A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [71]
The road was now lined with villagers and a few outsiders as well. They had not been attracted by the flogging, though that had encouraged the children of the village to gather a little earlier than might have been expected. They came for the food that would be distributed after the ceremony. Among these expectant uninvited guests Mr Biswas noticed two of the village shopkeepers.
The cooking was being done, under the superintendence of Sushila, over an open fire-hole in the yard. Sisters stirred enormous black cauldrons brought for the occasion from Hanuman House. They sweated and complained but they were happy. Though there was no need for it, some had stayed awake all the previous night, peeling potatoes, cleaning rice, cutting vegetables, singing, drinking coffee. They had prepared bin after bin of rice, bucket upon bucket of lentils and vegetables, vats of tea and coffee, volumes of chapattis.
Mr Biswas had given up trying to work out the cost. ‘Just going to leave me a damn pauper,’ he said. He walked along the hibiscus hedge, plucked leaves, chewed them and spat them out.
‘You have a nice little property here, Mohun.’
It was Mrs Tulsi, looking tired after her rest on the cast iron fourposter. She had used the English word ‘property’; it had an acquisitive, self-satisfied flavour; he would have preferred it if she had said ‘shop’ or ‘place’.
‘Nice?’ he said, not sure whether she was being satirical or not.
‘Very nice little property.’
‘Walls falling down in the shop.’
‘They wouldn’t fall.’
‘Roof leaking in the bedroom.’
‘It doesn’t rain all the time.’
‘And I don’t sleep all the time either. Want a new kitchen.’
‘The kitchen looks all right to me.’
‘And who does eat all the time, eh? We could do with a extra room.’
‘What’s the matter? You want a Hanuman House right away?’
‘I don’t want a Hanuman House at all.’
‘Look,’ Mrs Tulsi said. They were in the gallery now. ‘You don’t want an extra room at all. You could just hang some sugarsacks on these posts during the night, and you have your extra room.’
He looked at her. She was in earnest.
‘Take them away in the morning,’ she said, ‘and you have your gallery again.’
‘Sugarsack, eh?’
‘Just six or seven. You wouldn’t need any more.’
I would like to bury you in one, Mr Biswas thought. He said, ‘You going to send me some of these sugarsacks?’
‘You’re a shopkeeper,’ she said. ‘You have more than me.’
‘Don’t worry. I was just joking. Just send me a coal barrel. You could get a whole family in a coal barrel. You didn’t know that?’
She was too surprised to speak.
‘I don’t know why they still building houses,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Nobody don’t want a house these days. They just want a coal barrel. One coal barrel for one person. Whenever a baby born just get another coal barrel. You wouldn’t see any houses anywhere then. Just a yard with five or six coal barrels standing up in two or three rows.’
Mrs Tulsi patted her lips with her veil, turned away and stepped into the yard. Faintly she called, ‘Sushila.’
‘And you could get Hari to bless the barrels right in Hanuman House,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘No need to bring him all the way to The Chase.’
Sushila came and, giving Mr Biswas a hard stare, offered her arm to Mrs Tulsi. ‘What has happened, Mai?’
In the shop a baby woke and screamed and drowned Mrs Tulsi’s words.
Sushila led Mrs Tulsi to the tent.
Mr Biswas went to the bedroom. The window was closed and the room was dark, but enough light came in to make everything distinct: his clothes on the wall, the bed rumpled from Mrs Tulsi’s rest. Violating his fastidiousness, he lay down on the bed. The musty smell of old thatch was mingled with the smell of Mrs Tulsi’s medicaments: bay rum, soft candles, Canadian Healing Oil, ammonia. He didn’t feel a small man, but the clothes which hung so despairingly from the nail on the mud wall were definitely the clothes of a small