Mr. Biswas grew very still, and listened to his own breathing. It sounded regular and unnatural. He opened his eyes and looked up at the thatched roof. He could make out the rafters and the loose straws that hung straight down, threatening to fall into his eyes.
Shama groaned and blew her nose loudly, once, twice, three times. Then she got out of the cast iron fourposter and it rattled. Suddenly silent and energetic, she went out of the room. The latrine was right at the back of her yard.
When she came back, minutes later, he acknowledged defeat. “What happen, man?” he asked. “You can’t sleep?”
“I been sleeping sound sound,” she said.
The next morning he said, “All right, send for the old queen and the big boss and Hari and the gods and everybody else and get the shop bless.”
Shama was determined to do things well. Three labourers worked for three days to put up a large tent in the yard. It was a simple affair, with bamboo uprights and a roof of coconut branches; but the bamboos had to be transported from a neighbouring village, and the labourers, after many aggrieved and unintelligible mutterings about the Workmen’s Compensation Act, had to be paid extra for climbing the coconut trees to get branches. Enormous quantities of food were bought; and, to assist in its preparation, sisters began arriving at The Chase three days before the house-blessing ceremony. With their arrival Mr. Biswas’s protests ceased. He consoled himself with the thought that not all of the Tulsis would come.
They all came, except Seth, Miss Blackie and the two gods.
“Owad and Shekhar learning,” Mrs. Tulsi said in English, meaning only that the gods were at school.
She wandered about the yard, opening doors, inspecting, no expression on her face.
Hari, the holy man, who was to be the pundit that day, was just as Mr. Biswas remembered him, just as soft-spoken and lymphatic. His felt hat sat softly on his head. He greeted Mr. Biswas without rancour, without pleasure, without interest. Then he went into the bedroom that was reserved for him and changed into his pundit’s garb, which he had brought in a small cardboard suitcase. When he emerged as a pundit everyone treated him with a new respect.
Children, most of whom Mr. Biswas could associate with no particular parent, swarmed everywhere, the girls in stiff satin dresses and with large rayon bows in long, dank hair, the boys in pantaloons and bright shirts. And there were babies: asleep in mothers’ arms, asleep on blankets and sacks under the tent, asleep in various corners of the shop; babies crying and being energetically walked in the yard; babies crawling, babies bawling, babies simply silent; babies performing every babylike function.
Govind nodded to Mr. Biswas, but didn’t speak, and went and sat in the tent, where he talked and laughed loudly with the brothers-in-law.
Chinta and Padma asked without warmth after Mr. Biswas’s health. Padma asked because it was her duty, as Seth’s representative; Chinta asked because Padma had done so. The two women were together for much of the time, and Mr. Biswas suspected that an equally close relationship existed between Govind and Seth.
It seemed, too, that Sushila, the childless widow, was enjoying one of her periods of authority. She had now joined Mrs. Tulsi and they both wandered about, peering and prodding and holding muted discussions in Hindi.
Mr. Biswas found himself a stranger in his own yard. But was it his own? Mrs. Tulsi and Sushila didn’t appear to think so. The villagers didn’t think so. They had always called the shop the Tulsi Shop, even after he had painted a sign and hung it above the door:
The Bonne Esperance Grocery
M. Biswas Prop
Goods at City Prices
With one bedroom reserved for Hari, the other for Mrs. Tulsi, and with the shop full of babies, Mr. Biswas could retreat nowhere. He stood before the shop, fondling his belly under his shirt and working out the quarrel he would have with Shama afterwards.
A scampering and a series of cries came from the shop.
Then Sushila’s voice was heard, raised in undoubted authority. “Get away from here. Go and play in the open. Can’t you see you are waking up the babies? Why do you big children like the dark so much?”
Every sister was perpetually on the alert for any sign, however slight or veiled, of sexual inclination among the children.
Mr. Biswas knew the disagreeable rumpus that would follow. He had no taste for it, and walked away from the shop to the boundary of the lot. Here, under a hedge, he came upon a group of children playing house.
“You are Mai,” a girl said to another girl. And to a boy, “You are Seth.”
Mr. Biswas withdrew. But the girl-whose litter did she belong to?-saw him and, raising her voice from the whisper with which games of house should be played, said with unmistakable malice, “And who will be Mohun? You, Bhoj. You have three-quarter white pants. And you are a great fighter.”
There was a round of childish laughter which filled Mr. Biswas’s mind with thoughts of murder, though even as he hurried away he felt some desire to see what Bhoj looked like.
For the last three days, since the arrival of her sisters, Shama had become a Tulsi and a stranger again. Now she was unapproachable. The ceremony in the tent was about to begin and she sat in front of Hari, listening to his instructions with bowed head. Her hair was still wet from her ritual bath and she was dressed in white from top to toe. She looked like someone waiting to be sacrificed and Mr. Biswas thought he could detect pleasure in the curve of her back. Her status, like Hari’s, was only temporary; but while the ceremony lasted, it was paramount.
Mr. Biswas didn’t want to witness the ceremony. It meant sitting with the brothers-in-law in the tent; and he was sure that the sight of Shama’s submissive and exultant back would eventually infuriate him. Also, it occurred to him that if he kept moving about he might prevent some of the Tulsi army from looting.
It was then that he thought of the shop.
He nearly ran there. It was dark, with the front doors closed, and he had to be careful. The shop smelled of babies, who were asleep everywhere: on the counter, flanked by pillows and boxes to keep them from rolling off; under the counter; on the floor planks behind the counter. Then, slowly in the darkness, a group of squatting children defined itself in one corner. They were silent and intent. With equal silence and intentness Mr. Biswas picked his way past the babies to the counter.
The little group was methodically breaking soda water bottles and extracting the crystal marbles from the necks. The bottles were wrapped in sacking to muffle the noise. There was a deposit of eight cents on every bottle. The sweet jars on the bottom shelf were disarrayed. The Paradise Plums had dwindled substantially. So had the Mintips, a mint sweet with the elasticity and lastingness of rubber. So had the salted prunes. Many tin-lids had not been screwed on properly. Mr. Biswas put out a hand to straighten a lid. It felt sticky. He dropped it. A baby bawled, the children in the corner became alert, and Mr. Biswas shouted, “Get out of here before I lay my hand on some of you.” And at the same time, with the dexterity of the practised shopkeeper, he lifted the flap of the counter and opened the little door, almost in one action, and was on the group in the corner.
He lifted a boy by the collar. The boy bawled, the girls with him bawled, the babies in the shop bawled.
From outside a woman asked, “What’s happening? What’s happening?”
Mr. Biswas dropped the boy he had seized, and the boy ran outside, screaming louder than the babies.
“Uncle Mohun beat me. Ma, Uncle Mohun beat me.”
Another woman, doubtless the mother, said, “But he wouldn’t touch you for nothing.” Her tone indicated that Mr. Biswas wouldn’t dare. “You must have been doing something.”