House for Mister Biswas Part 37

Another car was bought, another Ford V-8, but a sports model with a d.i.c.ky seat. And into this, miraculously, all the children were squeezed, standing in the d.i.c.ky seat like stemmed flowers in a vase. A second trip was made for the oranges. While they were in the country the children could pretend to be on the top of a stage-coach, but when they got to Port of Spain they attracted derisive attention and missed the shelter of the saloon.

So for the children Shorthills became a nightmare. Daylight was nearly always gone when they returned, and there was little to return to. The food grew rougher and rougher and was eaten more casually, in the kitchen itself, where the brick floor had been topped with mud, or in the covered s.p.a.ce between the kitchen and the house. No child knew from one night to the next where he was going to sleep; beds were made anywhere and at any time. On Sat.u.r.days the children pulled up weeds; on Sundays they collected oranges or other fruit.

At week-ends the children submitted to the laws of the family. But during the week, when they spent so much time away from the house, they formed a community of their own, outside family laws. No one ruled; there were only the weak and the strong. Affection between brother and sister was despised. No alliance was stable. Only enmities were lasting, and the hot afternoon walks which Mrs Tulsi had seen lightened by song were often broken by bitter fights of pure hate.

Mr Biswas scarcely saw his children, and they became separated from one another. Anand felt disgraced by his sisters. They were all among the weak. Myna had developed a bad bladder; every journey with her involved shame. Sometimes the car stopped, sometimes it didn't. Kamla walked in her sleep; but this was a novelty and was thought endearing, especially in one so young. Savi was unnoticed until she had been chosen to sing at a school concert organized by the distributors of a face lotion called Limacol. She had never used Limacol but agreed with the master of ceremonies that the slogan, 'The Freshness of a Breeze in a Bottle', was just. Then in a high voice and with many quaverings she sang 'Some Sunday Morning' and was given a miniature Limacol bottle. The Tulsi sisters were shocked. They spoke of Savi almost as of a public entertainer, and lectured their children. Thereafter Savi was mocked and ridiculed. She drew maps with minutely indented coastlines, on the basis of her observations at beaches. She had attempted to propagate this method and had some disciples; but now one of Govind's daughters said that these indentations were as stupid and conceited as the quavers with which Savi had sung 'Some Sunday Morning', and Savi's disciples recanted. When one evening she was put off the bus because she had lost her fare, and had to walk all the way to Shorthills, arriving after nightfall, ill with fright and fatigue, and having to be ma.s.saged by Shama, it was felt that justice had been done. The news of the ma.s.sage in the room on the upper floor, Savi's tears, Mr Biswas's rage when he returned, quickly went round the house. Kamla, the petted sleep-walker, was pumped for details, and Kamla gave them, pleased to excite so much interest and amus.e.m.e.nt.

Though no one recognized his strength, Anand was among the strong. His satirical sense kept him aloof. At first this was only a pose, and imitation of his father. But satire led to contempt, and at Shorthills contempt, quick, deep, inclusive, became part of his nature. It led to inadequacies, to self-awareness and a lasting loneliness. But it made him una.s.sailable.

The children were ready to go to school one morning. Their lunches, wrapped in brown paper, were stuffed in their bags, and the car was waiting on the road. Quickly the children filled the car. They squashed in. They wedged themselves in. They screwed themselves in. A door was slammed. Anand, somewhere in the d.i.c.ky seat, heard a shriek and a groan. They came from Savi. The children, always breathless and bad-tempered when the car was stationary, shouted for the car to drive off. But someone cried, 'Quick! Open the door. Her hand.'

Anand laughed. No one joined him. The car emptied and he saw Savi sitting on the wet rabbit-gra.s.s of the verge. He could not bear to look at her hand.

Shama and Mr Biswas and some of the sisters came out to the road.

Myna said, 'Anand laugh, Pa.'

Mr Biswas slapped Anand hard.

And Mr Biswas decided that the time had come for him to withdraw from the Shorthills adventure. A return to Port of Spain was impossible. When he went for walks about the estate he kept his eye open for a suitable site.

Then, in quick succession, a number of deaths occurred.

