A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [131]
The flame of the oil lamp swayed, shrank, throwing the room into darkness for seconds, then shone again.
A shaking on the roof, a groan, a prolonged grinding noise, and Anand knew that a sheet of corrugated iron had been torn off. One sheet was left loose. It flapped and jangled continuously. Anand waited for the fall of the sheet that had been blown off.
He never heard it.
Lightning; thunder; the rain on roof and walls; the loose iron sheet; the wind pushing against the house, pausing, and pushing again.
Then there was a roar that overrode them all. When it struck the house the window burst open, the lamp went instantly out, the rain lashed in, the lightning lit up the room and the world outside, and when the lightning went out the room was part of the black void.
Anand began to scream.
He waited for his father to say something, to close the window, light the lamp.
But Mr Biswas only muttered on the bed, and the rain and wind swept through the room with unnecessary strength and forced open the door to the drawingroom, wall-less, floorless, of the house Mr Biswas had built.
Anand screamed and screamed.
Rain and wind smothered his voice, overturned the lamp, made the rockingchair rock and skid, rattled the kitchen safe against the wall, destroyed all smell. Lightning, flashing intermittently, steel-blue exploding into white, showed the ants continually disarrayed, continually re-forming.
Then Anand saw a light swaying in the dark. It was a man, bending forward against the rain, a hurricane lamp in one hand, a cutlass in the other. The living flame was like a miracle.
It was Ramkhilawan from the barracks. He had a jutebag over his head and shoulders like a cape. He was barefooted and his trousers were rolled up above his knees. The hum-cane lamp showed glinting streaks of rain, and, as he climbed the slippery steps, his footprints of mud, instantly washed away.
‘Oh, my poor little calf!’ he called. ‘Oh, my poor little calf!’
He closed the drawingroom door. The lamp illuminated a wet chaos. He struggled with the window. As soon as he had pulled it a little way from the wall to which it was pinned, the wind, rising, gave a push, and the window slammed shut, making Ramkhilawan jump back. He took off the dripping jutebag from his head and shoulders; his shirt stuck to his skin.
The oil lamp was not broken. There even remained some oil in it. The chimney was cracked, but still whole. Ramkhilawan brought out a damp box of matches from his trouser pocket and put a lighted match to the wick. The wick, waterlogged, spluttered; the match burned down; the wick caught.
6. A Departure
A MESSAGE had to be sent to Hanuman House. The labourers always responded to the melodramatic and calamitous, and there were many volunteers. Through rain and wind and thunder a messenger went that evening to Arwacas and dramatically unfolded his tale of calamity.
Mrs Tulsi and the younger god were in Port of Spain. Shama was in the Rose Room; the midwife had been attending upon her for two days.
Sisters and their husbands held a council.
‘I did always think he was mad,’ Chinta said.
Sushila, the childless widow, spoke with her sickroom authority. ‘It isn’t about Mohun I am worried, but the children.’
Padma, Seth’s wife, asked, ‘What do you think he is sick with?’
Sumati the flogger said, ‘Message only said that he was very sick.’
‘And that his house had been practically blown away,’ Jai’s mother added.
There were some smiles.
‘I am sorry to correct you, Sumati sister,’ Chinta said. ‘But Message said that he wasn’t right in his head.’
Seth said, ‘I suppose we have to bring the paddler home.’
The men got ready to go to Green Vale; they were as excited as the messenger.
The sisters bustled about, impressing and mystifying the children. Sushila, who occupied the Blue Room when the god was away, cleared it of all personal, womanly things; much of her time was devoted to keeping the mysteries of women from men. She also burned certain evil-smelling herbs to purify and protect the house.
‘Savi,