A House for Mr. Biswas (15 page)

The gods became stern.

Looking away from Seth, and causing a dozen or more faces instantly to turn away, Mr Biswas saw Govind among eaters at the far end of the table, going at his food in his smiling savage way, apparently indifferent to the inquisition, while C, bowed and veiled, stood dutifully over him.

‘Eh?’ For the first time there was impatience in Seth’s voice, and, to show his displeasure, he began talking Hindi. ‘This is gratitude. You come here, penniless, a stranger. We take you in, we give you one of our daughters, we feed you, we give you a place to sleep in. You refuse to help in the store, you refuse to help on the estate. All right. But then to turn around and insult us!’

Mr Biswas had never thought of it like that. He said, ‘I sorry.’

Mrs Tulsi said, ‘How can anyone be sorry for something he
thinks?’

Seth pointed to the eaters at the end of the table. ‘What names have you given to those, eh?’ The eaters, not looking up, ate with greater concentration.

Mr Biswas said nothing.

‘Oh, you haven’t given them names. It’s only to me and Mai and the two boys that you have given names?’

‘I sorry.’

Mrs Tulsi said, ‘How can anyone be sorry–’

Seth interrupted her. ‘So we want someone to work on the estate. Is nice to keep these things in the family. And what you say? You want to paddle your own canoe. Look at him!’ Seth said to the hall. ‘Biswas the paddler.’

The children smiled; the sisters pulled their veils over their foreheads; their husbands ate and frowned; the gods in the hammock, rocking very slowly with their feet on the floor, glowered at the staircase landing.

‘It runs in the family,’ Seth said. ‘They tell me your father was a great diver. But where has all your paddling got you so far?’

Mr Biswas said, ‘Is just that I don’t know anything about estate work.’

‘Oho! Is because you can read and write that you don’t want to get dirt on your hands, eh? Look at my hands.’ He
showed nails that were corrugated, warped and surprisingly short. The hairy backs of his hands were scratched and discoloured; the palms were hardened, worn smooth in some places, torn in others. ‘You think I can’t read and write? I can read and write better than the whole lot of them.’ He waved one hand to indicate the sisters, their husbands, their children; he held the other palm open towards the gods in the hammock, to indicate that they were excepted. There was amusement in his eyes now, and he opened his mouth on either side of the cigarette holder to laugh. ‘What about these boys here, Mohun? The gods.’

The younger god furrowed his brow, opened his eyes wider and wider until they were expressionless, and attempted to set his small, plump-lipped mouth.

‘You think
they
can’t read and write too?’

‘See them in the store,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘Reading and selling. Reading and eating and selling. Reading and eating and counting money. They are not afraid of getting their hands dirty.’

Not with money, Mr Biswas told her mentally.

The younger god got up from the hammock and said, ‘If he don’t want to take the job on the estate, that is his business. It serve you right, Ma. You choose your son-in-laws and they treat you exactly how you deserve.’

‘Sit down, Owad,’ Mrs Tulsi said. She turned to Seth. ‘This boy has a terrible temper.’

‘I don’t blame him,’ Seth said. ‘These paddlers go away, paddling their own canoe – that is how it is, eh, Biswas? – and as soon as trouble start they will be running back here. Seth is just here for people to insult, the same people, mark you, who he trying to help. I don’t mind. But that don’t mean I can’t see why the boy shouldn’t mind.’

The younger god frowned even more. ‘Is not because my father dead that people who eating my mother food should feel that they could call she a hen. I want Biswas to apologize to Ma.’

‘Apologize-ologize,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘It wouldn’t make any difference. I don’t see how anyone can be sorry for something he
feels.’

There is, in some weak people who feel their own weakness and resent it, a certain mechanism which, operating suddenly and without conscious direction, releases them from final humiliation. Mr Biswas, who had up till then been viewing his blasphemies as acts of the blackest ingratitude, now abruptly lost his temper.

‘The whole pack of you could go to hell!’ he shouted. ‘I not going to apologize to one of the damn lot of you.’

Astonishment and even apprehension appeared on their faces. He noted this for a lucid moment, turned and ran up the stairs to the long room, where he began to pack with unnecessary energy.

‘You don’t care what mess you get other people in, eh?’

It was Shama, standing in the doorway, barefooted, veil low over her forehead, looking as frightened as on that morning in the store.

‘Family! Family!’ Mr Biswas said, stuffing clothes and books –
Self Help, Bell’s Standard Elocutionist,
the seven volumes of
Hawkins’ Electrical Guide
– into a cardboard box whose top flaps bore the circular impressions of tins of condensed milk. ‘I not staying here a minute longer. Having that damn little boy talk to me like that! He does talk to all your brother-in-laws like that?’

