A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [98]
‘What have you brought for the others?’
It was Mrs Tulsi.
‘Didn’t have room,’ Mr Biswas said gaily.
‘When I give, I give to all,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘I am poor, but I give to all. It is clear, however, that I cannot compete with Santa Claus.’
Her voice was even and he would have smiled, as at a witticism, but when he looked at her he saw that her face was tight with anger.
‘Vidiadhar and Shivadhar!’ Chinta shouted. ‘Come here at once. Stop interfering with what doesn’t belong to you.’
As at a signal the sisters pounced on their children, threatening horrible punishments on those who interfered with what didn’t belong to them.
‘I will peel your backside.’
‘I will break every bone in your body.’
And Sumati the flogger said, ‘I will make you heavy with welts.’
‘Savi, go and put it away,’ Shama whispered. ‘Take it upstairs.’
Mrs Tulsi, rising, patting her lips, said, ‘Shama, I hope you will have the grace to give me notice before you move to your mansion.’ She laboured up the stairs, and Sushila, the widow who ruled the sickroom, followed solicitously.
The affronted sisters drew closer together, and Shama stood alone. Her eyes were wide with dread. She stared accusingly at Mr Biswas.
‘Well,’ he said briskly. ‘I better go back home – to the barracks.’
He urged Savi and Anand to come with him out to the arcade. Savi came willingly. Anand was, as usual, embarrassed. Mr Biswas couldn’t help feeling that, compared with Savi, the boy was a disappointment. He was small for his age, thin and sickly, with a big head; he looked as though he needed protection, but was shy and tongue-tied with Mr Biswas and always seemed anxious to be free of him. Now, when Mr Biswas put his arms around him, Anand sniffed, rubbed a dirty face against Mr Biswas’s trousers, and tried to pull away.
‘You must let Anand play with it,’ Mr Biswas said to Savi.
‘He is a boy.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Mr Biswas rubbed Anand’s bony back. ‘You are going to get something next time.’
‘I want a car,’ Anand said to Mr Biswas’s trousers. ‘A big one.’
Mr Biswas knew the sort he meant. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Going to get you a car.’
Immediately Anand broke away and ran back through the gate to the yard, riding an imaginary horse, wielding an imaginary whip and shouting, ‘And I going to get a car! I going to get a car!’
He bought the car; not, despite his promise, the big one Anand wanted, but a clockwork miniature; and on Saturday, after the labourers had been paid, he took it to Arwacas. His arrival was noted from the arcade and, as he pushed the side gate open, he heard the message being relayed by the children in awed and expectant tones: ‘Savi, your pappa come to see you.’
She came crying to the doorway of the hall. When he embraced her she burst into loud sobs.
The children were silent. He heard the stairs creaking continually, and he became aware of a thick shuffling and whispering in the black kitchen at the far end.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
She stifled her sobs. ‘They break it up.’
‘Show me!’ he cried. ‘Show me!’
His rage shocked her out of her tears. She came down the steps and he followed her through the gallery at the end of the hall into the yard, past a half-full copper reflecting a deep blue sky, and a black riveted tank where fish, bought alive from the market, swam until the time came for them to be eaten.
And there, below the almost bare branches of the almond tree that grew in the next yard, he saw it, thrown against a dusty leaning fence made of wood and tin and corrugated iron. A broken door, a ruined window, a staved-in wall or even roof-he had expected that. But not this. The doll’s house did not exist. He saw only a bundle of firewood. None of its parts was whole. Its delicate joints were exposed and useless. Below the torn skin of paint, still bright and still in parts imitating brickwork,