A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [171]
‘God! God! Isn’t this just the sort of arseness to make you go and dance on the grave afterwards? You know, I could turn the funeral column into a bright little feature. Yesterday’s Undertakings. By Gravedigger. Just next to Today’s Arrangements. Or set it next to Invalids. Heading: Going Going, Gone. How about this? Photo of weeping widow at graveside. Later, photo of widow hearing about will and laughing. Caption: “Smiling, Mrs X? We thought so. Where there’s a will there is a way.” Two photos side by side.’
In the meantime he bought a dark serge suit on credit. And while Anand walked beside the wall of Lapeyrouse Cemetery on his way to the Dairies in the afternoon, Mr Biswas was often inside the cemetery, moving solemnly among the tombstones and making discreet inquiries about names and decorations. He came home tired, complaining of headaches, his stomach rising.
‘A capitalist rag,’ he began to say. ‘Just another capitalist rag.’
Anand remarked that his name no longer appeared in it.
‘Glad like hell,’ Mr Biswas said.
And on four Saturdays in succession he was sent to unimportant cricket matches, just to get the scores. The game of cricket meant nothing to him, but he was made to understand that the assignment was part of his retraining and he cycled from fourth-class match to fourth-class match, copying symbols and scores he did not understand, enjoying only the brief esteem of surprised and thrilled players under trees. Most of the matches finished at half past five and it was impossible to be at all the grounds at the same time. It sometimes happened that when he got to a ground there was no one there. Then secretaries had to be hunted out and there was more cycling. In this way those Saturday afternoons and evenings were ruined, and often Sunday as well, for many of the scores he had gathered were not printed.
He began to echo phrases from the prospectus of the Ideal School of Journalism. ‘I can make a living by my pen,’ he said. ‘Let them go ahead. Just let them push me too far.’ At this period one-man magazines, nearly all run by Indians, were continually springing up. ‘Start my own magazine,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Go around like Bissessar, selling them myself. He tell me he does sell his paper like hot cakes. Like hot cakes, man!’
He abandoned his own régime of strictness at home and instead spoke so long of various members of the Sentinel staff that Shama and the children got to feel that they knew them well. From time to time he indulged in a tiny rebellion.
‘Anand, on your way to school stop at the café and telephone the Sentinel. Tell them I don’t feel like coming to work today.’
‘Why you don’t telephone them yourself? You know I don’t like telephoning.’
‘We can’t always do what we like, boy.’
‘And you want me to say that you just don’t feel like going out to work today.’
‘Tell them I’m sick. Cold, headache, fever. You know.’
When Anand left, Mr Biswas would say, ‘Let them sack me. Let them sack me like hell. Think I care? I want them to sack me.’
‘Yes,’ Shama said. ‘You want them to sack you.’
But he was careful to space out these days.
He made himself unpopular among the boys and young men of the street who played cricket on the pavement in the afternoons and chattered under the lamp-post at night. He shouted at them from his window and, because of his suit, his job, the house he lived in, his connexion with Owad, his influence with the police, they were cowed. Sometimes he ostentatiously went to the café and telephoned the local police sergeant, whom he had known well in happier days. And he rejoiced in the glares and the mutterings of the players when, soberly dressed, unlikely to offend mourners, he cycled out to his funerals in the afternoon.
He read political books. They gave him