And for the following day or two, when she held Mr. Biswas and the children absolutely in her power, she would be very gloomy; and it was at these times that she said, “I tell you, if it wasn’t for the children-”
And Mr. Biswas would sing, “Going to buy that gold brooch for you, girl!”
As important as weddings and funerals were to Shama, holiday visits became to the children. They went first of all to Hanuman House. But with every succeeding visit they felt more like strangers. Alliances were harder to take up again. There were new jokes, new games, new stories, new subjects of conversation. Too much had to be explained, and Anand and Savi and Myna often ended by remaining together. As soon as they went back to Port of Spain this unity disappeared. Savi returned to bullying Myna; Anand defended Myna; Savi beat Anand; Anand hit back; and Savi complained.
“What!” Mr. Biswas said. “Hitting your sister! Shama, you see the sort of effect one little trip to the monkey house does have on your children?”
It was a two-fold attack, for the children preferred visiting Mr. Biswas’s relations. These relations had come as a revelation. Not only were they an untapped source of generosity; Savi and Anand had also felt up to then that Mr. Biswas, like all the fathers at Hanuman House, had come from nothing, and the only people who had a proper family were the Tulsis. It was pleasant and novel, too, for Savi and Anand and Myna to find themselves flattered and cajoled and bribed. At Hanuman House they were three children among many; at Ajodha’s there were no other children. And Ajodha was rich, as they could tell by the house he was building. He offered them money and was absurdly delighted that they should know its value sufficiently well to take it. Anand got an extra six cents for reading That Body of Yours; it would have been worth it for the praise alone. They were feted at Pratap’s; Bipti was embarrassingly devoted and their cousins were shy and admiring and kind. At Prasad’s they were again the only children and lived in a mud hut, which they thought quaint: it was like a large doll’s house. Prasad didn’t give money, but a thick red exercise book, a Shirley Temple fountain pen and a bottle of Waterman’s ink. And so, with this encouragement to milk and prunes, the profitable round of holiday visits ended.
Then came the news that Mrs. Tulsi had decided to send Owad abroad to study, to become a doctor.
Mr. Biswas was overwhelmed. More and more students were going abroad; but they were items of news, remote. He had never thought that anyone so close to him could escape so easily. Concealing his sadness and envy, he made a show of enthusiasm and offered advice about shipping lines. And at Arwacas some of Mrs. Tulsi’s retainers defected. Forgetting that they were in Trinidad, that they had crossed the black water from India and had thereby lost all caste, they said they could have nothing more to do with a woman who was proposing to send her son across the black water.
“Water on a duck’s back,” Mr. Biswas said to Shama. “The number of times that mother of yours has made herself outcast!”
There was talk about the suitability and adequacy of the food Owad would get in England.
“Every morning in England, you know,” Mr. Biswas said, “the scavengers go around picking up the corpses. And you know why? The food there is not cooked by orthodox Roman Catholic Hindus.”
“Suppose Uncle Owad want more,” Anand said. “You think they will give it to him?”
“Hear the boy,” Mr. Biswas said, squeezing Anand’s thin arms. “Let me tell you, eh, boy, that you and Savi come out of the monkey house as going concerns only because of the little Ovaltine you drink.”
“No wonder the others can hold Anand and beat his little tail,” Shama said.
“Your family are tough,” Mr. Biswas said. He spat the word out and made it an insult. “Tough,” he repeated.
“Well, I could say one thing. None of us have calves swinging like hammocks.”
“Of course not. Your calves are tough. Anand, look at the back of my hands. No hair. The sign of an advanced race, boy. And look at yours. No hair either. But you never know. With some of your mother’s bad blood flowing in your veins you could wake up one morning and find yourself hairy like a monkey.”
Then, after a trip to Hanuman House, Shama reported that the decision to send Owad abroad had reduced Shekhar, the elder god, married man though he was, to tears.
“Send him some rope and soft candle,” Mr. Biswas said.
“He never did want to get married,” Shama said.
“Never did want to get married! Never see anybody skip off so smart to check mother-in-law’s money.”
“He wanted to go to Cambridge.”
“Cambridge!” Mr. Biswas exclaimed, startled by the word, starded to hear it coming so easily from Shama. “Cambridge, eh? Well, why the hell he didn’t go? Why the hell the whole pack of you didn’t go to Cambridge? Frighten of the bad food?”
“Seth was against it.” Shama’s tone was injured and conspiratorial.
Mr. Biswas paused. “Well, you don’t say. You don’t say!”
“I glad it please somebody.”
She could give no more information, and at last said impatiently, “You getting like a woman.”
She clearly felt that an injustice had been done. And he knew the Tulsis too well to be surprised that the sisters, who never questioned their own neglected education, cat-in-bag marriage and precarious position, should yet feel concerned that Shekhar, whose marriage was happy and whose business was nourishing, had not had all that he might.
Shekhar was coming to spend a week-end in Port of Spain. His family would not be with him and old Mrs. Tulsi would be in Arwacas: the brothers were to be boys together for one last week-end. Mr. Biswas waited for Shekhar with interest. He came early on Friday evening. The taxi hooted; Shama switched on the lights in the verandah and the porch; Shekhar ran up the front steps in his white linen suit and breezed through the house on his leather-heeled shoes, charging it with excitement, depositing on the diningtable a bottle of wine, a tin of peanuts, a packet of biscuits, two copies of Life and a paper-backed volume of Halevy’s History of the English People. Shama greeted him with sadness, Mr. Biswas with a solemnity which he hoped could be mistaken for sympathy. Shekhar responded with geniality: the absent geniality of the businessman sparing time from his business, the family man away from his family.
Owad’s expensive new suitcases were in the back verandah and Mr. Biswas was painting Owad’s name on them.
“Sort of thing to make you feel you want to go away,” Mr. Biswas said.
Shekhar wasn’t drawn. After the wine and peanuts and biscuits had been shared he showed himself almost paternally preoccupied with the arrangements for Owad’s journey, and in spite of Mr. Biswas’s coaxings never once mentioned Cambridge.
“You and your mouth,” Mr. Biswas told Shama.
She had no time for argument. She felt honoured at having to entertain her two brothers at once, on such an important occasion, and was determined to do it well. She had prepared all week for the week-end, and shortly after breakfast that morning had begun to cook.
From time to time Mr. Biswas went into the kitchen and whispered, “Who paying for all this? The old she-fox or you? Not me, you hear. Nobody sending me to Cambridge. Next week, when I eating dry ice, nobody sending me food by parcel post from Hanuman House, you hear.”