A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [78]
Mr Biswas knew him well.
‘A man like Mungroo should be in jail,’ Moti said. ‘I think so too.’
‘Is not,’ Moti said judiciously, closing his eyes and cracking the Paradise Plum, ‘as if he was a pauper and can’t afford to pay. Mungroo richer than you and me could ever hope to be, you hear.’ This was news to Mr Biswas.
‘Man should be in jail,’ Moti repeated.
Mr Biswas was about to say that he hadn’t been fooled by Mungroo when Moti said, ‘He don’t rob the rude and crude shopkeepers, people like himself. He frighten they give him a good dose of licks. No, he does look for nice people with nice soft heart, and is them he does rob. Mungroo see you, he think you look nice, and next day his wife come round for two cents this and three cents that, and she forget that she ain’t got no money, and if you could wait till next pay day. Well, you wrap up the goods in good strong paper-bag, you send she home happy, and you sit down and wait till next day. Next pay day Mungroo forget. His wife forget. They too busy killing chicken and buying rum to remember you. Two-three days later, eh-eh, wife suddenly remember you. She bawling again. She want more trust. Don’t tell me about Mungroo. I know him too good. Man should be in jail, if anybody had the guts to throw him there.’
The account was telescoped and dramatized, but Mr Biswas recognized its truth. He felt exposed, and said nothing.
‘Just show me your accounts,’ Moti said. ‘Just to see how much Mungroo owe you.’
Mr Biswas took down the spike from the nail between the shelves where it hung above a faded advertisement for Cydrax, a beverage which had not caught the village’s fancy. The spike was now a tall, feathery, multi-coloured brush, with the papers at the bottom as brittle and curling as dead leaves.
‘Pappa!’ Moti said, and became graver and graver as he looked through the papers. He could not look very far because to get at the lower papers he would have had to remove those at the top altogether. He turned away from Mr Biswas and contemplated the blackness outside, staring past the doorway against which the rear wheel of his decrepit bicycle could be seen. Sadly he sucked his Paradise Plum. ‘Pity you don’t know Seebaran. Seebaran woulda fix you up in two twos. He help out the man before you. Otherwise the man would be a pauper now, man. A pauper. Is a funny thing, but you don’t expect to find people getting fat and rich on credit while the poor shopkeeper, who give the credit, not getting enough to eat, wearing rags, watching his children starve, watching them sick.’
Mr Biswas, seeing himself as the hero of one of Misir’s stories, could scarcely hide his alarm.
‘All right, then, man.’ Moti fixed his bicycle clips around his ankles. ‘I got to go. Thanks for the chat. I hope everything go all right with you.’
‘But you know Seebaran,’ Mr Biswas said.
‘Know him, yes. But I don’t know whether I could just go and ask him to help out a friend of mine. Busy man, you know. Handling nearly all the work in the Petty Civil.’
‘Still, you could tell him?’
‘Yes,’ Moti said, without conviction. ‘I could tell him. But Seebaran is a big man. You can’t go troubling him with just one or two little things.’
Mr Biswas brushed his hand up and down the papers on the spike. ‘It have a lot of work here for him,’ he said aggressively. ‘You tell him.’
‘All right. I go tell him.’ Moti got on his cycle. ‘But I ain’t promising nothing.’
Savi was asleep when Mr Biswas went to the back room.
‘Going to settle Mungroo and the rest of them,’ Mr Biswas said to Shama. ‘Putting Seebaran on their tail.’
‘Who is Seebaran?’
‘Who is Seebaran! You mean you don’t know Seebaran? The man who handling practically all the work in the Petty Civil.’
‘I know all that. I hear what the man was saying too.’ ‘Why the hell you ask me then for?’