1. Pastoral SHORTLY BEFORE HE WAS BORN there had been another quarrel between Mr Biswas’s mother Bipti and his father Raghu, and Bipti had taken her three children and walked all the way in the hot sun to the village where her mother Bissoondaye lived. There Bipti had cried and told the old story of Raghu’s miserliness: how he kept a check on every cent he gave her, counted every biscuit in the tin, and how he would walk ten miles rather than pay a cart a penny. Bipti’s father, futile with asthma, propped himself up on his string bed and said, as he always did on unhappy occasions, ‘Fate. There is nothing we can do about it.’ No one paid him any attention. Fate had brought him from India to the sugar-estate, aged him quickly and left him to die in a crumbling mud hut in the swamplands; yet he spoke of Fate often and affectionately, as though, merely by surviving, he had been particularly favoured. While the old man talked on, Bissoondaye sent for the midwife, made a meal for Bipti’s children and prepared beds for them. When the midwife came the children were asleep. Some time later they were awakened by the screams of Mr Biswas and the shrieks of the midwife. ‘What is it?’ the old man asked. ‘Boy or girl?’ ‘Boy, boy,’ the midwife cried. ‘But what sort of boy? Six-fingered, and born in the wrong way.’ The old man groaned and Bissoondaye said, ‘I knew it. There is no luck for me.’ At once, though it was night and the way was lonely, she left the hut and walked to the next village, where there was a hedge of cactus. She brought back leaves of cactus, cut them into strips and hung a strip over every door, every window, every aperture through which an evil spirit might enter the hut. But the midwife said, ‘Whatever you do, this boy will eat up his own mother and father.’ The next morning, when in the bright light it seemed that all evil spirits had surely left the earth, the pundit came, a small, thin man with a sharp satirical face and a dismissing manner. Bissoondaye seated him on the string bed, from which the old man had been turned out, and told him what had happened. ‘Hm. Born in the wrong way. At midnight, you said.’ Bissoondaye had no means of telling the time, but both she and the midwife had assumed that it was midnight, the inauspicious hour. Abruptly, as Bissoondaye sat before him with bowed and covered head, the pundit brightened, ‘Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. There are always ways and means of getting over these unhappy things.’ He undid his red bundle and took out his astrological almanac, a sheaf of loose thick leaves, long and narrow, between boards. The leaves were brown with age and their musty smell was mixed with that of the red and ochre sandalwood paste that had been spattered on them. The pundit lifted a leaf, read a little, wet his forefinger on his tongue and lifted another leaf. At last he said, ‘First of all, the features of this unfortunate boy. He will have good teeth but they will be rather wide, and there will be spaces between them. I suppose you know what that means. The boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well. It is hard to be sure about those gaps between the teeth. They might mean only one of those things or they might mean all three.’ ‘What about the six fingers, pundit?’ ‘That’s a shocking sign, of course. The only thing I can advise is to keep him away from trees and water. Particularly water.’ ‘Never bath him?’ ‘I don’t mean exactly that.’ He raised his right hand, bunched the fingers and, with his head on one side, said slowly. ‘One has to interpret what the book says.’ He tapped the wobbly almanac with his left hand. ‘And when the book says water. I think it means water in its natural form.’ ‘Natural form.’ ‘Natural form,’ the pundit repeated, but uncertainly. ‘I mean,’ he said quickly, and with some annoyance, ‘keep him away from rivers and ponds. And of course the sea. And another thing,’ he added with satisfaction. ‘He will have an unlucky sneeze.’ He began to pack the long leaves of his almanac. ‘Much of the evil this boy will undoubtedly bring will be mitigated if his father is forbidden to see him for twenty-one days.’ ‘That will be easy,’ Bissoondaye said, speaking with emotion for the first time. ‘On the twenty-first day the father must see the boy. But not in the flesh.’ ‘In a mirror, pundit?’ ‘I would consider that ill-advised. Use a brass plate. Scour it well.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘You must fill this brass plate with coconut oil – which, by the way, you must make yourself from coconuts you have collected with your own hands – and in the reflection on this oil the father must see his son’s face.’ He tied the almanac together and rolled it in the red cotton wrapper which was also spattered with sandalwood paste. ‘I believe that is all.’ ‘We forgot one thing, punditji. The name.’ ‘I can’t help you completely there. But it seems to me that a perfectly safe prefix would be Mo. It is up to you to think of something to add to that.’ ‘Oh, punditji, you must help me. I can only think of hun.’ The pundit was surprised and genuinely pleased. ‘But that is excellent. Excellent. Mohun. I couldn’t have chosen better myself. For Mohun, as you know, means the beloved, and was the name given by the milkmaids to Lord Krishna.’ His eyes softened at the thought of the legend and for a moment he appeared to forget Bissoondaye and Mr Biswas. From the knot at the end of her veil Bissoondaye took out a florin and offered it to the pundit, mumbling her regret that she could not give more. The pundit said that she had done her best and was not to worry. In fact he was pleased; he had expected less. * Mr Biswas lost his sixth finger before he was nine days old. It simply came off one night and Bipti had an unpleasant turn when, shaking out the sheets one morning, she saw this tiny finger tumble to the ground. Bissoondaye thought this an excellent sign and buried the finger behind the cowpen at the back of the house, not far from where she had buried Mr Biswas’s navel string. In the days that followed Mr Biswas was treated with attention and respect. His brothers and sisters were slapped if they disturbed his sleep, and the flexibility of his limbs was regarded as a matter of importance. Morning and evening he was massaged with coconut oil. All his joints were exercised; his arms and legs were folded diagonally across his red shining body; the big toe of his right foot was made to touch his left shoulder, the big toe of his left foot was made to touch his right shoulder, and both toes were made to touch his nose; finally, all his limbs were bunched together over his belly and then, with a clap and a laugh, released. Mr Biswas responded well to these exercises, and Bissoondaye became so confident that she decided to have a celebration on the ninth day. She invited people from the village and fed them. The pundit came and was unexpectedly gracious, though his manner suggested that but for his intervention there would have been no celebration at all. Jhagru, the barber, brought his drum, and Selochan did the Shiva dance in the cowpen, his body smeared all over with ash. There was an unpleasant moment when Raghu, Mr Biswas’s father, appeared. He had walked; his dhoti and jacket were sweated and dusty. ‘Well, this is very nice,’ he said. ‘Celebrating. And where is the father?’ ‘Leave this house at once,’ Bissoondaye said, coming out of the kitchen at the side. ‘Father! What sort of father do you call yourself, when you drive your wife away every time she gets heavy-footed?’ ‘That is none of your business,’ Raghu said. ‘Where is my son?’ ‘Go ahead. God has paid you back for your boasting and your meanness. Go and see your son. He will eat you up. Six-fingered, born in the wrong way. Go in and see him. He has an unlucky sneeze as well.’ Raghu halted. ‘Unlucky sneeze?’ ‘I have warned you. You can only see him on the twenty-first day. If you do anything stupid now the responsibility will be yours.’ From his string bed the old man muttered abuse at Raghu. ‘Shameless, wicked. When I see the behaviour of this man I begin to feel that the Black Age has come.’ The subsequent quarrel and threats cleared the air. Raghu confessed he had been in the wrong and had already suffered much for it. Bipti said she was willing to go back to him. And he agreed to come again on the twenty-first day. To prepare for that day Bissoondaye began collecting dry coconuts. She husked them, grated the kernels and set about extracting the oil the pundit had prescribed. It was a long job of boiling and skimming and boiling again, and it was surprising how many coconuts it took to make a little oil. But the oil was ready in time, and Raghu came, neatly dressed, his hair plastered flat and shining, his moustache trimmed, and he was very correct as he took off his hat and went into the dark inner room of the hut which smelled warmly of oil and old thatch. He held his hat on the right side of his face and looked down into the oil in the brass plate. Mr Biswas, hidden from his father by the hat, and well wrapped from head to foot, was held face downwards over the oil. He didn’t like it; he furrowed his forehead, shut his eyes tight and bawled. The oil rippled, clear amber, broke up the reflection of Mr Biswas’s face, already distorted with rage, and the viewing was over. A few days later Bipti and her children returned home. And there Mr Biswas’s importance steadily diminished. The time came when even the daily massage ceased. But he still carried weight. They never forgot that he was an unlucky child and that his sneeze was particularly unlucky. Mr Biswas caught cold easily and in the rainy season threatened his family with destitution. If, before Raghu left for the sugar-estate, Mr Biswas sneezed, Raghu remained at home, worked on his vegetable garden in the morning and spent the afternoon making walking-sticks and sabots, or carving designs on the hafts of cutlasses and the heads of walking-sticks. His favourite design was a pair of wellingtons; he had never owned wellingtons but had seen them on the overseer. Whatever he did, Raghu never left the house. Even so, minor mishaps often followed Mr Biswas’s sneeze: threepence lost in the shopping, the breaking of a bottle, the upsetting of a dish. Once Mr Biswas sneezed on three mornings in succession. ‘This boy will eat up his family in truth,’ Raghu said. One morning, just after Raghu had crossed the gutter that ran between the road and his yard, he suddenly stopped. Mr Biswas had sneezed. Bipti ran out and said, ‘It doesn’t matter. He sneezed when you were already on the road.’ ‘But I heard him. Distinctly.’ Bipti persuaded him to go to work. About an hour or two later, while she was cleaning the rice for the midday meal, she heard shouts from the road and went out to find Raghu lying in an oxcart, his right leg swathed in bloody bandages. He was groaning, not from pain, but from anger. The man who had brought him refused to help him into the yard: Mr Biswas’s sneeze was too well known. Raghu had to limp in leaning on Bipti’s shoulder. ‘This boy will make us all paupers,’ Raghu said. He spoke from a deep fear. Though he saved and made himself and his family go without many things, he never ceased to feel that destitution was very nearly upon him. The more he hoarded, the more he felt he had to waste and to lose, and the more careful he became. Every Saturday he lined up with the other labourers outside the estate office to collect his pay. The overseer sat at a little table, on which his khaki cork hat rested, wasteful of space, but a symbol of wealth. On his left sat the Indian clerk, important, stern, precise, with small neat hands that wrote small neat figures in black ink and red ink in the tall ledger. As the clerk entered figures and called out names and amounts in his high, precise voice, the overseer selected coins from the columns of silver and the heaps of copper in front of him, and with greater deliberation extracted notes from the blue one-dollar stacks, the smaller red two-dollar stack and the very shallow green five-dollar