A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [134]
Savi was pained to see the furniture so scattered and disregarded, and angered to see the rockingchair being misused almost at once. At first the children stood on the cane-bottom and rocked violently. From this they evolved a game: four or five climbed into the chair and rocked; another four or five tried to pull them off. They fought over the chair and overturned it: that was the climax of the game. Knowing that to protest was to make herself absurd, Savi went to the Rose Room, with its basins and quaint jugs and tubes and smells, and complained to Shama.
Shama, always gentle with her children when she was alone with them, and especially gentle during her confinements, stroked Savi’s hair and told her that she was not to mind, she was being selfish, and if she complained to anybody else she would certainly cause a quarrel. Mr Biswas was sick, Shama said; and she herself was sick. Savi ought not to behave in a way that would annoy anyone.
‘And where have they put the bureau?’ Shama asked.
‘In the long room.’
Shama looked pleased.
Some of Mr Biswas’s most elaborate placards had also been brought from Green Vale. They were considered beautiful; though the sentiments, from a man long thought to be an atheist, caused some astonishment. The placards were hung in the hall and the Book Room, and when the children said, ‘Savi, your pappa did really paint those signs?’ the pain at seeing the furniture scattered was lessened.
The children said, ‘Savi, so all-you staying here for good now?’
Lying in the room next to Shama’s, perpetually dark, Mr Biswas slept and woke and slept again. The darkness, the silence, the absence of the world enveloped and comforted him. At some far-off time he had suffered great anguish. He had fought against it. Now he had surrendered, and this surrender had brought peace. He had controlled his disgust and fear when the men had come for him. He was glad he had. Surrender had removed the world of damp walls and paper covered walls, of hot sun and driving rain, and had brought him this: this worldless room, this nothingness. As the hours passed he found he could piece together recent happenings, and he marvelled that he had survived the horror. More and more frequently he forgot fear and questioning; sometimes, for as much as a minute or so, he was unable, even when he tried, to re-enter fully the state of mind he had lived through. There remained an unease, which did not seem real or actual and was more like an indistinct, chilling memory of horror.
Further messages had been sent and visitors came. Pratap and Prasad, abashed by the size of the house and conscious of their own condition, felt obliged to be kind to all the children. They began by giving each child a penny; but they had underestimated the number of children; they ended up by giving out halfpennies. They told Mr Biswas exactly what they had been doing when they got Message; it seemed that they both nearly missed Message; they had both, however, had some signs on the night of the storm that something was wrong with Mr Biswas and had told their wives so; they urged Mr Biswas to get confirmation from their wives. Mr Biswas listened with a sense of withdrawal. He asked after their families. Pratap and Prasad construed this as pure politeness, and though there was little to talk about, dismissed their families as worthless of serious consideration. And after making occasional solemn noises, looking down at their hats, examining them from various angles, brushing the bands, they got up to go, sighing.
Ramchand, Mr Biswas’s brother-in-law, was less restrained. He had acquired a city brashness that went well with his uniform. He had left the country and the rum-factory years before and was now a warden at the Lunatic Asylum in Port of Spain.
‘Don’t think I shy of you,’ he told Mr Biswas. ‘I used to this. This is my work.’
He spoke of himself, his career, the Lunatic Asylum.
‘You ain’t got a gramophone here?’ he asked.
‘Gramophone?’
‘Music,’ Ramchand