“Before I go,” he said, unpacking and re-packing the condensed milk case, “I want you to tell the Big Boss-because it is clear that he is the big bull in the family-I want you to go and tell him that he ain’t pay me for the signs 1 do in the store.”
“Why you don’t go and tell him yourself?” Shama was now angry and near to tears.
He tried to see himself asking Seth for money. He couldn’t. “You and all,” he said, “don’t start provoking me. You think I want to talk to that man? You know him for a long time. He is like a second father to you. You must ask him.”
“And suppose he ask for what you owe him?”
“I would give you straight back to him.”
“You owe him more than he owe you.”
“He owe me more than I owe him.”
They reduced it to a plain argument, which not only killed what remained of his anger, but even left him exhilarated, though a little puzzled as to what he should do next.
Before he could decide, C and Padma, Seth’s wife, came without knocking into the room. C was crying. Padma begged Mr. Biswas, for the sake of family unity and the family name, not to do anything in a temper.
He became very offended, turned his back to Padma and C and walked heavily up and down the small room.
With the arrival of the women Shama’s attitude changed. She ceased to be irritated and suppliant and instead looked martyred. She sat stiffly on a low bench, thumb under her chin, elbow on her knee, and opened her eyes until they were as wide and empty as the younger god’s had been a few minutes before in the hall.
“Don’t go, brother,” C sobbed. “Your sister is begging you.” She tried to grab his ankles.
He skipped away and looked puzzled.
C, sobbing, noticed his puzzlement and elucidated: “Chinta is begging you.” She mentioned her own name to indicate the depth of her unhappiness and the sincerity of her plea; and she began to wail.
By coming up to plead with him Chinta had as good as confessed that it was her husband Govind who had reported Mr. Biswas’s blasphemies to Seth; she was also claiming that Govind had triumphed. Mr. Biswas knew that when husbands quarrelled it was the duty of the wife of the victorious husband to placate the defeated husband, and the duty of the wife of the defeated husband not to display anger, but skilfully to suggest that her unhappiness was due, in equal measure, to both husbands. Shama, following Chinta’s arrival, had cast herself as the defeated wife and was making a commendable first attempt at this difficult role.
There was no means of protesting at this subtle humiliation. Up to that moment Mr. Biswas had never felt that he had enemies. People were simply indifferent to him. But now an enemy, the enemy, had declared itself. And he resolved not to run away.
And having made his resolve, he felt he had already won. And, already a winner, he looked upon Chinta and Padma with charity. Chinta was sobbing to herself, dabbing at her eyes with her veil. He said to her, kindly, “Why your husband don’t take a job with the Gazette, eh? He is a born reporter.” This had no effect on the flow of tears from Chinta’s bright eyes. Shama still sat martyred and unmoving, eyes wide, knees apart, skirt draped over knees. “What the hell you playing you thinking, eh?” She didn’t hear. Padma continued to behave with fatigued dignity. He said nothing to her. She resembled Mrs. Tulsi but was fatter and looked older. Her sallow, unhealthy skin was oily, and she continually fanned herself, as though tormented by some inner heat. After her first plea she hadn’t looked at Mr. Biswas or spoken to him. She didn’t cry or look sadder than usual. She had come on too many of these missions for them to thrill her the way they still thrilled Chinta: there was not a man in the house with whom Seth had not quarrelled at some time or other. Padma simply came, made her plea, sat and looked unwell. She never, in the hall or elsewhere, expressed approval of Seth’s actions or disapproval of those of her nieces’ husbands; this won her much respect and made her a good peacemaker.
Sternly and impatiently Mr. Biswas said, “All right. All right. Dry your tears. I not going.”
Chinta gave a short loud sob; it marked the end of her tears.
“But just tell them not to provoke me, that’s all.”
Sighing, Padma rose, heavily and unhealthily; and without another word she and Chinta left the room.
Shama unstiffened. Her eyes narrowed a little, her fingers left her chin. She began to cry, silently, and her body underwent a relaxing, melting process which fascinated Mr. Biswas and infuriated him. Her arms seemed to grow rounder; her shoulders rounded and drooped; her back curved; her eyes softened until they were quite liquid with tears; her wrists rested on her knees as if broken; her hands flapped loose; her long fingers swung lifelessly, as if broken at every joint.
“Talk about bad blood,” Mr. Biswas said. “Talk about bad blood!”
Disappointed in Govind, Mr. Biswas began to find virtues in brothers-in-law he had disregarded. There was Hari, a tall, pale, quiet man who spent much time at the long table, working through mounds of rice in a slow, unenthusiastic but efficient way, watched over by his pregnant wife. He spent even more time in the latrine, and this made him feared. “They should ring a bell when Hari decide to go to the latrine,” Mr. Biswas told Shama, “just as how they ring a bell to tell people they cutting off the water.” It was generally accepted at Hanuman House that Hari was a sick man; his wife told with sorrow and pride of the terrifying diagnoses of various doctors. No man looked less suitable for work on the estate; it was hard to imagine that thin, gentle voice ordering labourers about, reproving the idle and shouting down the argumentative. He was in fact a pundit, by training and inclination, and never looked so happy as when he changed from estate clothes into a dhoti and sat in the verandah upstairs reading from some huge, ungainly Hindi book that rested on a stylishly carved Kashmiri bookrest. He did the puja when the gods were away and he still conducted occasional ceremonies for close friends. He offended no one and amused no one. He was obsessed with his illnesses, his food and his religious books.
Between his estate duties, his reading in the verandah and his visits to the latrine, Hari had little free time, and was open to approach only at the long table. But then conversation was not easy. Hari believed in chewing every mouthful forty times, and was a noisy and preoccupied eater.
Sitting next to Hari one evening, receiving a brief ruminant glance from him and a concerned stare from his wife, Mr. Biswas waited until Hari had champed and ground and squelched through a mouthful. Then he hurriedly asked, “What do you feel about the Aryans?”
He was speaking of the protestant Hindu missionaries who had come from India and were preaching that caste was unimportant, that Hinduism should accept converts, that idols should be abolished, that women should be educated, preaching against all the doctrines the orthodox Tulsis held dear.
“What do you feel about the Aryans?” Mr. Biswas asked.
“The Aryans?” Hari said, and started on another mouthful. His tone declared that it was a frivolous question raised by a mischievous person.
A look of anguish came over the face of Hari’s wife.
“Yes,” Mr. Biswas said, despairingly filling in the pause. “The Aryans.”
“I don’t think much about them.” Hari bit at a pepper, baring sharp little white teeth, like a rat’s, and surprising in such a tall and sluggish man. “I hear,” he went on, the merest hint of amusement and reproof in his voice, “that you have been doing a lot of thinking about them.”
Mr. Biswas was almost an Aryan convert.
It was Misir, the idle journalist, who had encouraged him to go to hear Pankaj Rai. “He is not one of those illiterate Trinidad pundits, you know,” Misir said. “Pankaj is a BA and a LLB into the bargain. The man is a real orator. A purist, man.” Mr. Biswas had not asked what a purist was, but the word, pronounced with reverence by Misir, appealed strongly to him, suggesting not only purity and fastidiousness, but also elegance and breeding.