Sharma, the son-in-law who collected oranges and drove the children to school, slipped off a mossy orange branch one rainy morning and broke his neck. He died almost at once. The children did not go to school that day. Sharma's widow tried to turn the holiday into a day of mourning. She sobbed and wailed and embraced everyone who went near her and asked for messages to be sent. Messages were sent and Sharma's relations turned up in the afternoon, nondescript people, not able even in their sorrow to drown their shyness. They put Sharma in a plain coffin and carried him to the graveyard, where the village had a.s.sembled to see the Hindu rites. Hari, in white jacket and beads, whined over the grave and sprinkled water over it with a mango leaf.

'Same thing he did to my house,' Mr Biswas said to Anand.

Sharma's widow shrieked, fainted, revived and tried to fling herself into the grave. The villagers watched with interest. Some of the knowing whispered about suttee. suttee.

W. C. Tuttle took over the job of driving the children to school. He placed all his children in the front seat next to himself and stuffed the others into the d.i.c.ky seat. He complained about the behaviour of the car and attributed all its faults to Sharma. Soon there was talk that W. C. Tuttle was using the car to transport his subsidiary plunder. He threatened not to drive the car if the talk didn't stop. There was no one else who could drive, apart from the surly Govind, and the talk stopped.

Despite W. C. Tuttle's abuse Sharma was speedily forgotten. And one hot Sunday afternoon, when nearly everyone was out of doors, Anand came upon Hari and his wife sitting alone in the diningroom, at one end of the vast cedar table that had been made by W. C. Tuttle's blacksmith. They made a sad couple. Hari's wife had tears in her eyes, and Hari's expressionless face was yellow. Anand, wishing to animate them and to show off a new accomplishment, offered to recite a poem to them. He had just mastered all the gestures ill.u.s.trated on the frontispiece of Bell's Standard Elocutionist. Bell's Standard Elocutionist. Hari and his wife looked moved; they smiled and asked Anand to recite. Hari and his wife looked moved; they smiled and asked Anand to recite.

Anand drew his feet together, bowed, and said, 'Bingen on the Rhine.' He joined his palms, rested his head on them, and recited: 'A soldier of the legion lay dying in Algiers.'

He was pleased to see that the smiles of Hari and his wife had been replaced by looks of the utmost solemnity.

'There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears.

'But a comrade stood beside him while his life blood ebbed away.'

Anand's voice quavered with emotion. Hari stared at the floor. His wife fixed her large eyes on a spot somewhere above Anand's shoulder. Anand had not expected such a full and immediate response. He increased the pathos in his voice, spoke more slowly and exaggerated his gestures. With both hands on his left breast he acted out the last words of the dying legionnaire.

'Tell her the last night of my life, for ere this moon be risen, 'My body will be out of pain, my soul be out of prison.'

Hari's wife burst out crying. Hari put his hand on hers. In this way they listened to the end; and Anand, after being given a six-cents piece, left them shaken.

Less than a week later Hari died. It was only then that Anand learned that Hari had known for some time that he was going to die soon. W. C. Tuttle, ferociously brahminical in an embroidered silk jacket, did the last rites. The house went into mourning for Hari; no one used sugar or salt. He was one of those men who, by a negativeness that amounts to charity, are thought of kindly by everyone. He had taken part in no disputes; his goodness, like his scholarship, was a family tradition. Everyone had been used to seeing Hari as the officiating pundit at religious ceremonies; everyone had been used to receiving the consecrated foods from him every morning. Hari, in dhoti, his forehead marked with sandalwood paste; Hari doing morning and evening puja; puja; Hari with his religious texts on the elaborately carved bookrest: these had been fixed sights in the Tulsi house. There had been no one to take Seth's place. There was no one to take Hari's. Hari with his religious texts on the elaborately carved bookrest: these had been fixed sights in the Tulsi house. There had been no one to take Seth's place. There was no one to take Hari's.

