Seth stood still. The tears suddenly stopped. But the smile remained.
The Tulsi crowd became agitated, drowning their relief in noise.
He could have turned away before, Mr. Biswas kept on thinking. He could have turned away before.
Seth’s hands dropped slowly. The smile died. One hand went up to the cigarette holder and he held his head to one side as though he was going to say something. But he only jiggled the cigarette holder, turned and walked firmly away between two customs sheds towards the main gates.
Owad came back to the group.
“With mother? With brother? With father? Or with all of all-you?” someone asked, and Mr. Biswas recognized the sardonic voice of the Sentinel photographer.
The photographer nodded and smiled at Mr. Biswas, as though he had found Mr. Biswas out.
“By himself,” Mrs. Tulsi said. “Just by himself.”
Owad threw back his shoulders and laughed. His teeth showed; his moustache widened; his cheeks, shining and perfectly round, rose and rested against his nose.
“Thank you,” the photographer said.
A young reporter, whom Mr. Biswas didn’t know, came up with a notebook and pencil, and from the way he handled these implements Mr. Biswas could tell that he was inexperienced, as inexperienced as he himself had been when he interviewed the English novelist and tried to get him to say sensational things about Port of Spain.
Many emotions came to him and, saying good-bye to no one, he left the crowd and got into the Prefect, oven-hot with the windows closed, and drove to his area.
“Tulips and daffodils!” he muttered, remembering Owad’s horticultural letters as he drove along the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, past the swamplands, the crumbling huts, the rice fields.
It was just after ten when he got back to Port of Spain. The house was silent and upstairs was in darkness: Owad had gone to bed. But downstairs and in the tent lights blazed. Only the younger children were asleep; for everyone else, including those of the morning’s visitors who had decided to stay the night, the excitement of the day still lingered. Some were eating, some were playing cards; many were talking in whispers; and a surprising number were reading newspapers. Anand and Savi and Myna ran to Mr. Biswas as soon as they saw him and breathlessly began telling of Owad’s adventures in England: his firefighting during the war, the rescues he had conducted, his narrow escapes; the operations he had been called in to perform at the last minute on famous men, the jobs that had been offered to him as a result, the seat in parliament; the distinguished men he had known and sometimes defeated in public debate: Russell, Joad, Radhakrishnan, Laski, Menon: these had already become household names. The whole house had fallen under Owad’s spell, and everywhere in the tent little groups were going over Owad’s tales. Chinta had already worked up a great antipathy for Krishna Menon, whom Owad particularly disliked. And in one afternoon the family reverence for India had been shattered: Owad disliked all Indians from India. They were a disgrace to Trinidad Indians; they were arrogant, sly and lecherous; they pronounced English in a peculiar way; they were slow and unintelligent and were given degrees only out of charity; they were unreliable with money; in England they went around with nurses and other women of the lower classes and were frequently involved in scandals; they cooked Indian food badly (the only true Indian meals Owad had in England were the meals he had cooked himself); their Hindi was strange (Owad had repeatedly caught them out in solecisms); their ritual was debased; the moment they got to England they ate meat and drank to prove their modernity (a brahmin boy had offered Owad curried com beef for lunch); and, incomprehensibly, they looked down on colonial Indians. The sisters said they had never really been fooled by Indians from India; they spoke of the behaviour of the missionaries, merchants, doctors and politicians they had known; and they grew grave as they realized their responsibilities as the last representatives of Hindu culture.
The pundit, in dhoti, vest, sacred thread, caste-marks and wrist-watch, reclined on a blanket spread on the swept and flattened earth. He was reading a paper Mr. Biswas had never seen before. And Mr. Biswas saw then that the many other newspapers in the tent were similar to the pundit’s. It was the Soviet Weekly.
It was past midnight before Mr. Biswas, moving from group to group, decided he had heard enough; and when Anand tried to tell of Owad’s meeting with Molotov, of the achievements of the Red Army and the glories of Russia, Mr. Biswas said it was time for them to go to sleep. He went up to his room, leaving Anand and Savi in the festival atmosphere downstairs. His head rang with the great names the children and the sisters had spoken so casually. To think that the man who had met those people was sleeping under the same roof! There, where Owad had been, was surely where life was to be found.
