Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Mr. Biswas had always got on well with Dorothy; he was attracted by her loudness and gaiety and regarded her as an ally against the sisters. But on that hot still afternoon, when a holiday stateness lay over Arwacas, the hall, with its confused furniture, its dark loft and sooty green walls, with flies buzzing in and out of the white sunny spots on the long table, seemed abandoned, deprived of animation; and Mr. Biswas, feeling Shekhar’s absence as a betrayal, could sympathize with the sisters.

Savi said, “This is the last Christmas I spend at Hanuman House.”

Change followed change. At Pagotes Tara and Ajodha were decorating their new house. In Port of Spain new lampposts, painted silver, went up in the main streets and there was talk of replacing the diesel buses by trolley-buses. Owad’s old room was let to a middle-aged childless coloured couple. And at the Sentinel there were rumours.

Under Mr. Burnett’s direction the Sentinel had overtaken the Gazette and, though some distance behind the Guardian , it had become successful enough for its frivolity to be an embarrassment to the owners. Mr. Burnett had been under pressure for some time. That Mr. Biswas knew, but he had no head for intrigue and did not know the source of this pressure. Some of the staff became openly contemptuous and spoke of Mr. Burnett as uneducated; a joke went around the office that he had applied from the Argentine for a job as a sub-editor and his letter had been misunderstood. As if in reply to all this Mr. Burnett became increasingly perverse. “Let’s face it,” he said. “Editorials from Port of Spain didn’t have much effect in Spain. They are not going to stop Hitler either.” The Guardian responded to the war by starting a fighter fund: in a box on the front page twelve aeroplanes were outlined, and as the fund rose the outlines were filled in. Right up to the end the Sentinel had been headlining the West Indian cricket tour of England, and when the tour was abandoned it printed a drawing of Hitler which, when cut out and folded along certain dotted lines, became a drawing of a pig.

Early in the new year the blow fell. Mr. Biswas was lunching with Mr. Burnett in a Chinese restaurant, in one of those cubicles weakly lit by a low-hanging naked bulb, with lengths of flex loosely attached to the flyblown, grimy celotex partitions, when Mr. Burnett said, “Amazing scenes are going to be witnessed soon. I’m leaving.” He paused. “Sacked.” As if divining Mr. Biswas’s thoughts, he added, “Nothing for you to worry about, though.” Then, in quick succession, he displayed a number of conflicting moods. He was gay; he was depressed; he was glad to leave; he was sorry to go; he didn’t want to talk about it; he talked about it; he wasn’t going to talk any more about himself; he talked about himself. He ate in spasms, attacking the food as though it had done him some injury. “Shoots? Is that what they call this? There’ll be damned little bamboo left in China at this rate.” He pressed the bell, which lay at the centre of a roughly circular patch of grime on the wall. They heard it ring in some distant cavern, above a multitude of other bells, the pattering of waitresses’ feet and talk in adjacent cubicles.

The harassed waitress came and Mr. Burnett said, “Shoots? This is just plain bamboo. What do you think I have inside here?” He tapped his belly. “A paper factory?”

“That was one portion,” the waitress said.

“That was one bamboo.”

He ordered more lager and the waitress sucked her teeth and went out, leaving the swing door swinging rapidly to and fro.

“One portion,” Mr. Burnett said. “They make it sound like hay. And this damned room is like a stall. I’m not worried. I’ve got other strings to my bow. You too. You could go back to your sign-writing. I leave, you leave. Let’s all leave.”

They laughed.

Mr. Biswas returned to the office in a state of great agitation. He had been associated, and zestfully, with some of the most frivolous excesses of the Sentinel . Now at the thought of each he felt a stab of guilt and panic. He was expecting to be summoned to mysterious rooms and told by their secure occupants that his services were no longer required. He sat at his desk-but it belonged to him no more than the columns of the Sentinel he filled-and listened to the noises made by the carpenters. Those were the noises he had heard on his first day in the office; building and rebuilding had gone on without interruption ever since. The newsroom came to its afternoon life. Reporters arrived, took off their jackets, opened notebooks and typed; groups gathered at the green water-cooler and broke up again; at some desks proofs were being corrected, the inner pages laid out. For more than four years he had been part of this excitement. Now, waiting for the summons, he could only observe it.

Getting to believe that by staying in the office he was increasing the risk of dismissal, he left early and cycled home. Fear led to fear. Suppose he had to send the children back to Hanuman House, would there be anyone to receive them? Suppose Mrs. Tulsi gave him notice-as Shama did so often to the tenement people-where would he go? How would he live?

The years stretched ahead, dark.

When he got home he mixed and drank some Maclean’s Brand Stomach Powder, undressed, got into bed and began to read Epictetus.

But the days went by and no summons came. And at last it was time for Mr. Burnett to leave. Mr. Biswas wanted to make some gesture to show his gratitude and sympathy, but he could think of nothing. And after all Mr. Burnett was escaping; he was staying behind. The Sentinel reported Mr. Burnett’s departure on the society page. There was an unkind photograph of Mr. Burnett looking uncomfortable in a dinner jacket, his small eyes popping in the flash of the camera, a cigar stuck in his mouth as if for comic effect. He was reported as being sorry to leave; he had to take up an appointment in America; he had learned much from his association with Trinidad and the Sentinel , and he would take a great interest in the progress of both; he thought the standards of local journalism “surprisingly high”. It was left to the other newspapers to reveal the other strings to his bow that Mr. Burnett had spoken about. They reported that an Indian troupe, made up of dancers, a fire-walker, a snake-charmer and a man who could rest on a bed of nails, was accompanying Mr. Burnett, a former editor of a local newspaper, on his travels to America. One headline was THE CIRCUS MOVES ON.

And the new regime started at the Sentinel . The day after Mr. Burnett’s departure the newsroom was hung with posters which said DON”T BE BRIGHT, JUST GET IT RIGHT and NEWS NOT VIEWS and FACTS? IF NOT AXE and CHECK IT OR CHUCK IT. Mr. Biswas regarded them all as aimed at himself alone, and their whimsicality scared him. The office was subdued and everyone wore a look of earnestness, those who had gone up, those who had gone down. Mr. Burnett’s news editor had been made a sub-editor. His bright reporters had been variously scattered. One went to Today’s Arrangements, Invalids and The Weather, one to Shipping, one to Diana’s Diary on the society page, one to Classified Advertisements. Mr. Biswas joined Court Shorts.

“Write?” he said to Shama. “I don’t call that writing. Is more like filling up a form. X, aged so much, was yesterday fined so much by Mr. Y at this court for doing that. The prosecution alleged. Electing to conduct his own defence, X said. The magistrate, passing sentence, said. “

But Shama approved of the new regime. She said, “It will teach you to have some respect for people and the truth.”

“Hear you. Hear you! But you don’t surprise me. I expect you to talk like that. But let them wait. New regime, eh. Just see the circulation drop now.”