A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [68]
Mr Biswas knew the disagreeable rumpus that would follow. He had no taste for it, and walked away from the shop to the boundary of the lot. Here, under a hedge, he came upon a group of children playing house.
‘You are Mai,’ a girl said to another girl. And to a boy, ‘You are Seth.’
Mr Biswas withdrew. But the girl – whose litter did she belong to? – saw him and, raising her voice from the whisper with which games of house should be played, said with unmistakable malice, ‘And who will be Mohun? You, Bhoj. You have three-quarter white pants. And you are a great fighter.’
There was a round of childish laughter which filled Mr Biswas’s mind with thoughts of murder, though even as he hurried away he felt some desire to see what Bhoj looked like.
For the last three days, since the arrival of her sisters, Shama had become a Tulsi and a stranger again. Now she was unapproachable. The ceremony in the tent was about to begin and she sat in front of Hari, listening to his instructions with bowed head. Her hair was still wet from her ritual bath and she was dressed in white from top to toe. She looked like someone waiting to be sacrificed and Mr Biswas thought he could detect pleasure in the curve of her back. Her status, like Hari’s, was only temporary; but while the ceremony lasted, it was paramount.
Mr Biswas didn’t want to witness the ceremony. It meant sitting with the brothers-in-law in the tent; and he was sure that the sight of Shama’s submissive and exultant back would eventually infuriate him. Also, it occurred to him that if he kept moving about he might prevent some of the Tulsi army from looting.
It was then that he thought of the shop.
He nearly ran there. It was dark, with the front doors closed, and he had to be careful. The shop smelled of babies, who were asleep everywhere: on the counter, flanked by pillows and boxes to keep them from rolling off; under the counter; on the floor planks behind the counter. Then, slowly in the darkness, a group of squatting children defined itself in one corner. They were silent and intent. With equal silence and intentness Mr Biswas picked his way past the babies to the counter.
The little group was methodically breaking soda water bottles and extracting the crystal marbles from the necks. The bottles were wrapped in sacking to muffle the noise. There was a deposit of eight cents on every bottle. The sweet jars on the bottom shelf were disarrayed. The Paradise Plums had dwindled substantially. So had the Mintips, a mint sweet with the elasticity and lastingness of rubber. So had the salted prunes. Many tin-lids had not been screwed on properly. Mr Biswas put out a hand to straighten a lid. It felt sticky. He dropped it. A baby bawled, the children in the corner became alert, and Mr Biswas shouted, ‘Get out of here before I lay my hand on some of you.’ And at the same time, with the dexterity of the practised shopkeeper, he lifted the flap of the counter and opened the little door, almost in one action, and was on the group in the corner.
He lifted a boy by the collar. The boy bawled, the girls with him bawled, the babies in the shop bawled.
From outside a woman asked, ‘What’s happening? What’s happening?’
Mr Biswas dropped the boy he had seized, and the boy ran outside, screaming louder than the babies.
‘Uncle Mohun beat me. Ma, Uncle Mohun beat me.’
Another woman, doubtless the mother, said, ‘But he wouldn’t touch you for nothing.’ Her tone indicated that Mr Biswas wouldn’t dare. ‘You must have been doing something.’
‘I wasn’t doing nothing, Ma,’ the boy wailed in English.
‘He wasn’t doing nothing, Ma.’ This was from one of the girls. Mr Biswas knew her: a dumpy little thing, with big contemptuous eyes and full, pendulous lips; she was capable of fantastic physical contortions and often performed for visitors at Hanuman House.
‘Blasted liar!’ Mr Biswas said. He ran out of the shop, past a woman who was coming, cooing, to a bawling baby. ‘Wasn’t doing nothing? And who break up all those soda water bottles?’
In the tent Hari