For a full week the festival continued. Visitors left; fresh ones arrived. Perfect strangers-the ice-man, the salted-peanuts-man, the postman, the beggars, the street-sweepers, many stray children-were called in and fed. The food was supplied by Mrs. Tulsi and there was communal cooking, as in the old days, which seemed to have returned with Owad. The fruit hanging from the coconut-frond arches in the tent disappeared; the fronds became yellow. But Owad was still followed by admiring eyes, it was still an honour to be spoken to by him, and everything he had said was to be repeated. At any time and to anyone Owad might start on a new tale; then a crowd instantly collected. Regularly in the evening there were gatherings in the drawingroom or, when Owad was tired, in his bedroom. Mr. Biswas attended as often as he could. Mrs. Tulsi, forgetting her own illnesses and anxious instead to nurse, held Owad’s hand or head while he spoke.
He had canvassed for the Labour Party in 1945 and was considered by Kingsley Martin to be one of the architects of the Labour victory. In fact Kingsley Martin had pressed him to join the New Statesman and Nation; but he, laughing as at a private joke, said he had told Kingsley no. He had earned the bitter hatred of the Conservative Party by his scathing denunciations of Winston Churchill’s Fulton speech. Scathing was one of his favourite words, and the person he had handled most scathingly was Krishna Menon. He didn’t say, but it appeared from his talk that he had been gratuitously insulted by Menon at a public meeting. He had collected funds for Maurice Thorez and had discussed Party strategy in France with him. He spoke familiarly of Russian generals and their battles. He pronounced Russian names impressively.
“Those Russian names are ugly like hell,” Mr. Biswas ventured one evening.
The sisters looked at Mr. Biswas, then looked at Owad.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Owad said. “Biswas is a funny name, if you say it in a certain way.”
The sisters looked at Mr. Biswas.
“Rokossovsky and Coca-cola-kowsky,” Mr. Biswas said, a little annoyed. “Ugly like hell.”
“Ugly? Vyacheslav Molotov. Does that sound ugly to you, Ma?”
“No, son.”
“Joseph Dugashvili,” Owad said.
“That’s the one I had in mind,” Mr. Biswas said. “Don’t say you think that pretty.”
Owad replied scathingly, “I think so.”
The sisters smiled.
“Gawgle,” Owad said, raising his chin (he was lying in bed) and making a strangulated noise.
Mrs. Tulsi passed her hand from his chin to his Adam’s apple.
“What was that?” Mr. Biswas asked.
“Gogol,” Owad said. “The world’s greatest comic writer.”
“It sounded like a gargle.” Mr. Biswas waited for the applause, but Shama only looked warningly at him.
“You couldn’t say that in Russia,” Chinta said.
This led Owad from the beauty of Russian names to Russia itself. “There is work for everyone and everyone must work. It is distinctly written in the Soviet Constitution-Basdai, pass me that little book there-that he who does not work shall not eat.”
“That is fair,” Chinta said, taking the copy of the Soviet Constitution from Owad, opening it, looking at the title page, closing it, pas
sing it on. “Is exactly the sort of law we want in Trinidad.”
“He who does not work shall not eat,” Mrs. Tulsi repeated slowly.
“I just wish they could send some of my people to Russia,” Miss Blackie said, sucking her teeth, shaking her skirt and shifting in her chair to express the despair to which her people reduced her.
Mr. Biswas said, “How can he, who does not eat, work?”
Owad paid no attention. “In Russia, you know, Ma”-it was his habit to address many of his sentences to her-“they grow cotton of different colours. Red and blue and green and white cotton.”
“Just growing like that?” Shama asked, making up for Mr. Biswas’s irreverence.
“Just growing like that. And you,” Owad said, speaking to a widow who had been trying without success to grow an acre of rice at Shorthills, “you know the labour it is to plant rice. Bending down, up to your knees in muddy water, sun blazing, day in, day out.”
“The backache,” the widow said, arching her back and putting her hand where she ached. “You don’t have to tell me. Just planting that one acre, and I feel like going to hospital.”
