A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [166]
They came out of the ship and massed formally in front of a magenta-coloured shed with French and English notices forbidding smoking. From somewhere a chair had been obtained and Mrs Tulsi sat on it, her veil pulled low over her forehead, a handkerchief crushed in one hand, with Sushila, the sickroom widow, at her side.
Owad started to kiss, strangers first. But they were too many; soon he abandoned them and concentrated on the family. He kissed each sister into a spurt of tears; he shook the men by the hand, and when it was Mr Biswas’s turn he smiled and said, ‘No more ducking.’
Mr Biswas was unaccountably moved. His legs shook; he felt unsteady. He said, ‘I hope war doesn’t break out – ’ Tears rushed to his eyes, he choked and could say no more.
Owad had passed on. He embraced the children; then Shekhar; then Seth, who cried copiously; and finally Mrs Tulsi, who didn’t cry at all.
He went into the ship. Presently he appeared at the rails and waved. A passenger joined him; they began to talk.
The passengers’ gangway was drawn up. Then there were shouts, raucous, unsustained singing, and three Germans with bruised faces and torn and dirty clothes came staggering along the wharf, comically supporting one another, drunk. Someone from the ship called to them harshly; they shouted back and, drunk and collapsing though they were, and without touching the rope-rail, they walked up the narrow gang-board at the stern. All the doubts about the ship were re-excited.
Whistles: waves from ship, from shore: the ship edging away: the dock less protected, the dark, dirty water surfaced with litter. And soon they stood quite exposed in front of the customs shed, staring at the ship, staring at the gap it had left.
The weakness that had come to him at the touch of Owad’s hands remained with Mr Biswas. There was a hole in his stomach. He wanted to climb mountains, to exhaust himself, to walk and walk and never return to the house, to the empty tent, the dead fire-holes, the disarrayed furniture. He left the wharves with Anand and they walked aimlessly through the city. They stopped at a café and Mr Biswas bought Anand icecream in a tub and a Coca Cola.
The paper would sprawl on the sunny steps in the morning; there would be stillness at noon and shadow in the afternoon. But it would be a different day.
2. The New Régime
HAVING NO further business in Port of Spain, Mrs Tulsi returned to Arwacas. The tent was taken down and after a few days the house was cleared of stragglers. Mr Biswas set about restoring his rose-beds and the lily-pond, whose edges had collapsed, turning the water into bubbling mud. He worked without heart, feeling the emptiness of the house and not knowing how much longer he would be allowed to stay there. None of Mrs Tulsi’s furniture had been removed: the house there seemed to be awaiting change. Some of the savour went out of his job at the Sentinel. He needed to address his work mentally to someone. At first this had been Mr Burnett; then it had been Owad. Now there was only Shama. She seldom read his articles; when he read them aloud to her she showed neither interest nor amusement and made no comments. Once he gave her the typescript of an article and she infuriated him by turning over the last page and looking for more. ‘No more, no more,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to