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, passing 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.’ “