“None of that in Russia,” Owad said. “No backache and bending down. In Russia, you know how they plant rice?”
They shook their heads.
“Shoot it from an aeroplane. Not shooting bullets. Shooting rice.”
“From an aeroplane?” the rice-planting widow said.
“From an aeroplane. You could plant your field in a few seconds.”
“Take care you don’t miss,” Mr. Biswas said.
“And you,” Owad said to Sushila. “You should really be a doctor. Your bent is that way.”
“I’ve been telling her so,” Mrs. Tulsi said.
Sushila, who had had enough of nursing Mrs. Tulsi, hated the smell of medicines and asked for nothing more than a quiet dry goods shop to support her old age, nevertheless agreed.
“In Russia you would be a doctor. Free.”
“Doctor like you?” Sushila asked.
“Just like me. No difference between the sexes. None of this nonsense about educating the boys and throwing the girls aside.”
Chinta said, “Vidiadhar always keep on telling me that he want to be a aeronautical engineer.”
This was a lie. Vidiadhar didn’t even know the meaning of the words. He just liked their sound.
“He would be an aeronautical engineer,” Owad said.
“To take out the rice grains from the aeroplane gas-tank,” Mr. Biswas said. “But what about me?”
“You, Mohun Biswas. Welfare Officer. After they have broken people’s lives, deprived them of opportunity, sending you around like a scavenger to pick the pieces up. A typical capitalist trick, Ma.”
“Yes, son.”
“M-m-m-m.” It was Miss Blackie, purring.
“Using you like a tool. You have given us five hundred dollars profit. Here, we give you five dollars charity.”
The sisters nodded.
O God, Mr. Biswas thought, another scorpion trying to do me out of a job.
“But you are not really a capitalist lackey,” Owad said.
“Not really,” Mr. Biswas said.
“You are not really a bureaucrat. You are a journalist, a writer, a man of letters.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Yes, man.”
“In Russia, they see you are a journalist and a writer, they give you a house, give you food and money and tell you, ‘Go ahead and write.’ “
“Really really?” Mr. Biswas said. “A house, just like that?”
“Writers get them all the time. A dacha, a house in the country.”
“Why,” asked Mrs. Tulsi, “don’t we all go to Russia?”
“Ah,” Owad said. “They fought for it. You should hear what they did to the Czar.”
“M-m-m-m.” Miss Blackie said, and the sisters nodded gravely.
“You,” Mr. Biswas said, now full of respect, “are you a member of the Communist Party?”
Owad only smiled.
And his reaction was equally cryptic when Anand asked how, as a communist working for the revolution, he could take a job in the government medical service. “The Russians have a proverb,” Owad said. “A tortoise can pull in its head and go through a cesspit and remain clean.”
By the end of the week the house was in a ferment. Everyone was waiting for the revolution. The Soviet Constitution and the Soviet Weekly were read more thoroughly than the Sentinel or the Guardian. Every received idea was shaken. The readers and learners, happy to think themselves in a society that was soon to be utterly destroyed, relaxed their efforts to read and learn and began to despise their teachers, whom they had previously reverenced, as ill-informed stooges.
And Owad was an all-rounder. He not only had views on politics and military strategy; he not only was knowledgeable about cricket and football; he lifted weights, he swam, he rowed; and he had strong opinions about artists and writers.
“Eliot,” he told Anand. “Used to see him a lot. American, you know. The Waste Land. The Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Let us go then, you and I. Eliot is a man I simply loathe.”
And at school Anand said, “Eliot is a man I simply loathe”; and added, “I know someone who knows him.”
While they waited for the revolution, life had to be lived. The tent was taken down. Sisters and married granddaughters left. Visitors no longer came in great numbers. Owad took up his duties at the Colonial Hospital and for a time the house had to be content with stories of the operations he had carried out. The refugee doctor was dismissed and Owad looked after Mrs. Tulsi himself. She improved spectacularly. “These doctors stopped learning twenty years ago,” Owad said. “They don’t even bother to keep up with the journals.” Journals had been coming to him by almost every post from England, and drug samples, which he displayed proudly, though sometimes with scathing comments.