The duty of the puja puja was shared by many of the men and boys. Sometimes even Anand had to do it. Untutored in the prayers, he could only go through the motions of the ritual. He washed the images, placed fresh flowers on the shrine, diverted himself by trying to stick the stem of a flower in the crook of a G.o.d's arm or between the G.o.d's chin and chest. He put fresh sandalwood paste on the foreheads of the G.o.ds, on the smooth black and rose and yellow pebbles, and on his own forehead; lit the camphor, circled the flame about the shrine with his right hand while with his left he tried to ring the bell; blew at the conch sh.e.l.l, emitting a sound like that of a heavy wardrobe sc.r.a.ping on a wooden floor; then, his cheeks aching from the effort of blowing the conch sh.e.l.l, he hurried out to eat, first making the round of the house to offer the milk and tulsi leaves which, unbelievably, he had consecrated. When he dressed for school he brushed the caked sandalwood marks from his forehead. was shared by many of the men and boys. Sometimes even Anand had to do it. Untutored in the prayers, he could only go through the motions of the ritual. He washed the images, placed fresh flowers on the shrine, diverted himself by trying to stick the stem of a flower in the crook of a G.o.d's arm or between the G.o.d's chin and chest. He put fresh sandalwood paste on the foreheads of the G.o.ds, on the smooth black and rose and yellow pebbles, and on his own forehead; lit the camphor, circled the flame about the shrine with his right hand while with his left he tried to ring the bell; blew at the conch sh.e.l.l, emitting a sound like that of a heavy wardrobe sc.r.a.ping on a wooden floor; then, his cheeks aching from the effort of blowing the conch sh.e.l.l, he hurried out to eat, first making the round of the house to offer the milk and tulsi leaves which, unbelievably, he had consecrated. When he dressed for school he brushed the caked sandalwood marks from his forehead.

About a fortnight after Hari died news came from Arwacas of another death. Anand was working at the table in the room on the upper floor one evening, and Mr Biswas was reading in bed, when the door was thrown open and Savi ran in and said, 'Great Aunt Padma is dead!'

Mr Biswas closed his eyes and put his hand on his heart.

Anand screamed, 'Savi!'

She stood still, her eyes shining.

From downstairs a deep-drawn lamentation burst out and spread through the house, rising, falling, relayed from one sister to the other and back again, like the barking of dogs at night.

Sharma's death had done little more than upset routine. Hari's had saddened. Padma's terrified. She was Mrs Tulsi's sister: death had come closer to them all. She had known them all their lives; she had died away from them. The sisters said these things over and over as they embraced each other and embraced their children. The house shook with footsteps, shrieks, wails and the crying of frightened children. Mrs Tulsi was reported to be out of her mind; there were rumours that she too was dying. The children stuck pins into lamp wicks and murmured incantations to keep off fresh disaster. They heard Mrs Tulsi clamouring to be taken to the body of her sister. The cry was taken up by some of the sisters, and despite the hour and despite the quarrel with Seth, preparations were made and the lorry and sports car set off for Arwacas, and only men and children were left in the house.

The women returned the following afternoon, with more than their grief. For most of them it had been their first visit to Arwacas since the move, their first glimpse of Seth. They had not spoken to him, but the truce had enabled them to inspect the property which Seth, still vigorously pursuing the quarrel, had bought on the High Street not far from Hanuman House, a first step, they had been told, to his buying over of Hanuman House itself. It was a grocery and it was large enough and new enough and well enough stocked to alarm the sisters. But there could be no talk of Seth just then.

Padma appeared in many dreams that night. In the morning every dream was recounted and it was agreed that Padma's spirit had come to the house in Shorthills, which she had never visited while she lived. This was confirmed by the experience of one sister. In the middle of the night she had heard footsteps in the road. She recognized them as Padma's. There was silence as Padma had crossed the gully, footsteps again as Padma came up the sandy drive and up the concrete steps. Padma had then made a tour of the house, sat down on the back steps and wept. Many people saw Padma after that. Much attention was given to the story of one of the Tuttle children. In broad daylight he had seen a woman in white walking from the graveyard towards the house. He caught up with her and said, 'Aunt.' She turned. It wasn't an aunt. It was Padma; she was crying. Before he could speak she pulled her veil over her face, and he had run. When he looked back he saw no one.

Yet it was some time before the sisters realized that Padma appeared so often because she had a message. They then decided that anyone who saw her should ask what her message was. The messages varied. At first Padma merely asked after certain people and said she wished she were alive and with them; sometimes she also said she had died of a broken heart. But Padma's later messages, when whispered from sister to sister, from child to child, caused consternation. She said Seth had driven her to take poison; she said Seth had poisoned her; she said Seth had beaten her to death and bribed the doctor not to have a post mortem.

