He had been immediately attracted by Miss Logie, the head of the department. She was a tall, energetic woman in late middle age. She was not pompous or aggressive, as he had found women in authority inclined to be. She had the graces, and even before there was talk of the job he had found himself attempting to please. She also had the attraction of novelty. He had known no Indian woman of her age as alert and intelligent and inquiring. And when the matter of the job was raised he had no hesitation. He rejected Miss Logie’s offer of time to think it over; he feared all delay.
He walked light-heartedly down St. Vincent Street back to the office. What had just happened was unexpected in every way. He had stopped thinking of a new job. He had paid no more than a journalist’s attention to all the talk of postwar development, since he did not see how it involved him and his family. And now, on a Monday morning, he had walked into a new job, and his job made him part of the new era. And it was a job with the government! He thought with pleasure of all the jokes he had heard about civil servants, and felt the full weight of the fears that had been with him since Mr. Burnett had left. He could have been sacked from the Sentinel at any moment; there was nothing or no one to protect him. But in the Service no one could be sacked just like that. There were things like Whitley Councils, he believed. The matter would have to go through all sorts of channels-that was the delicious word-and this, he understood, was such a complicated proceeding that few civil servants ever did get the sack. What was that story about the messenger who had stolen and sold all a department’s typewriters? Didn’t they just say, “Put that man in a department where there are no typewriters”?
How many letters of resignation he had mentally addressed to the Sentinel! Yet when, letters having passed between the Secretariat and himself, the moment came and he sat up in the Slumberking to write to the Sentinel, he used none of the phrases and sentences he had polished over the years. Instead, to his surprise, he found himself grateful to the paper for employing him for so long, for giving him a start in the city, equipping him for the Service.
He felt a fool when he received the editor’s reply. In five lines he was thanked for his letter, his services were acknowledged, regret was expressed, and he was wished luck in his new job. The letter was typed by a secretary, whose smart lowercase initials were in the bottom left corner.
Working out his notice, he let the Destees slide, and prepared zestfully for his new job. He borrowed books from the Central Library and from the department’s small collection. He began with books on sociology and immediately came to grief: he could not understand their charts or their language. He moved on to simpler paperbacked books about village reconstruction in India. These were more amusing: they gave pictures of village drains before and after, showed how chimneys could be built at no cost, how wells could be dug. They stimulated Mr. Biswas to such a degree that for a few days he wondered whether he oughtn’t to practise on the little community in his own house. A number of books laid a puzzling stress on the need for folk dances and folk singing during the carrying out of cooperative undertakings; some gave examples of songs. Mr. Biswas saw himself leading a singing village as they cooperatively mended roads, cooperatively put up superhuts, cooperatively dug wells; singing, they harvested one another’s fields. The picture didn’t convince: he knew Indian villagers too well. Govind, for instance, sang, and W. C. Tuttle liked music; but Mr. Biswas couldn’t see himself leading them and the singing readers and learners to re-concrete the floor under the house, to plaster the half-walls, to build another bathroom or lavatory. He doubted whether he could even get them to sing. He read of cottage industries: romantic words, suggesting neatly clad peasants with grave classical features sitting at spinning wheels in cooperatively built superhuts and turning out yards and yards of cloth before going on to the folk singing and dancing under the village tree in the evening, by the light of flambeaux. But he knew what the villages were by night, when the rumshop emptied. He saw himself instead in a large timbered hall, walking up and down between lines of disciplined peasants making baskets. From cottage industries he was diverted by juvenile delinquency, which he found more appealing than adult delinquency. He particularly liked the photographs of the hardened delinquents: stunted, smoking, supercilious, and very attractive. He saw himself winning their confidence and then their eternal devotion. He read books on psychology and learned some technical words for the behaviour of Chinta when she flogged Vidiadhar.
Miss Logie, who had at first encouraged his enthusiasm, now attempted to control it. He saw her often during the month, and their relationship grew even better. Whenever she introduced him to anyone she spoke of him as her colleague, a graciousness he had never before experienced; and from being relaxed with her he became debonair.
Then he had a fright.
Miss Logie said she would like to meet his family.
Readers! Learners! Govind! Chinta! The Slumberking bed and the destitute’s diningtable! And perhaps some widow might want to try again, and there would be a little tray of oranges or avocado pears outside the gate.
“Mumps,” he said.
It was partly true. The contagion had struck down Basdai’s readers and learners wholesale, had attacked a little Tuttle; but it had not yet got to Mr. Biswas’s children.
“They are all down with mumps, I fear.”
And when later Miss Logie asked after the children, Mr. Biswas had to say they had recovered, though they had in fact just succumbed.
Promptly at the end of the month the free delivery of the Sentinel stopped.
“Don’t you think a little holiday before you begin would be refreshing?” Miss Logie said.
“I was thinking of that.” The words came out easily; they were in keeping with his new manner. And he saw himself condemned to a pay-less week among the readers and learners. “Yes, a little holiday would be most refreshing.”
“Sans Souci would be very nice.”
Sans Souci was in the northeast of the island. Miss Logie, a newcomer, had been there; he had not.
“Yes,” he said. “Sans Souci would be nice. Or Mayaro,” he added, trying to take an independent line by mentioning a resort in the southeast.
“I am sure your family would enjoy it.”
“You know, I believe they would.” Family again! He waited. And it came. She still wanted to meet them.
Poise deserted him. What could he suggest? Bringing them to the Red House one by one?