A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [218]
‘Biswas!’ a boy called. ‘You coming to the Savannah?’
‘Yes, man!’
He ran to join the boys; and Mr Biswas, loaded with the pen and pencils, the ruler and erasers and bottle of ink, cycled home.
It was strange that, having talked about football and racing all through the term, the boys should now, watching an important football match, talk about nothing but the examination.
Anand returned home shortly after nightfall. His serge trousers were dusty, his shirt wet with perspiration, and he was very gloomy.
‘I’ve failed,’ he said.
‘What happened?’ Mr Biswas asked.
‘In the spelling paper. The synonyms and homonyms. They were so easy I thought I’d leave them for last. Then I just didn’t do them.’
‘You mean you left out a whole question?’
‘I realized it in the Savannah.’
The gloom spread to Savi and Myna and Kamla and Shama, and was deepened by the joy of Vidiadhar’s brothers and sisters. Vidiadhar had been untouched by the day’s events, and was at that moment in the Roxy Theatre, seeing the complete serial of Daredevils of the Red Circle. He had brought home question papers that were quite clean except for gay ticks at the side of those questions he had answered. His arithmetic answers, neatly written on a strip of paper, were all correct. He had known the meanings of all the difficult words; he had spotted the synonyms and had not been fooled by one homonym. And he had not had private lessons. He had not had private lessons after private lessons. No one had taken him Ovaltine and sandwiches at five. He had not been going for very long to a Port of Spain school; he had drunk little milk and eaten few prunes.
‘I always say,’ Shama said, though she had never said anything of the sort, ‘I always say that carelessness was going to be your downfall.’
‘In a few years you will look back on this and laugh,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘You did your best. And no true effort is ever wasted. Remember that.’
‘What about you?’ Anand said.
And though they slept on the same bed, neither spoke to the other for the rest of the evening.
Anand had no more work to do that year and no more milk to drink, but on Monday he went to school. All Saturday’s candidates were there. They had become a superior, leisured caste. A few boys did spend the day writing the examination as nearly as possible as they had done on Saturday. (The Chinese boy, with a mortification that amounted almost to terror, got the correct answer to the sum about the cyclist.) The others flaunted their idleness. At first they were content to be in the classroom and not of the class, seeing the exhibition discipline enforced on next year’s candidates. But this soon palled, and they wandered out into the yard. Their attitude to the examination had changed since Saturday afternoon: they all now had tales of disaster. Anand, believing none of them, magnified his own blunder. In the end they were all boasting of how badly they had done; and apparently none of them really cared. Time hung heavily on their hands, and the afternoon was only partially enlivened by a packet of cigarettes: disappointing, but a prank, at last. For the first time for many years Anand was free to go home as soon as the afternoon bell rang. Up to last week this had seemed the supreme freedom. But now he dreaded leaving the boys, dreaded going back to the house. He did not get home till six.
Unusually, Mr Biswas was below the house, in that section of it which Shama used as a kitchen. He was in his working clothes, and tired, but very gay.
‘Ah, the young man himself,’ he greeted Anand. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve got something for you, young man.’ He took out an envelope from his jacket pocket.
It was a letter from an English judge. He said he had been following Mr Biswas’s work in the Sentinel, admired it, and would like to meet Mr Biswas, to try and persuade him to join a literary group he had formed.
‘What about me, eh. What about me. I tell you, man, no true effort is wasted. Not that I expect to get anything from that blasted paper. Or from you.’
Mr Biswas’s elation was extravagant. Anand thought