A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
In the morning everything seemed so ordinary that both his fear and regret became unreal, and he saw no reason why he should behave unusually.
He went back to the Tulsi Store and painted a column.
He was invited to lunch in the hall, off lentils, spinach and a mound of rice on a brass plate. Flies buzzed on fresh food-stains all along the pitchpine table. He disliked the food and disliked eating off brass plates. Mrs Tulsi, who was not eating herself, sat next to him, stared at his plate, brushed the flies away from it with one hand, and talked.
At one stage she directed his attention to a framed photograph on the wall below the loft. The photograph, blurred at the edges and in many other places, was of a moustached man in turban, jacket and dhoti, with beads around his neck, caste-marks on his forehead and an unfurled umbrella on the crook of his left arm. It was Pundit Tulsi.
‘We never had a quarrel,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘Suppose I wanted to go to Port of Spain, and he didn’t. You think we’d quarrel about a thing like that? No. We would sit down and talk it over, and he would say, “All right, let us go.” Or I would say, “All right, we won’t go.” That’s the way we were, you know.’
She had grown almost maudlin, and Mr Biswas was trying to appear solemn while chewing. He chewed slowly and wondered whether he shouldn’t stop altogether; but whenever he stopped eating Mrs Tulsi stopped talking.
‘This house,’ Mrs Tulsi said, blowing her nose, wiping her eyes with her veil and waving a hand in a fatigued way, ‘this house – he built it with his own hands. Those walls aren’t concrete, you know. Did you know that?’
Mr Biswas went on eating.
‘They looked like concrete to you, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, they looked like concrete.’
‘It looks like concrete to everybody. But everybody is wrong. Those walls are really made of clay bricks. Clay bricks,’ she repeated, staring at Mr Biswas’s plate and waiting for him to say something.
‘Clay bricks!’ he said. ‘I would never have thought that.’
‘Clay bricks. And he made every brick himself. Right here. In Ceylon.’
‘Ceylon?’
‘That is how we call the yard at the back. You haven’t seen it? Nice piece of ground. Lots of flower trees. He was a great one for flowers, you know. We still have the brick-factory and everything there as well. There’s a lot of people don’t know about this house. Ceylon. You’d better start getting to know these names.’ She laughed and Mr Biswas felt a little stab of fear. ‘And then,’ she went on, ‘he was going to Port of Spain one day, to make arrangements to take us all back to India. Just for a trip, you know. And this car came and knocked him down, and he died, Died,’ she repeated, and waited.
Mr Biswas swallowed hurriedly and said, ‘That must have been a blow.’
‘It was a blow. Only one daughter married. Two sons to educate. It was a blow. And we had no money, you know.’
This was news to Mr Biswas. He hid his perturbation by looking down at his brass plate and chewing hard.
‘And Seth says, and I agree with him, that with the father dead, one shouldn’t make too much fuss about marrying people off. You know’ – she lifted her heavy braceleted arms and made a clumsy dancer’s gesture which amused her a good deal – ‘drums and dancing and big dowry. We don’t believe in that. We leave that to people who want to show off. You know the sort of people. Dressed up to kill all the time. Yet go and see where they come out from. You know those houses in the County Road. Half built. No furniture. No, we are not like that. Then, all this fuss about getting married was more suitable for oldfashioned people like myself. Not for you. Do you think it matters how people get married?’
‘Not really.’
‘You remind me a little of him.’
He followed her gaze to other photographs of Pundit Tulsi on the wall. There was one of him flanked by potted palms against the sunset of a photographer’s studio. In another photograph he stood, a small indistinct figure, under the arcade of Hanuman House, beyond the High Street that was empty except for a broken barrel which, because it was nearer the camera, stood out in clear detail. (How did they empty the street, Mr Biswas wondered. Perhaps it was a Sunday morning, or perhaps they had roped the populace off.) There was another photograph of him behind the balustrade. In every photograph he carried the unfurled umbrella.
