A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [89]
‘All right,’ Shama said. ‘Let me show you for the last time. Watch me. Now try.’
Savi fumbled ineffectually again. This time there was less laughter.
‘You just want to shame me,’ Shama said. ‘A big girl like you, five going on six, can’t tie her own laces. Jai, come here.’
Jai was the son of an unimportant sister. He was pushed to the front by his mother, who was dandling another baby on her hip.
‘Look at Jai,’ Shama said. ‘His mother don’t have to tie his shoelaces. And he is a whole year younger than you.’
‘Fourteen months younger,’ Jai’s mother said.
‘Well, fourteen months younger,’ Shama said, directing her annoyance to Savi. ‘You want to defy me?’
Savi was still squatting.
‘Hurry up now!’ Shama said, so loudly and suddenly that Savi jumped and began playing stupidly with the laces. No one laughed.
Stooping, Shama brought the hibiscus switch down on Savi’s bare legs.
Mr Biswas looked on, a fixed smile on his face. He made phlegmy little noises, urging Shama to stop.
Savi was crying.
Sushila, the widow, came to the top of the stairs and said authoritatively, ‘Remember Mai.’
They all remembered. Silence for the sick. The scene was over.
Shama, trying too late to turn comedy into tragedy, developed a sudden temper and stamped off, almost unnoticed, to the kitchen.
Sumati, the flogger at The Chase, pulled Savi to her long skirt. Savi cried into it and used it to wipe her nose and dry her eyes. Then Sumati tied Savi’s laces and sent her off to school.
At The Chase Shama had seldom beat Savi, and then it had been only a matter of a few slaps. But at Hanuman House the sisters still talked with pride of the floggings they had received from Mrs Tulsi. Certain memorable floggings were continually recalled, with commonplace detail made awful and legendary by its association with a stupendous event, like the detail in a murder case. And there was even some rivalry among the sisters as to who had been flogged worst of all.
Mr Biswas had breakfast: biscuits from the big black drum, red butter, and tea, lukewarm, sugary and strong. Shama, though indignant, was dutiful and correct. As she watched him eat, her indignation became more and more defensive. Finally she was only grave.
‘You see Mai yet?’
He understood.
They went to the Rose Room. Sushila admitted them and at once went outside. A shaded oil lamp burned low. The jalousied window in the thick clay-brick wall was closed, keeping out daylight; cloth was wedged around the frame, to keep out draughts. There was a smell of ammonia, bay rum, rum, brandy, disinfectant, and a variety of febrifuges. Below a white canopy with red appliqué apples Mrs Tulsi lay, barely recognizable, a bandage around her forehead, her temples dotted with lumps of soft candle, her nostrils stuffed with some white medicament.
Shama sat on a chair in a shadowed corner, effacing herself.
The marble topped bedside table was a confusion of bottles, jars and glasses. There were little blue jars of medicated rubs, little white jars of medicated rubs; tall green bottles of bay rum and short square bottles of eyedrops and nosedrops; a round bottle of rum, a flat bottle of brandy and an oval royal blue bottle of smelling-salts; a bottle of Sloan’s Liniment and a tiny tin of Tiger Balm; a mixture with a pink sediment and one with a yellow-brown sediment, like muddy water left to stand from the previous night.
Mr Biswas didn’t want to talk to Mrs Tulsi in Hindi, but the Hindi words came out. ‘How are you, Mai? I couldn’t come to see you last night because it was too late and I didn’t want to disturb you.’ He hadn’t intended to give any explanations.
‘How