A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [69]
Mr Biswas was lucid enough to hope that he wasn’t antagonizing a father.
Padma went into the shop in her slow way and came out and said judicially. ‘Some bottles have been broken.’
‘And is eight cents a bottle,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Wasn’t doing nothing!’
The mother of the boy, suddenly enraged, flew to a hibiscus bush and began breaking off a switch. It was a tough bush and she had to bend the switch back and forth several times. Torn leaves fell on the ground.
The boy’s bawls were now touched with genuine anguish.
The mother broke two switches on the boy, speaking as she beat. ‘This will teach you not to meddle with things that don’t belong to you. This will teach you not to provoke people who don’t make any allowances for children.’ She caught sight of the marks left on the boy’s collar by Mr Biswas’s fingers, sticky from the tin-lid. ‘And this will teach you not to let big people make your clothes dirty. This will teach you that they don’t have to wash them. You are a big man. You know right. You know wrong. You are not a child. That is why I am beating you as though you are a big man and can take a big man’s blows.’
The beating had ceased to be a simple punishment and had become a ritual. Sisters came out to witness, rocking crying babies in their arms, and said without urgency, ‘You will damage the boy, Sumati.’ And: ‘Stop it now, Sumati. You have beaten him enough.’
Sumati continued to beat, and didn’t stop talking.
In the tent Hari intoned. From the set of Shama’s back Mr Biswas could divine her displeasure.
‘House-blessing party!’ Mr Biswas said.
The beating went on.
‘Is just a form of showing-off,’ Mr Biswas said. He had seen enough of these beatings to know that later it would be said admiringly, ‘Sumati beats her children really well’ and that the sisters would say to their children, ‘Do you want to be beaten the way Sumati beat her son that day at The Chase?’
The boy, no longer crying, was at last released. He sought comfort from an aunt, who calmed her baby, calmed the boy, said to the baby, ‘Come, kiss him. His mother has beaten him really badly today’; then to the boy, ‘Come, look how you are making him cry.’ The whimpering boy kissed the crying baby and slowly the noise subsided.
‘Good!’ Sumati said, tears in her eyes. ‘Good! Everyone is satisfied now. And I suppose the soda water bottles have been made whole again. Nobody is losing eight cents a bottle now.’
‘I didn’t ask anybody to beat their child, you hear,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘Nobody asked,’ Sumati said, to no one in particular. ‘I am just saying that everybody is now satisfied.’
She went to the tent and sat down in the section set aside for women and girls. The boy sat among the men.
The road was now lined with villagers and a few outsiders as well. They had not been attracted by the flogging, though that had encouraged the children of the village to gather a little earlier than might have been expected. They came for the food that would be distributed after the ceremony. Among these expectant uninvited guests Mr Biswas noticed two of the village shopkeepers.
The cooking was being done, under the superintendence of Sushila, over an open fire-hole in the yard. Sisters stirred enormous black cauldrons brought for the occasion from Hanuman House. They sweated and complained but they were happy. Though there was no need for it, some had stayed awake all the previous night, peeling potatoes, cleaning rice, cutting vegetables, singing, drinking coffee. They had prepared bin after bin of rice, bucket upon bucket of lentils and vegetables, vats of tea and coffee, volumes of chapattis.
Mr Biswas had given up trying to work out the cost. ‘Just going to leave me a damn pauper,’ he said. He walked along the hibiscus hedge, plucked leaves, chewed them and spat them out.
‘You have a nice little property here, Mohun.’
It was Mrs Tulsi, looking tired after her rest on the cast iron fourposter. She had used the English word