A House for Mr. Biswas

by V. S. Naipaul

  He had feared the moment of arrival and wished that the bus would go on and never stop, but when he got down into the yard next to the railway station his uncertainty at once fell away, and he felt free and excited. It was a day of freedom such as he had had only once before, when one of Ajodha’s relations had died and the rumshop had been closed and everybody had gone away. He drank a coconut from a cart in Marine Square. How wonderful to be able to do that in the middle of the morning! He walked on crowded pavements beside the slow, continuous motor traffic, noted the size and number of the stores and cafés and restaurants, the trams, the high standard of the shop signs, the huge cinemas, closed after the pleasures of last night (which he had spent dully at Arwacas), but with posters, still wet with paste, promising fresh gaieties for that afternoon and evening. He comprehended the city whole; he did not isolate the individual, see the man behind the desk or counter, behind the pushcart or the steering-wheel of the bus; he saw only the activity, felt the call to the senses, and knew that below it all there was an excitement, which was hidden, but waiting to be grasped.

  It wasn’t until four, when stores and offices closed and the cinemas opened, that he thought of making his way to the address Ramchand had given. This was in the Woodbrook area and Mr Biswas, enchanted by the name, was disappointed to find an unfenced lot with two old unpainted wooden houses and many makeshift sheds. It was too late to turn back, to make another decision, another journey; and after making inquiries of a Negro woman who was fanning a coal-pot in one shed, he picked his way past bleaching stones, a slimy open gutter and a low open gutter and a low clothes-wire, to the back, where he saw Dehuti fanning a coal-pot in another shed, one wall of which was the corrugated iron fence of the sewer trace.

  His disappointment was matched by their surprise when, after the exclamations of greeting, he made it clear that he intended to spend some time with them. But when he announced that he had left Shama, they were welcoming again, their solicitude touched not only with excitement but also with pleasure that in a time of trouble he had come to them.

  ‘You stay here and rest as long as you want,’ Ramchand said. ‘Look, you have a gramophone. You just stay here and play music to yourself.’

  And Dehuti even dropped the sullenness with which she always greeted Mr Biswas, a sullenness which, no longer defensive, held no meaning and was only an attitude fixed by habit, simplifying relationships.

  Presently Dehuti’s younger son came back from school and Dehuti said sternly, ‘Take out your books and let me hear what you learn at school today.’

  The boy didn’t hesitate. He took out Captain Cutteridge’s Reader, Standard Four, and read an account of an escape from a German prison camp in 1917.

  Mr Biswas congratulated the boy, Dehuti and Ramchand.

  ‘He is a good little reader,’ Ramchand said.

  ‘And what is the meaning of “distribute”?’ Dehuti asked, still stern.

  ‘Share out,’ the boy said.

  ‘I didn’t know that at his age,’ Mr Biswas said to Ramchand.

  ‘And bring out your copy book and show me what you do in arithmetic today.’

  The boy took the book out to her and Dehuti said, ‘It look passable. But I don’t know anything about arithmetic. Take it to your uncle, let him see.’

  Mr Biswas didn’t know anything about arithmetic either, but he saw the approving red ticks and again congratulated the boy, Dehuti and Ramchand.

  ‘This education is a helluva thing,’ Ramchand said. ‘Any little child could pick up. And yet the blasted thing does turn out so damn important later on.’

  Dehuti and Ramchand lived in two rooms. One of these Mr Biswas shared with the boy. And though from the outside the unpainted house with its rusting roof and weatherbeaten, broken boards looked about to fall down, the wood inside had kept some of its colour, and the rooms were clean and well kept. The furniture, including the hatrack with the diamond shaped glass, was brilliantly polished. The area between the kitchen shed and the back room was roofed and partly walled; so that the open yard could be forgotten, and there was room and even privacy.

