A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [135]
He spoke of the perquisites of the job as though the Lunatic Asylum had been organized solely for his benefit.
‘Take the canteen now. Everything there five cents and six cents cheaper than outside, you know. But that is because they not running it to make a profit. If you ever want anything you must let me know.’
‘Sanatogen?’
‘I will see. Look, why you don’t leave the country, man, and come to Port of Spain? A man like you shouldn’t remain in this backward place. No wonder this thing happen to you. Come up and spend some time with us. Dehuti always talking about you, you know.’
Mr Biswas promised to think it over.
Ramchand walked heavily through the house and when he came into the hall shouted at Sushila, whom he didn’t know, ‘Everything all right, maharajin?’
‘He looks like a real chantar-caste-type,’ Sushila said.
‘However much you wash a pig,’ Chinta said, ‘you can’t turn it into a cow.’
That evening Seth went to the Blue Room.
‘Well, Mohun. How you feeling?’
‘All right, I think.’ Mr Biswas spoke with something like his humorous high-pitched voice.
‘You thinking of going back to Green Vale?’
To his own surprise, Mr Biswas found himself behaving in the old way. With an expression of mock-horror he said, ‘Who? Me?’
‘I glad you feel that way. As a matter of fact you can’t go back.’
‘Look at me. I crying.’
‘Guess what happen.’
‘All the cane burn down.’
‘Wrong. Only your house.’
‘Burn down? You mean it insuranburn.’
‘No, no. Not insuranburn. It burn fair and square. Green Vale people. Wicked like hell, man, those people.’
Seth saw that Mr Biswas was crying and looked away. But Seth misunderstood.
An immense relief had come upon Mr Biswas. The anxiety, the fear, the anguish which had kept his mind humming and his body taut now ebbed away. He could feel it ebbing; it was a physical sensation; it left him weak and very weary. And he felt an enormous gratitude to Seth. He wanted to embrace him, to promise eternal friendship, to make some vow.
‘You mean,’ he said at last, ‘that after all that rain they burn it down?’ And he burst out sobbing.
That night Shama gave birth to her fourth child, another girl.
Mr Biswas’s books had been placed among those in the Book Room. Somewhere among them was the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare. No entry was made on its endpaper of this new birth.
The thin, short-winded and repetitive cry of the baby hardly made itself heard outside the Rose Room. The midwife no longer squatted in the hall and smoked. She was busy. She washed, she cleaned, she watched and ruled. After nine days she was paid and dismissed. The sisters told Anand and Savi, ‘You have a new sister. Somebody else to get a share of your father’s property.’ And they told Anand, ‘You are lucky. You are still the only boy. But wait. One day you will get a brother, and he will cut off your nose.’
Mr Biswas mixed and drank Sanatogen, drank table-spoonfuls of Ferrol and, in the evenings, glasses of Ovaltine. One day he remembered his fingernails. When he looked he saw they were whole, unbitten. There were still the periods of darkness, the spasms of panic; but now he knew they were not real and because he knew this he overcame them. He remained in the Blue Room, feeling secure to be only a part of Hanuman House, an organism that possessed a life, strength and power to comfort which was quite separate from the individuals who composed it.
‘Savi, what you drinking?’
‘Ovaltine.’
‘Anand, what you drinking?’
‘Ovaltine.’
‘It nice?’
‘Very nice.’
‘Ma, Savi and Anand drinking Ovaltine. Their pappa give it to them.’
‘Well, let me tell you, eh, boy, your father is not a millionaire to give you Ovaltine. You hear?’
And the next day:
‘Jai, what you drinking?’
‘Ovaltine, like you.’
‘Vidiadhar, you drinking Ovaltine too?’
‘No. We drinking Milo. We like it better.’
Mr Biswas came out from the Blue Room to the drawingroom with the thronelike chairs and the statuary. He felt safe and even a little adventurous. He went through to the wooden house. In the verandah Hari