After breakfast-tea and biscuits from the drum-the children waited for lunch. More whistles were silenced; more balloons burst. The girls seized the scraps of the boys’ burst balloons and blew them up into many-coloured bunches of grapes which they rubbed against their cheeks to make a noise like heavy furniture dragging on an unpolished floor. Lunch was good. And after lunch they waited for tea: Sumati’s cakes, a local and fraudulent cherry brandy doled out by Chinta, and icecream, made by Chinta again, who, against annual evidence, was supposed to have an especial gift for making icecream. And that was that. Dinner was as bad as usual. Christmas was over. And, like all other Christmases at Hanuman House, it had turned out to be only a series of anticipations.
At the barracks there were no apples, no stockings, no baking of cakes, no churning of icecream, no refinements to be waited for. It was from the start a day of abandoned eating and drinking and was to end, not with the beating of children, but with the beating of wives. Mr. Biswas went to see his mother and had dinner at Tara’s. On Boxing-day he visited his brothers; they had married nondescript women from nondescript families and spent Christmas with their wives.
The following day Mr. Biswas cycled from Green Vale to Arwacas. When he turned into the High Street the sight of the stores, open again and carelessly displaying Christmas goods at bargain prices, reminded him of the presents he had forgotten. He got off his bicycle and leaned it against the kerb. Before he had taken off his bicycle clips he was accosted by a heavy-lidded shopman who repeatedly sucked his teeth. The shopman offered Mr. Biswas a cigarette and lit it for him. Words were exchanged. Then, with the shopman’s arm around his shoulders, Mr. Biswas disappeared into the shop. Not many minutes later Mr. Biswas and the shopman reappeared. They were both smoking and excited. A boy came out of the shop partly hidden by the large doll’s house he was carrying. The doll’s house was placed on the handlebar of Mr. Biswas’s cycle and, with Mr. Biswas on one side and the boy on the other, wheeled down the High Street.
Every room of the doll’s house was daintily furnished. The kitchen had a stove such as Mr. Biswas had never seen in real life, a safe and a sink. As they progressed towards Hanuman House Mr. Biswas’s excitement cooled; his extravagance astonished, then frightened him. He had spent more than a month’s wages. He couldn’t take back the doll’s house now; he was attracting continuous attention. And he had bought nothing for Anand. It was always like this. When he thought of his children he thought mainly of Savi. She was part of those early months at The Chase and he knew her. Anand belonged completely to the Tulsis.
At Hanuman House they knew about the doll’s house before it arrived. The hall was packed with sisters and their children. Mrs. Tulsi sat at the pitchpine table patting her lips with her veil.
The children exclaimed when the doll’s house was set down, and in the hush that followed Savi came forward and stood near it proprietorially.
“Well, what you think?” Mr. Biswas asked the hall, using his quick, high-pitched voice.
The sisters were silent.
Then Padma, Seth’s wife, usually taciturn and oppressed and unwell, began on a long and involved story, which Mr. Biswas refused to believe, about an incredible doll’s house one of Seth’s brothers had made for somebody’s daughter, a girl of exceptional beauty who had died shortly afterwards.
As Padma spoke, the children, boys and girls, gathered round the house. Mr. Biswas was not altogether happy about this, but was pleased when the children acknowledged Savi’s ownership by asking her permission to open doors and touch beds. Even as she explored, Savi tried to give the impression that she was familiar with everything.
“What have you brought for the others?”
It was Mrs. Tulsi.
“Didn’t have room,” Mr. Biswas said gaily.
“When I give, I give to all,” Mrs. Tulsi said. “I am poor, but I give to all. It is clear, however, that I cannot compete with Santa Claus.”
Her voice was even and he would have smiled, as at a witticism, but when he looked at her he saw that her face was tight with anger.
“Vidiadhar and Shivadhar!” Chinta shouted. “Come here at once. Stop interfering with what doesn’t belong to you.”
As at a signal the sisters pounced on their children, threatening horrible punishments on those who interfered with what didn’t belong to them.
“I will peel your backside.”
“I will break every bone in your body.”
And Sumati the flogger said, “I will make you heavy with welts.”
“Savi, go and put it away,” Shama whispered. “Take it upstairs.”
Mrs. Tulsi, rising, patting her lips, said, “Shama, I hope you will have the grace to give me notice before you move to your mansion.” She laboured up the stairs, and Sushila, the widow who ruled the sickroom, followed solicitously.
The affronted sisters drew closer together, and Shama stood alone. Her eyes were wide with dread. She stared accusingly at Mr. Biswas.
“Well,” he said briskly. “I better go back home-to the barracks.”
He urged Savi and Anand to come with him out to the arcade. Savi came willingly. Anand was, as usual, embarrassed. Mr. Biswas couldn’t help feeling that, compared with Savi, the boy was a disappointment. He was small for his age, thin and sickly, with a big head; he looked as though he needed protection, but was shy and tongue-tied with Mr. Biswas and always seemed anxious to be free of him. Now, when Mr. Biswas put his arms around him, Anand sniffed, rubbed a dirty face against Mr. Biswas’s trousers, and tried to pull away.
“You must let Anand play with it,” Mr. Biswas said to Savi.
“He is a boy.”
“Don’t worry.” Mr. Biswas rubbed Anand’s bony back. “You are going to get something next time.”
“I want a car,” Anand said to Mr. Biswas’s trousers. “A big one.”
Mr. Biswas knew the sort he meant. “All right,” he said. “Going to get you a car.”
Immediately Anand broke away and ran back through the gate to the yard, riding an imaginary horse, wielding an imaginary whip and shouting, “And I going to get a car! I going to get a car!”
He bought the car; not, despite his promise, the big one Anand wanted, but a clockwork miniature; and on Saturday, after the labourers had been paid, he took it to Arwacas. His arrival was noted from the arcade and, as he pushed the side gate open, he heard the message being relayed by the children in awed and expectant tones: “Savi, your pappa come to see you.”
She came crying to the doorway of the hall. When he embraced her she burst into loud sobs.
The children were silent. He heard the stairs creaking continually, and he became aware of a thick shuffling and whispering in the black kitchen at the far end.