'Don't tell Mai,' the sisters said.

Anger overrode their grief. Every sister cursed Seth and vowed never to speak to him again.

Mrs Tulsi kept to the room with the closed windows. Sushila and Miss Blackie made brandy poultices for her eyelids, as before, and ma.s.saged her head with bay rum. But in the box-board temple at the end of the ruined, overgrown garden there was no Hari to say prayers for her and the house. Bells were rung and gongs were struck, but the luck, the virtue had gone out of the family.

And two of the sheep died. The ca.n.a.l at the side of the drive was at last completely silted over and the rain, which ran down the hillside in torrents after the briefest shower, flooded the flat land. The gully, no longer supported by the roots, began to be eaten away. The old man's beard was deprived of a footing; its thin tangled roots hung over the banks like a threadbare carpet. The gully bed, washed clean of black soil and the plants that grew on it, showed sandy, then pebbly, then rocky. It could no longer be forded by the car, and the car stayed on the road. The sisters were puzzled by the erosion, which seemed to them sudden; but they accepted it as part of their new fate.

Govind stopped looking after the cows. He bought a secondhand motorcar and operated it as a taxi in Port of Spain. W. C. Tuttle opened a quarry on the estate. His enterprise aroused envy. He had been the first to sell estate trees; now that there were few trees to sell he was selling the very earth. Mr Biswas continued to transport his plunder of oranges and avocado pears in the saddlebag of his bicycle.

For nearly all the sisters still with husbands Shorthills had become only an interlude. For the widows there was only Shorthills, and land they did not understand. It was not rice-land or caneland. But the widows united, and after much whispered discussion and ostentatious silence when other sisters, husbands or their children were near, the widows announced that they were going to start a chicken farm. To feed the chickens they needed maize. They cut down a hillside, burned it, and planted maize. Then they bought some chickens and set them loose. At first the chickens stayed close to the house and sometimes inside it, leaving their droppings everywhere. Presently snakes and mongooses attacked the chickens. Those that survived took to the bush, learned to fly high, and laid their eggs where the widows couldn't get them. In the meantime the maize was reaped and husked. The widows and their children ate much corn, boiled and roasted. The remainder was heaped in the verandah; there were no chickens to give it to. The corn turned from pale yellow to hard bright orange. Intermittently the widows and their children sh.e.l.led the cobs on graters. There was talk of selling maize flour; with the continuing shortage of wheat flour the prospects were considered bright. The widows invested in a mill: two circular slabs of toothed stone resting one on the other. After some time and much labour a little flour was ground, but there was not the demand for it that the widows had expected. The maize remained in the verandah; weevils and other insects burrowed neatly through the golden cobs.

Mrs Tulsi remained in her dark room, devising economies and issuing directives about food. She had heard that the Chinese, an ancient race, ate bamboo shoots. The estate abounded in bamboo; Mrs Tulsi ordered that bamboo shoots were to be eaten. But what were bamboo shoots? Were they the neat little green buds at the joints of the bamboo trunks? Were they the very young bamboo stalks? Were they the very young bamboo leaves? No one knew. Buds, stalks and leaves were collected, washed, chopped, boiled, and curried with tomatoes. No one could eat it. The leaves of the shining bush, a prolific shrub that grew even in sand, had been used in the house to make a mildly purgative brew that was not unpleasant and was reputedly good for colds, coughs and fevers. Mrs Tulsi directed that tea should no longer be bought: the shining bush was to be used instead. Already the widows and their children were making coffee and chocolate from the beans on the estate. Now maize flour was to be used instead of wheat flour, and coconut oil was to be made, not bought. No one had thought of growing vegetables and, since they too could not be bought, efforts were made to find vegetable subst.i.tutes: hard coconut, green papaw, green mango, green pomme cithere, pomme cithere, and almost any green fruit. But when Mrs Tulsi ordered the widows to experiment with birds' nests, which the Chinese ate, and the widows looked at the long stockinglike corn-bird nests of dry twigs hanging from the saman tree, there was such an outcry that the idea was dropped. and almost any green fruit. But when Mrs Tulsi ordered the widows to experiment with birds' nests, which the Chinese ate, and the widows looked at the long stockinglike corn-bird nests of dry twigs hanging from the saman tree, there was such an outcry that the idea was dropped.

