A House for Mr. Biswas Read online

  Then one day Mr Biswas lost the calf. He had forgotten it, watching the fish. And when, after dropping the stick and scattering the fish, he remembered the calf, it had gone. He hunted for it along the banks and in the adjoining fields. He went back to the field where Dhari had left the calf that morning. The iron piquet, its head squashed and shiny from repeated poundings, was there, but no rope was attached to it, no calf. He spent a long time searching, in fields full of tall weeds with fluffy heads, in the gutters, like neat red gashes, between the fields, and among the sugarcane. He called for it, mooing softly so as not to attract the attention of people.

  Abruptly, he decided that the calf was lost for good; that the calf was anyway able to look after itself and would somehow make its way back to its mother in Dhari’s yard. In the meantime the best thing for him to do would be to hide until the calf was found, or perhaps forgotten. It was getting late and he decided that the best place for him to hide would be at home.

  The afternoon was almost over. In the west the sky was gold and smoke. Most of the villagers were back from work, and Mr Biswas had to make his way home with caution, keeping close to hedges and sometimes hiding in gutters. Unseen, he came right up to the back boundary of their lot. On a stand between the hut and the cowpen he saw Bipti washing enamel, brass and tin dishes with ashes and water. He hid behind the hibiscus hedge. Pratap and Prasad came, blades of grass between their teeth, their close-fitting felt hats damp with sweat, their faces scorched by the sun and stained with sweat, their legs cased in white mud. Pratap threw a length of white cotton around his dirty trousers and undressed with expert adult modesty before using the calabash to throw water over himself from the big black oil barrel. Prasad stood on a board and began scraping the white mud off his legs.

  Bipti said, ‘You boys will have to go and get some wood before it gets dark.’

  Prasad lost his temper; and, as though by scraping off the white mud he had lost the composure of adulthood, he flung his hat to the ground and cried like a child, ‘Why do you ask me now? Why do you ask me every day? I am not going.’

  Raghu came to the back, an unfinished walking-stick in one hand and in the other a smoking wire with which he had been burning patterns into the stick. ‘Listen, boy,’ Raghu said. ‘Don’t feel that because you are earning money you are a man. Do what your mother asks. And go quickly, before I use this stick on you, even though it is unfinished.’ He smiled at his joke.

  Mr Biswas became uneasy.

  Prasad, still raging, picked up his hat, and he and Pratap went away to the front of the house.

  Bipti took her dishes to the kitchen in the front verandah, where Dehuti would be helping with the evening meal. Raghu went back to his bonfire at the front. Mr Biswas slipped through the hibiscus fence, crossed the narrow, shallow gutter, grey-black and squelchy with the ashy water from the washing-up stand and the muddy water from Pratap’s bath, and made his way to the small back verandah where there was a table, the only piece of carpenter-built furniture in the hut. From the verandah he went into his father’s room, passed under the valance of the bed – planks resting on upright logs sunk into the earth floor – and prepared to wait.

  It was a long wait but he endured it without discomfort. Below the bed the smell of old cloth, dust and old thatch combined into one overpoweringly musty smell. Idly, to pass the time, he tried to disentangle one smell from the other, while his ears picked up the sounds in and around the hut. They were remote and dramatic. He heard the boys return and throw down the dry wood they had brought. Prasad still raged, Raghu warned, Bipti coaxed. Then all at once Mr Biswas became alert.

  ‘Ey, Raghu?’ He recognized Dhari’s voice. ‘Where is that youngest son of yours?’

  ‘Mohun? Bipti, where is Mohun?’

  ‘With Dhari’s calf, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t,’ Dhari said.

  ‘Prasad!’ Bipti called. ‘Pratap! Dehuti! Have you seen Mohun?’

  ‘No, mai.’

  ‘No, mai.’

  ‘No, mai.’

  ‘No, mai. No, mai. No, mai,’ Raghu said. ‘What the hell do you think it is? Go and look for him.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Prasad cried.

  ‘And you too, Dhari. It was your idea, getting Mohun to look after the calf. I hold you responsible.’

