A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [235]
He was glad he had written a mild letter of resignation. And, preparing for misfortune, he took to dropping in at the Sentinel office. The newspaper atmosphere never failed to excite him, and the welcome he received stilled his fears: he was regarded as one who had escaped and made good. Yet with every improvement in his condition, every saving, he felt more vulnerable: it was too good to last.
In time he completed his charts (to display the classifications clearly he joined three double foolscap sheets and produced a scroll nearly five feet long, which made Miss Logie roar with laughter); and he wrote his report. Charts and report were typed and duplicated and, he was told, sent to various parts of the world. Then he was at last free to get villagers to sing or to take up cottage industries. He was given an area. And a memorandum informed him that, to enable him to move easily about his area, he was to be given a car, on a painless government loan.
The rule of the house was followed again. The children were sworn to secrecy. Mr Biswas brought home glossy booklets which had the aromatic smell of rich art paper and seemed to hold the smell of the new car. Secretly he took driving lessons and obtained a driving licence. Then, on a perfectly ordinary Saturday morning, he drove to the house in a brand-new Prefect, parked it casually before the gate, not quite parallel to the pavement, and walked up the front steps, ignoring the excitement that had broken out.
‘Vidiadhar! Come back here this minute, if you don’t want me to break your hand and your foot.’
When Govind arrived at lunchtime he found his parking space occupied. His Chevrolet was larger, but old and unwashed; the mudguards had been dented, cut, welded; one door had been ducoed in a lustreless colour that did not exactly match; there was the H – for hire – on the number plate; and the windscreen was made ugly by various stickers and a circular plaque which carried Govind’s photograph and taxi-driver’s permit.
‘Matchbox,’ Govind muttered. ‘Who leave this matchbox here?’
He did not impress the orphans, and he did not diminish the energy of Mr Biswas’s children who, ever since the car had been so carelessly parked by Mr Biswas, had been wiping away dust and saying crossly how a new car collected dust. They found dust everywhere: on the body, the springs, the underside of the mudguards. They wiped and polished and discovered, with distress, that they were leaving scratches on the paintwork, very slight, but visible from certain angles. Myna reported this to Mr Biswas.
He was lying on the Slumberking, surrounded by many glossy booklets. He asked, ‘You hear anything? What they saying, eh?’
‘Govind say it is a matchbox.’
‘Matchbox, eh. English car, you know. Would last for years and still be running when his Chevrolet is on the rubbish dump.’
He returned to studying an intricate drawing in red and black which explained the wiring of the car. He could not fully understand it, but it was his habit whenever he bought anything new, whether a pair of shoes or a bottle of patent medicine, to read all the literature provided.
Kamla came into the room and said that the orphans had been fingering the car and blurring the shine.
Mr Biswas knelt on the bed and advanced on his knees to the front window. He lifted the curtain and, pushing a vested chest outside, shouted, ‘You! Boy! Leave the car alone! You think is a taxi?’
The orphans scattered.
‘I coming to break the hands of some of you,’ Basdai, the guardian widow, called. News of her advance and her pause to break a whip from the neem tree at the side of the yard was relayed by hoots and shouts and giggles. Some orphans, disdaining to run, were flogged on the pavement. There was crying, and Basdai said, ‘Well, some people satisfy now.’
Shama stayed under the house and did not go out to see the car. And when Suniti, the former contortionist, now baby-swollen,