A House for Mr. Biswas (17 page)

Shama giggled. The sisters and their husbands, more at ease now, giggled. Mrs Tulsi gave a short explosive laugh. Only the gods remained stern; but Mrs Tulsi, still embracing the elder god, coaxed a smile from him.

So the encounter was a defeat. But Mr Biswas, so far from being cast down, was exhilarated. He had no doubt now that in his campaign against the Tulsis – for that was how he thought of it – he was winning.

Unexpected support came through the Aryan Association.

The Association attracted the attention of Mrs Weir, the wife of the owner of a small sugar-estate. She didn’t pay her labourers well but was respected by them for her interest in religion and the concern she showed for their spiritual welfare. Most of her labourers were Hindus and Mrs Weir was
particularly interested in Hinduism. It was rumoured that her purpose was an eventual wholesale conversion of Hindus, but Misir denied this. He said he had practically converted
her.
She did indeed come to an Aryan meeting. And she invited some of the Aryans to tea. Mr Biswas, Misir, Shivlochan and two others went. Misir talked. Mrs Weir listened and never disagreed. Misir gave books and pamphlets. Mrs Weir said she looked forward to reading them. Just before they left, Mrs Weir presented everyone with copies of the
Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius, the
Discourses
of Epictetus, and a number of other booklets.

For days afterwards Hanuman House was subjected to the propaganda of a little-known Christian sect. Mrs Weir’s booklets turned up on the long table, in the Tulsi Store, in the kitchen, in bedrooms. A religious picture was nailed on the inside of the latrine-door. When a booklet was found on the prayer-room shrine, Seth summoned Mr Biswas and said, ‘The next thing will be for you to start teaching the children hymns. I can’t understand how anyone could have even tried to turn you into a pundit.’

Mr Biswas said, ‘Well, since I been in this house I begin to get the feeling that to be a good Hindu you must be a good Roman Catholic first.’

The elder god, seeing himself attacked, got up from the hammock, already prepared to cry.

‘Look at him,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Little Jack Horner. If he just put his hand in his shirt he pull up a crucifix.’

The elder god did wear a crucifix. It was regarded in the house as an exotic and desirable charm. The elder god wore many charms and it was thought fitting that someone so valuable should be well protected. On the Sunday before examination week he was bathed by Mrs Tulsi in water consecrated by Hari; the soles of his feet were soaked in lavender water; he was made to drink a glass of Guinness stout; and he left Hanuman House, a figure of awe, laden with crucifix, sacred thread and beads, a mysterious sachet, a number of curious armlets, consecrated coins, and a lime in each trouser pocket.

‘You call yourself Hindus?’ Mr Biswas said.

Shama tried to silence Mr Biswas.

The younger god got out of the hammock and stamped. ‘I not going to remain in this hammock and hear my brother insulted, Ma.
You
don’t care.’

‘What?’ said Mr Biswas. ‘I insult somebody? At the Catholic college they make him close his eyes and open his mouth and say Hail Mary. What about that?’

‘Man!’ Shama said.

The elder god was crying.

The younger god said,
‘You
don’t care, Ma.’

‘Biswas!’ Seth said. ‘You want to feel my hand?’

Shama pulled at Mr Biswas’s shirt and he struggled as though he were being pulled away from a physical fight which he was winning and wanted to continue. But he had noted Seth’s threat and allowed himself to be pushed slowly up the stairs.

Halfway up they heard Seth calling for his wife. ‘Padma! Come quickly and look after your sister. She is going to faint.’

Someone raced up the steps. It was Chinta. She ignored Mr Biswas and said accusingly to Shama, ‘Mai faint.’

Shama looked hard at Mr Biswas.

‘Faint, eh?’ Mr Biswas said.

Chinta didn’t say any more. She hurried on to the concrete house to prepare Mrs Tulsi’s bedroom, the Rose Room.

As soon as Shama had seen Mr Biswas safely to their room she left him, and he heard her running across the Book Room and down the stairs.

Mrs Tulsi often fainted. Whenever this happened a complex ritual was at once set in motion. One daughter was despatched to get the Rose Room ready, and Mrs Tulsi was taken there by other daughters working under the direction of Padma, Seth’s wife. If, as often happened, Padma was ill herself, Sushila took her place. Sushila’s position in the family was unique. She was a widowed daughter whose only child had died. Because of her suffering she was respected, but though she gave herself the airs of authority her status was undefined, at times appearing as high as Mrs Tulsi’s, at times lower than Miss Blackie’s. It was only during Mrs Tulsi’s illnesses that anyone could be sure of Sushila’s power.

