A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [169]
The harassed waitress came and Mr Burnett said, ‘Shoots? This is just plain bamboo. What do you think I have inside here?’ He tapped his belly. ‘A paper factory?’
‘That was one portion,’ the waitress said.
‘That was one bamboo.’
He ordered more lager and the waitress sucked her teeth and went out, leaving the swing door swinging rapidly to and fro.
‘One portion,’ Mr Burnett said. ‘They make it sound like hay. And this damned room is like a stall. I’m not worried. I’ve got other strings to my bow. You too. You could go back to your sign-writing. I leave, you leave. Let’s all leave.’
They laughed.
Mr Biswas returned to the office in a state of great agitation. He had been associated, and zestfully, with some of the most frivolous excesses of the Sentinel. Now at the thought of each he felt a stab of guilt and panic. He was expecting to be summoned to mysterious rooms and told by their secure occupants that his services were no longer required. He sat at his desk – but it belonged to him no more than the columns of the Sentinel he filled – and listened to the noises made by the carpenters. Those were the noises he had heard on his first day in the office; building and rebuilding had gone on without interruption ever since. The newsroom came to its afternoon life. Reporters arrived, took off their jackets, opened notebooks and typed; groups gathered at the green water-cooler and broke up again; at some desks proofs were being corrected, the inner pages laid out. For more than four years he had been part of this excitement. Now, waiting for the summons, he could only observe it.
Getting to believe that by staying in the office he was increasing the risk of dismissal, he left early and cycled home. Fear led to fear. Suppose he had to send the children back to Hanuman House, would there be anyone to receive them? Suppose Mrs Tulsi gave him notice – as Shama did so often to the tenement people – where would he go? How would he live?
The years stretched ahead, dark.
When he got home he mixed and drank some Maclean’s Brand Stomach Powder, undressed, got into bed and began to read Epictetus.
But the days went by and no summons came. And at last it was time for Mr Burnett to leave. Mr Biswas wanted to make some gesture to show his gratitude and sympathy, but he could think of nothing. And after all Mr Burnett was escaping; he was staying behind. The Sentinel reported Mr Burnett’s departure on the society page. There was an unkind photograph of Mr Burnett looking uncomfortable in a dinner jacket, his small eyes popping in the flash of the camera, a cigar stuck in his mouth as if for comic effect. He was reported as being sorry to leave; he had to take up an appointment in America; he had learned much from his association with Trinidad and the Sentinel, and he would take a great interest in the progress of both; he thought the standards of local journalism ‘surprisingly high’. It was left to the other newspapers to reveal the other strings to his bow that Mr Burnett had spoken about. They reported that an Indian troupe, made up of dancers, a fire-walker, a snake-charmer and a man who could rest on a bed of nails, was accompanying Mr Burnett, a former editor of a local newspaper, on his travels to America. One headline was THE CIRCUS MOVES ON.
And the new régime started at the Sentinel The day after Mr Burnett’s departure the newsroom was hung with posters which said DON’T BE BRIGHT, JUST GET IT RIGHT and NEWS NOT VIEWS and FACTS? IF NOT AXE and CHECK IT OR CHUCK IT. Mr Biswas regarded them all as aimed at himself alone, and their whimsicality scared