A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [181]
Shama spoke about the sheep.
‘Sheep?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘To ride?’
She said that Seth was no longer part of the family and that two husbands who had left Hanuman House after disagreements with Seth had rejoined the family for the move to Shorthills.
Mr Biswas didn’t listen. ‘About those sheep. Savi get one, Anand get one, Myna get one, Kamla get one. Make four in all. What are we going to do with four sheep. Breed more? To sell and kill? Hindus, eh? Feeding and fattening just in order to kill. Or you see the six of us sitting down and making wool from four sheep? You know how to make wool? Any of your family know how to make wool?’
The children did not want to move to a place they didn’t know, and they were a little frightened of living with the Tulsis again. Above all, they did not want to be referred to as ‘country pupils’ at school; the advantages – being released fifteen minutes earlier in the afternoon – could not make up for the shame. And Mr Biswas turned Shama’s propaganda into a joke. He read out ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ from Bell’s Standard Elocutionist; he drove imaginary flocks of sheep through the drawingroom, making bleating noises. As always during the holidays, he announced his arrival by ringing his bicycle bell from the road; then the children walked out in single file to meet him, staggering under imaginary loads. ‘Watch it, Savi!’ he would call. ‘Those tonka beans are heavy like hell, you know.’ Later he would ask, ‘Make a lot of wool today?’ And once, when Anand came into the drawingroom just as the lavatory chain was pulled, Mr Biswas said, ‘Walking back? What’s the matter? Forgot your horse at the waterfall?’
Shama sulked.
‘Going to buy that gold brooch for you, girl! Anand, Savi, Myna! Come and sing a Christmas carol for your mother.’
They sang ‘While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night’.
Shama’s gloom, persisting, defeated them all. And that Christmas, the first they spent by themselves, was made more memorable by Shama’s gloom. She could not make icecream because she didn’t have a freezer, but she did what she could to turn the day into a miniature Hanuman House Christmas. She got up early and waited to be kissed, like Mrs Tulsi. She spread a white cloth on the table and put out nuts and dates and red apples; she cooked an extravagant meal. She did everything punctiliously, but as one martyred. ‘Anybody would think you were making another baby,’ Mr Biswas said. And in his diary, a Sentinel reporter’s notebook which he had begun to fill at Mr Biswas’s suggestion, as an additional exercise in English Composition and as practice in natural writing, Anand wrote, ‘This is the worst Christmas Day I have ever spent;’ and, not forgetting the literary purpose of the diary, added, ‘I feel like Oliver Twist in the workhouse.’
But Shama never relented.
Soon she received impressive assistance. The house became full of sisters and husbands on their way to and from Shorthills. The fine dresses, veils and jewellery of the sisters contrasted with their mood, which they seemed to get from Shama. They fixed Mr Biswas with injured, helpless, accusing woman’s looks which he found difficult to ignore. The jokes about sheep and waterfalls and tonka beans stopped; he locked himself in his room. Sometimes Shama, after much coaxing from her sisters, dressed and went to Shorthills with them. She came back gloomier than ever, and when Mr Biswas said, ‘Well, tell me, girl, tell me,’ she did not reply and only cried silently. When Mrs Tulsi came Shama cried all the time.
Since the quarrel with Seth Mrs Tulsi had ceased to be an invalid. She had left the Rose Room to direct the move from Arwacas and was, indeed, the source of the new enthusiasm. She tried to persuade Mr Biswas to join the move, and Mr Biswas, flattered at this attention, listened sympathetically. There would be no Seth, Mrs Tulsi said; one could live for nothing at Shorthills; Mr Biswas would