A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [129]
But there were compensations.
‘Today,’ Mr Biswas said, ‘I am going to show you something about a thing called centrifugal force. Go and get the bucket outside and full it up so high with water.’
Anand brought the water.
‘Not enough space here really,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘Why you don’t go outside?’
Mr Biswas didn’t listen. ‘Got to give it a good swing.’ He swung.
The water splashed on the bed, the walls, the floor.
‘The bucket was too heavy. Go and get one of the small blue pots from the kitchen. Full that with some water.’
And the second time it worked.
They made an electric buzzer, using the torch batteries, a piece of tin and a nail, a rusty new nail, one of those Mr Maclean had brought in newspaper on the afternoon Edgar had brushed the site for the house.
There were many reasons why Mr Biswas moved from the barracks to the finished room of his house. It was a positive action; it was a confident, defiant gesture; there was his continuing unease at hearing people moving about the barracks. And there was his hope that living in a new house in the new year might bring about a new state of mind. He would not have moved if he had been alone, for he feared solitude more than people. But, with Anand, he had enough company.
Tarzan found a pregnant cat in possession of the empty, dusty room and chased her out.
The room was swept and cleaned. They tried to scrape the asphalt snakes off the floor; but the asphalt, which melted so easily on the corrugated iron, remained hard on the cedar boards. The room was smaller than the barrackroom; the bed, Shama’s dressingtable, the green table, the kitchen safe and the rockingchair nearly filled it. ‘Got to be careful now,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Can’t rock too hard.’ And there were other inconveniences. There was no kitchen; they had to cook on boxes downstairs, below the room; they both got nausea. The roof had no gutters and water had to be fetched all the way from the barrack barrels. They also had to use the barrack latrine.
And every day Mr Biswas saw the snakes, thin, black, lengthening.
The incompleteness of the house didn’t depress him. He saw the rafters, the old corrugated iron, the grey uprights, the cracked boards on the floor and walls, the door to the non-existent bedroom nailed and barred. He knew that they had made him unhappy; but that was at a time so remote he could now scarcely imagine it.
The snakes appeared more often in his dreams. He began to regard them as living, and wondered what it would be like to have one fall and curl on his skin.
The questioning and the fear remained. He hadn’t left that at the barracks.
The trees could conceal so much.
And one night Anand was awakened by Mr Biswas jumping out of bed, screaming, tearing at his vest as though he had been attacked by a column of red ants.
A snake had fallen on him. Very thin, and not long.
When they looked up they saw the parent snake, waiting to release some more.
With poles and brooms they tried to pull down the snakes. The asphalt only swung when they hit it. To grab at it was only to pull away a small snake, leaving the pregnant parent above.
He got a cocoa-knife and spent the following evening cutting down the snakes. It was not easy. Below the crust at the roots the asphalt was soft but rubbery. He scraped hard and felt the rust from the roof falling on his face.
By the next afternoon the snakes had begun to grow again.
He said he had another touch of malaria. He wrapped himself in the floursack sheet and rocked in his chair. Tarzan had his tail crushed; he leapt up with a yell, and went out of the room.
‘Say Rama Rama Sita Rama, and nothing will happen to you,’ Mr Biswas said.
Anand repeated the words, faster