Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“Come,” Mr. Biswas said, making room in the hammock.

“No!” Anand shouted.

But there was no one to laugh.

Mr. Biswas’s hurt turned to anger. “Go and cut me a whip,” he said, getting out of the hammock. “Go on. Quick sharp.”

Anand stamped down the back stairs. From the neem tree that grew at the edge of the lot and hung over into the sewerage trace he cut a thick rod, far thicker than those he normally cut. His purpose was to insult Mr. Biswas. Mr. Biswas recognized the insult and was further enraged. He seized the rod and beat Anand savagely. In the end Shama had to intervene.

“I can’t stand this,” Savi cried. “I can’t stand you people. I am going back to Hanuman House.”

Myna was crying as well.

Shama said to Anand, “You see what you cause?”

He said nothing.

“Good!” Savi said. “All this shouting and screaming make this house sound like every other house in the street. I hope the low minds of some people are satisfied.”

“Yes,” Mr. Biswas said calmly. “Some people are satisfied.”

His smile drove Savi to fresh tears.

But Anand had his revenge that evening.

Now that there were only a few days left to Owad in Trinidad, and very few before the family came to Port of Spain for the farewell, Mr. Biswas and Anand ate as many meals as possible with him. They ate formally, in the diningroom. And that evening, just before Mr. Biswas sat at the table, Anand pulled the chair from under him, and Mr. Biswas fell noisily to the floor.

“Shompo! Lompo! Gomp!” Owad said, roaring with laughter.

Savi said, “Well, some people are satisfied.”

Mr. Biswas didn’t talk during the meal. Afterwards he went for a walk. When he came back he went directly to his room and never once called to anyone to get his cigarettes or matches or books.

It was his habit to walk through the house at six in the morning, rustling the newspaper and getting everyone up. Then he himself went back to bed: he had the gift of enjoying sleep in snatches. He woke no one the next morning and didn’t show himself while the children were getting ready for school.

But before Anand left, Shama gave him a six-cents piece.

“From your Father. For milk from the Dairies.”

At three that afternoon, when school was over, Anand walked down Victoria Avenue, past the racketing wheels and straps of the Government Printery, crossed Tragarete Road for the shade of the ivory-covered walls of Lapeyrouse Cemetery, and turned into Phillip Street where, in the cigarette factory, was the source of the sweet smell of tobacco which hung over the district. The Dairies looked expensive and forbidding in white and pale green. Anand tiptoed to the caged desk, said to the woman, “A small bottle of milk, please,” paid, got his voucher, and sat on a tall pale green stool at the milky-smelling bar. The white-capped barman tried to stab off the silver top a little too nonchalantly and, failing twice, pressed it out with a large thumb. Anand didn’t care for the ice-cold milk and the cloying sweetness it left at the back of his throat; it also seemed to have the tobacco smell, which he associated with the cemetery.

When he got home Shama gave him a small brown paper parcel. It contained prunes. They were his, to eat as and when he pleased.

Both he and Savi were told to keep the milk and the prunes secret, lest Owad should hear of it and laugh at them for their presumptuousness.

And almost immediately Anand began to pay the price of the milk and prunes. Mr. Biswas went to the school and saw the headmaster and the teacher whose vocabulary he knew so well. They agreed that Anand could win an exhibition if he worked, and Mr. Biswas made arrangements for Anand to be given private lessons after school, after milk. To balance this, Mr. Biswas also arranged for Anand to have unlimited credit at the school shop; thus deranging Shama’s accounts further.

Savi’s heart went out to Anand.

“I am too glad,” she said, “that God didn’t give me a brain.”

In the week before Owad’s departure the house filled up with sisters, husbands, children and those of Mrs. Tulsi’s retainers who remained faithful. The women came in their brightest clothes and best jewellery and, though only twenty miles from their villages, looked exotic. Heedless of stares, they stared; and made comments in Hindi, unusually loud, unusually ribald, because in the city Hindi was a secret language, and they were in holiday mood. A tent covered the back of the yard where Anand and Owad had sometimes played cricket. Fire-holes had been dug on the pitch itself, and over these food was always being cooked in large black cauldrons specially brought from Hanuman House. The visitors had come with musical instruments. They played and sang late into the night, and neighbours, too fascinated to object, peeped through holes in the corrugated iron fences.

Few of the visitors knew Mr. Biswas or knew the position he held in the house. And all at once this position became uncertain. He found himself squeezed into one room, and for periods lost track of Shama and his children. “Eight dollars,” he whispered to Shama. “That is the rent I pay every month. I have my rights.”

The rose-bushes and the lily-pond suffered.

“Set up trip-wires,” he told Shama. “Then let them carry on. ‘Arй , what have we here?’ He imitated an old woman talking Hindi. “Then, oops! Trip! Bam! Fall. All the pretty clothes get dirty like hell. Face wet with mud. Let that happen a few times. Then they will learn that flowers don’t just grow like that.”

After two days he gave up his flowers as lost. He went for long walks in the evening and stayed out as late as possible, calling at various police stations on the chance of picking up a story. One night he stayed out until the street dogs began their round, futile creatures that hunted in packs, fled at the sound of a human foot and left a trail of overturned dustbins and sifted garbage. The house was alive but subdued when he got back. He found four children on his bed. They were not his. Thereafter he occupied his room early in the evening, bolted the door and refused to answer knocks, calls, scratches and cries.

And all at once, too, the bond between Owad and himself seemed to have evaporated. Owad was out for much of the time making farewell calls; when he came to the house he was immediately besieged by friends and relations who gazed on him and wept and offered advice which they later discussed among themselves, to prove their concern: advice about money, the weather, food, alcohol, women.

The time came for photographs. Husbands, children and friends watched as Owad posed with Shekhar, with Mrs. Tulsi, with Shekhar and Mrs. Tulsi, with Shekhar, Mrs. Tulsi and the whole array of the sisters who, because the occasion was sad, ignored the pleas of the Chinese photographer and scowled at the camera.

On the last day Seth arrived. He wore his khaki uniform; his bluchers rang on the floor; he dominated, imposing formality wherever he went. His absence had been noted, and now everyone was expectant. But after the final family council Owad, Shekhar, Mrs. Tulsi and Seth looked only solemn, which could have been a sign of disagreement, or sorrow.

Mr. Biswas achieved a minor notoriety when he brought the Sentinel photographer to the house, cleared the drawing-room and did his best to appear to be directing both Owad and the photographer. But on the following morning the story, on page three-TRINIDAD MAN OFF TO U.K. FOR MEDICAL STUDIES-was given little attention, for those who were not occupied with dressing their children for the wharf or getting wharf passes were at the service Hari was conducting in the tent.

Finally they went to the wharf. Only newborn babies and their mothers stayed behind. The Tulsi contingent stared at the ship; and the ship’s rails were presently lined with in-transit passengers and members of the ship’s company, getting an unusually exotic glimpse of Port of Spain harbour. The word went around that well-wishers could go aboard and in a matter of minutes the Tulsis and their friends had overrun the ship. They stared at officers and passengers and the photographs of Adolf Hitler, and listened attentively to the guttural language around them, to mimic it later. The older women kicked at decks and rails and the sides of the ship, testing its seaworthiness. Some of the more susceptible took it in turns to sit on Owad’s bunk and weep. The men were shyer, and more respectful before the might of the ship; they wandered about silently with their hats in their hands. Whatever doubts remained about ship and crew vanished when an officer began giving out presents: lighters to the men, dolls in country dress to the women. And all the time, unnoticed by those he was seeking to impress, Mr. Biswas scurried knowingly about the ship, talking to the foreigners and writing in his notebook.