• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 7537 0

and wedged between dry goods. The assistants stood outside with pencils behind their ears or pencils tapping bill-pads with the funereally-coloured carbon paper peeping out from under the first sheet. Grocers’ shops, smelling damply of oil, sugar and salted fish. Vegetable stalls, damp but fresh, and smelling of earth. Grocers’ wives and children stood oily and confident behind counters. The women behind the vegetable stalls were old and correct with thin mournful faces; or they were young and plump with challenging and quarrelsome stares; with a big-eyed child or two hanging about behind the purple sweet potatoes to which dirt still clung; and babies in the background lying in condensed milk boxes. And all the time donkey-carts, horse-carts and ox-carts rumbled and jangled in the roadway, the heavy iron-rimmed wheels grating over gravel and sand and wobbling over the bumpy road. Continually long whips with knotted ends whistled and cracked, arousing brief enthusiasm in the animals. The men drivers sat on their carts; the boy drivers stood, shouting and whistling at their animals and their rivals; half a dozen races were always in progress.

Mr Biswas returned to the back trace, his resolution shaken. ‘I am not going to take any job at all,’ he told Bipti.

‘Why don’t you go and make it up with Tara?’

‘I don’t want to see Tara. I am going to kill myself.’

‘That would be the best thing for you. And for me.’

‘Good. Good. I don’t want any food.’ And in a great rage he left the hut.

Anger gave him energy, and he determined to walk until he was tired. On the Main Road he took the other direction now and went past the office of F. Z. Ghany, dingier but still intact, closed because it wasn’t market day; past the same array of shops, it seemed, the same owners, the same goods, the same assistants; and it all filled him with the same depression.

Late in the afternoon, when he was some miles out of Pagotes, a slender young man with shining eyes and a thick shining moustache came up to Mr Biswas and tapped him on the shoulder. He was embarrassed to recognize Ramchand, Tara’s delinquent yard boy, now Dehuti’s husband. He had sometimes seen him at Tara’s, but they had not spoken.

Ramchand, so far from showing embarrassment, behaved as though he had known Mr Biswas well for years. He asked so many questions so quickly that Mr Biswas had time only to nod. ‘How is everything? It is good to see you. And your mother? Well? Nice to hear. And the shop? A funny thing. You know Parakeet and Indian Maiden and The White Cock? I make that rum now. They are the same, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘No future working for Tara, I can tell you. As you know, I am working at this rum place now, and do you know how much I am getting? Come on. Guess.’

‘Ten dollars.’

‘Twelve. With a bonus every Christmas. And rum at the wholesale price into the bargain. Not bad, eh?’

Mr Biswas was impressed.

‘Dehuti talks about you all the time. At one time everybody thought you were drowned, remember?’ Then, as though this knowledge had removed whatever unfamiliarity remained between them, Ramchand added, ‘Why don’t you come and see Dehuti? She was talking about you only last night.’ He paused. ‘And perhaps you could eat something as well.’

Mr Biswas noticed the pause. It reminded him that Ramchand was of a low caste; and though it was absurd in the Main Road to think that of a man earning twelve dollars a month in addition to bonuses and other advantages, Mr Biswas was flattered that Ramchand looked upon him as someone to be flattered and conciliated. He agreed to go to see Dehuti. Ramchand, delighted, talked on, revealing much knowledge of other members of the family. He told Mr Biswas that Ajodha’s finances were not as sound as they appeared, and that Tara was offending too many people. Tara may have vowed never to mention Ramchand’s name again; he appeared anxious to mention hers as often as possible.

Mr Biswas had never questioned the deference shown him when he had gone to Tara’s to be fed as a Brahmin and on his rounds with Pundit Jairam. But he had never taken