A House for Mr. Biswas

by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul

  “Anand,” Shama said, “Go and pack your clothes.”

  Dookhnee said, “Yes, go and pack your clothes.”

  And many of the women said, “Go, boy.”

  “He is not going with you to that house,” Mr. Biswas said.

  Anand remained where he was, in the kitchen area, stroking Tarzan, not looking at Mr. Biswas or the women.

  Savi came out of the room with a suitcase and a pair of shoes. She dusted her feet and buckled on a shoe.

  Shama, only now beginning to cry, said in Hindi, “Savi, I have told you many times to wash your feet before putting on your shoes.”

  “All right, Ma. I will go and wash them.”

  “Don’t bother this time,” Dookhnee said.

  The women said, “No, don’t bother.”

  Savi buckled on the other shoe.

  Shama said, “Anand, do you want to come with me, or do you want to stay with your father?”

  Mr. Biswas, the stick in his hand, looked at Anand.

  Anand continued to stroke Tarzan, whose head was now upturned, his eyes partly closed.

  Mr. Biswas ran to the green table and awkwardly pulled out the drawer. He took the long box of crayons he used for his placards and held it to Anand. He shook the box; the crayons rattled.

  Savi said, “Come, Anand boy. Go and get your clothes.”

  Still stroking Tarzan, Anand said, “I staying with Pa.” His voice was low and irritable.

  “Anand!” Savi said.

  “Don’t beg him,” Shama said, in control of herself again. “He is a man and knows what he is doing.”

  “Boy,” Dookhnee said. “Your mother.”

  Anand said nothing.

  Shama got up and the circle of women around her widened. She took Myna, Savi took the suitcase, and they walked along the path, muddy between sparse and stubborn grass, to the road, scattering the hens and chickens before them. Tarzan followed, and was diverted by the chickens. When he was pecked by an angry hen he looked for Shama and Savi and Myna. They had disappeared. He trotted back to the barracks and Anand.

  Mr. Biswas opened the box and showed Anand the sharpened crayons. “Take them. They are yours. You can do what you like with them.”

  Anand shook his head.

  “You don’t want them?”

  Tarzan, between Anand’s legs, held up his head to be stroked, closing his eyes in anticipation.

  “What do you want then?”

  Anand shook his head. Tarzan shook his.

  “Why did you stay then?”

  Anand looked exasperated.

  “Why?”

  “Because-” The word came out thin, explosive, charged with anger, at himself and his father. “Because they was going to leave you alone.”

  For the rest of that day they hardly spoke.

  His instinct had been right. As soon as Shama had gone his fatigue left him. He became restless again, and almost welcomed the familiar constricted turmoil in his mind. He returned to the fields, taking Anand with him on the first day. Anand, dusty, itching, scorched by the sun and cut by sharp grass, refused to go again, and thereafter remained at the barracks with Tarzan.

  He made more toys for Anand. A round tin-lid loosely nailed to a rod provided something that rolled when pushed and gave Anand a deep satisfaction. At night they drew imaginary scenes: snow-covered mountains and fir trees, red-hulled yachts in a blue sea below a clear sky, roads winding between well-kept forests to green mountains in the distance. They also talked.

  “Who is your father?”

  “You.”

  “Wrong. I am not your father. God is your father.”

  “Oh. And what about you?”

  “I am just somebody. Nobody at all. I am just a man you know.”

  He showed Anand how to mix colours. He taught him that red and yellow made orange, blue and yellow green.

  “Oh. That is why the leaves turn yellow?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, look then. Suppose I take a leaf and wash it and wash it and wash it, it will turn yellow or blue?”

  “Not really. The leaf is God’s work. You see?”

  “No.”

  “Your trouble is that you don’t really believe. There was a man like you one time. He wanted to mock a man like me. So one day, when the man like me was sleeping, this other man drop an orange in his lap, thinking, ‘I bet the damn fool going to wake up and say that God drop the orange.’ So the other man woke up and began eating the orange. And this man come up and say, ‘I suppose God give you that orange.’ ‘Yes,’ the other man said. ‘Well, let me tell you. Is not God. Is me.’ ‘Well,’ the other man said, ‘I prayed for an orange while I was asleep.’ “

  Anand was impressed.