It was W. C. Tuttle's duty, after taking the children to school, to bring back stale cakes for the cows. To prevent them being stolen, the cakes were heaped in the verandah next to the widows' dry corn. The widows' children, foraging among the stale cakes, came upon some that were still edible. The news was reported to Mrs Tulsi; thereafter stale cakes were shared between the cows and the widows. In this period of experiment many new foods were discovered. The children discovered that brown sugar in a dry pancake made a better lunch than curried bamboo, which could not be exchanged for anything at school. Someone hit upon the idea of dipping sardines in condensed milk, and someone else made the accidental discovery that condensed milk burned in the tin had an original and pleasing flavour.

Economy went further. Directing that no tins were to be thrown away, Mrs Tulsi summoned a tinker from Arwacas. For a fortnight he shared the household food, slept in the verandah, and made tin cups and tin plates; from a sardine tin he made a whistle. Ink was no longer bought; a violet liquid, faint but unwashable, was extracted from the small berries of the black sage. Mrs Tulsi, hearing that coconut husks were being thrown away, decided that mattresses and cushions were to be made, and possibly sold. The widows and their children soaked and pounded and stretched and shredded the coconut husks, washed the fibre and dried it. Then Mrs Tulsi sent for the mattress-maker from Arwacas. He came and made mattresses and cushions for a month.

Sisters with husbands fed their children secretly. And when it was learned that some of the widows' sons had killed a sheep, roasted it in the woods and eaten it, W. C. Tuttle expressed his outrage at this un-Hindu act, refused to eat any more from the common kitchen and made his wife cook separately. One of his sons reported that W. C. Tuttle's brahmin mouth had burst into sores the day the sheep was eaten. Mr Biswas, though unable to produce W. C. Tuttle's spectacular symptoms, made Shama cook separately as well. Touched by the prevailing obsession with food, Mr Biswas had been making experiments of his own. He had decided that the gospo, a mixture of the orange and the lemon, and the shadduck, which no one ate, had extraordinary virtues. There was one gospo tree on the estate, and the fruit had been used by the children to play cricket (using bats of bois-canot). bois-canot). Mr Biswas put an end to that. He drank a gla.s.s of the unpleasant gospo juice every morning and made his children do the same, until the gospo tree, which stood at one corner of the cricket field, collapsed into the gully after a flood, still laden with its hybrid fruit. Mr Biswas put an end to that. He drank a gla.s.s of the unpleasant gospo juice every morning and made his children do the same, until the gospo tree, which stood at one corner of the cricket field, collapsed into the gully after a flood, still laden with its hybrid fruit.

With the disappearance of the gospo tree the cricket field shrank rapidly. After every shower part of it was carved away, leaving a gra.s.s-covered overhang which collapsed in a day or two and was carried off by the next downpour. The drive became tall with weeds, and through the weeds a narrow, curiously wavering path led to the concrete steps, now cracked and sagging and bursting into vegetation at every crack. The evergreen hedge was a tangle of small trees, and whenever it rained the grounds smelled fresh, as of fish, telling that snakes were about.

No one had time to fight the bush. The widows, when not cooking or washing or cleaning or looking after the cows, were making coffee or chocolate or coconut oil or grinding maize. Their clothes became patched, their arms hard. They looked like labourers, and they had to bear with the exulting comments Seth sent through common friends. He had given his life to the family; then he had been rejected and slandered. Their punishment was only beginning. Had he not said that when he left them they would all start catching crabs?

And the widows worked like men. When the gully became a gorge they threw a bridge of coconut trunks across it. The gorge widened; the trunks collapsed. The widows built another bridge; that collapsed too. The widows prevailed on Mrs Tulsi to buy lengths of rail. The rails were laid across the gorge, coconut trunks laid across the rails, and for a time this structure survived, shaky, slippery, with gaps through which a child might fall to the rocks below.

Mr Biswas could no longer ignore the dereliction about him; yet when he spoke about moving, Shama, though excluded from the councils of the widows and the confidences of the other sisters, became sullen and sometimes cried.

