A House for Mr. Biswas

by V. S. Naipaul

  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.

  Mr Biswas said, ‘If you go to Hanuman House, you have to give me back the colour-pencils.’

  The wind blew in gusts, curving the fall of the rain.

  ‘But you did give them to me.’

  ‘Ah. But you didn’t take them. Remember? Anyway, I taking them back now.’

  ‘Well, you could take them back. I don’t want them.’

  ‘All right, all right. I was only joking. I not taking them back.’

  ‘I don’t want them.’

  ‘Take them.’

  ‘No.’

  Anand went out to the unfinished drawingroom.

  When the real rain came it announced itself seconds in advance by its roar: the roar of wind, of wind through trees, of the deluge on distant trees. Then came a swift crepitation on the roof, instantly lost in a continuous and even hammering, so loud that if Mr Biswas spoke Anand could not have heard.

  Here and there Mr Maclean’s roof leaked; that added to the cosiness of shelter. Water fell from the corrugations in evenly-spaced streams, enclosing the house. Water flowed down the sloping land below the roof; the pellets of dirt had long disappeared. Water gouged out tortuous channels as it forced its way down to the road and down to the hollow before the barracks. And the rain continued to roar, and the roof resounded.

  For several seconds at a time lightning lit up a shining chaotic world. Fresh mud flowed off Tarzan’s grave in a thin regular stream. Raindrops glittered as they struck the sodden ground. Then the thunder came, grating and close. Anand thought of a monstrous steam-roller breaking through the sky. The lightning was exciting but it made him feel peculiar. That, and the thunder, sent him back to the bedroom.

  He surprised Mr Biswas writing with his finger on his head. Mr Biswas quickly pretended that he was playing with his hair. The flame of the oil lamp, though protected by a glass chimney, wavered; shadows dodged about the room; the shadows of the snakes swung in an ever-changing pattern on the shivering roof.

  Still officially annoyed with his father, Anand sat down on the floor, at the foot of the bed, and held his arms over his knees. The din on the roof and the beat of the rain on the trees and earth made him feel chilly. Something fell near him. It was a winged ant, its wings collapsed and now a burden on its wormlike body. These creatures came out only in heavy rain and seldom lived beyond it. When they fell they never rose again. Anand pressed a finger on the broken wing. The ant wriggled, the wing was released; and the ant, suddenly busy, suddenly deceptively whole, moved off towards the dark.

  All at once a cycle of heavy rain was over. It still drizzled, and the wind still blew, flinging the drizzle on the roof and walls like showers of sand. It was possible to hear the water from the roof falling to the earth, water gurgling as it ran off in its new channels. The rain had soaked through the gaps between the wall-boards. The edges of the floor were wet.

  ‘Rama Rama Sita Rama, Rama Rama Sita Rama.’

  Mr Biswas was lolling on the bed, his legs locked together, his lips moving rapidly. The expression on his face was one of exasperation rather than pain.

  Anand thought this was a plea for sympathy and ignored it. He leaned his head on his arms crossed over his knees, and rocked on the floor.

  A fresh cycle of rain started. A winged ant dropped on Anand’s arm. Hurriedly he brushed it off; where the ant touched him seemed to burn. Then he saw that the room was full of these ants enjoying the last minutes of their short life. Their small wings, strained by large bodies, quickly became useless, and without wings they were without defence. They kept on dropping. Their enemies had already discovered them. On one wall, in the shadow of the reflector of the oil lamp, Anand saw a column of black ants. They were not the crazy ants, thin frivolous creatures who scattered at the slightest disturbance; they were the biting ants, smaller, thicker, neater, purple-black with a dull shine, moving slowly and in strict formation, as solemn and stately as undertakers. Lightning lit up the room again and Anand saw the column of biting ants stretched diagonally across two walls: a roundabout route, but they had their reasons.

  ‘Hear them!’

  Anand, watching the ants, his mouth pressed on his goose-fleshed arm, didn’t reply. ‘Boy!’

  The anguish, the loudness of the voice rising above rain and wind made Anand jump. He stood up.

