Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Because no cooking could be done at their house, they ate at Sadhu’s. The food was unsalted and as soon as he began to chew, Mr. Biswas felt he was eating raw flesh and the nauseous saliva filled his mouth again. He hurried outside to empty his mouth and clean it, but the taste remained. And Mr. Biswas screamed when, back at the hut, Bipti put him to bed and threw Raghu’s blanket over him. The blanket was hairy and prickly; it seemed to be the source of the raw, fresh smell he had been smelling all day. Bipti let him scream until he was tired and fell asleep in the yellow, wavering light of the oil lamp which left the corners in darkness. She watched the wick burn lower and lower until she heard the snores of Pratap, who snored like a big man, and the heavy breathing of Mr. Biswas and Prasad. She slept only fitfully herself. It was quiet inside the hut, but outside the noises were loud and continuous: mosquitoes, bats, frogs, crickets, the poor-me-one. If the cricket missed a chirp the effect was disturbing and she awoke.

She was awakened from a light sleep by a new noise. At first she couldn’t be sure. But the nearness of the noise and its erratic sequence disturbed her. It was a noise she heard every day but now, isolated in the night, it was hard to place. It came again: a thud, a pause, a prolonged snapping, then a series of gentler thuds. And it came again. Then there was another noise, of bottles breaking, muffled, as though the bottles were full. And she knew the noises came from her garden. Someone was stumbling among the bottles Raghu had buried neck downwards around the flower-beds.

She roused Prasad and Pratap.

Mr. Biswas, awaking to hushed talk and a room of dancing shadows, closed his eyes to keep out the danger; at once, as on the day before, everything became dramatic and remote.

Pratap gave walking-sticks to Prasad and Bipti. Carefully he unbolted the small window, then pushed it out with sudden vigour.

The garden was lit up by a hurricane lamp. A man was working a fork into the ground among the bottle-borders.

“Dhari!” Bipti called.

Dhari didn’t look up or reply. He went on forking, rocking the implement in the earth, tearing the roots that kept the earth firm.

“Dhari!”

He began to sing a wedding song.

“The cutlass!” Pratap said. “Give me the cutlass.”

“O God! No, no,” Bipti said.

“I’ll go out and beat him like a snake,” Pratap said, his voice rising out of control. “Prasad? Mai?”

“Close the window,” Bipti said.

The singing stopped and Dhari said, “Yes, close the window and go to sleep. I am here to look after you.”

Violently Bipti pulled the small window to, bolted it and kept her hand on the bolt.

The digging and the breaking bottles continued. Dhari sang:

In your daily tasks be resolute.

Fear no one, and trust in God.

“Dhari isn’t in this alone,” Bipti said. “Don’t provoke him.” Then, as though it not only belittled Dhari’s behaviour but gave protection to them all, she added, “He is only after your father’s money. Let him look.”

Mr. Biswas and Prasad were soon asleep again. Bipti and Pratap remained up until they had heard the last of Dhari’s songs and his fork no longer dug into the earth and broke bottles. They did not speak. Only, once, Bipti said, “Your father always warned me about the people of this village.”

Pratap and Prasad awoke when it was still dark, as they always did. They did not talk about what had happened and Bipti insisted that they should go to the buffalo pond as usual. As soon as it was light she went out to the garden. The flower-beds had been dug up; dew lay on the upturned earth which partially buried uprooted plants, already limp and quailing. The vegetable patch had not been forked, but tomato plants had been cut down, stakes broken and pumpkins slashed.

“Oh, wife of Raghu!” a man called from the road, and she saw Dhari jump across the gutter.

Absently, he picked a dew-wet leaf from the hibiscus shrub, crushed it in his palm, put it in his mouth and came towards her, chewing.

Her anger rose. “Get out! At once! Do you call yourself a man? You are a shameless vagabond. Shameless and cowardly.”

He walked past her, past the hut, to the garden. Chewing, he considered the damage. He was in his working clothes, his cutlass in its black leather sheath at his waist, his enamel food-carrier in one hand, his calabash of water hanging from his shoulder.

“Oh, wife of Raghu, what have they done?”

“I hope you found something to make you happy, Dhari.”

He shrugged, looking down at the ruined flower-beds. “They will keep on looking, maharajin .”

“Everybody knows you lost your calf. But that was an accident. What about-”

“Yes, yes. My calf. Accident.”

“I will remember you for this, Dhari. And Raghu’s sons won’t forget you either.”

“He was a great diver.”

“Savage! Get out!”

“Willingly.” He spat out the hibiscus leaf on to a flowerbed. “I just wanted to tell you that these wicked men will come again. Why don’t you help them, maharajin ?”

There was no one Bipti could ask for help. She distrusted the police, and Raghu had no friends. Moreover, she didn’t know who might be in league with Dhari.

That night they gathered all Raghu’s sticks and cutlasses and waited. Mr. Biswas closed his eyes and listened, but as the hours passed he found it hard to remain alert.

He was awakened by whispers and movement in the hut. Far away, it seemed, someone was singing a slow, sad wedding song. Bipti and Prasad were standing. Cutlass in hand, Pratap moved in a frenzy between the window and the door, so swiftly that the flame of the oil lamp blew this way and that, and once, with a plopping sound, disappeared. The room sank into darkness. A moment later the flame returned, rescuing them.

The singing drew nearer, and when it was almost upon them they heard, mingled with it, chatter and soft laughter.

Bipti unbolted the window, pushed it open a crack, and saw the garden ablaze with lanterns.

“Three of them,” she whispered. “Lakhan, Dhari, Oumadh.”

Pratap pushed Bipti aside, flung the window wide open and screamed, “Get out! Get out! I will kill you all.”

“Shh,” Bipti said, pulling Pratap away and trying to close the window.

“Raghu’s son,” a man said from the garden.

“Don’t sh me,” Pratap screamed, turning on Bipti. Tears came to his eyes and his voice broke into sobs. “I will kill them all.”

“Noisy little fellow,” another man said.

“I will come back and kill you all,” Pratap shouted. “I promise you.”

Bipti took him in her arms and comforted him, like a child, and in the same gentle, unalarmed voice said, “Prasad, close the window. And go to sleep.”

“Yes, son.” They recognized Dhari’s voice. “Go to sleep. We will be here every night now to look after you.”

Prasad closed the window, but the noise stayed with them: song, talk, and unhurried sounds of fork and spade. Bipti sat and stared at the door, next to which, on the ground, Pratap sat, a cutlass beside him, its haft carved into a pair of Wellingtons. He was motionless. His tears had gone, but his eyes were red, and the lids swollen.

In the end Bipti sold the hut and the land to Dhari, and she and Mr. Biswas moved to Pagotes. There they lived on Tara’s bounty, though not with Tara, but with some of Tara’s husband’s dependent relations in a back trace far from the Main Road. Pratap and Prasad were sent to a distant relation at Felicity, in the heart of the sugar-estates; they were already broken into estate work and were too old to learn anything else.

And so Mr. Biswas came to leave the only house to which he had some right. For the next thirty-five years he was to be a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world of the Tulsis. For with his mother’s parents dead, his father dead, his brothers on the estate at Felicity, Dehuti as a servant in Tara’s house, and himself rapidly growing away from Bipti who, broken, became increasingly useless and impenetrable, it seemed to him that he was really quite alone.