A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [182]
‘Leave him, leave him,’ Shama said. ‘All this talk about house was only to spite me.’
‘But if I keep my job in Port of Spain I don’t see how I would be able to do anything on the estate,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘Never mind,’ Mrs Tulsi said.
He wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to move for Shama’s sake; or whether, without Seth, she needed as many men as possible around her; or whether she wanted no one, by his coolness, to make her question her own enthusiasm. And he agreed to go to Shorthills with her one morning, to have a look at the estate.
He made Anand telephone the Sentinel and went with Mrs Tulsi to the bus stop. There he suffered some moments of anxiety, for with her long white skirt, her veil, her arms braceleted from wrist to elbow and a thick gold yoke around her neck, Mrs Tulsi was noticeable in any Port of Spain street, and Mr Biswas feared he would be spotted by someone from the office. He leaned against the lamp-post, hiding his face.
‘Regular bus service,’ he said after a time.
‘From Shorthills, the buses always leave on the dot.’
‘Instead of giving every child a sheep, better to give them a horse. Ride to school. Ride back.’
At last the bus came, empty except for the driver and the conductor. The body had been made locally, a crude jangling box of wood and tin and felt and large naked bolts. Mr Biswas bumped exaggeratedly up and down on the rough wooden seat. ‘Just practising,’ he said.
The city ended abruptly at the Maraval terminus. The road climbed and dipped; hills intermittently shut out the view. After half an hour Mr Biswas pointed to the bush on a roundabout. ‘Estate?’ They went past a puzzling huddle of three crumbling shacks. Two black water barrels stood in the hard yellow yard. ‘Cricket field?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Swimming pool?’
After many curves and climbs the road straightened out and ran steadily down into a widening valley. The hills looked wild, the tops of trees rising one behind the other: a coagulation of greenery. But here and there the faded thatch of a lean-to, warm against the still, dark green, showed that the wilderness had been charted. Houses and huts appeared on either side of the road, widely separated and so hidden by green that, from the bus, Shorthills was only flitting patches of colour: the rust of a roof, the pink or ochre of a wall.
‘Next bus to Port of Spain in ten minutes,’ the conductor said conversationally. Mr Biswas got up. Mrs Tulsi pulled him down. ‘They like to reverse first.’ The bus reversed in a dirt lane and came to rest on the verge, under an avocado pear tree.
The driver and conductor squatted under the tree, smoking. Across the road and next to the lane in which the bus had reversed Mr Biswas saw an open square of ground, mounds and faded wreaths alone indicating its purpose.
Mr Biswas waved at the forlorn little cemetery and the dirt lane which, past a few tumbledown houses, disappeared behind bush and apparently led only to more bush and the mountain which rose at the end. ‘Estate?’ he asked.
Mrs Tulsi smiled. ‘And on this side.’ She waved at the other side of the road.
Beyond a deep gully, whose sides were sheer, whose bed was strewn with boulders, stones and pebbles, perfectly graded, Mr Biswas saw more bush, more mountains. ‘A lot of bamboo,’ he said. ‘You could start a paper factory.’
It was easy to see just how far the buses went. Up to the dirt lane the road was smooth, its centre black and dully shining. Past that the road narrowed, was gravelly and dusty, its edges obscured by the untended verge.
‘I suppose we go along there,’ Mr Biswas said.
They began walking.
Mrs Tulsi bent down and tore up a plant from the verge. ‘Rabbit meat,’ she said. ‘Best food for rabbits. In Arwacas you have to buy it.’
Below the overarching trees the road was in soft shadow. Sunlight spotted the gravel in white blurs,