A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [197]
Morning revealed the house, still red and raw, in a charred and smoking desolation. Villagers came running to see, and were confirmed in their belief that their village had been taken over by vandals.
‘Charcoal, charcoal,’ Mr Biswas called to them. ‘Anybody want charcoal?’
For days afterwards the valley darkened with ash whenever the wind blew. Ash dusted the plot Bipti had forked.
‘Best thing for the land,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Best sort of fertilizer.’
4. Among the Readers and Learners
HE COULD not simply leave the house in Shorthills. He had to be released from it. And presently this happened. Transport became impossible. The bus service deteriorated; the sports car began to give as much trouble as its predecessor and had to be sold. And just about this time Mrs Tulsi’s house in Port of Spain fell vacant. Mr Biswas was offered two rooms in it, and he immediately accepted.
He considered himself lucky. The housing shortage in Port of Spain had been aggravated by the steady arrival of illegal immigrants from the other islands in search of work with the Americans. A whole shanty town had sprung up at the east end of the city; and even to buy a house was not to assure yourself of a room, for there were now laws against the indiscriminate eviction Shama had so coolly practised.
He put up a sign in the midst of the desolation he had created: HOUSE FOR RENT OR SALE, and moved to Port of Spain. The Shorthills adventure was over. From it he had gained only two pieces of furniture: the Slumberking bed and Théophile’s bookcase. And when he moved back to the house in Port of Spain, he did not move alone.
The Tuttles came, Govind and Chinta and their children came, and Basdai, a widow. The Tuttles occupied most of the house. They occupied the drawingroom, the diningroom, a bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom; this gave them effective control of both the front and back verandahs, for which they paid no rent. Govind and Chinta had only one room. Chinta hinted that they could afford more, but were saving and planning for better things; and, as if in promise of this, Govind suddenly gave up wearing rough clothes, and for six successive days, during which he smiled maniacally at everyone, appeared in a different threepiece suit. Every morning Chinta hung out five of Govind’s suits in the sun, and brushed them. She cooked below the tall-pillared house, and her children slept below the house, on long cedar benches which Théophile had made at Shorthills. Basdai, the widow, lived in the servantroom, which stood by itself in the yard.
Mr Biswas’s two rooms could be entered only through the front verandah, which was Tuttle territory. At first Mr Biswas slept in the inner room. Light and noise from the Tuttles’ drawingroom came through the ventilation gaps at the top of the partition and drove him to the front room, where he was enraged by the constant passage of Shama and the children to and from the inner room. Shama, like Chinta, cooked below the house; and when Mr Biswas shouted for his food or his Maclean’s Brand Stomach Powder, it had to be taken to him up the front steps, in full view of the street.
The house was never quiet, and became almost unbearable when W. C. Tuttle bought a gramophone. He played one record over and over:
One night when the moon was so mellow
Rosita met young man Wellow.
He held her like this, his loveliness,
And stole a kiss, this fellow.
Tippy-tippy-turn tippy-turn
— and here W. C. Tuttle always joined in, whistling, singing, drumming; so that whenever the record came on, Mr Biswas was compelled to listen, waiting for W. C. Tuttle’s accompaniment to:
Tippy-tippy-turn tippy-turn
Tippy-tippy-teeeeepi-tum-tum turn.
A dispute also arose between W. C. Tuttle and Govind. They both parked their vehicles in the garage at the side