A House for Mr. Biswas (16 page)

After he had spoken Pankaj Rai distributed copies of his book,
Reform the Only Way,
and Mr Biswas asked for his to be autographed. Pankaj Rai did more. He wrote Mr Biswas’s name as well, describing him as a ‘dear friend’. Below this inscription Mr Biswas wrote: ‘Presented to Mohun Biswas by his dear friend Pankaj Rai,
BA LLB.’

He showed book and inscriptions to Shama when he got back to Hanuman House.

‘Go ahead,’ Shama said.

‘Let me hear what you have against him. You people say you are high-caste. But you think Pankaj would call you that? Let me see. I wonder where Pankaj would place the Big Bull. Ha! With the cows. Make him a cowherd. No. That is a good job.’ He remembered his own cowherd days. ‘Better make him a leather-worker, skinning dead animals. Yes, that’s it. The Big Bull is a member of the leather-worker caste. And what about the two gods? Where you think Pankaj would place them?’

‘Just where you would place your brothers.’

‘Road-sweeper? Little washerboys? Barber? Yes, little barbers. Pankaj would just look at them and feel that he want a trim. And what about your mother?’ He paused. ‘Sha-ma! It just hit me. Pankaj would say that your mother ain’t a Hindu at all! I mean, look at the facts. Marrying off her favourite
daughter in a registry office. Sending the two little barbers to a Roman Catholic college. As soon as Pankaj see your mother he would start making the sign of the cross. Roman Catholic, that’s what she is!’

‘Why don’t you shut your mouth?’ Shama tried to sound amused, but he could tell that she was getting angry.

‘Ro-man Cat-o-lic! Roman cat, the bitch. You think she could fool Pankaj? And here you have Pankaj bringing the woman a message of hope, saying that Hindus should take in converts and treat them like their own, saying that it is not necessary to be born a high-caste to be a high-caste. A message of hope, man. And what? Your mother running the man down, when she should be grateful like hell, kissing the man foot. Gratitude, eh?’

‘I just hope this Pankaj Rai come to lift you out of this gum-pot you surely going to land yourself in. Go ahead.’

‘Shama.’

‘Why you don’t wrap your little tail up and go to sleep?’

‘Shama, we have another problem, girl. You think any good Hindu would get married to a Roman Catholic girl, if he was really a good Hindu? Shama, you know what? It look to me that your whole family is just one big low-caste bunch.’

‘You should know. You married into it.’

‘Married into it. Ha! You think that make me happy. I
look
as if I happy?’

‘Why you should look as if you happy? It should make you miserable. Is the first time in your life you eating three square meals a day. It giving your stomach too much exercise, I should say.’

‘Licking up my stomach, you mean. My biggest item of food and drink in this house is soda powder and water.’

He pressed his foot against the wall and with his big toe drew circles around one of the faded lotus decorations.

He intended to discuss the Aryans less flippantly with Hari. He imagined that Hari, like Pundit Jairam and many other pundits, would welcome disputation. But at the long table Hari remained cold, his wife looked aghast, and Mr Biswas left him to his food.

When Hari had changed and was sitting in the verandah upstairs, humming from some holy book in his cheerless way, Mr Biswas, piqued and anxious to provoke some reaction, brought out his copy of
Reform the Only Way
and showed it, drawing Hari’s attention to the inscriptions. Hari looked briefly at the book and said, ‘Mm.’

Having failed with Hari, Mr Biswas decided that it would be prudent to withhold the message of hope from the other brothers-in-law, who were less intelligent and more temperamental.

About a week later Seth met Mr Biswas in the hall and said, laughing, ‘How is your
dear
friend Pankaj Rai?’

‘What you asking me for?’ Mr Biswas nearly always spoke English at Hanuman House, even when the other person spoke Hindi; it had become one of his principles. ‘Why you don’t ask Hari, the stargazer?’

‘You know Rai nearly went to jail?’

‘Some people would say anything.’ But Mr Biswas was disturbed by this news about the purist.

‘These Aryans say all sorts of things about women,’ Seth said. ‘And you know why? They want to lift them up to get on top of them. You know Rai was interfering with Nath’s daughter-in-law? So they asked him to leave. But a lot of other things left the house when he left.’

‘But the man is a
BA
.’

‘And
LLB.
I know. I wouldn’t trust an Aryan with my great-grandmother.’

