A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [171]
Mr Biswas burst out laughing, and Anand ran out of the room, trembling with rage and humiliation, to the kitchen, where Shama comforted him.
For many days Anand didn’t speak to Mr Biswas and, in secret revenge, didn’t drink milk at the Dairies, but iced coffee. Mr Biswas was effusive towards Savi and Myna and Kamla, and relaxed with Shama. The atmosphere in the house was less heavy and Shama, now Anand’s defender, took much pleasure in urging Anand to speak to his father.
‘Leave him, leave him,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Leave the storyteller.’
Anand became steadily more morose. When he came home after private lessons one afternoon he refused to eat or talk. He went to his room, lay down on the bed and, despite Shama’s coaxings, stayed there.
Mr Biswas came in and presently walked into the room, saying in his rallying voice, ‘Well, well. What happen to our Hans Andersen?’
‘Eat some prunes, son,’ Shama said, taking out the little brown paper-bag from the table drawer.
Mr Biswas saw the distress on Anand’s face and his manner changed. ‘What’s the matter?’
Anand said, ‘The boys laugh at me.’
‘He who laughs last laughs best,’ Shama said.
‘Lawrence say that his father is your boss.’
There was silence.
Mr Biswas sat on the bed and said, ‘Lawrence is the night editor. Nothing to do with me.’
‘He say they have you like an office boy in the office.’
‘You know I write features.’
‘And he say that when you go to his father house you have to go to the back door.’
Mr Biswas stood up. His linen suit was crumpled, the jacket pulled out of shape by the notebooks in the pockets, the tops of which were dirty and a little frayed.
‘You never went to his father house?’
‘Why should he go to Lawrence’s house?’ Shama said.
‘And you never went to the back door?’
Mr Biswas walked to the window. It was dark; his back was to them.
‘Let me put on the light,’ Shama said briskly. Her footsteps were heavy. The light went on. Anand covered his face with his arm. ‘Is that all that’s been upsetting you?’ Shama asked. ‘Your father has nothing to do with Lawrence. You heard what he said.’
Mr Biswas went out of the room.
Shama said, ‘You shouldn’t have told him that, you know, son.’
For the rest of that evening Shama walked and talked and did everything as noisily as she could.
The next morning, with his books and lunch parcel in his bag and the six cents for milk in his pocket, Anand was kissing Shama in the back verandah when Mr Biswas came to him and said, ‘I don’t depend on them for a job. You know that. We could go back any time to Hanuman House. All of us. You know that.’
On Saturday he took the children on a surprise visit to Ajodha’s. Tara and Ajodha were as delighted as the children, and the visit lasted till Sunday. There was much to look at in the new house. It was a grand two-storeyed concrete house built and decorated and furnished in the modern manner. The concrete blocks looked like rough-hewn stone; there was no dust-collecting fretwork hanging from the eaves; doors and windows were varnished, not painted, and closed and opened in interesting ways; chairs were upholstered and vast, not small and cane-bottomed; floors were stained and polished; the lavatory flushes were chainless. In the drawingroom they studied Tara’s photographs of the dead; they saw Raghu in his flower-strewn coffin surrounded by his thin, big-eyed children. The kitchen was enormous and abounded in modern contrivances; Tara, old, slow and oldfashioned, seemed out of place in it. When they were tired of the house they wandered about the yard, which had not changed. They talked to the cowman and the gardener, examined the various people who called, and played among the abandoned frames of motor vehicles. After lunch on Saturday they went to the cinema, and on Sunday Ajodha arranged an excursion.
The following week-end they went again, and the week-end after that; and soon this week-end visit was established. They travelled up on Saturday morning, since that was the only time it was reasonably easy to get a bus out of Port of Spain.