A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [90]
Shama laid out food for Mr Biswas in the hall. The food might be bad at Hanuman House, but there was always some for unexpected visitors. Everything was cold. The pancakes were sweating, hard on the outside and little better than dough inside. He did not complain.
‘You going back tonight?’ she asked in English.
He knew then that he hadn’t intended to go back, ever. He said nothing.
‘You better sleep here then.’
As long as there was floor space, there was bed space.
Some sisters came into the hall. Packs of cards were brought out; the sisters split into groups and gravely settled down to play. Chinta played with style. She fussed with her cards, rearranged them often, stared blankly and disconcertingly at the other players, hummed and never spoke; before she played a telling card she frowned at it, pulled it up a little, tapped it down and kept on tapping it; then, suddenly, she threw it on the table with a crack and, still frowning, collected her trick. She was a magnanimous winner and a bad loser.
Mr Biswas watched.
Shama made a bed for him in the verandah upstairs, among the children.
He woke to a babel the next morning and when he went down to the hall found the sisters getting their children ready for school. It was the only time of day when it was reasonably easy to tell which child belonged to which mother. He was surprised to see Shama filling a satchel with a slate, a slate pencil, a lead pencil, an eraser, an exercise book with the Union Jack on the cover, and Nelson’s West Indian Reader, First Stage, by Captain J. O. Cutteridge, Director of Education, Trinidad and Tobago. Lastly Shama wrapped an orange in tissue paper and put it in the satchel. ‘For teacher,’ she said to Savi.
Mr Biswas didn’t know that Savi had begun to go to school.
Shama sat on a bench, held Savi between her legs, combed her hair, plaited it, straightened the pleats on her navy-blue uniform, and adjusted her Panama hat.
Mother and daughter had been doing this for many weeks. And he had known nothing.
Shama said, ‘If your shoelaces come loose again today, you think you would be able to tie them back?’ She bent down and undid Savi’s shoelaces. ‘Let me see you tie them.’
‘You know I can’t tie them.’
‘Do it quick sharp, or I give you a dose of licks.’
‘I can’t tie them.’
‘Come,’ Mr Biswas said, shamelessly paternal in the bustling hall. ‘I will tie them for you.’
‘No,’ Shama said. ‘She must learn to tie her laces. Otherwise I will keep her at home and beat her until she can tie them.’
It was standard talk at Hanuman House. At The Chase Shama had never spoken like that.
As yet no one was paying attention. But when Shama started to hunt for one of the many hibiscus switches which always lay about the hall, sisters and children became less noisy and good-humouredly waited to see what would happen. It was not going to be a serious flogging since ineptitude rather than criminality was being punished; and Shama moved about with a comic jerkiness, as though she knew she was only an actor in a farce and not, like Sumati at the house-blessing in The Chase, a figure of high tragedy.
Mr Biswas, his eyes fixed on Savi, found himself tittering nervously. Still wearing her Panama hat, Savi squatted on the floor, tangling laces and watching them fall apart, or knotting them double, tight and high, and having to undo them with her nails and teeth. She, too, was partly acting for the audience. Her failures were greeted with approving laughter. Even Shama, standing by with whip in hand, allowed amusement to invade her playacting annoyance.
‘All right,’ Shama said. ‘Let me show you for the last time. Watch me. Now try.’
Savi fumbled ineffectually again. This time there was less laughter.
‘You just want to shame me,’ Shama said. ‘A big girl like you, five going on six, can’t tie her own laces. Jai, come here.’
Jai was the son of an unimportant sister. He was pushed to the front by his mother, who was dandling another baby on her hip.
‘Look