A House for Mr. Biswas

by V. S. Naipaul

  Mrs Tulsi had no precise illness. She was simply ill. Her eyes ached; her heart was bad; her head always hurt; her stomach was fastidious; her legs were unreliable; and every other day she had a temperature. Her head had continually to be soaked in bay rum; she had to be massaged once a day; she needed poultices of various sorts. Her nostrils were stuffed with soft candle or Vick’s Vaporub; she wore dark glasses; and she was seldom without a bandage around her forehead. Sushila was kept on the go all day. At Hanuman House Sushila had sought to gain power by being Mrs Tulsi’s nurse; now that the organization of the house had been broken up, the position carried no power, but Sushila was bound to it, and she had no children to rescue her.

  Time hung heavily on Mrs Tulsi’s hands. She did not read. The radio offended her. She was never well enough to go out. She moved from her room to the lavatory to the front verandah to her room. Her only solace was talk. Daughters were always at hand, but talk with them seemed only to enrage her; and as her body decayed so her command of invective and obscenity developed. Her rages fell oftenest on Sushila, whom she ordered out of the house once a week. She cried out that her daughters were all waiting for her to die, that they were sucking her blood; she pronounced curses on them and their children, and threatened to expel them from the family.

  ‘I have no luck with my family,’ she told Miss Blackie. ‘I have no luck with my race.’

  And it was Miss Blackie who received her confidences, Miss Blackie who reported and comforted. And there was the Jewish refugee doctor. He came once a week and listened. The house was always specially prepared for him, and Mrs Tulsi treated him with love. He resurrected all that remained of her softness and humour. When he left, she said to Miss Blackie, ‘Never trust your race, Black. Never trust them.’ And Miss Blackie said, ‘No’m.’ Gifts of fruit were sent regularly to the doctor and sometimes Mrs Tulsi would suddenly order Basdai and Sushila to prepare an elaborate meal and take it to the doctor’s house, treating the matter as one of urgency, as though she was satisfying some craving of her own.

  Still her daughters came to the house. They knew they all had some small hold on her: they knew that she feared loneliness and never wished to push them beyond her reach; they knew they could hurt her by staying away. If Miss Blackie reported that one daughter had been particularly upset, then Mrs Tulsi made overtures, and made promises. In such moods she might give a piece of jewellery, she might take off a ring or a bracelet and give it. So the daughters came, and none was willing to let Mrs Tulsi be alone with any other. The visits of Mrs Tuttle were especially distrusted. She bore abuse with unexampled patience and was able at the end to suggest that Mrs Tulsi should look at plants, because green nourished the eyes and soothed the nerves.

  Though she abused her daughters, she took care not to offend her sons-in-law. She greeted Mr Biswas briefly but politely. And she never attempted to remonstrate with Govind, who continued to behave as before. He beat Chinta when the mood took him, and, ignoring pleas for silence for Mrs Tulsi’s headaches, sang from the Ramayana. It was left to the sisters to comment on Govind’s behaviour.

  There were times when she wished to have children about her. Then she summoned the readers and learners to scrub the floor of the drawingroom and verandah, or she made them sing Hindi hymns. Her mood changed without warning, and the readers and learners were perpetually apprehensive, never knowing whether they were required to be solemn or amusing. Sometimes she stood them in lines in her room and made them recite arithmetic tables, flogging the inaccurate with as much vigour as her arms would allow, flabby, muscleless arms, broad and loose towards the armpit, and swinging like dead flesh. Miss Blackie burst into squelchy laughter when a child made a stupid mistake or when Mrs Tulsi made a witticism; and Mrs Tulsi, her eyes masked by dark glasses, would give a pleased, crooked smile. In sterner moments Miss Blackie grew stern as well and moved her jaws up and down quickly, saying ‘Mm!’ at every blow Mrs Tulsi gave.

  Another trial for the readers and learners was Mrs Tulsi’s concern for their health. Every five Saturdays or so she called them to her room and dosed them with Epsom salts; and between these gloomy, wasted week-ends she listened for coughs and sneezes. There was no escaping her. She had learned to recognize every voice, every laugh, every footstep, every cough and almost every sneeze. She took a special interest in Anand’s wheeze and doglike cough. She bought him some poisonous herb cigarettes; when these had no effect she prescribed brandy and water and gave him a bottle of brandy. Anand, while hating the brandy and water, drank it for its literary associations: he had read of the mixture in Dickens.