  ‘You hear them?’

  Anand listened, trying to pick up the component parts of the din: the rain, the wind, the running of water, the trees, the rain on walls and roof. Talk, indistinct, a bumble, rising and falling.

  ‘You hear them?’

  Anything could sound like talk: the gurgle of water, boughs rubbing against one another. Anand opened the door a little way and looked down through the spars of the drawingroom. The ground ran with shining black water. Below the unfloored front bedroom, where the ground was higher and not so wet, two men were squatting before a smoking fire of twigs. Two large heart-shaped leaves of the wild tannia were near the men. They must have used the leaves as umbrellas when they had been caught by the heavier shower. The men stared at the fire. One man was smoking a cigarette. In the weak firelight, in the stillness of the scene in the midst of turmoil, this act of smoking, so intense and unruffled, might have been part of an ancient ritual.

  ‘You see them?’

  Anand closed the door.

  On the floor the winged ants had a new life. They were possessed of scores of black limbs. They were being carted away by the biting ants. They wriggled and squirmed, but did not disturb the even solemnity of their bearers. Bodiless wings were also being carried away.

  Lightning obliterated shadows and colour.

  The hair on Anand’s arms and legs stood straight. His skin tingled.

  ‘You see them?’

  Anand thought they might be the men from the day before. But he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Bring the cutlass.’

  Anand put the cutlass against the wall near the head of the bed. The wall was running with water.

  ‘And you take the walking-stick.’

  Anand would have liked to go to sleep. But he didn’t want to get into bed with his father. And with the floor full of ants where it was not wet, he couldn’t make up a bed for himself.

  ‘Rama Rama Sita Rama, Rama Rama Sita Rama.’

  ‘Rama Rama Sita Rama,’ Anand repeated.

  Then Mr Biswas forgot Anand and began to curse. He cursed Ajodha, Pundit Jairam, Mrs Tulsi, Shama, Seth.

  ‘Say Rama Rama, boy.’

  ‘Rama Rama Sita Rama.’

  The rain abated.

  When Anand looked outside, the men under the house had gone with their tannia leaves, leaving a dead, hardly-smoking fire.

  ‘You see them?’

  The rain came again. Lightning flashed and flashed, thunder exploded and rolled.

  The procession of the ants continued. Anand began killing them with the walking-stick. Whenever he crushed a group carrying a living winged ant, the ants broke up, without confusion or haste, re-formed, took away what they could of the crushed body and carried away their dead. Anand struck and struck with his stick. A sharp pain ran up his arm. On his hand he saw an ant, its body raised, its pincers buried in his skin. When he looked at the walking-stick he saw that it was alive with biting ants crawling upwards. He was suddenly terrified of them, their anger, their vindictiveness, their number. He threw the stick away from him. It fell into a puddle.

  The roof rose and
dropped, grinding and flapping. The house shook.

  ‘Rama Rama Sita Rama,’ Anand said.

  ‘O God! They coming!’

  ‘They gone!’ Anand shouted angrily.

  Mr Biswas muttered hymns in Hindi and English, left them unfinished, cursed, rolled on the bed, his face still expressing only exasperation.

  The flame of the oil lamp swayed, shrank, throwing the room into darkness for seconds, then shone again.

  A shaking on the roof, a groan, a prolonged grinding noise, and Anand knew that a sheet of corrugated iron had been torn off. One sheet was left loose. It flapped and jangled continuously. Anand waited for the fall of the sheet that had been blown off.

  He never heard it.

  Lightning; thunder; the rain on roof and walls; the loose iron sheet; the wind pushing against the house, pausing, and pushing again.

  Then there was a roar that overrode them all. When it struck the house the window burst open, the lamp went instantly out, the rain lashed in, the lightning lit up the room and the world outside, and when the lightning went out the room was part of the black void.

  Anand began to scream.

  He waited for his father to say something, to close the window, light the lamp.

  But Mr Biswas only muttered on the bed, and the rain and wind swept through the room with unnecessary strength and forced open the door to the drawingroom, wall-less, floorless, of the house Mr Biswas had built.