stack. Few labourers earned five dollars a week; the notes were there to pay those who were collecting their wives’ or husbands’ wages as well as their own. Around the overseer’s cork hat, and seeming to guard it, there were stiff blue paper bags, neatly serrated at the top, printed with large figures, and standing upright from the weight of coin inside them. Clean round perforations gave glimpses of the coin and, Raghu had been told, allowed it to breathe. These bags fascinated Raghu. He had managed to get a few and after many months and a little cheating – turning a shilling into twelve pennies, for example – he had filled them. Thereafter he had never been able to stop. No one, not even Bipti, knew where he hid these bags; but the word had got around that he buried his money and was possibly the richest man in the village. Such talk alarmed Raghu and, to counter it, he increased his austerities. * Mr Biswas grew. The limbs that had been massaged and oiled twice a day now remained dusty and muddy and unwashed for days. The malnutrition that had given him the sixth finger of misfortune pursued him now with eczema and sores that swelled and burst and scabbed and burst again, until they stank; his ankles and knees and wrists and elbows were in particular afflicted, and the sores left marks like vaccination scars. Malnutrition gave him the shallowest of chests, the thinnest of limbs; it stunted his growth and gave him a soft rising belly. And yet, perceptibly, he grew. He was never aware of being hungry. It never bothered him that he didn’t go to school. Life was unpleasant only because the pundit had forbidden him to go near ponds and rivers. Raghu was an excellent swimmer and Bipti wished him to train Mr Biswas’s brothers. So every Sunday morning Raghu took Pratap and Prasad to swim in a stream not far off, and Mr Biswas stayed at home, to be bathed by Bipti and have all his sores ripped open by her strong rubbing with the blue soap. But in an hour or two the redness and rawness of the sores had faded, scabs were beginning to form, and Mr Biswas was happy again. He played at house with his sister Dehuti. They mixed yellow earth with water and made mud fireplaces; they cooked a few grains of rice in empty condensed milk tins; and, using the tops of tins as baking-stones, they made rotis. In these amusements Prasad and Pratap took no part. Nine and eleven respectively, they were past such frivolities, and had already begun to work, joyfully cooperating with the estates in breaking the law about the employment of children. They had developed adult mannerisms. They spoke with blades of grass between their teeth; they drank noisily and sighed, passing the back of their hands across their mouths; they ate enormous quantities of rice, patted their bellies and belched; and every Saturday they stood up in line to draw their pay. Their job was to look after the buffaloes that drew the cane-carts. The buffaloes’ pleasance was a muddy, cloyingly sweet pool not far from the factory; here, with a dozen other thin-limbed boys, noisy, happy, over-energetic and with a full sense of their importance, Pratap and Prasad moved all day in the mud among the buffaloes. When they came home their legs were caked with the buffalo mud which, on drying, had turned white, so that they looked like the trees in fire-stations and police-stations which are washed with white lime up to the middle of their trunks. Much as he wanted to, it was unlikely that Mr Biswas would have joined his brothers at the buffalo pond when he was of age. There was the pundit’s ruling against water; and though it could be argued that mud was not water, and though an accident there might have removed the source of Raghu’s anxiety, neither Raghu nor Bipti would have done anything against the pundit’s advice. In another two or three years, when he could be trusted with a sickle, Mr Biswas would be made to join the boys and girls of the grass-gang. Between them and the buffalo boys there were constant disputes, and there was no doubt who were superior. The buffalo boys, with their leggings of white mud, tickling the buffaloes and beating them with sticks, shouting at them and controlling them, exercised power. Whereas the children of the grass-gang, walking briskly along the road single file, their heads practically hidden by tall, wide bundles of wet grass, hardly able to see, and, because of the weight on their heads and the grass over their faces, unable to make more than slurred, brief replies to taunts, were easy objects of ridicule. And it was to be the grass-gang for Mr Biswas. Later he would move to the cane fields, to weed and clean and plant and reap; he would be paid by the task and his tasks would be measured out by a driver with a long bamboo rod. And there he would remain. He would never become a driver or a weigher because he wouldn’t be able to read. Perhaps, after many years, he might save enough to rent or buy a few acres where he would plant his own canes, which he would sell to the estate at a price fixed by them. But he would achieve this only if he had the strength and optimism of his brother Pratap. For that was what Pratap did. And Pratap, illiterate all his days, was to become richer than Mr Biswas; he was to have a house of his own, a large, strong, well-built house, years before Mr Biswas. But Mr Biswas never went to work on the estates. Events which were to occur presently led him away from that. They did not lead him to riches, but made it possible for him to console himself in later life with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, while he rested on the Slumberking bed in the one room which contained most of his possessions. * Dhari, the next-door neighbour, bought a cow in calf, and when the calf was born, Dhari, whose wife went out to work and who had no children of his own, offered Mr Biswas the job of taking water to the calf during the day, at a penny a week. Raghu and Bipti were pleased. Mr Biswas loved the calf, for its big head that looked so insecurely attached to its slender body, for