A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [65]
Their goods barely filled a donkey-cart, and their arrival at The Chase was noted by a waiting crowd with pity and some hostility. The hostility came from rival shopkeepers. And Mr Biswas, shakily perched on one of Shama’s bundles, with the clang of those cost-price but expensive pans in his ears, was unable to ignore the hostility of Shama herself. She had kept up her martyr’s attitude throughout the journey, silently staring at the road through the piquets of the cart, holding on her lap a box containing a Japanese coffee-set of intricate and fantastic design, part of a consignment the Tulsi Store had not been able to sell after three years, and given by Seth as a belated wedding present. Nor did Mr Biswas fail to notice that The Chase appeared to be managing quite well without his shop, which had been closed, as he knew, for many months.
‘Is the sort of place you could build up,’ he said to the carter.
The carter nodded non-committally, looking neither at Mr Biswas nor at the crowd but straight at his donkey, and aiming a gentle lash at the animal’s eye.
And Shama sighed: the sigh which now told Mr Biswas that she thought him stupid, boring and shaming.
The cart stopped.
‘Whoa!’ some boys shouted.
Looking stern, preoccupied and, as he hoped, dangerous, Mr Biswas became very busy, helping the carter to unload. They carried bundles and boxes through the back rooms smelling of dust to the dark shop, warm in the late afternoon with the smell of coarse brown sugar and stale coconut oil. The white lines of light between the boards of the front door carne from a bright, open world; movements inside the shop sounded furtive.
Their possessions, spread out on the counter, didn’t take up much space.
‘Only the first load,’ Mr Biswas said to the carter. ‘Have a pile of other stuff to come.’
The carter said nothing.
‘Oh.’ Mr Biswas remembered the carter had to be paid. More money.
The man took the dirty blue dollar-note and left.
‘Is the last time he carry anything for me,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘I could tell him that.’
There was silence in the closed, stuffy shop.
‘Is the sort of place you could build up,’ Mr Biswas said.
His eyes became accustomed to the darkness and he looked about him. On a top shelf he saw some tins, apparently abandoned by the previous shopkeeper. About this person Mr Biswas now began to speculate. There was ambition and despair in these tins: their faded labels had been nibbled by rats and stained by flies; some tins had no labels at all.
He heard the carter shouting at his donkey as the cart turned in the narrow road; villagers gave advice, boys shouted encouragement, a whip repeatedly cracked, hoof beats sounded awkward and irregular; then, with a jangle of harness, a cracking of the whip and a shout, the cart was off, cheered by the village boys.
Shama started to cry. But this time she didn’t cry silently, with the tears running down from the expressionless eyes. She sobbed like a child, leaning over the box with the Japanese coffee-set on the counter. ‘You wanted this. You wanted to paddle your own canoe. In all my life I never was so shamed as today. People standing up and laughing. This is what you want to paddle your own canoe with.’ She covered her eyes with one hand and waved at the bundles on the counter with the other.
He wanted to comfort her. But he needed comfort himself. How lonely the shop was! And how frightening! He had never thought it would be like this when he found himself in an establishment of his own. It was late afternoon; Hanuman House would be warm and noisy with activity. Here he was afraid to disturb the silence, afraid to open the door of the