‘Is a trick. The man is a dear friend. A purist. Pankaj wouldn’t do a thing like that. You never hear him talk, that’s why.’

‘Nath’s daughter-in-law heard, though. She didn’t like what she heard.’

‘Scandal, scandal. Is just a piece of scandal you stick-in-the-mud Sanatanists dig up.’

‘If I had my way,’ Seth said, ‘I would cut the balls off all these Aryans. Have they converted you yet?’

‘That is my own business.’

‘I hear they have made some creole converts. Brothers for you, Mohun!’

In the verandah Mr Biswas saw Hari in dhoti, vest and beads, reading.

‘Hello, pundit!’ Mr Biswas said.

Hari stared blankly at Mr Biswas and returned to his book.

Mr Biswas went past a door with glass panes of many colours into the Book Room. Here, along the length of one wall, was a bookcase choked with the religious literature Hari was working through. Few of the books were bound. Many were simply stacks of large loose brown-edged sheets which looked stained rather than printed. Each sheet carried partial impressions of the sheet above and the sheet below; the ink had turned russet; and each letter lay in a patch of oil.

Mr Biswas turned and walked back to the verandah. He put his head around a brilliant blue pane and whispered loudly down the verandah to Hari, ‘Hello, Mr God.’

Hari, humming, didn’t hear.

‘I got a name for another one of your brother-in-laws,’ he told Shama that evening, lying on his blanket, his right foot on his left knee, peeling off a broken nail from his big toe. ‘The constipated holy man.’

‘Hari?’ she said, and pulled herself up, realizing that she had begun to take part in the game.

He slapped his yellow, flabby calf and pushed his finger into the flesh. The calf yielded like sponge.

She pulled his hand away. ‘Don’t do that. I can’t bear to see you do that. You should be ashamed, a young man like you, being so soft.’

‘That is all the bad food I eating in this place.’ He was still holding her hand. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I have quite a few names for him. The holy ghost. You like that?’

‘Man!’

‘And what about the two gods? It ever strike you that they look like two monkeys? So, you have one concrete monkey-god outside the house and two living ones inside. They could just call this place the monkey house and finish. Eh, monkey, bull, cow, hen. The place is like a blasted zoo, man.’

‘And what about you? The barking puppy dog?’

‘Man’s best friend.’ He flung up his legs and his thin slack calves shook. With a push of his finger he kept the calves swinging.

‘Stop doing that!’

By now Shama’s head was on his soft arm, and they were lying side by side.

Abandoning the brothers-in-law altogether, Mr Biswas contented himself with the company of the Aryans at the Naths’. Pankaj Rai was no longer with them and no one was willing to talk about him. His place had been taken by a man who introduced himself as Shivlochan, B
A
(Professor). He was no purist. He spoke pompous Hindi and little English, and continually allowed himself to be bullied by Misir. Misir was keen on discussions and resolutions, and under his guidance they passed resolutions that education was important, that child marriage should be abolished, that young people should choose their own spouses.

Misir, who had suffered from his parents’ choice, said, ‘The present system is nothing more than cat-in-bag.’

(Mr Biswas loved Misir’s phrases. ‘That is all your family do for you,’ he said to Shama that evening. ‘Marry off the whole pack of you cat-in-bag.’

‘Don’t think I don’t know where you picking up all that,’ Shama said. ‘Go ahead.’)

‘Look what I got,’ Misir said, ‘from marrying cat-in-bag. What about you, Mohun? You happy about this cat-in-bag business?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ Mr Biswas said, ‘I didn’t get married cat-in-bag. I did see the girl first.’

‘You mean they let you see the child first?’ Whatever remained of Misir’s orthodox instincts was clearly outraged.

‘Well, she was just there, you know, in the shop, selling cloth and socks and ribbon. And I see her and then –’

‘All the old confusion, eh?’

‘Well, not exactly. Things just happen after that.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Misir said. ‘Well, you ask for what you get. Anyway, I think we could say we are against this early cat-in-bag marriage business.’

‘We could say that,’ Mr Biswas said.

‘Now, how are we going to put our ideas across to the masses?’ Misir said, and Mr Biswas noted that Misir’s manner was growing more and more like Pankaj Rai’s. ‘I suggest persuasion.’

‘Peaceful persuasion,’ Shivlochan said.