  Anand screamed and screamed.

  Rain and wind smothered his voice, overturned the lamp, made the rockingchair rock and skid, rattled the kitchen safe against the wall, destroyed all smell. Lightning, flashing intermittently, steel-blue exploding into white, showed the ants continually disarrayed, continually re-forming.

  Then Anand saw a light swaying in the dark. It was a man, bending forward against the rain, a hurricane lamp in one hand, a cutlass in the other. The living flame was like a miracle.

  It was Ramkhilawan from the barracks. He had a jutebag over his head and shoulders like a cape. He was barefooted and his trousers were rolled up above his knees. The hum-cane lamp showed glinting streaks of rain, and, as he climbed the slippery steps, his footprints of mud, instantly washed away.

  ‘Oh, my poor little calf!’ he called. ‘Oh, my poor little calf!’

  He closed the drawingroom door. The lamp illuminated a wet chaos. He struggled with the window. As soon as he had pulled it a little way from the wall to which it was pinned, the wind, rising, gave a push, and the window slammed shut, making Ramkhilawan jump back. He took off the dripping jutebag from his head and shoulders; his shirt stuck to his skin.

  The oil lamp was not broken. There even remained some oil in it. The chimney was cracked, but still whole. Ramkhilawan brought out a damp box of matches from his trouser pocket and put a lighted match to the wick. The wick, waterlogged, spluttered; the match burned down; the wick caught.

  6. A Departure

  A MESSAGE had to be sent to Hanuman House. The labourers always responded to the melodramatic and calamitous, and there were many volunteers. Through rain and wind and thunder a messenger went that evening to Arwacas and dramatically unfolded his tale of calamity.

  Mrs Tulsi and the younger god were in Port of Spain. Shama was in the Rose Room; the midwife had been attending upon her for two days.

  Sisters and their husbands held a council.

  ‘I did always think he was mad,’ Chinta said.

  Sushila, the childless widow, spoke with her sickroom authority. ‘It isn’t about Mohun I am worried, but the children.’

  Padma, Seth’s wife, asked, ‘What do you think he is sick with?’

  Sumati the flogger said, ‘Message only said that he was very sick.’

  ‘And that his house had been practically blown away,’ Jai’s mother added.

  There were some smiles.

  ‘I am sorry to correct you, Sumati sister,’ Chinta said. ‘But Message said that he wasn’t right in his head.’

  Seth said, ‘I suppose we have to bring the paddler home.’

  The men got ready to go to Green Vale; they were as excited as the messenger.

  The sisters bustled about, impressing and mystifying the children. Sushila, who occupied the Blue Room when the god was away, cleared it of all personal, womanly things; much of her time was devoted to keeping the mysteries of women from men. She also burned certain evil-smelling herbs to purify and protect the house.

  ‘Savi,’ the children said, ‘something happen to your pappa.’

  And they stuck pins in the wicks of lamps to keep misfortune and death away.

  In the verandah and in every bedroom upstairs beds were made earlier than usual, lamps were turned low, and the children fell asleep, lulled by the sound of the rain. Downstairs the sisters sat silently around the long table, their veils pulled close over their heads and shoulders. They played cards and read newspapers. Chinta was reading the Ramayana; she continually set herself new ambitions and at the moment wanted to be the first woman in the family to read the epic from beginning to end. Occasionally the card-players chuckled. Chinta was sometimes called to look at the cards one sister had; often the temptation was too great, and Chinta, adopting her frowning card-playing manner, and not saying a word, stayed to play the hand, tapping each card before she played it, throwing down the winning card with the crack she could do so well, then, still silent, going back to the Ramayana. The midwife, an old, thin, inscrutable Madrassi, came to the hall and sat on her haunches in a corner, smoking, silent, her eyes bright. Coffee simmered in the kitchen; its smell filled the hall.

  When the men returned, dripping, with Anand sleepily and tearfully walking beside them and Govind carrying Mr Biswas in his arms, there was relief, and some disappointment. Mr Biswas was not wild or violent; he made no speeches; he did not pretend he was driving a motorcar or picking cocoa – the two actions popularly associated with insanity. He only looked deeply exasperated and fatigued.

