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By Root 17630 0

more memorable by Shama’s gloom. She could not make icecream because she didn’t have a freezer, but she did what she could to turn the day into a miniature Hanuman House Christmas. She got up early and waited to be kissed, like Mrs Tulsi. She spread a white cloth on the table and put out nuts and dates and red apples; she cooked an extravagant meal. She did everything punctiliously, but as one martyred. ‘Anybody would think you were making another baby,’ Mr Biswas said. And in his diary, a Sentinel reporter’s notebook which he had begun to fill at Mr Biswas’s suggestion, as an additional exercise in English Composition and as practice in natural writing, Anand wrote, ‘This is the worst Christmas Day I have ever spent;’ and, not forgetting the literary purpose of the diary, added, ‘I feel like Oliver Twist in the workhouse.’

But Shama never relented.

Soon she received impressive assistance. The house became full of sisters and husbands on their way to and from Shorthills. The fine dresses, veils and jewellery of the sisters contrasted with their mood, which they seemed to get from Shama. They fixed Mr Biswas with injured, helpless, accusing woman’s looks which he found difficult to ignore. The jokes about sheep and waterfalls and tonka beans stopped; he locked himself in his room. Sometimes Shama, after much coaxing from her sisters, dressed and went to Shorthills with them. She came back gloomier than ever, and when Mr Biswas said, ‘Well, tell me, girl, tell me,’ she did not reply and only cried silently. When Mrs Tulsi came Shama cried all the time.

Since the quarrel with Seth Mrs Tulsi had ceased to be an invalid. She had left the Rose Room to direct the move from Arwacas and was, indeed, the source of the new enthusiasm. She tried to persuade Mr Biswas to join the move, and Mr Biswas, flattered at this attention, listened sympathetically. There would be no Seth, Mrs Tulsi said; one could live for nothing at Shorthills; Mr Biswas would be able to save his salary; there were many good sites for houses, and with timber from the estate Mr Biswas might even build himself a little house.

‘Leave him, leave him,’ Shama said. ‘All this talk about house was only to spite me.’

‘But if I keep my job in Port of Spain I don’t see how I would be able to do anything on the estate,’ Mr Biswas said.

‘Never mind,’ Mrs Tulsi said.

He wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to move for Shama’s sake; or whether, without Seth, she needed as many men as possible around her; or whether she wanted no one, by his coolness, to make her question her own enthusiasm. And he agreed to go to Shorthills with her one morning, to have a look at the estate.

He made Anand telephone the Sentinel and went with Mrs Tulsi to the bus stop. There he suffered some moments of anxiety, for with her long white skirt, her veil, her arms braceleted from wrist to elbow and a thick gold yoke around her neck, Mrs Tulsi was noticeable in any Port of Spain street, and Mr Biswas feared he would be spotted by someone from the office. He leaned against the lamp-post, hiding his face.

‘Regular bus service,’ he said after a time.

‘From Shorthills, the buses always leave on the dot.’

‘Instead of giving every child a sheep, better to give them a horse. Ride to school. Ride back.’

At last the bus came, empty except for the driver and the conductor. The body had been made locally, a crude jangling box of wood and tin and felt and large naked bolts. Mr Biswas bumped exaggeratedly up and down on the rough wooden seat. ‘Just practising,’ he said.

The city ended abruptly at the Maraval terminus. The road climbed and dipped; hills intermittently shut out the view. After half an hour Mr Biswas pointed to the bush on a roundabout. ‘Estate?’ They went past a puzzling huddle of three crumbling shacks. Two black water barrels stood in the hard yellow yard. ‘Cricket field?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Swimming pool?’

After many curves and climbs the road straightened out and ran steadily down into a widening valley. The hills looked wild, the tops of trees rising one behind the other: a coagulation