A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [136]
Leaning on the verandah half-wall, with his back to Hari, Mr Biswas thought about Hari’s position in the family. Hari spent all his free time reading. He used this reading for nothing; he disliked disputation of any sort. No one was able to check his knowledge of Sanskrit and his scholarship had to be taken on trust. Yet he was respected inside the family and outside it. How did Hari get to that position? Mr Biswas wondered. Where did he start?
What would happen if he, Mr Biswas, made a sudden appearance in the hall in dhoti and beads and sacred thread? Let his top-knot grow again, as it had grown at Pundit Jairam’s. Would Hanuman House care to have two sick scholars? But he couldn’t see himself as a holy man for long. Sooner or later someone was bound to surprise him, in dhoti, top-knot, sacred thread and caste-marks, reading The Manxman or The Atom.
Speculating about this, he reviewed his situation. He was the father of four children, and his position was as it had been when he was seventeen, unmarried and ignorant of the Tulsis. He had no vocation, no reliable means of earning a living. The job at Green Vale was over; he could not rest in the Blue Room forever; soon he would have to make a decision. Yet he felt no anxiety. The second to second agony and despair of those days at Green Vale had given him an experience of unhappiness against which everything had now to be measured. He was more fortunate than most people. His children would never starve; they would always be sheltered and clothed. It didn’t matter if he were at Green Vale or Arwacas, if he were alive or dead.
His money dwindled: Ovaltine, Ferrol, Sanatogen; the doctor’s fees, the midwife’s, the thaumaturge’s. And there was no more money to come.
One evening Seth said, ‘That tin of Ovaltine could very well be your last, if you don’t decide to do something.’
Decide. What was there to decide?
There was room for him at Hanuman House if he stayed. If he left he would not be missed. He had not claimed his children; they avoided him and were embarrassed when they met him.
But it was only when Seth said, ‘Mai and Owad are coming home this week-end,’ meaning that the Blue Room had to be prepared for Owad, it was only then that Mr Biswas thought of action, unwilling to move to any other part of the house, unwilling to face Mrs Tulsi and the god.
The small brown cardboard suitcase, acquired in exchange for a large number of Anchor Cigarette packets, and decorated on both sides with his monogram, was enough for what he intended to take. He remembered Shama’s taunt: ‘When you came to us you had no more clothes than you could hang up on a nail.’ He still had few clothes; they were all crumpled and dirty. The cork hat he decided to leave; he had always found it absurd, and it belonged to the barracks. He could always send for his books. But he packed his paintbrushes. Through every move they had survived; the soft candle on the bristle of one or two had hardened, cracked and turned to powder.
He wanted to leave early in the morning, to have as much time as possible before it became dark. The crumpled clothes felt loose when he put them on; his trousers sagged; he had grown thinner. He remembered the morning the towel had fallen from him in front of the twelve barrackrooms.
When Savi brought him the cocoa and biscuits and butter he told her, ‘I am going away.’
She didn’t look surprised or disappointed, and didn’t ask where he was going.
He was going out into the world, to test it for its power to frighten. The past was counterfeit, a series of cheating accidents. Real life, and its especial sweetness, awaited; he was still beginning.
He wondered whether he should go to see Shama and the baby. His senses recoiled. As soon as he heard the children leave for school he went downstairs. He was seen, but no one called out to him: the suitcase was not of a significant size.
The High Street was already busy. The market