Further messages had been sent and visitors came. Pratap and Prasad, abashed by the size of the house and conscious of their own condition, felt obliged to be kind to all the children. They began by giving each child a penny; but they had underestimated the number of children; they ended up by giving out halfpennies. They told Mr. Biswas exactly what they had been doing when they got Message; it seemed that they both nearly missed Message; they had both, however, had some signs on the night of the storm that something was wrong with Mr. Biswas and had told their wives so; they urged Mr. Biswas to get confirmation from their wives. Mr. Biswas listened with a sense of withdrawal. He asked after their families. Pratap and Prasad construed this as pure politeness, and though there was little to talk about, dismissed their families as worthless of serious consideration. And after making occasional solemn noises, looking down at their hats, examining them from various angles, brushing the bands, they got up to go, sighing.
Ramchand, Mr. Biswas’s brother-in-law, was less restrained. He had acquired a city brashness that went well with his uniform. He had left the country and the rum-factory years before and was now a warden at the Lunatic Asylum in Port of Spain.
“Don’t think I shy of you,” he told Mr. Biswas. “I used to this. This is my work.”
He spoke of himself, his career, the Lunatic Asylum.
“You ain’t got a gramophone here?” he asked.
“Gramophone?”
“Music,” Ramchand said. “We does play music to them all the time.”
He spoke of the perquisites of the job as though the Lunatic Asylum had been organized solely for his benefit.
“Take the canteen now. Everything there five cents and six cents cheaper than outside, you know. But that is because they not running it to make a profit. If you ever want anything you must let me know.”
“Sanatogen?”
“I will see. Look, why you don’t leave the country, man, and come to Port of Spain? A man like you shouldn’t remain in this backward place. No wonder this thing happen to you. Come up and spend some time with us. Dehuti always talking about you, you know.”
Mr. Biswas promised to think it over.
Ramchand walked heavily through the house and when he came into the hall shouted at Sushila, whom he didn’t know, “Everything all right, maharajin?”
“He looks like a real chamar -caste-type,” Sushila said.
“However much you wash a pig,” Chinta said, “you can’t turn it into a cow.”
That evening Seth went to the Blue Room.
“Well, Mohun. How you feeling?”
“All right, I think.” Mr. Biswas spoke with something like his humorous high-pitched voice.
“You thinking of going back to Green Vale?”
To his own surprise, Mr. Biswas found himself behaving in the old way. With an expression of mock-horror he said, “Who? Me?”
“I glad you feel that way. As a matter of fact you can’t go back.”
“Look at me. I crying.”
“Guess what happen.”
“All the cane burn down.”
“Wrong. Only your house.”
“Burn down? You mean it insuranburn.”
“No, no. Not insuranburn. It burn fair and square. Green Vale people. Wicked like hell, man, those people.”
Seth saw that Mr. Biswas was crying and looked away. But Seth misunderstood.
An immense relief had come upon Mr. Biswas. The anxiety, the fear, the anguish which had kept his mind humming and his body taut now ebbed away. He could feel it ebbing; it was a physical sensation; it left him weak and very weary. And he felt an enormous gratitude to Seth. He wanted to embrace him, to promise eternal friendship, to make some vow.
“You mean,” he said at last, “that after all that rain they burn it down?” And he burst out sobbing.
That night Shama gave birth to her fourth child, another girl.
Mr. Biswas’s books had been placed among those in the Book Room. Somewhere among them was the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare. No entry was made on its endpaper of this new birth.
The thin, short-winded and repetitive cry of the baby hardly made itself heard outside the Rose Room. The midwife no longer squatted in the hall and smoked. She was busy. She washed, she cleaned, she watched and ruled. After nine days she was paid and dismissed. The sisters told Anand and Savi, “You have a new sister. Somebody else to get a share of your father’s property.” And they told Anand, “You are lucky. You are still the only boy. But wait. One day you will get a brother, and he will cut off your nose.”
Mr. Biswas mixed and drank Sanatogen, drank tablespoonfuls of Ferrol and, in the evenings, glasses of Ovaltine. One day he remembered his fingernails. When he looked he saw they were whole, unbitten. There were still the periods of darkness, the spasms of panic; but now he knew they were not real and because he knew this he overcame them. He remained in the Blue Room, feeling secure to be only a part of Hanuman House, an organism that possessed a life, strength and power to comfort which was quite separate from the individuals who composed it.
“Savi, what you drinking?”
“Ovaltine.”
“Anand, what you drinking?”
“Ovaltine.”
“It nice?”
“Very nice.”
“Ma, Savi and Anand drinking Ovaltine. Their pappa give it to them.”
“Well, let me tell you, eh, boy, your father is not a millionaire to give you Ovaltine. You hear?”
And the next day:
“Jai, what you drinking?”
“Ovaltine, like you.”
“Vidiadhar, you drinking Ovaltine too?”
“No. We drinking Milo. We like it better.”
Mr. Biswas came out from the Blue Room to the drawing-room with the thronelike chairs and the statuary. He felt safe and even a little adventurous. He went through to the wooden house. In the verandah Hari was reading. Instinctively Mr. Biswas took a step back. Then he remembered there was no need. The two men looked at one another and looked away again.
Leaning on the verandah half-wall, with his back to Hari, Mr. Biswas thought about Hari’s position in the family. Hari spent all his free time reading. He used this reading for nothing; he disliked disputation of any sort. No one was able to check his knowledge of Sanskrit and his scholarship had to be taken on trust. Yet he was respected inside the family and outside it. How did Hari get to that position? Mr. Biswas wondered. Where did he start?
What would happen if he, Mr. Biswas, made a sudden appearance in the hall in dhoti and beads and sacred thread? Let his top-knot grow again, as it had grown at Pundit Jairam’s. Would Hanuman House care to have two sick scholars? But he couldn’t see himself as a holy man for long. Sooner or later someone was bound to surprise him, in dhoti, top-knot, sacred thread and caste-marks, reading The Manxman or The Atom.
Speculating about this, he reviewed his situation. He was the father of four children, and his position was as it had been when he was seventeen, unmarried and ignorant of the Tulsis. He had no vocation, no reliable means of earning a living. The job at Green Vale was over; he could not rest in the Blue Room forever; soon he would have to make a decision. Yet he felt no anxiety. The second to second agony and despair of those days at Green Vale had given him an experience of unhappiness against which everything had now to be measured. He was more fortunate than most people. His children would never starve; they would always be sheltered and clothed. It didn’t matter if he were at Green Vale or Arwacas, if he were alive or dead.