A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [72]
Then he discovered that Shama had made preparations for him as well. His clothes had been washed and darned; and he was moved, though not surprised, to find on the kitchen shelf little squares of shop-paper on which, in her Mission-school script that always deteriorated after the first two or three lines, Shama had pencilled recipes for the simplest meals, writing with a disregard for grammar and punctuation which he thought touching. How quaint, too, to find phrases he had only heard her speak committed to paper in this handwriting! In her instructions for the boiling of rice, for example, she told him to ‘throw in just a little pinch of salt’ – he could see her bunching her long fingers – and to use ‘the blue enamel pot without the handle’. How often, crouched before the chulha fire, she had said to him, ‘Just hand me the blue pot without the handle.’
During the idle hours in the shop he had begun to choose names, mostly male ones: he never thought anything else likely. He wrote them on shop-paper, rolled them on his tongue, and tried them out on customers.
‘Krishnadhar Haripratap Gokulnath Damodar Biswas. What do you think of that for a name? K. H. G. D. Biswas. Or what about Krishnadhar Gokulnath Haripratap Damodar Biswas. K. G. H. D.’
‘You are not leaving much room for the pundit to give the child a name.’
‘No pundit is giving any name to any child of mine.’
And on the back endpaper of the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare, a work of fatiguing illegibility, he wrote the names in large letters, as though his succession had already been settled. He would have used Bell’s Standard Elocutionist, still his favourite reading, if it had not suffered so much from the kick he had given it in the long room at Hanuman House; the covers hung loose and the endpapers had been torn, exposing the khaki-coloured boards. He had bought the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare for the sake of Julius Caesar, parts of which he had declaimed at Lal’s school. Every other play defeated him; the volume remained virtually unread and now, as a repository of the family records, proved to be a mistake. The endpaper blotted atrociously.
And the baby was a girl. But it was born at the correct time; it was born without difficulty; it was healthy; and Shama was absolutely well. He expected no less from her. He closed the shop and cycled to Hanuman House, and found that his daughter had already been named.
‘Look at Savi,’ Shama said.
‘Savi?’
They were in Mrs Tulsi’s room, the Rose Room, where all the sisters spent their confinements.
‘It is a nice name,’ Shama said.
Nice name; when all the way from The Chase he had been working on names, and had decided on Sarojini Lakshmi Kamala Devi.
‘Seth and Hari chose it.’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Jerking his chin towards the baby, he asked in English, ‘They had it register?’
On the marble topped table next to the bed there was a sheet of paper under a brass plate. She handed that to him.
‘Well! I glad she register. You know the government and nobody else did want to believe that I was even born. People had to swear and sign all sort of paper.’
‘All of we was register,’ Shama said.
‘All of all-you would be register.’ He looked at the certificate. ‘Savi? But I don’t see the name here at all. I only see Basso.’
She widened her eyes. ‘Shh!’
‘I not going to let anybody call my child Basso.’
‘Shh!’
He understood. Basso was the real name of the baby, Savi the calling name. The real name of a person could be used to damage that person, whereas the calling name had no validity and was only a convenience. He was relieved he wouldn’t have to call his daughter Basso. Still, what a name!
‘Hari make that one up, eh? The holy ghost.’
‘And Seth.’
‘Trust the pundit and the big thug.’
‘Man, what you doing?’
He was scribbling hard on the birth certificate.
‘Look.’ At the top of the certificate he had written: Real calling name: Lakshmi. Signed