As he found at Pagotes.
“How old you is, boy?” Lai, the teacher at the Canadian Mission school, asked, his small hairy hands fussing with the cylindrical ruler on his roll-book.
Mr. Biswas shrugged and shifted from one bare foot to the other.
“How you people want to get on, eh?” Lai had been converted to Presbyterianism from a low Hindu caste and held all unconverted Hindus in contempt. As part of this contempt he spoke to them in broken English. “Tomorrow I want you to bring your buth certificate. You hear?”
“Buth suttificate?” Bipti echoed the English words. “I don’t have any.”
“Don’t have any, eh?” Lai said the next day. “You people don’t even know how to born, it look like.”
But they agreed on a plausible date, Lai completed his roll-book record, and Bipti went to consult Tara.
Tara took Bipti to a solicitor whose office was a tiny wooden shed standing lopsided on eight unfashioned logs. The distemper on its walls had turned to dust. A sign, obviously painted by the man himself, said that F. Z. Ghany was a solicitor, conveyancer and a commissioner of oaths. He didn’t look like all that, sitting on a broken kitchen chair at the door of his shed, bending forward, picking his teeth with a matchstick, his tie hanging perpendicular. Large dusty books were piled on the dusty floor, and on the kitchen table at his back there was a sheet of green blotting-paper, also dusty, on which there was a highly decorated metal contraption which looked like a toy version of the merry-go-round Mr. Biswas had seen in the playground at St. Joseph on the way to Pagotes. From this toy merry-go-round hung two rubber stamps, and directly below them there was a purple-stained tin. F. Z. Ghany carried the rest of his office equipment in his shirt pocket; it was stiff with pens, pencils, sheets of paper and envelopes. He needed to be able to carry his equipment about; he opened the Pagotes office only on market day, Wednesday; he had other offices, open on other market days, at Tunapuna, Arima, St. Joseph and Tacarigua. “Just give me three or four dog-case or cuss-case every day,” he used to say, “and I all right, you hear.”
Seeing the group of three walking Indians file across the plank over the gutter, F. Z. Ghany got up, spat out the matchstick and greeted them with good-humoured scorn. “Maharajin, maharajin, and little boy.” He made most of his money from Hindus but, as a Muslim, distrusted them.
They climbed the two steps into his office. It became full. Ghany liked it that way; it attracted customers. He took the chair behind the table, sat on it, and left his clients standing.
Tara began to explain about Mr. Biswas. She grew prolix, encouraged by the quizzical look on Ghany’s heavy dissipated face.
During one of Tara’s pauses Bipti said, “Buth suttificate.”
“Oh!” Ghany said, his manner changing. “Certificate of buth.” It was a familiar problem. He looked legal and said, “Affidavit. When did the buth take place?”
Bipti told Tara in Hindi, “I can’t really say. But Pundit Sitaram should know. He cast Mohun’s horoscope the day after he was born.”
“I don’t know what you see in that man, Bipti. He doesn’t know anything.”
Ghany could follow their conversation. He disliked the way Indian women had of using Hindi as a secret language in public places, and asked impatiently, “Date of buth?”
“Eighth of June,” Bipti said to Tara. “It must be that.”
“All right,” Ghany said. “Eighth of June. Who to tell you no?” Smiling, he put a hand to the drawer of his table and pulled it this way and that before it came out. He took out a sheet of foolscap, tore it in half, put back one half into the drawer, pushed the drawer this way and that to close it, put the half-sheet on the dusty blotting-paper, stamped his name on it and prepared to write. “Name of boy?”
“Mohun,” Tara said.
Mr. Biswas became shy. He passed his tongue above his upper lip and tried to make it touch the knobby tip of his nose.
“Surname?” Ghany asked.
“Biswas,” Tara said.
“Nice Hindu name.” He asked more questions, and wrote. When he was finished, Bipti made her mark and Tara, with great deliberation and much dancing of the pen above the paper, signed her name. F. Z. Ghany struggled with the drawer once more, took out the other half-sheet, stamped his name on it, wrote, and then had everybody sign again.
Mr. Biswas was now leaning forward against one of the dusty walls, his feet pushed far back. He was spitting carefully, trying to let his spittle hang down to the floor without breaking.
F. Z. Ghany hung up his name stamp and took down the date stamp. He turned some ratchets, banged hard on the almost dry purple pad and banged hard on the paper. Two lengths of rubber fell apart. “Blasted thing bust,” he said, and examined it without annoyance. He explained, “You could print the year all right, because you move that only once a year. But the dates and the months, man, you spinning them round all the time.” He took up the length of rubber and looked at them thoughtfully. “Here, give them to the boy. Play with them.” He wrote the date with one of his pens and said, “All right, leave everything to me now. Expensive business, affidavits. Stamps and thing, you know. Ten dollars in all.”
Bipti fumbled with the knot at the end of her veil and Tara paid.
“Any more children without certificate of buth?”
“Three,” Bipti said.
“Bring them,” Ghany said. “Bring all of them. Any market day. Next week? Is better to straighten these things right away, you know.”
In this way official notice was taken of Mr. Biswas’s existence, and he entered the new world.
Ought oughts are ought,
Ought twos are ought.
The chanting of the children pleased Lai. He believed in thoroughness, discipline and what he delighted to call stick-to-it-iveness, virtues he felt unconverted Hindus particularly lacked.
One twos are two,
Two twos are four.
“Stop!” Lai cried, waving his tamarind rod. “Biswas, ought twos are how much?”
“Two.”
“Come up here. You, Ramguli, ought twos are how much?”
“Ought.”
“Come up. That boy with a shirt that looks like one of his mother bodice. How much?”
“Four.”
“Come up.” He held the rod at both ends and bent it back and forth quickly. The sleeves of his jacket fell down past dirty cuffs and thin wrists black with hair. The jacket was brown but had turned saffron where it had been soaked by Lai’s sweat. For all the time he went to school, Mr. Biswas never saw Lai wearing any other jacket.
“Ramguli, go back to your desk. All right, the two of you. All-you decide now how much ought twos is?”
“Ought,” they whimpered together.
“Yes, ought twos are ought. You did tell me two.” He caught hold of Mr. Biswas, pulled his trousers tight across his bottom, and began to apply the tamarind rod, saying as he beat, “Ought twos are ought. Ought oughts are ought. One twos are two.”
Mr. Biswas, released, went crying back to his desk.
“And now you. Before we talk about anything, tell me where you get that bodice from?”
With its flaming red colour and leg-of-mutton sleeves it was obviously a bodice and had, without comment, been recognized as such by the boys, most of whom wore garments not originally designed for them.
“Where you get it from?”
“My sister-in-law.”
“And you thank her?”