In the Rose Room, then, after a faint, one daughter fanned Mrs Tulsi; two massaged her smooth, shining and surprisingly firm legs; one soaked bay rum into her loosened hair and massaged her forehead. The other daughters stood by, ready to carry out the instructions of Padma or Sushila. The gods were often there as well, looking grimly on. When the massage and the bay rum-soaking was over Mrs Tulsi turned on her stomach and asked the younger god to walk on her, from the soles of her feet to her shoulders. The elder god had done this duty in the past but had grown too heavy.

The sons-in-law found themselves alone in the wooden house with the children, who knew without being told that they had to be silent. All activity was suspended; the house became dead. One of the sons-in-law was invariably responsible for precipitating Mrs Tulsi’s faint. He was now hounded by silence and hostility. If he attempted to make friendly talk many glances instantly reproved him for his frivolity. If he moped in a corner or went up to his room he was condemned for his callousness and ingratitude. He was expected to stay in the hall and show all the signs of contrition and unease. He waited for the sounds of footsteps coming from the Rose Room; he accosted a busy, offended sister and, ignoring snubs, made whispered inquiries about Mrs Tulsi’s condition. Next morning he came down, shy and sheepish. Mrs Tulsi would be better. She would ignore him. But that evening forgiveness would be in the air. The offender would be spoken to as if nothing had happened, and he would respond with eagerness.

Mr Biswas didn’t go to the hall. He remained on his blanket in the long room, doodling and thinking out subjects for the articles he had promised to write for the New Aryan, a magazine Misir was planning. He couldn’t concentrate, and soon the paper was covered with repetitions, in various styles, of the letters
RES
, a combination he had found challenging and beautiful ever since he had done a sign for a restaurant.

The room smelled of hartshorn.

‘You happy, eh, now that you make Mai faint?’

It was Shama. Her hands were still oily.

‘Which foot you rub?’ Mr Biswas asked. ‘You should be glad they allow you to touch a foot. You know, it does beat me why all you sisters so anxious to look after the old hen. She did look after you? She just pick you up and marry you off to any old coconut-seller and crab-catcher. And still everybody rushing up to rub foot and squeeze head and hand smelling-salts.’

‘You know, nobody hearing you talk would believe that you come to this house with no more things than you could hang up on a one-inch nail.’

It was a familiar attack. He ignored it.

Next morning he went down to the hall and called briskly, ‘Morning, morning. Morning, everybody.’ He got no reply. He said, ‘Shama, Shama. Food, girl. Food.’ She brought him a tall cup of tea. Breakfast was tea and biscuits. The biscuits came in a vast drum, returnable to the biscuit makers: the largest economy size, the method of bulk-purchase used by café-owners. While he was diving into the drum, turning away straw, feeling for biscuits – a pleasant task, for the straw and biscuits together had a smell that was good and even better than the meal – while he was doing this, Mrs Tulsi came into the hall, fatigued and heavy, looking almost as old as Padma. Her veil was low over her forehead and every now and then she pressed a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne to her nose. Without her teeth she looked decrepit, but there was about her decrepitude a quality of ever-lastingness.

‘You feeling better, Mai?’ Mr Biswas asked, stacking some biscuits on a chipped enamel plate. He spoke very cheerfully. The hall was hushed.

‘Yes, son,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘I am feeling better.’

And it was Mr Biswas’s turn to be astonished.

(‘I was wrong about your mother,’ he told Shama before he left that morning. ‘She is not a old hen at all. Nor a old cow.’

‘I glad you learning gratitude,’ Shama said.

‘She is a she-fox. A old she-fox. What they call that? You know what I mean, man. You remember your
Macdougall’s Grammar.
Abbot, abbess. Stag, roe, Hart, hind. Fox, what?’

‘I not going to tell you.’

‘I going to find out. In the meantime, remember the name change. She is the old she-fox.’)

He remained on the staircase landing, sinking lower and lower through the torn seat of a cane-bottomed chair in front of the stained, battered, disused and useless piano, sipping his tea, cracking biscuits and dropping the pieces into the tea. He watched the pieces swell out and rescued them with his spoon just when they started to sink. Then swiftly, before the soggy biscuit that drooped over the spoon could fall off, he thrust the spoon into his mouth. All around him children were doing the same.

The younger god came down the stairs. He had been doing the morning
puja.
With his small dhoti, small vest, beads and miniature caste-marks he looked like a toy holy man. He carried a brass plate on which there was a cube of burning camphor. The camphor had been used to give incense to the images in the prayer-room; now it was to be offered to every member of the family.

