Once, years before, he was conducting one of Ajodha’s motorbuses that ran its erratic course to remote and unsuspected villages. It was late afternoon and they were racing back along the ill-made country road. Their lights were weak and they were racing the sun. The sun fell; and in the short dusk they passed a lonely hut set in a clearing far back from the road. Smoke came from under the ragged thatched eaves: the evening meal was being prepared. And, in the gloom, a boy was leaning against the hut, his hands behind him, staring at the road. He wore a vest and nothing more. The vest glowed white. In an instant the bus went by, noisy in the dark, through bush and level sugarcane fields. Mr Biswas could not remember where the hut stood, but the picture remained: a boy leaning against an earth house that had no reason for being there, under the dark falling sky, a boy who didn’t know where the road, and that bus, went.
And often, among the pundits and the cushions and the statuary in the drawingroom, eating the enormous meals the Tulsis provided on these occasions, he was assailed by this sense of utter desolation. Then, without conviction, he counted his blessings and ordered himself to enjoy the moment, like the others.
And while he made greater efforts to please at Hanuman House, with Shama, at The Chase, he became increasingly irritable. After every visit he abused the Tulsis to her, and his invective was without fantasy or humour.
‘Talk about hypocrisy,’ Shama said. ‘Why you don’t tell them so to their face?’
He began to think that she was plotting to get him back to Hanuman House, and he wondered whether she hadn’t encouraged him to believe that The Chase was temporary. She had never urged him to make improvements, and was always interested when something was done at Hanuman House, when the famous clay-brick factory was pulled down or when awnings were put up over the windows. More and more The Chase was a place where Shama only spent time; she had always called Hanuman House home. And it was her home, and Savi’s, and Anand’s, as it could never be his. As he realized every Christmas.
The Tulsis celebrated Christmas in their store and, with equal irreligiosity, in their home. It was a purely Tulsi festival. All the sons-in-law, and even Seth, were expelled from Hanuman House and returned to their own families. Even Miss Blackie went to her own people.
For Mr Biswas Christmas was a day of tedious depression. He went to Pagotes to see his mother and Tara and Ajodha, none of whom recognized Christmas. His mother cried so much and with so much feeling he was never sure whether she was glad to see him. Every Christmas she said the same things. He sounded like his father; if she closed her eyes while he spoke she could imagine that his father was alive again. She had little to say about herself. She was happy where she was and did not want to be a burden to any of her sons; her life was over, she had nothing more to do, and was waiting for death. To feel sympathy for her he had to look, not at her face, but at the thinness of her hair. It was still black, however: which was a pity, for grey hair would have helped to put him in a more tender mood. Suddenly she got up and said she was going to make him tea; she was poor, that was all she could offer. She went out to the gallery and he heard her talking to someone. Her voice was quite different; it was firm, without a whine, the voice of a woman still energetic and capable. She brought tea that was lukewarm, with too little tea, too much milk and a taste of woodsmoke. She told him he needn’t drink it. Dutifully he put his arm around her. The gesture caused him pain, making him feel his own worthlessness. She didn’t respond, and wept and talked as before. She said she was going to give him tomatoes and cabbages and lettuces to take home. When she went out her voice and manner changed again. He gave her a dollar, which he could scarcely afford. She took it without showing surprise and without a word of thanks. He was always glad when he could leave the back trace to go to Tara’s.
At last Shama said she could stand The Chase no more. She wanted them to give up the shop and return to Hanuman House. This re-opened all their old quarrels. Only, now everything Shama said was true and cutting.
‘We are not doing anything here,’ she said.
‘All right, Mrs Samuel Smiles. Look, I standing up in this shop, behind this dirty old counter. Tell me exactly what it have for me to do. You tell me.’
‘You know it isn’t that I mean.’
‘You want me to make the spinning-jenny and the flying shuttle? Invent the steam-engine?’
And these arguments ended in insults and were followed by days of silence.
They spent their last two years at The Chase in this state of mutual hostility; at peace only in Hanuman House.
She became pregnant for the third time.
‘Another one for the monkey house,’ he said, passing his hands over her belly.
‘You had nothing to do with it.’
And though he had spoken humorously, this led to another serious quarrel, which went over the same limited ground until, unable to control his rage, he hit her.
They were both astonished. She was silenced in the middle of a sentence; for some time afterwards the unfinished sentence remained in his mind, as though it had just been spoken. She was stronger than he. Her silence and her refusal to retaliate made his humiliation complete. She dressed Anand and went to Arwacas.
It was the kite-flying season and in the afternoons, when the wind came from the hills to the north, for miles around multi-coloured kites with long tails plunged and wriggled like tadpoles in the clear sky above the plain. He had been thinking that in two or three years he and Anand would fly kites together.