‘He would have liked you,’ Mrs Tulsi said. ‘He would have been proud to know that you were going to marry one of his daughters. He wouldn’t have let things like your job or your money worry him. He always said that the only thing that mattered was the blood. I can just look at you and see that you come from good blood. A simple little ceremony at the registrar’s office is all that you need.’
And Mr Biswas found that he had agreed.
At Hanuman House everything had appeared simple and reasonable. Outside, he was stunned. He had not had time to think about the problems marriage would bring. Now they seemed enormous. What would happen to his mother? Where would he live? He had no money and no job, for sign-writing, while good enough for a boy living with his mother, was hardly a secure profession for a married man. To get a house he would first have to get a job. He needed much time, but the Tulsis were giving him none at all, though they knew his circumstances. He assumed that they had decided to give more than a dowry, that they would help with a job or a house, or both. He would have liked to talk things over with Seth and Mrs Tulsi; but they had become unapproachable as soon as notice had been given at the registrar’s.
There was no one in Pagotes he could talk to, for pure shame had kept him from telling Tara or Bipti or Alec that he was going to be married. At Hanuman House, in the press of daughters, sons-in-law and children, he began to feel lost, unimportant and even frightened. No one particularly noticed him. Sometimes, during the general feeding, he might be included; but as yet he had no wife to single him out for attention, to do the little services he saw Shama’s sisters doing for their husbands: the ready ladle, the queries, the formal concern. Shama he seldom saw, and when he did, she ostentatiously ignored him.
It never occurred to him that he might withdraw. He felt he had committed himself in every legal and moral way. And, telling Bipti one morning that he would be away for a short time on a job, he took some of his clothes and moved to Hanuman House. It was only half a lie: he could not believe that the events he was taking part in had any solidity, and could change him in any way. The days were too ordinary for that; nothing unusual could befall him. And shortly, he knew, he would return, unchanged, to the back trace. As a guarantee of that return, he left most of his clothes and all of his books in the hut; it was partly, too, to guarantee this return that he lied to Bipti.
After a brief ceremony at the registrar’s, as make-believe as a child’s game, with paper flowers in dissimilar vases on a straw-coloured, official-looking desk, Mr Biswas and Shama were given part of a long room on the top floor of the wooden house.
And now he became cautious. Now he thought of escape. To leave the way clear for that he thought it important to avoid the final commitment. He didn’t embrace or touch her. He wouldn’t have known, besides, how to begin, with someone who had not spoken a word to him, and whom he still saw with the mocking smile she had given that morning in the store. Not wishing to be tempted, he didn’t look at her, and was relieved when she left the room. He spent the rest of that day imprisoned where he was, listening to the noises of the house.
Neither on that day nor on the following days did anyone speak to him of dowry, house or job; and he realized that there had been no discussions because Mrs Tulsi and Seth didn’t see that there were any problems to discuss. The organization of the Tulsi house was simple. Mrs Tulsi had only one servant, a Negro woman who was called Blackie by Seth and Mrs Tulsi, and Miss Blackie by everyone else. Miss Blackie’s duties were vague. The daughters and their children swept and washed and cooked and served in the store. The husbands, under Seth’s supervision, worked on the Tulsi land, looked af
Up to this time Mr Biswas thought he had been especially favoured by the Tulsis. But when he came to see how the family disposed of its daughters, he wondered that Seth and Mrs Tulsi had gone to such trouble on two consecutive days to make marriage attractive to him. They had married Shama to him simply because he was of the proper caste, just as they had married the daughter called C to an illiterate coconut-seller.
Mr Biswas had no money or position. He was expected to become a Tulsi.
At once he rebelled.
Pretending not to know what was expected of him, he finished the signs for the Tulsi Store and decided that the time had come to escape, with Shama or without her. It looked as though it would have to be without her. They still had not spoken; and, following his policy of caution, he had not attempted to establish any relations with her in the long room. He was convinced that she was a thorough Tulsi. And he was glad of his caution when she took to crying openly in the hall, surrounded by sisters, brothers-in-law, nephews and nieces, saying that Mr Biswas had been married less than a fortnight but was already doing his best to break her heart and create trouble in the family.