  Sometimes she sent for old friends from Arwacas. They came and camped for a week or so, and listened to Mrs Tulsi. She, refreshed, talked all day and late into the night, while the friends, lying on bedding on the floor, made drowsy mechanical affirmations: ‘Yes, Mother. Yes, Mother.’ Some visits were cut short by illness, some by carefully documented dreams of bad omen; those visitors who stayed to the end went away fatigued, doped, bleary-eyed.

  Regularly too, she had pujas, austere rites aimed at God alone, without the feasting and gaiety of the Hanuman House ceremonies. The pundit came and Mrs Tulsi sat before him; he read from the scriptures, took his money, changed in the bathroom and left. More and more prayer flags went up in the yard, the white and red pennants fluttering until they were ragged, the bamboo poles going yellow, brown, grey. For every puja Mrs Tulsi tried a different pundit, since no pundit could please her as well as Hari. And, no pundit pleasing her, her faith yielded. She sent Sushila to burn candles in the Roman Catholic church; she put a crucifix in her room; and she had Pundit Tulsi’s grave cleaned for All Saints’ Day.

  The more she was recommended not to exert herself the less she was able to exert herself, until she appeared to live only for her illness. She became obsessed with the decay of her body, and finally wanted the girls to search her head for lice. No louse could have survived the hourly dousing with bay rum which her head received, but she was enraged when the girls found nothing. She called them liars, pinched them, pulled their hair. Sometimes she was only hurt; then she shuffled out to the verandah and sat, taking her veil to her lips, feeding her eyes on the green, as Mrs Tuttle had recommended. She would speak to no one, refuse to eat, reject all care. She would sit, feeding her eyes on the green, the tears running down her slack cheeks below her dark glasses.

  Of all hands she liked Myna’s best. She wanted Myna to search her head for lice, wanted Myna to kill them, wanted to hear them being squashed between Myna’s fingernails. This preference created some jealousy, upset Myna, annoyed Mr Biswas.

  ‘Don’t go and pick her damn lice,’ Mr Biswas said.

  ‘Don’t worry with your father,’ Shama said, unwilling to lose this unexpected hold over Mrs Tulsi.

  And Myna went and spent hours in Mrs Tulsi’s room, her slender fingers exploring every strand of Mrs Tulsi’s thin, grey, bay-rum-scented hair. From time to time, to satisfy Mrs Tulsi, Myna clicked her fingernails, and Mrs Tulsi swallowed and said, ‘Ah,’ pleased that one of her lice had been caught.

  An additional constraint came upon the house when Shekhar and his family paid one of their visits to Mrs Tulsi. If Shekhar had come alone he would have been more warmly welcomed by his sisters. But the antagonism between them and Shekhar’s Presbyterian wife Dorothy had deepened as Shekhar had prospered and Dorothy’s Presbyterianism had become more assertive and excluding. There had almost been an open quarrel when Shekhar, approached by the widows for a loan to start a mobile restaurant, had offered them jobs in his cinemas instead. They regarded this as an insult and saw in it the hand of Dorothy. Of course they refused: they did not care to be employed by Dorothy and they would never work in a place of public entertainment.

  Shekhar could never appear as more than a visitor. He came in his car, led his wife and five elegant daughters upstairs, and for a long time nothing was heard except occasional footsteps and Mrs Tulsi’s low voice going evenly on. Then Shekhar came downstai
rs by himself, forbiddingly correct in white short sleeved sports shirt and white slacks. Having listened to his mother, he now listened to his sisters, staring them in the eye and saying, ‘Hm – hm,’ his top lip hanging over his lower lip and almost concealing it. He spoke little, as though unwilling to disturb the set of his mouth. His words came out abruptly, his expression never changed, and everything he said seemed to have an edge. When he tried to be friendly with the readers and learners he only frightened them. Yet he never appeared unkind; only preoccupied.

