A House for Mr. Biswas

by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul

  During the idle hours in the shop he had begun to choose names, mostly male ones: he never thought anything else likely. He wrote them on shop-paper, rolled them on his tongue, and tried them out on customers.

  “Krishnadhar Haripratap Gokulnath Damodar Biswas. What do you think of that for a name? K. H. G. D. Biswas. Or what about Krishnadhar Gokul nath Haripratap Damodar Biswas. K. G. H. D.”

  “You are not leaving much room for the pundit to give the child a name.”

  “No pundit is giving any name to any child of mine.”

  And on the back endpaper of the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare, a work of fatiguing illegibility, he wrote the names in large letters, as though his succession had already been settled. He would have used Bell’s Standard Elocutionist, still his favourite reading, if it had not suffered so much from the kick he had given it in the long room at Hanuman House; the covers hung loose and the endpapers had been torn, exposing the khaki-coloured boards. He had bought the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare for the sake of Julius Caesar, parts of which he had declaimed at Lai’s school. Every other play defeated him; the volume remained virtually unread and now, as a repository of the family records, proved to be a mistake. The endpaper blotted atrociously.

  And the baby was a girl. But it was born at the correct time; it was born without difficulty; it was healthy; and Shama was absolutely well. He expected no less from her. He closed the shop and cycled to Hanuman House, and found that his daughter had already been named.

  “Look at Savi,” Shama said.

  “Savi?”

  They were in Mrs. Tulsi’s room, the Rose Room, where all the sisters spent their confinements.

  “It is a nice name,” Shama said.

  Nice name; when all the way from The Chase he had been working on names, and had decided on Sarojini Lakshmi Kamala Devi.

  “Seth and Hari chose it.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” Jerking his chin towards the baby, he asked in English, “They had it register?”

  On the marble topped table next to the bed there was a sheet of paper under a brass plate. She handed that to him.

  “Well! I glad she register. You know the government and nobody else did want to believe that I was even born. People had to swear and sign all sort of paper.”

  “All of we was register,” Shama said.

  “All of all-you would be register.” He looked at the certificate. “Savi? But I don’t see the name here at all. I only see Basso.”

  She widened her eyes. “Shh!”

  “I not going to let anybody call my child Basso.”

  “Shh!”

  He understood. Basso was the real name of the baby, Savi the calling name. The real name of a person could be used to damage that person, whereas the calling name had no validity and was only a convenience. He was relieved he wouldn’t have to call his daughter Basso. Still, what a name!

  “Hari make that one up, eh? The holy ghost.”

  “And Seth.”

  “Trust the pundit and the big thug.”

  “Man, what you doing?”

  He was scribbling hard on the birth certificate.

  “Look.” At the top of the certificate he had written: Real calling name: Lakshmi. Signed by Mohun Biswas, father. Below that was the date.

  They both felt that a government document, which should have remained inviolate, had been challenged.

  He enjoyed her alarm, and looked at her closely for the first time since he had come. Her long hair was loose and spread about her pillow. To look at him she had to press her chin into her neck.

  “You got a double chin,” he said. She didn’t reply.

  Suddenly he jumped up. “What the hell is this?”

  “Show me.”

  He showed her the certificate. “Look. Occupation of father. Labourer. Labourer! Me! Where your family get all this bad blood, girl?”

  “I didn’t see that.”

  “Trust Seth. Look. Name of informant: R. N. Seth. Occupation: Estate Manager.”

  “I wonder why he do that.”

  “Look, the next time you want a informant, eh, just let me know. Calling Lakshmi Basso and Savi. Hello, Lakshmi. Lakshmi, is me, your father, occupation-occupation what, girl? Painter?”

  “It make you sound like a house painter.”

  “Sign-painter? Shopkeeper? God, not that!” He took the certificate and began scribbling. “Proprietor,” he said, passing the certificate to her.

  “But you can’t call yourself a proprietor. The shop belong to Mai.”