  ‘The magistrate will have something else to say,’ Dhari said. ‘A calf is a calf, and for one who is not as rich as yourself-’

  ‘I am sure nothing has happened,’ Bipti said, ‘Mohun knows he mustn’t go near water.’

  Mr Biswas was startled by a sound of wailing. It came from Dhari. ‘Water, water. Oh, the unlucky boy. Not content with eating up his mother and father, he is eating me up as well. Water! Oh, Mohun’s mother, what you have said?’

  ‘Water?’ Raghu sounded puzzled.

  ‘The pond, the pond,’ Dhari wailed, and Mr Biswas heard him shouting to the neighbours, ‘Raghu’s son has drowned my calf in the pond. A nice calf. My first calf. My only calf.’

  Quickly a chattering crowd gathered. Many of them had been to the pond that afternoon; quite a number had seen a calf wandering about, and one or two had even seen a boy.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Raghu said. ‘You are a pack of liars. The boy doesn’t go near water.’ He paused and added, ‘The pundit especially forbade him to go near water in its natural form.’

  Lakhan the carter said, ‘But this is a fine man. He doesn’t seem to care whether his son is drowned or not.’

  ‘How do you know what he thinks?’ Bipti said.

  ‘Leave him, leave him,’ Raghu said, in an injured, forgiving tone. ‘Mohun is my son. And if I don’t care whether he is drowned or not, that is my business.’

  ‘What about my calf?’ Dhari said.

  ‘I don’t care about your calf. Pratap! Prasad! Dehuti! Have you seen your brother?’

  ‘No, father.’

  ‘No, father.’

  ‘No, father.’

  ‘I will go and dive for him,’ Lakhan said.

  ‘You are very anxious to show off,’ Raghu said.

  ‘Oh!’ Bipti cried. ‘Stop this bickering-ickering and let us go to look for the boy.’

  ‘Mohun is my son,’ Raghu said. ‘And if anybody is going to dive for him, it will be me. And I pray to God, Dhari, that when I get to the bottom of that pond I find your wretched calf.’

  ‘Witnesses!’ Dhari said. ‘You are all my witnesses. Those words will have to be repeated in court.’

  ‘To the pond! To the pond!’ the villagers said, and the news was shouted to those just arriving: ‘Raghu is going to dive for his son in the pond.’

  Mr Biswas, under his father’s bed, had listened at first with pleasure, then with apprehension. Raghu came into the room, breathing heavily and swearing at the village. Mr Biswas heard him undress and shout for Bipti to come and rub him down with coconut oil. She came and rubbed him down and they both left the room. From the road chatter and the sound of footsteps rose, and slowly faded.

  Mr Biswas came out from under the bed and was dismayed to find that the hut was dark. In the next room someone began to cry. He went to the doorway and looked. It was Dehuti. From the nail on the wall she had taken down his shirt and two vests and was pressing them to her face.

  ‘Sister,’ he whispered.

  She heard and saw, and her sobs turned to screams.

  Mr Biswas didn’t know what to do. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ he said, but the words were useless, and he went back to his father’s room. Just in time, for at that moment Sadhu, the very old man who lived two houses away, came and asked what was wrong, his words whistling through the gaps in his teeth.

  Dehuti continued to scream. Mr Biswas put his hands into his trouser pockets and, through the holes in them, pressed his fingers on his thighs.

  Sadhu led Dehuti away.

  Outside, from an unknown direction, a frog honked, then made a sucking, bubbling noise. The crickets were already chirping. Mr Biswas was alone in the dar
k hut, and frightened.

  *

  The pond lay in swampland. Weeds grew all over its surface and from a distance it appeared to be no more than a shallow depression. In fact it was full of abrupt depths and the villagers liked to think that these were immeasurable. There were no trees or hills around, so that though the sun had gone, the sky remained high and light. The villagers stood silently around the safe edge of the pond. The frogs honked and the poor-me-one bird began to say the mournful words that gave it its name. The mosquitoes were already active; from time to time a villager slapped his arm or lifted a leg and slapped that.

  Lakhan the carter said, ‘He’s been down there too long.’

