“Why do you use Lux Toilet Soap?”

Mr. Biswas saw that Bhandat was staring at him earnestly. “Lux Toilet? I think we use Palmolive. A green thing-”

Bhandat said in English, “I use Lux Toilet Soap because it is the soap used by lovely film stars.”

Mr. Biswas was disturbed.

Bhandat turned on his side and began to rummage among the newspapers on the floor. “None of my worthless sons ever come to see me. You are the only one, Mohun. But you were always like that.” He frowned at a newspaper. “No. This one is over. Fernandes Rum. The perfect round in every circle. That is the sort of thing they want. Rum, Mohun. Remember? Ah! Yes, this is the one.” He handed Mr. Biswas a newspaper and Mr. Biswas read the details of the Lux slogan competition. “Help an old man, Mohun. Tell me why you use Lux Toilet Soap.”

Mr. Biswas said, “I use Lux Toilet Soap because it is antiseptic, refreshing, fragrant and inexpensive.”

Bhandat frowned. The words had made no impression on him. And Mr. Biswas knew for sure then, what he had intuited and dismissed: Bhandat was deaf.

“Write it down, Mohun,” Bhandat cried. “Write it down before I forget it. I don’t have any luck with these things. Crosswords. Missing Ball competitions. Slogans. They are all the same.”

While Mr. Biswas wrote, Bhandat began on an account of his life. His deafness must have occurred some time ago: he spoke in complete sentences, which gave his talk a literary quality. It was a familiar story of jobs acquired and lost, great enterprises which had failed, wonderful opportunities Bhandat had not taken because of his own honesty or the dishonesty of his associates, all of whom were now famous and rich.

He liked the slogan. “This is bound to win, Mohun. Now, what about the crosswords, Mohun. Couldn’t you make me win just one?”

Mr. Biswas was saved from replying, for just then the woman came from behind the screen. She moved briskly, furtively, setting an enamel plate with small yellow cakes on the table, pulling out the chair, placing it next to where Mr. Biswas stood, then hurrying behind the screen again. She was middle-aged, very thin, with a long neck and a small face. She gave an impression of perpendicularity: her unwashed black hair hung straight, her washed-out blue cotton dress dropped straight, her thin legs were straight.

Mr. Biswas looked at Bhandat for signs of embarrassment. But Bhandat went on talking undisturbed about the competitions he had entered and lost.

The woman came out again with two tall enamel cups of tea. She put a cup on the table and pushed the plate of cakes towards Mr. Biswas, who was now seated on the chair she had pulled out. She gave the other cup to Bhandat, who sat up to receive it, handing her the sheet of paper on which Mr. Biswas had written the slogan.

Bhandat sipped his tea, and for a moment he could have been Ajodha. The gesture was the same: the slow bringing of the cup to the lips, the half-closing of the eyes, the lips resting on the brim, the blowing at the tea. Then came the sip with closed eyes, as though the drink had been consecrated; and peace spread across the tormented face.

He opened his eyes: torment returned. “It good, eh?” he said to the woman in English. She glanced hastily at Mr. Biswas. She seemed anxious to return behind her screen.

“He is a big man now,” Bhandat said. “But you know, I did know him when he was a boy so high.” He gave a hoot. “Yes, so high.”

Mr. Biswas tried to avoid Bhandat’s gaze by taking one of the yellow cakes and biting at it.

“Since he was a boy so high. He is a big man now. But I used to put the licks on him good too, you know. Eh, Mohun? Yes, man.” Bhandat held the cup in his left hand and whipped his right forefinger against his thumb.

This was the moment Mr. Biswas had feared. But now that it had come, he found only that he was relieved. Bhandat had not revived the shame: he had removed it.

The cup trembled in Bhandat’s hand. The woman ran to the bed and opened her mouth wide. No words came out of that mouth: only a clacking of the tongue that erupted, at the end, into a shrill croak.

The tea had spilled on the bed, on Bhandat. And Mr. Biswas, thinking of deafness, dumbness, insanity, the horror of the sexual act in that grimy room, felt the yellow cake turn to a sweet slippery paste in his mouth. He could neither chew nor swallow. On the bed Bhandat was in a paroxysm of rage, cursing in Hindi, while the woman, unheeding, took the cup from his hand, ran behind the screen and brought out a floursack rag, burned in places, and began rubbing briskly on the sheet and Bhandat’s vest.