  “Now, look,” Mr. Biswas said. “See this matchbox. You see me holding it in my hand. Oops! It fall down. Why?”

  “You leggo, that’s why.”

  “Not that at all. It fall down because of gravity. The law of gravity. They not teaching you children anything at all these days.”

  He talked to Anand about people called Coppernickus and Galilyo. And it gave him a thrill to be the first to inform Anand that the world was round and moved about the sun.

  “Remember Galilyo. Always stick up for yourself.”

  He was glad that Anand was interested. It was the week before Christmas and he was fearing the result of Seth’s visit.

  He told Anand, “On Saturday we are going to make a compass.”

  And on Saturday Seth said, “Why you don’t come home, Anand boy? Come home and hang up your stocking. What you doing here with your father?”

  “He is not my father. It just look to you that he is my father.”

  Seth evaded the theological issue. “They going to make cake and icecream, boy.”

  Mr. Biswas said, “Remember Galilyo.”

  Anand stayed.

  Using the batteries of his electric torch Mr. Biswas magnetized a needle and stuck it on a disc of paper; in the centre of the disc he inserted a cap of paper and rested the cap on the head of a pin.

  “Where the eye of the needle points, that is north.”

  They played with that until the needle lost its magnetism.

  Sometimes Mr. Biswas said he had ague. Then, wrapped up tightly and shivering, he made Anand recite Hindi hymns after him. And at these times, though nothing was said, Anand became affected by his father’s fear and repeated the hymns like charms. The barrackroom, its door and window closed, its edges in darkness, became cavernous and full of menace, and Anand longed for morning.

  But there were compensations.

  “Today,” Mr. Biswas said, “I am going to show you something about a thing called centrifugal force. Go and get the bucket outside and full it up so high with water.”

  Anand brought the water.

  “Not enough space here really,” Mr. Biswas said.

  “Why you don’t go outside?”

  Mr. Biswas didn’t listen. “Got to give it a good swing.” He swung.

  The water splashed on the bed, the walls, the floor.

  “The bucket was too heavy. Go and get one of the small blue pots from the kitchen. Full that with some water.”

  And the second time it worked.

  They made an electric buzzer, using the torch batteries, a piece of tin and a nail, a rusty new nail, one of those Mr. Maclean had brought in newspaper on the afternoon Edgar had brushed the site for the house.

  There were many reasons why Mr. Biswas moved from the barracks to the finished room of his house. It was a positive action; it was a confident, defiant gesture; there was his continuing unease at hearing people moving about the barracks. And there was his hope that living in a new house in the new year might bring about a new state of mind. He would not have moved if he had been alone, for he feared solitude more than people. But, with Anand, he had enough company.

  Tarzan found a pregnant cat in possession of the empty, dusty room and chased her out.

  The room was
swept and cleaned. They tried to scrape the asphalt snakes off the floor; but the asphalt, which melted so easily on the corrugated iron, remained hard on the cedar boards. The room was smaller than the barrackroom; the bed, Shama’s dressingtable, the green table, the kitchen safe and the rockingchair nearly filled it. “Got to be careful now,” Mr. Biswas said. “Can’t rock too hard.” And there were other inconveniences. There was no kitchen; they had to cook on boxes downstairs, below the room; they both got nausea. The roof had no gutters and water had to be fetched all the way from the barrack barrels. They also had to use the barrack latrine.

  And every day Mr. Biswas saw the snakes, thin, black, lengthening.

  The incompleteness of the house didn’t depress him. He saw the rafters, the old corrugated iron, the grey uprights, the cracked boards on the floor and walls, the door to the nonexistent bedroom nailed and barred. He knew that they had made him unhappy; but that was at a time so remote he could now scarcely imagine it.

  The snakes appeared more often in his dreams. He began to regard them as living, and wondered what it would be like to have one fall and curl on his skin.