He decided that this time Shama would have to make the first move. So for many months he didn’t go to Hanuman House, not even to see Savi. When, however, he judged that the baby was born, he broke his resolution and closed the shop – what was it that made him know, as he put the bar into place, that he was closing the doors for the last time? – and wheeled out the Royal Enfield from the bedroom and cycled to Arwacas, a small man made conspicuous by the exaggeratedly upright way he sat on the low saddle (to tauten his stomach and relieve his indigestion pains), with his palms pressing hard on the handgrips and the inside of his wrists turned outwards. He cycled slowly and steadily, his feet flat on the pedals. From time to time he inclined his head, arched his back and gave a series of small belches. This gave him some relief.
He reached Arwacas when it was dark, suffering an additional anxiety because he rode without bicycle lights, an offence zealously pursued by idle policemen. There were no street lamps, only the yellow smoky flames of flambeaux on night stalls and the dim lights of houses coming through curtained doorways and windows. In the arcade of Hanuman House, grey and substantial in the dark, there was already the evening assembly of old men, squatting on sacks on the ground and on tables now empty of Tulsi Store goods, pulling at clay cheelums that glowed red and smelled of ganja and burnt sacking. Though it wasn’t cold, many had scarves over their heads and around their necks; this detail made them look foreign and, to Mr Biswas, romantic. It was the time of day for which they lived. They could not speak English and were not interested in the land where they lived; it was a place where they had come for a short time and stayed longer than they expected. They continually talked of going back to India, but when the opportunity came, many refused, afraid of the unknown, afraid to leave the familiar temporariness. And every evening they came to the arcade of the solid, friendly house, smoked, told stories, and continued to talk of India.
Mr Biswas went in by the tall side gate. The hall was lit by one oil lamp. Despite the late hour children were still eating. Some were at the long table, some on benches and chairs about the hall, two in the hammock, some on the steps, some on the landing, and two on the disused piano. Two of the lesser Tulsi sisters and Miss Blackie were supervising.
No one seemed surprised to see him. He was grateful for that. He looked for Savi and had trouble in locating her. She saw him first, smiled, but didn’t leave the table. He went up to her.
‘I haven’t seen you for a long time,’ she said, and he couldn’t tell whe
ther she was disappointed or not.
‘Missing your six cents, eh?’ He studied the food on Savi’s enamel plate: curried beans, fried tomatoes and a dry pancake. ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘She had another baby. Did you know?’
He noticed the fatherless children. They had given up their offending mourning suits; even so, their clothes were different. He didn’t know these children very well and they regarded him, a visiting father, with curiosity.
‘Ma said you beat her,’ Savi said.
The fatherless children looked at Mr Biswas with dread and disapproval. They all had large eyes: another distinguishing feature.
Mr Biswas laughed. ‘She was only joking,’ he said in English.
‘She upstairs, rubbing down Myna,’ Savi said, in English as well.
‘Myna, eh? Another girl.’ He spoke light-heartedly, trying to get the attention of the two Tulsi sisters. ‘This family just full of girl children.’
The sisters tittered. He turned to them and smiled.
Shama was not in the Rose Room, but in the wooden bridge between the two houses. A basin with soapy, baby-smelling water was on the floor and, as Savi had said, Shama was rubbing down Myna, the way she had rubbed down Savi herself and Anand (asleep on the bed: no more rubbing for him, for the rest of his life).
Shama saw him, but concentrated on the baby, folding limbs this way and that, saying the rhyme that was to end in a laugh, a bunching of the limbs over the belly, a clap, and a release of the limbs.
Mr Biswas watched.
While she was dressing Myna, Shama said, ‘Have you eaten?’
He shook his head. They might have parted only the hour before. And not only that. She had spoken about eating, and there was nothing in her voice to hint at the innumerable quarrels they had had about food. He had often opened tins of salmon and sardines from the shop after refusing to eat her food and sometimes throwing it away, food as unimaginative as that he had just seen on Savi’s plate. It wasn’t that the Tulsis couldn’t cook. They thought appetizing food should be reserved for religious festivals; at other times it was a carnal indulgence. Mr Biswas’s digestion had been repeatedly shocked to move from plain food before a ceremony to excessively rich food on the day of the ceremony and promptly back to plain food the day after.
Myna fell asleep at Shama’s breast and was laid on the bed next to Anand. A pillow was placed at her side to keep her from rolling off, and the oil lamp in the bracket on the unpainted wall was turned down.
When Mr Biswas and Shama passed through the verandah it was thronged with children sitting on mats, reading or playing cards or draughts. These games had been recently introduced and were taken with the utmost seriousness; they were regarded as intellectual disciplines particularly suitable for children. Savi, too small for books, was playing Go-to-Pack with one of the large-eyed children. Everyone talked in whispers. Shama walked on tiptoe.
‘Mai sick,’ she said.
