A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [128]
Mr Biswas opened the box and showed Anand the sharpened crayons. ‘Take them. They are yours. You can do what you like with them.’
Anand shook his head.
‘You don’t want them?’
Tarzan, between Anand’s legs, held up his head to be stroked, closing his eyes in anticipation.
‘What do you want then?’
Anand shook his head. Tarzan shook his.
‘Why did you stay then?’
Anand looked exasperated.
‘Why?’
‘Because –’ The word came out thin, explosive, charged with anger, at himself and his father. ‘Because they was going to leave you alone.’
For the rest of that day they hardly spoke.
His instinct had been right. As soon as Shama had gone his fatigue left him. He became restless again, and almost welcomed the familiar constricted turmoil in his mind. He returned to the fields, taking Anand with him on the first day. Anand, dusty, itching, scorched by the sun and cut by sharp grass, refused to go again, and thereafter remained at the barracks with Tarzan.
He made more toys for Anand. A round tin-lid loosely nailed to a rod provided something that rolled when pushed and gave Anand a deep satisfaction. At night they drew imaginary scenes: snow-covered mountains and fir trees, red-hulled yachts in a blue sea below a clear sky, roads winding between well-kept forests to green mountains in the distance. They also talked.
‘Who is your father?’
‘You.’
‘Wrong. I am not your father. God is your father.’
‘Oh. And what about you?’
‘I am just somebody. Nobody at all. I am just a man you know.’
He showed Anand how to mix colours. He taught him that red and yellow made orange, blue and yellow green.
‘Oh. That is why the leaves turn yellow?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Well, look then. Suppose I take a leaf and wash it and wash it and wash it, it will turn yellow or blue?’
‘Not really. The leaf is God’s work. You see?’
‘No.’
‘Your trouble is that you don’t really believe. There was a man like you one time. He wanted to mock a man like me. So one day, when the man like me was sleeping, this other man drop an orange in his lap, thinking, “I bet the damn fool going to wake up and say that God drop the orange.” So the other man woke up and began eating the orange. And this man come up and say, “I suppose God give you that orange.” “Yes,” the other man said. “Well, let me tell you. Is not God. Is me.” “Well,” the other man said, “I prayed for an orange while I was asleep.” ’
Anand was impressed.
‘Now, look,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘See this matchbox. You see me holding it in my hand. Oops! It fall down. Why?’
‘You leggo, that’s why.’
‘Not that at all. It fall down because of gravity. The law of gravity. They not teaching you children anything at all these days.’
He talked to Anand about people called Coppernickus and Galilyo. And it gave him a thrill to be the first to inform Anand that the world was round and moved about the sun.
‘Remember Galilyo. Always stick up for yourself.’
He was glad that Anand was interested. It was the week before Christmas and he was fearing the result of Seth’s visit.
He told Anand, On Saturday we are going to make a compass.’
And on Saturday Seth said, ‘Why you don’t come home, Anand boy? Come home and hang up your stocking. What you doing here with your father?’
‘He is not my father. It just look to you that he is my father.’
Seth evaded the theological issue. ‘They going to make cake and icecream, boy.’
Mr Biswas said, ‘Remember Galilyo.’
Anand stayed.
Using the batteries of his electric torch Mr Biswas magnetized a needle and stuck it on a disc of paper; in the centre of the disc he inserted a cap of paper and rested the cap on the head of a pin.
‘Where the eye of the needle points, that is north.’
They played with that until the needle lost its magnetism.
Sometimes Mr Biswas said he had ague. Then,