A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [119]
Thinking it would help him if he read novels, he bought a number of the cheap Reader’s Library editions. The covers were dark purple with gold lettering and decorations. In the stall at Arwacas they had looked attractive, but in his room he could scarcely bear to touch them. The gilt stuck to his fingers and the covers reminded him of funeral palls and of those undertakers’ horses that were draped with the colours of death every day.
The sun shone and the rain fell. The roof didn’t leak. But the asphalt began to melt and hung limply down: a legion of slim, black, growing snakes. Occasionally they fell, and, falling, curled and died.
Late one night, when he had put out the oil lamp and was in bed, he heard footsteps outside his room.
He lay still, listening. Then he jumped out of bed, grabbed his stick and deliberately knocked against the kitchen safe and table and Shama’s dressingtable. He stood at the side of the door and violently pushed out the top half, his body protected by the lower half.
He saw nothing but the night, the still, colourless barrackyard, the dead trees black against the moonlit sky. Two rooms away a light was burning: someone was out, or a child was ill.
Then, making a lapping, happy sound, Tarzan was on the step, wagging his tail so hard it struck against the lower half of the door.
He let him in and stroked him. His coat was damp.
Tarzan, overjoyed at the attention, stuck his muzzle against Mr Biswas’s face.
‘Egg!’
For a second Tarzan hesitated. No threat appearing, he redoubled his tail-wagging, continually shifting his hind legs.
Mr Biswas embraced him.
After that he always slept with his oil lamp on.
He began to fear that his house might be burned down. He went to bed with an added anxiety; every morning he opened his side window as soon as he got up, looking past the trees for signs of destruction; in the fields he worried about it. But the house always stood: the variegated roof, the frames, the crapaud pillars, the wooden staircase.
When Shama came he told her of his fears.
She said, ‘I don’t think they would worry about it.’
And he regretted telling her, for when Seth came he said, ‘So you frighten they burn it down, eh? Don’t worry. They not so idle.’
Mr Maclean came twice and went away.
And every day the rain fell, the sun blazed, the house became greyer, the sawdust, once fresh and aromatic, became part of the earth, the asphalt snakes hanging from the roof grew longer, and many more died, and Mr Biswas worked more and more elaborate messages of comfort for his walls with a steady, unthinking hand, and a mind in turmoil.
Then one evening a great calm settled on him, and he made a decision. He had for too long regarded situations as temporary; henceforth he would look upon every stretch of time, however short, as precious. Time would never be dismissed again. No action would merely lead to another; every action was a part of his life which could not be recalled; therefore thought had to be given to every action: the opening of a matchbox, the striking of a match. Slowly, then, as though unused to his limbs, and concentrating hard, he had his evening bath, cooked his meal, ate it, washed up, and settled down in his rockingchair to pass – no, to use, to enjoy, to live – the evening. The house was unimportant. The evening, in this room, was all that mattered.
And so great was his assurance that he did something he had not done for weeks. He took down the Reader’s Library edition of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He passed his hands over the cover; deliberately he opened the book, broke the spine in a few places, destroying it completely in one place, and, pulling up his legs on to the chair so that he was huddled and cosy, and smacking his lips, which was not one of his habits, he began to read.
His mind was clear. He had pushed everything apart from the Victor Hugo to the boundaries. He had made a clearing in the bush: that was the picture he gave himself of his mind: for his mind had become quite separate from the rest of