A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [73]
They both felt that a government document, which should have remained inviolate, had been challenged.
He enjoyed her alarm, and looked at her closely for the first time since he had come. Her long hair was loose and spread about her pillow. To look at him she had to press her chin into her neck.
‘You got a double chin,’ he said. She didn’t reply.
Suddenly he jumped up. ‘What the hell is this?’
‘Show me.’
He showed her the certificate. ‘Look. Occupation of father. Labourer. Labourer! Me! Where your family get all this bad blood, girl?’
‘I didn’t see that.’
‘Trust Seth. Look. Name of informant: R. N. Seth. Occupation: Estate Manager.’
‘I wonder why he do that.’
‘Look, the next time you want a informant, eh, just let me know. Calling Lakshmi Basso and Savi. Hello, Lakshmi. Lakshmi, is me, your father, occupation – occupation what, girl? Painter?’
‘It make you sound like a house painter.’
‘Sign-painter? Shopkeeper? God, not that!’ He took the certificate and began scribbling. ‘Proprietor,’ he said, passing the certificate to her.
‘But you can’t call yourself a proprietor. The shop belong to Mai.’
‘You can’t call me a labourer either.’
‘They could bring you up for this.’
‘Let them try.’
‘You better go now, man.’
The baby was stirring.
‘Hello, Lakshmi.’
‘Savi.’
‘Basso.’
‘Shh!’
‘Talk about the old thug. The old scorpion, if you ask me. The old Scorpio.’
He left the dark room with its close medicinal smells, its basins and its pile of diapers and came out into the drawingroom where at one end the two tall chairs stood like thrones. He went through the wooden bridge to the verandah of the old upstairs where Hari usually sat reading his unwieldy scriptures. Shyly, he came down the stairs into the hall, anticipating much attention as the father of the newest baby in Hanuman House. No one particularly looked at him. The hall was full of children eating gloomily. Among them he recognized the contortionist and the girl who had been running the house-game at The Chase. He smelled sulphur and saw that the children were not eating food but a yellow powder mixed with what looked like condensed milk.
He asked, ‘What is that, eh?’
The contortionist grimaced and said, ‘Sulphur and condensed milk.’
‘Food getting expensive, eh?’
‘Is for the eggzema,’ the house-player said.
She dipped her finger in condensed milk, in sulphur, then put her finger in her mouth. Hurriedly she repeated the action.
Mrs Tulsi had come out of the black kitchen doorway.
‘Sulphur and condensed milk,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘To sweeten it,’ Mrs Tulsi said. Again she had forgiven him.
‘Sweeten!’ the contortionist whispered loudly. ‘My foot.’ Her achievements gave her unusual licence.
‘Very good for the eczema.’ Mrs Tulsi sat down next to the contortionist, took up her plate and shook back the sulphur from the rim, over which the contortionist had been steadily spilling sulphur on to the table. ‘Have you seen your daughter, Mohun?’
‘Lakshmi?’
‘Lakshmi?’
‘Lakshmi. My daughter. That is the name I choose.’
‘Shama looks well.’ Mrs Tulsi brushed the spilled sulphur off the table on to her palm and shook the palm over the condensed milk, which the contortionist had so far kept virgin. ‘I have put her in the Rose Room. My room.’
Mr Biswas said nothing.
Mrs Tulsi patted the bench. ‘Come and sit here, Mohun.’
He sat beside her.
‘The Lord gives,’ Mrs Tulsi said abruptly in English.
Concealing his surprise, Mr Biswas nodded. He knew Mrs Tulsi’s philosophizing manner. Slowly, and with the utmost solemnity, she made a number of simple, unconnected statements; the effect was one of puzzling profundity.
‘Everything comes, bit by bit,’ she said. ‘We must forgive. As your father used to say’ – she pointed to the photographs on the wall – ‘what is for you is for you. What is not for you is not for you.’
Against his will Mr Biswas found himself listening gravely and nodding in agreement.
Mrs Tulsi sniffed and pressed her veil to her nose. ‘A year ago, who would have thought that you would be sitting here,