A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [255]
Anand had to wait in the verandah for some time before Owad came out from the bedroom. He came out with his usual heavy brisk steps. As soon as he saw Anand he became stern. And there was silence.
Anand went in, held his hands behind his back.
‘I apologize,’ Anand said.
Owad continued to look stern.
At last he said, ‘All right.’
Anand didn’t know what to do. He remained where he was, so that it seemed he was waiting for an invitation to dinner and the theatre. But there was no word. He turned and walked slowly out of the room to the back verandah. As he went down the steps he heard the talk break out, heard the conscientious bustling of the aunts in the kitchen.
Shama was waiting for him in their room. He knew that her pain was as great as his, possibly greater, and he did not wish to increase it. She waited for him to do or say something, so that she could apply the soothing words. But he said nothing.
‘You will eat something now?’
He shook his head. How ridiculous were the attentions the weak paid one another in the shadow of the strong!
She went downstairs.
When Owad and the cousins left she came back. He was willing to eat then.
Shortly after, Mr Biswas returned from his walk. His mood had changed. His face was twisted with pain and Anand had to mix him some stomach powder. He was tired after his walk and wanted to go to bed. He could sleep early on Sundays; on other evenings he came back late from his area.
The light from the diningroom came through the tall ventilation gaps at the top of the partition. He called Shama and told her, ‘Go and get them to take off that light.’
It was an awkward request at the best of times, though before Owad’s return Shama had sometimes made it successfully. Now she could do nothing.
Mr Biswas lost his temper. He ordered Shama and Anand to get sheets of cardboard, and with these he tried to block the gaps at the top of the partition, jumping from the bed to the ledge on the partition. Of the three sections he put up two fell down almost at once.
‘Uncle Podger,’ Savi said.
He was about to lose his temper with her as well; but, as if in answer to the commotion, the light in the diningroom went out. He lay down on the bed in the dark and was soon asleep, grinding his teeth, and making strange contented smacking sounds with his mouth.
Anand sat in the darkness. Shama came to the room and got into the fourposter. Anand did not want to go downstairs. He lay on the bed beside his father and remained quite still.
He was disturbed by chatter and heavy footsteps, and made wide awake by the light coming in through the two open sections above the partition. Some aunts who had been waiting up below the house were now heard moving about the kitchen. The chatter continued, and laughter. Mr Biswas stirred and groaned. ‘Good God!’
Anand felt Shama awake and anxious. Listened to in this way, the chatter was as unbearable as the dripping of a water-tap.
‘God!’ Mr Biswas cried.
There was a moment’s silence in the diningroom.
‘Other people in this house,’ Mr Biswas shouted.
The visiting sisters and the readers and learners could be heard awakening downstairs.
Softly, as though speaking only to the people with him, Owad said, ‘Don’t we all know it, old man.’ There were giggles.
The giggles maddened Mr Biswas. ‘Go to France!’ he cried.
‘And you can go to hell.’ It was Mrs Tulsi. Her words, evenly spaced, were cold and firm and clear.
‘Ma!’ Owad said.
Mr Biswas didn’t know what to say. Surprise was followed by shock, shock by anger.
Shama got up from the fourposter and said, ‘Man, man.’
‘Let him go to hell,’ Mrs Tulsi said, almost conversationally. Her voice was followed by a groan, a creaking of a bed-spring and a shuffling on the floor.
Lights went on downstairs, lit up the yard and reflected through the jalousied door