A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [197]
Late one afternoon, not long after they had moved, Anand found himself alone in the house. Mr Biswas was out, the girls were in the kitchen with Shama. The house felt bare, unused and still exposed; corners held no secrets; none of the furniture seemed to have found its place. Moved by boredom more than curiosity, Anand opened the bottom drawer of Shama’s dressingtable. In an envelope he found his parents’ marriage certificate and the birth certificates of his sisters and himself. On a birth certificate, which he did not at first recognize as Savi’s, he saw a name, Basso, which he had never heard used. He saw Mr Biswas’s harsh scrawl: Real calling name: Lakshmi. In the column headed ‘Father’s Occupation’ labourer had been energetically scratched out and proprietor written in. No other birth certificate had been so scribbled over. Some photographs were wrapped in crinkled brown paper. One was of the Tulsi sisters standing in a straight line and scowling; the others were of the entire Tulsi family, of Hanuman House, of Pundit Tulsi, of Pundit Tulsi in Hanuman House.
In the kitchen Shama was singing her doleful song and slapping dough between her palms.
Anand came upon a bundle of letters. They were all still in their envelopes. The stamps were English and bore the head of George V. From one envelope fell small brown photographs of an English girl, a dog, a house with a faded X on a window; in another envelope there was a newspaper clipping with one name underlined in ink in a long paragraph of names. The letters were neatly written and said little at great length. They spoke about letters received, about school, about holidays; they thanked for photographs. Abruptly they were touched with feeling; they expressed surprise that arrangements for marriage had been made so soon; they attempted to soften surprise with congratulation. Then there were no more letters.
Anand closed the drawer and went to the drawingroom. He rested his elbows on the window-sill and looked out. The sun had just set and the bush was turning black against a sky that was still clear. Smoke came through the kitchen door and window and Anand listened to Shama singing. Darkness filled the valley.
That evening Shama discovered the ransacked drawer. ‘
Thief!’ she said. ‘Some thief was in the house.’
Refusing to yield to the gloom of his family and his own feeling that he had been rash, Mr Biswas set about clearing the land. He spared only the poui trees, for their branches and their yellow flowers, which came out bright and pure for one week in the year. The integrity of living bush was replaced by a brown chaos of collapsed and dying trees. Through this Mr Biswas made a winding path from the house down to the road, cutting steps into the earth and shoring them with bamboo. The debris could not be immediately fired, for though the leaves were dead and brittle the wood was green. Waiting, Mr Biswas cut poui sticks and roasted them in bonfires. And he was reminded of a duty.
He sent for his mother. He had for so long been telling her – ever since he was a boy in the back trace – that she was to come to stay with him when he had built his own house, that he now doubted whether she would come. But she came, for a fortnight. Her feelings could not be read. He was at first extravagantly affectionate. But Bipti remained calm, and Mr Biswas followed her example. It was as if the relationship between them had been granted without their asking, and had only to be accepted.
Though the children understood Hindi they could no longer speak it, and this limited communication between