A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [45]
‘Love match!’ Ajodha cried. ‘Rabidat, listen to that.’ He punched Bhandat’s younger boy in the belly. ‘Love match!’
Rabidat gave his contemptuous smile.
Mr Biswas looked angrily and accusingly at Rabidat. He held Rabidat, more than anyone else, responsible for his marriage and wanted to say it was Rabidat’s taunt which had made him write that note to Shama. Instead, ignoring Ajodha’s chuckles and shrieks, he said, ‘Love match? What love match? They are lying.’
In a disappointed, tired way Tara said, ‘They showed me a love letter.’ She used the English word; it sounded vicious.
Ajodha shrieked again. ‘Love letter! Mohun!’
Bhandat’s boy continued to smile.
Their mood seemed to infect Tara. ‘Mrs Tulsi told me that she believed you wanted to go on with your sign-writing and that Hanuman House was the best place to work from.’ She had begun to smile. ‘Everything’s all right now, boy. You can go back to your wife.’
The stress she gave to the word ‘wife’ wounded Mr Biswas.
‘You have got yourself into a real gum-pot,’ she added, more sympathetically. ‘And I had such nice plans for you.’
‘I wish you had told me,’ he said, without irony.
‘Go back and get your wife!’ Ajodha said.
He paid no attention to Ajodha and asked Tara in English, ‘You like she?’ Hindi was too intimate and tender.
Tara shrugged, to say that it was none of her business; and this hurt Mr Biswas, for it emphasized his loneliness: Tara’s interest in Shama might have made everything more bearable. He thought he would show an equal unconcern. Lightly, smiling back at Ajodha, he asked Tara, ‘I suppose they vex with me now over there, eh?’
His tone angered her. ‘What’s the matter? Are you afraid of them already, like every other man in that place?’
‘Afraid? No. You don’t know me.’
But it was some days before he could make up his mind to go back. He didn’t know what his rights were, didn’t believe in the shop at The Chase, and his plans were vague. Only, he doubted that he would return to the back trace, and when he packed, he packed everything, Bipti crying happily all the while. As he cycled past the unfinished, open houses on the County Road, he wondered how many nights he would spend behind the closed façade of Hanuman House.
‘What?’ Shama said in English. ‘You come back already? You tired catching crab in Pagotes?’
Despite the adventurousness and danger of his calling, the crab-catcher was considered the lowest of the low.
‘I thought I would come and help all-you catch some here,’ Mr Biswas replied, and killed the giggles in the hall.
No other comment was made. He had expected to be met by silence, stares, hostility and perhaps a little fear. He got the stares; the noise continued; the fear was, of course, only a wild hope; and he couldn’t be sure of the hostility. The interest in his return was momentary and superficial. No one referred to his absence or return, not Seth, not Mrs Tulsi, both of whom continued, as they had done even before he left, hardly to notice him. He heard nothing about the visits of Bipti and Tara. The house was too full, too busy; such events were insignificant because he mattered little to the house. His status there was now fixed. He was troublesome and disloyal, and could not be trusted. He was weak and therefore contemptible.
He had not expected to hear any more about the shop in The Chase. And he didn’t. He began to doubt that it existed. He went on with his sign-writing and spent as much time as he could out of the house. But he was unknown in Arwacas and jobs were scarce. Time hung heavily on his hands until he met an equally underemployed man called Misir, the Arwacas correspondent of the Trinidad Sentinel. They discussed jobs, Hinduism, India and their respective families.
Every afternoon Mr Biswas had to prepare afresh for his return to