A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [39]
He put the cup down when he heard someone else come into the hall. This was a tall, slender, smiling man dressed in white. His face was sunburnt and his hands were rough. Breathlessly, with many sighs, laughs and swallows, he reported to Seth on various animals. He seemed anxious to appear tired and anxious to please. Seth looked pleased. C came from the kitchen again and followed the man upstairs; he was obviously her husband.
Mr Biswas took another draught of tea, studied his reflection and wondered whether every couple had a room to themselves; he also wondered what sleeping arrangements were made for the children he heard shouting and squealing and being slapped (by mothers alone?) in the gallery outside, the children he saw peeping at him from the kitchen doorway before being dragged away by ringed hands.
‘So you really do like the child?’
It was a moment or so before Mr Biswas, behind his cup, realized that Mrs Tulsi had addressed the question to him, and another moment before he knew who the child was.
He felt it would be graceless to say no. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I like the child.’
Mrs Tulsi chewed and said nothing.
Seth said: ‘I know Ajodha. You want me to go and see him?’
Incomprehension, surprise, then panic, overwhelmed Mr Biswas. ‘The child,’ he said desperately. ‘What about the child?’
‘What about her?’ Seth said. ‘She is a good child. A little bit of reading and writing even.’
‘A little bit of reading and writing –’ Mr Biswas echoed, trying to gain time.
Seth, chewing, his right hand working dexterously with roti and beans, made a dismissing gesture with his left hand. ‘Just a little bit. So much. Nothing to worry about. In two or three years she might even forget.’ And he gave a little laugh. He wore false teeth which clacked every time he chewed.
‘The child – ’ Mr Biswas said.
Mrs Tulsi stared at him.
‘I mean,’ said Mr Biswas, ‘the child knows?’
‘Nothing at all,’ Seth said appeasingly.
‘I mean,’ said Mr Biswas, ‘does the child like me?’
Mrs Tulsi looked as though she couldn’t understand. Chewing, with lingering squelchy sounds, she raised Mr Biswas’s note with her free hand and said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t like the child?’
‘Yes,’ Mr Biswas said helplessly. ‘I like the child.’
‘That is the main thing,’ Seth said. ‘We don’t want to force you to do anything. Are we forcing you?’
Mr Biswas remained silent.
Seth gave another disparaging little laugh and poured tea into his mouth, holding the cup away from his lips, chewing and clacking between pours. ‘Eh, boy, are we forcing you?’
‘No,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘You are not forcing me.’
‘All right, then. What’s upsetting you?’
Mrs Tulsi smiled at Mr Biswas. ‘The poor boy is shy. I know.’
‘I am not shy and I am not upset,’ Mr Biswas said, and the aggression in his voice so startled him that he continued softly, ‘It’s only that – well, it’s only that I have no money to start thinking about getting married.’
Mrs Tulsi became as stern as he had seen her in the store that morning. ‘Why did you write this then?’ She waved the note.
‘Ach! Don’t worry with him,’ Seth said. ‘No money! Ajodha’s family, and no money!’
Mr Biswas thought it would be useless to explain.
Mrs Tulsi became calmer. ‘If your father was worried about money, he wouldn’t have married at all.’
Seth nodded solemnly.
Mr Biswas was puzzled by her use of the words ‘your father’. At first he had thought she was speaking to Seth alone, but then he saw that the statement had wider, alarming implications.
Faces of children and women peeped out from the kitchen doorway.
The world was too small, the Tulsi family too large. He felt trapped.
How often, in the years to come, at Hanuman House or in the house at Shorthills or in the house in Port of Spain, living in one room, with some of his children sleeping on the next bed, and Shama, the prankster, the server of black cotton stockings, sleeping downstairs with the other children,