A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [84]
And there were whole weeks when he devoted himself to some absurdity. He grew his nails to an extreme length and held them up to startle customers. He picked and squeezed at his face until his cheeks and forehead were inflamed and the rims of his lips were like welts. When his skin became pitted with little holes, he studied these with interest and found the perfection of their shape pleasing. And once he dabbed healing ointments of various colours on his face and went and stood in the shop doorway, greeting people he knew.
He did these things when Shama was away. And more and more frequently she went to Hanuman House, even when there was no quarrel, and stayed longer.
Three years after Savi was born, Shama gave birth to a son. He was not given the names that had been written on the endpaper of the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare. Seth suggested that the boy should be called Anand, and Mr Biswas, who had prepared no new names, agreed. Then it was Anand who travelled with Shama. Savi stayed at Hanuman House. Mrs Tulsi wanted this; so did Shama; so did Savi herself. She liked Hanuman House for its activity and its multitude of children; at The Chase she was restless and badly behaved.
‘Ma,’ Savi said to Shama one day, ‘couldn’t you give me to Aunt Chinta and take Vidiadhar in exchange?’
Vidiadhar was Chinta’s newest baby, born a few months before Anand. And the reason for Savi’s request was this: by virtue of a tradition whose beginnings no one could trace, Chinta was the aunt who distributed all the delicacies that were given to the House by visitors.
Shama told the story as a joke, and couldn’t understand it when Mr Biswas became annoyed.
Once a week he rode his Royal Enfield bicycle to Hanuman House to see Savi. Often he didn’t have to go inside; Savi was waiting for him in the arcade. At every visit he gave her a silver six-cents piece and asked anxious questions.
‘Who beat you?’
Savi shook her head.
‘Who shouted at you?’
‘They shout at everybody.’
She didn’t seem to need a protector.
One Saturday he found her wearing heavy boots with long iron bands down the side of her legs and straps over her knees.
‘Who put these on you?’
‘Granny.’ She was not aggrieved. She was proud of the boots, the iron, the straps. ‘They are heavy, heavy.’
‘Why did she put them on? To punish you?’
‘Only to straighten my legs.’
She had bow-legs. He didn’t believe anything could be done about them and had never tried to find out.
‘They are ugly.’ That was all he could say. ‘They make you look like a cripple.’
She frowned at the word. ‘Well, I like it.’ Then, taking the six cents, ‘At least, I don’t mind.’ She threw out her hands, then put them on her hips and looked away, just like one of the aunts.
The numbers of the Tulsis swelled continually. Fresh children were born to the resident daughters. A son-in-law who lived away died, and his brood came to Hanuman House, where they were distinguished and made glamorous by their mourning clothes of black, white and mauve. This Christian custom did not please everyone. And almost at once Shama had tales to take back to The Chase about the low manners and language of the new arrivals. There were even whispers of theft and obscene practises, and Shama reported the general approval when the widow, anxious to appease, took to inflicting spectacular punishments on her bereaved children.
All this made Mr Biswas uneasy, and he was mortified to find that Savi now talked of nothing but the mourners, their misdeeds and their punishments.
‘Sometimes,’ Savi said, ‘their mother simply hands over to Granny.’
‘Look, Savi. If Granny or anybody else touches you, you just let me know. Don’t let them frighten you. I will take you home right