A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [127]
The snakes appeared more often in his dreams. He began to regard them as living, and wondered what it would be like to have one fall and curl on his skin.
The questioning and the fear remained. He hadn’t left that at the barracks.
The trees could conceal so much.
And one night Anand was awakened by Mr Biswas jumping out of bed, screaming, tearing at his vest as though he had been attacked by a column of red ants.
A snake had fallen on him. Very thin, and not long.
When they looked up they saw the parent snake, waiting to release some more.
With poles and brooms they tried to pull down the snakes. The asphalt only swung when they hit it. To grab at it was only to pull away a small snake, leaving the pregnant parent above.
He got a cocoa-knife and spent the following evening cutting down the snakes. It was not easy. Below the crust at the roots the asphalt was soft but rubbery. He scraped hard and felt the rust from the roof falling on his face.
By the next afternoon the snakes had begun to grow again.
He said he had another touch of malaria. He wrapped himself in the floursack sheet and rocked in his chair. Tarzan had his tail crushed; he leapt up with a yell, and went out of the room.
‘Say Rama Rama Sita Rama, and nothing will happen to you,’ Mr Biswas said.
Anand repeated the words, faster and faster.
‘You don’t want to leave me?’
Anand didn’t reply.
This had become one of Mr Biswas’s fears. By concentrating on it – a power he had in his state – he managed to make it the most oppressive of all his fears: that Anand would leave him and he would be left alone.
Anand was rolling his tin-lid about the yard one afternoon when two men came to the house and asked whether he lived there. Then they asked for the driver.
‘He in the fields,’ Anand said. ‘But he coming back just now.’
Between the trees the road was cool. The men squatted there. They hummed; they talked; they threw pebbles; they chewed blades of grass; they spat. Anand watched them.
One of the men called, ‘Boy, come here.’ He was fat and yellow-skinned with a black moustache and light eyes.
The other man, who was younger, said, ‘We digging for treasure.’
Anand couldn’t resist that. Pushing his tin-lid, he went to the road.
‘Come on. Dig,’ the younger man said.
The fat man cried, ‘Yaah!’ and pulled out a cent from the gravel.
Anand went to where the fat man was and began scraping
Then the younger man called out, ‘Aha!’ and took up a penny from the gravel.
Anand ran to him. Then the fat man called out again; he had found another cent.
Anand moved back and forth between the men.
‘But I not finding any,’ he said.
‘Here,’ the younger man said. ‘Dig here.’
Anand dug and found a penny. ‘I could keep it?’
‘But is yours,’ the younger man said. ‘You find it.’
The game went on for some time. Anand found two more cents.
Then the fat man appeared to lose interest. ‘The driver taking long,’ he said. ‘Where your father, boy?’
Anand pointed to the sky and was pleased when the fat man looked puzzled and asked, ‘The driver is your father, not so?’
‘Well, everybody think he is my father. But he is not my father really. He is just a man I know.’
The men looked at one another. The fat man took up a handful of gravel and made as if to throw it at Anand. ‘Run away,’ he said. ‘Go on, haul your little tail.’
‘Is not your road,’ Anand said. ‘Is the PWD road.’
‘So you is a smart man into the bargain? Who the hell you think you talking to?’ The fat man rose. ‘Since you so smart, give me back my money.’
‘Find your own. This is mine.’ Anand turned to the younger man. ‘You see me find it.’
‘Leave the boy,’ the younger man said.
‘I not going to take cheek from a little boy who rob me of my last few cents,’ the fat man said. ‘I going to teach him a lesson.’ He seized Anand.
‘Hit me and I tell my father.’
The fat man hesitated.
‘Leave him, Dinnoo,’ the younger man said. ‘Look, the driver.’
Anand broke away and ran to Mr Biswas.