The rule of the house was followed again. The children were sworn to secrecy. Mr. Biswas brought home glossy booklets which had the aromatic smell of rich art paper and seemed to hold the smell of the new car. Secretly he took driving lessons and obtained a driving licence. Then, on a perfectly ordinary Saturday morning, he drove to the house in a brand-new Prefect, parked it casually before the gate, not quite parallel to the pavement, and walked up the front steps, ignoring the excitement that had broken out.
“Vidiadhar! Come back here this minute, if you don’t want me to break your hand and your foot.”
When Govind arrived at lunchtime he found his parking space occupied. His Chevrolet was larger, but old and unwashed; the mudguards had been dented, cut, welded; one door had been ducoed in a lustreless colour that did not exactly match; there was the H-for hire-on the number plate; and the windscreen was made ugly by various stickers and a circular plaque which carried Govind’s photograph and taxi-driver’s permit.
“Matchbox,” Govind muttered. “Who leave this matchbox here?”
He did not impress the orphans, and he did not diminish the energy of Mr. Biswas’s children who, ever since the car had been so carelessly parked by Mr. Biswas, had been wiping away dust and saying crossly how a new car collected dust. They found dust everywhere: on the body, the springs, the underside of the mudguards. They wiped and polished and discovered, with distress, that they were leaving scratches on the paintwork, very slight, but visible from certain angles. Myna reported this to Mr. Biswas.
He was lying on the Slumberking, surrounded by many glossy booklets. He asked, “You hear anything? What they saying, eh?”
“Govind say it is a matchbox.”
“Matchbox, eh. English car, you know. Would last for years and still be running when his Chevrolet is on the rubbish dump.”
He returned to studying an intricate drawing in red and black which explained the wiring of the car. He could not fully understand it, but it was his habit whenever he bought anything new, whether a pair of shoes or a bottle of patent medicine, to read all the literature provided.
Kamla came into the room and said that the orphans had been fingering the car and blurring the shine.
Mr. Biswas knelt on the bed and advanced on his knees to the front window. He lifted the curtain and, pushing a vested chest outside, shouted, “You! Boy! Leave the car alone! You think is a taxi?”
The orphans scattered.
“I coming to break the hands of some of you,” Basdai, the guardian widow, called. News of her advance and her pause to break a whip from the neem tree at the side of the yard was relayed by hoots and shouts and giggles. Some orphans, disdaining to run, were flogged on the pavement. There was crying, and Basdai said, “Well, some people satisfy now.”
Shama stayed under the house and did not go out to see the car. And when Suniti, the former contortionist, now baby-swollen, who often stopped at the house on her way to and from Shortfalls after quarrels and reconciliations with her husband, and attempted to shock by talk of getting a divorce, and wore ugly and unsuitable frocks as a mark of her modernity, when Suniti came to Shama and said, “So, Aunt, you come a big-shot now. Car and thing, man!” Shama said, “Yes, my child,” as though the car was another of Mr. Biswas’s humiliating excesses. But she had begun to prepare another hamper.
There was no need for Mr. Biswas to ask where they wanted to go. They all wanted to go to Balandra, to repeat the experience of delight: the drive in the private car, the hampers, the beach.
They went to Balandra, but it was a different experience. They did not attend to the landscape. They savoured the smell of new leather, the sweet smell of a new car. They listened to the soft, steady beat of the engine and compared it with the grinding and pounding of the vehicles they met. And they listened acutely for wrong noises. The grilled cover of an ashtray on one door did not sit properly and tinkled distractingly; they attempted to stop it with a matchstick. The ignition key had already been provided by Mr. Biswas with a chain. The chain struck the dashboard. That distracted them too. At one moment it looked as though it might rain; a few drops flecked the windshield. Anand promptly put the wiper on. “You’ll scratch the glass!” Mr. Biswas cried. They worried about putting their shoes on the floormats. They consulted the dashboard clock constantly, comparing it with those they saw on the road. They marvelled at the working of the speedometer.
“Man was telling me,” Mr. Biswas said, “that these Prefect clocks go wrong in no time.”
And they decided to call in on Ajodha.
They parked the car in the road and walked around the house to the back verandah. Tara was in the kitchen. Ajodha was reading the Sunday Guardian. Mr. Biswas said they were going to the beach and had just dropped in for a minute. There was a pause, and each of them wondered whether they should tell.
Ajodha commented on the sickliness of them all, pinched Anand’s arms and laughed when the boy winced. Then, as though to cure them at once, he made them drink glasses of fresh milk and had the servant girl peel some oranges from the bag in the corner of the verandah.
Jagdat came in, his funeral clothes relieved by his broad, bright tie, his unbuttoned cuffs folded back above hairy wrists. He asked jocularly, “Is your car outside, Mohun?”
The children studied their glasses of milk.
Mr. Biswas said gently, “Yes, man.”
Jagdat roared as at a good joke. “The old Mohun, man!”
“Car?” Ajodha said, puzzled, petulant. “Mohun?”
“A little Prefect,” Mr. Biswas said.
“Some of those pre-war English cars can be very good,” Ajodha said.
“This is a new one,” Mr. Biswas said. “Got it yesterday.”
“Cardboard.” Ajodha bunched his fingers. “It will mash like cardboard.”
“A drive, man, Mohun!” Jagdat said.
The children, Shama, were alarmed. They looked at Mr. Biswas, Jagdat smiling, slapping his hands together.
Mr. Biswas was aware of their alarm.
“You are right, Mohun,” Ajodha said. “He will lick it up.”
“It isn’t that,” Mr. Biswas said. “Seaside.” He looked at his Cyma watch. Then, noticing that Jagdat had stopped smiling, he added, “Running in, you know.”
“I run in more cars than you,” Jagdat said angrily. “Bigger and better.”
“He will lick it up,” Ajodha repeated.
“It isn’t that,” Mr. Biswas said again.
“Hear him,” Jagdat said. “But don’t give me that, eh, man. Listen. I was driving motorcars before you even learn to drive a donkey-cart. Look at me. You think I pining to drive in your sardine can? You think that?”
Mr. Biswas looked embarrassed.
The children didn’t mind. The car was safe.
“Mohun! You think that?”
At Jagdat’s scream the children jumped.
“Jagdat,” Tara said.
He strode out of the verandah into the yard, cursing.
“I know what it is, Mohun,” Ajodha said. “The first time you get a car is always the same.” He waved at his yard, the graveyard of many vehicles.
He went out with them to the road. When he saw the Prefect he hooted.
“Six horse power?” he said. “Eight?”
“Ten,” Anand said, pointing to the red disc below the bonnet.
“Yes, ten.” He turned to Shama. “Well, niece, where are you going in your new car?”
“Balandra.”
“I hope the wind doesn’t blow too hard.”