  The questioning and the fear remained. He hadn’t left that at the barracks.

  The trees could conceal so much.

  And one night Anand was awakened by Mr. Biswas jumping out of bed, screaming, tearing at his vest as though he had been attacked by a column of red ants.

  A snake had fallen on him. Very thin, and not long.

  When they looked up they saw the parent snake, waiting to release some more.

  With poles and brooms they tried to pull down the snakes. The asphalt only swung when they hit it. To grab at it was only to pull away a small snake, leaving the pregnant parent above.

  He got a cocoa-knife and spent the following evening cutting down the snakes. It was not easy. Below the crust at the roots the asphalt was soft but rubbery. He scraped hard and felt the rust from the roof falling on his face.

  By the next afternoon the snakes had begun to grow again.

  He said he had another touch of malaria. He wrapped himself in the floursack sheet and rocked in his chair. Tarzan had his tail crushed; he leapt up with a yell, and went out of the room.

  “Say Rama Rama Sita Rama, and nothing will happen to you,” Mr. Biswas said.

  Anand repeated the words, faster and faster.

  “You don’t want to leave me?”

  Anand didn’t reply.

  This had become one of Mr. Biswas’s fears. By concentrating on it-a power he had in his state-he managed to make it the most oppressive of all his fears: that Anand would leave him and he would be left alone.

  Anand was rolling his tin-lid about the yard one afternoon when two men came to the house and asked whether he lived there. Then they asked for the driver.

  “He in the fields,” Anand said. “But he coming back just now.”

  Between the trees the road was cool. The men squatted there. They hummed; they talked; they threw pebbles; they chewed blades of grass; they spat. Anand watched them.

  One of the men called, “Boy, come here.” He was fat and yellow-skinned with a black moustache and light eyes.

  The other man, who was younger, said, “We digging for treasure.”

  Anand couldn’t resist that. Pushing his tin-lid, he went to the road.

  “Come on. Dig,” the younger man said.

  The fat man cried, “Yaah!” and pulled out a cent from the gravel.

  Anand went to where the fat man was and began scraping

  Then the younger man called out, “Aha!” and took up a penny from the gravel.

  Anand ran to him. Then the fat man called out again; he had found another cent.

  Anand moved back and forth between the men.

  “But I not finding any,” he said.

  “Here,” the younger man said. “Dig here.”

  Anand dug and found a penny. “I could keep it?”

  “But is yours,” the younger man said. “You find it.”

  The game went on for some time. Anand found two more cents.

  Then the fat man appeared to lose interest. The driver taking long,” he said. “Where your father, boy?”

  Anand pointed to the sky and was pleased when the fat man looked puzzled and asked, “The driver is your father, not so?”

  “Well, everybody think he is my father. But he is not my father really. He is just a man I know.”

  The men looked at one another. The fat man took up a handful of gravel and made as if to throw it at Anand. “Run away,” he said. “Go on, haul your little tail.”

  “Is not your road,” Anand said. “Is the PWD road.”

  “So you is a smart man into the bargain? Who the hell you think you talking to?” The fat man rose. “Since you so smart, give me back my money.”

  “Find your own. This is mine.” Anand turned to the younger man. “You see me find it.”

  “Leave the boy,” the younger man said.

  “I not going to take cheek from a little boy who rob me of my last few cents,” the fat man said. “I going to teach him a lesson.” He seized Anand.

  “Hit me and I tell my father.”

  The fat man hesitated.

  “Leave him, Dinnoo,” the younger man said. “Look, the driver.”

  Anand broke away and ran to Mr. Biswas. “That fat man was trying to thief my money.”

  “Afternoon, boss,” the fat man said.

  “Haul your tail. Who the hell tell you you could lay your hand on my son?”

  “Son, boss?”

  “He try to thief my money,” Anand said.

  “Was a game,” the fat man said.

  “Haul off!” Mr. Biswas said. “Job! You not looking for any job. You not getting any either.”

  “But, boss,” the younger man said, “Mr. Seth say he did tell you.”

