A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [257]
‘So, Aunt,’ Suniti, the former contortionist, said, ‘I hear you moving to a new house, man.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ Shama said.
At school Anand defended Eliot, Picasso, Braque, Chagall. He who had been leaving copies of the Soviet Weekly in the readingroom between the pages of Punch and The Illustrated London News now announced that he frowned upon communism. The phrase was thought odd; but the action, coinciding with the widespread renunciation of communism by distinguished intellectuals in Europe and America, caused little comment.
Shortly after he had been taken on the Sentinel Mr Biswas went late one night to the city centre to interview the homeless people, whose families among them, who regularly slept in Marine Square. ‘That conundrum – the housing question —’ he had begun his article; and though the words were excised by Mr Burnett, Mr Biswas was taken by their rhythm and had never forgotten them. They drummed in his head that morning; he spoke them and sang them under his breath; and throughout the Monday conference at the office he was exceptionally lively and garrulous. When the conference was over he went down St Vincent Street to the café with the gay murals and sat at the bar, waiting for people he knew.
‘Got notice to quit, man,’ he said.
He spoke lightly, expecting solicitude, but his lightness was met with lightness.
‘I expect I will be joining you in Marine Square,’ a Guardian reporter said.
‘Hell of a thing, though. Married with four children and nowhere to go. Know any places for rent?’
‘If I know one I would be there right now.’
‘Ah, well. I suppose it will be the square.’
‘It look so.’
The café, close to newspaper offices, government offices and the courts, was frequented by newspapermen and civil servants; by people who came in for a drink before their cases were called and then disappeared, sometimes for months; by solicitors’ clerks and by junior clerks who spent days of tedium tracing titles at the polished desks in the outer room of the Registrar-General’s Department.
It was a title-tracer who said, ‘If Billy was still here I woulda tell you to go and see Billy. All-you remember Billy?
‘Billy used to promise them that he wasn’t only going to get them a house, but that he was going to move them free into the bargain. Everybody rushing to get this free move – you know black people – and paying Billy deposit. When he pick up a good few deposit Billy decide it was time to put a end to this stupidness and to make tracks for the States.
‘But listen. The day before he leave, Billy plan leak out. But Billy get to know that the plan leak out. So the next day, Billy ship waiting in the harbour, Billy hire a lorry, put on his khaki working-clothes and went around to all the people he take money from. Everybody so surprise they forgetting they vex. All of them telling Billy how they call police and they saying, “But, Billy, we hear that you was leaving today.” And Billy saying, “I don’t know where you get the niggergram from. I not leaving. You leaving. I come to move you. You got everything pack?” None of them had anything pack, and Billy start getting into one big temper, saying how they make him waste his time, and he was mad not to move them at all. And they calm him down by saying if he pass back in the afternoon they would have everything pack and ready to move. So Billy leave and the people pack and wait for Billy. They still waiting.’
The laughter broke, but Mr Biswas could take no part in it. Outside it had grown dark. There was a blue instant of lightning, a crack and roll of thunder. The thought of driving to his area with the windows closed was not appealing. He had drunk many lagers and they had steadily reduced him to silence and stillness. He did not want to go to the country; he did not want to stay in the café. But the rain, which had begun to fall in heavy drops that blotted on the pavement and presently had it wet and running, encouraged him to stay, silent and unlistening