A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [57]
‘You know, nobody hearing you talk would believe that you come to this house with no more things than you could hang up on a one-inch nail.’
It was a familiar attack. He ignored it.
Next morning he went down to the hall and called briskly, ‘Morning, morning. Morning, everybody.’ He got no reply. He said, ‘Shama, Shama. Food, girl. Food.’ She brought him a tall cup of tea. Breakfast was tea and biscuits. The biscuits came in a vast drum, returnable to the biscuit makers: the largest economy size, the method of bulk-purchase used by café-owners. While he was diving into the drum, turning away straw, feeling for biscuits – a pleasant task, for the straw and biscuits together had a smell that was good and even better than the meal – while he was doing this, Mrs Tulsi came into the hall, fatigued and heavy, looking almost as old as Padma. Her veil was low over her forehead and every now and then she pressed a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne to her nose. Without her teeth she looked decrepit, but there was about her decrepitude a quality of ever-lastingness.
‘You feeling better, Mai?’ Mr Biswas asked, stacking some biscuits on a chipped enamel plate. He spoke very cheerfully. The hall was hushed.
‘Yes, son,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘I am feeling better.’
And it was Mr Biswas’s turn to be astonished.
(‘I was wrong about your mother,’ he told Shama before he left that morning. ‘She is not a old hen at all. Nor a old cow.’
‘I glad you learning gratitude,’ Shama said.
‘She is a she-fox. A old she-fox. What they call that? You know what I mean, man. You remember your Macdougall’s Grammar. Abbot, abbess. Stag, roe, Hart, hind. Fox, what?’
‘I not going to tell you.’
‘I going to find out. In the meantime, remember the name change. She is the old she-fox.’)
He remained on the staircase landing, sinking lower and lower through the torn seat of a cane-bottomed chair in front of the stained, battered, disused and useless piano, sipping his tea, cracking biscuits and dropping the pieces into the tea. He watched the pieces swell out and rescued them with his spoon just when they started to sink. Then swiftly, before the soggy biscuit that drooped over the spoon could fall off, he thrust the spoon into his mouth. All around him children were doing the same.
The younger god came down the stairs. He had been doing the morning puja. With his small dhoti, small vest, beads and miniature caste-marks he looked like a toy holy man. He carried a brass plate on which there was a cube of burning camphor. The camphor had been used to give incense to the images in the prayer-room; now it was to be offered to every member of the family.
The god went first to Mrs Tulsi. She put her handkerchief in her bosom, touched the camphor flame with her fingertips and carried her fingertips to her forehead. ‘Rama, Rama,’ she said. Then she added, ‘Take it to your brother Mohun.’
The hall was hushed again. And again Mr Biswas was astonished.
Sushila, clinging to her sickroom authority of the previous evening, said, ‘Yes, Owad. Take it to your brother Mohun.’
The god hesitated, frowning. Then he sucked his teeth, stamped up to the landing and offered the aromatic camphor flame to Mr Biswas. Mr Biswas rescued more sodden biscuit from the enamel cup. He put his mouth under the spoon, caught the biscuit that broke off, chewed noisily and said, ‘You could take that away. You know I don’t hold with this idol worship.’
The god, annoyed just the moment before, was stupefied almost into argument and coaxing before the full horror of Mr Biswas’s rejection came to him. He stood still, the camphor burning, melting on the plate.
The hall was still.
Mrs Tulsi was silent. Forgetting her frailty and fatigue, she got up and walked slowly up the stairs.
‘Man!’ Shama cried.
Shama’s shout aroused the god. He walked down to the hall, tears of anger in his eyes, saying, ‘I didn’t want to go and offer him anything. I didn’t. I know the amount of respect he have for people.’
Sushila said,