Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“Anything funny happen at the Mad House?” Mr. Biswas asked Ramchand that evening.

Ramchand looked annoyed.

And Mr. Biswas gave up the idea of an exposure piece on the Mad House.

On his way to the Sentinel next morning he called at a police station. From there he went to the mortuary, then to the City Council’s stable-yard. When he got to the Sentinel he sat down at a free desk-no desk was yet his-and wrote in pencil:

Last week the Sentinel Bonny Baby Competition was held at Prince’s Building. And late last night the body of a dead male baby was found, neatly wrapped in a brown paper parcel, on the rubbish dump at Cocorite.

I have seen the baby and I am in a position to say that it did not win a prize in our Bonny Baby Competition.

Experts are not yet sure whether the baby was specially taken to the rubbish dump, or simply put out with the rubbish in the usual way.

Hezekiah James, 43, unemployed, who discovered the dead baby, told me…

“Good, good,” Mr. Burnett said. “But heavy. Heavy. Why not ‘I am able’ instead of ‘I am in a position’?”

“I got that from the Daily Express .”

“All right. Let it pass. But promise me that for a whole week you won’t be in a position to do or say anything. It’s going to be hard. But try. What sort of baby?”

“Sort?”

“Black, white, green?”

“White. Blueish when I saw it, really. I thought, though, that we didn’t mention race, except for Chinese.”

“Listen to the man. If I ran across a black baby on the rubbish dump at Banbury, do you think I would just say a baby?”

And the headlines the next day read:

White Baby Found on Rubbish Dump

In Brown Paper Parcel

Did Not Win Bonny Baby Competition

“Just one other thing,” Mr. Burnett said. “Lay off babies for a while.”

The job was urgent: the paper had to be printed every evening; by early morning it had to be in every part of the island. This was not the false urgency of writing signs for shops at Christmas or looking after crops. And even after a dozen years Mr. Biswas never lost the thrill, which he then felt for the first time, at seeing what he had written the day before appear in print, in the newspaper delivered free.

“You haven’t given me a real shock yet,” Mr. Burnett said.

And Mr. Biswas wanted to shock Mr. Burnett. It seemed unlikely that he would ever do so, for in his fourth week he was made shipping reporter, taking the place of a man who had been killed at the docks by a crane load of flour accidentally falling from a great height. It was the tourist season and the harbour was full of ships from America and Europe. Mr. Biswas went aboard German ships, was given excellent lighters, saw photographs of Adolf Hitler, and was bewildered by the Heil Hitler salutes.

Excitement!

The ships sailed away with their scorched tourists, distinguished by their tropical clothes, after only a few hours. But they had come from places with famous names. And in the Sentinel office news from those places spilled out continually on to spools of paper. Outside was the hot sun, the horse-dunged streets, the choked slums, the rooms where he lived with Ramchand and Dehuti; and, beyond that, the level acres of sugarcane, the sunken ricelands, the repetitive labour of his brothers, the short roads leading from known settlement to known settlement, the Tulsi establishment, the old men who gathered every evening in the arcade of Hanuman House and would travel no more. But within the walls of the office every part of the world was near.

He went aboard American ships on the South American tourist route, interviewed businessmen, had difficulty in understanding the American accent, saw the galleys and marvelled at the quantity and quality of the food thrown away. He copied down passenger lists, was invited by a ship’s cook to join a smuggling ring that dealt in camera flash-bulbs, declined and was unable to write the story because it would have incriminated his late predecessor.

He interviewed an English novelist, a man about his own age, but still young, and shining with success. Mr. Biswas was impressed. The novelist’s name was unknown to him and to the readers of the Sentinel , but Mr. Biswas had thought of all writers as dead and associated the production of books not only with distant lands, but with distant ages. He visualized headlines-FAMOUS NOVELIST SAYS PORT OF SPAIN WORLD’S THIRD WICKEDEST CITY-and fed the novelist with leading questions. But the novelist considered Mr. Biswas’s inquiries to have a sinister political motive, and made slow statements about the island’s famed beauty and his desire to see as much of it as possible.

I want to see that frighten anybody, Mr. Biswas thought.

(Years later Mr. Biswas came across the travel-book the novelist had written about the region. He saw himself described as an “incompetent, aggrieved and fanatical young reporter, who distastefully noted my guarded replies in a laborious longhand”.)

Then a ship called on the way to Brazil.

Within twenty-four hours Mr. Biswas was notorious, the Sentinel , reviled on every hand, momentarily increased its circulation, and Mr. Burnett was jubilant.

He said, “You have even chilled me.”

The story, the leading one on page three, read:

Daddy Comes Home in a Coffin

U.S. Explorer’s Last Journey

On Ice

by M. Biswas

Somewhere in America in a neat little red-roofed cottage four children ask their mother every day, “Mummy, when is Daddy coming home?”

Less than a year ago Daddy-George Elmer Edrnan, the celebrated traveller and explorer-left home to explore the Amazon.

Well, I have news for you, kiddies.

Daddy is on his way home.

Yesterday he passed through Trinidad. In a coffin.

Mr. Biswas was taken on the staff of the Sentinel at a salary of fifteen dollars a fortnight.

“The first thing you must do,” Mr. Burnett said, “is to get out and get yourself a suit. I can’t have my best reporter running about in those clothes.”

It was Ramchand who brought about the reconciliation between Mr. Biswas and the Tulsis; or rather, since the Tulsis had few thoughts on the subject, made it possible for Mr. Biswas to recover his family without indignity. Ramchand’s task was easy. Mr. Biswas’s name appeared almost every day in the Sentinel , so that it seemed he had suddenly become famous and rich. Mr. Biswas, believing himself that this was very nearly so, felt disposed to be charitable.

He was at that time touring the island as the Scarlet Pimpernel, in the hope of having people come up to him and say, “You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize.” Every day his photograph appeared in the Sentinel together with his report on the previous day’s journey and his itinerary for the day. The photograph was half a column wide and there was no room for his ears; he was frowning, in an unsuccessful attempt to look menacing; his mouth was slightly open and he stared at the camera out of the corners of his eyes, which were shadowed by the low-pulled brim of his hat. As a circulation raiser the Scarlet Pimpernel was a failure. The photograph concealed too much; and he was too well dressed for ordinary people to accost him in a sentence of such length and correctness. The prizes went unclaimed for days and the Scarlet Pimpernel reports became increasingly fantastic. Mr. Biswas visited his brother Prasad and readers of the Sentinel learned next morning that a peasant in a remote village had rushed up to the Scarlet Pimpernel and said, “You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize.” The peasant was then reported as saying that he read the Sentinel every day, since no other paper presented the news so fully, so amusingly, and with such balance.