Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

He came to the War Memorial Park, sat on a bench in the shade of a tree and studied the statue of a belligerent soldier. Shadows were black and well-defined and encouraged repose and languor. His stomach was hurting.

His freedom was over, and it had been false. The past could not be ignored; it was never counterfeit; he carried it within himself. If there was a place for him, it was one that had already been hollowed out by time, by everything he had lived through, however imperfect, makeshift and cheating.

He welcomed the stomach pains. They had not occurred for months and it seemed to him that they marked the return of the wholeness of his mind, the restoration of the world; they indicated how far he had lifted himself from the abyss of the past months, and reminded him of the anguish against which everything now had to be measured.

Reluctantly, for it was a pleasure just to sit and let the wind play about his face and neck and down his shirt, he left the park and walked south, away from the Savannah. The quiet, withdrawn houses disappeared; pavements grew narrower and higher and more crowded; there were shops and cafйs and buses, cars, trams and bicycles, horns and bells and shouts. He crossed Park Street and continued towards the sea. In the distance, above the roofs at the end of the street, he saw the tops of masts of sloops and schooners at St. Vincent Jetty.

He passed the courts and came to the Red House, bulky in red sandstone. Part of the asphalt forecourt was marked off in white and lettered RESERVED FOR JUDGES. He went up the central steps and found himself under a high dome. He saw many green notice-boards and an unplaying fountain. The basin of the fountain was wet, and held many dead leaves and empty cigarette packets.

It was busy under the dome, with messengers in khaki uniforms and clerks in well-ironed clothes carrying buff or green folders, and with people continually passing between St. Vincent Street and Woodford Square, where the professional beggars lounged about the bandstand and on benches, so confident of their appearance that they disdained to beg, spending most of their time patching the rags they wore like a uniform, garments thick and shaggy and richly variegated, small rag sewn on to small rag, labours of love. Even about the beggars there was an air of establishment. Woodford Square, cool under the trees and attractively dappled with light, was theirs; they cooked, ate and slept there, disturbed only by occasional political gatherings. They worried no one, and since they all had excellent physiques, and one or two were reputed to be millionaires, no one worried them.

On the green notice-boards, which also served to screen the offices on either side, there were government notices. Mr. Biswas was reading these when he heard someone call out. He turned to see an elderly Negro, respectably dressed, waving to him with a one-armed pair of spectacles.

“You want a certificate?” The Negro’s lips snapped ferociously shut between words.

“Certificate?”

“Birth, marriage, death.” The Negro adjusted his mutilated spectacles low over his nose and from a shirt pocket stuffed with paper and pencils he pulled out a sheet of paper and let his pencil circle impatiently above it.

“I don’t want any certificate.”

The pencil stopped playing. “I can’t understand it.” The Negro put away paper and pencil, sat down on a long, shiny bench, took off his spectacles, thrust the scratched, white end of the remaining arm into his mouth, and shook his legs. “Nobody wanting certificates these days. If you ask me, the trouble is that nowadays it just have too damn many searchers. When I sit down on this bench in 1919 I was the onliest searcher. Today every Tom, Dick or Harry running up and down this place”-he jerked his chin towards the fountain-“calling themself searchers.” His lips snapped ferociously. “You sure you don’t want a certificate? You never know when these things could be useful. I get lots of certificates for Indians, you know. In fact, I prefer getting certificates for Indians. And I could get it for you this afternoon self. I know one of the clerks inside there.” He waved to the office at his back and Mr. Biswas saw a high, polished brown counter and pale green walls, lit, on this bright afternoon, by electric light.

“Helluva job,” the Negro said. “No Christmas and Easter for me, you know. At times like that nobody want any certificate at all. And every day, whether I search for ten or two or no certificates, that damn clerk inside there got to get his twenty cigarettes.”

Mr. Biswas began to move away.

“Still, if you know anybody who want a certificate-birth, death, marriage, marriage in extremis -send them to me. I come here every morning at eight o”clock sharp. The name is Pastor.”

Mr. Biswas left Pastor, overwhelmed by the thought that in the office behind the green notice-board records were kept of every birth and death. And they had nearly missed him! He went down the steps into St. Vincent Street and continued south towards the masts. Even Pastor, for all his grumbling, had found his place. What had driven him on a day in 1919 to take a seat outside the Registrar-General’s Department and wait for illiterates wanting certificates?

He had thought himself back into the mood he had known at Green Vale, when he couldn’t bear to look at the newspapers on the wall. And now he perceived that the starts of apprehension he felt at the sight of every person in the street did not come from fear at all; only from regret, envy, despair.

And, thinking of the newspapers on the barrackroom wall, he was confronted with the newspaper offices: the Guardian , the Gazette , the Mirror , the Sentinel , facing each other across the street. Machinery rattled like distant trains; through open windows came the warm smell of oil, ink and paper. The Sentinel was the paper for which Misir, the Aryan, was a cent-a-line country correspondent. All the stories Mr. Biswas had got by heart from the newspapers in the barrackroom returned to him. Amazing scenes were witnessed yesterday when … Passers-by stopped and stared yesterday when…

He turned down a lane, pushed open a door on the right, and then another. The noise of machinery was louder. An important, urgent noise, but it did not intimidate him. He said to the man behind the high caged desk, “I want to see the editor.”

Amazing scenes were witnessed in St . Vincent Street yesterday when Mohun Biswas, 31…

“You got an appointment?”

… assaulted a receptionist.

“No,” Mr. Biswas said irritably.

In an interview with our reporter … In an interview with our special correspondent late last night Mr. Biswas said…

“The editor is busy. You better go and see Mr. Woodward.”

“You just tell the editor I come all the way from the country to see him.”

Amazing scenes were witnessed in St . Vincent Street yesterday when Biswas, 31, unemployed, of no fixed address, assaulted a receptionist at the offices of the TRINIDAD SENTINEL . People ducked behind desks as Biswas, father of four, walked into the building with guns blazing, shot the editor and four reporters dead, and then set fire to the building. Passers-by stopped and stared as the flames rose high, fanned by a strong breeze. Several tons of paper were destroyed and the building itself gutted. In an exclusive interview with our special correspondent late last night Mr. Biswas said…

“This way,” the receptionist said, climbing down from his desk, and led Mr. Biswas into a large room which belied the urgent sounds of typewriters and machinery. Many typewriters were idle, many desks untenanted. A group of men in shirtsleeves stood around a green water-cooler in one corner; other groups of two or three were seated on desks; one man was spinning a swivel-chair with his foot. There was a row of frosted-glass cubicles along one wall, and the receptionist, going ahead of Mr. Biswas, knocked on one of these, pushed the door open, allowed Mr. Biswas to enter, and closed the door.