A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [82]
He read innumerable novels, particularly those in the Reader’s Library; and he even tried to write, encouraged by the appearance in a Port of Spain magazine of a puzzling story by Misir. (This was a story of a starving man who was rescued by a benefactor and after some years rose to wealth. One day, driving along the beach, the man heard someone in the sea shouting for help, and recognized his former benefactor in difficulties. He instantly dived into the water, struck his head on a submerged rock and was drowned. The benefactor survived.) But Mr Biswas could never devise a story, and he lacked Misir’s tragic vision; whatever his mood and however painful his subject, he became irreverent and facetious as soon as he began to write, and all he could manage were distorted and scurrilous descriptions of Moti, Mungroo, Seebaran, Seth and Mrs Tulsi.
And there were whole weeks when he devoted himself to some absurdity. He grew his nails to an extreme length and held them up to startle customers. He picked and squeezed at his face until his cheeks and forehead were inflamed and the rims of his lips were like welts. When his skin became pitted with little holes, he studied these with interest and found the perfection of their shape pleasing. And once he dabbed healing ointments of various colours on his face and went and stood in the shop doorway, greeting people he knew.
He did these things when Shama was away. And more and more frequently she went to Hanuman House, even when there was no quarrel, and stayed longer.
Three years after Savi was born, Shama gave birth to a son. He was not given the names that had been written on the endpaper of the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare. Seth suggested that the boy should be called Anand, and Mr Biswas, who had prepared no new names, agreed. Then it was Anand who travelled with Shama. Savi stayed at Hanuman House. Mrs Tulsi wanted this; so did Shama; so did Savi herself. She liked Hanuman House for its activity and its multitude of children; at The Chase she was restless and badly behaved.
‘Ma,’ Savi said to Shama one day, ‘couldn’t you give me to Aunt Chinta and take Vidiadhar in exchange?’
Vidiadhar was Chinta’s newest baby, born a few months before Anand. And the reason for Savi’s request was this: by virtue of a tradition whose beginnings no one could trace, Chinta was the aunt who distributed all the delicacies that were given to the House by visitors.
Shama told the story as a joke, and couldn’t understand it when Mr Biswas became annoyed.
Once a week he rode his Royal Enfield bicycle to Hanuman House to see Savi. Often he didn’t have to go inside; Savi was waiting for him in the arcade. At every visit he gave her a silver six-cents piece and asked anxious questions.
‘Who beat you?’
Savi shook her head.
‘Who shouted at you?’
‘They shout at everybody.’
She didn’t seem to need a protector.
One Saturday he found her wearing heavy boots with long iron bands down the side of her legs and straps over her knees.
‘Who put these on you?’
‘Granny.’ She was not aggrieved. She was proud of the boots, the iron, the straps. ‘They are heavy, heavy.’
‘Why did she put them on? To punish you?’
‘Only to straighten my legs.’
She had bow-legs. He didn’t believe anything could be done about them and had never tried to find out.
‘They are ugly.’ That was all he could say. ‘They make you look like a cripple.’
She frowned at the word. ‘Well, I