A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [43]
In a tremendous temper Mr Biswas began packing his brushes and clothes.
‘Yes, take up your clothes and go,’ Shama said. ‘You came to this house with nothing but a pair of cheap khaki trousers and a dirty old shirt.’
He left Hanuman House and went back to Pagotes.
He felt unchanged, unmarried. He had simply had a good fright, but had managed things well and escaped.
In Pagotes, however, he found that his marriage was not a secret. Bipti welcomed him with tears of joy. She said she had always known that he wouldn’t let her down. She had never said it, but she had always felt he would marry into a good family. She could now die happily. If she lived she had something to brighten her old age. Mr Biswas must not reproach himself for his secrecy; he was not to worry about her at all; he had his own life to live.
And despite his protests she put on her best clothes and went to Arwacas the next day. She came back overwhelmed by the graciousness of Mrs Tulsi, the diffidence of Shama and the splendour of Hanuman House.
She described a house he hardly knew. She spoke of a drawingroom with two tall thronelike mahogany chairs, potted palms and ferns in huge brass vases on marble topped tables, religious paintings, and many pieces of Hindu sculpture. She spoke of a prayer-room above that, which, with its slender columns, was like a temple: a low, cool, white room, empty except for the shrine in the centre.
She had seen only the upper floors of the concrete or rather, clay-brick, building. He didn’t tell her that that part of the house was reserved for visitors, Mrs Tulsi, Seth and Mrs Tulsi’s two younger sons. And he thought it better to keep silent about the old wooden house which the family called ‘the old barracks’.
He spent two days in hiding at the back trace, not caring to face Alec or Bhandat’s boys. On the third day he felt the need of greater comfort than Bipti could give, and that evening he went to Tara’s. He entered by the side gate. From the cowpen came a familiar early evening sound: the unhurried stir and rustle of cows in stalls laid with fresh straw. The back verandah outside Tara’s kitchen was warm with light. He heard the steady drone of someone reading aloud.
He found Ajodha rocking slowly, his head thrown back, frowning, his eyes closed, his eyelids palpitating with anguish while Bhandat’s younger boy read That Body of Yours.
Bhandat’s boy stopped reading when he saw Mr Biswas. His eyes became bright with amusement and his prognathous smile was a sneer.
Ajodha opened his eyes and gave a shriek of malicious delight. ‘Married man!’ he cried in English. ‘Married man!’
Mr Biswas smiled and looked sheepish.
‘Tara, Tara,’ Ajodha called. ‘Come and look at your married nephew.’
She came out gravely from the kitchen, embraced Mr Biswas and wept for so long that he began to feel, with sadness and a deep sense of loss, that he really was married, that in some irrevocable way he had changed. She undid the knot at the end of her veil and took out a twenty-dollar note. He objected for a little, then took it.
‘Married man!’ Ajodha cried again.
Tara took Mr Biswas to the kitchen and gave him a meal. And while, in the verandah, Bhandat’s boy continued to read That Body of Yours, with the moths striking continually against the glass chimney of the oil lamp, she and Mr Biswas talked. She could not keep the unhappiness and disappointment out of her face and voice, and this encouraged him to be bitter about the Tulsis.
‘And what sort of dowry did they give you?’ she asked.
‘Dowry? They are not so oldfashioned. They didn’t give me a penny.’
‘Registry?