A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [239]
‘I have no luck with my family,’ she told Miss Blackie. ‘I have no luck with my race.’
And it was Miss Blackie who received her confidences, Miss Blackie who reported and comforted. And there was the Jewish refugee doctor. He came once a week and listened. The house was always specially prepared for him, and Mrs Tulsi treated him with love. He resurrected all that remained of her softness and humour. When he left, she said to Miss Blackie, ‘Never trust your race, Black. Never trust them.’ And Miss Blackie said, ‘No’m.’ Gifts of fruit were sent regularly to the doctor and sometimes Mrs Tulsi would suddenly order Basdai and Sushila to prepare an elaborate meal and take it to the doctor’s house, treating the matter as one of urgency, as though she was satisfying some craving of her own.
Still her daughters came to the house. They knew they all had some small hold on her: they knew that she feared loneliness and never wished to push them beyond her reach; they knew they could hurt her by staying away. If Miss Blackie reported that one daughter had been particularly upset, then Mrs Tulsi made overtures, and made promises. In such moods she might give a piece of jewellery, she might take off a ring or a bracelet and give it. So the daughters came, and none was willing to let Mrs Tulsi be alone with any other. The visits of Mrs Tuttle were especially distrusted. She bore abuse with unexampled patience and was able at the end to suggest that Mrs Tulsi should look at plants, because green nourished the eyes and soothed the nerves.
Though she abused her daughters, she took care not to offend her sons-in-law. She greeted Mr Biswas briefly but politely. And she never attempted to remonstrate with Govind, who continued to behave as before. He beat Chinta when the mood took him, and, ignoring pleas for silence for Mrs Tulsi’s headaches, sang from the Ramayana. It was left to the sisters to comment on Govind’s behaviour.
There were times when she wished to have children about her. Then she summoned the readers and learners to scrub the floor of the drawingroom and verandah, or she made them sing Hindi hymns. Her mood changed without warning, and the readers and learners were perpetually apprehensive, never knowing whether they were required to be solemn or amusing. Sometimes she stood them in lines in her room and made them recite arithmetic tables, flogging the inaccurate with as much vigour as her arms would allow, flabby, muscleless arms, broad and loose towards the armpit, and swinging like dead flesh. Miss Blackie burst into squelchy laughter when a child made a stupid mistake or when Mrs Tulsi made a witticism; and Mrs Tulsi, her eyes masked by dark glasses, would give a pleased, crooked smile. In sterner moments Miss Blackie grew stern as well and moved her jaws up and down quickly, saying ‘Mm!’ at every blow Mrs Tulsi gave.
Another trial for the readers and learners was Mrs Tulsi’s concern for their health. Every five Saturdays or so she called them to her room and dosed them with Epsom salts; and between these gloomy, wasted week-ends she listened for coughs and sneezes. There was no escaping her. She had learned to recognize every voice, every laugh, every footstep, every cough and almost every sneeze. She took a special interest in Anand’s wheeze and doglike cough. She bought him some poisonous herb cigarettes; when these had no effect she prescribed brandy and water and gave him a bottle of brandy. Anand, while hating the brandy and water, drank it for its literary associations: he had read of the mixture in Dickens.
Sometimes she sent for old friends from Arwacas. They came and camped for a week or so, and listened to Mrs Tulsi. She, refreshed, talked all day and late into the night, while the friends, lying on bedding on the floor, made drowsy mechanical affirmations: ‘Yes, Mother. Yes, Mother.’ Some visits were cut short by illness, some by carefully documented dreams of bad omen; those visitors who stayed to the end went away fatigued, doped, bleary-eyed.
Regularly