A House for Mr. Biswas (29 page)

At the barracks there were no apples, no stockings, no baking of cakes, no churning of icecream, no refinements to be waited for. It was from the start a day of abandoned eating and drinking and was to end, not with the beating of children, but with the beating of wives. Mr Biswas went to see his mother and had dinner at Tara’s. On Boxing-day he visited his brothers; they had married nondescript women from nondescript families and spent Christmas with their wives.

The following day Mr Biswas cycled from Green Vale to Arwacas. When he turned into the High Street the sight of the stores, open again and carelessly displaying Christmas goods at bargain prices, reminded him of the presents he had forgotten. He got off his bicycle and leaned it against the kerb. Before he had taken off his bicycle clips he was accosted by a heavy-lidded shopman who repeatedly sucked his teeth. The shopman offered Mr Biswas a cigarette and lit it for him. Words were exchanged. Then, with the shopman’s arm around his shoulders, Mr Biswas disappeared into the shop. Not many minutes later Mr Biswas and the shopman reappeared. They were both smoking and excited. A boy came out of the shop partly hidden by the large doll’s house he was carrying. The doll’s house was placed on the handlebar of Mr Biswas’s cycle and, with Mr Biswas on one side and the boy on the other, wheeled down the High Street.

Every room of the doll’s house was daintily furnished. The kitchen had a stove such as Mr Biswas had never seen in real life, a safe and a sink. As they progressed towards Hanuman
House Mr Biswas’s excitement cooled; his extravagance astonished, then frightened him. He had spent more than a month’s wages. He couldn’t take back the doll’s house now; he was attracting continuous attention. And he had bought nothing for Anand. It was always like this. When he thought of his children he thought mainly of Savi. She was part of those early months at The Chase and he knew her. Anand belonged completely to the Tulsis.

At Hanuman House they knew about the doll’s house before it arrived. The hall was packed with sisters and their children. Mrs Tulsi sat at the pitchpine table patting her lips with her veil.

The children exclaimed when the doll’s house was set down, and in the hush that followed Savi came forward and stood near it proprietorially.

‘Well, what you think?’ Mr Biswas asked the hall, using his quick, high-pitched voice.

The sisters were silent.

Then Padma, Seth’s wife, usually taciturn and oppressed and unwell, began on a long and involved story, which Mr Biswas refused to believe, about an incredible doll’s house one of Seth’s brothers had made for somebody’s daughter, a girl of exceptional beauty who had died shortly afterwards.

As Padma spoke, the children, boys and girls, gathered round the house. Mr Biswas was not altogether happy about this, but was pleased when the children acknowledged Savi’s ownership by asking her permission to open doors and touch beds. Even as she explored, Savi tried to give the impression that she was familiar with everything.

‘What have you brought for the others?’

It was Mrs Tulsi.

‘Didn’t have room,’ Mr Biswas said gaily.

‘When I give, I give to all,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘I am poor, but I give to all. It is clear, however, that I cannot compete with Santa Claus.’

Her voice was even and he would have smiled, as at a witticism, but when he looked at her he saw that her face was tight with anger.

‘Vidiadhar and Shivadhar!’ Chinta shouted. ‘Come here at once. Stop interfering with what doesn’t belong to you.’

As at a signal the sisters pounced on their children, threatening horrible punishments on those who interfered with what didn’t belong to them.

‘I will peel your backside.’

‘I will break every bone in your body.’

And Sumati the flogger said, ‘I will make you heavy with welts.’

‘Savi, go and put it away,’ Shama whispered. ‘Take it upstairs.’

Mrs Tulsi, rising, patting her lips, said, ‘Shama, I hope you will have the grace to give me notice before you move to your mansion.’ She laboured up the stairs, and Sushila, the widow who ruled the sickroom, followed solicitously.

The affronted sisters drew closer together, and Shama stood alone. Her eyes were wide with dread. She stared accusingly at Mr Biswas.

‘Well,’ he said briskly. ‘I better go back home – to the barracks.’

He urged Savi and Anand to come with him out to the arcade. Savi came willingly. Anand was, as usual, embarrassed. Mr Biswas couldn’t help feeling that, compared with Savi, the boy was a disappointment. He was small for his age, thin and sickly, with a big head; he looked as though he needed protection, but was shy and tongue-tied with Mr Biswas and always seemed anxious to be free of him. Now, when Mr Biswas put his arms around him, Anand sniffed, rubbed a dirty face against Mr Biswas’s trousers, and tried to pull away.