its knobbly shaky legs, its big sad eyes and pink stupid nose. He liked to watch the calf tugging fiercely and sloppily at its mother’s udders, its thin legs splayed out, its head almost hidden under its mother’s belly. And he did more than take water to the calf. He took it for walks across damp fields of razor grass and along the rutted lanes between the cane fields, anxious to feed it with grass of many sorts and unable to understand why the calf resented being led from one place to another. It was on one of these walks that Mr Biswas discovered the stream. It could not be here that Raghu brought Pratap and Prasad to swim: it was too shallow. But it was certainly here that Bipti and Dehuti came on Sunday afternoons to do the washing and returned with their fingers white and pinched. Between clumps of bamboo the stream ran over smooth stones of many sizes and colours, the cool sound of water blending with the rustle of the sharp leaves, the creaks of the tall bamboos when they swayed and their groans when they rubbed against one another. Mr Biswas stood in the stream and looked down. The swift movement of the water and the noise made him forget its shallowness, the stones felt slippery, and in a panic he scrambled up to the bank and looked at the water, now harmless again, while the calf stood idle and unhappy beside him, not caring for bamboo leaves. He continued to go to the forbidden stream. Its delights seemed endless. In a small eddy, dark in the shadow of the bank, he came upon a school of small black fish matching their background so well that they might easily have been mistaken for weeds. He lay down on the bamboo leaves and stretched out a hand slowly, but as soon as his fingers touched the water, the fish, with a wriggle and flick, were away. After that, when he saw the fish, he did not try to catch them. He would watch them and then drop things on the water. A dry bamboo leaf might cause a slight tremor among the fish; a bamboo twig might frighten them more; but if he remained still after that and dropped nothing the fish would become calm again. Then he would spit. Though he couldn’t spit as well as his brother Pratap who, with casual violence, could make his spit resound wherever it fell, it pleased Mr Biswas to see his spit circling slowly above the black fish before being carried away into the main stream. Fishing he sometimes tried, with a thin bamboo rod, a length of string, a bent pin and no bait. The fish didn’t bite; but if he wiggled the string violently they became frightened. When he had gazed at the fish long enough he dropped a stick into the water; it was good then to see the whole school instantly streaking away. Then one day Mr Biswas lost the calf. He had forgotten it, watching the fish. And when, after dropping the stick and scattering the fish, he remembered the calf, it had gone. He hunted for it along the banks and in the adjoining fields. He went back to the field where Dhari had left the calf that morning. The iron piquet, its head squashed and shiny from repeated poundings, was there, but no rope was attached to it, no calf. He spent a long time searching, in fields full of tall weeds with fluffy heads, in the gutters, like neat red gashes, between the fields, and among the sugarcane. He called for it, mooing softly so as not to attract the attention of people. Abruptly, he decided that the calf was lost for good; that the calf was anyway able to look after itself and would somehow make its way back to its mother in Dhari’s yard. In the meantime the best thing for him to do would be to hide until the calf was found, or perhaps forgotten. It was getting late and he decided that the best place for him to hide would be at home. The afternoon was almost over. In the west the sky was gold and smoke. Most of the villagers were back from work, and Mr Biswas had to make his way home with caution, keeping close to hedges and sometimes hiding in gutters. Unseen, he came right up to the back boundary of their lot. On a stand between the hut and the cowpen he saw Bipti washing enamel, brass and tin dishes with ashes and water. He hid behind the hibiscus hedge. Pratap and Prasad came, blades of grass between their teeth, their close-fitting felt hats damp with sweat, their faces scorched by the sun and stained with sweat, their legs cased in white mud. Pratap threw a length of white cotton around his dirty trousers and undressed with expert adult modesty before using the calabash to throw water over himself from the big black oil barrel. Prasad stood on a board and began scraping the white mud off his legs. Bipti said, ‘You boys will have to go and get some wood before it gets dark.’ Prasad lost his temper; and, as though by scraping off the white mud he had lost the composure of adulthood, he flung his hat to the ground and cried like a child, ‘Why do you ask me now? Why do you ask me every day? I am not going.’ Raghu came to the back, an unfinished walking-stick in one hand and in the other a smoking wire with which he had been burning patterns into the stick. ‘Listen, boy,’ Raghu said. ‘Don’t feel that because you are earning money you are a man. Do what your mother asks. And go quickly, before I use this stick on you, even though it is unfinished.’ He smiled at his joke. Mr Biswas became uneasy. Prasad, still raging, picked up his hat, and he and Pratap went away to the front of the house. Bipti took her dishes to the kitchen in the front verandah, where Dehuti would be helping with the evening meal. Raghu went back to his bonfire at the front. Mr Biswas slipped through the hibiscus fence, crossed the narrow, shallow gutter, grey-black and squelchy with the ashy water from the washing-up stand and the muddy water from Pratap’s bath, and made his way to the small back verandah where there was a table, the only piece of carpenter-built furniture in the hut. From the verandah he went into his father’s room, passed under the valance of the bed – planks resting on upright logs sunk into the earth floor – and prepared to wait. It was a long wait but he endured it without discomfort. Below the bed the smell of old cloth, dust and old thatch combined into one overpoweringly musty smell. Idly, to pass the time, he tried to disentangle one smell from the other, while his ears picked up the sounds in and around the hut. They were remote and dramatic. He heard the boys return and throw down the dry wood they had brought. Prasad still raged, Raghu warned, Bipti coaxed. Then all at once Mr Biswas became alert. ‘Ey, Raghu?’ He recognized Dhari’s voice. ‘Where is that youngest son of yours?’ ‘Mohun? Bipti, where is Mohun?’ ‘With Dhari’s calf, I suppose.’ ‘Well, he isn’t,’ Dhari said. ‘Prasad!’ Bipti called. ‘Pratap! Dehuti! Have you seen Mohun?’ ‘No, mai.’ ‘No, mai.’ ‘No, mai.’ ‘No, mai. No, mai. No, mai,’ Raghu said. ‘What the hell do you think it is? Go and look for him.’ ‘Oh God!’ Prasad cried. ‘And you too, Dhari. It was your idea, getting Mohun to look after the calf. I hold you responsible.’ ‘The magistrate will have something else to say,’ Dhari said. ‘A calf is a calf, and for one who is not as rich as yourself – ’ ‘I am sure nothing has happened,’ Bipti said, ‘Mohun knows he mustn’t go near water.’ Mr Biswas was startled by a sound of wailing. It came from Dhari. ‘Water, water. Oh, the unlucky boy. Not content with eating up his mother and father, he is eating me up as well. Water! Oh, Mohun’s mother, what you have said?’ ‘Water?’ Raghu sounded puzzled. ‘The pond, the pond,’ Dhari wailed, and Mr Biswas heard him shouting to the neighbours, ‘Raghu’s son has drowned my calf in the pond. A nice calf. My first calf. My only calf.’ Quickly a chattering crowd gathered. Many of them had been to the pond that afternoon; quite a number had seen a calf wandering about, and one or two had even seen a boy. ‘Nonsense!’ Raghu said. ‘You are a pack of liars. The boy doesn’t go near water.’ He paused and added, ‘The pundit especially forbade him to go near water in its natural form.’ Lakhan the carter said, ‘But this is a fine man. He doesn’t seem to care whether his son is drowned or not.’ ‘How do you know what he thinks?’ Bipti said. ‘Leave him, leave him,’ Raghu said, in an injured, forgiving tone. ‘Mohun is my son. And if I don’t care whether he is drowned or not, that is my business.’ ‘What about my calf?’ Dhari said. ‘I don’t care about your calf. Pratap! Prasad! Dehuti! Have you seen your brother?’ ‘No, father.’ ‘No, father.’ ‘No, father.’ ‘I will go and dive for him,’ Lakhan said. ‘You are very anxious to show off,’ Raghu said. ‘Oh!’ Bipti cried. ‘Stop this bickering-ickering and let us go to look for the boy.’ ‘Mohun is my son,’ Raghu said. ‘And if anybody is going to dive for him, it will be me. And I pray to God, Dhari, that when I get to the bottom of that pond I find your wretched calf.’ ‘Witnesses!’ Dhari said. ‘You are all my witnesses. Those words will have to be repeated in court.’ ‘To the pond! To the pond!’ the villagers said, and the news was shouted to those just arriving: ‘Raghu is going to dive for his son in the pond.’ Mr Biswas, under his father’s bed, had listened at first with pleasure, then with apprehension. Raghu came into the room, breathing heavily and swearing at the village. Mr Biswas heard him undress and shout for Bipti to come and rub him down with coconut oil. She came and rubbed him down and they both left the room. From the road chatter and the sound of footsteps rose, and slowly faded. Mr Biswas came out from under the bed and was dismayed to find that the hut was dark. In the next room someone began to cry. He went to the doorway and looked. It was Dehuti. From the nail on the wall she had taken down his shirt and two vests and was pressing them to her face. ‘Sister,’ he whispered. She heard and saw, and her sobs turned to screams. Mr Biswas didn’t know what to do. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ he said, but the words were useless, and he went back to his father’s room. Just in time, for at that moment Sadhu, the very old man who lived two houses away, came and asked what was wrong, his words whistling through the gaps in his teeth. Dehuti continued to scream. Mr Biswas put his hands into his trouser pockets and, through the holes in them, pressed his fingers on his thighs. Sadhu led Dehuti away. Outside, from an unknown direction, a frog honked, then made a sucking, bubbling noise. The crickets were already chirping. Mr Biswas was alone in the dark hut, and frightened. * The pond lay in swampland. Weeds grew all over its surface and from a distance it appeared to be no more than a shallow depression. In fact it was full of abrupt depths and the villagers liked to think that these were immeasurable. There were no trees or hills around, so that though the sun had gone, the sky remained high and light. The villagers stood silently around the safe edge of the pond. The frogs honked and the poor-me-one bird began to say the mournful words that gave it its name. The mosquitoes were already active; from time to time a villager slapped his arm or lifted a leg and slapped that. Lakhan the carter said, ‘He’s been down there too long.’ Bipti frowned. Before Lakhan could take off his shirt Raghu broke the surface, puffed out his cheeks, spat out a long thin arc of water and took deep resounding breaths. The water rolled off his oiled skin, but his moustache had collapsed over his upper lip and his hair fell in a fringe over his forehead. Lakhan gave him a hand up. ‘I believe there is something down there,’ Raghu said. ‘But it is very dark.’ Far away the low trees were black against the fading sky; the orange streaks of sunset were smudged with grey, as if by dirty thumbs. Bipti said, ‘Let Lakhan dive.’ Someone else said, ‘Leave it till tomorrow.’ ‘Till tomorrow?’ Raghu said. ‘And poison the water for everybody?’ Lakhan said, ‘I will go.’ Raghu, panting, shook his head. ‘My son. My duty.’ ‘And my calf,’ Dhari said. Raghu ignored him. He ran his hands through his hair, puffed out his cheeks, put his hands to his sides and belched. In a moment he was in the water again. The pond didn’t permit stylish diving; Raghu merely let himself down. The water broke and rippled. The gleam it got from the sky was fading. While they waited a cool wind came down from the hills to the north; between the shaking weeds the water shimmered like sequins. Lakhan said, ‘He’s coming up now. I believe he’s got something.’ They knew what it was from Dhari’s cry. Then Bipti began to scream, and Pratap and Prasad and all the women, while the men helped to lift the calf to the bank. One of its sides was green with slime; its thin limbs were ringed with vinelike weeds, still fresh and thick and green. Raghu sat on the bank, looking down between his legs at the dark water. Lakhan said, ‘Let me go down now and look for the boy.’ ‘Yes, man,’ Bipti pleaded. ‘Let him go.’ Raghu remained where he was, breathing deeply, his dhoti clinging to his skin. Then he was in the water and the villagers were silent again. They waited, looking at the calf, looking at the pond. Lakhan said, ‘Something has happened.’ A woman said, ‘No stupid talk now, Lakhan. Raghu is a great diver.’ ‘I know, I know,’ Lakhan said. ‘But he’s been diving too long.’ Then they were all still. Someone had sneezed. They turned to see Mr Biswas standing some distance away in the gloom, the toe of one foot scratching the ankle of the other. Lakhan was in the pond. Pratap and Prasad rushed to hustle Mr Biswas away. ‘That boy!’ Dhari said. ‘He has murdered my calf and now he has eaten up his own father.’ Lakhan brought up Raghu unconscious. They rolled him on the damp grass and pumped water out of his mouth and through his nostrils. But it was too late. * ‘Messages.’ Bipti kept on saying. ‘We must send messages.’ And messages were taken everywhere by willing and excited villagers. The most important message went to Bipti’s sister Tara at Pagotes. Tara was a person of standing. It was her fate to be childless, but it was also her fate to have married a man who had, at one bound, freed himself from the land and acquired wealth; already he owned a rumshop and a dry goods shop, and he had been one of the first in Trinidad to buy a motorcar. Tara came and at once took control. Her arms were encased from wrist to elbow with silver bangles which she had often recommended to Bipti: ‘They are not very pretty, but one clout from this arm will settle any attacker.’ She also wore earrings and a nakphul, a ‘nose-flower’. She had a solid gold yoke around her neck and thick silver bracelets on her ankles. In spite of all her jewellery she was energetic and capable, and had adopted her husband’s commanding manner. She left the mourning to Bipti and arranged everything else. She had brought her own pundit, whom she continually harangued; she instructed Pratap how to behave during the ceremonies; and she had even brought a photographer. She urged Prasad, Dehuti and Mr Biswas to behave with dignity and to keep out of the way, and she ordered Dehuti to see that Mr Biswas was properly dressed. As the baby of the family Mr Biswas was treated by the mourners with honour and sympathy, though this was touched with a little dread. Embarrassed by their attentions, he moved about the hut and yard, thinking he could detect a new, raw smell in the air. There was also a strange taste in his mouth; he had never eaten meat, but now he felt he had eaten raw white flesh; nauseating saliva rose continually at the back of his throat and he had to keep on spitting, until Tara said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you pregnant?’ Bipti was bathed. Her hair, still wet, was neatly parted and the parting filled with red henna. Then the henna was scooped out and the parting filled with charcoal dust. She was now a widow forever. Tara gave a short scream and at her signal the other women began to wail. On Bipti’s wet black hair there were still spots of henna, like drops of blood. Cremation was forbidden and Raghu was to be buried. He lay in a coffin in the bedroom, dressed in his finest dhoti, jacket and turban, his beads around his neck and down his jacket. The coffin was strewed with marigolds which matched his turban. Pratap, the eldest son, did the last rites, walking round the coffin. ‘Photo now,’ Tara said. ‘Quick. Get them all together. For the last time.’ The photographer, who had been smoking under the mango tree, went into the hut and said, ‘Too dark.’ The men became interested and gave advice while the women wailed. ‘Take it outside. Lean it against the mango tree.’ ‘Light a lamp.’ ‘It couldn’t be too dark.’ ‘What do you know? You’ve never had your photo taken. Now, what I suggest – ’ The photographer, of mixed Chinese, Negro and European blood, did not understand what was being said. In the end he and some of the men took the coffin out to the verandah and stood it against the wall. ‘Careful! Don’t let him fall out.’ ‘Goodness. All the marigolds have dropped out.’ ‘Leave them,’ the photographer said in English. ‘Is a nice little touch. Flowers on the ground.’ He set up his tripod in the yard, just under the ragged eaves of thatch, and put his head under the black cloth. Tara roused Bipti from her grief, arranged Bipti’s hair and veil, and dried Bipti’s eyes. ‘Five people all together,’ the photographer said to Tara. ‘Hard to know just how to arrange them. It look to me that it would have to be two one side and three the other side. You sure you want all five?’ Tara was firm. The photographer sucked his teeth, but not at Tara. ‘Look, look. Why nobody ain’t put anything to chock up the coffin and prevent it from slipping?’ Tara had that attended to. The photographer said, ‘All right then. Mother and biggest son on either side. Next to mother, young boy and young girl. Next to big son, smaller son.’ There was more advice from the men. ‘Make them look at the coffin.’ ‘At the mother.’ ‘At the youngest boy.’ The photographer settled the matter by telling Tara, ‘Tell them to look at me.’ Tara translated, and the photographer went under his cloth. Almost immediately he came out again. ‘How about making the mother and the biggest boy put their hands on the edge of the coffin?’ This was done and the photographer went back under his cloth. ‘Wait!’ Tara cried, running out from the hut with a fresh garland of marigolds. She hung it around Raghu’s neck and said to the photographer in English, ‘All right. Draw your photo now.’ * Mr Biswas never owned a copy of the photograph and he did not see it until 1937, when it made its appearance, framed in passepartout, on the wall of the drawingroom of Tara’s fine new house at Pagotes, a little lost among many other photographs of funeral groups, many oval portraits with blurred edges of more dead friends and relations, and coloured prints of the English countryside. The photograph had faded to the lightest brown and was partially defaced by the large heliotrope stamp of the photographer, still bright, and his smudged sprawling signature in soft black pencil. Mr Biswas was astonished at his own smallness. The scabs of sores and the marks of eczema showed clearly on his knobbly knees and along his very thin arms and legs. Everyone in the photograph had unnaturally large, staring eyes which seemed to have been outlined in black. * Tara was right when she said that the photograph was to be a record of the family all together for the last time. For in a few days Mr Biswas and Bipti, Pratap and Prasad and Dehuti had left Parrot Trace and the family split up for good. It began on the evening of the funeral. Tara said, ‘Bipti, you must give me Dehuti.’ Bipti had been hoping that Tara would make the suggestion. In four or five years Dehuti would have to be married and it was better that she should be given to Tara. She would learn manners, acquire graces and, with a dowry from Tara, might even make a good match. ‘If you are going to have someone,’ Tara said, ‘it is better to have one of your own family. That is what I always say. I don’t want strangers poking their noses into my kitchen and bedroom.’ Bipti agreed that it was better to have servants from one’s own family. And Pratap and Prasad and even Mr Biswas, who had not been asked, nodded, as though the problem of servants was one they had given much thought. Dehuti looked down at the floor, shook her long hair and mumbled a few words which meant that she was far too small to be consulted, but was very pleased. ‘Get her new clothes,’ Tara said, fingering the georgette skirt and satin petticoat Dehuti had worn for the funeral. ‘Get her some jewels.’ She put a thumb and finger around Dehuti’s wrist, lifted her face, and turned up the lobe of her ear. ‘Earrings. Good thing you had them pierced, Bipti. She won’t need these sticks now.’ In the holes in her lobe Dehuti wore pieces of the thin hard spine of the blades of the coconut branch. Tara playfully pulled Dehuti’s nose. ‘Nakphul too. You would like a nose-flower?’ Dehuti smiled shyly, not looking up. ‘Well,’ Tara said, ‘fashions are changing all the time these days. I am just old-fashioned, that is all.’ She stroked her gold nose-flower. ‘It is expensive to be old-fashioned.’ ‘She will satisfy you,’ Bipti said. ‘Raghu had no money. But he trained his children well. Training, piety – ’ ‘Quite,’ Tara said. ‘The time for crying is over, Bipti. How much money did Raghu leave you?’ ‘Nothing. I don’t know.’ ‘What do you mean? Are you trying to keep secrets from me? Everyone in the village knows that Raghu had a lot of money. I am sure he has left you enough to start a nice little business.’ Pratap sucked his teeth. ‘He was a miser, that one. He used to hide his money.’ Tara said, ‘Is this the training and piety your father gave you?’ They searched. They pulled out Raghu’s box from under the bed and looked for false bottoms; at Bipti’s suggestion they looked for any joint that might reveal a hiding-place in the timber itself. They poked the sooty thatch and ran their hands over the rafters; they tapped the earth floor and the bamboo-and-mud walls; they examined Raghu’s walking-sticks, taking out the ferrules, Raghu’s only extravagance; they dismantled the bed and uprooted the logs on which it stood. They found nothing. Bipti said, ‘I don’t suppose he had any money really.’ ‘You are a fool,’ Tara said, and it was in this mood of annoyance that she ordered Bipti to pack Dehuti’s bundle and took Dehuti away. * Because no cooking could be done at their house, they ate at Sadhu’s. The food was unsalted and as soon as he began to chew, Mr Biswas felt he was eating raw flesh and the nauseous saliva filled his mouth again. He hurried outside to empty his mouth and clean it, but the taste remained. And Mr Biswas screamed when, back at the hut, Bipti put him to bed and threw Raghu’s blanket over him. The blanket was hairy and prickly; it seemed to be the source of the raw, fresh smell he had been smelling all day. Bipti let him scream until he was tired and fell asleep in the yellow, wavering light of the oil lamp which left the corners in darkness. She watched the wick burn lower and lower until she heard the snores of Pratap, who snored like a big man, and the heavy breathing of Mr Biswas and Prasad. She slept only fitfully herself. It was quiet inside the hut, but outside the noises were loud and continuous: mosquitoes, bats, frogs, crickets, the poor-me-one. If the cricket missed a chirp the effect was disturbing and she awoke. She was awakened from a light sleep by a new noise. At first she couldn’t be sure. But the nearness of the noise and its erratic sequence disturbed her. It was a noise she heard every day but now, isolated in the night, it was hard to place. It came again: a thud, a pause, a prolonged snapping, then a series of gentler thuds. And it came again. Then there was another noise, of bottles breaking, muffled, as though the bottles were full. And she knew the noises came from her garden. Someone was stumbling among the bottles Raghu had buried neck downwards around the flower-beds. She roused Prasad and Pratap. Mr Biswas, awaking to hushed talk and a room of dancing shadows, closed his eyes to keep out the danger; at once, as on the day before, everything became dramatic and remote. Pratap gave walking-sticks to Prasad and Bipti. Carefully he unbolted the small window, then pushed it out with sudden vigour. The garden was lit up by a hurricane lamp. A man was working a fork into the ground among the bottle-borders. ‘Dhari!’ Bipti called. Dhari didn’t look up or reply. He went on forking, rocking the implement in the earth, tearing the roots that kept the earth firm. ‘Dhari!’ He began to sing a wedding song. ‘The cutlass!’ Pratap said. ‘Give me the cutlass.’ ‘O God! No, no,’ Bipti said. ‘I’ll go out and beat him like a snake,’ Pratap said, his voice rising out of control. ‘Prasad? Mai?’ ‘Close the window,’ Bipti said. The singing stopped and Dhari said, ‘Yes, close the window and go to sleep. I am here to look after you.’ Violently Bipti pulled the small window to, bolted it and kept her hand on the bolt. The digging and the breaking bottles continued. Dhari sang: In your daily tasks be resolute. Fear no one, and trust in God. ‘Dhari isn’t in this alone,’ Bipti said. ‘Don’t provoke him.’ Then, as though it not only belittled Dhari’s behaviour but gave protection to them all, she added, ‘He is only after your father’s money. Let him look.’ Mr Biswas and Prasad were soon asleep again. Bipti and Pratap remained up until they had heard the last of Dhari’s songs and his fork no longer dug into the earth and broke bottles. They did not speak. Only, once, Bipti said, ‘Your father always warned me about the people of this village.’ Pratap and Prasad awoke when it was still dark, as they always did. They did not talk about what had happened and Bipti insisted that they should go to the buffalo-pond as usual. As soon as it was light she went out to the garden. The flower-beds had been dug up; dew lay on the upturned earth which partially buried uprooted plants, already limp and quailing. The vegetable patch had not been forked, but tomato plants had been cut down, stakes broken and pumpkins slashed. ‘Oh, wife of Raghu!’ a man called from the road, and she saw Dhari jump across the gutter. Absently, he picked a dew-wet leaf from the hibiscus shrub, crushed it in his palm, put it in his mouth and came towards her, chewing. Her anger rose. ‘Get out! At once! Do you call yourself a man? You are a shameless vagabond. Shameless and cowardly.’ He walked past her, past the hut, to the garden. Chewing, he considered the damage. He was in his working clothes, his cutlass in its black leather sheath at his waist, his enamel food-carrier in one hand, his calabash of water hanging from his shoulder. ‘Oh, wife of Raghu, what have they done?’ ‘I hope you found something to make you happy, Dhari.’ He shrugged, looking down at the ruined flower-beds. ‘They will keep on looking, maharajin.’ ‘Everybody knows you lost your calf. But that was an accident. What about – ’ ‘Yes, yes. My calf. Accident.’ ‘I will remember you for this, Dhari. And Raghu’s sons won’t forget you either.’ ‘He was a great diver.’ ‘Savage! Get out!’ ‘Willingly.’ He spat out the hibiscus leaf on to a flower-bed. ‘I just wanted to tell you that these wicked men will come again. Why don’t you help them, maharajin?’ There was no one Bipti could ask for help. She distrusted the police, and Raghu had no friends. Moreover, she didn’t know who might be in league with Dhari. That night they gathered all Raghu’s sticks and cutlasses and waited. Mr Biswas closed his eyes and listened, but as the hours passed he found it hard to remain alert. He was awakened by whispers and movement in the hut. Far away, it seemed, someone was singing a slow, sad wedding song. Bipti and Prasad were standing. Cutlass in hand, Pratap moved in a frenzy between the window and the door, so swiftly that the flame of the oil lamp blew this way and that, and once, with a plopping sound, disappeared. The room sank into darkness. A moment later the flame returned, rescuing them. The singing drew nearer, and when it was almost upon them they heard, mingled with it, chatter and soft laughter. Bipti unbolted the window, pushed it open a crack, and saw the garden ablaze with lanterns. ‘Three of them,’ she whispered. ‘Lakhan, Dhari, Oumadh.’ Pratap pushed Bipti aside, flung the window wide open and screamed, ‘Get out! Get out! I will kill you all.’ ‘Shh,’ Bipti said, pulling Pratap away and trying to close the window. ‘Raghu’s son,’ a man said from the garden. ‘Don’t sh me,’ Pratap screamed, turning on Bipti. Tears came to his eyes and his voice broke into sobs. ‘I will kill them all.’ ‘Noisy little fellow,’ another man said. ‘I will come back and kill you all,’ Pratap shouted. ‘I promise you.’ Bipti took him in her arms and comforted him, like a child, and in the same gentle, unalarmed voice said, ‘Prasad, close the window. And go to sleep.’ ‘Yes, son.’ They recognized Dhari’s voice. ‘Go to sleep. We will be here every night now to look after you.’ Prasad closed the window, but the noise stayed with them: song, talk, and unhurried sounds of fork and spade. Bipti sat and stared at the door, next to which, on the ground, Pratap sat, a cutlass beside him, its haft carved into a pair of wellingtons. He was motionless. His tears had gone, but his eyes were red, and the lids swollen. * In the end Bipti sold the hut and the land to Dhari, and she and Mr Biswas moved to Pagotes. There they lived on Tara’s bounty, though not with Tara, but with some of Tara’s husband’s dependent relations in a back trace far from the Main Road. Pratap and Prasad were sent to a distant relation at Felicity, in the heart of the sugar-estates; they were already broken into estate work and were too old to learn anything else. And so Mr Biswas came to leave the only house to which he had some right. For the next thirty-five years he was to be a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world of the Tulsis. For with his mother’s parents dead, his father dead, his brothers on the estate at Felicity, Dehuti as a servant in Tara’s house, and himself rapidly growing away from Bipti who, broken, became increasingly useless and impenetrable, it seemed to him that he was really quite alone.