House for Mister Biswas Part 29

At the road junction Mr Biswas had still not decided where to go. Most of the traffic moved north: tarpaulin-covered lorries, taxis, buses. The buses slowed down to pa.s.s Mr Biswas, and the conductors, hanging out from the footboard, shouted to him to come aboard. North lay Ajodha and Tara, and his mother. South lay his brothers. None of them could refuse to take him in. But to none of them did he want to go: it was too easy to picture himself among them. Then he remembered that north, too, lay Port of Spain and Ramchand, his brother-in-law. And it was while he was trying to decide whether Ramchand's invitation could be considered genuine that a bus, its engine partially unbonneted, its capless radiator steaming, came to a stop inches away with a squeal of brakes and a racking of its tin and wood body, and the conductor, a young man, almost a boy, bent down and seized Mr Biswas's cardboard suitcase, saying imperiously, impatiently, 'Port of Spain, man, Port of Spain'.

As a conductor of Ajodha's buses Mr Biswas had seized the suitcases of many wayfarers, and he knew that in these circ.u.mstances a conductor had to be aggressive to combat any possible annoyance. But now, finding himself suddenly separated from his suitcase and hearing the impatience in the conductor's voice, he was cowed, and nodded. 'Up, up, man,' the conductor said, and Mr Biswas climbed into the vehicle while the conductor stowed away his suitcase.

Whenever the bus stopped to release a pa.s.senger or kidnap another, Mr Biswas wondered whether it was too late to get off and make his way south. But the decision had been made, and he was without energy to go back on it; besides, he could get at his suitcase only with the cooperation of the conductor. He fixed his eyes on a house, as small and as neat as a doll's house, on the distant hills of the Northern Range; and as the bus moved north, he allowed himself to be puzzled that the house didn't grow any bigger, and to wonder, as a child might, whether the bus would eventually come to that house.

It was the crop season. In the sugarcane fields, already in parts laid low, cutters and loaders were at work, knee-deep in trash. Along the tracks between fields mudstained, grey-black buffaloes languidly pulled carts carrying high, bristling loads of sugarcane. But soon the land changed and the air was less sticky. Sugarcane gave way to rice-fields, the muddy colour of their water lost in the flawless reflections of the blue sky; there were more trees; and instead of mud huts there were wooden houses, small and old, but finished, painted and jalousied, with fretwork, frequently broken, along the eaves, above doors and windows and around fern-smothered verandahs. The plain fell behind, the mountains grew nearer; but the doll's house remained as small as ever and when the bus turned into the Eastern Main Road Mr Biswas lost sight of it. The road was strung with many wires and looked important; the bus moved westwards through thickening traffic and increasing noise, past one huddled red and ochre settlement after another, until the hills rose directly from the road on the right, and from the left came a smell of swamp and sea, which presently appeared, level, grey and hazy, and they were in Port of Spain, where the stale salt smell of the sea mixed with the sharp sweet smells of cocoa and sugar from the warehouses.

He had feared the moment of arrival and wished that the bus would go on and never stop, but when he got down into the yard next to the railway station his uncertainty at once fell away, and he felt free and excited. It was a day of freedom such as he had had only once before, when one of Ajodha's relations had died and the rumshop had been closed and everybody had gone away. He drank a coconut from a cart in Marine Square. How wonderful to be able to do that in the middle of the morning! He walked on crowded pavements beside the slow, continuous motor traffic, noted the size and number of the stores and cafes and restaurants, the trams, the high standard of the shop signs, the huge cinemas, closed after the pleasures of last night (which he had spent dully at Arwacas), but with posters, still wet with paste, promising fresh gaieties for that afternoon and evening. He comprehended the city whole; he did not isolate the individual, see the man behind the desk or counter, behind the pushcart or the steering-wheel of the bus; he saw only the activity, felt the call to the senses, and knew that below it all there was an excitement, which was hidden, but waiting to be grasped.

