“Go down and tell him so yourself. You talking like a man, go down and behave like one.”
“I not going down.”
Shama cried, and in the end Mr. Biswas put on his trousers. As he went down the stairs his courage began to leave him, and he had to tell himself that he was a free man and could leave the house whenever he wished. In the hall, to his shame, he heard himself saying, “Yes, Uncle?”
Seth was fixing a cigarette in his long ivory holder, an exquisiteness which no longer seemed an affectation to Mr. Biswas. It no longer contrasted with his rough estate clothes and rough, unshaved, moustached face; it had become part of his appearance. Mr. Biswas, concentrating on the delicate activity of Seth’s thick, bruised fingers, could feel that the hall was full. But no one was raising his voice; the whispers, the sounds of eating, the muted and seemingly distant scuffles, amounted to silence.
“Mohun,” Seth said at last, “how long you been living here?”
“Two months, Uncle.” And he couldn’t help noticing how much he sounded like Govind.
Mrs. Tulsi was there, sitting on a bench at the long table. Unusually, the two gods, unsmiling boys, were there, sitting together in the sugarsack hammock, their feet on the floor. Sisters were feeding husbands at the other end of the table. Sisters and their children were thick about the black entrance to the kitchen.
“You been eating well?”
In Seth’s presence Mr. Biswas felt diminished. Everything about Seth was overpowering: his calm manner, his smooth grey hair, his ivory holder, his hard swollen forearms: after he spoke he stroked them, and looked at the hairs springing back into their original posture.
“Eating well?” Mr. Biswas thought about the miserable meals, the risings of his belly, the cravings which were seldom satisfied. “Yes. I been eating well.”
“You know who provide all the food you been eating?”
Mr. Biswas didn’t answer.
Seth laughed, took the cigarette holder out of his mouth and coughed, from a deep chest. “This is a helluva man. When a man is married he shouldn’t expect other people to feed him. In fact, he should be feeding his wife. When I got married you think I did want Mai mother to feed me?”
Mrs. Tulsi rubbed her braceleted arms on the pitchpine table and shook her head.
The gods were grave.
“And yet I hear that you not happy here.”
“I didn’t tell anybody anything about not being happy here.”
“I is the Big Boss, eh? And Mai is the old queen and the old hen. And these boys is the two gods, eh?”
The gods became stern.
Looking away from Seth, and causing a dozen or more faces instantly to turn away, Mr. Biswas saw Govind among eaters at the far end of the table, going at his food in his smiling savage way, apparently indifferent to the inquisition, while C, bowed and veiled, stood dutifully over him.
“Eh?” For the first time there was impatience in Seth’s voice, and, to show his displeasure, he began talking Hindi. “This is gratitude. You come here, penniless, a stranger. We take you in, we give you one of our daughters, we feed you, we give you a place to sleep in. You refuse to help in the store, you refuse to help on the estate. All right. But then to turn around and insult us!”
Mr. Biswas had never thought of it like that. He said, “I sorry.”
Mrs. Tulsi said, “How can anyone be sorry for something he thinks?”
Seth pointed to the eaters at the end of the table. “What names have you given to those, eh?” The eaters, not looking up, ate with greater concentration.
Mr. Biswas said nothing.
“Oh, you haven’t given them names. It’s only to me and Mai and the two boys that you have given names?”
“I sorry.”
Mrs. Tulsi said, “How can anyone be sorry-”
Seth interrupted her. “So we want someone to work on the estate. Is nice to keep these things in the family. And what you say? You want to paddle your own canoe. Look at him!” Seth said to the hall. “Biswas the paddler.”
The children smiled; the sisters pulled their veils over their foreheads; their husbands ate and frowned; the gods in the hammock, rocking very slowly with their feet on the floor, glowered at the staircase landing.
“It runs in the family,” Seth said. “They tell me your father was a great diver. But where has all your paddling got you so far?”
Mr. Biswas said, “Is just that I don’t know anything about estate work.”
“Oho! Is because you can read and write that you don’t want to get dirt on your hands, eh? Look at my hands.” He showed nails that were corrugated, warped and surprisingly short. The hairy backs of his hands were scratched and discoloured; the palms were hardened, worn smooth in some places, torn in others. “You think I can’t read and write? I can read and write better than the whole lot of them.” He waved one hand to indicate the sisters, their husbands, their children; he held the other palm open towards the gods in the hammock, to indicate that they were excepted. There was amusement in his eyes now, and he opened his mouth on either side of the cigarette holder to laugh. “What about these boys here, Mohun? The gods.”
The younger god furrowed his brow, opened his eyes wider and wider until they were expressionless, and attempted to set his small, plump-lipped mouth.
“You think they can’t read and write too?”
“See them in the store,” Mrs. Tulsi said. “Reading and selling. Reading and eating and selling. Reading and eating and counting money. They are not afraid of getting their hands dirty.”
Not with money, Mr. Biswas told her mentally.
The younger god got up from the hammock and said, “If he don’t want to take the job on the estate, that is his business. It serve you right, Ma. You choose your son-in-laws and they treat you exactly how you deserve.”
“Sit down, Owad,” Mrs. Tulsi said. She turned to Seth. “This boy has a terrible temper.”
“I don’t blame him,” Seth said. “These paddlers go away, paddling their own canoe-that is how it is, eh, Biswas?-and as soon as trouble start they will be running back here. Seth is just here for people to insult, the same people, mark you, who he trying to help. I don’t mind. But that don’t mean I can’t see why the boy shouldn’t mind.”
The younger god frowned even more. “Is not because my father dead that people who eating my mother food should feel that they could call she a hen. I want Biswas to apologize to Ma.”
“Apologize-ologize,” Mrs. Tulsi said. “It wouldn’t make any difference. I don’t see how anyone can be sorry for something he feels.”
There is, in some weak people who feel their own weakness and resent it, a certain mechanism which, operating suddenly and without conscious direction, releases them from final humiliation. Mr. Biswas, who had up till then been viewing his blasphemies as acts of the blackest ingratitude, now abruptly lost his temper.
“The whole pack of you could go to hell!” he shouted. “I not going to apologize to one of the damn lot of you.”
Astonishment and even apprehension appeared on their faces. He noted this for a lucid moment, turned and ran up the stairs to the long room, where he began to pack with unnecessary energy.
“You don’t care what mess you get other people in, eh?”
It was Shama, standing in the doorway, barefooted, veil low over her forehead, looking as frightened as on that morning in the store.
“Family! Family!” Mr. Biswas said, stuffing clothes and books-Self Help, Bell’s Standard Elocutionist, the seven volumes of Hawkins’ Electrical Guide -into a cardboard box whose top flaps bore the circular impressions of tins of condensed milk. “I not staying here a minute longer. Having that damn little boy talk to me like that! He does talk to all your brother-in-laws like that?”
He packed with such energy that he was soon finished. But his anger had begun to cool and he reflected that by leaving the house again so soon he would be behaving absurdly, like a newly-married girl. He waited for Shama to say something that would rekindle his anger. She remained silent.