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By Root 7687 0

Tulsi and there was communal cooking, as in the old days, which seemed to have returned with Owad. The fruit hanging from the coconut-frond arches in the tent disappeared; the fronds became yellow. But Owad was still followed by admiring eyes, it was still an honour to be spoken to by him, and everything he had said was to be repeated. At any time and to anyone Owad might start on a new tale; then a crowd instantly collected. Regularly in the evening there were gatherings in the drawingroom or, when Owad was tired, in his bedroom. Mr Biswas attended as often as he could. Mrs Tulsi, forgetting her own illnesses and anxious instead to nurse, held Owad’s hand or head while he spoke.

He had canvassed for the Labour Party in 1945 and was considered by Kingsley Martin to be one of the architects of the Labour victory. In fact Kingsley Martin had pressed him to join the New Statesman and Nation; but he, laughing as at a private joke, said he had told Kingsley no. He had earned the bitter hatred of the Conservative Party by his scathing denunciations of Winston Churchill’s Fulton speech. Scathing was one of his favourite words, and the person he had handled most scathingly was Krishna Menon. He didn’t say, but it appeared from his talk that he had been gratuitously insulted by Menon at a public meeting. He had collected funds for Maurice Thorez and had discussed Party strategy in France with him. He spoke familiarly of Russian generals and their battles. He pronounced Russian names impressively.

‘Those Russian names are ugly like hell,’ Mr Biswas ventured one evening.

The sisters looked at Mr Biswas, then looked at Owad.

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ Owad said. ‘Biswas is a funny name, if you say it in a certain way.’

The sisters looked at Mr Biswas.

‘Rokossovsky and Coca-cola-kowsky,’ Mr Biswas said, a little annoyed. ‘Ugly like hell.’

‘Ugly? Vyacheslav Molotov. Does that sound ugly to you, Ma?’

‘No, son.’

‘Joseph Dugashvili,’ Owad said.

‘That’s the one I had in mind,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Don’t say you think that pretty.’

Owad replied scathingly, ‘I think so.’

The sisters smiled.

‘Gawgle,’ Owad said, raising his chin (he was lying in bed) and making a strangulated noise.

Mrs Tulsi passed her hand from his chin to his Adam’s apple.

‘What was that?’ Mr Biswas asked.

‘Gogol,’ Owad said. ‘The world’s greatest comic writer.’

‘It sounded like a gargle.’ Mr Biswas waited for the applause, but Shama only looked warningly at him.

‘You couldn’t say that in Russia,’ Chinta said.

This led Owad from the beauty of Russian names to Russia itself. ‘There is work for everyone and everyone must work. It is distinctly written in the Soviet Constitution – Basdai, pass me that little book there – that he who does not work shall not eat.’

‘That is fair,’ Chinta said, taking the copy of the Soviet Constitution from Owad, opening it, looking at the title page, closing it, passing it on. ‘Is exactly the sort of law we want in Trinidad.’

‘He who does not work shall not eat,’ Mrs Tulsi repeated slowly.

‘I just wish they could send some of my people to Russia,’ Miss Blackie said, sucking her teeth, shaking her skirt and shifting in her chair to express the despair to which her people reduced her.

Mr Biswas said, ‘How can he, who does not eat, work?’

Owad paid no attention. ‘In Russia, you know, Ma’ – it was his habit to address many of his sentences to her – ‘they grow cotton of different colours. Red and blue and green and white cotton.’

‘Just growing like that?’ Shama asked, making up for Mr Biswas’s irreverence.

‘Just growing like that. And you,’ Owad said, speaking to a widow who had been trying without success to grow an acre of rice at Shorthills, ‘you know the labour it is to plant rice. Bending down, up to your knees in muddy water, sun blazing, day in, day out.’

‘The backache,’ the widow said, arching her back and putting her hand where she ached. ‘You don’t have to tell me. Just planting that one acre, and I feel like going to hospital.’

‘None of that in Russia,’ Owad said. ‘No backache and bending down. In Russia,