It wasn't until four, when stores and offices closed and the cinemas opened, that he thought of making his way to the address Ramchand had given. This was in the Woodbrook area and Mr Biswas, enchanted by the name, was disappointed to find an unfenced lot with two old unpainted wooden houses and many makeshift sheds. It was too late to turn back, to make another decision, another journey; and after making inquiries of a Negro woman who was fanning a coal-pot in one shed, he picked his way past bleaching stones, a slimy open gutter and a low open gutter and a low clothes-wire, to the back, where he saw Dehuti fanning a coal-pot in another shed, one wall of which was the corrugated iron fence of the sewer trace.

His disappointment was matched by their surprise when, after the exclamations of greeting, he made it clear that he intended to spend some time with them. But when he announced that he had left Shama, they were welcoming again, their solicitude touched not only with excitement but also with pleasure that in a time of trouble he had come to them.

'You stay here and rest as long as you want,' Ramchand said. 'Look, you have a gramophone. You just stay here and play music to yourself.'

And Dehuti even dropped the sullenness with which she always greeted Mr Biswas, a sullenness which, no longer defensive, held no meaning and was only an att.i.tude fixed by habit, simplifying relationships.

Presently Dehuti's younger son came back from school and Dehuti said sternly, 'Take out your books and let me hear what you learn at school today.'

The boy didn't hesitate. He took out Captain Cutteridge's Reader, Reader, Standard Four, and read an account of an escape from a German prison camp in 1917. Standard Four, and read an account of an escape from a German prison camp in 1917.

Mr Biswas congratulated the boy, Dehuti and Ramchand.

'He is a good little reader,' Ramchand said.

'And what is the meaning of "distribute"?' Dehuti asked, still stern.

'Share out,' the boy said.

'I didn't know that at his age,' Mr Biswas said to Ramchand.

'And bring out your copy book and show me what you do in arithmetic today.'

The boy took the book out to her and Dehuti said, 'It look pa.s.sable. But I don't know anything about arithmetic. Take it to your uncle, let him see.'

Mr Biswas didn't know anything about arithmetic either, but he saw the approving red ticks and again congratulated the boy, Dehuti and Ramchand.

'This education is a h.e.l.luva thing,' Ramchand said. 'Any little child could pick up. And yet the blasted thing does turn out so d.a.m.n important later on.'

Dehuti and Ramchand lived in two rooms. One of these Mr Biswas shared with the boy. And though from the outside the unpainted house with its rusting roof and weatherbeaten, broken boards looked about to fall down, the wood inside had kept some of its colour, and the rooms were clean and well kept. The furniture, including the hatrack with the diamond shaped gla.s.s, was brilliantly polished. The area between the kitchen shed and the back room was roofed and partly walled; so that the open yard could be forgotten, and there was room and even privacy.

But at night gruff, intimate whispers came through the part.i.tions, reminding Mr Biswas that he lived in a crowded city. The other tenants were all Negroes. Mr Biswas had never lived close to people of this race before, and their proximity added to the strangeness, the adventure of being in the city. They differed from country Negroes in accent, dress and manner. Their food had strange meaty smells, and their lives appeared less organized. Women ruled men. Children were disregarded and fed, it seemed, at random; punishments were frequent and brutal, without any of the ritual that accompanied floggings at Hanuman House. Yet the children all had fine physiques, disfigured only by projecting navels, which were invariably uncovered; for the city children wore trousers and exposed their tops, unlike country children, who wore vests and exposed their bottoms. And unlike country children, who were timid, the city children were half beggars, half bullies.

The organization of the city fascinated Mr Biswas: the street lamps going on at the same time, the streets swept in the middle of the night, the rubbish collected by the scavenging carts early in the morning; the furtive, macabre sounds of the nightsoil removers; the newsboys, really men; the bread van, the milk that came, not from cows, but in rum bottles stopped with brown paper. Mr Biswas was impressed when Dehuti and Ramchand spoke proprietorially of streets and shops, talking with the ease of people who knew their way about the baffling city. Even about Ramchand's going out to work every morning there was something knowing, brave and enviable.

And with Mr Biswas Ramchand was indeed the knowledgeable townsman. He took Mr Biswas to the Botanical Gardens and the Rock Gardens and Government House. They went up Chancellor Hill and looked down at the ships in the harbour. For Mr Biswas this was a moment of deep romance. He had seen the sea, but didn't know that Port of Spain was really a port, at which ocean liners called from all parts of the world.

