A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [109]
He cycled down the High Street. Just past the shop with the Red Rose Tea Is Good Tea sign, he looked back. Anand was still under the arcade, next to one of the thick white pillars with the lotus-shaped base; standing and staring like that other boy Mr Biswas had seen outside a low hut at dusk.
When he got to Green Vale it was dark. Under the trees it was night. The sounds from the barracks were assertive and isolated one from the other: snatches of talk, the sound of frying, a shout, the cry of a child: sounds thrown up at the starlit sky from a place that was nowhere, a dot on the map of the island, which was a dot on the map of the world. The dead trees ringed the barracks, a wall of flawless black.
He locked himself in his room.
That week he decided he couldn’t wait any longer. Unless he started his house now he never would. His children would stay at Hanuman House, he would remain in the barrackroom, and nothing would arrest his descent into the void. Every night he wound himself up to a panic at his inaction, every morning he reaffirmed his decision, and on Saturday he spoke to Seth about a site.
‘Rent you land?’ Seth said. ‘Rent? Look, man, there is the land. Why don’t you just choose a site and build? Don’t talk to me about renting.’
The site Mr Biswas had in mind was about two hundred yards from the barracks, screened from it by the trees and separated from it by a shallow damp depression which ran with muddy water after rain. Trees also screened the road. But when he thought of the land as the site of his house, the trees did not seem unfriendly; and he liked to think of the spot as a ‘bower’, a word that had come to him from Wordsworth by way of the Royal Reader.
On Sunday morning, after he had had some cocoa, shop bread and red butter, he went to see the builder. The builder lived in a crumbling wooden house in a small Negro settlement not far from Arwacas. Just over the gutter a badly-written notice board announced that George Maclean was a carpenter and cabinet-maker; this announcement was choked by much subsidiary information scattered all over the board in small and wavering letters; Mr Maclean was also a blacksmith and a painter; he made tin cups and he soldered; he sold fresh eggs; he had a ram for service; and all his prices were keen.
Mr Biswas called, ‘Morning!’
From the shack in the hard yellow yard a Negro woman came out, a large calabash full of corn in one hand. Her tight cotton dress imperfectly covered her big body and her kinky hair was in curlers and twists of newspaper.
‘The carpenter home?’ Mr Biswas asked.
The woman called, ‘Géorgie!’ For a fat woman her voice was surprisingly thin.
Mr Maclean appeared above the half-door at the side of the house. He looked at Mr Biswas suspiciously.
The woman walked to the far end of the yard, scattering corn and clucking loudly, calling the poultry to feed.
Mr Biswas didn’t know how to begin. He couldn’t just say, ‘I want to build a house.’ He didn’t have all the necessary money and he didn’t want to deceive Mr Maclean or expose himself to his scorn. He said shyly, ‘I have a little business I want to talk to you about.’
Mr Maclean pushed open the lower half of the door and came down the concrete steps. He was middle-aged, tall and thin; he looked as eager and uncertain as his board. His profession was a frustrating one. The county abounded in work he had not been allowed to finish: exposed and rotting house-frames, houses that had begun with concrete and dressed wood and ended with mud walls and tree branches. Evidence of his compensating activities lay about the yard. In an open shed at the back a half-finished wheel stood amid shavings. Here and there Mr Biswas saw goat droppings.
‘What sort of business?’ Mr Maclean asked. He reached up and pulled a window open. It rattled and glittered; it was hung on the inside with strings of tin cups.
‘Is about a house.’
‘Oh. Repairs?’
‘Not exactly. It ain’t