A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [31]
‘Making some improvements too,’ Ramchand said. ‘Come.’
This time Dehuti did not suck her teeth. They went to the back and Mr Biswas saw another room being added to the hut. Trimmed tree-branches had been buried in the earth; the rafters, of lesser boughs, were in place; between the uprights the bamboo had been plaited; the earth floor was raised but not yet packed. ‘Extra room,’ Ramchand said. ‘When it is finished you can come and stay with us.’
Mr Biswas’s depression deepened.
They went on a tour of the small hut, Ramchand pointing out the refinements he had added: shelves set in the mud walls, tables, chairs. Back in the verandah Ramchand pointed to the hatrack. There were eight hooks on it symmetrically arranged about a diamond-shaped glass. ‘That is the only thing here I didn’t make myself. Dehuti set her heart on it.’ He slumped down on the floor again and flung the little ball of earth he had been rolling between his fingers at the baby.
Dehuti closed her eyes and pouted. ‘Me? I didn’t want it. I wish you would stop running round giving people the idea that I have modern ambitions.’
He laughed uneasily and scratched his bare leg; the nails left white marks.
‘I have no hat to hang on a hatrack,’ Dehuti said. ‘I don’t want a mirror to show me my ugly face.’
Ramchand scratched and winked at Mr Biswas. ‘Ugly face? Ugly face?’
Dehuti said, ‘I don’t stand up in front of the hatrack combing my hair for hours. My hair is not pretty and curly enough.’
Ramchand accepted the compliment with a smile.
In the verandah, black and yellow in the light of the oil lamp, they sat down on low benches to eat. But although he was hungry, and although he knew that both Dehuti and Ramchand had much affection for him, Mr Biswas found that his belly was beginning to rise and hurt, and he couldn’t eat. Their happiness, which he couldn’t share, had upset him. And it pained him more then to see Ramchand’s jumpy enthusiasm replaced by uncertainty. Dehuti’s sullen expression never changed; it was for just such a rebuff that she had been prepared.
He left soon after, promising to come back and see them one day, knowing that he wouldn’t, that the links between Dehuti and himself, never strong, had been broken, that from her too he had become separate. The desire to keep on looking for a job had left him. He supposed he had always known he would fall back on Tara for help. She liked him; Ajodha liked him. Perhaps he would apologize, and they would put him in the garage.
Then Alec reappeared in Pagotes, and there was no sign of engine grease on him. His hands and arms and face were spotted and streaked with paint of various colours, as were his long khaki trousers and white shirt, where each stain was rimmed with oil. When, at the end of a long, idle and uncertain week, Mr Biswas saw him, Alec had a small tin of paint in one hand and a small brush in the other; he was standing on a ladder against a café in the Main Road and painting a sign, of which he had already achieved THE HUMMING BIRD CA.
Mr Biswas was full of admiration.
‘You like it, eh?’ Alec came down the ladder, pulled out a large paint-spotted cloth from his back pocket and wiped his hands. ‘Got to shadow them. In two colours. Blue across, green down.’
‘But that will spoil it, man.’
Alec spat out a cigarette that had burned down to his lips and gone dead. ‘It will look like a little carnival when I finish. But that is the way they want it.’ He jerked his head contemptuously towards the proprietor of the Humming Bird Café who was leaning on his counter and looking at them suspiciously. The shelves at his back were half filled with bottles of aerated water. Flies buzzed about him, attracted by the sweat on his neck and those parts of his body exposed by his vest; flies with different tastes had settled on the coarse sugar on the rock cakes in his showcase.
To Alec Mr Biswas explained his problem, and they talked for a while. Then they went into the tiny café and Alec bought two bottles of aerated water.
Alec said to the proprietor, ‘This is my