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By Root 7647 0

the day in her room, asking for her hair to be soaked in bay rum, and listening for Owad’s footsteps. She sought to win him back by talking about his boyhood and Pundit Tulsi. Abusing no one, raging against no one, the tears flowing from the wells, as it seemed, of her dark glasses, she wove a lengthy tale of injustice, neglect and ingratitude. Her daughters came to listen. They came bowed and penitent and respected their brother’s silence by showing themselves solemn and correct. They spoke Hindi; they did not debase themselves; they all tried to look as though they had offended. But Owad’s mood did not break. He did not relate his adventures in Tobago; and the sisters directed their own silent accusations at Shama. Owad spent more time away from home. He mixed with his medical colleagues, a new caste separate from the society from which it had been released. He went south to Shekhar’s. He played tennis at the India Club. And, almost as suddenly as it had started, talk of the revolution ended.

7. The House

THE SOLICITOR’S clerk was as good as his word, and as soon as the transaction was completed he and the old queen hurriedly abandoned the house. On Monday night Mr Biswas made his final decision. On Thursday the house awaited him.

Late on Thursday afternoon they went in the Prefect to Sikkim Street. The sun came through the open windows on the ground floor and struck the kitchen wall. Woodwork and frosted glass were hot to the touch. The inside of the brick wall was warm. The sun went through the house and laid dazzling stripes on the exposed staircase. Only the kitchen escaped the sun; everywhere else, despite the lattice work and open windows, was airlessness, a concentration of heat and light which hurt their eyes and made them sweat.

Without curtains, empty except for the morris suite, with the hot floor no longer shining and polished, the sun showing only grit and scratches and dusty footprints, the house seemed smaller than the children remembered and had lost the cosiness they had noted at night, in the soft lights, with thick curtains keeping out the world. Undraped by curtains, the large areas of lattice work left the house open, to the green of the breadfruit tree next door, the bleedingheart vine thick and tendrilled on the rotting fence, the decaying slum house at the back, the noises of the street.

They discovered the staircase: unhidden by curtains, it was too plain. Mr Biswas discovered the absence of a back door. Shama discovered that two of the wooden pillars supporting the staircase landing were rotten, whittled away towards the bottom and green with damp. They all discovered that the staircase was dangerous. At every step it shook, and at the lightest breeze the sloping corrugated iron sheets rose in the middle and gave snaps which were like metallic sighs.

Shama did not complain. She only said, ‘It look as though we will have to do a few repairs before we move.’

In the days that followed they made more discoveries. The landing pillars had rotted because they stood next to a tap which emerged from the back wall of the house. The water from the tap simply ran into the ground. Shama spoke about the possibility of subsidence. Then they discovered that the yard had no drainage of any sort. When it rained the water from the pyramidal roof fell directly to the ground, turned the yard into mud and spattered walls and doors, the bottoms of which appeared to have been sprayed with wet soot.

They discovered that none of the windows downstairs would close. Some grated on the concrete sill; others had been so warped by the sun that their bolts could no longer make contact with the grooves. They discovered that the front door, elegant with white woodwork and frosted panes and with herringbone lattice work on either side, flew open in a strong wind even when locked and bolted. The other drawingroom door could not open at all: it was pinned to the wall by two floorboards which had risen, pressing against each other, to make a miniature and even mountain range.

‘Jerry-builder,’ Mr Biswas said.

They