A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [40]
Incomprehension, surprise, then panic, overwhelmed Mr Biswas. ‘The child,’ he said desperately. ‘What about the child?’
‘What about her?’ Seth said. ‘She is a good child. A little bit of reading and writing even.’
‘A little bit of reading and writing –’ Mr Biswas echoed, trying to gain time.
Seth, chewing, his right hand working dexterously with roti and beans, made a dismissing gesture with his left hand. ‘Just a little bit. So much. Nothing to worry about. In two or three years she might even forget.’ And he gave a little laugh. He wore false teeth which clacked every time he chewed.
‘The child – ’ Mr Biswas said.
Mrs Tulsi stared at him.
‘I mean,’ said Mr Biswas, ‘the child knows?’
‘Nothing at all,’ Seth said appeasingly.
‘I mean,’ said Mr Biswas, ‘does the child like me?’
Mrs Tulsi looked as though she couldn’t understand. Chewing, with lingering squelchy sounds, she raised Mr Biswas’s note with her free hand and said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t like the child?’
‘Yes,’ Mr Biswas said helplessly. ‘I like the child.’
‘That is the main thing,’ Seth said. ‘We don’t want to force you to do anything. Are we forcing you?’
Mr Biswas remained silent.
Seth gave another disparaging little laugh and poured tea into his mouth, holding the cup away from his lips, chewing and clacking between pours. ‘Eh, boy, are we forcing you?’
‘No,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘You are not forcing me.’
‘All right, then. What’s upsetting you?’
Mrs Tulsi smiled at Mr Biswas. ‘The poor boy is shy. I know.’
‘I am not shy and I am not upset,’ Mr Biswas said, and the aggression in his voice so startled him that he continued softly, ‘It’s only that – well, it’s only that I have no money to start thinking about getting married.’
Mrs Tulsi became as stern as he had seen her in the store that morning. ‘Why did you write this then?’ She waved the note.
‘Ach! Don’t worry with him,’ Seth said. ‘No money! Ajodha’s family, and no money!’
Mr Biswas thought it would be useless to explain.
Mrs Tulsi became calmer. ‘If your father was worried about money, he wouldn’t have married at all.’
Seth nodded solemnly.
Mr Biswas was puzzled by her use of the words ‘your father’. At first he had thought she was speaking to Seth alone, but then he saw that the statement had wider, alarming implications.
Faces of children and women peeped out from the kitchen doorway.
The world was too small, the Tulsi family too large. He felt trapped.
How often, in the years to come, at Hanuman House or in the house at Shorthills or in the house in Port of Spain, living in one room, with some of his children sleeping on the next bed, and Shama, the prankster, the server of black cotton stockings, sleeping downstairs with the other children, how often did Mr Biswas regret his weakness, his inarticulateness, that evening! How often did he try to make events appear grander, more planned and less absurd than they were!
And the most absurd feature of that evening was to come. When he had left Hanuman House and was cycling back to Pagotes, he actually felt elated! In the large, musty hall with the sooty kitchen at one end, the furniture-choked landing on one side, and the dark, cobwebbed loft on the other, he had been overpowered and frightened by Seth and Mrs Tulsi and all the Tulsi women and children; they were strange and had appeared too strong; he wanted nothing so much then as to be free of that house. But now the elation he felt was not that of relief. He felt he had been involved in large events. He felt he had achieved status.
His way lay along the County Road and the Eastern Main Road. Both were lined for stretches with houses that were ambitious, incomplete, unpainted, often skeletal, with wooden frames that had grown grey and mildewed while their owners lived in one or two imperfectly enclosed rooms. Through unfinished partitions, patched up with box-boards, tin and canvas, the family clothing could be seen hanging on lengths