Once, years before, he was conducting one of Ajodha’s motorbuses that ran its erratic course to remote and unsuspected villages. It was late afternoon and they were racing back along the ill-made country road. Their lights were weak and they were racing the sun. The sun fell; and in the short dusk they passed a lonely hut set in a clearing far back from the road. Smoke came from under the ragged thatched eaves: the evening meal was being prepared. And, in the gloom, a boy was leaning against the hut, his hands behind him, staring at the road. He wore a vest and nothing more. The vest glowed white. In an instant the bus went by, noisy in the dark, through bush and level sugarcane fields. Mr. Biswas could not remember where the hut stood, but the picture remained: a boy leaning against an earth house that had no reason for being there, under the dark falling sky, a boy who didn’t know where the road, and that bus, went.
And often, among the pundits and the cushions and the statuary in the drawingroom, eating the enormous meals the Tulsis provided on these occasions, he was assailed by this sense of utter desolation. Then, without conviction, he counted his blessings and ordered himself to enjoy the moment, like the others.
And while he made greater efforts to please at Hanuman House, with Shama, at The Chase, he became increasingly irritable. After every visit he abused the Tulsis to her, and his invective was without fantasy or humour.
“Talk about hypocrisy,” Shama said. “Why you don’t tell them so to their face?”
He began to think that she was plotting to get him back to Hanuman House, and he wondered whether she hadn’t encouraged him to believe that The Chase was temporary. She had never urged him to make improvements, and was always interested when something was done at Hanuman House, when the famous clay-brick factory was pulled down or when awnings were put up over the windows. More and more The Chase was a place where Shama only spent time; she had always called Hanuman House home. And it was her home, and Savi’s, and Anand’s, as it could never be his. As he realized every Christmas.
The Tulsis celebrated Christmas in their store and, with equal irreligiosity, in their home. It was a purely Tulsi festival. All the sons-in-law, and even Seth, were expelled from Hanuman House and returned to their own families. Even Miss Blackie went to her own people.
For Mr. Biswas Christmas was a day of tedious depression. He went to Pagotes to see his mother and Tara and Ajodha, none of whom recognized Christmas. His mother cried so much and with so much feeling he was never sure whether she was glad to see him. Every Christmas she said the same things. He sounded like his father; if she closed her eyes while he spoke she could imagine that his father was alive again. She had little to say about herself. She was happy where she was and did not want to be a burden to any of her sons; her life was over, she had nothing more to do, and was waiting for death. To feel sympathy for her he had to look, not at her face, but at the thinness of her hair. It was still black, however: which was a pity, for grey hair would have helped to put him in a more tender mood. Suddenly she got up and said she was going to make him tea; she was poor, that was all she could offer. She went out to the gallery and he heard her talking to someone. Her voice was quite different; it was firm, without a whine, the voice of a woman still energetic and capable. She brought tea that was lukewarm, with too little tea, too much milk and a taste of woodsmoke. She told him he needn’t drink it. Dutifully he put his arm around her. The gesture caused him pain, making him feel his own worthlessness. She didn’t respond, and wept and talked as before. She said she was going to give him tomatoes and cabbages and lettuces to take home. When she went out her voice and manner changed again. He gave her a dollar, which he could scarcely afford. She took it without showing surprise and without a word of thanks. He was always glad when he could leave the back trace to go to Tara’s.
At last Shama said she could stand The Chase no more. She wanted them to give up the shop and return to Hanuman House. This re-opened all their old quarrels. Only, now everything Shama said was true and cutting.
“We are not doing anything here,” she said.
“All right, Mrs. Samuel Smiles. Look, I standing up in this shop, behind this dirty old counter. Tell me exactly what it have for me to do. You tell me.”
“You know it isn’t that I mean.”
“You want me to make the spinning-jenny and the flying shuttle? Invent the steam-engine?”
And these arguments ended in insults and were followed by days of silence.
They spent their last two years at The Chase in this state of mutual hostility; at peace only in Hanuman House.
She became pregnant for the third time.
“Another one for the monkey house,” he said, passing his hands over her belly.
“You had nothing to do with it.”
And though he had spoken humorously, this led to another serious quarrel, which went over the same limited ground until, unable to control his rage, he hit her.
They were both astonished. She was silenced in the middle of a sentence; for some time afterwards the unfinished sentence remained in his mind, as though it had just been spoken. She was stronger than he. Her silence and her refusal to retaliate made his humiliation complete. She dressed Anand and went to Arwacas.
It was the kite-flying season and in the afternoons, when the wind came from the hills to the north, for miles around multi-coloured kites with long tails plunged and wriggled like tadpoles in the clear sky above the plain. He had been thinking that in two or three years he and Anand would fly kites together.
He decided that this time Shama would have to make the first move. So for many months he didn’t go to Hanuman House, not even to see Savi. When, however, he judged that the baby was born, he broke his resolution and closed the shop-what was it that made him know, as he put the bar into place, that he was closing the doors for the last time?-and wheeled out the Royal Enfield from the bedroom and cycled to Arwacas, a small man made conspicuous by the exaggeratedly upright way he sat on the low saddle (to tauten his stomach and relieve his indigestion pains), with his palms pressing hard on the handgrips and the inside of his wrists turned outwards. He cycled slowly and steadily, his feet flat on the pedals. From time to time he inclined his head, arched his back and gave a series of small belches. This gave him some relief.
He reached Arwacas when it was dark, suffering an additional anxiety because he rode without bicycle lights, an offence zealously pursued by idle policemen. There were no street lamps, only the yellow smoky flames of flambeaux on night stalls and the dim lights of houses coming through curtained doorways and windows. In the arcade of Hanuman House, grey and substantial in the dark, there was already the evening assembly of old men, squatting on sacks on the ground and on tables now empty of Tulsi Store goods, pulling at clay cheelums that glowed red and smelled of ganja and burnt sacking. Though it wasn’t cold, many had scarves over their heads and around their necks; this detail made them look foreign and, to Mr. Biswas, romantic. It was the time of day for which they lived. They could not speak English and were not interested in the land where they lived; it was a place where they had come for a short time and stayed longer than they expected. They continually talked of going back to India, but when the opportunity came, many refused, afraid of the unknown, afraid to leave the familiar temporariness. And every evening they came to the arcade of the solid, friendly house, smoked, told stories, and continued to talk of India.