  Bipti frowned.

  Before Lakhan could take off his shirt Raghu broke the surface, puffed out his cheeks, spat out a long thin arc of water and took deep resounding breaths. The water rolled off his oiled skin, but his moustache had collapsed over his upper lip and his hair fell in a fringe over his forehead. Lakhan gave him a hand up. ‘I believe there is something down there,’ Raghu said. ‘But it is very dark.’

  Far away the low trees were black against the fading sky; the orange streaks of sunset were smudged with grey, as if by dirty thumbs.

  Bipti said, ‘Let Lakhan dive.’

  Someone else said, ‘Leave it till tomorrow.’

  ‘Till tomorrow?’ Raghu said. ‘And poison the water for everybody?’

  Lakhan said, ‘I will go.’

  Raghu, panting, shook his head. ‘My son. My duty.’

  ‘And my calf,’ Dhari said.

  Raghu ignored him. He ran his hands through his hair, puffed out his cheeks, put his hands to his sides and belched. In a moment he was in the water again. The pond didn’t permit stylish diving; Raghu merely let himself down. The water broke and rippled. The gleam it got from the sky was fading. While they waited a cool wind came down from the hills to the north; between the shaking weeds the water shimmered like sequins.

  Lakhan said, ‘He’s coming up now. I believe he’s got something.’

  They knew what it was from Dhari’s cry. Then Bipti began to scream, and Pratap and Prasad and all the women, while the men helped to lift the calf to the bank. One of its sides was green with slime; its thin limbs were ringed with vinelike weeds, still fresh and thick and green. Raghu sat on the bank, looking down between his legs at the dark water.

  Lakhan said, ‘Let me go down now and look for the boy.’

  ‘Yes, man,’ Bipti pleaded. ‘Let him go.’

  Raghu remained where he was, breathing deeply, his dhoti clinging to his skin. Then he was in the water and the villagers were silent again. They waited, looking at the calf, looking at the pond.

  Lakhan said, ‘Something has happened.’

  A woman said, ‘No stupid talk now, Lakhan. Raghu is a great diver.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Lakhan said. ‘But he’s been diving too long.’

  Then they were all still. Someone had sneezed.

  They turned to see Mr Biswas standing some distance away in the gloom, the toe of one foot scratching the ankle of the other.

  Lakhan was in the pond. Pratap and Prasad rushed to hustle Mr Biswas away.

  ‘That boy!’ Dhari said. ‘He has murdered my calf and now he has eaten up his own father.’

  Lakhan brought up Raghu unconscious. They rolled him on the damp grass and pumped water out of his mouth and through his nostrils. But it was too late.

  ‘Messages,’ Bipti kept on saying. ‘We must send messages.’ And messages were taken everywhere by willing and excited villagers. The most important message went to Bipti’s sister Tara at Pagotes. Tara was a person of standing. It was her fate to be childless, but it was also her fate to have married a man who had, at one bound, freed himself from the land and acquired wealth; already he owned a rumshop and a dry goods shop, and he had been one of the first in Trinidad to buy a motorcar.

  Tara came and at once took control. Her arms were encased from wrist to elbow with silver bangles which she had often recommended to Bipti: ‘They are not very pretty, but one clout from this arm will settle any attacker.’ She also wore earrings and a nakphul, a ‘nose-flower’. She had a solid gold yoke around her neck and thick silver bracelets on her ankles. In spite of all her jewellery she was energetic and capable, and had adopted her husband’s commanding manner. She left the mourning to Bipti and arranged everything else. She had brought her own pundit, whom she continually harangued; she instructed Pratap how to behave during the ceremonies; and she had even brought a photographer.

  She urged Prasad, Dehuti and Mr Biswas to behave with dignity and to keep out of the way, and she ordered Dehuti to see that Mr Biswas was properly dressed. As the baby of the family Mr Biswas was treated by the mourners with honour and sympathy, though this was touched with a little dread. Embarrassed by their attentions, he moved about the hut and yard, thinking he could detect a new, raw smell in the air. There was also a strange taste in his mouth; he had never eaten meat, but now he felt he had eaten raw white flesh; nauseating saliva rose continually at the back of his throat and he had to keep on spitting, until Tara said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you pregnant?’