  But at night gruff, intimate whispers came through the partitions, reminding Mr Biswas that he lived in a crowded city. The other tenants were all Negroes. Mr Biswas had never lived close to people of this race before, and their proximity added to the strangeness, the adventure of being in the city. They differed from country Negroes in accent, dress and manner. Their food had strange meaty smells, and their lives appeared less organized. Women ruled men. Children were disregarded and fed, it seemed, at random; punishments were frequent and brutal, without any of the ritual that accompanied floggings at Hanuman House. Yet the children all had fine physiques, disfigured only by projecting navels, which were invariably uncovered; for the city children wore trousers and exposed their tops, unlike country children, who wore vests and exposed their bottoms. And unlike country children, who were timid, the city children were half beggars, half bullies.

  The organization of the city fascinated Mr Biswas: the street lamps going on at the same time, the streets swept in the middle of the night, the rubbish collected by the scavenging carts early in the morning; the furtive, macabre sounds of the nightsoil removers; the newsboys, really men; the bread van, the milk that came, not from cows, but in rum bottles stopped with brown paper. Mr Biswas was impressed when Dehuti and Ramchand spoke proprietorially of streets and shops, talking with the ease of people who knew their way about the baffling city. Even about Ramchand’s going out to work every morning there was something knowing, brave and enviable.

  And with Mr Biswas Ramchand was indeed the knowledgeable townsman. He took Mr Biswas to the Botanical Gardens and the Rock Gardens and Government House. They went up Chancellor Hill and looked down at the ships in the harbour. For Mr Biswas this was a moment of deep romance. He had seen the sea, but didn’t know that Port of Spain was really a port, at which ocean liners called from all parts of the world.

  Mr Biswas was amused by Ramchand’s city manners and allowed himself to be patronized by him. Ramchand had in any case always managed to do that, even when he had just stopped being a yard boy at Tara’s. Ostracized from the community into which he was born, he had shown the futility of its sanctions. He had simply gone outside it. He had acquired a loudness and heartiness which was alien and which he did not always carry off easily. He spoke English most of the time, but with a rural Indian accent which made his attempts to keep up with the ever-changing Port of Spain slang absurd. And Mr Biswas suffered when, as sometimes happened, Ramchand was rebuffed; when, for instance, partly to impress Mr Biswas, he overdid the heartiness in his relations with the Negroes in the yard and was met with cold surprise.

  At the end of a fortnight Ramchand said, ‘Don’t worry about getting a job yet. You suffering from brain fag, and you got to have lots of rest.’

  He spoke without irony, but Mr Biswas, now practically without money, had begun to feel burdened by his freedom. He was no longer content to walk about the city. He wanted to be part of it, to be one of those who stood at the black and yellow bus-stops in the morning, one of those he saw behind the windows of offices, one of those to whom the evenings and week-ends brought relaxation. He thought of taking up sign-writing again. But how was he to go about it? Could he simply put up a sign in front of the house and wait?

  Ramchand said, ‘Why you don’t try to get a job in the Mad House? Good pay, free uniform, and a damn good canteen. Everything there five and six cents cheaper. Ask Dehuti.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Everything there much cheaper.’

  Mr Biswas saw himself in the uniform, walking alone through long rooms of howling maniacs.

  ‘Well, why the hell not?’ he said. ‘Is something to do.’

  Ramchand looked slightly offended. He mentioned difficulties; and though he had contacts and influence, he was not sure that it would create a good impression if he made use of them. ‘That is the only thing that keeping me back,’ he said. ‘The
impression.’

  Then one day Mr Biswas was surprised by the spasms of fear. They were weak and intermittent, but they persisted, and reminded him to look at his hands. The nails were all bitten down.

  His freedom was over.

  And as a last act of this freedom he decided to go to the specialist the Arwacas doctor had recommended. The specialist’s office was at the northern end of St Vincent Street, not far from the Savannah. House and grounds suggested whiteness and order. The fence pillars were freshly whitewashed; the brass plaque glittered; the lawn was trimmed; not a piece of earth was out of place on the flower-beds; and on the drive the light-grey gravel, free from impurities, reflected the sunlight.

