A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [271]
‘I don’t suppose,’ Mr Biswas said, ‘that the City Council woulda pass it if it wasn’t strong.’
The old man paid no attention. ‘A spec’lator, that’s what he was. A real spec’lator. This ain’t the first house he built like this, you know. He build two-three in Belmont, one in Woodbrook, this one, and right now he building one in Morvant. Building it and living in it at the same time.’ The old man rocked and chuckled. ‘But he get stick with this one.’
‘He live in it a long time,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘Couldn’t get anybody to buy it. Is a good little site, mark you. But he was asking too much. Four five.’
‘Four five!’
‘If you please. And look. Look at that little house down the road.’ He pointed to a new neat bungalow, which Mr Biswas, with his newly acquired eye for carpentry, had recognized as of good design and workmanship. ‘Small, but very nice. That sell this year for four five.’
A Tuttle boy, the writer, came unexpectedly to the house one afternoon, talked of this and that and then, casually, as if delivering a message he had forgotten, said that his parents were going to call that evening, because Mrs Tuttle wanted to ask Shama’s advice about something.
Rapidly, they made ready. The floor was polished and walking on it was forbidden. Curtains were rearranged, and the morris suite and the glass cabinet and the bookcase pushed into new positions. The curtains masked the staircase; the bookcase and the glass cabinet hid part of the lattice work, which was also draped with curtains. The door that couldn’t close was left wide open and curtains hung over the doorway. The door that couldn’t open was left shut; and a curtain hung over that. The windows that couldn’t close were left open and curtains hung over them as well. And when the Tuttles came they were greeted by an enclosed, shining, softly-lit house, the morris chairs and the small palm in the brass pot reflecting on the polished floor. Shama seated them on the morris chairs, left them to marvel in silence for a minute or so, and, as cosily as the old queen herself, made tea in the kitchen and offered that and biscuits.
And the Tuttles were taken in! Shama could tell from the hardening of Mrs Tuttle’s expression into one of outrage and self-pity, from the nervous little chuckles of W. C. Tuttle who sat with a mixture of Eastern and Western elegance on his morris chair, rubbing one hand over the ankle that rested on his left knee, twirling the long hairs in his nose with the other hand.
Mrs Tuttle said to Myna, who had amputated the torch-bearer’s torchbearing arm, ‘Hello, Myna girl. You forget your aunt these days. I don’t suppose you want to come round to my old house after this.’
Myna smiled, as though Mrs Tuttle had hit on an embarrassing truth.
Mrs Tuttle said to Shama in Hindi, ‘Well, it is old. But it is full of room.’ She pressed her elbows to her side to show the constriction she felt in Shama’s house. ‘And we didn’t want to get into debt or anything like that.’
W. C. Tuttle played with the hairs in his nose and smiled.
‘I don’t want anything bigger,’ Shama said. ‘This is just right for me. Something small and nice.’
‘Yes,’ W. C. Tuttle said. ‘Something nice and small.’
And they had a moment of panic when he jumped up from his chair and, going to the wall with the lattice work, began measuring it by extending his fingers, gathering them up again and extending them once more. But it was only the length of the wall, not the quality of the work, that interested him. He measured, gave a little laugh and said, ‘Twelve by twenty.’
‘Fifteen by twenty-five,’ Shama said.
‘Nice and small,’ W. C. Tuttle said. ‘That, to me, is the beauty of it.’
And Shama had another uneasy moment when W. C. Tuttle asked to be shown upstairs. But it was night. They had enclosed the staircase with lattice work from banister to roof, with strips of wood from banister to steps, and it had all been painted. A weak bulb