A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [187]
‘What about the grass?’ Shama replied. ‘The water? The feed?’
Govind looked after the cows and for that reason alone Mr Biswas made no further inquiries. Govind was becoming increasingly surly. He scarcely spoke to anyone, and worked off his rages on the cows. He beat them with thick lengths of wood and at milking time the slightest misdemeanour threw him into a rage. The animals didn’t moan or wince or show anger; they only tried to move away. No one protested; there was no one to complain to.
Mr Biswas said, ‘Poor Mutri.’
Before cows and sheep the cricketers retreated. The cricket field turned to mud and manure, and someone planted a pumpkin vine at the edge of it.
Then the tree-cutting began. In less than a morning the reader of W. C. Tuttle cut down the gri-gri palms along the drive. He came back sweating to the house and, since none of the watertaps worked, had a bath at a waterbarrel. Mrs Tulsi ate the hearts of the trees, which had been recommended to her by one of her Arwacas friends, and the children consoled themselves with the red berries. Govind, asserting himself, then cut down the orange trees: they were blighted, encouraged snakes, and could conceal thieves.
‘Damn stupid thieves if they think they could find anything in this place,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘They cut down the trees only to make it easier to pick the oranges, that is all.’
The oranges were collected by Govind and Chinta and their children, put into sacks and sent to Port of Spain by bus. Everyone wondered who took the money. The trees were chopped into logs and burned in the kitchen, the moss-covered barks making excellent kindling.
The children lost heart. They now had to be compelled to gather tonka beans, to pick oranges and avocado pears to be sent to Port of Spain. On some Saturdays they pulled up weeds from the drive, urged on by the adults to hollow competitions to see who could amass the highest pile of weeds.
The plumbing remained unrepaired. Some lesser husbands built a latrine on the hillside. The house toilet, unused, became a sewingroom.
In place of the orange trees and the palm trees seedlings were planted along the drive and hedged around with bamboo stakes. The cows broke down the cricket field fence. The sheep, escaping, broke down the bamboo stakes and stripped the seedlings clean. The silt rose in the canal at the side of the drive. Weeds grew from the cracks in the concrete culvert and up the wide, shallow steps.
Every morning Hari said his prayers and rang his bell and beat his gong in his boxboard kennel in the ruined garden; and every evening the man Mr Biswas now thought of as W. C. Tuttle said his prayers before the framed print in the drawingroom. The rubbish heap started by the Tulsis at the foot of the hill grew higher and wider. The sheep, neglected, unfruitful, survived. The cows were milked. The pumpkin vine spread rapidly in the manured mud and broke into frail yellow flower. The first pumpkin, the first Tulsi fruit, was welcomed with enthusiasm; and since, because of a Hindu taboo no one could explain, women were forbidden to cut pumpkins open, a man was invited to do so. And the man was W. C. Tuttle.
It was W. C. Tuttle who dismantled the electricity plant and melted down the lead to make dumb-bells. And it was W. C. Tuttle who announced that a furniture factory was to be started. Scores of cedar trees were cut down, sawed and stacked in the garage, and W. C. Tuttle sent to his own village for a Negro called Théophile. Théophile was a blacksmith whose trade had declined with the coming of the motorcar. He was lodged in a small room below the drawingroom, fed three times a day and turned loose among the cedar planks. He made many benches; gaining confidence, he put together a vast, irregularly oval table; then a number of wardrobes like sentry-boxes. No joint was clean; no door fitted; and the soft wood showed many little clusters of hammer indentations. It was stated by W. C. Tuttle, his wife, his children and Théophile himself that