  “You can’t call me a labourer either.”

  “They could bring you up for this.”

  “Let them try.”

  “You better go now, man.”

  The baby was stirring.

  “Hello, Lakshmi.”

  “Savi.”

  “Basso.”

  “Shh!”

  “Talk about the old thug. The old scorpion, if you ask me. The old Scorpio.”

  He left the dark room with its close medicinal smells, its basins and its pile of diapers and came out into the drawing-room where at one end the two tall chairs stood like thrones. He went through the wooden bridge to the verandah of the old upstairs where Hari usually sat reading his unwieldy scriptures. Shyly, he came down the stairs into the hall, anticipating much attention as the father of the newest baby in Hanuman House. No one particularly looked at him. The hall was full of children eating gloomily. Among them he recognized the contortionist and the girl who had been running the house-game at The Chase. He smelled sulphur and saw that the children were not eating food but a yellow powder mixed with what looked like condensed milk.

  He asked, “What is that, eh?”

  The contortionist grimaced and said, “Sulphur and condensed milk.”

  “Food getting expensive, eh?”

  “Is for the eggzema,” the house-player said.

  She dipped her finger in condensed milk, in sulphur, then put her finger in her mouth. Hurriedly she repeated the action.

  Mrs. Tulsi had come out of the black kitchen doorway.

  “Sulphur and condensed milk,” Mr. Biswas said.

  “To sweeten it,” Mrs. Tulsi said. Again she had forgiven him.

  “Sweeten!” the contortionist whispered loudly. “My foot.” Her achievements gave her unusual licence.

  “Very good for the eczema.” Mrs. Tulsi sat down next to the contortionist, took up her plate and shook back the sulphur from the rim, over which the contortionist had been steadily spilling sulphur on to the table. “Have you seen your daughter, Mohun?”

  “Lakshmi?”

  “Lakshmi?”

  “Lakshmi. My daughter. That is the name I choose.”

  “Shama looks well.” Mrs. Tulsi brushed the spilled sulphur off the table on to her palm and shook the palm over the condensed milk, which the contortionist had so far kept virgin. “I have put her in the Rose Room. My room.”

  Mr. Biswas said nothing.

  Mrs. Tulsi patted the bench. “Come and sit here, Mohun.”

  He sat beside her.

  “The Lord gives,” Mrs. Tulsi said abruptly in English.

  Concealing his surprise, Mr. Biswas nodded. He knew Mrs. Tulsi’s philosophizing manner. Slowly, and with the utmost solemnity, she made a number of simple, unconnected statements; the effect was one of puzzling profundity.

  “Everything comes, bit by bit,” she said. “We must forgive. As your father used to say”-she pointed to the photographs on the wall-“what is for you is for you. What is not for you is not for you.”

  Against his will Mr. Biswas found himself listening gravely and nodding in agreement.

  Mrs. Tulsi sniffed and pressed her veil to her nose. “A year ago, who would have thought that you would be sitting here, in this hall, with these children, as my son-in-law and a father? Life is full of these surprises. But they are not really surprising. You are responsible for a life now, Mohun.” She began to cry. She put her hand on Mr. Biswas’s shoulder,
not to comfort him, but urging him to comfort her. “I let Shama have my room. The Rose Room. I know that you are worried about the future. Don’t tell me. 1 know.” She patted his shoulder.

  He was trapped by her mood. He forgot the children eating sulphur and condensed milk, and shook his head as if to admit that he had thought profoundly and with despair of the future.

  Having trapped him in the mood, she removed her hand, blew her nose and dried her eyes. “Whatever happens, you keep on living. Whatever happens. Until the Lord sees fit to take you away.” The last sentence was in English; it took him aback, and broke the spell. “As He did with your dear father. But until that time comes, no matter how they starve you or how they treat you, they can never kill you.”

  They, Mr. Biswas thought, who are they?

  Then Seth stamped into the hall with his muddy bluchers and the children applied themselves with zeal to the sulphur powder.

