A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [41]
‘This house,’ Mrs Tulsi said, blowing her nose, wiping her eyes with her veil and waving a hand in a fatigued way, ‘this house – he built it with his own hands. Those walls aren’t concrete, you know. Did you know that?’
Mr Biswas went on eating.
‘They looked like concrete to you, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, they looked like concrete.’
‘It looks like concrete to everybody. But everybody is wrong. Those walls are really made of clay bricks. Clay bricks,’ she repeated, staring at Mr Biswas’s plate and waiting for him to say something.
‘Clay bricks!’ he said. ‘I would never have thought that.’
‘Clay bricks. And he made every brick himself. Right here. In Ceylon.’
‘Ceylon?’
‘That is how we call the yard at the back. You haven’t seen it? Nice piece of ground. Lots of flower trees. He was a great one for flowers, you know. We still have the brick-factory and everything there as well. There’s a lot of people don’t know about this house. Ceylon. You’d better start getting to know these names.’ She laughed and Mr Biswas felt a little stab of fear. ‘And then,’ she went on, ‘he was going to Port of Spain one day, to make arrangements to take us all back to India. Just for a trip, you know. And this car came and knocked him down, and he died, Died,’ she repeated, and waited.
Mr Biswas swallowed hurriedly and said, ‘That must have been a blow.’
‘It was a blow. Only one daughter married. Two sons to educate. It was a blow. And we had no money, you know.’
This was news to Mr Biswas. He hid his perturbation by looking down at his brass plate and chewing hard.
‘And Seth says, and I agree with him, that with the father dead, one shouldn’t make too much fuss about marrying people off. You know’ – she lifted her heavy braceleted arms and made a clumsy dancer’s gesture which amused her a good deal – ‘drums and dancing and big dowry. We don’t believe in that. We leave that to people who want to show off. You know the sort of people. Dressed up to kill all the time. Yet go and see where they come out from. You know those houses in the County Road. Half built. No furniture. No, we are not like that. Then, all this fuss about getting married was more suitable for oldfashioned people like myself. Not for you. Do you think it matters how people get married?’
‘Not really.’
‘You remind me a little of him.’
He followed her gaze to other photographs of Pundit Tulsi on the wall. There was one of him flanked by potted palms against the sunset of a photographer’s studio. In another photograph he stood, a small indistinct figure, under the arcade of Hanuman House, beyond the High Street that was empty except for a broken barrel which, because it was nearer the camera, stood out in clear detail. (How did they empty the street, Mr Biswas wondered. Perhaps it was a Sunday morning, or perhaps they had roped the populace off.) There was another photograph of him behind the balustrade. In every photograph he carried the unfurled umbrella.
‘He would have liked you,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘He would have been proud to know that you were going to marry one of his daughters. He wouldn’t have let things like your job or your money worry him. He always said that the only thing that mattered was the blood. I can just look at you and see that you come from good blood. A simple little ceremony at the registrar’s office is all that you need.’
And Mr Biswas found that he had agreed.
At Hanuman House everything had appeared simple and reasonable. Outside, he was stunned. He had not had time to think about the problems marriage would bring. Now they seemed enormous. What would happen to his mother? Where would he live? He had no money and no job, for sign-writing, while good enough for a boy living with his mother, was hardly a secure profession for a married man. To get a house he would first have to get a job. He needed much time, but the Tulsis were giving him none at all, though they knew his circumstances. He assumed that they had decided to give more than a dowry, that they would help with a job or a house,