Then came the scandal of the eighty dollars.

Chinta announced one day that someone had stolen eighty dollars from her room. It was an astonishing announcement, not only because an accusation of theft had never been made in the family before, but also because no one knew that Chinta and Govind had so much money. Chinta told again and again of the last time she had checked the money, and of the accident that had led her to find out that the money was missing. She said she knew who had stolen the money, but was waiting for the thief to trip himself up.

After a few days the thief had not tripped himself up, and Chinta went on searching, drawing crowds wherever she went. Sometimes she spoke Hindi incantations; sometimes she searched with a candle in one hand and a crucifix in the other; sometimes she spat on her left palm, struck the spittle with a finger, and searched in the direction indicated by the flight of the spittle. Finally she decided to hold a trial by Bible and key.

'The old Roman cat and kitten,' Mr Biswas said to Shama. 'Like mother, like daughter. But look, eh, I don't want my children meddling in that sort of tomfoolery.'

This was repeated throughout the house.

Chinta said, 'I don't blame him.'

The Bible-and-key trial lasted the whole of one afternoon. Chinta invoked the names of Saints Peter and Paul and spoke the accusations; Miss Blackie, invoking the same names, defended; and the innocence of everyone except Mr Biswas and his family was established.

Mr Biswas refused to have his room searched and ignored Shama's pleas that he should allow the children to be tried. 'She is a Roman cat,' he said. 'So what? I look like a Hindu mouse?' For some time he and Govind had not spoken; now he and Chinta did not speak. Shama attempted to maintain relations with Chinta, but was rebuffed.

'I am not blaming anybody,' Chinta said. 'I am only blaming the man who set the example.'

Then the whisperings began.

'Don't talk to them. But watch them.'

'Vidiadhar! Quick! I left my purse on the table in the diningroom.'

'Anand likes his nose to run. He swallows the snot. It is like condensed milk to him.'

'Savi does eat the scabs of sores.'

'You ever see Kamla's head? Crawling with lice. But she is like a monkey. She eats them.'

And the girls begged Mr Biswas to move.

He had found a site such as he always wanted, isolated, unused and full of possibilities. It was some way from the estate house, on a low hill buried in bush and well back from the road. The house was begun and, unblessed, completed in less than a month. Its pattern was precisely that of the house he had attempted in Green Vale, precisely that of thousands of houses in rural Trinidad. It had a verandah, two bedrooms and a drawingroom, and stood on tall pillars. Estate trees provided the timber; he had to pay only for the sawing. He bought corrugated iron for the roof, plain gla.s.s and frosted gla.s.s for the windows, coloured gla.s.s for the drawingroom door, and cement for the pillars.

The speed with which the house went up took him by surprise. The builders had given him no opportunity to withdraw, and at the end he found that his savings were nearly all gone. He felt uneasy. His circ.u.mstances had changed; but his ambition had remained steady, and now seemed only idyllic and absurd. He had built his own house, in a place as wild and out-of-the-way as he could have wished. But Shama had to walk a mile to the village to do her shopping, water had to be brought up the hill from a spring in the cocoa woods. And there was the problem of transport. He had to cycle long distances every day, and though he had cut himself off from the family, his children had to go to school in the family car.

After he had bought a Slumberking bed (delivered by two Port of Spain vanmen who swore as they made their various trips up and down the improperly cleared and precipitous path) his money was exhausted. The house was not painted. It stood red-raw in its unregulated green setting, not seeming to invite habitation so much as decay.

Shama, though pained by the quarrel with Chinta, did not approve of the move. She regarded it as provocative, and like the children, she had watched the house rise and wished it not to be completed. The children wanted to go back to Port of Spain, to the life they had had before Shorthills. They knew about the housing shortage but blamed Mr Biswas for not trying hard enough. The new house imprisoned them in silence and bush. They had no pleasures, no cinema shows, no walks, no games even, for the land around the house still smelled of snakes. The nights seemed longer and blacker. The girls stayed close to Shama, as though frightened to be by themselves; and in her shanty kitchen Shama sang sad Hindi songs.

