Before they left, Shekhar and Dorothy always called on Mr. Biswas. Mr. Biswas did not relish these calls. It wasn’t only that Shekhar’s party was campaigning against the Community Welfare Department. Shekhar had never forgotten that Mr. Biswas was a clown, and whenever they met he tried to provoke an act of clowning. He made a belittling remark, and Mr. Biswas was expected to extend this remark wittily and fancifully. To Mr. Biswas’s fury, Dorothy had also adopted this attitude; and from this relationship there was no escape, since anger and retaliation were counted parts of the game. Shekhar came into the front room and asked in his brusque, humourless manner, “Is the welfare officer still well-fed?” Then he hoisted himself on to the destitute’s diningtable and threatened Mr. Biswas with the destruction of the department and joblessness. For a time Mr. Biswas responded in his old way. He told stories about civil servants, spoke of the trouble he had making up his expense sheets, the work he had looking for work. But soon he made his annoyance plain. “You take these things too personally,” Shekhar said, still playing the game. “Our differences are only political. You’ve got to be a little more sophisticated, man.”
“Be a little more sophisticated,” Mr. Biswas said, when Shekhar left. “On a hungry belly? The old scorpion. Wouldn’t care a damn if I lose my job tomorrow.”
For some time there had been rumours. And now at last the news was given out: Owad, Mrs. Tulsi’s younger son, was returning from England. Everyone was excited. Sisters came up from Shorthills in their best clothes to talk over the news. Owad was the adventurer of the family. Absence had turned him into a legend, and his glory was undiminished by the numbers of students who were leaving the colony every week to study medicine in England, America, Canada and India. His exact attainments were not known, but were felt by all to be extraordinary and almost beyond comprehension. He was a doctor, a professional man, with letters after his name! And he belonged to them! They could no longer claim Shekhar. But every sister had a story which proved how close she had been to Owad, what regard he had had for her.
Mr. Biswas felt as proprietary as the sisters towards Owad and shared their excitement. But he was uneasy. Once, many years before, he had felt that he had to leave Hanuman House before Owad and Mrs. Tulsi returned to it. Now he experienced the same unease: the same sense of threat, the same need to leave before it was too late. Over and over he checked the money he had saved, the money he was going to save. His additions appeared on cigarette packets, in the margins of newspapers, on the backs of buff government folders. The sum never varied: he had six hundred and twenty dollars; by the end of the year he would have seven hundred. It was a staggering sum, more than he had ever possessed all at once. But it couldn’t attract a loan to buy any house other than one of those wooden tenements that awaited condemnation. At two thousand dollars or so they were bargains, but only for speculators who could take the tenants to court, rebuild, or wait for the site to rise in value. Now, his anxiety growing with the excitement about him, Mr. Biswas scanned agents’ lists every morning and drove about the city looking for places to rent. When for one whole week the City Council bought pages and pages in the newspapers to serialize the list of houses it was putting up for auction because their rates had not been paid, Mr. Biswas turned up at the Town Hall with all the city’s estate agents; but he lacked the confidence to bid.
He could not avoid Mrs. Tulsi when he returned to the house. She sat in the verandah, feeding her eyes on the green, patting her lips with her veil.
And though he had nerved himself for the blow, he grew frantic when it came.
It was Shama who brought the message.
“The old bitch can’t throw me out like that,” Mr. Biswas said. “I still have some rights. She has got to provide me with alternative accommodation.” And: “Die, you bitch!” he hissed towards the verandah. “Die!”
“Man!”
“Die! Sending poor little Myna to pick her lice. That did you any good? Eh? Think she would throw out the little god like that? O no. The god must have a room to himself. You and me and my children can sleep in sugarsacks. The Tulsi sleeping-bag. Patents applied for. Die, you old bitch!”
They heard Mrs. Tulsi mumbling placidly to Sushila.
“I have my rights,” Mr. Biswas said. “This is not like the old days. You can’t just stick a piece of paper on my door and throw me out. Alternative accommodation, if you please.”
But Mrs. Tulsi had provided alternative accommodation: a room in one of the tenements whose rents Shama had collected years before. The wooden walls were unpainted, grey-black, rotting; at every step on the patched, shaky floor wood dust excavated by woodlice showered down; there was no ceiling and the naked galvanized roof was fluffy with soot; there was no electricity. Where would the furniture go? Where would they sleep, cook, wash? Where would the children study?
He vowed never to talk to Mrs. Tulsi again; and she, as though sensing his resolve, did not speak to him. Morning after morning he went from house to house, looking for rooms to rent, until he was exhausted, and exhaustion burned out his anger. Then in the afternoons he drove to his area, where he stayed until evening.
Returning late one night to the house, which seemed to him more and more ordered and sheltering, he saw Mrs. Tulsi sitting in the verandah in the dark. She was humming a hymn, softly, as though she were alone, removed from the world. He did not greet her, and was passing into his room when she spoke.
“Mohun?” Her voice was groping, amiable.
He stopped.
“Mohun?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“How is Anand? I haven’t heard his cough these last few days.”
“He’s all right.”
“Children, children. Trouble, trouble. But do you remember how Owad used to work? Eating and reading. Helping in the store and reading. Checking money and reading. Helping head and head with everybody else, and still reading. You remember Hanuman House, Mohun?”
He recognized her mood, and did not wish to be seduced by it. “It was a big house. Bigger than the place we are going to.”
She was unruffled. “Did they show you Owad’s letter?”
Those of Owad’s letters which went the rounds were mainly about English flowers and the English weather. They were semi-literary, and were in a large handwriting with big spaces between the words and big gaps between the lines. “The February fogs have at last gone,” Owad used to write, “depositing a thick coating of black on every window-sill. The snowdrops have come and gone, but the daffodils will be here soon. I planted six daffodils in my tiny front garden. Five have grown. The sixth appears to be a failure. My only hope is that they will not turn out to be blind, as they were last year.”
“He never took much interest in flowers when he was a boy,” Mrs. Tulsi said.
“I suppose he was too busy reading.”
“He always liked you, Mohun. I suppose that was because you were a big reader yourself. I don’t know. Perhaps I should have married all my daughters to big readers. Owad always said that. But Seth, you know-” She stopped; it was the first time he had heard her speak the name for years. “The old ways have become oldfashioned so quickly, Mohun. I hear that you are looking for a house.”