A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [133]
‘Savi,’ the children said, ‘your pappa here. In the Blue Room.’
But she didn’t want to go to the Blue Room or the Rose Room.
Outside, naked children splashed shrieking in the flooded road and swollen canals, racing paper boats and wooden boats and even sticks.
Towards the middle of the morning the sky lightened and lifted, the rain thinned to a drizzle, then stopped altogether. The clouds rolled back, the sky was suddenly blinding blue and there were shadows on the water. Rapidly, their gurgling soon lost in the awakening every day din, canals subsided, leaving a wash of twigs and dirt on the road. In yards, against fences, there were tidemarks of debris and pebbles which looked as though they had been washed and sifted; around stones dirt had been washed away; green leaves that had been torn down were partly buried in silt. Roads and roofs dried, steaming, areas of dryness spreading out swiftly, like ink on a blotter. And presently roads and yards were dry, except for the depressions where water had collected. Heat nibbled at their edges, until even the depressions failed to reflect the blue sky. And the world was dry again, except for the mud in the shelter of the trees.
The news about Mr Biswas was broken to Shama. She suggested that the furniture from Green Vale should be brought to Hanuman House.
The doctor came, a Roman Catholic Indian, but much respected by the Tulsis for his manners and the extent of his property. He dismissed talk about having Mr Biswas certified and said that Mr Biswas was suffering from nerves and a certain vitamin deficiency. He prescribed a course of Sanatogen, a tonic called Ferrol with reputed iron-giving, body-building qualities, and Ovaltine. He also said that Mr Biswas was to have much rest, and should go to Port of Spain as soon as he was better to see a specialist.
Almost as soon as the doctor had gone the thaumaturge came, an unsuccessful man with a flashy turban and an anxious manner; his fees were low. He purified the Blue Room and erected invisible barriers against evil spirits. He recommended that strips of aloe should be hung in doorways and windows and said that the family ought to have known that they should always have a black doll in the doorway of the hall to divert evil spirits: prevention was better than cure. Then he inquired whether he couldn’t prepare a little mixture as well.
The offer was rejected. ‘Ovaltine, Ferrol, Sanatogen,’ Seth said. ‘Give Mohun your mixture and you turn him into a little capsule.’
But they hung the aloe; it was a natural purgative that cost nothing and large quantities were always in the house. And they hung the black doll, one of a small ancient stock in the Tulsi Store, an English line which had not appealed to the people of Arwacas.
That same afternoon a lorry brought the furniture from Green Vale. It was all damp and discoloured. The polish on Shama’s dressingtable had turned white. The mattress was soaked and smelly; the coconut fibre had swollen and stained the ticking. The cloth covers of Mr Biswas’s books were still sticky, and their colours had run along the edges of the pages, which had wrinkled and stuck together.
The metal sections of the fourposter were left unmounted in that part of the long room which had once been Shama’s and Mr Biswas’s; the boards and the mattress were put out to dry in the sun. The safe stood in the hall, near the doorway to the kitchen, looking almost new against the sooty green wall. It still exhibited the Japanese coffee-set (the head of a Japanese woman at the bottom of every cup, an embossed dragon breathing fire outside), Seth’s wedding present to Shama, never used, only cleaned. The green table was also put in the hall, but in that jumble of unmatching