  “Mohun,” Seth said. “See your daughter? You surprise me, man.”

  The contortionist giggled. Mrs. Tulsi smiled.

  You traitor, Mr. Biswas thought, you old she-fox traitor.

  “Well, you are a big man now, Mohun,” Seth said. “Husband and father. Don’t start behaving like a little boy again. The shop gone bust yet?”

  “Give it a little time,” Mr. Biswas said, standing up. “After all, is only about four months since Hari bless it.”

  The contortionist laughed; for the first time Mr. Biswas felt charitably towards this girl. Encouraged, he added, “You think we could get him to un-bless it?”

  There was more laughter.

  Seth shouted for his wife and food.

  At the mention of food the children looked up longingly.

  “No food for none of all-you today,” Seth said. “This will teach you to play in dirt and give yourself eggzema.”

  Mrs. Tulsi was at Mr. Biswas’s side. She was solemn again. “It comes bit by bit.” She was whispering now, for sisters were coming out of the kitchen with brass plates and dishes. “You never thought, I expect, that your own first child would be born in a place like this.”

  He shook his head.

  “Remember, they can’t kill you.”

  That “they” again.

  “Oh,” Mr. Biswas said. “So it have three in the family now.”

  She was warned by his tone.

  “Send me a barrel,” he said loudly. “A small coal barrel.”

  He came out through the side gate and wheeled his cycle past the arcade, which was already filling up with the evening crowd of old India-born men who came there to smoke and talk. He cycled to Misir’s rickety little wooden house and called at the lighted window.

  Misir pushed his head past the lace curtain and said, “Just the man I want to see. Come in.”

  Misir said he had packed his wife and children off to his mother-in-law. Mr. Biswas guessed the reason to be a quarrel or a pregnancy.

  “Been working like hell without them, too,” Misir said. “Writing stories.”

  “For the Sentinel?”

  “Short stories,” Misir said with his old impatience. “Just sit down and listen.”

  Misir’s first story was about a man who had been out of work for months and was starving. His five children were starving; his wife was having another baby. It was December and the shops were full of food and toys. On Christmas eve the man got a job. Going home that evening, he was knocked down and killed by a motorcar that didn’t stop.

  “Helluva thing,” Mr. Biswas said. “I like the part about the car not stopping.”

  Misir smiled, and said fiercely, “But life is like that. Is not a fairy-story. No once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-rajah nonsense. Listen to this one.”

  Misir’s second story was about a man who had been out of work for months and was starving. To keep his large family he began selling his possessions, and finally he had nothing left but a two-shilling sweepstake ticket. He didn’t want to sell it, but one of his children fell dangerously ill and needed medicine. He sold the ticket for a shilling and bought medicine. The child died; the ticket he had sold won the sweepstake.

  “Helluva thing,” Mr. Biswas said. “What happen?”

  “To the man? Why you asking me? Use your imagination.”

  “Hell, hell, helluva thing.”

  “People should know about these things,” Misir said. “Know about life. You should start writing some stories yourself

  “I just don’t have the time, boy. Have a little property in The Chase now.” Mr. Biswas paused, but Misir didn’t react. “Married man, too, you know. Responsibilities.” He paused again. “Daughter.”

  “God!” Misir exclaimed in disgust. “God!”

  “Just born.”

  Misir shook his head, sympathizing. “Cat in bag, cat in bag. That is all we get from this cat-in-bag business.”

  Mr. Biswas changed the subject. “What about the Aryans?”

  “Why you asking? You don’t really care. Nobody don’t care. Just tell them a few fairy-stories and they happy. They don’t want to face facts. And this Shivlochan is a damn fool. You know they send Pankaj Rai back to India? Sometimes I stop and wonder what happening to him over there. I suppose the poor man in rags, starving in some gutter, can’t get a job or anything. You know, you could make a good story out of Pankaj.”

  “Just what I was going to say. The man was a purist.”

  “A born purist.”