Late one afternoon, not long after they had moved, Anand found himself alone in the house. Mr Biswas was out, the girls were in the kitchen with Shama. The house felt bare, unused and still exposed; corners held no secrets; none of the furniture seemed to have found its place. Moved by boredom more than curiosity, Anand opened the bottom drawer of Shama's dressingtable. In an envelope he found his parents' marriage certificate and the birth certificates of his sisters and himself. On a birth certificate, which he did not at first recognize as Savi's, he saw a name, Ba.s.so, which he had never heard used. He saw Mr Biswas's harsh scrawl: Real calling name: Lakshmi. Real calling name: Lakshmi. In the column headed 'Father's Occupation' In the column headed 'Father's Occupation' labourer labourer had been energetically scratched out and had been energetically scratched out and proprietor proprietor written in. No other birth certificate had been so scribbled over. Some photographs were wrapped in crinkled brown paper. One was of the Tulsi sisters standing in a straight line and scowling; the others were of the entire Tulsi family, of Hanuman House, of Pundit Tulsi, of Pundit Tulsi in Hanuman House. written in. No other birth certificate had been so scribbled over. Some photographs were wrapped in crinkled brown paper. One was of the Tulsi sisters standing in a straight line and scowling; the others were of the entire Tulsi family, of Hanuman House, of Pundit Tulsi, of Pundit Tulsi in Hanuman House.

In the kitchen Shama was singing her doleful song and slapping dough between her palms.

Anand came upon a bundle of letters. They were all still in their envelopes. The stamps were English and bore the head of George V. From one envelope fell small brown photographs of an English girl, a dog, a house with a faded X on a window; in another envelope there was a newspaper clipping with one name underlined in ink in a long paragraph of names. The letters were neatly written and said little at great length. They spoke about letters received, about school, about holidays; they thanked for photographs. Abruptly they were touched with feeling; they expressed surprise that arrangements for marriage had been made so soon; they attempted to soften surprise with congratulation. Then there were no more letters.

Anand closed the drawer and went to the drawingroom. He rested his elbows on the window-sill and looked out. The sun had just set and the bush was turning black against a sky that was still clear. Smoke came through the kitchen door and window and Anand listened to Shama singing. Darkness filled the valley.

That evening Shama discovered the ransacked drawer. '

Thief!' she said. 'Some thief was in the house.'

Refusing to yield to the gloom of his family and his own feeling that he had been rash, Mr Biswas set about clearing the land. He spared only the poui poui trees, for their branches and their yellow flowers, which came out bright and pure for one week in the year. The integrity of living bush was replaced by a brown chaos of collapsed and dying trees. Through this Mr Biswas made a winding path from the house down to the road, cutting steps into the earth and shoring them with bamboo. The debris could not be immediately fired, for though the leaves were dead and brittle the wood was green. Waiting, Mr Biswas cut trees, for their branches and their yellow flowers, which came out bright and pure for one week in the year. The integrity of living bush was replaced by a brown chaos of collapsed and dying trees. Through this Mr Biswas made a winding path from the house down to the road, cutting steps into the earth and shoring them with bamboo. The debris could not be immediately fired, for though the leaves were dead and brittle the wood was green. Waiting, Mr Biswas cut poui poui sticks and roasted them in bonfires. And he was reminded of a duty. sticks and roasted them in bonfires. And he was reminded of a duty.

He sent for his mother. He had for so long been telling her ever since he was a boy in the back trace that she was to come to stay with him when he had built his own house, that he now doubted whether she would come. But she came, for a fortnight. Her feelings could not be read. He was at first extravagantly affectionate. But Bipti remained calm, and Mr Biswas followed her example. It was as if the relationship between them had been granted without their asking, and had only to be accepted.

Though the children understood Hindi they could no longer speak it, and this limited communication between them and Bipti. From the start, however, Shama and Bipti got on well. Shama gave not a hint of the sullenness she used with Bipti's sister Tara; to Mr Biswas's surprise and pleasure, she treated Bipti with all the respect of a Hindu daughter-in-law. She had touched Bipti's feet with her fingers when Bipti came, and she never appeared before Bipti with her head uncovered.

