Mr. Biswas glanced at Shekhar. He and Dorothy were staring resolutely at the approaching ship.
Seth was uncomfortable. He fidgeted. He took out his long cigarette holder from his breast pocket and, concentrating, fixed a cigarette into it. With that suit, and with such uncertain gestures, the cigarette holder was an absurd affectation, and appeared so to the children who could not remember him. As soon as he had lighted the cigarette a khaki-uniformed official pounced and pointed to the large white notices in English and French on the customs sheds. Seth ejected the cigarette and crushed it with the sole of an unshining brown shoe. He replaced the holder in his breast pocket and clasped his hands behind his back.
Soon, too soon for some of the children, the ship was alongside. The tugs hooted, retrieved their ropes. Ropes were flung from ship to wharf, which now, in the shadow of the white hull, was sheltered and almost roomlike.
Then they saw him. He was wearing a suit they had never known, and he had a Robert Taylor moustache. His jacket was open, his hands in his trouser pockets. His shoulders had broadened and he had grown altogether bigger. His face was fuller, almost fat, with enormous round cheeks; if he wasn’t tall he would have looked gross.
“Is the cold in England,” someone said, explaining the cheeks.
Mrs. Tulsi, Miss Blackie, the sisters, Shekhar, Dorothy and every granddaughter who had borne a child began to cry silently.
A young white woman joined Owad behind the rails. They laughed and talked.
“Arй bap!” one of Mrs. Tulsi’s woman friends cried out through her tears.
But it was only a passing alarm.
The gangway was laid down. The children went to the edge of the quay and examined the mooring ropes and tried to look through the lighted portholes. Someone started a discussion about anchors.
And then he was down. His eyes were wet.
Mrs. Tulsi, sitting on her chair, all her effervescence gone, lifted her face to him as he stooped to kiss her. Then she held him round the legs. Sushila, in tears, opened her bag and held a bright blue bottle of smelling-salts at the ready. Miss Blackie wept with Mrs. Tulsi, and every time Mrs. Tulsi sniffed, Miss Blackie said, “Hm-mm. Hm. Mm.” Children, ungreeted, stared. The brothers shook hands, like men, and smiled at one another. Then it was the turn of the sisters. They were kissed; they burst into new tears and feverishly attempted to introduce those of their children who had been born in the intervening years. Owad, kissing, crying, went through them quickly. Then it was the turn of the eight surviving husbands. Govind, who had known Owad well, was not there, but W. C. Tuttle, who had scarcely known him, was. Long brahminical hairs sprouted out of his ears, and he drew further attention to himself by closing his eyes, neatly shaking away tears, putting a hand on Owad’s head and speaking a Hindi benediction. As his turn came nearer Mr. Biswas felt himself weakening, and when he offered his hand he was ready to weep. But Owad, though taking the hand, suddenly grew distant.
Seth was advancing towards Owad. He was smiling, tears in his eyes, raising his hands as he approached.
In that moment it was clear that despite his age, despite Shekhar, Owad was the new head of the family. Everyone looked at him. If he gave the sign, there was to be a reconciliation.
“Son, son,” Seth said in Hindi.
The sound of his voice, which they had not heard for years, thrilled them all.
Owad still held Mr. Biswas’s hand.
Mr. Biswas noted Seth’s cheap, flapping brown jacket, the stained cigarette holder. Seth held out his hands and nearly touched Owad.
Owad turned and said in English, “I think I’d better go and see about the baggage.” He released Mr. Biswas’s hand and walked briskly away, his jacket swinging.
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.