  He went through a white-walled verandah and found himself in a high white room. A Chinese receptionist in a stiff white uniform sat at a desk on which calendar, diary, inkwells, ledgers and lamp were neatly disposed. A fan whirred in one corner. A number of people reclined on low luxurious chairs, reading magazines or talking in whispers. They didn’t look sick: there was not a bandage or an oiled face among them, no smell of bay rum or ammonia. This was far removed from Mrs Tulsi’s Rose Room; and it was hard to believe that in the same city Ramchand and Dehuti lived in two rooms of a crumbling house. Mr Biswas began to feel that he had come on false pretences; there was nothing wrong with him.

  ‘You have an appointment?’ The receptionist spoke with the nasal, elided Chinese highness, and Mr Biswas detected hostility in her manner.

  Fish-face, he commented mentally.

  The receptionist started.

  Mr Biswas realized with horror that he had whispered the word; he had not lost the Green Vale habit of speaking his thoughts aloud. ‘Appointment?’ he said. ‘I have a letter.’ He took out the small brown envelope which the Arwacas doctor had given him. It was creased, dirty, fuzzy along the edges, the corners curled.

  The receptionist deftly slit the envelope open with a tortoiseshell knife. As she read the letter Mr Biswas felt exposed, and more of a fraud than ever. The blunder he had made worried him. He determined to be cautious. He clenched his teeth and tried to imagine whether ‘fish-face’, heard in a whisper, couldn’t be mistaken for something quite different, something even complimentary.

  Fish-face.

  The receptionist looked up. Mr Biswas smiled.

  ‘You want to make an appointment, or you prefer to wait?’ The receptionist was cold.

  Mr Biswas decided to wait. He sat on a sofa, sank right into it, fell back and sank further, his knees rising high. He didn’t know what to do with his eyes. It was too late to get a magazine. He counted the people in the room. Eight. He had a long time to wait. They probably all had appointments; they were all correctly ill.

  A short limping man came in noisily, spoke loudly to the receptionist, stumped over to the sofa, sank into it, breathing hard, and stretched out a short straight leg.

  At least there was something wrong with him. Mr Biswas eyed the leg and wondered how the man was going to get up again.

  The surgery door opened, a man was heard but not seen, a woman came out, and someone else went in.

  A soldier of the legion lay dying in Algiers.

  Mr Biswas felt the lame man’s eyes on him.

  He thought about money. He had three dollars. A country doctor charged a dollar; but illness was clearly more expensive in this room.

  The lame man breathed heavily.

  Money was too worrying to think about, Bell’s Standard Elocutionist too dangerous. His mind wandered and settled on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which he had read at Ramchand’s. He smiled at the memory of Huckleberry Finn, whose trousers ‘bagged low and contained nothing’, nigger Jim who had seen ghosts and told stories.

  He chuckled.

  When he looked up he intercepted an exchange of glances between the receptionist and the lame man. He would have left right then, but he was too deeply wedged in his chair; if he attempted to rise he would create a disturbance and draw attention to himself. He became aware of his clothes: the washed-out khaki trousers with the frayed turn-ups, the washed-out blue shirt with the cuffs given one awkward fold backwards (no shirt size fitted him absolutely: collars were too tight or sleeves too long), the little brown hat resting in the valley formed by his thighs and belly. And he had only three dollars.

  You know, I am not a sick man at all.

  The lame man cleared his throat noisily, very noisily for a small man, and agitated his stiff leg.

  Mr Biswas watched it.

  Suddenly he had levered himself up from the sofa, rocking the lame man violently, and was walking towards the receptionist. Concentrating on his English, he said, ‘I have changed my mind. I am feeling much better, thank you.’ And, putting on his hat, he went towards the door.

  ‘What about your letter?’ the receptionist asked, surprised into her Trinidad accent.

  ‘Keep it,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘File it. Burn it. Sell it.’

