A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [129]
Soon it came. Isolated drops, rapping hard on the roof, like a slow roll of drums. The wind freshened, the rain slanted. Every drop that struck the uprights blotted, expanding, into the shape of a spear-head. The rain that struck the dust below the roof rolled itself into dark pellets of dirt, neat and spherical.
They lit the oil lamp. Moths flew to it. Flies, deceived by the darkness, had already settled down for the night; they were thick on the asphalt lengths.
Mr Biswas said, ‘If you go to Hanuman House, you have to give me back the colour-pencils.’
The wind blew in gusts, curving the fall of the rain.
‘But you did give them to me.’
‘Ah. But you didn’t take them. Remember? Anyway, I taking them back now.’
‘Well, you could take them back. I don’t want them.’
‘All right, all right. I was only joking. I not taking them back.’
‘I don’t want them.’
‘Take them.’
‘No.’
Anand went out to the unfinished drawingroom.
When the real rain came it announced itself seconds in advance by its roar: the roar of wind, of wind through trees, of the deluge on distant trees. Then came a swift crepitation on the roof, instantly lost in a continuous and even hammering, so loud that if Mr Biswas spoke Anand could not have heard.
Here and there Mr Maclean’s roof leaked; that added to the cosiness of shelter. Water fell from the corrugations in evenly-spaced streams, enclosing the house. Water flowed down the sloping land below the roof; the pellets of dirt had long disappeared. Water gouged out tortuous channels as it forced its way down to the road and down to the hollow before the barracks. And the rain continued to roar, and the roof resounded.
For several seconds at a time lightning lit up a shining chaotic world. Fresh mud flowed off Tarzan’s grave in a thin regular stream. Raindrops glittered as they struck the sodden ground. Then the thunder came, grating and close. Anand thought of a monstrous steam-roller breaking through the sky. The lightning was exciting but it made him feel peculiar. That, and the thunder, sent him back to the bedroom.
He surprised Mr Biswas writing with his finger on his head. Mr Biswas quickly pretended that he was playing with his hair. The flame of the oil lamp, though protected by a glass chimney, wavered; shadows dodged about the room; the shadows of the snakes swung in an ever-changing pattern on the shivering roof.
Still officially annoyed with his father, Anand sat down on the floor, at the foot of the bed, and held his arms over his knees. The din on the roof and the beat of the rain on the trees and earth made him feel chilly. Something fell near him. It was a winged ant, its wings collapsed and now a burden on its wormlike body. These creatures came out only in heavy rain and seldom lived beyond it. When they fell they never rose again. Anand pressed a finger on the broken wing. The ant wriggled, the wing was released; and the ant, suddenly busy, suddenly deceptively whole, moved off towards the dark.
All at once a cycle of heavy rain was over. It still drizzled, and the wind still blew, flinging the drizzle on the roof and walls like showers of sand. It was possible to hear the water from the roof falling to the earth, water gurgling as it ran off in its new channels. The rain had soaked through the gaps between the wall-boards. The edges of the floor were wet.
‘Rama Rama Sita Rama, Rama Rama Sita Rama.’
Mr Biswas was lolling on the bed, his legs locked together, his lips moving rapidly. The expression on his face was one of exasperation rather than pain.
Anand thought this was a plea for sympathy and ignored it. He leaned his head on his arms crossed over his knees, and rocked on the floor.
A fresh cycle of rain started. A winged ant dropped on Anand’s arm. Hurriedly he brushed it off; where the ant touched him seemed to burn. Then he saw that the room was full of these ants enjoying the last minutes of their short life. Their small wings, strained by large bodies, quickly