A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [133]
‘You see them?’
Anand closed the door.
On the floor the winged ants had a new life. They were possessed of scores of black limbs. They were being carted away by the biting ants. They wriggled and squirmed, but did not disturb the even solemnity of their bearers. Bodiless wings were also being carried away.
Lightning obliterated shadows and colour.
The hair on Anand’s arms and legs stood straight. His skin tingled.
‘You see them?’
Anand thought they might be the men from the day before. But he couldn’t be sure.
‘Bring the cutlass.’
Anand put the cutlass against the wall near the head of the bed. The wall was running with water.
‘And you take the walking-stick.’
Anand would have liked to go to sleep. But he didn’t want to get into bed with his father. And with the floor full of ants where it was not wet, he couldn’t make up a bed for himself.
‘Rama Rama Sita Rama, Rama Rama Sita Rama.’
‘Rama Rama Sita Rama,’ Anand repeated.
Then Mr Biswas forgot Anand and began to curse. He cursed Ajodha, Pundit Jairam, Mrs Tulsi, Shama, Seth.
‘Say Rama Rama, boy.’
‘Rama Rama Sita Rama.’
The rain abated.
When Anand looked outside, the men under the house had gone with their tannia leaves, leaving a dead, hardly-smoking fire.
‘You see them?’
The rain came again. Lightning flashed and flashed, thunder exploded and rolled.
The procession of the ants continued. Anand began killing them with the walking-stick. Whenever he crushed a group carrying a living winged ant, the ants broke up, without confusion or haste, re-formed, took away what they could of the crushed body and carried away their dead. Anand struck and struck with his stick. A sharp pain ran up his arm. On his hand he saw an ant, its body raised, its pincers buried in his skin. When he looked at the walking-stick he saw that it was alive with biting ants crawling upwards. He was suddenly terrified of them, their anger, their vindictiveness, their number. He threw the stick away from him. It fell into a puddle.
The roof rose and dropped, grinding and flapping. The house shook.
‘Rama Rama Sita Rama,’ Anand said.
‘O God! They coming!’
‘They gone!’ Anand shouted angrily.
Mr Biswas muttered hymns in Hindi and English, left them unfinished, cursed, rolled on the bed, his face still expressing only exasperation.
The flame of the oil lamp swayed, shrank, throwing the room into darkness for seconds, then shone again.
A shaking on the roof, a groan, a prolonged grinding noise, and Anand knew that a sheet of corrugated iron had been torn off. One sheet was left loose. It flapped and jangled continuously. Anand waited for the fall of the sheet that had been blown off.
He never heard it.
Lightning; thunder; the rain on roof and walls; the loose iron sheet; the wind pushing against the house, pausing, and pushing again.
Then there was a roar that overrode them all. When it struck the house the window burst open, the lamp went instantly out, the rain lashed in, the lightning lit up the room and the world outside, and when the lightning went out the room was part of the black void.
Anand began to scream.
He waited for his father to say something, to close the window, light the lamp.
But Mr Biswas only muttered on the bed, and the rain and wind swept through the room with unnecessary strength and forced open the door