A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [115]
She obediently filled a bag with oranges.
Then Ajodha went inside.
As soon as he had gone Tara put some avocado pears into the bag, large purple-skinned ones such as, at Hanuman House, were set aside for Mrs Tulsi and the god. ‘They will get ripe soon,’ she said. ‘The children will like them.’
He didn’t want to explain where the children lived and where he lived. But he was glad he hadn’t asked her for money.
‘I am sorry your uncle was in such a temper,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t mean anything. The boys are being a little difficult. They want money from him all the time and you can’t blame him for getting angry sometimes. They are spreading all sorts of stories about him, too. He doesn’t say anything. But he knows.’
Mr Biswas went to say good-bye to Ajodha. His room was in darkness, the door was open, and Ajodha was lying on his pillowless bed with all his clothes on. Mr Biswas knocked lightly and there was no reply. The ledges on the walls were littered with papers. The room had only four pieces of furniture: the bed, a chair, a low chest of drawers and a black iron chest, the top of which was also covered with papers and magazines. Mr Biswas was about to go away when he heard Ajodha say gently, ‘I am not asleep, Mohun. But these days I always rest after eating. You mustn’t mind if I don’t talk or get up.’
On the way to the Main Road to get a bus Mr Biswas was hailed by someone. It was Jagdat. He put his hand on Mr Biswas’s shoulder and conspiratorially offered a cigarette. Ajodha forbade smoking and for Jagdat a cigarette was still an excitement.
Jagdat said breezily, ‘You come to squeeze something out of the old man, eh?’
‘What? Me? I just come to see the old people, man.’ ‘That wasn’t what the old man tell me.’ Jagdat waited, then clapped Mr Biswas on the back. ‘But I didn’t tell him anything.’
‘The old Mohun, man. Trying out the old diplomatic tactic, eh. The old tic-tac-toe.’
‘I wasn’t trying out anything.’
‘No, no. You mustn’t think I look down on you for trying. What else you think I doing every day? But the old man sharp, boy. He could smell a thing like that before you even start thinking about it. So what, eh? You still building this house for the children sake?’
‘You build one for yours?’
There was a sudden abatement of Jagdat’s high spirits. He stopped, half turned, as though about to go back, and raising his voice, said angrily, ‘So they spreading stories about me, eh? To you?’ He bawled, ‘O God! I going to go back and knock out all their false teeth. Mohun! You hearing me?’
The melodramatic flair seemed to run through the family. Mr Biswas said, ‘They didn’t tell me anything. But don’t forget that I know you since you was a boy. And if is still the old Jagdat I imagine you have enough outside children now to make up your own little school.’
Jagdat, still in the attitude of return, relaxed. They walked on.
‘Just four or five,’ Jagdat said.
‘How you mean, four or five?’
‘Well, four.’ Some of Jagdat’s bounce had gone and when, after some time, he spoke again, it was in an elegiac voice. ‘Boy, I went to see my father last week. The man living in a small concrete room in Henry Street in a ramshackle old house full of creole people. And, and’ – his voice was rising again – ‘that son of a bitch’ – he was screaming – ‘that son of a bitch not doing a damn thing to help him.’
In lighted windows curtains were raised. Mr Biswas plucked at Jagdat’s sleeve.
Jagdat dropped his voice to one of melancholy piety. ‘You remember the old man, Mohun?’
Mr Biswas remembered Bhandat well.
‘His face,’ Jagdat said, ‘come small small.’ He half-closed his small eyes and bunched the fingers of one hand raised in a gesture so delicate it might have been made by a pundit at a religious ceremony. ‘O yes,’ he went on, ‘Ajodha always ready to give you vitamin A and vitamin B. But when it come to