  Govind and Mr Biswas had not spoken since their fight. By carrying Mr Biswas in his arms Govind had put himself on the side of authority: he had assumed authority’s power to rescue and assist when there was need, authority’s impersonal power to forgive.

  Recognizing this, Chinta looked solicitously after Anand, drying his hair, taking off his wet clothes and giving him some of Vidiadhar’s, giving him food, taking him upstairs and finding a place for him among the sleeping boys.

  Mr Biswas was put in the Blue Room, given dry clothes and cautiously offered a cup of hot sweetened milk with nutmeg, brandy and lumps of red butter. He stilled remaining fears by taking the cup without accident, and drinking carefully.

  He welcomed the warmth and reassurance of the room. Every wall was solid; the sound of the rain was deadened; the ceiling of two and a half inch pitchpine concealed corrugated iron and asphalt; the jalousied window, set in a deep embrasure, was unrattled by wind and rain.

  He knew he was at Hanuman House; but he couldn’t assess what had gone before or what was to come. He felt he was continually awakening to a new situation, which was in some way linked to the memories he had, as instantaneous as snapshots, of other happenings that seemed to have spread over an unmeasurable length of time. The rain on the wet bed; the trip in the motorcar; the appearance of Ramkhilawan; the dead dog; the men talking outside; the thunder and lightning; the room suddenly full of Seth and Govind and the others; and now this warm, closed room, yellowly lit by a steady lamp; the dry clothes. As he concentrated, every object acquired a solidity, a permanence. That marble topped table with the china cup and saucer and spoon: no other arrangement of those objects was possible. He knew that this order was threatened; he had a feeling of expectation and unease.

  He lay as still as possible. Soon he was asleep. In his last moments of lucidity he thought the sound of the rain, muffled and regular, was comforting.

  It was still raining next morning, steadily, but the wind had dropped. It was dark, but there was no lightning and thunder. The gutt
ers around the house were full and muddy. In the High Street the canals overflowed and the road was under water. The children could not go to school. There was excitement among them, not only at the unusual weather and unexpected holiday, but also at the overnight disturbance. Some had memories of being awakened briefly during the night; now Anand was with them and his father was in the Blue Room. Some of the girls pretended to know all that had happened. It was like the morning after a birth in the Rose Room: the mysteries were so well kept and everything carried out so secretly that few of the younger children knew what was afoot until they were told.

  ‘Savi,’ the children said, ‘your pappa here. In the Blue Room.’

  But she didn’t want to go to the Blue Room or the Rose Room.

  Outside, naked children splashed shrieking in the flooded road and swollen canals, racing paper boats and wooden boats and even sticks.

  Towards the middle of the morning the sky lightened and lifted, the rain thinned to a drizzle, then stopped altogether. The clouds rolled back, the sky was suddenly blinding blue and there were shadows on the water. Rapidly, their gurgling soon lost in the awakening every day din, canals subsided, leaving a wash of twigs and dirt on the road. In yards, against fences, there were tidemarks of debris and pebbles which looked as though they had been washed and sifted; around stones dirt had been washed away; green leaves that had been torn down were partly buried in silt. Roads and roofs dried, steaming, areas of dryness spreading out swiftly, like ink on a blotter. And presently roads and yards were dry, except for the depressions where water had collected. Heat nibbled at their edges, until even the depressions failed to reflect the blue sky. And the world was dry again, except for the mud in the shelter of the trees.

  The news about Mr Biswas was broken to Shama. She suggested that the furniture from Green Vale should be brought to Hanuman House.

  The doctor came, a Roman Catholic Indian, but much respected by the Tulsis for his manners and the extent of his property. He dismissed talk about having Mr Biswas certified and said that Mr Biswas was suffering from nerves and a certain vitamin deficiency. He prescribed a course of Sanatogen, a tonic called Ferrol with reputed iron-giving, body-building qualities, and Ovaltine. He also said that Mr Biswas was to have much rest, and should go to Port of Spain as soon as he was better to see a specialist.