A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [254]
‘That is fair,’ Chinta said, taking the copy of the Soviet Constitution from Owad, opening it, looking at the title page, closing it, passing it on. ‘Is exactly the sort of law we want in Trinidad.’
‘He who does not work shall not eat,’ Mrs Tulsi repeated slowly.
‘I just wish they could send some of my people to Russia,’ Miss Blackie said, sucking her teeth, shaking her skirt and shifting in her chair to express the despair to which her people reduced her.
Mr Biswas said, ‘How can he, who does not eat, work?’
Owad paid no attention. ‘In Russia, you know, Ma’ – it was his habit to address many of his sentences to her – ‘they grow cotton of different colours. Red and blue and green and white cotton.’
‘Just growing like that?’ Shama asked, making up for Mr Biswas’s irreverence.
‘Just growing like that. And you,’ Owad said, speaking to a widow who had been trying without success to grow an acre of rice at Shorthills, ‘you know the labour it is to plant rice. Bending down, up to your knees in muddy water, sun blazing, day in, day out.’
‘The backache,’ the widow said, arching her back and putting her hand where she ached. ‘You don’t have to tell me. Just planting that one acre, and I feel like going to hospital.’
‘None of that in Russia,’ Owad said. ‘No backache and bending down. In Russia, you know how they plant rice?’
They shook their heads.
‘Shoot it from an aeroplane. Not shooting bullets. Shooting rice.’
‘From an aeroplane?’ the rice-planting widow said.
‘From an aeroplane. You could plant your field in a few seconds.’
‘Take care you don’t miss,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘And you,’ Owad said to Sushila. ‘You should really be a doctor. Your bent is that way.’
‘I’ve been telling her so,’ Mrs Tulsi said.
Sushila, who had had enough of nursing Mrs Tulsi, hated the smell of medicines and asked for nothing more than a quiet dry goods shop to support her old age, nevertheless agreed.
‘In Russia you would be a doctor. Free.’
‘Doctor like you?’ Sushila asked.
‘Just like me. No difference between the sexes. None of this nonsense about educating the boys and throwing the girls aside.’
Chinta said, ‘Vidiadhar always keep on telling me that he want to be a aeronautical engineer.’
This was a lie. Vidiadhar didn’t even know the meaning of the words. He just liked their sound.
‘He would be an aeronautical engineer,’ Owad said.
‘To take out the rice grains from the aeroplane gas-tank,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘But what about me?’
‘You, Mohun Biswas. Welfare Officer. After they have broken people’s lives, deprived them of opportunity, sending you around like a scavenger to pick the pieces up. A typical capitalist trick, Ma.’
‘Yes, son.’
‘M-m-m-m.’ It was Miss Blackie, purring. ‘Using you like a tool. You have given us five hundred dollars profit. Here, we give you five dollars charity.’ The sisters nodded.
O God, Mr Biswas thought, another scorpion trying to do me out of a job.
‘But you are not really a capitalist lackey,’ Owad said.
‘Not really,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘You are not really a bureaucrat. You are a journalist, a writer, a man of letters.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Yes, man.’
‘In Russia, they see you are a journalist and a writer, they give you a house, give you food and money and tell you, “Go ahead and write.” ’
‘Really really?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘A house, just like that?’
‘Writers get them all the time. A dacha, a house in the country.’
‘Why,’ asked Mrs Tulsi, ‘don’t we all go to Russia?’
‘Ah,’ Owad said. ‘They fought for it. You should hear what they did to the Czar.’
‘M-m-m-m.’ Miss Blackie said, and the sisters nodded gravely.
‘You,’ Mr Biswas said, now full of respect, ‘are you a member of the Communist Party?’
Owad only smiled.
And his reaction was equally cryptic when Anand asked