Communal cooking had stopped, but communal life continued. Sisters and granddaughters often came to spend a night or a week-end. They brought all their illnesses to him and he attended to them without charge, giving injections wholesale with new miracle drugs which he said were as yet unknown in the colony. Later the sisters worked out what they would have had to pay another doctor, and there was a gentle rivalry as to who had been favoured with the most expensive treatment.
And Owad’s success grew. For long the emphasis in the house had been on reading and learning, which many of the readers and learners couldn’t do well and approached reluctantly. Now Owad said that this emphasis was wrong. Everyone had something to offer. Physical strength and manual skills were as important as academic success, and he spoke of the equality in Russia of peasants, workers and intellectuals. He organized swimming parties, boating expeditions, ping-pong tournaments; and such was the admiration and respect felt for him that even enemies came together. Anand and Vidiadhar played some ping-pong sets and, though not speaking a word to one another before or after, were scrupulously polite during the game, saying “Good shot!” and “Bad luck!” at the least opportunity. Vidiadhar, who had developed into a games-playing thug, more keen than competent and never picked for any college side, excelled in these family games and was the house champion.
“I can’t tell you,” Chinta said to Owad, “how Vidiadhar got me worried. That boy does sweat so much. You can’t get him to stick in a corner with some old book. He always exercising or playing some rough game or other. He done break a hand, a foot and some ribs. I does keep on trying to stop him. But he don’t listen. And he does sweat so much.”
“Nothing to worry about there,” Owad said, the doctor now. “That is quite normal.”
“You take a weight off my mind,” Chinta said, disappointed, for she believed that profuse sweating was a sign of exceptional virility and had hoped to be told so. “He does sweat so much.”
Regularly Shekhar, Dorothy and their five daughters came to the house, and these visits gave the sisters a sweet revenge. They treated Shekhar with the respect due t
o him, but they made their contempt for Dorothy plain. “I am sorry,” Chinta said to her one Sunday. “I cannot understand you. I only speak Spanish.” Dorothy had not spoken Spanish since Owad’s arrival and the sisters felt that they were at last making her boil down. But their behaviour had an unexpected result. For Owad, taking his cue from the sisters, spoke rallyingly to Dorothy; she responded with rough good humour and soon a familiarity grew up between them; and one Sunday, to the dismay of the sisters, Dorothy came with her cousin, a handsome young woman who had graduated from McGill University and had all the elegance of the Indian girl from South Trinidad. When they had gone Owad calmed the sisters’ fears by deriding the girl’s Canadian degree, her slight Canadian accent and her musical skills. “She went all the way to Canada to learn to play the violin,” he said. “I hope she doesn’t want to play to me. I’ll break the bow on her parents’ heads. People starving, not getting enough to eat in Trinidad, and she playing the violin in Canada!”
And though he spent more and more time with his friends and colleagues and often went south to Shekhar’s, and though when his friends called the house had to be silent and the sisters and the readers and learners hidden, the sisters continued to feel safe. For after every journey, every meeting, Owad related his adventures to them. His appetite for talk was insatiable, his dramatic gifts never failed, and the comments he made on the people he had met were invariably scathing.
The sisters now sought audience with him singly or in small groups. They came to the house, waited up for him, and when he returned they fell to talking, under the house, so as not to disturb Mrs. Tulsi’s sleep. In time each sister felt she had a special hold on him; and having received his confidences, offered hers. At first the sisters spoke of their financial difficulties. But Owad was unwilling to anticipate the revolution. Then the sisters complained. They complained about the teachers who were keeping their children back at school; they complained about Dorothy, about Shekhar, about their husbands; they complained about absent sisters. Every scandal was gone over, every petty dispute, every resentment. And Owad listened. The children listened as well, kept awake by the sisters’ bumbling and their frequent hawking and spitting (a sign of intimacy: the warmer the feeling, the noisier the hawk, the longer the period of speaking through the spittle). In the morning the sisters who had talked late into the night were brisk and exceptionally friendly towards the people they had criticized, exceptionally proprietary towards Owad.
A House for Mr. Biswas Page 56