A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [110]
‘Georgie!’ Mrs Maclean shouted. ‘Come and see what that damn mongoose do again.’
Mr Maclean went to the back of the house. Mr Biswas heard him mumbling evenly. ‘Damn nuisance,’ he said, coming back, striking his trousers with a switch. ‘So, you want me to build a house for you?’
Mr Biswas mistook his wariness for sarcasm and said defensively, ‘Is not a mansion.’
‘That is a blessing. Too much people putting up mansion these days. You ever had a close look at the County Road?’ He paused. ‘Upstairs house?’
Mr Biswas nodded. ‘Upstairs house. Small thing. But neat. I don’t want too much to make me happy,’ he ran on, made uneasy by Mr Maclean. ‘I don’t see any point in pretending that you have more money than you really have.’
‘Naturally,’ Mr Maclean said. With the switch he flicked some fowl droppings from the yard into the thick dust under the floor of his own house. Then he drew two equal and adjacent squares on the ground. ‘You want two bedrooms.’
‘And a drawingroom.’
Mr Maclean added another square of the same size. To this he added half a square and said, ‘And a gallery.’
‘That’s it. Nothing too fancy for me. Small and neat.’
‘You want a door from the gallery to the front bedroom. A wood door. And you want another door to the drawingroom. With coloured glass panes.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘One side of the gallery you want board up. For the front you would like some fancy rails. You want a nice concrete step with a banister in front.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘For the front bedroom you want glass windows, and if you get the money you going to paint them white. The back windows could be pure board. And you want a plain wood staircase at the back, with no banister or anything like that. The kitchen you going to build yourself, somewhere in the yard.’
‘Exactly.’
‘That’s a nice little house you have there. A lot of people would like it. It going to cost you about two hundred and fifty, three hundred dollars. Labour, you know –’ He looked at Mr Biswas and slowly rubbed a bare foot over the drawing on the ground. ‘I don’t know. I busy these days.’ He pointed to the unfinished wheel in the shed.
A hen cackled, proclaiming an egg.
‘Georgie! Is the Leghorn.’
There was a tremendous squawking and flapping among the poultry.
Mr Maclean said, ‘Is a lucky thing. Otherwise she was going straight in the pot.’
‘We not bound and ’bliged to build the whole thing right away,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.’
‘So they say. But Rome get build. Anyway, as soon as I get some time I going to come and we could look at the site. You have a site?’
‘Yes, yes, man. Have a site.’
‘Well, in about two-three days then.’
He came early that afternoon, in hat, shoes and an ironed shirt, and they went to look at the site.
‘Is a real little bower,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘Is a sloping site!’ Mr Maclean said in surprise and almost with pleasure. ‘You really have to have high pillars.’
‘High on one side, low on the other. It could practically be a style. And then I was thinking about a little path down to the road here. Steps. In the ground itself. Garden on both sides. Roses. Exora. Oleanders. Bougainvillaea and poinsettia. And some Queen of Flowers. And a neat little bamboo bridge to the road.’
‘It sound nice.’
‘I was thinking. About the house. It would be nice to have concrete pillars. Not naked though. I don’t think that does look nice. Plastered and smooth.’
‘I know what you mean. You think you could give me about a hundred and fifty dollars just to start off with?’
Mr Biswas hesitated.
‘You mustn’t think I want to meddle in your private affairs. I just wanting to know how much you want to spend right away.’
Mr Biswas walked away from Mr Maclean, among the bushes on the damp site, the weeds and the nettles. ‘About a hundred,’ he said. ‘But at the end of the month I could give you a little bit more.’
‘A hundred.’
‘