A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [157]
‘Water on a duck’s back,’ Mr Biswas said to Shama. ‘The number of times that mother of yours has made herself outcast!’
There was talk about the suitability and adequacy of the food Owad would get in England.
‘Every morning in England, you know,’ Mr Biswas said, ‘the scavengers go around picking up the corpses. And you know why? The food there is not cooked by orthodox Roman Catholic Hindus.’
‘Suppose Uncle Owad want more,’ Anand said. ‘You think they will give it to him?’
‘Hear the boy,’ Mr Biswas said, squeezing Anand’s thin arms. ‘Let me tell you, eh, boy, that you and Savi come out of the monkey house as going concerns only because of the little Ovaltine you drink.’
‘No wonder the others can hold Anand and beat his little tail,’ Shama said.
‘Your family are tough,’ Mr Biswas said. He spat the word out and made it an insult. ‘Tough,’ he repeated.
‘Well, I could say one thing. None of us have calves swinging like hammocks.’
‘Of course not. Your calves are tough. Anand, look at the back of my hands. No hair. The sign of an advanced race, boy. And look at yours. No hair either. But you never know. With some of your mother’s bad blood flowing in your veins you could wake up one morning and find yourself hairy like a monkey.’
Then, after a trip to Hanuman House, Shama reported that the decision to send Owad abroad had reduced Shekhar, the elder god, married man though he was, to tears.
‘Send him some rope and soft candle,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘He never did want to get married,’ Shama said.
‘Never did want to get married! Never see anybody skip off so smart to check mother-in-law’s money.’
‘He wanted to go to Cambridge.’
‘Cambridge!’ Mr Biswas exclaimed, startled by the word, startled to hear it coming so easily from Shama. ‘Cambridge, eh? Well, why the hell he didn’t go? Why the hell the whole pack of you didn’t go to Cambridge? Frighten of the bad food?’
‘Seth was against it.’ Shama’s tone was injured and conspiratorial.
Mr Biswas paused. ‘Well, you don’t say. You don’t say!’
‘I glad it please somebody.’
She could give no more information, and at last said impatiently, ‘You getting like a woman.’
She clearly felt that an injustice had been done. And he knew the Tulsis too well to be surprised that the sisters, who never questioned their own neglected education, cat-in-bag marriage and precarious position, should yet feel concerned that Shekhar, whose marriage was happy and whose business was flourishing, had not had all that he might.
Shekhar was coming to spend a week-end in Port of Spain. His family would not be with him and old Mrs Tulsi would be in Arwacas: the brothers were to be boys together for one last week-end. Mr Biswas waited for Shekhar with interest. He came early on Friday evening. The taxi hooted; Shama switched on the lights in the verandah and the porch; Shekhar ran up the front steps in his white linen suit and breezed through the house on his leather-heeled shoes, charging it with excitement, depositing on the diningtable a bottle of wine, a tin of peanuts, a packet of biscuits, two copies oí Life and a paper-backed volume of Halévy’s History of the English People. Shama greeted him with sadness, Mr Biswas with a solemnity which he hoped could be mistaken for sympathy. Shekhar responded with geniality: the absent geniality of the businessman sparing time from his business, the family man away from his family.
Owad’s expensive new suitcases were in the back verandah and Mr Biswas was painting Owad’s name on them.
‘Sort ofthing to make you feel you want to go away,’ Mr Biswas said.
Shekhar wasn’t drawn. After the wine and peanuts and biscuits had been shared he showed himself almost paternally preoccupied with the arrangements for Owad’s journey,