‘You must let Anand play with it,’ Mr Biswas said to Savi.

‘He is a boy.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Mr Biswas rubbed Anand’s bony back. ‘You are going to get something next time.’

‘I want a car,’ Anand said to Mr Biswas’s trousers. ‘A big one.’

Mr Biswas knew the sort he meant. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Going to get you a car.’

Immediately Anand broke away and ran back through the gate to the yard, riding an imaginary horse, wielding an imaginary whip and shouting, ‘And I going to get a car! I going to get a car!’

He bought the car; not, despite his promise, the big one Anand wanted, but a clockwork miniature; and on Saturday, after the labourers had been paid, he took it to Arwacas. His arrival was noted from the arcade and, as he pushed the side gate open, he heard the message being relayed by the children in awed and expectant tones: ‘Savi, your pappa come to see you.’

She came crying to the doorway of the hall. When he embraced her she burst into loud sobs.

The children were silent. He heard the stairs creaking continually, and he became aware of a thick shuffling and whispering in the black kitchen at the far end.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

She stifled her sobs. ‘They break it up.’

‘Show me!’ he cried. ‘Show me!’

His rage shocked her out of her tears. She came down the steps and he followed her through the gallery at the end of the hall into the yard, past a half-full copper reflecting a deep blue sky, and a black riveted tank where fish, bought alive from the market, swam until the time came for them to be eaten.

And there, below the almost bare branches of the almond tree that grew in the next yard, he saw it, thrown against a dusty leaning fence made of wood and tin and corrugated iron. A broken door, a ruined window, a staved-in wall or even roof-he had expected that. But not this. The doll’s house did not exist. He saw only a bundle of firewood. None of its parts was whole. Its delicate joints were exposed and useless. Below the torn skin of paint, still bright and still in parts imitating brickwork, the hacked and splintered wood was white and raw.

‘O God!’

The sight of the wrecked house and the silence of her father made Savi cry afresh.

‘Ma mash it up.’

He ran back to the house. The edge of a wall scraped against his shoulder, tearing his shirt and tearing the skin below.

Sisters had now left the stairs and kitchen and were sitting about the hall.

‘Shama!’ he bawled. ‘Shama!’

Savi came slowly up the steps from the courtyard. Sisters shifted their gaze from Mr Biswas to her and she remained in the doorway, looking down at her feet.

‘Shama!’

He heard a sister whisper, ‘Go and call your aunt Shama. Quick.’

He noticed Anand among the children and sisters. ‘Come here, boy!’

Anand looked at the sisters. They gave him no help. He didn’t move.

‘Anand, I call you! Come here quick sharp.’

‘Go, boy,’ Sumati said. ‘Before you get blows.’

While Anand hesitated, Shama came. She came through the kitchen doorway. Her veil was pulled over her forehead. This unusual touch of dutifulness he noted. She looked frightened yet determined.

‘You bitch!’

The silence was absolute.

Sisters shooed away their children up the stairs and into the kitchen.

Savi remained in the doorway behind Mr Biswas. ‘I don’t mind what you call me,’ Shama said. ‘You break up the dolly house?’

Her eyes widened with fear and guilt and shame. ‘Yes,’ she said, exaggeratedly calm. Then casually, ‘I break it up.’

‘To please who?’ He was losing control of his voice.

She didn’t answer.

He noticed that she looked lonely. ‘Tell me,’ he screamed. ‘To please
these
people?’

Chinta got up, straightened out her long skirt and started to walk up the stairs. ‘Let me go away, eh, before I hear something I don’t like and have to answer back.’

‘I wasn’t pleasing anybody but myself.’ Shama was speaking more surely now and he could see that she was gaining strength from the approval of her sisters.

‘You know what I think of you and your family?’

Two more sisters went up the stairs.

‘I don’t care what you think.’

And suddenly his rage had gone. His shouts rang in his head, leaving him startled, ashamed and tired. He could think of nothing to say.

She recognized the change in his mood and waited, at ease now.

‘Go and dress Savi.’ He spoke quietly.

She made no move.

‘Go and dress Savi!’

His shout frightened Savi and she began to scream. She was trembling and when he touched her she felt brittle.

Shama at last moved to obey.

Savi pulled away. ‘I don’t want anybody to dress me.’