“You awkward barren cow!” Bhandat screamed in Hindi. “Always full to the brim! Always full to the brim!”

As she rubbed, her thin dress shook, revealing the thick coarse hair under her arms, the shape of her graceless body, the outline of one of her undergarments. Mr. Biswas forced himself to swallow the paste in his mouth and washed it down with the strong sweet tea. He was glad when the woman rolled up the floursack rag, put it under Bhandat’s vest, and went behind the screen.

Bhandat calmed down at once. He smiled impishly at Mr. Biswas and said, “She doesn’t understand Hindi.”

Mr. Biswas rose to go.

The woman appeared again, and croaked at Bhandat.

“Stay and eat a proper meal, Mohun,” Bhandat said. “I am not so poor that I can’t afford to feed my child.”

Mr. Biswas shook his head and tapped the notebook in his jacket pocket.

The woman withdrew.

“Antiseptic, fragrant, refreshing and inexpensive, eh? God will thank you for this, Mohun. As for those worthless sons of mine-” Bhandat smiled. “Come and let me kiss you before you go, Mohun.”

Mr. Biswas smiled, left Bhandat hooting, and went behind the screen to say good-bye to the woman. A lighted coal-pot stood on a box; on another box there were vegetables and plates. A basin of dirty water rested on the wet, black floor.

He said, “I’ll see what I can do. But I can’t promise anything.”

The woman nodded.

“Is his back, really.”

The words were low but clear. She was not dumb!

He did not wait for an explanation. He hurried out of the room into the lane. It was chokingly warm. Once more he received the shock of the street’s hot smells. The bees, honey-makers, buzzed around the exporters’ sweating sugarsacks. Bits of the coarse cake were still between his teeth. He swallowed. Instandy his mouth filled with saliva again.

As soon as he got to the house he went to the old bookcase, dug past his newspaper clippings, his correspondence from the Ideal School, a nest of pink blind baby mice, and took out his unfinished Escape stories, the dreams of the barren heroine. He took the stories to the lavatory in the yard and stayed there for some time, creating a din of his own, pulling the chain again and again. When he came out there was a little queue of readers and learners, impatient but interested.

On Sundays the din of the readers and learners was at its peak, and Mr. Biswas started once more to take his children on visits to Pagotes. But now he spent little time with them when they got there. Jagdat, like a vicious schoolboy eager to corrupt, was always anxious to get Mr. Biswas out of the house, and Mr. Biswas was always willing. Between Jagdat and Mr. Biswas there had developed an easy, relaxing relationship. They had never quarrelled; they could never be friends; yet each was always pleased to see the other. Neither believed or was interested in what the other said, and did not feel obliged even to listen. Mr. Biswas liked, too, to be with Jagdat in Pagotes, for once outside the house Jagdat was a person of importance, Ajodha’s heir, and his manner was that of someone used to obedience and affection. Despite his age, his family, his premature, attractive grey hair, Jagdat was still treated as the young man for whom allowances had to be made. His main pleasure lay in breaking Ajodha’s rules, and for a few hours Mr. Biswas had to pretend that these rules applied to him as well. Smoking was forbidden: they began to smoke as soon as they were in the road. Drinking was forbidden, and on Sunday mornings rumshops were closed by law: therefore they drank. Jagdat had an arrangement with a rum-shop-keeper who, in return for free petrol from Ajodha’s pumps, offered the use of his drawingroom for this Sunday morning drinking. In this drawingroom, which was strangely respectable, with four highly polished morris chairs around a small table, Mr. Biswas and Jagdat drank whisky and soda. In the beginning they were young men, for whom the world was still new, and neither mentioned the affections to which he had that day to return. But there always came a time when, after a silence, with each willing the talk to continue as before, anxieties and affections returned. Jagdat mentioned his family; he spoke their names: they became individuals. Mr. Biswas spoke about the Sentinel, about Anand and the exhibition. And always at the end the talk turned to Ajodha. Mr. Biswas heard old and new stories of Ajodha’s selfishness and cruelty; again and again he heard how it was Bhandat who had made Ajodha’s early success possible. Distrustful of the family, despite the drink, Mr. Biswas listened and made no comments, only squeezing in words about the Tulsis from time to time, half-heartedly trying to suggest that he had suffered as grand a betrayal as Bhandat. One Sunday morning he told Jagdat about his visit to Bhandat.