A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [260]
‘Uncle Podger,’ Savi said.
He was about to lose his temper with her as well; but, as if in answer to the commotion, the light in the diningroom went out. He lay down on the bed in the dark and was soon asleep, grinding his teeth, and making strange contented smacking sounds with his mouth.
Anand sat in the darkness. Shama came to the room and got into the fourposter. Anand did not want to go downstairs. He lay on the bed beside his father and remained quite still.
He was disturbed by chatter and heavy footsteps, and made wide awake by the light coming in through the two open sections above the partition. Some aunts who had been waiting up below the house were now heard moving about the kitchen. The chatter continued, and laughter. Mr Biswas stirred and groaned. ‘Good God!’
Anand felt Shama awake and anxious. Listened to in this way, the chatter was as unbearable as the dripping of a water-tap.
‘God!’ Mr Biswas cried.
There was a moment’s silence in the diningroom.
‘Other people in this house,’ Mr Biswas shouted.
The visiting sisters and the readers and learners could be heard awakening downstairs.
Softly, as though speaking only to the people with him, Owad said, ‘Don’t we all know it, old man.’ There were giggles.
The giggles maddened Mr Biswas. ‘Go to France!’ he cried.
‘And you can go to hell.’ It was Mrs Tulsi. Her words, evenly spaced, were cold and firm and clear.
‘Ma!’ Owad said.
Mr Biswas didn’t know what to say. Surprise was followed by shock, shock by anger.
Shama got up from the fourposter and said, ‘Man, man.’
‘Let him go to hell,’ Mrs Tulsi said, almost conversationally. Her voice was followed by a groan, a creaking of a bed-spring and a shuffling on the floor.
Lights went on downstairs, lit up the yard and reflected through the jalousied door into Mr Biswas’s room.
‘Go to hell?’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Go to hell? To prepare the way for you? Praying to God, eh? Cleaning up the old man’s grave.’
‘For God’s sake, Biswas,’ Owad called, ‘hold your damned tongue.’
‘You don’t talk to me about God. Red and blue cotton! Shooting rice from aeroplanes!’ The girls came into the room.
Savi said, ‘Pa, stop being stupid. For God’s sake, stop it.’ Anand was standing between the two beds. The room was like a cage.
‘Let him go to hell,’ Mrs Tulsi sobbed. ‘Let him get out.’
‘Neighbour! Neighbour!’ a woman cried shrilly from next door. ‘Anything wrong, neighbour?’
‘I can’t stand this,’ Owad shouted. ‘I can’t stand it. I don’t know what I’ve come back to.’ His footsteps were heard pounding across the drawingroom. He mumbled loudly, angrily, indistinctly.
‘Son, son,’ Mrs Tulsi said.
They heard him going down the steps, heard the gate click and shiver.
Mrs Tulsi began to wail.
‘Neighbour! Neighbour!’
A wonderful sentence formed in Mr Biswas’s mind, and he said, ‘Communism, like charity, should begin at home.’
Mr Biswas’s door was pushed open, fresh light and shadows confused the patterns on the walls, and Govind came into the room, his trousers unbelted, his shirt unbuttoned.
‘Mohun!’
His voice was kind. Mr Biswas was overwhelmed to tears. ‘Communism, like charity,’ he said to Govind, ‘should begin at home.’
‘We know, we know,’ Govind said.
Sushila was comforting Mrs Tulsi. Her wail broke up into sobs.
‘I am giving you notice,’ Mr Biswas shouted. ‘I curse the day I step into your house.’ ‘Man, man.’
‘You curse the day,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘Coming to us with no more clothes than you could hang on a nail.’
This wounded Mr Biswas. He could not reply at once. ‘I am giving you notice,’ he repeated at last.
‘I am giving you notice,’ Mrs Tulsi said.
‘I gave it to you first.’
There was an abrupt silence. Then in the drawingroom