A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [105]
Mr Biswas winked at Savi.
Presently Chinta came out to the hall again. She had obviously thought of something to say. Sternly and needlessly she rearranged chairs and benches and straightened the photographs of Pundit Tulsi and a huge Chinese calendar which showed a woman of sly beauty against a background of tamed trees and waterfalls. ‘Savi,’ Chinta said at last, and her voice was gentle, ‘you reach first standard at school and you must know the poetry Captain Cutteridge have in that book. I don’t think your father know it because I don’t think your father reach first standard.’
Mr Biswas had not been brought up on Captain Cutteridge but on the Royal Reader. Nevertheless he said, ‘First standard? I skipped that one. I went straight from Introductory to second standard.’
‘I thought so, brother-in-law. But you, Savi, you know the poetry I mean. The one about felo-de-se. The little pigs. You know it?’
‘I know it! I know it!’ a boy exclaimed. This was Jai, the expert lace-knotter, fourteen months younger than Savi. He had developed into something of an exhibitionist. He ran to the centre of the hall, held his hands behind his back and said, ‘The Three Little Piggies. By Sir Alfred Scott-Gatty.’
A jolly old sow once lived in a sty.
And three little piggies had she,
And she waddled about, saying, ‘Umph! Umph! Umph!’
While the little ones said, ‘Wee! Wee!’
‘My dear little brothers,’ said one of the brats,
‘My dear little piggies,’ said he,
‘Let us all for the future say, “Umph! Umph! Umph!”
‘Tis so childish to say, “Wee! Wee!” ’
While Jai recited Chinta moved her head up and down in time to the rhythm and stared smilingly at Savi.
‘So after a time,’ Jai went on,
So after a time these little pigs died,
They all died of ‘felo-de-se’,
From trying too hard to say, ‘Umph! Umph! Umph!’
When they could only say, ‘Wee! Wee!’
‘A moral there is to this little song,’ Chinta said, continuing the poem with Jai and wagging her finger at Savi. ‘A moral that’s easy to see.’
‘Felo-de-se?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Sounds like the name of a crab-catcher to me.’
Chinta stamped, irritated as when she lost at cards, and, looking as though she was about to cry, went back to the kitchen.
‘Shama sister,’ Mr Biswas heard her say in a breaking voice, ‘I want you to ask your husband to stop provoking me. Otherwise I will just have to tell him’ – her husband, Govind – ‘and you know what happened when he had a little falling-out with your husband.’
‘All right, Chinta sister, I will tell him.’
Shama came out and said, with annoyance, ‘Man, stop provoking C. You know she can’t take jokes.’
‘Jokes? What jokes? Crab-catching is no joke, you hear.’
Chinta had her revenge a few days later.
Mr Biswas arrived at Hanuman House when the evening meal was over and the children were sitting about the hall in groups of three or four, reading primers or pretending to read. One of the economies of the house was that as many children as possible shared a book; and the children were talking among themselves and trying to hide the fact by holding their hands over their mouths and turning pages regularly. When Mr Biswas came they looked at him with amusement and expectancy.
Chinta smiled. ‘You have come to see your son, brother-in-law?’
A rustle of turning pages coincided with many muffled titters.
Savi left a group around a book and came to Mr Biswas. She looked unhappy. ‘Anand upstairs.’ When they were halfway up she whispered, ‘He kneeling down.’
In the hall Chinta was singing.
‘Kneeling down? What for?’
‘He mess up himself at school today and had to leave.’
They went through the Book Room to the long room, which he and Shama had occupied after their marriage. The lotus decorations on the wall were as faded as before; the Demerara window through which he had gargled was propped open with a section of a broomstick.
Anand was kneeling in a corner with his face to the wall.
‘He kneeling down since this afternoon,’ Savi said.
Mr Biswas didn’t feel this was true. Anand had been left to himself, and was now kneeling upright, without a sign of fatigue,