  “Didn’t tell me nothing.”

  “But Mr. Seth say-” the fat man said.

  “Leave them, Dinnoo,” the younger man said. “Father and blasted son.”

  “Is in the blood,” the fat man said.

  “You mind your mouth,” Mr. Biswas shouted.

  “Tcha!” The man sucked his teeth, backing away.

  Anand showed Mr. Biswas the coppers he had found.

  “The road full of money,” he said. “They was finding silver. But I didn’t find any.”

  Mr. Biswas was awake and lying in bed when Anand got up. Anand always got up first. Mr. Biswas heard him walk along the resounding boards of the unfinished drawingroom floor and step on to the staircase-that was a firmer sound. Then there was a silence, and he heard Anand coming back across the drawingroom.

  Anand stood in the doorway. His face was blank. “Pa.” His voice was weak. His mouth remained half open and quivering.

  Mr. Biswas threw off the sheet and went to him.

  Anand shrugged off his father’s hand and pointed across the drawingroom.

  Mr. Biswas went to look.

  On the lowest step he saw Tarzan, dead. The body had been flung down carelessly. The hind quarters were on the step, the muzzle on the ground. The brown and white hair was clotted with black-red blood and stained with dirt; flies were thick about him. The tail was propped up against the second step, erect, the hair ruffled in the light morning breeze, as though it belonged to a living dog. The neck had been cut, the belly ripped open; flies were on his lips and around his eyes, which were mercifully closed.

  Mr. Biswas felt Anand standing beside him.

  “Come. Go inside. I will look after Tarzan.”

  He led Anand to the bedroom. Anand walked lightly, very lightly, as though responding only to the pressure of Mr. Biswas’s fingers. Mr. Biswas passed his hand over Anand’s hair. Anand angrily shook the hand away. The tight, brittle body quivered and Anand, clutching his shirt with both hands, began dancing on the floor.

  It was some seconds before Mr. Biswas realized that Anand had drawn a deep breath before screaming. He could do nothing but wa
it, watching the swollen face, the distended mouth, the narrow eyes. And then it came, a terrible whistle of a shriek that went on and on until it broke up into gurgles and strangulated sounds.

  “I don’t want to stay here! I want to go!”

  “All right,” Mr. Biswas said, when Anand sat red-eyed and snuffling on the bed. “I will take you to Hanuman House. Tomorrow.” It was a plea for time. In the anxiety that palpitated through him he had forgotten the dog, and knew only that he didn’t want to be left alone. It was a skill he had acquired: to forget the immediately unpleasant. Nothing could distract him from the deeper pain.

  Anand, too, forgot the dog. All he recognized was the plea and his own power. He beat his legs against the side of the rumpled bed and stamped on the floor. “No! No! I want to go today.”

  “All right. I will take you this afternoon.”

  Mr. Biswas buried Tarzan in the yard, adding another mound to those thrown up by the energetic Edgar and now covered with a skin of vegetation. Tarzan’s mound looked raw; but soon the weeds would cover it; like Edgar’s mounds it would become part of the shape of the land.

  The early morning breeze dropped. It became hazy. The heat rose steadily and no relieving shower came in the early afternoon. Then the haze thickened, clouds turned from white to silver to grey to black and billowed heavily across the sky: a watercolour in black and grey.

  It became dark.

  Mr. Biswas hurried from the fields and said, “I don’t think we can take you to Arwacas today. The rain is going to come any minute.”

  Anand was content. Darkness at four o”clock was an event, romantic, to be remembered.

  Downstairs, in the makeshift kitchen of boxes, they prepared a meal. Then they went upstairs to wait for the downpour.

  Soon it came. Isolated drops, rapping hard on the roof, like a slow roll of drums. The wind freshened, the rain slanted. Every drop that struck the uprights blotted, expanding, into the shape of a spear-head. The rain that struck the dust below the roof rolled itself into dark pellets of dirt, neat and spherical.

  They lit the oil lamp. Moths flew to it. Flies, deceived by the darkness, had already settled down for the night; they were thick on the asphalt lengths.