A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [123]
Only then, when the danger had disappeared, Mr Biswas realized that for more than an hour he had not questioned himself.
Instantly the questionings, the fear, came.
When the labourers returned to the barracks their chatter lasted a short time, and he was left alone.
But the hour had proved one thing. He was going to get better soon.
It was the first of many disappointments. In time he came to disregard these periods of freedom, just as he no longer expected to wake up one morning and find himself whole again.
At the beginning of the Christmas school holidays, when the sugarcane was in arrow once more and the Christmas shop-signs were going up at Arwacas, Shama sent word by Seth that she was bringing the children to Green Vale for a few days.
Mr Biswas waited for them with dread. On the day they were to arrive he began to wish for some accident that would prevent their coming. But he knew there would be no accident. If anything was to happen he had to act. He decided that he had to get rid of Anand and Savi and himself, in such a way that the children would never know who had killed them. All morning he was possessed of visions in which he cutlassed, poisoned, strangled, burned, Anand and Savi; so that even before they came his relationship with them had been perverted. About Myna and Shama he didn’t care; he didn’t want to kill them.
They came. At once his designs became insubstantial and absurd. He felt only resignation and a great fatigue. And the deception and especial pain he had wished to avoid began. Even while he allowed himself to be touched and kissed by Anand and Savi he was questioning himself about them, looking for the fear, and wondering whether they had seen the deception and could tell what was going on in his mind.
Of Shama he was not afraid; only envious, for her unthinking assurance. Then almost immediately he began to hate her. Her pregnancy was grotesque; he hated the way she sat down; when she ate he listened for the noises she made; he hated the way she fussed and clucked over the children; he hated it when she puffed and fanned and sweated in her pregnant way; he was nauseated by the frills and embroidery and other ornamentation on her clothes.
Shama, Savi and Myna slept on bedding on the floor. Anand slept with Mr Biswas on the fourposter. Dreading the boy’s touch, Mr Biswas built a bank of pillows between Anand and himself.
His fatigue deepened. The next day, Sunday, he scarcely got out of bed. Whereas before he felt he had to be out of the room, now he didn’t wish to leave it. He said he was sick and found it easy to simulate the symptoms of malaria.
When Seth came Mr Biswas told him, ‘Is ague, I think.’
After a week his fatigue hadn’t left him. Sitting up in bed he made kites and toy-carts for Anand and built a chest-of-drawers with matchboxes for Savi. The longer he stayed in the room the less he wanted to leave it. He became constipated. Yet from time to time he had to go outside; then he came back hurriedly, anxiously, relaxing only when he was on the bed again.
He continued to observe Shama closely, with suspicion, hatred and nausea. He never spoke to her directly, but through one of the children; and it was some time before Shama realized this.
As he was lying in bed one morning she came and placed her palm, then the back of her hand, on his forehead. The action offended him, flattered him, and made him uneasy. She had been cutting vegetables and he couldn’t bear their smell on her hand.
‘No fever,’ she said.
She undid his shirt and put her hand, large and dark and foreign, on his pale, soft chest.
He wanted to scream.
He said, ‘No, I not fat enough yet. You got to put me back and feed me some more. Here, why don’t you just feel my finger?’
She took her hand away. ‘Something on your mind, man?’
‘Something on your mind?’ he mimicked. ‘Something in my mind and you know what it