A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [74]
He was trapped by her mood. He forgot the children eating sulphur and condensed milk, and shook his head as if to admit that he had thought profoundly and with despair of the future.
Having trapped him in the mood, she removed her hand, blew her nose and dried her eyes. ‘Whatever happens, you keep on living. Whatever happens. Until the Lord sees fit to take you away.’ The last sentence was in English; it took him aback, and broke the spell. ‘As He did with your dear father. But until that time comes, no matter how they starve you or how they treat you, they can never kill you.’
They, Mr Biswas thought, who are they?
Then Seth stamped into the hall with his muddy bluchers and the children applied themselves with zeal to the sulphur powder.
‘Mohun,’ Seth said. ‘See your daughter? You surprise me, man.’
The contortionist giggled. Mrs Tulsi smiled.
You traitor, Mr Biswas thought, you old she-fox traitor.
‘Well, you are a big man now, Mohun,’ Seth said. ‘Husband and father. Don’t start behaving like a little boy again. The shop gone bust yet?’
‘Give it a little time,’ Mr Biswas said, standing up. ‘After all, is only about four months since Hari bless it.’
The contortionist laughed; for the first time Mr Biswas felt charitably towards this girl. Encouraged, he added, ‘You think we could get him to un-bless it?’
There was more laughter.
Seth shouted for his wife and food.
At the mention of food the children looked up longingly.
‘No food for none of all-you today,’ Seth said. ‘This will teach you to play in dirt and give yourself eggzema.’
Mrs Tulsi was at Mr Biswas’s side. She was solemn again. ‘It comes bit by bit.’ She was whispering now, for sisters were coming out of the kitchen with brass plates and dishes. ‘You never thought, I expect, that your own first child would be born in a place like this.’
He shook his head.
‘Remember, they can’t kill you.’
That ‘they’ again.
‘Oh,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘So it have three in the family now.’ She was warned by his tone.
‘Send me a barrel,’ he said loudly. ‘A small coal barrel.’
He came out through the side gate and wheeled his cycle past the arcade, which was already filling up with the evening crowd of old India-born men who came there to smoke and talk. He cycled to Misir’s rickety little wooden house and called at the lighted window.
Misir pushed his head past the lace curtain and said, ‘Just the man I want to see. Come in.’
Misir said he had packed his wife and children off to his mother-in-law. Mr Biswas guessed the reason to be a quarrel or a pregnancy.
‘Been working like hell without them, too,’ Misir said. ‘Writing stories.’
‘For the Sentinel?’
‘Short stories,’ Misir said with his old impatience. ‘Just sit down and listen.’
Misir’s first story was about a man who had been out of work for months and was starving. His five children were starving; his wife was having another baby. It was December and the shops were full of food and toys. On Christmas eve the man got a job. Going home that evening, he was knocked down and killed by a motorcar that didn’t stop.
‘Helluva thing,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘I like the part about the car not stopping.’
Misir smiled, and said fiercely, ‘But life is like that. Is not a fairy-story. No once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-rajah nonsense. Listen to this one.’
Misir’s second story was about a man who had been out of work for months and was starving. To keep his large family he began selling his possessions, and finally he had nothing left but a two-shilling sweepstake ticket. He didn’t want to sell it, but one of his children fell dangerously ill and needed medicine. He sold the ticket for a shilling and bought medicine.