A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [44]
And despite his protests she put on her best clothes and went to Arwacas the next day. She came back overwhelmed by the graciousness of Mrs Tulsi, the diffidence of Shama and the splendour of Hanuman House.
She described a house he hardly knew. She spoke of a drawingroom with two tall thronelike mahogany chairs, potted palms and ferns in huge brass vases on marble topped tables, religious paintings, and many pieces of Hindu sculpture. She spoke of a prayer-room above that, which, with its slender columns, was like a temple: a low, cool, white room, empty except for the shrine in the centre.
She had seen only the upper floors of the concrete or rather, clay-brick, building. He didn’t tell her that that part of the house was reserved for visitors, Mrs Tulsi, Seth and Mrs Tulsi’s two younger sons. And he thought it better to keep silent about the old wooden house which the family called ‘the old barracks’.
He spent two days in hiding at the back trace, not caring to face Alec or Bhandat’s boys. On the third day he felt the need of greater comfort than Bipti could give, and that evening he went to Tara’s. He entered by the side gate. From the cowpen came a familiar early evening sound: the unhurried stir and rustle of cows in stalls laid with fresh straw. The back verandah outside Tara’s kitchen was warm with light. He heard the steady drone of someone reading aloud.
He found Ajodha rocking slowly, his head thrown back, frowning, his eyes closed, his eyelids palpitating with anguish while Bhandat’s younger boy read That Body of Yours.
Bhandat’s boy stopped reading when he saw Mr Biswas. His eyes became bright with amusement and his prognathous smile was a sneer.
Ajodha opened his eyes and gave a shriek of malicious delight. ‘Married man!’ he cried in English. ‘Married man!’
Mr Biswas smiled and looked sheepish.
‘Tara, Tara,’ Ajodha called. ‘Come and look at your married nephew.’
She came out gravely from the kitchen, embraced Mr Biswas and wept for so long that he began to feel, with sadness and a deep sense of loss, that he really was married, that in some irrevocable way he had changed. She undid the knot at the end of her veil and took out a twenty-dollar note. He objected for a little, then took it.
‘Married man!’ Ajodha cried again.
Tara took Mr Biswas to the kitchen and gave him a meal. And while, in the verandah, Bhandat’s boy continued to read That Body of Yours, with the moths striking continually against the glass chimney of the oil lamp, she and Mr Biswas talked. She could not keep the unhappiness and disappointment out of her face and voice, and this encouraged him to be bitter about the Tulsis.
‘And what sort of dowry did they give you?’ she asked.
‘Dowry? They are not so oldfashioned. They didn’t give me a penny.’
‘Registry?’
He bit at a slice of pickled mango and nodded.
‘It is a modern custom,’ Tara said. ‘And like most modern customs, very economical.’
‘They didn’t even pay me for the signs.’
‘You didn’t ask?’
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘But you don’t know those people.’ He would have been ashamed to explain the organization of the Tulsi house, and to say that his signs were probably considered contributions to the family endeavour.
‘You just leave this to me,’ Tara said.
His heart sank. He had wanted her to declare that he was free, that he needn’t go back, that he could forget the Tulsis and Shama.
And he was no happier when she went to Hanuman House and came back with what she said was good news. He was not to live at Hanuman House forever; the Tulsis had decided to set him up as soon as possible in a shop in a village called The Chase.
He was married. Nothing now, except death, could change that.
‘They told me that they only wanted