‘Go and pack her clothes.’

‘You are taking her with you?’

It was his turn to be silent.

The children who had been shooed away into the kitchen pushed their faces out of the doorway.

Shama walked the length of the hall to the stairs, where sisters, sitting on the lower steps, pulled their knees in to let her pass.

At once everybody relaxed.

Sumati said in an amused voice, ‘Anand, are you going with your father too?’

Anand pulled his head back into the kitchen.

The hall became active again. Children drifted back, and sisters hurried between kitchen and hall, laying out the evening meal. Chinta returned and started on a light-hearted song, which was taken up by other sisters.

The drama was over, and Shama’s re-entry, with ribbons, comb and a small cardboard suitcase, did not have the same attention as her exit.

Offering the suitcase with outstretched hand, Shama said, ‘She is your daughter. You know what is good for her. You have been feeding her. You know —’

He set his mouth, pulling his upper teeth behind his lower.

Chinta broke off her singing to say to Savi, ‘Going home, girl?’

‘Put some shoes on her feet,’ Shama said.

But that meant washing Savi’s feet, and that meant delay; and, pushing away Shama when she tried to comb Savi’s hair, he led Savi outside. It was only when they were in the High Street that he remembered Anand.

Market day was over and the street was littered with broken boxes, torn paper, straw, rotting vegetables, animal droppings and, though it hadn’t rained, a number of puddles. By the light of flambeaux stalls were being stripped and carts loaded by vendors, their wives and tired children.

Mr Biswas tied the suitcase to the carrier of his bicycle, and he and Savi walked in silence to the end of the High Street.

When the red and ochre police station was out of sight, he put Savi on the crossbar of the cycle, took a short run and, with difficulty and some nervousness, hopped on to the saddle. The cycle wobbled; Savi held on to his left arm and made balance more uncertain. Presently, however, they had left Arwacas and there was nothing but silent sugarcane on either side of the road. It was pitch black. The bicycle had no lights and they couldn’t see for more than a few yards ahead. Savi was trembling.

‘Don’t frighten.’

A light flashed in front of them. A gritty male voice said harshly, ‘Where you think you going?’

It was a Negro policeman. Mr Biswas pulled at his handbrakes. The bicycle leaned to the left and Savi slipped to the ground.

The policeman examined the bicycle. ‘No licence, eh? No licence. No lights. And you was towing. You have a nice little case coming up.’ He paused, waiting to be bribed. ‘All right, then. Name and address.’ He wrote in his book. ‘Good. You go be getting a summons.’

So they walked the rest of the way to Green Vale, through the darkness, and then below the dead trees to the barracks.

They spent a miserable week. Mr Biswas left the barracks early in the morning and returned in the middle of the afternoon. All that time Savi was alone. An old woman, who was
spending time with her son, his wife and five children in a barrackroom, took pity on Savi and gave her food at midday. This food Savi never ate; hunger could not overcome her distrust of food cooked by strangers. She took the plate to the room, emptied it on to a sheet of newspaper, washed the plate, took it back to the old woman, thanked her, and waited for Mr Biswas. When he came she waited for the night; when the night came she waited for the morning.

To amuse her, he read from his novels, expounded Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, made her learn the quotations hanging on the walls, and made her sit still while he unsuccessfully tried to sketch her. She was dispirited and submissive. She was also afraid. Sometimes, especially during walks under the trees, he suddenly seemed to forget her, and she heard him muttering to himself, holding bitter, repetitive arguments with unseen persons. He was ‘trapped’ in a ‘hole’. ‘Trap,’ she heard him say over and over. ‘That’s what you and your family do to me. Trap me in this hole.’ She saw his mouth twist with anger; she heard him curse and threaten. When they got back to the barracks he asked her to mix him doses of Macleans’ Brand Stomach Powder.

They were both looking forward to Saturday afternoon, when Seth would come and take her back to Hanuman House. There was a good reason why she couldn’t stay any longer: her school was opening on Monday.

On Saturday Seth came. He was not alone. Shama, Anand and Myna came with him. Savi ran to the road to meet them. Mr Biswas pretended he didn’t see, and Seth smiled, as at the antics of children. Quarrels between Seth and his wife were unknown, and it was his policy-never to interfere in quarrels between sisters and their husbands. But Mr Biswas knew that despite the smile Seth had come as Shama’s protector.