A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [174]
And in the house, while he was out, the children would come out of bed and go to Shama. She would take down her bloated reporter’s notebooks and try to explain how she had spent the money given her.
At school one day Anand asked the boy who shared his desk, ‘Your father and mother does quarrel?’
‘What about?’
‘Oh, about anything. About food, for instance.’
‘Nah. But suppose he ask her to go to town and buy something. And suppose she don’t buy it. Boy!’
One evening, after a quarrel had flared up and died without being concluded, Anand went to Mr Biswas’s room and said, ‘I have a story to tell you.’
Something in his manner warned Mr Biswas. He put down his book, settled a pillow against the head of the bed and smiled.
‘Once upon a time there was a man —’ Anand’s voice broke.
‘Yes?’ Mr Biswas said, in a mocking friendly voice, still smiling, scraping his lower lip with his teeth.
‘Once upon a time there was a man who –’ His voice broke again, his father’s smile confused him, he forgot what he had planned to say and abandoning grammar, added quickly, ‘Who, whatever you do for him, wasn’t satisfied.’
Mr Biswas burst out laughing, and Anand ran out of the room, trembling with rage and humiliation, to the kitchen, where Shama comforted him.
For many days Anand didn’t speak to Mr Biswas and, in secret revenge, didn’t drink milk at the Dairies, but iced coffee. Mr Biswas was effusive towards Savi and Myna and Kamla, and relaxed with Shama. The atmosphere in the house was less heavy and Shama, now Anand’s defender, took much pleasure in urging Anand to speak to his father.
‘Leave him, leave him,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Leave the storyteller.’
Anand became steadily more morose. When he came home after private lessons one afternoon he refused to eat or talk. He went to his room, lay down on the bed and, despite Shama’s coaxings, stayed there.
Mr Biswas came in and presently walked into the room, saying in his rallying voice, ‘Well, well. What happen to our Hans Andersen?’
‘Eat some prunes, son,’ Shama said, taking out the little brown paper-bag from the table drawer.
Mr Biswas saw the distress on Anand’s face and his manner changed. ‘What’s the matter?’
Anand said, ‘The boys laugh at me.’
‘He who laughs last laughs best,’ Shama said.
‘Lawrence say that his father is your boss.’
There was silence.
Mr Biswas sat on the bed and said, ‘Lawrence is the night editor. Nothing to do with me.’
‘He say they have you like an office boy in the office.’
‘You know I write features.’
‘And he say that when you go to his father house you have to go to the back door.’
Mr Biswas stood up. His linen suit was crumpled, the jacket pulled out of shape by the notebooks in the pockets, the tops of which were dirty and a little frayed.
‘You never went to his father house?’
‘Why should he go to Lawrence’s house?’ Shama said.
‘And you never went to the back door?’
Mr Biswas walked to the window. It was dark; his back was to them.
‘Let me put on the light,’ Shama said briskly. Her footsteps were heavy. The light went on. Anand covered his face with his arm. ‘Is that all that’s been upsetting you?’ Shama asked. ‘Your father has nothing to do with Lawrence. You heard what he said.’
Mr Biswas went out of the room.
Shama said, ‘You shouldn’t have told him that, you know, son.’
For the rest of that evening Shama walked and talked and did everything as noisily as she could.
The next morning, with his