They were in the Main Road, not far from the shop where Mr. Biswas had served under Bhandat. The shop was now owned by a Chinese and a large signboard proclaimed the fact.

The moment came to separate from Jagdat. But Mr. Biswas was unwilling to leave him, to be alone, to get on the bus to go back through the night to Green Vale.

Jagdat said, “The first boy bright like hell, you know.”

It was some seconds before Mr. Biswas realized that Jagdat was talking about one of his celebrated illegitimate children. He saw anxiety in Jagdat’s broad face, in the bright jumping little eyes.

“I glad,” Mr. Biswas said. “Now you could get him to read That Body of Yours to you.”

Jagdat laughed. “The same old Mohun.”

There was no need to ask where Jagdat was going. He was going to his family. He too, then, lived a divided life.

“She does work in a office,” Jagdat said, anxious again.

Mr. Biswas was impressed.

“Spanish,” Jagdat said.

Mr. Biswas knew this was a euphemism for a red-skinned Negro. “Too hot for me, man.”

“But faithful,” Jagdat said.

Knocked about on the wooden seat of the rackety rickety dim-lit bus, going past silent fields and past houses which were lightless and dead or bright and private, Mr. Biswas no longer thought of the afternoon’s mission, but of the night ahead.

Early next morning Mr. Maclean turned up at the barracks and said he had put off other pressing work and was ready to go ahead with Mr. Biswas’s house. He was in his poor but respectable business clothes. His ironed shirt was darned with almost showy neatness; his khaki trousers were clean and sharply creased, but the khaki was old and would not keep the crease for long.

“You decide how much you want to start off with?”

“A hundred,” Mr. Biswas said. “More at the end of the month. No concrete pillars.”

“Is only a sort of fanciness. You watch. I will get you a crapaud that would last a lifetime. Wouldn’t make no difference.”

“Once it neat.”

“Neat and nice,” Mr. Maclean said. “Well, I suppose I better start seeing about materials and labour.”

Materials came that afternoon. The crapaud pillars looked rough; they were not altogether round or altogether straight. But Mr. Biswas was delighted by the new scantlings, and the new nails that came in several wrappings of newspaper. He took up handfuls of nails and let them fall again. The sound pleased him. “Did not know nails was so heavy,” he said.

Mr. Maclean had brought a tool-box which had his initials on the cover and was like a large wooden suitcase. It contained a saw with an old handle and a sharp, oiled blade; several chisels and drills; a spirit-level and a “I square; a plane; a hammer and a mallet; wedges with smooth, fringed heads; a ball of old, white-stained twine; and a lump of chalk. His tools were like his clothes: old but cared-for. He built a rough work-bench out of the materials and assured Mr. Biswas that all the material would be eventually released for the house and would suffer little damage. That was why, he explained in reply to another of Mr. Biswas’s queries, no nail had been driven right in.

The labour also came. The labour was a labourer named Edgar, a muscular, full-blooded Negro whose short khaki trousers were shaggy with patches, and whose vest, brown with dirt, was full of holes that had been distended by his powerful body into ellipses. Edgar cutlassed the site, leaving it a rich wet green.

When Mr. Biswas returned from the fields he found the brushed site marked in white with the plan of the house. Holes for pillars had been indicated and Edgar was digging. Not far off Mr. Maclean had constructed a frame which rested level on stones and answered wonderfully to the design he had drawn in his yard.

“Gallery, drawingroom, bedroom, bedroom,” Mr. Biswas said, hopping over the spars. “Gallery, bedroom, bedroom, drawingroom.”

The air smelled of sawdust. Sawdust had spilled rich red and cream on the grass and had been ground into the damp black earth by Edgar’s bare feet and Mr. Maclean’s old, un-shining working-boots.

Mr. Maclean talked to Mr. Biswas about the difficulties of labour.

“I try to get Sam,” he said. “But he a little too erratic and don’t-care. Edgar, now, does do the work of two men. The only trouble is, you got to keep a eye on him all the time. Look at him.”

Edgar was knee-deep in a hole and regularly throwing up spadefuls of black earth.

“You got to tell him to stop,” Mr. Maclean said. “Otherwise, he dig right through till he come out the other side. Well, boss, how about something to wet the job?” He made a drinking gesture. In the early days he had preferred to drink on the completion of a job; now he got his drink as soon as he could.

Mr. Biswas nodded and Mr. Maclean called, “Edgar!”

Edgar went on digging.

Mr. Maclean tapped his forehead. “You see what I tell you?” He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

Edgar looked up and jumped out of his hole. Mr. Maclean asked him to go to the rumshop and buy a nip of rum. Edgar ran to where his belongings were, seized a dusty, squashed aand abbreviated felt hat, pressed it on his head and ran off. Some minutes later he came back, still running, one hand holding a bottle, the other holding down his hat.

Mr. Maclean opened the bottle, said, “To you and the house, boss,” and drank. He passed the bottle to Edgar, who said, “To you and the house, mister boss,” and drank without wiping the botde.

Mr. Maclean required much space when he worked. Next day he built another frame and left it on the ground beside the frame of the floor. The new frame was of the back wall and Mr. Biswas recognized the back door and the back window. Edgar finished digging the holes and set up three of the crapaud pillars, making them firm with stones taken from a heap left by the Public Works Department some distance away.

One thing puzzled Mr. Biswas. The materials had cost nearly eighty-five dollars. That left fifteen dollars to be divided between Mr. Maclean and Edgar for work which, Mr. Maclean said, would take from eight to ten days. Yet they were both cheerful; though Mr. Maclean had complained, in a whisper, about the cost of labour.

That afternoon, when Mr. Maclean and Edgar left, Shama came.

“What is this I hear from Seth?”

He showed her the frames on the ground, the three erect pillars, the mounds of dirt.

“I suppose you use up every cent you had?”

“Every red cent,” Mr. Biswas said. “Gallery, drawingroom, bedroom, bedroom.”

Her pregnancy was beginning to be prominent. She puffed and fanned. “Is all right for you. But what about me and the children?”

“What you mean? They going to be ashamed because their father building a house?”

“Because their father trying to set himself up in competition with people who have a lot more than him.”

He knew what was upsetting her. He could imagine the whisperings at the monkey house, the puss-puss here, the puss-puss there. He said, “I know you want to spend all the days of your life in that big coal barrel called Hanuman House. But don’t try to keep my children there.”

“Where you going to get the money to finish the house?”

“Don’t you worry your head about that. If you did worry a little bit more and a little bit earlier, by now we might have a house.”

“You just gone and throw away your money. You want to be a pauper.”

“O God! Stop digging and digging at me like this!”

“Who digging? Look.” She pointed to Edgar’s mounds of earth. “You is the big digger.”

He gave an annoyed little laugh.

For some time they were silent. Then she said, “You didn’t even get a pundit or anything before you plant the first pillar.”

“Look. I get enough good luck the last time Hari come and bless the shop. Remember that.”