A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [119]
Anand said, ‘Pa, you not going to use that?’
‘You will make the house look like a shack,’ Savi said.
‘You want something to cover your house,’ Seth said. ‘When you are sheltering from the rain you don’t run outside to look at what is sheltering you. Take it for three dollars.’
Mr Biswas thought again of the price of new corrugated iron, of the exposed frame of his house. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Send it.’
Anand, who had been displaying more and more energy since his misadventure at school, said, ‘All right! Go ahead and buy it and put it on your old house. I don’t care what it look like now.’
‘Another little paddler,’ Seth said.
But Mr Biswas felt as Anand. He too didn’t care what the house looked like now.
When he got back to Green Vale he found Mr Maclean.
They were both embarrassed.
‘I was doing a job in Swampland,’ Mr Maclean said. ‘I was just passing by here and I thought I would drop in.’
‘I was going to come to see you the other day,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘But you know how it is. I got about eighteen dollars. No, fifteen. I just went to Arwacas to buy some galvanize for the roof.’
‘Just in time too, boss. Otherwise all the money you did spend woulda waste.’
‘Not new galvanize, you know. I mean, not brand-brand new.’
‘The thing about galvanize is that you could always make it look nice. You go be surprised what a little bit of paint could do.’
‘They have a few holes here and there. A few. Tiny tiny.’ ‘We could fix those up easy. Mastic cement. Not expensive, boss.’
Mr Biswas noted the change in Mr Maclean’s tone.
‘Boss, I know you want pitchpine for the floor. I know pitchpine nice. It does look nice and it does smell nice and it easy to keep clean. But you know it does burn easy. Easy, easy.’
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘At pujas we always use pitchpine.’ To burn the offerings in a quick, scented flame.
‘Boss, I got some cedar planks. A man in Swampland offer me a whole pile of cedar for seven dollars. Seven dollars for a hundred and fifty foot of cedar is a real bargain.’
Mr Biswas hesitated. Of all wood cedar appealed to him least. The colour was pleasing but the smell was acrid and clinging. It was such a soft wood that a fingernail could mark it and splinters could be bitten off with teeth. To be strong it had to be thick; then its thickness made it look ungainly.
‘Now, boss, I know they is only rough planks. But you know me. When I finish planing them they would be level level, and when I join them together you wouldn’t be able to slip a sheet of bible-paper between them.’
‘Seven dollars. That leave eight for you.’ Mr Biswas meant it was little to pay for laying a floor and putting on a roof.
But Mr Maclean was offended. ‘My labour,’ he said.
The corrugated iron came that week-end on a lorry that also brought Anand and Savi and Shama.
Anand said, ‘Aunt Sushila bawl off the men when they was loading the galvanize on the lorry.’
‘She tell them to throw them down hard, eh?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Is that what she tell them? She did want them to dent them up more, eh? Don’t frighten to tell me.’
‘No, no. She say they wasn’t working fast enough.’
Mr Biswas examined the sheets as they were unloaded, looking for bumps and dents he could attribute to Sushila’s maliciousness. Whenever he saw a crack in the rust he stopped the loaders.
‘Look at this. Which one of you was responsible for this? You know, I mad enough to get Mr Seth to dock your money.’ That word ‘dock’, so official and ominous, he had got from Jagdat.
Stacked on the grass, the sheets made the site look like an abandoned lot. No corrugation of one sheet fitted into the corrugation of any other; the pile rose high and shaky and awkward.
Mr Maclean said, ‘I could straighten them out with the hammer. Now, about the rafters, boss.’
Mr Biswas had forgotten about those.
‘Now, boss, you must look at it this way. The rafters don’t show from the outside. Only