They were both looking forward to Saturday afternoon, when Seth would come and take her back to Hanuman House. There was a good reason why she couldn’t stay any longer: her school was opening on Monday.
On Saturday Seth came. He was not alone. Shama, Anand and Myna came with him. Savi ran to the road to meet them. Mr. Biswas pretended he didn’t see, and Seth smiled, as at the antics of children. Quarrels between Seth and his wife were unknown, and it was his policy never to interfere in quarrels between sisters and their husbands. But Mr. Biswas knew that despite the smile Seth had come as Shama’s protector.
He immediately took out the green table to the yard, setting it some distance away from the room, and the labourers queued up, screening him from Shama. While he sat beside Seth, calling out tasks and wages and making entries in the ledger, he listened to Savi talking excitedly to Shama and Anand. He heard Shama’s cooing replies. Soon she was so sure of the children’s affection that she was even scolding them. What a difference there was, though, in the voice she used now and the voice she used at Hanuman House!
And even while he noted Shama’s duplicity, he felt that Savi had betrayed him.
The labourers were paid. Seth said he wanted to have a look at the fields; it was not necessary for Mr. Biswas to come with him.
Shama was sitting in the kitchen area. She held Myna in her arms and was playing with her, talking baby-talk. Savi and Anand looked on. When Mr. Biswas passed, Shama glanced at him but did not stop talking to Myna.
Savi and Anand looked up apprehensively.
Mr. Biswas went into the room and sat in the rocking-chair.
Shama said loudly, “Anand, go and ask your father if he would like a cup of tea.”
Anand came, shy and worried, and mumbled the message.
Mr. Biswas did not reply. He studied Anand’s big head and thin arms. The skin at the elbow was baggy, and scarred purple with eczema. Had he too been fed on sulphur and condensed milk?
Anand waited, then went outside.
Mr. Biswas rocked. The floor-planks were wide and rough. One had cambered and cracked; whenever the rockers came down on it, it squeaked and snapped.
Savi, not looking at Mr. Biswas, brought Myna into the room and laid her carefully on the bed.
Shama was fanning the coal-pot.
Savi, her pyromaniacal instincts aroused, hurried out of the room, saying, “Ma, you getting coal all over your clothes. Let me.”
So. They had all forgotten the doll’s house. He drew up his feet on to the chair, leaned his head back, closed his eyes and rocked. The board replied.
“Anand, take this to your father.”
He heard Anand approaching but didn’t open his eyes. He wondered whether he shouldn’t take the tea and fling it over Shama’s fussy embroidered dress and smiling, uncertain face.
He opened his eyes, took the cup from Anand, and sipped.
When Seth came back he smiled at everyone benevolently and sat down on the steps. Shama gave him a large cup of tea and he drank it in three gurgling draughts, snorting and sighing in between. He took off his hat and smoothed his damp hair. Suddenly he began to laugh. “Mohun, I hear you have a case.”
“Case? Oh, case! Small one. Tiny tiny. Baby case, really.”
“You are a funny sort of paddler. Get your summons yet?”
“Waiting for it.”
“And Savi. You get your summons yet?”
Savi smiled, as though there had been no terror in the dark road and the flash of the policeman’s torch.
“Well, don’t worry.” Seth got up. “These people just want to see whether your dollar-notes look any different from theirs. I settle it up. Wouldn’t do anybody any good for your case to come up.”
And he was gone.
Mr. Biswas closed his eyes, rocked on the noisy board, and the children became anxious again.
He remained in the chair until it was dark and time to eat. Oil lamps were lighted in many barrackrooms. Far down a drunk man was swearing.
Savi and Anand ate sitting on the steps. As he ate at the green table Mr. Biswas became less torpid, and Shama correspondingly gloomier. Towards the end of the meal he even began to clown. He squatted on the chair, with his left hand squashed between calf and thigh, and asked banteringly, “Why you didn’t stay at the monkey house, eh?”
She didn’t reply.
After he had washed his hands and gargled out of the side window, Shama sat down on the steps to eat. He watched her.
“Crying, eh?”
Slowly the tears flowed out of her wide eyes.
“So you vex up then?”
One tear raced down her cheek and hung trembling over her top lip.
“It tickling?”
Her mouth was half full but she stopped chewing.
“Don’t tell me the food so bad.”
She said, as though to herself, “If it wasn’t for the children-”
“If it wasn’t for the children, what?”
She continued to chew with a loud and morose deliberation.
In one corner Savi and Anand were rolling out sacks and sheets on which to sleep.
“You come,” Shama said. “You come, you didn’t look right, you didn’t look left, you start getting on, you curse me upside down-”
It was the beginning of her apology. He didn’t interrupt.
“You didn’t know what I had to put up with. Talking night and day. Puss-puss here. Puss-puss there. Chinta dropping remarks all the time. Everybody beating their children the moment they start talking to Savi. Nobody wanting to talk to me. Everybody behaving as though I kill their father.” She stopped, and cried. “So I had to satisfy them. I break up the dolly-house and everybody was satisfied. And then you come. You didn’t look right, you didn’t look left-”
“Charge of the Light Brigade. You think Chinta would break up a dolly-house Govind buy? If you could imagine Govind doing anything like that. Tell me, what does that brother-in-law of yours use for food, eh? Dirt? You think Chinta would break up a dolly-house Govind buy?”
She wept over her plate.
Later she wept over the washingup, repeatedly interrupting her tears, first to blow her nose, then to sing sad songs softly, and finally to ask about Savi’s behaviour during the week.
He told how Savi had thrown away the old woman’s food. Shama was gratified, and told other stories of the girl’s sensibility. Savi, still anxiously awake and only pretending to be asleep, listened with pleasure. Again Shama told of Savi’s dislike for fish and how Mrs. Tulsi had overcome that dislike. She also spoke of Anand, who was so sensitive that biscuits made his mouth bleed.
Mr. Biswas, his mood now soft as hers, did not say that he thought this to be a sign of undernourishment. Instead he began to talk about his house and Shama listened without enthusiasm but without objection.
“And as soon as the house finish, going to buy that gold brooch for you, girl!”
“I would like to see the day.”
They had come on Saturday. On Monday Savi had to go back to school.
“Stay here,” Mr. Biswas said. “They don’t teach much on the first day.”
“How you know?” Savi said. “You ever went to school?”
“Yes, miss. I went to school. You are not the only one to go to school, you know.”
“If I stay I will have to have an excuse to give Teacher.”
“I will write one for you in two twos. Dear Teacher, My daughter Savi is unable to attend school for the first week because she has been staying with her grandmother and is suffering from serious undernourishment.”