The god went first to Mrs Tulsi. She put her handkerchief in her bosom, touched the camphor flame with her fingertips and carried her fingertips to her forehead. ‘Rama, Rama,’ she said. Then she added, ‘Take it to your brother Mohun.’

The hall was hushed again. And again Mr Biswas was astonished.

Sushila, clinging to her sickroom authority of the previous evening, said, ‘Yes, Owad. Take it to your brother Mohun.’

The god hesitated, frowning. Then he sucked his teeth, stamped up to the landing and offered the aromatic camphor flame to Mr Biswas. Mr Biswas rescued more sodden biscuit from the enamel cup. He put his mouth under the spoon, caught the biscuit that broke off, chewed noisily and said, ‘You could take that away. You know I don’t hold with this idol worship.’

The god, annoyed just the moment before, was stupefied almost into argument and coaxing before the full horror of Mr Biswas’s rejection came to him. He stood still, the camphor burning, melting on the plate.

The hall was still.

Mrs Tulsi was silent. Forgetting her frailty and fatigue, she got up and walked slowly up the stairs.

‘Man!’ Shama cried.

Shama’s shout aroused the god. He walked down to the hall, tears of anger in his eyes, saying, ‘I didn’t want to go and offer him anything. I didn’t. I know the amount of respect he have for people.’

Sushila said, ‘Shh. Not while you are carrying the plate.’

‘Man!’ Shama said. ‘What you go and do now?’

Mr Biswas drained his cup, used his spoon to scrape up the mess of biscuit at the bottom, ate that and, getting up, said, ‘What I do? I ain’t do nothing. I just don’t believe in this idol worship, that is all.’

‘M-m-m-m.
Mm!’
Miss Blackie made a loud purring noise. She was offended. She was a Roman Catholic and went to mass every morning, but she had seen the Hindu rites performed every day for many years and regarded them as inviolate as her own.

‘Idols are stepping-stones to the worship of the real thing,’ Mr Biswas said, quoting Pankaj Rai to the hall. ‘They are necessary only in a spiritually backward society. Look at that little boy down there. You think he know what he was doing this morning?’

The god stamped and said shrilly, ‘I know a lot more about it than you, you – you
Christian!’

Miss Blackie purred again, now deeply offended.

Sushila said to the god, ‘You must never lose your temper when you are doing
puja,
Owad. It isn’t nice.’

‘It nice for him to insult me and Ma and everybody else the way he doing?’

‘Just give him enough rope. He will hang himself.’

In the long room Mr Biswas gathered his painting equipment and sang over and over:

Words and tune were based, remotely, on
Roaming in the Gloaming,
which the choir at Lal’s school had once sung to entertain important visitors from the Canadian Mission.

Yet almost as soon as he had left Hanuman House through the side gate, Mr Biswas’s high spirits vanished, and a depression fell upon him and lasted all day. He worked badly. He had to paint a large sign on a corrugated iron paling. Doing letters on a corrugated surface was bad enough; to paint a cow and a gate, as he had to, was maddening. His cow looked stiff, deformed and sorrowful, and undid the gaiety of the rest of the advertisement.

He was strained and irritable when he went back to Hanuman House. The aggrieved and aggressive stares he received in the hall reminded him of his morning triumph. All his joy at that had turned into disgust at his condition. The campaign against the Tulsis, which he had been conducting with such pleasure, now seemed pointless and degrading. Suppose, Mr Biswas thought in the long room, suppose that at one word I could just disappear from this room, what would remain to speak of me? A few clothes, a few books. The shouts and thumps in the hall would continue; the
puja
would be done; in the morning the Tulsi Store would open its doors.

He had lived in many houses. And how easy it was to think of those houses without him! At this moment Pundit Jairam would be at a meeting or he would be eating at home, looking forward to an evening with his books. Soanie stood in the doorway, darkening the room, waiting for the least gesture of command. In Tara’s back verandah Ajodha sat relaxed in his rockingchair, his eyes closed, listening perhaps to
That Body of Yours
being read by Rabidat, who sat at an awkward angle, trying to hide the smell of drink and tobacco on his breath. Tara was about, harrying the cowman (it was milking-time) or harrying the yard boy or the servant girl, harrying somebody. In none of these places he was being missed because in none of these places had he ever been more than a visitor, an upsetter of routine. Was Bipti thinking of him in the back trace? But she herself was a derelict. And, even more remote, that house of mud and grass in the swamplands: probably pulled down now and ploughed up. Beyond that, a void. There was nothing to speak of him.