  He went through the tiled verandah, crossed the black afternoon shadow on the drive, emerged into the sun, noted a bed of suffering zinnias as he moved briskly down the dazzling gravel to St Vincent Street. The wind from the Savannah was like a blessing. His mind was hot. And now he saw the city as made up of individuals, each of whom had his place in it. The large buildings around the Savannah were white and blank and silent in the heat.

  He came to the War Memorial Park, sat on a bench in the shade of a tree and studied the statue of a belligerent soldier. Shadows were black and well-defined and encouraged repose and languor. His stomach was hurting.

  His freedom was over, and it had been false. The past could not be ignored; it was never counterfeit; he carried it within himself. If there was a place for him, it was one that had already been hollowed out by time, by everything he had lived through, however imperfect, makeshift and cheating.

  He welcomed the stomach pains. They had not occurred for months and it seemed to him that they marked the return of the wholeness of his mind, the restoration of the world; they indicated how far he had lifted himself from the abyss of the past months, and reminded him of the anguish against which everything now had to be measured.

  Reluctantly, for it was a pleasure just to sit and let the wind play about his face and neck and down his shirt, he left the park and walked south, away from the Savannah. The quiet, withdrawn houses disappeared; pavements grew narrower and higher and more crowded; there were shops and cafés and buses, cars, trams and bicycles, horns and bells and shouts. He crossed Park Street and continued towards the sea. In the distance, above the roofs at the end of the street, he saw the tops of masts of sloops and schooners at St Vincent Jetty.

  He passed the courts and came to the Red House, bulky in red sandstone. Part of the asphalt forecourt was marked off in white and lettered RESERVED FOR JUDGES. He went up the central steps and found himself under a high dome. He saw many green notice-boards and an unplaying fountain. The basin of the fountain was wet, and held many dead leaves and empty cigarette packets.

  It was busy under the dome, with messengers in khaki uniforms and clerks in well-ironed clothes carrying buff or green folders, and with people continually passing between St Vincent Street and Woodford Square, where the professional beggars lounged about the bandstand and on benches, so confident of their appearance that they disdained to beg, spending most of their time patching the rags they wore like a uniform, garments thick and shaggy and richly variegated, small rag sewn on to small rag, labours of love. Even about the beggars there was an air of establishment. Woodford Square, cool under the trees and attractively dappled with light, was theirs; they cooked, ate and slept there, disturbed only by occasional political gatherings. They worried no one, and since they all had excellent physiques, and one or two were reputed to be millionaires, no one worried them.

  On the green notice-boards, which also served to screen the offices on either side, there were government notices. Mr Biswas was reading these when he heard someone call out. He turned to see an elder
ly Negro, respectably dressed, waving to him with a one-armed pair of spectacles.

  ‘You want a certificate?’ The Negro’s lips snapped ferociously shut between words.

  ‘Certificate?’

  ‘Birth, marriage, death.’ The Negro adjusted his mutilated spectacles low over his nose and from a shirt pocket stuffed with paper and pencils he pulled out a sheet of paper and let his pencil circle impatiently above it.

  ‘I don’t want any certificate.’

  The pencil stopped playing. ‘I can’t understand it.’ The Negro put away paper and pencil, sat down on a long, shiny bench, took off his spectacles, thrust the scratched, white end of the remaining arm into his mouth, and shook his legs. ‘Nobody wanting certificates these days. If you ask me, the trouble is that nowadays it just have too damn many searchers. When I sit down on this bench in 1919 I was the onliest searcher. Today every Tom, Dick or Harry running up and down this place’ – he jerked his chin towards the fountain –‘calling themself searchers.’ His lips snapped ferociously. ‘You sure you don’t want a certificate? You never know when these things could be useful. I get lots of certificates for Indians, you know. In fact, I prefer getting certificates for Indians. And I could get it for you this afternoon self. I know one of the clerks inside there.’ He waved to the office at his back and Mr Biswas saw a high, polished brown counter and pale green walls, lit, on this bright afternoon, by electric light.