Alec was congratulatory. “Like I did say, these things come when you least expect them. What you was fussing so for?”
And a few days later Bhandat’s eldest boy said, “Mohun, I hear you got a girl at long last, man.” He was patronizing; it was well known that he was having an affair with a woman of another race by whom he had already had a child; he was proud both of the child and its illegitimacy.
The news of the girl at Arwacas spread and Mr. Biswas enjoyed some glory at Pagotes until Bhandat’s younger son, a prognathous, contemptuous boy, said, “I feel you lying like hell, you know.”
When Mr. Biswas went to Hanuman House the next day he had a note in his pocket, which he intended to give to Shama. She was busy all morning, but just before noon, when the store closed for lunch, there was a lull and her counter was free. He came down the ladder, whistling in his way. Unnecessarily, he began stacking and restacking his paint tins. Then, preoccupied and frowning, he walked about the store, looking for tins that were not there. He passed Shama’s counter and, without looking at her, placed the note under a bolt of cloth. The note was crumpled and slightly dirty and looked ineffectual. But she saw it. She looked away and smiled. It was not a smile of complicity or pleasure; it was a smile that told Mr. Biswas he had made a fool of himself. He felt exceedingly foolish, and wondered whether he shouldn’t take back his note and abandon Shama at once.
While he hesitated a fat Negro woman went to Shama’s counter and asked for flesh-coloured stockings, which were then enjoying some vogue in rural Trinidad.
Shama, still smiling, took down a box and held up a pair of black cotton stockings.
“Eh!” The woman’s gasp could be heard throughout the shop. “You playing with me? How the hell all-you get so fresh and conceited?” She began to curse. “Playing with me!” She pulled boxes and bolts of cloth off the counter and hurled them to the floor and every time something crashed she shouted, “Playing with me!” One of the Tulsi sons-in-law ran up to pacify her. She cuffed him back. “Where the old lady?” she called, and screamed, “Mai! Mai!” as though in great pain.
Shama had ceased to smile. Fright was plain on her face. Mr. Biswas had no desire to comfort her. She looked so much like a child now that he only became more ashamed of the note. The bolt of cloth which concealed it had been thrown to the ground, and the note was exposed, caught at the end of the brass yardstick that was screwed to the counter.
He moved towards the counter, but was driven back by the woman’s fat flailing arms.
Then silence fell on the shop. The woman’s arms became still. Through the back doorway, to the right of the counter, Mrs. Tulsi appeared. She was as laden as Tara with jewellery; she lacked Tara’s sprightliness but was statelier; her face, though not plump, was slack, as if unexercised.
Mr. Biswas moved back to his tins and brushes.
“Yes, ma’am, I want to see you.” The woman was breathless with anger. “I want to see you. I want you to beat that child, ma’am. I want you to beat that conceited, rude child of yours.”
“All right, miss. All right.” Mrs. Tulsi pressed her thin lips together repeatedly. “Tell me what happened.” She spoke English in a slow, precise way which surprised Mr. Biswas and filled him with apprehension. She was now behind the counter and her fingers which, like her face, were creased rather than wrinkled, rubbed along the brass yardstick. From time to time, while she listened, she pressed the corner of her veil over her moving lips.
Mr. Biswas, now busily cleaning brushes, wiping them dry, and putting soap in the bristle to keep it supple, was sure that Mrs. Tulsi was listening with only half a mind, that her eyes had been caught by the note: I love you and I want to talk to you.
Mrs. Tulsi spoke some abuse to Shama in Hindi, the obscenity of which startled Mr. Biswas. The woman looked pacified. Mrs. Tulsi promised to look further into the matter and gave the woman a pair of flesh-coloured stockings free. The woman began to retell her story. Mrs. Tulsi, treating the matter as closed, repeated that she was giving the stockings free. The woman went on unhurriedly to the end of the story. Then she walked slowly out of the shop, muttering, exaggeratedly swinging her large hips.
The note was in Mrs. Tulsi’s hand. She held it just above the counter, far from her eyes, and read it, patting her lips with her veil.
“Shama, that was a shameless thing to do.”
“I wasn’t thinking, Mai,” Shama said, and burst into tears, like a girl about to be flogged.
Mr. Biswas’s disenchantment was complete.
Mrs. Tulsi, holding her veil to her chin, nodded absently, still looking at the note.
Mr. Biswas slunk out of the store. He went to Mrs. Seeung’s, a large cafй in the High Street, and ordered a sardine roll and a bottle of aerated water. The sardines were dry, the onion offended him, and the bread had a crust that cut the inside of his lips. He drew comfort only from the thought that he had not signed the note and could deny writing it.
When he went back to the store he was determined to pretend that nothing had happened, determined never to look at Shama again. Carefully he prepared his brushes and set to work. He was relieved that no one showed an interest in him; and more relieved to find that Shama was not in the store that afternoon. With a light heart he outlined Punch’s dog on the irregular surface of the whitewashed column. Below the dog he ruled lines and sketched BARGAINS! BARGAINS! He painted the dog red, the first BARGAINS! black, the second blue. Moving a rung or two down the ladder he ruled more lines, and between these lines he detailed some of the bargains the Tulsi Store offered, in letters which he “cut out”, painting a section of the column red, leaving the letters cut out in the whitewash. Along the top and bottom of the red strip he left small circles of whitewash; these he gashed with one red stroke, to give the impression that a huge red plaque had been screwed on to the pillar; it was one of Alec’s devices. The work absorbed him all afternoon. Shama never appeared in the store, and for minutes he forgot about the morning’s happenings.
Just before four, when the store closed and Mr. Biswas stopped work, Seth came, looking as though he had spent the day in the fields. He wore muddy bluchers and a stained khaki topee; in the pocket of his sweated khaki shirt he carried a black notebook and an ivory cigarette holder. He went to Mr. Biswas and said, in a tone of gruff authority, “The old lady want to see you before you go.”
Mr. Biswas resented the tone, and was disturbed that Seth had spoken to him in English. Saying nothing, he came down the ladder and washed out his brushes, doing his soundless whistling while Seth stood over him. The front doors were bolted and barred and the Tulsi Store became dark and warm and protected.
He followed Seth through the back door to the damp, gloomy courtyard, where he had never been. Here the Tulsi Store felt even smaller: looking back he saw lifesize carvings of Hanuman, grotesquely coloured, on either side of the shop doorway. Across the courtyard there was a large, old, grey wooden house which he thought must be the original Tulsi house. He had never suspected its size from the store; and from the road it was almost hidden by the tall concrete building, to which it was connected by an unpainted, new-looking wooden bridge, which roofed the courtyard.
They climbed a short flight of cracked concrete steps into the hall of the wooden house. It was deserted. Seth left Mr. Biswas, saying he had to go and wash. It was a spacious hall, smelling of smoke and old wood. The pale green paint had grown dim and dingy and the timbers revealed the ravages of woodlice which left wood looking so new where it was rotten. Then Mr. Biswas had another surprise. Through the doorway at the far end he saw the kitchen. And the kitchen had mud walls. It was lower than the hall and appeared to be completely without light. The doorway gaped black; soot stained the wall about it and the ceiling just above; so that blackness seemed to fill the kitchen like a solid substance.