Bipti helped with the housework and on the land. When, after Bipti's death, Mr Biswas wished to be reminded of her, he thought less of his childhood and the back trace than of this fortnight at Shorthills. He thought of one moment in particular. The ground in front of the house had been only partly cleared, and one afternoon, when he had pushed his bicycle up the earth steps to the top of the hill, he saw that part of the ground, which he had left that morning c.u.mbered and unbroken, had been cleared and levelled and forked. The black earth was soft and stoneless; the spade had cut cleanly into it, leaving damp walls as smooth as mason's work. Here and there the p.r.o.ngs of the fork had left shallow parallel indentations on the upturned earth. In the setting sun, the sad dusk, with Bipti working in a garden that looked, for a moment, like a garden he had known a dark time ages ago, the intervening years fell away. Thereafter the marks of a fork in earth made him think of that moment at the top of the hill, and of Bipti.

The children looked forward to the firing of the land as to a celebration. The Civil Defence authorities had given them a taste for large conflagrations, and now they were to have a hill on fire in their own backyard. It would be almost as good as the mock air-raid on the Port of Spain race course. Of course there would be no dummy houses to burn, no ambulances, no nurses attending to people groaning at mock wounds, no Boy Scouts on motor bicycles dashing about through the thick smoke with dummy dispatches; but at the same time there would be none of those eager firefighters who, in spite of the public outcry, had rescued some of the dummy buildings before they were even scorched.

Mr Biswas, displaying manual skills which his children secretly distrusted, dug trenches and prepared little nests of twigs and leaves at what he called strategic points. On Sat.u.r.day afternoon he summoned the children, soaked a brand in pitch-oil, set it alight, and ran from nest to nest, poking the brand in and jumping back, as though he had touched off an explosion. A leaf caught here and a twig there, blazed, shrank, smouldered, died. Mr Biswas didn't wait to see. Ignoring the cries of the children, he ran on, leaving a trail of subsiding wisps of dark smoke.

'Is all right,' he said, coming down the hillside, the brand dripping fire. 'Is all right. Fire is a funny thing. You think it out, but it blazing like h.e.l.l underground.'

One of the smoke wisps shrank like a failing fountain. 'That one take your advice and gone underground,' Savi said.

'I don't know,' he said, rubbing one itching ankle against the other. 'Perhaps it is a little too green. Perhaps we should wait until next week.'

There were protests.

Savi put her hand to her face and backed away.

'What's the matter?'

'The heat,' Savi said.

'You just carry on. See if you don't get hot somewhere else. Clowns. That's what I'm raising. A pack of clowns.'

From the kitchen Shama shouted, 'Hurry up, all-you. The sun going down.'

They went to examine the nests Mr Biswas had fired. They found them collapsed, reduced: shallow heaps of grey leaves and black twigs. Only one had caught, and from it the fire proceeded unspectacularly, avoiding thick branches and nibbling at lesser ones, making the bark curl, attacking the green wood with a great deal of smoke, staining it, then retreating to run up a twig with a businesslike air, scorching the brown leaves, creating a brief blaze, then halting. On the gound there were a few isolated flames, none higher than an inch.

'Fireworks,' Savi said.

'Well, do it yourself.'

The children ran to the kitchen and seized the pitch-oil Shama had bought for the lamps. They poured the pitch-oil haphazardly on the bush and set it alight. In minutes the bush blazed and became a restless sea of yellow, red, blue and green. They exchanged theories about the various colours; they listened with pleasure to the chatter and crackle of the quick fire. Too soon the tall flames contracted. The sun set. Charred leaves rose in the air. After dinner they had the sad task of beating down the fire at the edge of the trench. The brown sea had turned black, with red glitters and twinkles.

'All right,' Mr Biswas said. 'Puja 'Puja over. Books now.' over. Books now.'

They retired to the bare drawingroom. From time to time they went to the window. The hill was black against a lighter sky. Here and there it showed red and occasionally burst into yellow flame, which seemed unsupported, dancing in the air.

Anand was in a bus, one of those dilapidated, crowded buses that ran between Shorthills and Port of Spain. Something was wrong. He was lying on the floor of the bus and people were looking down at him and chattering. The bus must have been running over a newly-repaired road: the wheels were kicking up pebbles against the wings.

Myna and Kamla stood over him, and he was being shaken by Savi. He lay on his bedding in the drawingroom.

'Fire!' Savi said.

'What o'clock it is?'