A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [188]
‘Same thing he did to my house,’ Mr Biswas said to Anand.
Sharma’s widow shrieked, fainted, revived and tried to fling herself into the grave. The villagers watched with interest. Some of the knowing whispered about suttee.
W. C. Tuttle took over the job of driving the children to school. He placed all his children in the front seat next to himself and stuffed the others into the dicky seat. He complained about the behaviour of the car and attributed all its faults to Sharma. Soon there was talk that W. C. Tuttle was using the car to transport his subsidiary plunder. He threatened not to drive the car if the talk didn’t stop. There was no one else who could drive, apart from the surly Govind, and the talk stopped.
Despite W. C. Tuttle’s abuse Sharma was speedily forgotten. And one hot Sunday afternoon, when nearly everyone was out of doors, Anand came upon Hari and his wife sitting alone in the diningroom, at one end of the vast cedar table that had been made by W. C. Tuttle’s blacksmith. They made a sad couple. Hari’s wife had tears in her eyes, and Hari’s expressionless face was yellow. Anand, wishing to animate them and to show off a new accomplishment, offered to recite a poem to them. He had just mastered all the gestures illustrated on the frontispiece of Bell’s Standard Elocutionist. Hari and his wife looked moved; they smiled and asked Anand to recite.
Anand drew his feet together, bowed, and said, ‘Bingen on the Rhine.’ He joined his palms, rested his head on them, and recited:
‘A soldier of the legion lay dying in Algiers.’
He was pleased to see that the smiles of Hari and his wife had been replaced by looks of the utmost solemnity.
‘There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears.
‘But a comrade stood beside him while his life blood ebbed away.’
Anand’s voice quavered with emotion. Hari stared at the floor. His wife fixed her large eyes on a spot somewhere above Anand’s shoulder. Anand had not expected such a full and immediate response. He increased the pathos in his voice, spoke more slowly and exaggerated his gestures. With both hands on his left breast he acted out the last words of the dying legionnaire.
‘Tell her the last night of my life, for ere this moon be risen,
‘My body will be out of pain, my soul be out of prison.’
Hari’s wife burst out crying. Hari put his hand on hers. In this way they listened to the end; and Anand, after being given a six-cents piece, left them shaken.
Less than a week later Hari died. It was only then that Anand learned that Hari had known for some time that he was going to die soon. W. C. Tuttle, ferociously brahminical in an embroidered silk jacket, did the last rites. The house went into mourning for Hari; no one used sugar or salt. He was one of those men who, by a negativeness that amounts to charity, are thought of kindly by everyone. He had taken part in no disputes; his goodness, like his scholarship, was a family tradition. Everyone had been used to seeing Hari as the officiating pundit at religious ceremonies; everyone had been used to receiving the consecrated foods from him every morning. Hari, in dhoti, his forehead marked with sandalwood paste; Hari doing morning and evening puja; Hari with his religious texts on the elaborately carved bookrest: these had been fixed sights in the Tulsi house. There had been no one to take Seth’s place. There was no one to take Hari’s.
The duty of the puja was shared by many of the men and boys. Sometimes even Anand had to do it. Untutored in the prayers, he could only go through the motions of the ritual. He washed the images, placed fresh flowers on the shrine, diverted himself by trying to stick the stem of a flower in the crook of a god’s arm