  Bipti was bathed. Her hair, still wet, was neatly parted and the parting filled with red henna. Then the henna was scooped out and the parting filled with charcoal dust. She was now a widow forever. Tara gave a short scream and at her signal the other women began to wail. On Bipti’s wet black hair there were still spots of henna, like drops of blood.

  Cremation was forbidden and Raghu was to be buried. He lay in a coffin in the bedroom, dressed in his finest dhoti, jacket and turban, his beads around his neck and down his jacket. The coffin was strewed with marigolds which matched his turban. Pratap, the eldest son, did the last rites, walking round the coffin.

  ‘Photo now,’ Tara said. ‘Quick. Get them all together. For the last time.’

  The photographer, who had been smoking under the mango tree, went into the hut and said, ‘Too dark.’

  The men became interested and gave advice while the women wailed.

  ‘Take it outside. Lean it against the mango tree.’

  ‘Light a lamp.’

  ‘It couldn’t be too dark.’

  ‘What do you know? You’ve never had your photo taken. Now, what I suggest –’

  The photographer, of mixed Chinese, Negro and European blood, did not understand what was being said. In the end he and some of the men took the coffin out to the verandah and stood it against the wall.

  ‘Careful! Don’t let him fall out.’

  ‘Goodness. All the marigolds have dropped out.’

  ‘Leave them,’ the photographer said in English. ‘Is a nice little touch. Flowers on the ground.’ He set up his tripod in the yard, just under the ragged eaves of thatch, and put his head under the black cloth.

  Tara roused Bipti from her grief, arranged Bipti’s hair and veil, and dried Bipti’s eyes.

  ‘Five people all together,’ the photographer said to Tara. ‘Hard to know just how to arrange them. It look to me that it would have to be two one side and three the other side. You sure you want all five?’

  Tara was firm.

  The photographer sucked his teeth, but not at Tara. ‘Look, look. Why nobody ain’t put anything to chock up the coffin and prevent it from slipping?’

  Tara had that attended to.

  The photographer said, ‘All right then. Mother and biggest son on either side. Next to mother, young boy and young girl. Next to big son, smaller son.’

  There was more advice from the men.

  ‘Make them look at the coffin.’

  ‘At the mother.’

  ‘At the youngest boy.’

  The photographer settled the matter by telling Tara, ‘Tell them to look at me.’

  Tara translated, and the photographer went under his cloth. Almost immediately he came out again. ‘How about making the mother and the biggest boy put their hands on the edge of the coffin?’

/>   This was done and the photographer went back under his cloth.

  ‘Wait!’ Tara cried, running out from the hut with a fresh garland of marigolds. She hung it around Raghu’s neck and said to the photographer in English, ‘All right. Draw your photo now.’

  Mr Biswas never owned a copy of the photograph and he did not see it until 1937, when it made its appearance, framed in passepartout, on the wall of the drawingroom of Tara’s fine new house at Pagotes, a little lost among many other photographs of funeral groups, many oval portraits with blurred edges of more dead friends and relations, and coloured prints of the English countryside. The photograph had faded to the lightest brown and was partially defaced by the large heliotrope stamp of the photographer, still bright, and his smudged sprawling signature in soft black pencil. Mr Biswas was astonished at his own smallness. The scabs of sores and the marks of eczema showed clearly on his knobbly knees and along his very thin arms and legs. Everyone in the photograph had unnaturally large, staring eyes which seemed to have been outlined in black.

  Tara was right when she said that the photograph was to be a record of the family all together for the last time. For in a few days Mr Biswas and Bipti, Pratap and Prasad and Dehuti had left Parrot Trace and the family split up for good.

  It began on the evening of the funeral.

  Tara said, ‘Bipti, you must give me Dehuti.’

  Bipti had been hoping that Tara would make the suggestion. In four or five years Dehuti would have to be married and it was better that she should be given to Tara. She would learn manners, acquire graces and, with a dowry from Tara, might even make a good match.