A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [101]
Savi and Anand looked up apprehensively.
Mr Biswas went into the room and sat in the rockingchair.
Shama said loudly, ‘Anand, go and ask your father if he would like a cup of tea.’
Anand came, shy and worried, and mumbled the message.
Mr Biswas did not reply. He studied Anand’s big head and thin arms. The skin at the elbow was baggy, and scarred purple with eczema. Had he too been fed on sulphur and condensed milk?
Anand waited, then went outside.
Mr Biswas rocked. The floor-planks were wide and rough. One had cambered and cracked; whenever the rockers came down on it, it squeaked and snapped.
Savi, not looking at Mr Biswas, brought Myna into the room and laid her carefully on the bed.
Shama was fanning the coal-pot.
Savi, her pyromaniacal instincts aroused, hurried out of the room, saying, ‘Ma, you getting coal all over your clothes. Let me.’
So. They had all forgotten the doll’s house. He drew up his feet on to the chair, leaned his head back, closed his eyes and rocked. The board replied.
‘Anand, take this to your father.’
He heard Anand approaching but didn’t open his eyes. He wondered whether he shouldn’t take the tea and fling it over Shama’s fussy embroidered dress and smiling, uncertain face.
He opened his eyes, took the cup from Anand, and sipped.
When Seth came back he smiled at everyone benevolently and sat down on the steps. Shama gave him a large cup of tea and he drank it in three gurgling draughts, snorting and sighing in between. He took off his hat and smoothed his damp hair. Suddenly he began to laugh. ‘Mohun, I hear you have a case.’
‘Case? Oh, case! Small one. Tiny tiny. Baby case, really.’
‘You are a funny sort of paddler. Get your summons yet?’
‘Waiting for it.’
‘And Savi. You get your summons yet?’
Savi smiled, as though there had been no terror in the dark road and the flash of the policeman’s torch.
‘Well, don’t worry.’ Seth got up. ‘These people just want to see whether your dollar-notes look any different from theirs. I settle it up. Wouldn’t do anybody any good for your case to come up.’
And he was gone.
Mr Biswas closed his eyes, rocked on the noisy board, and the children became anxious again.
He remained in the chair until it was dark and time to eat. Oil lamps were lighted in many barrackrooms. Far down a drunk man was swearing.
Savi and Anand ate sitting on the steps. As he ate at the green table Mr Biswas became less torpid, and Shama correspondingly gloomier. Towards the end of the meal he even began to clown. He squatted on the chair, with his left hand squashed between calf and thigh, and asked banteringly, ‘Why you didn’t stay at the monkey house, eh?’
She didn’t reply.
After he had washed his hands and gargled out of the side window, Shama sat down on the steps to eat. He watched her.
‘Crying, eh?’
Slowly the tears flowed out of her wide eyes.
‘So you vex up then?’
One tear raced down her cheek and hung trembling over her top lip.
‘It tickling?’
Her mouth was half full but she stopped chewing. ‘Don’t tell me the food so bad.’
She said, as though to herself, ‘If it wasn’t for the children –’
‘If it wasn’t for the children, what?’
She continued to chew with a loud and morose deliberation.
In one corner Savi and Anand were rolling out sacks and sheets on which to sleep.
‘You come,’ Shama said. ‘You come, you didn’t look right, you didn’t look left, you start getting on, you curse me upside down –’
It was the beginning of her apology. He didn’t interrupt.
‘You didn’t know what I had to put up with. Talking night and day. Puss-puss here. Puss-puss there. Chinta dropping remarks all the time. Everybody beating their children the moment they start talking to Savi. Nobody wanting to talk to me. Everybody behaving as though I kill their father.’ She stopped, and cried. ‘So I had to satisfy them. I break up the dolly-house and everybody was satisfied. And then you come. You didn’t look right, you didn’t look left