He packed with such energy that he was soon finished. But his anger had begun to cool and he reflected that by leaving the house again so soon he would be behaving absurdly, like a newly-married girl. He waited for Shama to say something that would rekindle his anger. She remained silent.

‘Before I go,’ he said, unpacking and re-packing the condensed milk case, ‘I want you to tell the Big Boss – because it is clear that he is the big bull in the family – I want you to go and tell him that he ain’t pay me for the signs I do in the store.’

‘Why you don’t go and tell him yourself?’ Shama was now angry and near to tears.

He tried to see himself asking Seth for money. He couldn’t. ‘You and all,’ he said, ‘don’t start provoking me. You think I want to talk to that man?
You
know him for a
long time. He is like a second father to you. You must ask him.’

‘And suppose he ask for what you owe him?’

‘I would give you straight back to him.’

‘You owe him more than he owe you.’

‘He owe me more than I owe him.’

They reduced it to a plain argument, which not only killed what remained of his anger, but even left him exhilarated, though a little puzzled as to what he should do next.

Before he could decide, C and Padma, Seth’s wife, came without knocking into the room. C was crying. Padma begged Mr Biswas, for the sake of family unity and the family name, not to do anything in a temper.

He became very offended, turned his back to Padma and C and walked heavily up and down the small room.

With the arrival of the women Shama’s attitude changed. She ceased to be irritated and suppliant and instead looked martyred. She sat stiffly on a low bench, thumb under her chin, elbow on her knee, and opened her eyes until they were as wide and empty as the younger god’s had been a few minutes before in the hall.

‘Don’t go, brother,’ C sobbed. ‘Your sister is begging you.’ She tried to grab his ankles.

He skipped away and looked puzzled.

C, sobbing, noticed his puzzlement and elucidated: ‘Chinta is begging you.’ She mentioned her own name to indicate the depth of her unhappiness and the sincerity of her plea; and she began to wail.

By coming up to plead with him Chinta had as good as confessed that it was her husband Govind who had reported Mr Biswas’s blasphemies to Seth; she was also claiming that Govind had triumphed. Mr Biswas knew that when husbands quarrelled it was the duty of the wife of the victorious husband to placate the defeated husband, and the duty of the wife of the defeated husband not to display anger, but skilfully to suggest that her unhappiness was due, in equal measure, to both husbands. Shama, following Chinta’s arrival, had cast herself as the defeated wife and was making a commendable first attempt at this difficult role.

There was no means of protesting at this subtle humiliation. Up to that moment Mr Biswas had never felt that he had enemies. People were simply indifferent to him. But now an enemy, the enemy, had declared itself. And he resolved not to run away.

And having made his resolve, he felt he had already won. And, already a winner, he looked upon Chinta and Padma with charity. Chinta was sobbing to herself, dabbing at her eyes with her veil. He said to her, kindly, ‘Why your husband don’t take a job with the
Gazette,
eh? He is a born reporter.’ This had no effect on the flow of tears from Chinta’s bright eyes. Shama still sat martyred and unmoving, eyes wide, knees apart, skirt draped over knees. ‘What the hell you playing you thinking, eh?’ She didn’t hear. Padma continued to behave with fatigued dignity. He said nothing to her. She resembled Mrs Tulsi but was fatter and looked older. Her sallow, unhealthy skin was oily, and she continually fanned herself, as though tormented by some inner heat. After her first plea she hadn’t looked at Mr Biswas or spoken to him. She didn’t cry or look sadder than usual. She had come on too many of these missions for them to thrill her the way they still thrilled Chinta: there was not a man in the house with whom Seth had not quarrelled at some time or other. Padma simply came, made her plea, sat and looked unwell. She never, in the hall or elsewhere, expressed approval of Seth’s actions or disapproval of those of her nieces’ husbands; this won her much respect and made her a good peacemaker.

Sternly and impatiently Mr Biswas said, ‘All right. All right. Dry your tears. I not going.’

Chinta gave a short loud sob; it marked the end of her tears.

‘But just tell them not to provoke me, that’s all.’

Sighing, Padma rose, heavily and unhealthily; and without another word she and Chinta left the room.

Shama unstiffened. Her eyes narrowed a little, her fingers left her chin. She began to cry, silently, and her body underwent a relaxing, melting process which fascinated Mr Biswas and infuriated him. Her arms seemed to grow rounder; her shoulders rounded and drooped; her back curved; her eyes
softened until they were quite liquid with tears; her wrists rested on her knees as if broken; her hands flapped loose; her long fingers swung lifelessly, as if broken at every joint.

