A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [149]
Excitement!
The ships sailed away with their scorched tourists, distinguished by their tropical clothes, after only a few hours. But they had come from places with famous names. And in the Sentinel office news from those places spilled out continually on to spools of paper. Outside was the hot sun, the horse-dunged streets, the choked slums, the rooms where he lived with Ramchand and Dehuti; and, beyond that, the level acres of sugarcane, the sunken ricelands, the repetitive labour of his brothers, the short roads leading from known settlement to known settlement, the Tulsi establishment, the old men who gathered every evening in the arcade of Hanuman House and would travel no more. But within the walls of the office every part of the world was near.
He went aboard American ships on the South American tourist route, interviewed businessmen, had difficulty in understanding the American accent, saw the galleys and marvelled at the quantity and quality of the food thrown away. He copied down passenger lists, was invited by a ship’s cook to join a smuggling ring that dealt in camera flash-bulbs, declined and was unable to write the story because it would have incriminated his late predecessor.
He interviewed an English novelist, a man about his own age, but still young, and shining with success. Mr Biswas was impressed. The novelist’s name was unknown to him and to the readers of the Sentinel, but Mr Biswas had thought of all writers as dead and associated the production of books not only with distant lands, but with distant ages. He visualized headlines – FAMOUS NOVELIST SAYS PORT OF SPAIN WORLD’S THIRD WICKEDEST CITY – and fed the novelist with leading questions. But the novelist considered Mr Biswas’s inquiries to have a sinister political motive, and made slow statements about the island’s famed beauty and his desire to see as much of it as possible.
I want to see that frighten anybody, Mr Biswas thought.
(Years later Mr Biswas came across the travel-book the novelist had written about the region. He saw himself described as an ‘incompetent, aggrieved and fanatical young reporter, who distastefully noted my guarded replies in a laborious longhand’.)
Then a ship called on the way to Brazil.
Within twenty-four hours Mr Biswas was notorious, the Sentinel, reviled on every hand, momentarily increased its circulation, and Mr Burnett was jubilant.
He said, ‘You have even chilled me.’
The story, the leading one on page three, read:
DADDY COMES HOME IN A COFFIN
U.S. Explorer’s Last Journey
ON ICE
by M. Biswas
Somewhere in America in a neat little red-roofed cottage four children ask their mother every day, ‘Mummy, when is Daddy coming home?’
Less than a year ago Daddy – George Elmer Edman, the celebrated traveller and explorer – left home to explore the Amazon.
Well, I have news for you, kiddies.
Daddy is on his way home.
Yesterday he passed through Trinidad. In a coffin.
Mr Biswas was taken on the staff of the Sentinel at a salary of fifteen dollars a fortnight.
‘The first thing you must do,’ Mr Burnett said, ‘is to get out and get yourself a suit. I can’t have my best reporter running about in those clothes.’
It was Ramchand who brought about the reconciliation between Mr Biswas and the Tulsis; or rather, since the Tulsis had few thoughts on the subject, made it possible for Mr Biswas to recover his family without indignity. Ramchand’s task was easy. Mr Biswas’s name appeared almost every day in the Sentinel, so that it seemed he had suddenly become famous and rich. Mr Biswas, believing himself that this was very nearly so, felt disposed to be charitable.
He was at that time touring the island as the Scarlet Pimpernel, in the hope of having people come up to him and say, ‘You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize.’ Every day his photograph appeared in the Sentinel together with his report on the previous day’s journey and his itinerary for the day. The photograph was half a column wide and there was no room for his