Which accounted for the children’s late dinner and the absence of so many of the sisters.
Shama laid out food for Mr Biswas in the hall. The food might be bad at Hanuman House, but there was always some for unexpected visitors. Everything was cold. The pancakes were sweating, hard on the outside and little better than dough inside. He did not complain.
‘You going back tonight?’ she asked in English.
He knew then that he hadn’t intended to go back, ever. He said nothing.
‘You better sleep here then.’
As long as there was floor space, there was bed space.
Some sisters came into the hall. Packs of cards were brought out; the sisters split into groups and gravely settled down to play. Chinta played with style. She fussed with her cards, rearranged them often, stared blankly and disconcertingly at the other players, hummed and never spoke; before she played a telling card she frowned at it, pulled it up a little, tapped it down and kept on tapping it; then, suddenly, she threw it on the table with a crack and, still frowning, collected her trick. She was a magnanimous winner and a bad loser.
Mr Biswas watched.
Shama made a bed for him in the verandah upstairs, among the children.
He woke to a babel the next morning and when he went down to the hall found the sisters getting their children ready for school. It was the only time of day when it was reasonably easy to tell which child belonged to which mother. He was surprised to see Shama filling a satchel with a slate, a slate pencil, a lead pencil, an eraser, an exercise book with the Union Jack on the cover, and Nelson’s West Indian Reader, First Stage, by Captain J. O. Cutteridge, Director of Education, Trinidad and Tobago. Lastly Shama wrapped an orange in tissue paper and put it in the satchel. ‘For teacher,’ she said to Savi.
Mr Biswas didn’t know that Savi had begun to go to school.
Shama sat on a bench, held Savi between her legs, combed her hair, plaited it, straightened the pleats on her navy-blue uniform, and adjusted her Panama hat.
Mother and daughter had been doing this for many weeks. And he had known nothing.
Shama said, ‘If your shoelaces come loose again today, you think you would be able to tie them back?’ She bent down and undid Savi’s shoelaces. ‘Let me see you tie them.’
‘You know I can’t tie them.’
‘Do it quick sharp, or I give you a dose of licks.’
‘I can’t tie them.’
‘Come,’ Mr Biswas said, shamelessly paternal in the bustling hall. ‘I will tie them for you.’
‘No,’ Shama said. ‘She must learn to tie her laces. Otherwise I will keep her at home and beat her until she can tie them.’
It was standard talk at Hanuman House. At The Chase Shama had never spoken like that.
As yet no one was paying attention. But when Shama started to hunt for one of the many hibiscus switches which always lay about the hall, sisters and children became less noisy and good-humouredly waited to see what would happen. It was not going to be a serious flogging since ineptitude rather than criminality was being punished; and Shama moved about with a comic jerkiness, as though she knew she was only an actor in a farce and not, like Sumati at the house-blessing in The Chase, a figure of high tragedy.
Mr Biswas, his eyes fixed on Savi, found himself tittering nervously. Still wearing her Panama hat, Savi squatted on the floor, tangling laces and watching them fall apart, or knotting them double, tight and high, and having to undo them with her nails and teeth. She, too, was partly acting for the audience. Her failures were greeted with approving laughter. Even Shama, standing by with whip in hand, allowed amusement to invade her playacting annoyance.
‘All right,’ Shama said. ‘Let me show you for the last time. Watch me. Now try.’
Savi fumbled ineffectually again. This time there was less laughter.
‘You just want to shame me,’ Shama said. ‘A big girl like you, five going on six, can’t tie her own laces. Jai, come here.’
Jai was the son of an unimportant sister. He was pushed to the front by his mother, who was dandling another baby on her hip.
‘Look at Jai,’ Shama said. ‘His mother don’t have to tie his shoelaces. And he is a whole year younger than you.’
‘Fourteen months younger,’ Jai’s mother said.
‘Well, fourteen months younger,’ Shama said, directing her annoyance to Savi. ‘You want to defy me?’
Savi was still squatting.
‘Hurry up now!’ Shama said, so loudly and suddenly that Savi jumped and began playing stupidly with the laces. No one laughed.
Stooping, Shama brought the hibiscus switch down on Savi’s bare legs.
Mr Biswas looked on, a fixed smile on his face. He made phlegmy little noises, urging Shama to stop.
Savi was crying.
Sushila, the widow, came to the top of the stairs and said authoritatively, ‘Remember Mai.’
They all remembered. Silence for the sick. The scene was over.
Shama, trying too late to turn comedy into tragedy,
developed a sudden temper and stamped off, almost unnoticed, to the kitchen.
Sumati, the flogger at The Chase, pulled Savi to her long skirt. Savi cried into it and used it to wipe her nose and dry her eyes. Then Sumati tied Savi’s laces and sent her off to school.
A House for Mr. Biswas Page 20