Mr Biswas was amused by Ramchand's city manners and allowed himself to be patronized by him. Ramchand had in any case always managed to do that, even when he had just stopped being a yard boy at Tara's. Ostracized from the community into which he was born, he had shown the futility of its sanctions. He had simply gone outside it. He had acquired a loudness and heartiness which was alien and which he did not always carry off easily. He spoke English most of the time, but with a rural Indian accent which made his attempts to keep up with the ever-changing Port of Spain slang absurd. And Mr Biswas suffered when, as sometimes happened, Ramchand was rebuffed; when, for instance, partly to impress Mr Biswas, he overdid the heartiness in his relations with the Negroes in the yard and was met with cold surprise.

At the end of a fortnight Ramchand said, 'Don't worry about getting a job yet. You suffering from brain f.a.g, and you got to have lots of rest.'

He spoke without irony, but Mr Biswas, now practically without money, had begun to feel burdened by his freedom. He was no longer content to walk about the city. He wanted to be part of it, to be one of those who stood at the black and yellow bus-stops in the morning, one of those he saw behind the windows of offices, one of those to whom the evenings and week-ends brought relaxation. He thought of taking up sign-writing again. But how was he to go about it? Could he simply put up a sign in front of the house and wait?

Ramchand said, 'Why you don't try to get a job in the Mad House? Good pay, free uniform, and a d.a.m.n good canteen. Everything there five and six cents cheaper. Ask Dehuti.'

'Yes,' she said, 'Everything there much cheaper.'

Mr Biswas saw himself in the uniform, walking alone through long rooms of howling maniacs.

'Well, why the h.e.l.l not?' he said. 'Is something to do.'

Ramchand looked slightly offended. He mentioned difficulties; and though he had contacts and influence, he was not sure that it would create a good impression if he made use of them. 'That is the only thing that keeping me back,' he said. 'The impression.' impression.'

Then one day Mr Biswas was surprised by the spasms of fear. They were weak and intermittent, but they persisted, and reminded him to look at his hands. The nails were all bitten down.

His freedom was over.

And as a last act of this freedom he decided to go to the specialist the Arwacas doctor had recommended. The specialist's office was at the northern end of St Vincent Street, not far from the Savannah. House and grounds suggested whiteness and order. The fence pillars were freshly whitewashed; the bra.s.s plaque glittered; the lawn was trimmed; not a piece of earth was out of place on the flower-beds; and on the drive the light-grey gravel, free from impurities, reflected the sunlight.

He went through a white-walled verandah and found himself in a high white room. A Chinese receptionist in a stiff white uniform sat at a desk on which calendar, diary, inkwells, ledgers and lamp were neatly disposed. A fan whirred in one corner. A number of people reclined on low luxurious chairs, reading magazines or talking in whispers. They didn't look sick: there was not a bandage or an oiled face among them, no smell of bay rum or ammonia. This was far removed from Mrs Tulsi's Rose Room; and it was hard to believe that in the same city Ramchand and Dehuti lived in two rooms of a crumbling house. Mr Biswas began to feel that he had come on false pretences; there was nothing wrong with him.

'You have an appointment?' The receptionist spoke with the nasal, elided Chinese highness, and Mr Biswas detected hostility in her manner.

Fish-face, he commented mentally. he commented mentally.

The receptionist started.

Mr Biswas realized with horror that he had whispered the word; he had not lost the Green Vale habit of speaking his thoughts aloud. 'Appointment?' he said. 'I have a letter.' He took out the small brown envelope which the Arwacas doctor had given him. It was creased, dirty, fuzzy along the edges, the corners curled.

The receptionist deftly slit the envelope open with a tortoisesh.e.l.l knife. As she read the letter Mr Biswas felt exposed, and more of a fraud than ever. The blunder he had made worried him. He determined to be cautious. He clenched his teeth and tried to imagine whether 'fish-face', heard in a whisper, couldn't be mistaken for something quite different, something even complimentary.

Fish-face.

