They, Mr. Biswas thought, who are they?
Then Seth stamped into the hall with his muddy bluchers and the children applied themselves with zeal to the sulphur powder.
“Mohun,” Seth said. “See your daughter? You surprise me, man.”
The contortionist giggled. Mrs. Tulsi smiled.
You traitor, Mr. Biswas thought, you old she-fox traitor.
“Well, you are a big man now, Mohun,” Seth said. “Husband and father. Don’t start behaving like a little boy again. The shop gone bust yet?”
“Give it a little time,” Mr. Biswas said, standing up. “After all, is only about four months since Hari bless it.”
The contortionist laughed; for the first time Mr. Biswas felt charitably towards this girl. Encouraged, he added, “You think we could get him to un-bless it?”
There was more laughter.
Seth shouted for his wife and food.
At the mention of food the children looked up longingly.
“No food for none of all-you today,” Seth said. “This will teach you to play in dirt and give yourself eggzema.”
Mrs. Tulsi was at Mr. Biswas’s side. She was solemn again. “It comes bit by bit.” She was whispering now, for sisters were coming out of the kitchen with brass plates and dishes. “You never thought, I expect, that your own first child would be born in a place like this.”
He shook his head.
“Remember, they can’t kill you.”
That “they” again.
“Oh,” Mr. Biswas said. “So it have three in the family now.”
She was warned by his tone.
“Send me a barrel,” he said loudly. “A small coal barrel.”
He came out through the side gate and wheeled his cycle past the arcade, which was already filling up with the evening crowd of old India-born men who came there to smoke and talk. He cycled to Misir’s rickety little wooden house and called at the lighted window.
Misir pushed his head past the lace curtain and said, “Just the man I want to see. Come in.”
Misir said he had packed his wife and children off to his mother-in-law. Mr. Biswas guessed the reason to be a quarrel or a pregnancy.
“Been working like hell without them, too,” Misir said. “Writing stories.”
“For the Sentinel?”
“Short stories,” Misir said with his old impatience. “Just sit down and listen.”
Misir’s first story was about a man who had been out of work for months and was starving. His five children were starving; his wife was having another baby. It was December and the shops were full of food and toys. On Christmas eve the man got a job. Going home that evening, he was knocked down and killed by a motorcar that didn’t stop.
“Helluva thing,” Mr. Biswas said. “I like the part about the car not stopping.”
Misir smiled, and said fiercely, “But life is like that. Is not a fairy-story. No once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-rajah nonsense. Listen to this one.”
Misir’s second story was about a man who had been out of work for months and was starving. To keep his large family he began selling his possessions, and finally he had nothing left but a two-shilling sweepstake ticket. He didn’t want to sell it, but one of his children fell dangerously ill and needed medicine. He sold the ticket for a shilling and bought medicine. The child died; the ticket he had sold won the sweepstake.
“Helluva thing,” Mr. Biswas said. “What happen?”
“To the man? Why you asking me? Use your imagination.”
“Hell, hell, helluva thing.”
“People should know about these things,” Misir said. “Know about life. You should start writing some stories yourself
“I just don’t have the time, boy. Have a little property in The Chase now.” Mr. Biswas paused, but Misir didn’t react. “Married man, too, you know. Responsibilities.” He paused again. “Daughter.”
“God!” Misir exclaimed in disgust. “God!”
“Just born.”
Misir shook his head, sympathizing. “Cat in bag, cat in bag. That is all we get from this cat-in-bag business.”
Mr. Biswas changed the subject. “What about the Aryans?”
“Why you asking? You don’t really care. Nobody don’t care. Just tell them a few fairy-stories and they happy. They don’t want to face facts. And this Shivlochan is a damn fool. You know they send Pankaj Rai back to India? Sometimes I stop and wonder what happening to him over there. I suppose the poor man in rags, starving in some gutter, can’t get a job or anything. You know, you could make a good story out of Pankaj.”
“Just what I was going to say. The man was a purist.”
“A born purist.”
“Misir, you still working for the Sentinel?”
“Blasted cent a line still. Why?”
“A damn funny thing happen today. You know what I see? A pig with two heads.”
“Where?”
“Right here, Hanuman House. From their estate.”
“But Hindus like the Tulsis wouldn’t keep pigs.”
“You would be surprised. Of course it was dead.”
For all his reforming instincts, Misir was clearly disappointed and upset. “Anything for the money these days. Still, is a story. Going to telephone it in straight away.”
And when he left Misir, Mr. Biswas said, “Occupation labourer. This will show them.”
It would be three weeks before Shama returned to The Chase. He put up a hammock for the baby in the gallery and waited. The shop and the back rooms became increasingly disordered, and felt cold, like an abandoned camp. Yet as soon as Shama came with Lakshmi-“Her name is Savi,” Shama insisted, and Savi it remained-those rooms again became the place where he not only lived, but had status without having to assert his rights or explain his worth.
He immediately began complaining of the very things that pleased him most. Savi cried, and he spoke as though she were one of Shama’s indulgences. Meals were late, and he exhibited an annoyance which concealed the joy he felt that there was someone to cook meals with him in mind. To these outbursts Shama didn’t reply, as she would have done before. She was morose herself, as though she preferred this bond to the bond of sentimentality.
He liked to watch when the baby was bathed. Shama did this expertly; she might have been bathing babies for years. Her left arm and hand supported the baby’s back and wobbly head; her right hand soaped and washed; finally there was the swift, gentle gesture which transferred the baby from basin to towel. He marvelled that someone who had come out of Hanuman House with hands torn by housework could express so much gentleness through those same hands. Afterwards Savi was rubbed with coconut oil and her limbs exercised, to certain cheerful rhymes. The same things had been done to Mr. Biswas and Shama when they were babies; the same rhymes had been said; and possibly the ritual had been evolved a thousand years before.
The anointing was repeated in the evening, when the sun had dropped and the surrounding bush had begun to sing. And it was at this time, some six months later, that Moti came to the shop and rapped hard on the counter.
Moti did not belong to the village. He was a small worried-looking man with grey hair and bad teeth. He was dressed in a dingy clerkish way. His dirty shirt sat neatly on him and the creases on his trousers could just be seen. In his shirt pocket he carried a fountain pen, a stunted pencil and pieces of soiled paper, the equipment and badge of the rural literate.
He asked nervously for a pennyworth of lard.
Mr. Biswas’s Hindu instincts didn’t permit him to stock lard. “But we have butter,” he said, thinking of the tall smelly tin full of red, runny, rancid butter.
Moti shook his head and took off his bicycle clips. “Just give me a cent Paradise Plums.”