Shama’s sobs mingled with the squelch of bay rum in Mrs. Tulsi’s hair.
“You got any debts?”
“Well, a lot of people owing me but they won’t pay.”
“Not after what happen with Mungroo. I suppose you was the only man in Trinidad who didn’t know about Seebaran and Mahmoud.”
Shama was crying openly.
Abruptly Seth lost interest in Mr. Biswas. He said, “Tcha!” and looked at his bluchers.
“You mustn’t mind,” Mrs. Tulsi said. “I know you haven’t got a soft heart. But you mustn’t mind.”
Seth sighed. “So what we going to do with the shop?”
Mr. Biswas shrugged.
“Insure-and-burn?” Seth said, making it one word: insuranburn.
Mr. Biswas felt that talk like this belonged to the realms of high finance.
Seth crossed his big arms high over his chest. “Is the only thing for you to do now.”
“Insuranburn,” Mr. Biswas said. “How much I going to make out of that?”
“More than you would make if you don’t insuranburn. The shop is Mai own. The goods is yours. For the goods you ought to get about seventy-five, a hundred dollars.”
It was a large sum. Mr. Biswas smiled.
But Seth only said, “And after that, what?”
Mr. Biswas tried to look thoughtful.
“You still too proud to get your hands dirty in the fields?” And Seth displayed his own hands.
“Soft heart,” Mrs. Tulsi muttered.
“I want a driver at Green Vale,” Seth said.
Shama gave a loud sob and, suddenly leaving Mrs. Tulsi’s head, rushed to Mr. Biswas and said, “Take it, man. Take it, I beg you.” She was making it easy for him to accept. “He will take it,” she cried to Seth. “He will take it.”
Seth looked irritable and turned away.
Mrs. Tulsi groaned.
Shama, still crying, went back to the bed and pressed her fingers into Mrs. Tulsi’s hair.
Mrs. Tulsi said, “Aah.”
“I don’t know anything about estate work,” Mr. Biswas said, trying to salvage some of his dignity.
“Nobody begging you,” Seth said.
“You mustn’t mind,” Mrs. Tulsi said. “You know what Owad always tells me. He always blames me for the way I married off my daughters. And I suppose he is right. But then Owad is going to college, reading and learning all the time. And I am very oldfashioned.” She spoke with pride in Owad and pride in her oldfashionedness.
Seth stood up. His bluchers scraped on the floor, the bed made noises, and Mrs. Tulsi was slightly disturbed. But Seth’s irritability had disappeared. He took out the ivory cigarette holder which had been pushing up through the buttoned flap of the pocket on his khaki shirt, put it in his mouth and blew whistlingly through it. “Owad. You remember him, Mohun?” He laughed, opening his mouth on either side of the holder. “The old hen son.”
“What is past is past,” Mrs. Tulsi said. “When people are boys they behave like boys. When they are men they behave like men.”
Shama squeezed vigorously at Mrs. Tulsi’s head and succeeded in reducing Mrs. Tulsi’s speech to a series of “Aah. Aah.” She washed bay rum into Mrs. Tulsi’s hair and face and held her palm over Mrs. Tulsi’s nose and mouth.
“This insuranburning,” Mr. Biswas said, and his tone was light, “who going to see about it? Me?” He was putting himself back into the role of the licensed buffoon.
Shama was the first to laugh. Seth followed. A croak came from Mrs. Tulsi and Shama took away her hand from Mrs. Tulsi’s mouth to allow her to laugh.
Mrs. Tulsi began to splutter. “He want,” she said in English, choking with laughter, “to jump-from-the fryingpan-into-into-”
They all roared.
“-into-the fire!”
The witty mood spread.
“No more paddling,” Seth said.
“We insuranburning right away?” Mr. Biswas asked, pitching his voice high and speaking quickly.
“You got to get your furniture out first,” Seth said.
“My bureau!” Shama exclaimed, and put her hand to her own mouth, as though astonished that, when she had left Mr. Biswas, she had forgotten to take that piece of furniture with her.
“You know,” Seth said, “the best thing would be for you to do the insuranburning.”
“No, Uncle,” Shama said. “Don’t start putting ideas in his head.”
“Don’t worry with the child,” Mr. Biswas said. “You just tell me.”
Seth sat on the bed again. “Well, look,” he said, and his voice was amused and avuncular. “You had this trouble with Mungroo. You go to the police station and lay your life on Mungroo head.”
“Lay my what on Mungroo head?”
“Tell them about the row. Tell them that Mungroo threatening to kill you. And the moment anything happen to you, the first person they would pick up would be Mungroo.”
“You mean the first person they would pick up would be me. But let me get this straight. When I dead, like a cockroach, lying on my back with my four foot throw up straight and stiff and high in the air, you want me to walk to the police station and say, ‘I did tell all-you so.’ “
Mrs. Tulsi, still chuckling over her own joke, the first she had managed in English, made Mr. Biswas’s an excuse to burst out laughing again.
“Well, you lay your life on Mungroo head,” Seth said. “You go back to The Chase and stay quiet. You let one week pass, two weeks, even three. Then you make your little preparations. You let Shama collect her bureau. On Thursday, half-day, you drop pitch-oil all over the shop-not where you sleeping-and in the night-time you set a match to it. You give it a little time-not too much-and then you run outside and start bawling for Mungroo.”
“You mean,” Mr. Biswas said, “that this is why all those motorcars burning up every day in this place? And all those houses?”
5. Green Vale
Whenever afterwards Mr. Biswas thought of Green Vale he thought of the trees. They were tall and straight, and so hung with long, drooping leaves that their trunks were hidden and appeared to be branchless. Half the leaves were dead; the others, at the top, were a dead green. It was as if all the trees had, at the same moment, been blighted in luxuriance, and death was spreading at the same pace from all the roots. But death was forever held in check. The tonguelike leaves of dead green turned slowly to the brightest yellow, became brown and thin as if scorched, curled downwards over the other dead leaves and did not fall. And new leaves came, as sharp as daggers; but there was no freshness to them; they came into the world old, without a shine, and only grew longer before they too died.
It was hard to imagine that beyond the trees on every side lay the clear plain. Green Vale was damp and shadowed and close. The trees darkened the road and their rotting leaves choked the grass gutters. The trees surrounded the barracks.
As soon as he saw the barracks Mr. Biswas decided that the time had come for him to build his own house, by whatever means. The barracks gave one room to one family, and sheltered twelve families in one long room divided into twelve. This long room was built of wood and stood on low concrete pillars. The whitewash on the walls had turned to dust, leaving stains like those left on stones by bleaching clothes; and these stains were mildewed and sweated and freckled with grey and green and black. The corrugated iron roof projected on one side to make a long gallery, divided by rough partitions into twelve kitchen spaces, so open that when it rained hard twelve cooks had to take twelve coal-pots to twelve rooms. The ten middle rooms each had a front door and a back window. The rooms at the end had a front door, a back window, and a side window. Mr. Biswas, as a driver, was given an end room. The back window had been nailed shut by the previous tenant and plastered over with newspaper. Its position could only be guessed at, since newspaper covered the walls from top to bottom. This had obviously been the work of a literate. No sheet was placed upside down, and Mr. Biswas found himself continuously exposed to the journalism of his time, its bounce and excitement bottled and made quaint in these old newspapers.