relief had come upon Mr. Biswas. The anxiety, the fear, the anguish which had kept his mind humming and his body taut now ebbed away. He could feel it ebbing; it was a physical sensation; it left him weak and very weary. And he felt an enormous gratitude to Seth. He wanted to embrace him, to promise eternal friendship, to make some vow.

“You mean,” he said at last, “that after all that rain they burn it down?” And he burst out sobbing.

That night Shama gave birth to her fourth child, another girl.

Mr. Biswas’s books had been placed among those in the Book Room. Somewhere among them was the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare . No entry was made on its endpaper of this new birth.

The thin, short-winded and repetitive cry of the baby hardly made itself heard outside the Rose Room. The midwife no longer squatted in the hall and smoked. She was busy. She washed, she cleaned, she watched and ruled. After nine days she was paid and dismissed. The sisters told Anand and Savi, “You have a new sister. Somebody else to get a share of your father’s property.” And they told Anand, “You are lucky. You are still the only boy. But wait. One day you will get a brother, and he will cut off your nose.”

Mr. Biswas mixed and drank Sanatogen, drank tablespoonfuls of Ferrol and, in the evenings, glasses of Ovaltine. One day he remembered his fingernails. When he looked he saw they were whole, unbitten. There were still the periods of darkness, the spasms of panic; but now he knew they were not real and because he knew this he overcame them. He remained in the Blue Room, feeling secure to be only a part of Hanuman House, an organism that possessed a life, strength and power to comfort which was quite separate from the individuals who composed it.

“Savi, what you drinking?”

“Ovaltine.”

“Anand, what you drinking?”

“Ovaltine.”

“It nice?”