  After lunch, prepared by Basdai and Sushila and eaten upstairs, Dorothy and her daughters passed downstairs, Dorothy booming out her greetings, her daughters remaining close together and speaking in fine, almost inaudible voices. Then Dorothy would look at her watch and say, ‘Caramba! Ya son las tres. Dónde está tu Padre? Lena, va a llamarle. Vamos, vamos. Es demasiado tarde. Well, all right, people,’ she would say, turning to the outraged sisters and the wondering readers and learners, ‘we got to go.’ Since they had taken to spending holidays in Venezuela and Colombia, Dorothy used Spanish when she spoke to her children or to Shekhar in the presence of her sisters-in-law. Later the sisters agreed that Shekhar was to be pitied; they had all noted his unhappiness.

  Before they left, Shekhar and Dorothy always called on Mr Biswas. Mr Biswas did not relish these calls. It wasn’t only that Shekhar’s party was campaigning against the Community Welfare Department. Shekhar had never forgotten that Mr Biswas was a clown, and whenever they met he tried to provoke an act of clowning. He made a belittling remark, and Mr Biswas was expected to extend this remark wittily and fancifully. To Mr Biswas’s fury, Dorothy had also adopted this attitude; and from this relationship there was no escape, since anger and retaliation were counted parts of the game. Shekhar came into the front room and asked in his brusque, humourless manner, ‘Is the welfare officer still well-fed?’ Then he hoisted himself on to the destitute’s diningtable and threatened Mr Biswas with the destruction of the department and joblessness. For a time Mr Biswas responded in his old way. He told stories about civil servants, spoke of the trouble he had making up his expense sheets, the work he had looking for work. But soon he made his annoyance plain. ‘You take these things too personally,’ Shekhar said, still playing the game. ‘Our differences are only political. You’ve got to be a little more sophisticated, man.’ ‘Be a little more sophisticated,’ Mr Biswas said, when Shekhar left. ‘On a hungry belly? The old scorpion. Wouldn’t care a damn if I lose my job tomorrow.’

  For some time there had been rumours. And now at last the news was given out: Owad, Mrs Tulsi’s younger son, was returning from England. Everyone was excited. Sisters came up from Shorthills in their best clothes to talk over the news. Owad was the adventurer of the family. Absence had turned him into a legend, and his glory was undiminished by the numbers of students who were leaving the colony every week to study medicine in England, America, Canada and India. His exact attainments were not known, but were felt by all to be extraordinary and almost beyond comprehension. He was a doctor, a professional man, with letters after his name! And he belonged to them! They could no longer claim Shekhar. But every sister had a story which proved how close she had been to Owad, what regard he had had for her.

  Mr Biswas felt as proprietary as the sisters towards Owad and shared their excitement. But he was uneasy. Once, many years before, he had felt that he had to leave Hanuman House before Owad and Mrs Tulsi returned to it. Now he experienced the same unease: the same sense of threat, the same need to leave before it was too late. Over and over he checked the money he had saved, the money he was going to save. His additions appeared on cigarette packets, in the margins of newspapers, on the backs of buff government folders. The sum never varied: he had six hundred and twenty dollars; by the end of the year he would have seven hundred. It was a staggering sum, more than he had ever possessed all at once. But it couldn’t attract a loan to buy any house other than one of those wooden tenements that awaited condemnation. At two thousand dollars or so they were bargains, but only for speculators who could take the tenants to court, rebuild, or wait for the site to rise in value. Now, his anxiety growing with the excitement about him, Mr Biswas scanned agents’ lists every morning and drove about the city looking for places to rent. When for one whole week the City Council bought pages and pages in the newspapers to serialize the list of houses it was putting up for auction because their rates had not been paid, Mr Biswas turned up at the Town Hall with all the city’s estate agents; but he lacked the confidence to bid.

  He could not avoid Mrs Tulsi when he returned to the house. She sat in the verandah, feeding her eyes on the green, patting her lips with her veil.

  And though he had nerved himself for the blow, he grew frantic when it came.

  It was Shama who brought the message.

  ‘The old bitch can’t throw me out like that,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘I still have some rights. She has got to provide me with alternative accommodation.’ And: ‘Die, you bitch!’ he hissed towards the verandah. ‘Die!’

  ‘Man!’

