Free A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul Page A

falling through the air he knew that it would eventually land in Bhandat’s pocket.
    Directly afterwards Bhandat became as gay as he could with the customers, and suspicious and irritable with Mr Biswas. ‘You,’ he would say to Mr Biswas. ‘What the hell are you looking at?’ And sometimes he would say to people across the counter, ‘Look at him. Always smiling, eh? As though he is smarter than everybody else. Look at him.’
    ‘Yes,’ the drinkers said. ‘He is a real smart man. You better keep an eye on him, Bhandat.’
    So to the drinkers Mr Biswas became ‘smart man’ or ‘smart boy’, someone who could be ridiculed.
    He revenged himself by spitting in the rum when he bottled it, which he did early every morning. The rum was the same, but the prices and labels were different: ‘Indian Maiden’, ‘The White Cock’, ‘Parakeet’. Each brand had its adherents, and to Mr Biswas this was a subsidiary revenge which gave a small but continuous pleasure.
    The bottling-room was in the ancillary shop-buildings which formed a square about an unpaved yard. Bhandat lived with his family, and Mr Biswas, in two rooms. When it was dry Bhandat’s wife cooked on the steps that led to one of these rooms; when it rained she cooked in a corrugated-iron shack, made by Bhandat during a period of sobriety and responsibility, in the yard. The other rooms were used as storerooms or were rented out to other families. The room in which Mr Biswas slept had no window and was perpetually dark. His clothes hung on a nail on one wall; his books occupied a small amount of floor space; he slept with Bhandat’s two sons on a hard, smelly coconut fibre mattress on the floor. Every morning the mattress was rolled up, leaving a deposit of coarse fibre grit on the floor, and pushed under Bhandat’s fourposter in the adjacent room. When this was done Mr Biswas felt he had no further claim to the room for the rest of the day.
    On Sundays and on Thursday afternoons, when the shop was closed, he didn’t know where to go. Sometimes he went to the back trace to see his mother. He was giving her a dollar a month, but she continued to make him feel helpless and unhappy, and he preferred to seek out Alec. But Alec wasnow seldom to be found and Mr Biswas often ended by going to Tara’s. In the back verandah there the bookcase had been unexpectedly filled with twenty tall black volumes of the
Book of Comprehensive Knowledge.
Ajodha had agreed to buy the books from an American travelling salesman; even before he had paid a deposit the books had been delivered, and then apparently forgotten. The salesman never called again, no one asked to be paid, and Ajodha said happily that the company had gone bankrupt. He had no intention of reading the books, but they were a bargain; and when Mr Biswas proved the books’ usefulness by coming week after week to read them, Ajodha was delighted.
    Presently Mr Biswas fell into a Sunday routine. He went to Tara’s in the middle of the morning, read for Ajodha all the
That Body of Yours
columns which had been cut out during the week, got his penny, was given lunch, and was then free to explore the
Book of Comprehensive Knowledge.
He read folk tales from various lands; he read, and quickly forgot, how chocolate, matches, ships, buttons and many other things were made; he read articles which answered, with drawings that looked pretty but didn’t really help, questions like: Why does ice make water cold? Why does fire burn? Why does sugar sweeten?
    ‘You must get Bhandat’s boys to read these books too,’ Ajodha said enthusiastically.
    But Bhandat’s boys refused to be enticed. They were learning to smoke; they were full of scandalous and incredible revelations about sex; and at night, in whispers, they wove lurid sexual fantasies. Mr Biswas had tried to contribute to these, but could never strike the correct note. He was either so tame or so ill-informed that they laughed, or so revolting that they threatened to