In a tremendous temper Mr Biswas began packing his brushes and clothes.
‘Yes, take up your clothes and go,’ Shama said. ‘You came to this house with nothing but a pair of cheap khaki trousers and a dirty old shirt.’
He left Hanuman House and went back to Pagotes.
He felt unchanged, unmarried. He had simply had a good fright, but had managed things well and escaped.
In Pagotes, however, he found that his marriage was not a secret. Bipti welcomed him with tears of joy. She said she had always known that he wouldn’t let her down. She had never said it, but she had always felt he would marry into a good family. She could now die happily. If she lived she had something to brighten her old age. Mr Biswas must not reproach himself for his secrecy; he was not to worry about her at all; he had his own life to live.
And despite his protests she put on her best clothes and went to Arwacas the next day. She came back overwhelmed by the graciousness of Mrs Tulsi, the diffidence of Shama and the splendour of Hanuman House.
She described a house he hardly knew. She spoke of a drawingroom with two tall thronelike mahogany chairs, potted palms and ferns in huge brass vases on marble topped tables, religious paintings, and many pieces of Hindu sculpture. She spoke of a prayer-room above that, which, with its slender columns, was like a temple: a low, cool, white room, empty except for the shrine in the centre.
She had seen only the upper floors of the concrete or rather, clay-brick, building. He didn’t tell her that that part of the house was reserved for visitors, Mrs Tulsi, Seth and Mrs Tulsi’s two younger sons. And he thought it better to keep silent about the old wooden house which the family called ‘the old barracks’.
He spent two days in hiding at the back trace, not caring to face Alec or Bhandat’s boys. On the third day he felt the need of greater comfort than Bipti could give, and that evening he went to Tara’s. He entered by the side gate. From the cowpen came a familiar early evening sound: the unhurried stir and rustle of cows in stalls laid with fresh straw. The back verandah outside Tara’s kitchen was warm with light. He heard the steady drone of someone reading aloud.
He found Ajodha rocking slowly, his head thrown back, frowning, his eyes closed, his eyelids palpitating with anguish while Bhandat’s younger boy read That Body of Yours.
Bhandat’s boy stopped reading when he saw Mr Biswas. His eyes became bright with amusement and his prognathous smile was a sneer.
Ajodha opened his eyes and gave a shriek of malicious delight. ‘Married man!’ he cried in English. ‘Married man!’
Mr Biswas smiled and looked sheepish.
‘Tara, Tara,’ Ajodha called. ‘Come and look at your married nephew.’
She came out gravely from the kitchen, embraced Mr Biswas and wept for so long that he began to feel, with sadness and a deep sense of loss, that he really was married, that in some irrevocable way he had changed. She undid the knot at the end of her veil and took out a twenty-dollar note. He objected for a little, then took it.
‘Married man!’ Ajodha cried again.
Tara took Mr Biswas to the kitchen and gave him a meal. And while, in the verandah, Bhandat’s boy continued to read That Body of Yours, with the moths striking continually against the glass chimney of the oil lamp, she and Mr Biswas talked. She could not keep the unhappiness and disappointment out of her face and voice, and this encouraged him to be bitter about the Tulsis.
‘And what sort of dowry did they give you?’ she asked.
‘Dowry? They are not so oldfashioned. They didn’t give me a penny.’
‘Registry?’
He bit at a slice of pickled mango and nodded.
‘It is a modern custom,’ Tara said. ‘And like most modern customs, very economical.’
‘They didn’t even pay me for the signs.’
‘You didn’t ask?’
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘But you don’t know those people.’ He would have been ashamed to explain the organization of the Tulsi house, and to say that his signs were probably considered contributions to the family endeavour.