The receptionist looked up. Mr Biswas smiled.

'You want to make an appointment, or you prefer to wait?' The receptionist was cold.

Mr Biswas decided to wait. He sat on a sofa, sank right into it, fell back and sank further, his knees rising high. He didn't know what to do with his eyes. It was too late to get a magazine. He counted the people in the room. Eight. He had a long time to wait. They probably all had appointments; they were all correctly ill.

A short limping man came in noisily, spoke loudly to the receptionist, stumped over to the sofa, sank into it, breathing hard, and stretched out a short straight leg.

At least there was something wrong with him. him. Mr Biswas eyed the leg and wondered how the man was going to get up again. Mr Biswas eyed the leg and wondered how the man was going to get up again.

The surgery door opened, a man was heard but not seen, a woman came out, and someone else went in.

A soldier of the legion lay dying in Algiers.

Mr Biswas felt the lame man's eyes on him.

He thought about money. He had three dollars. A country doctor charged a dollar; but illness was clearly more expensive in this room.

The lame man breathed heavily.

Money was too worrying to think about, Bell's Standard Elocutionist Bell's Standard Elocutionist too dangerous. His mind wandered and settled on too dangerous. His mind wandered and settled on Tom Sawyer Tom Sawyer and and Huckleberry Finn, Huckleberry Finn, which he had read at Ramchand's. He smiled at the memory of Huckleberry Finn, whose trousers 'bagged low and contained nothing', n.i.g.g.e.r Jim who had seen ghosts and told stories. which he had read at Ramchand's. He smiled at the memory of Huckleberry Finn, whose trousers 'bagged low and contained nothing', n.i.g.g.e.r Jim who had seen ghosts and told stories.

He chuckled.

When he looked up he intercepted an exchange of glances between the receptionist and the lame man. He would have left right then, but he was too deeply wedged in his chair; if he attempted to rise he would create a disturbance and draw attention to himself. He became aware of his clothes: the washed-out khaki trousers with the frayed turn-ups, the washed-out blue shirt with the cuffs given one awkward fold backwards (no shirt size fitted him absolutely: collars were too tight or sleeves too long), the little brown hat resting in the valley formed by his thighs and belly. And he had only three dollars.

You know, I am not a sick man at all.

The lame man cleared his throat noisily, very noisily for a small man, and agitated his stiff leg.

Mr Biswas watched it.

Suddenly he had levered himself up from the sofa, rocking the lame man violently, and was walking towards the receptionist. Concentrating on his English, he said, 'I have changed my mind. I am feeling much better, thank you.' And, putting on his hat, he went towards the door.

'What about your letter?' the receptionist asked, surprised into her Trinidad accent.

'Keep it,' Mr Biswas said. 'File it. Burn it. Sell it.'

He went through the tiled verandah, crossed the black afternoon shadow on the drive, emerged into the sun, noted a bed of suffering zinnias as he moved briskly down the dazzling gravel to St Vincent Street. The wind from the Savannah was like a blessing. His mind was hot. And now he saw the city as made up of individuals, each of whom had his place in it. The large buildings around the Savannah were white and blank and silent in the heat.

He came to the War Memorial Park, sat on a bench in the shade of a tree and studied the statue of a belligerent soldier. Shadows were black and well-defined and encouraged repose and languor. His stomach was hurting.

His freedom was over, and it had been false. The past could not be ignored; it was never counterfeit; he carried it within himself. If there was a place for him, it was one that had already been hollowed out by time, by everything he had lived through, however imperfect, makeshift and cheating.

He welcomed the stomach pains. They had not occurred for months and it seemed to him that they marked the return of the wholeness of his mind, the restoration of the world; they indicated how far he had lifted himself from the abyss of the past months, and reminded him of the anguish against which everything now had to be measured.

Reluctantly, for it was a pleasure just to sit and let the wind play about his face and neck and down his shirt, he left the park and walked south, away from the Savannah. The quiet, withdrawn houses disappeared; pavements grew narrower and higher and more crowded; there were shops and cafes and buses, cars, trams and bicycles, horns and bells and shouts. He crossed Park Street and continued towards the sea. In the distance, above the roofs at the end of the street, he saw the tops of masts of sloops and schooners at St Vincent Jetty.

