A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [67]
Shama groaned and blew her nose loudly, once, twice, three times. Then she got out of the cast iron fourposter and it rattled. Suddenly silent and energetic, she went out of the room. The latrine was right at the back of her yard.
When she came back, minutes later, he acknowledged defeat. ‘What happen, man?’ he asked. ‘You can’t sleep?’
‘I been sleeping sound sound,’ she said.
The next morning he said, ‘All right, send for the old queen and the big boss and Hari and the gods and everybody else and get the shop bless.’
Shama was determined to do things well. Three labourers worked for three days to put up a large tent in the yard. It was a simple affair, with bamboo uprights and a roof of coconut branches; but the bamboos had to be transported from a neighbouring village, and the labourers, after many aggrieved and unintelligible mutterings about the Workmen’s Compensation Act, had to be paid extra for climbing the coconut trees to get branches. Enormous quantities of food were bought; and, to assist in its preparation, sisters began arriving at The Chase three days before the house-blessing ceremony. With their arrival Mr Biswas’s protests ceased. He consoled himself with the thought that not all of the Tulsis would come.
They all came, except Seth, Miss Blackie and the two gods.
‘Owad and Shekhar learning,’ Mrs Tulsi said in English, meaning only that the gods were at school.
She wandered about the yard, opening doors, inspecting, no expression on her face.
Hari, the holy man, who was to be the pundit that day, was just as Mr Biswas remembered him, just as soft-spoken and lymphatic. His felt hat sat softly on his head. He greeted Mr Biswas without rancour, without pleasure, without interest. Then he went into the bedroom that was reserved for him and changed into his pundit’s garb, which he had brought in a small cardboard suitcase. When he emerged as a pundit everyone treated him with a new respect.
Children, most of whom Mr Biswas could associate with no particular parent, swarmed everywhere, the girls in stiff satin dresses and with large rayon bows in long, dank hair, the boys in pantaloons and bright shirts. And there were babies: asleep in mothers’ arms, asleep on blankets and sacks under the tent, asleep in various corners of the shop; babies crying and being energetically walked in the yard; babies crawling, babies bawling, babies simply silent; babies performing every babylike function.
Govind nodded to Mr Biswas, but didn’t speak, and went and sat in the tent, where he talked and laughed loudly with the brothers-in-law.
Chinta and Padma asked without warmth after Mr Biswas’s health. Padma asked because it was her duty, as Seth’s representative; Chinta asked because Padma had done so. The two women were together for much of the time, and Mr Biswas suspected that an equally close relationship existed between Govind and Seth.
It seemed, too, that Sushila, the childless widow, was enjoying one of her periods of authority. She had now joined Mrs Tulsi and they both wandered about, peering and prodding and holding muted discussions in Hindi.
Mr Biswas found himself a stranger in his own yard. But was it his own? Mrs Tulsi and Sushila didn’t appear to think so. The villagers didn’t think so. They had always called the shop the Tulsi Shop, even after he had painted a sign and hung it above the door:
THE BONNE ESPERANCE GROCERY
M. Biswas Prop
Goods at City Prices
With one bedroom reserved for Hari, the other for Mrs Tulsi, and with the shop full of babies, Mr Biswas could retreat nowhere. He stood before the shop, fondling his belly under his shirt and working out the quarrel he would have with Shama afterwards.
A scampering and a series of cries came from the shop.
Then Sushila’s voice was heard, raised in undoubted authority. ‘Get away from here. Go and play in the open. Can’t you see you are waking up the babies? Why do you big children like the dark so much?’
Every sister was perpetually on the alert for any sign, however slight or veiled,