A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [88]
At last Shama said she could stand The Chase no more. She wanted them to give up the shop and return to Hanuman House. This re-opened all their old quarrels. Only, now everything Shama said was true and cutting.
‘We are not doing anything here,’ she said.
‘All right, Mrs Samuel Smiles. Look, I standing up in this shop, behind this dirty old counter. Tell me exactly what it have for me to do. You tell me.’
‘You know it isn’t that I mean.’
‘You want me to make the spinning-jenny and the flying shuttle? Invent the steam-engine?’
And these arguments ended in insults and were followed by days of silence.
They spent their last two years at The Chase in this state of mutual hostility; at peace only in Hanuman House.
She became pregnant for the third time.
‘Another one for the monkey house,’ he said, passing his hands over her belly.
‘You had nothing to do with it.’
And though he had spoken humorously, this led to another serious quarrel, which went over the same limited ground until, unable to control his rage, he hit her.
They were both astonished. She was silenced in the middle of a sentence; for some time afterwards the unfinished sentence remained in his mind, as though it had just been spoken. She was stronger than he. Her silence and her refusal to retaliate made his humiliation complete. She dressed Anand and went to Arwacas.
It was the kite-flying season and in the afternoons, when the wind came from the hills to the north, for miles around multi-coloured kites with long tails plunged and wriggled like tadpoles in the clear sky above the plain. He had been thinking that in two or three years he and Anand would fly kites together.
He decided that this time Shama would have to make the first move. So for many months he didn’t go to Hanuman House, not even to see Savi. When, however, he judged that the baby was born, he broke his resolution and closed the shop – what was it that made him know, as he put the bar into place, that he was closing the doors for the last time? – and wheeled out the Royal Enfield from the bedroom and cycled to Arwacas, a small man made conspicuous by the exaggeratedly upright way he sat on the low saddle (to tauten his stomach and relieve his indigestion pains), with his palms pressing hard on the handgrips and the inside of his wrists turned outwards. He cycled slowly and steadily, his feet flat on the pedals. From time to time he inclined his head, arched his back and gave a series of small belches. This gave him some relief.
He reached Arwacas when it was dark, suffering an additional anxiety because he rode without bicycle lights, an offence zealously pursued by idle policemen. There were no street lamps, only the yellow smoky flames of flambeaux on night stalls and the dim lights of houses coming through curtained doorways and windows. In the arcade of Hanuman House, grey and substantial in the dark, there was already the evening assembly of old men, squatting on sacks on the ground and on tables now empty of Tulsi Store goods, pulling at clay cheelums that glowed red and smelled of ganja and burnt sacking. Though it wasn’t cold, many had scarves over their heads and around their necks; this detail made them look foreign and, to Mr Biswas, romantic. It was the time of day for which they lived. They could not speak English and were not interested in the land where they