He pa.s.sed the courts and came to the Red House, bulky in red sandstone. Part of the asphalt forecourt was marked off in white and lettered RESERVED FOR JUDGES RESERVED FOR JUDGES. He went up the central steps and found himself under a high dome. He saw many green notice-boards and an unplaying fountain. The basin of the fountain was wet, and held many dead leaves and empty cigarette packets.

It was busy under the dome, with messengers in khaki uniforms and clerks in well-ironed clothes carrying buff or green folders, and with people continually pa.s.sing between St Vincent Street and Woodford Square, where the professional beggars lounged about the bandstand and on benches, so confident of their appearance that they disdained to beg, spending most of their time patching the rags they wore like a uniform, garments thick and s.h.a.ggy and richly variegated, small rag sewn on to small rag, labours of love. Even about the beggars there was an air of establishment. Woodford Square, cool under the trees and attractively dappled with light, was theirs; they cooked, ate and slept there, disturbed only by occasional political gatherings. They worried no one, and since they all had excellent physiques, and one or two were reputed to be millionaires, no one worried them.

On the green notice-boards, which also served to screen the offices on either side, there were government notices. Mr Biswas was reading these when he heard someone call out. He turned to see an elderly Negro, respectably dressed, waving to him with a one-armed pair of spectacles.

'You want a certificate?' The Negro's lips snapped ferociously shut between words.

'Certificate?'

'Birth, marriage, death.' The Negro adjusted his mutilated spectacles low over his nose and from a shirt pocket stuffed with paper and pencils he pulled out a sheet of paper and let his pencil circle impatiently above it.

'I don't want any certificate.'

The pencil stopped playing. 'I can't understand it.' The Negro put away paper and pencil, sat down on a long, shiny bench, took off his spectacles, thrust the scratched, white end of the remaining arm into his mouth, and shook his legs. 'n.o.body wanting certificates these days. If you ask me, the trouble is that nowadays it just have too d.a.m.n many searchers. When I sit down on this bench in 1919 I was the onliest searcher. Today every Tom, d.i.c.k or Harry running up and down this place' he jerked his chin towards the fountain 'calling themself searchers.' His lips snapped ferociously. 'You sure you don't want a certificate? You never know when these things could be useful. I get lots of certificates for Indians, you know. In fact, I prefer getting certificates for Indians. And I could get it for you this afternoon self. I know one of the clerks inside there.' He waved to the office at his back and Mr Biswas saw a high, polished brown counter and pale green walls, lit, on this bright afternoon, by electric light.

'h.e.l.luva job,' the Negro said. 'No Christmas and Easter for me, you know. At times like that n.o.body want any certificate at all. And every day, whether I search for ten or two or no certificates, that d.a.m.n clerk inside there got to get his twenty cigarettes.'

Mr Biswas began to move away.

'Still, if you know anybody who want a certificate birth, death, marriage, marriage in extremis in extremis send them to me. I come here every morning at eight o'clock sharp. The name is Pastor.' send them to me. I come here every morning at eight o'clock sharp. The name is Pastor.'

Mr Biswas left Pastor, overwhelmed by the thought that in the office behind the green notice-board records were kept of every birth and death. And they had nearly missed him! He went down the steps into St Vincent Street and continued south towards the masts. Even Pastor, for all his grumbling, had found his place. What had driven him on a day in 1919 to take a seat outside the Registrar-General's Department and wait for illiterates wanting certificates?

He had thought himself back into the mood he had known at Green Vale, when he couldn't bear to look at the newspapers on the wall. And now he perceived that the starts of apprehension he felt at the sight of every person in the street did not come from fear at all; only from regret, envy, despair.

