A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [104]
His departure was followed by another. Mrs Tulsi went to live in Port of Spain, not caring for the younger god to be in that city by himself, and not trusting anyone else to look after him. She bought not one house, but three: one to live in, two to rent out. She travelled up to Port of Spain with the god every Sunday evening and came down with him every Friday afternoon.
During her absences the accepted degrees of precedence at Hanuman House lost some of their meaning. Sushila, the widow, was reduced to nonentity. Many sisters attempted to seize power and a number of squabbles ensued. Offended sisters ostentatiously looked after their own families, sometimes even cooking separately for a day or two. Padma, Seth’s wife, alone continued to be respected, but she showed no inclination to assert authority. Seth exacted the obedience of everyone; he could not impose harmony. That was reestablished every week-end, when Mrs Tulsi and the younger god returned.
And just before the school holidays all quarrels were forgotten. The house was scrubbed and cleaned, the brass polished and the yard tidied, as though to receive passing royalty; and the brothers-in-law vied with one another in laying aside offerings for the god: a Julie mango, a bunch of bananas, an especially large purple-skinned avocado pear.
Mr Biswas brought nothing. Shama complained.
‘And what about my son, eh?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘He lost in the crowd? Who looking after him? He not studying too?’
For, halfway through the term, Anand had begun to go to the mission school. He hated it. He soaked his shoes in water; he was flogged and sent to school in wet shoes. He threw away Captain Cutteridge’s First Primer and said it had been stolen; he was flogged and given another copy.
‘Anand is a coward,’ Savi told Mr Biswas. ‘He still frightened of school. And you know what Aunt Chinta say to him yesterday? “If you don’t look out you will come a grass-cutter just like your father.” ’
‘Grass-cutter! Look, look, Savi. The next time your aunt Chinta open that big mouth’ – he broke off, remembering grammar – ‘the next time she opens her big mouth –’
Savi smiled.
‘– you just ask her whether she has ever read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.’
These were household names to Savi.
‘Munnih-munnih-munnih,’ Mr Biswas muttered.
‘Munnih-munnih?’
‘Money. Checking munnih-munnih-munnih. That is the only way your mother’s family like to get their fat little hands dirty. Look, the next time Chinta or anybody else says I am a grass-cutter, you just tell them that it is better to be a grass-cutter than a crab-catcher. You got that? Better to be a grass-cutter than a crab-catcher.’
And he opened the campaign himself. He had seen some large blue-backed crabs scrambling awkwardly about the black tank in the yard. ‘Whoo!’ he said in the hall. ‘Those are big crabs in the tank. Where did they come from?’
‘Govind bought them for Mai and Owad,’ Chinta said proudly.
‘Bought them?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Anybody would say that he caught them.’
When he next went to Hanuman House he found that Savi had delivered all his messages.
Chinta came straight up to him and said, with the mannishness she put on when Mrs Tulsi was away, ‘Brother-in-law, I want you to know that until you came to this house there were no crab-catchers here.’
‘Eh? No what?’
‘Crab-catchers.’
‘Crab-catchers? What about crab-catchers? You don’t have enough here?’
‘Marcus Aurelius-Aurelius,’ Chinta said, retreating to the kitchen. ‘Shama sister, I don’t want to meddle in the way you are bringing up your children, but you are turning them into men and women before their time.