‘Peaceful persuasion. Start like Mohammed. Start small. Start with your own family. Start with your own wife. Then move on. I want everybody here to go home this evening determined to pass the word on to his neighbours. And I promise you, my friends, that in no time Arwacas will become a stronghold of Aryanism.’

‘Just a moment,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Not so fast. Start with your own family? You don’t know my family. I think we better leave them out.’

‘This is a helluva man,’ Misir said. ‘You want to convert three hundred million Hindus and you let one backward little family of country bookies frighten you?’

‘I telling you, man. You don’t know my family.’

‘All right,’ Misir said, a little of his bounce gone. ‘Now, supposing peaceful persuasion doesn’t work. Just supposing. What do you suggest, my friends? By what means can we bring about the conversion we so earnestly desire?’ The last two sentences had occurred in one of Pankaj Rai’s speeches.

‘By the sword,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘The only thing. Conversion by the sword.’

‘That’s how I feel too,’ Misir said.

‘Just a minute, gentlemen,’ Shivlochan,
BA
(Professor), said, rising. ‘You are rejecting the doctrine of non-violence. Do you realize that?’

‘Rejecting it just for a short time,’ Misir said impatiently. ‘Short short time.’

Shivlochan sat down.

‘I think, then, that we could pass a resolution to the effect that peaceful persuasion should be followed by militant conversion. All right?’

‘I think so,’ Mr Biswas said.

‘I think this would make a good little story,’ Misir said. ‘Going to telephone it in to the
Sentinel
straight away.’

On the country page of the
Sentinel
the next day there was an item, two inches high, about the proceedings of the Arwacas Aryan Association, the
AAA
, Mr Biswas’s name was mentioned, as was his address.

He left an open and marked copy of the paper on the long table in the hall. And when that evening Shama came up as he was reading
Reform the Only Way
and said that Seth wanted to see him, Mr Biswas didn’t argue. Whistling in his soundless way, he put on his trousers and ran down to face the family tribunal.

‘I see you have got your name in the papers,’ Seth said.

Mr Biswas shrugged.

The gods swung slowly in the hammock, frowning.

‘What are you trying to do? Disgrace the family? Here you have these boys trying to get on in the Catholic college. Do you believe this sort of thing is going to help them in any way?’

The gods looked injured.

‘Jealous,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Everybody just jealous.’

‘What have you got for them to be jealous of?’ Mrs Tulsi asked.

The elder god got up, in tears. ‘I not going to remain sitting down in this hammock and have any-and-everybody in this house insulting me. Is your fault, Ma. Is your son-in-law. You just bring them in here to eat all the food my father money buy and then to insult your sons.’

It was a grave charge, and Mrs Tulsi held the boy to her and embraced him and wiped away his tears with her veil.

‘It’s all right, son,’ Seth said. ‘I am still here to look after you.’ He turned to Mr Biswas. ‘All right,’ he said in English. ‘You see what you cause. You want to get the family in trouble. You want to see them go to jail. They feeding you, but you want to see me and Mai go to jail. You want to see the two boys, who ain’t got no father, go through life without a education. All that is all right. This house is like a republic already.’

Sisters and brothers-in-law froze into attitudes of sullen penitence. Seth’s gratuitous remark about the republic was a
rebuke to them all; it meant that Mr Biswas’s behaviour was bringing discredit upon the other brothers-in-law.

‘So,’ Seth went on. ‘You want to see girl children educated and choosing their own husband, eh? The same sort of thing that your sister do.’

The sisters and their husbands relaxed.

Mr Biswas said, ‘My sister better than anybody here, and better off too. And too besides, she living in a house a lot cleaner.’

Seth rested his elbow on the table and smoked sadly, looking down at his bluchers. ‘The Black Age,’ he said softly in Hindi. ‘The Black Age has come at last. Sister, we have taken in a serpent. It is my fault. You must blame me.’

‘I not asking to stay here, you know,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘I believe in the old ways too. You make me marry your daughter, you promise to do this and do that. So far I ain’t got nothing. The day you give me what you promise me, I gone.’

‘So you want girl children learning to read and write and picking up boy-friends? You want to see them wearing short frocks?’

‘I ain’t say a thing about short frocks. I talking about what you promise me.’

‘Short frocks. And love letters. Love letters! Remember the love letter you write Shama?’