Cremation was forbidden and Raghu was to be buried. He lay in a coffin in the bedroom, dressed in his finest dhoti, jacket and turban, his beads around his neck and down his jacket. The coffin was strewed with marigolds which matched his turban. Pratap, the eldest son, did the last rites, walking round the coffin.
“Photo now,” Tara said. “Quick. Get them all together. For the last time.”
The photographer, who had been smoking under the mango tree, went into the hut and said, “Too dark.”
The men became interested and gave advice while the women wailed.
“Take it outside. Lean it against the mango tree.”
“Light a lamp.”
“It couldn’t be too dark.”
“What do you know? You’ve never had your photo taken. Now, what I suggest-”
The photographer, of mixed Chinese, Negro and European blood, did not understand what was being said. In the end he and some of the men took the coffin out to the verandah and stood it against the wall.
“Careful! Don’t let him fall out.”
“Goodness. All the marigolds have dropped out.”
“Leave them,” the photographer said in English. “Is a nice little touch. Flowers on the ground.” He set up his tripod in the yard, just under the ragged eaves of thatch, and put his head under the black cloth.
Tara roused Bipti from her grief, arranged Bipti’s hair and veil, and dried Bipti’s eyes.
“Five people all together,” the photographer said to Tara. “Hard to know just how to arrange them. It look to me that it would have to be two one side and three the other side. You sure you want all five?”
Tara was firm.
The photographer sucked his teeth, but not at Tara. “Look, look. Why nobody ain’t put anything to chock up the coffin and prevent it from slipping?”
Tara had that attended to.
The photographer said, “All right then. Mother and biggest son on either side. Next to mother, young boy and young girl. Next to big son, smaller son.”
There was more advice from the men.
“Make them look at the coffin.”
“At the mother.”
“At the youngest boy.”
The photographer settled the matter by telling Tara, “Tell them to look at me.”
Tara translated, and the photographer went under his cloth. Almost immediately he came out again. “How about making the mother and the biggest boy put their hands on the edge of the coffin?”
This was done and the photographer went back under his cloth.
“Wait!” Tara cried, running out from the hut with a fresh garland of marigolds. She hung it around Raghu’s neck and said to the photographer in English, “All right. Draw your photo now.”
Mr. Biswas never owned a copy of the photograph and he did not see it until 1937, when it made its appearance, framed in passepartout, on the wall of the drawingroom of Tara’s fine new house at Pagotes, a little lost among many other photographs of funeral groups, many oval portraits with blurred edges of more dead friends and relations, and coloured prints of the English countryside. The photograph had faded to the lightest brown and was partially defaced by the large heliotrope stamp of the photographer, still bright, and his smudged sprawling signature in soft black pencil. Mr. Biswas was astonished at his own smallness. The scabs of sores and the marks of eczema showed clearly on his knobbly knees and along his very thin arms and legs. Everyone in the photograph had unnaturally large, staring eyes which seemed to have been outlined in black.
Tara was right when she said that the photograph was to be a record of the family all together for the last time. For in a few days Mr. Biswas and Bipti, Pratap and Prasad and Dehuti had left Parrot Trace and the family split up for good.
It began on the evening of the funeral.
Tara said, “Bipti, you must give me Dehuti.”
Bipti had been hoping that Tara would make the suggestion. In four or five years Dehuti would have to be married and it was better that she should be given to Tara. She would learn manners, acquire graces and, with a dowry from Tara, might even make a good match.
“If you are going to have someone,” Tara said, “it is better to have one of your own family. That is what I always say. I don’t want strangers poking their noses into my kitchen and bedroom.”
Bipti agreed that it was better to have servants from one’s own family. And Pratap and Prasad and even Mr. Biswas, who had not been asked, nodded, as though the problem of servants was one they had given much thought.
Dehuti looked down at the floor, shook her long hair and mumbled a few words which meant that she was far too small to be consulted, but was very pleased.
“Get her new clothes,” Tara said, fingering the georgette skirt and satin petticoat Dehuti had worn for the funeral. “Get her some jewels.” She put a thumb and finger around Dehuti’s wrist, lifted her face, and turned up the lobe of her ear. “Earrings. Good thing you had them pierced, Bipti. She won’t need these sticks now.” In the holes in her lobe Dehuti wore pieces of the thin hard spine of the blades of the coconut branch. Tara playfully pulled Dehuti’s nose. “Nakphul too. You would like a nose-flower?”
Dehuti smiled shyly, not looking up.
“Well,” Tara said, “fashions are changing all the time these days. I am just oldfashioned, that is all.” She stroked her gold nose-flower. “It is expensive to be oldfashioned.”
“She will satisfy you,” Bipti said. “Raghu had no money. But he trained his children well. Training, piety-”
“Quite,” Tara said. “The time for crying is over, Bipti. How much money did Raghu leave you?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? Are you trying to keep secrets from me? Everyone in the village knows that Raghu had a lot of money. I am sure he has left you enough to start a nice little business.”
Pratap sucked his teeth. “He was a miser, that one. He used to hide his money.”
Tara said, “Is this the training and piety your father gave you?”
They searched. They pulled out Raghu’s box from under the bed and looked for false bottoms; at Bipti’s suggestion they looked for any joint that might reveal a hiding-place in the timber itself. They poked the sooty thatch and ran their hands over the rafters; they tapped the earth floor and the bamboo-and-mud walls; they examined Raghu’s walking-sticks, taking out the ferrules, Raghu’s only extravagance; they dismanded the bed and uprooted the logs on which it stood. They found nothing.
Bipti said, “I don’t suppose he had any money really.”
“You are a fool,” Tara said, and it was in this mood of annoyance that she ordered Bipti to pack Dehuti’s bundle and took Dehuti away.
Because no cooking could be done at their house, they ate at Sadhu’s. The food was unsalted and as soon as he began to chew, Mr. Biswas felt he was eating raw flesh and the nauseous saliva filled his mouth again. He hurried outside to empty his mouth and clean it, but the taste remained. And Mr. Biswas screamed when, back at the hut, Bipti put him to bed and threw Raghu’s blanket over him. The blanket was hairy and prickly; it seemed to be the source of the raw, fresh smell he had been smelling all day. Bipti let him scream until he was tired and fell asleep in the yellow, wavering light of the oil lamp which left the corners in darkness. She watched the wick burn lower and lower until she heard the snores of Pratap, who snored like a big man, and the heavy breathing of Mr. Biswas and Prasad. She slept only fitfully herself. It was quiet inside the hut, but outside the noises were loud and continuous: mosquitoes, bats, frogs, crickets, the poor-me-one. If the cricket missed a chirp the effect was disturbing and she awoke.
She was awakened from a light sleep by a new noise. At first she couldn’t be sure. But the nearness of the noise and its erratic sequence disturbed her. It was a noise she heard every day but now, isolated in the night, it was hard to place. It came again: a thud, a pause, a prolonged snapping, then a series of gentler thuds. And it came again. Then there was another noise, of bottles breaking, muffled, as though the bottles were full. And she knew the noises came from her garden. Someone was stumbling among the bottles Raghu had buried neck downwards around the flower-beds.