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By Root 7640 0

was half a column wide and there was no room for his ears; he was frowning, in an unsuccessful attempt to look menacing; his mouth was slightly open and he stared at the camera out of the corners of his eyes, which were shadowed by the low-pulled brim of his hat. As a circulation raiser the Scarlet Pimpernel was a failure. The photograph concealed too much; and he was too well dressed for ordinary people to accost him in a sentence of such length and correctness. The prizes went unclaimed for days and the Scarlet Pimpernel reports became increasingly fantastic. Mr Biswas visited his brother Prasad and readers of the Sentinel learned next morning that a peasant in a remote village had rushed up to the Scarlet Pimpernel and said, ‘You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize.’ The peasant was then reported as saying that he read the Sentinel every day, since no other paper presented the news so fully, so amusingly, and with such balance.

Then Mr Biswas visited his eldest brother Pratap. And there he had a surprise. He found that his mother had been living with Pratap for some weeks. For long Mr Biswas had considered Bipti useless, depressing and obstinate; he wondered how Pratap had managed to communicate with her and persuade her to leave the hut in the back trace at Pagotes. But she had come and she had changed. She was active and lucid; she was a lively and important part of Pratap’s household. Mr Biswas felt reproached and anxious. His luck had been too sudden, his purchase on the world too slight. When he got back late that evening to the Sentinel office he sat down at a desk, his own (his towel in the bottom drawer), and with memories coming from he knew not where, he wrote:

SCARLET PIMPERNEL SPENDS NIGHT IN A TREE

Anguish of Six-Hour Vigil

Oink! Oink!

The frogs croaked all around me. Nothing but that and the sound of the rain on trees in the black night.

I was dripping wet. My motorcycle had broken down miles from anywhere. It was midnight and I was alone.

The report then described a sleepless night, encounters with snakes and bats, the two cars that passed in the night, heedless of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s cries, the rescue early in the morning by peasants who recognized the Scarlet Pimpernel and claimed their prize.

It was not long after this that Mr Biswas went to Arwacas. He got there in the middle of the morning but did not go to Hanuman House until after four, when he knew the store would be closed, the children back from school and the sisters in the hall and kitchen. His return was as magnificent as he had wished. He was still climbing up the steps from the courtyard when he was greeted by shouts, scampering and laughter.

‘You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize!’

He went around, dropping Sentinel dollar-tokens into eager hands.

‘Send this in with the coupon from the Sentinel. Your money will come the day after tomorrow.’

Savi and Anand at once took possession of him.

Shama, emerging from the black kitchen, said, ‘Anand, you will get your father’s suit dirty.’

It was as though he had never left. Neither Shama nor the children nor the hall carried any mark of his absence.

Shama dusted a bench at the table and asked whether he had eaten. He didn’t reply, but sat where she had dusted. The children asked questions continually, and it was easy not to pay attention to Shama as she brought the food out.

‘Uncle Mohun, Uncle Mohun. You really spend a night up a tree?’

‘What do you think, Jai?’

‘Ma say you make it up. And I don’t see how you could climb up a tree.’

‘I can’t tell you how often I fall down.’

It was better than he had imagined to be back in the sooty green hall with the shelflike loft, the long pitchpine table, the unrelated pieces of furniture, the photographs of Pundit Tulsi, the kitchen safe with the Japanese coffee-set.

‘Uncle Mohun, that man did really chase you with a cutlass when you try to give a coupon to his wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why you didn’t give him one too?’

‘Go away. You children getting too smart for me.’

He ate and washed his hands and