And, thinking of the newspapers on the barrackroom wall, he was confronted with the newspaper offices: the Guardian, Guardian, the the Gazette, Gazette, the the Mirror, Mirror, the the Sentinel, Sentinel, facing each other across the street. Machinery rattled like distant trains; through open windows came the warm smell of oil, ink and paper. The facing each other across the street. Machinery rattled like distant trains; through open windows came the warm smell of oil, ink and paper. The Sentinel Sentinel was the paper for which Misir, the Aryan, was a cent-a-line country correspondent. All the stories Mr Biswas had got by heart from the newspapers in the barrackroom returned to him. was the paper for which Misir, the Aryan, was a cent-a-line country correspondent. All the stories Mr Biswas had got by heart from the newspapers in the barrackroom returned to him. Amazing scenes were witnessed yesterday when...Pa.s.sers-by stopped and stared yesterday when... Amazing scenes were witnessed yesterday when...Pa.s.sers-by stopped and stared yesterday when...

He turned down a lane, pushed open a door on the right, and then another. The noise of machinery was louder. An important, urgent noise, but it did not intimidate him. He said to the man behind the high caged desk, 'I want to see the editor.'

Amazing scenes were witnessed in St Vincent Street yesterday when Mohun Biswas, 31...

'You got an appointment?'

...a.s.saulted a receptionist.

'No,' Mr Biswas said irritably.

In an interview with our reporter...In an interview with our special correspondent late last night Mr Biswas said...

'The editor is busy. You better go and see Mr Woodward.'

'You just tell the editor I come all the way from the country to see him.'

Amazing scenes were witnessed in St Vincent Street yesterday when Biswas, 31, unemployed, of no fixed address, a.s.saulted a receptionist at the offices of the TRINIDAD SENTINEL. TRINIDAD SENTINEL. People ducked behind desks as Biswas, father of four, walked into the building with guns blazing, shot the editor and four reporters dead, and then set fire to the building. Pa.s.sers-by stopped and stared as the flames rose high, fanned by a strong breeze. Several tons of paper were destroyed and the building itself gutted. In an exclusive interview with our special correspondent late last night Mr Biswas said... People ducked behind desks as Biswas, father of four, walked into the building with guns blazing, shot the editor and four reporters dead, and then set fire to the building. Pa.s.sers-by stopped and stared as the flames rose high, fanned by a strong breeze. Several tons of paper were destroyed and the building itself gutted. In an exclusive interview with our special correspondent late last night Mr Biswas said...

'This way,' the receptionist said, climbing down from his desk, and led Mr Biswas into a large room which belied the urgent sounds of typewriters and machinery. Many typewriters were idle, many desks untenanted. A group of men in shirtsleeves stood around a green water-cooler in one corner; other groups of two or three were seated on desks; one man was spinning a swivel-chair with his foot. There was a row of frosted-gla.s.s cubicles along one wall, and the receptionist, going ahead of Mr Biswas, knocked on one of these, pushed the door open, allowed Mr Biswas to enter, and closed the door.

A small fat man, pink and oiled from the heat, half rose from behind a desk littered with paper. Slabs of lead, edged with type, served as paperweights. And Mr Biswas was thrilled to see the proof of an article, headlined and displayed. It was a glimpse of a secret; isolated on the large white sheet, the article had an eminence tomorrow's readers would never see. Mr Biswas's excitement increased. And he liked the man he saw before him.

'And what is your story?' the editor asked, sitting down.

'I don't have a story. I want a job.'

Mr Biswas saw almost with delight that he had embarra.s.sed the editor; and he pitied him for not having the decision to throw him out. The editor went pinker and looked down at the proof. He was unhappy in the heat and seemed to be melting. His cheeks flowed into his neck; his neck bulged over his collar; his round shoulders drooped; his belly hung over his waistband; and he was damp all over. 'Yes, yes,' he said. 'Have you worked on a paper before?'

Mr Biswas thought about the articles he had promised to write, but hadn't, for Misir's paper, which had never appeared. 'Once or twice,' he said.

The editor looked at the door, as though for help. 'Do you mean once? Or do you mean twice?'

'I have read a lot.' Mr Biswas said, getting out of dangerous ground.

The editor played with a slab of lead.

'Hall Caine, Marie Corelli, Jacob Boehme, Mark Twain. Hall Caine, Mark Twain,' Mr Biswas repeated. 'Samuel Smiles.'

The editor looked up.