‘You just leave this to me,’ Tara said.
His heart sank. He had wanted her to declare that he was free, that he needn’t go back, that he could forget the Tulsis and Shama.
And he was no happier when she went to Hanuman House and came back with what she said was good news. He was not to live at Hanuman House forever; the Tulsis had decided to set him up as soon as possible in a shop in a village called The Chase.
He was married. Nothing now, except death, could change that.
‘They told me that they only wanted to help you out,’ Tara said. ‘They said you didn’t want any dowry or big wedding and they didn’t offer because it was a love match.’ Reproach was in her voice.
‘Love match!’ Ajodha cried. ‘Rabidat, listen to that.’ He punched Bhandat’s younger boy in the belly. ‘Love match!’
Rabidat gave his contemptuous smile.
Mr Biswas looked angrily and accusingly at Rabidat. He held Rabidat, more than anyone else, responsible for his marriage and wanted to say it was Rabidat’s taunt which had made him write that note to Shama. Instead, ignoring Ajodha’s chuckles and shrieks, he said, ‘Love match? What love match? They are lying.’
In a disappointed, tired way Tara said, ‘They showed me a love letter.’ She used the English word; it sounded vicious.
Ajodha shrieked again. ‘Love letter! Mohun!’
Bhandat’s boy continued to smile.
Their mood seemed to infect Tara. ‘Mrs Tulsi told me that she believed you wanted to go on with your sign-writing and that Hanuman House was the best place to work from.’ She had begun to smile. ‘Everything’s all right now, boy. You can go back to your wife.’
The stress she gave to the word ‘wife’ wounded Mr Biswas.
‘You have got yourself into a real gum-pot,’ she added, more sympathetically. ‘And I had such nice plans for you.’
‘I wish you had told me,’ he said, without irony.
‘Go back and get your wife!’ Ajodha said.
He paid no attention to Ajodha and asked Tara in English, ‘You like she?’ Hindi was too intimate and tender.
Tara shrugged, to say that it was none of her business; and this hurt Mr Biswas, for it emphasized his loneliness: Tara’s interest in Shama might have made everything more bearable. He thought he would show an equal unconc
His tone angered her. ‘What’s the matter? Are you afraid of them already, like every other man in that place?’
‘Afraid? No. You don’t know me.’
But it was some days before he could make up his mind to go back. He didn’t know what his rights were, didn’t believe in the shop at The Chase, and his plans were vague. Only, he doubted that he would return to the back trace, and when he packed, he packed everything, Bipti crying happily all the while. As he cycled past the unfinished, open houses on the County Road, he wondered how many nights he would spend behind the closed façade of Hanuman House.
‘What?’ Shama said in English. ‘You come back already? You tired catching crab in Pagotes?’
Despite the adventurousness and danger of his calling, the crab-catcher was considered the lowest of the low.
‘I thought I would come and help all-you catch some here,’ Mr Biswas replied, and killed the giggles in the hall.
No other comment was made. He had expected to be met by silence, stares, hostility and perhaps a little fear. He got the stares; the noise continued; the fear was, of course, only a wild hope; and he couldn’t be sure of the hostility. The interest in his return was momentary and superficial. No one referred to his absence or return, not Seth, not Mrs Tulsi, both of whom continued, as they had done even before he left, hardly to notice him. He heard nothing about the visits of Bipti and Tara. The house was too full, too busy; such events were insignificant because he mattered little to the house. His status there was now fixed. He was troublesome and disloyal, and could not be trusted. He was weak and therefore contemptible.
He had not expected to hear any more about the shop in The Chase. And he didn’t. He began to doubt that it existed. He went on with his sign-writing and spent as much time as he could out of the house. But he was unknown in Arwacas and jobs were scarce. Time hung heavily on his hands until he met an equally underemployed man called Misir, the Arwacas correspondent of the Trinidad Sentinel. They discussed jobs, Hinduism, India and their respective families.