A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [262]
Mr Biswas stayed to have a meal with them, and continued to be blunt and loud and full of bounce. It was only when he drove away that his exhilaration left him and he saw that he had involved himself not only in debt but also in deception. Ajodha did not know that the car had not yet been paid for; Ajodha did not know that he was only an unestablished civil servant. And the loan could not be repaid in five years: the interest alone would come to thirty dollars a month.
Still there were occasions he could have withdrawn. When, for instance, they went to see the house on Friday evening.
Anxious to show himself worthy of the house, he insisted that the children should put on their best clothes, and urged Shama to say as little as possible when they got there.
‘Leave me behind. Leave me behind,’ Shama said. ‘I have no shame for you and I will shame you in front of your high and mighty house-seller.’
And all the way she kept it up until, just before they turned into Sikkim Street, Mr Biswas lost his temper and said, ‘Yes. You damn well will shame me. Stay and live with your family and leave me alone. I don’t want you to come in with me.’
She looked surprised. But there was no time for the quarrel to subside. They were in Sikkim Street. He drove the car past the house, parked it some distance away, called to the children to come with him if they wanted to or stay with their mother and continue living with the Tulsis if they wanted to do that, slammed the door and walked away. The children got out and followed him.
So that the one glimpse Shama had of the house before it was bought was from the moving Prefect. She saw concrete walls softly coloured in the light of the street lamp, with romantic shadows thrown by the trees next door. And she, who might have noticed the grossness of the staircase, the dangerous curve of the beams, the lack of finish in the lattice work and in all the woodwork, she who might have noticed the absence of a back door, the absence of a hundred small but important touches, sat in the car overcome by anger and dread.
While the children, on their best behaviour, made conversation with the old queen and were pleased by the interest she showed in them and her approval of nearly everything they said. They saw the polished floor, the rich curtains, the celotex ceiling, the morris suite, and they wanted to see little more. They drank tea and ate cakes; while Mr Biswas, not at all displeased by the success of his children, smoked cigarettes and drank whisky with the solicitor’s clerk. When they went upstairs, the solicitor’s clerk went first. It was dark. They did not note the absence of a light on the staircase; the darkness masked the crudity of the construction. Used for so long to the makeshift and the oldfashioned, dazzled by what they had seen, and in the position of guests, they didn’t stop to inquire; and once they had got to the top they were too taken by the bathroom and the green bedrooms and the verandah and the rediffusion set.
‘A radio!’ they cried. They had forgotten what it was like to have one.
‘I will leave it here if you want it,’ the solicitor’s clerk said, as if offering to pay the rental of the set.
‘Well, you like it?’ Mr Biswas asked, when they left.
There was no doubt that they did. Something so new, so clean, so modern, so polished. They were anxious to win Shama over to it, to get her to see it herself. But in the face of Mr Biswas’s gaiety and triumph Shama was firm. She said she had no intention of shaming Mr Biswas or his children.
During the week Mrs Tulsi had been ill but placid. With Owad’s return she became maudlin. She spent most of