  “Misir, you still working for the Sentinel?”

  “Blasted cent a line still. Why?”

  “A damn funny thing happen today. You know what I see? A pig with two heads.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here, Hanuman House. From their estate.”

  “But Hindus like the Tulsis wouldn’t keep pigs.”

  “You would be surprised. Of course it was dead.”

  For all his reforming instincts, Misir was clearly disappointed and upset. “Anything for the money these days. Still, is a story. Going to telephone it in straight away.”

  And when he left Misir, Mr. Biswas said, “Occupation labourer. This will show them.”

  It would be three weeks before Shama returned to The Chase. He put up a hammock for the baby in the gallery and waited. The shop and the back rooms became increasingly disordered, and felt cold, like an abandoned camp. Yet as soon as Shama came with Lakshmi-“Her name is Savi,” Shama insisted, and Savi it remained-those rooms again became the place where he not only lived, but had status without having to assert his rights or explain his worth.

  He immediately began complaining of the very things that pleased him most. Savi cried, and he spoke as though she were one of Shama’s indulgences. Meals were late, and he exhibited an annoyance which concealed the joy he felt that there was someone to cook meals with him in mind. To these outbursts Shama didn’t reply, as she would have done before. She was morose herself, as though she preferred this bond to the bond of sentimentality.

  He liked to watch when the baby was bathed. Shama did this expertly; she might have been bathing babies for years. Her left arm and hand supported the baby’s back and wobbly head; her right hand soaped and washed; finally there was the swift, gentle gesture which transferred the baby from basin to towel. He marvelled that someone who had come out of Hanuman House with hands torn by housework could express so much gentleness through those same hands. Afterwards Savi was rubbed with coconut oil and her limbs exercised, to certain cheerful rhymes. The same things had been done to Mr. Biswas and Shama when they were babies; the same rhymes had been said; and possibly the ritual had been evolved a thousand years before.

  The anointing was repeated in the evening, when the sun had dropped and the surrounding bush had begun to sing. And it was at this time, some six months later, that Moti came to the shop and rapped hard on the counter.

  Moti did not belong to the village. He was a small worried-looking man with grey hair and bad teeth. He was dressed in a dingy clerkish way. His dirty shirt sat neatly on him and the cre
ases on his trousers could just be seen. In his shirt pocket he carried a fountain pen, a stunted pencil and pieces of soiled paper, the equipment and badge of the rural literate.

  He asked nervously for a pennyworth of lard.

  Mr. Biswas’s Hindu instincts didn’t permit him to stock lard. “But we have butter,” he said, thinking of the tall smelly tin full of red, runny, rancid butter.

  Moti shook his head and took off his bicycle clips. “Just give me a cent Paradise Plums.”

  Mr. Biswas gave him three in a square of white paper.

  Moti didn’t go away. He put a Paradise Plum in his mouth and said, “I am glad you don’t stock lard. I respect you for it.” He paused and, closing his eyes, crushed the Paradise Plum between his jaws. “I am glad to see a man in your position not giving up his religion for the sake of a few cents. Do you know that these days some Hindu shopkeepers are actually selling salt beef with their own hands? Just for the few extra cents.”

  Mr. Biswas knew, and regretted the squeamishness which prevented him from doing the same.

  “And look at that other thing,” Moti said, talking through the crushed Paradise Plum. “Did you hear about the pig?”

  “The Tulsi pig? Doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  “Still, the blessing is that not everyone is like that. You, for instance. And Seebaran. Do you know Seebaran?”

  “Seebaran?”

  “Don’t know Seebaran! L. S. Seebaran? The man who has been handling practically all the work in the Petty Civil.”

  “Oh, him,” Mr. Biswas said, still in the dark.

  “Very strict Hindu. And one of the best lawyers here too, I can tell you. We should be proud of him. The man who was here before you-what’s his name?-anyway, the man before you had a lot to thank Seebaran for. He would be a pauper today if it hadn’t been for Seebaran.”