‘Talk about bad blood,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘Talk
about bad blood!’

Disappointed in Govind, Mr Biswas began to find virtues in brothers-in-law he had disregarded. There was Hari, a tall, pale, quiet man who spent much time at the long table, working through mounds of rice in a slow, unenthusiastic but efficient way, watched over by his pregnant wife. He spent even more time in the latrine, and this made him feared. ‘They should ring a bell when Hari decide to go to the latrine,’ Mr Biswas told Shama, ‘just as how they ring a bell to tell people they cutting off the water.’ It was generally accepted at Hanuman House that Hari was a sick man; his wife told with sorrow and pride of the terrifying diagnoses of various doctors. No man looked less suitable for work on the estate; it was hard to imagine that thin, gentle voice ordering labourers about, reproving the idle and shouting down the argumentative. He was in fact a pundit, by training and inclination, and never looked so happy as when he changed from estate clothes into a dhoti and sat in the verandah upstairs reading from some huge, ungainly Hindi book that rested on a stylishly carved Kashmiri bookrest. He did the
puja
when the gods were away and he still conducted occasional ceremonies for close friends. He offended no one and amused no one. He was obsessed with his illnesses, his food and his religious books.

Between his estate duties, his reading in the verandah and his visits to the latrine, Hari had little free time, and was open to approach only at the long table. But then conversation was not easy. Hari believed in chewing every mouthful forty times, and was a noisy and preoccupied eater.

Sitting next to Hari one evening, receiving a brief ruminant glance from him and a concerned stare from his wife, Mr Biswas waited until Hari had champed and ground and squelched through a mouthful. Then he hurriedly asked, ‘What do you feel about the Aryans?’

He was speaking of the protestant Hindu missionaries who had come from India and were preaching that caste was unimportant, that Hinduism should accept converts, that idols should be abolished, that women should be educated, preaching against all the doctrines the orthodox Tulsis held dear.

‘What do you feel about the Aryans?’ Mr Biswas asked.

‘The Aryans?’ Hari said, and started on another mouthful. His tone declared that it was a frivolous question raised by a mischievous person.

A look of anguish came over the face of Hari’s wife.

‘Yes,’ Mr Biswas said, despairingly filling in the pause. ‘The Aryans.’

‘I don’t think much about them.’ Hari bit at a pepper, baring sharp little white teeth, like a rat’s, and surprising in such a tall and sluggish man. ‘I hear,’ he went on, the merest hint of amusement and reproof in his voice, ‘that you have been doing a lot of thinking about them.’

Mr Biswas was almost an Aryan convert.

It was Misir, the idle journalist, who had encouraged him to go to hear Pankaj Rai. ‘He is not one of those illiterate Trinidad pundits, you know,’ Misir said. ‘Pankaj is a
BA
and a
LLB
into the bargain. The man is a real orator. A purist, man.’ Mr Biswas had not asked what a purist was, but the word, pronounced with reverence by Misir, appealed strongly to him, suggesting not only purity and fastidiousness, but also elegance and breeding.

He had an additional inducement: the meeting was to be held at the home of the Naths. The Naths owned land and a soap factory, and were the Tulsis’ most important rivals in Arwacas. Between Naths and Tulsis of all ages there was an enmity as established and unexamined as the enmity between Hindu and Muslim. The enmity had grown more acrimonious since the Naths had built a new house in the modern Port of Spain style.

Purist, Mr Biswas thought, when he saw Pankaj Rai. The man
is
a purist. He was elegant in a long, black, close-fitting Indian coat; and when he shook Mr Biswas by the hand Mr Biswas surrendered to his graciousness, at the same time noting
with satisfaction that Pankaj Rai was as short as himself and had an equally ugly nose. He also had unusually heavy, drooping eyelids which could make him look comic or sinister, benevolent or supercilious. They dropped a fraction of an inch and converted a smile into a faint but devastating sneer. This was particularly effective when he began to ridicule the practices of orthodox Hinduism. He spoke without flourish, and slowly, as if tasting the phrases beforehand, like a good purist; and it was a revelation to Mr Biswas that words and phrases which by themselves were commonplace could be welded into sentences of such balance and beauty. He found he agreed with everything Pankaj Rai said: after thousands of years of religion idols were an insult to the human intelligence and to God; birth was unimportant; a man’s caste should be determined only by his actions.