  ‘Die! Sending poor little Myna to pick her lice. That did you any good? Eh? Think she would throw out the little god like that? O no. The god must have a room to himself. You and me and my children can sleep in sugarsacks. The Tulsi sleeping-bag. Patents applied for. Die, you old bitch!’

  They heard Mrs Tulsi mumbling placidly to Sushila.

  ‘I have my rights,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘This is not like the old days. You can’t just stick a piece of paper on my door and throw me out. Alternative accommodation, if you please.’

  But Mrs Tulsi had provided alternative accommodation: a room in one of the tenements whose rents Shama had collected years before. The wooden walls were unpainted, grey-black, rotting; at every step on the patched, shaky floor wood dust excavated by woodlice showered down; there was no ceiling and the naked galvanized roof was fluffy with soot; there was no electricity. Where would the furniture go? Where would they sleep, cook, wash? Where would the children study?

  He vowed never to talk to Mrs Tulsi again; and she, as though sensing his resolve, did not speak to him. Morning after morning he went from house to house, looking for rooms to rent, until he was exhausted, and exhaustion burned out his anger. Then in the afternoons he drove to his area, where he stayed until evening.

  Returning late one night to the house, which seemed to him more and more ordered and sheltering, he saw Mrs Tulsi sitting in the verandah in the dark. She was humming a hymn, softly, as though she were alone, removed from the world. He did not greet her, and was passing into his room when she spoke.

  ‘Mohun?’ Her voice was groping, amiable.

  He stopped.

  ‘Mohun?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘How is Anand? I haven’t heard his cough these last few days.’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘Children, children. Trouble, trouble. But do you remember how Owad used to work? Eating and reading. Helping in the store and reading. Checking money and reading. Helping head and head with everybody else, and still reading. You remember Hanuman House, Mohun?’

  He recognized her mood, and did not wish to be seduced by it. ‘It was a big house. Bigger than the place we are going to.’

  She was unruffled. ‘Did they show you Owad’s letter?’

  Those of Owad’s letters which went the rounds were mainly about English flowers and the English weather. They were semi-literary, and were in a large handwriting with big spaces between the words and big gaps between the lines. ‘The February fogs have at last gone,’ Owad used to write, ‘depositing a thick coating of black on every window-sill. The snowdrops have come and gone, but the daffodils will be here soon. I planted six daffodils in my tiny front garden. Five have grown. The sixth appears to be a failure. My only hope is that they will not turn out to be blind, as they were last year.’

  ‘He never took much interest in flowers when he was a boy,’ Mrs Tulsi said.

  ‘I s
uppose he was too busy reading.’

  ‘He always liked you, Mohun. I suppose that was because you were a big reader yourself. I don’t know. Perhaps I should have married all my daughters to big readers. Owad always said that. But Seth, you know –’ She stopped; it was the first time he had heard her speak the name for years. ‘The old ways have become oldfashioned so quickly, Mohun. I hear that you are looking for a house.’

  ‘I have my eye on something.’

  ‘I am sorry about the inconvenience. But we have to get the house ready for Owad. It isn’t his father’s house, Mohun. Wouldn’t it be nice if he could come back to his father’s house?’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like the smell of paint. And it’s dangerous too. We are putting up some awnings and louvres here and there. Modern things.’

  ‘It sounds very nice.’

  ‘Really for Owad. Though I suppose it would be nice for you to come back to.’

  ‘Come back to?’

  ‘Aren’t you coming back?’

  ‘But yes,’ he said, and couldn’t keep the eagerness out of his voice. ‘Yes, of course. Louvres would be very nice.’

  Shama was elated at the news.

  ‘I never did believe,’ she said, ‘that Ma did want us to stay away for good.’ She spoke of Mrs Tulsi’s regard for Myna, her gift of brandy to Anand.

  ‘God!’ Mr Biswas said, suddenly offended. ‘So you’ve got the reward for lice-picking? You’re sending back Myna to pick some more, eh? God! God! Cat and mouse! Cat and mouse!’

  It sickened him that he had fallen into Mrs Tulsi’s trap and shown himself grateful to her. She was keeping him, like her daughters, within her reach. And he was in her power, as he had been ever since he had gone to the Tulsi Store and seen Shama behind the counter.

  ‘Cat and mouse!’