I want to see that frighten anybody, Mr. Biswas thought.

(Years later Mr. Biswas came across the travel-book the novelist had written about the region. He saw himself described as an “incompetent, aggrieved and fanatical young reporter, who distastefully noted my guarded replies in a laborious longhand”.)

Then a ship called on the way to Brazil.

Within twenty-four hours Mr. Biswas was notorious, the Sentinel, reviled on every hand, momentarily increased its circulation, and Mr. Burnett was jubilant.

He said, “You have even chilled me.”

The story, the leading one on page three, read:

Daddy Comes Home in a Coffin

U.S. Explorer’s Last Journey

On Ice

by M. Biswas

Somewhere in America in a neat little red-roofed cottage four children ask their mother every day, “Mummy, when is Daddy coming home?”

Less than a year ago Daddy-George Elmer Edrnan, the celebrated traveller and explorer-left home to explore the Amazon.

Well, I have news for you, kiddies.

Daddy is on his way home.

Yesterday he passed through Trinidad. In a coffin.

Mr. Biswas was taken on the staff of the Sentinel at a salary of fifteen dollars a fortnight.

“The first thing you must do,” Mr. Burnett said, “is to get out and get yourself a suit. I can’t have my best reporter running about in those clothes.”

It was Ramchand who brought about the reconciliation between Mr. Biswas and the Tulsis; or rather, since the Tulsis had few thoughts on the subject, made it possible for Mr. Biswas to recover his family without indignity. Ramchand’s task was easy. Mr. Biswas’s name appeared almost every day in the Sentinel, so that it seemed he had suddenly become famous and rich. Mr. Biswas, believing himself that this was very nearly so, felt disposed to be charitable.

He was at that time touring the island as the Scarlet Pimpernel, in the hope of having people come up to him and say, “You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize.” Every day his photograph appeared in the Sentinel together with his report on the previous day’s journey and his itinerary for the day. The photograph was half a column wide and there was no room for his ears; he was frowning, in an unsuccessful attempt to look menacing; his mouth was slightly open and he stared at the camera out of the corners of his eyes, which were shadowed by the low-pulled brim of his hat. As a circulation raiser the Scarlet Pimpernel was a failure. The photograph concealed too much; and he was too well dressed for ordinary people to accost him in a sentence of such length and correctness. The prizes went unclaimed for days and the Scarlet Pimpernel reports became increasingly fantastic. Mr. Biswas visited his brother Prasad and readers of the Sentinel learned next morning that a peasant in a remote village had rushed up to the Scarlet Pimpernel and said, “You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize.” The peasant was then reported as saying that he read the Sentinel every day, since no other paper presented the news so fully, so amusingly, and with such balance.

Then Mr. Biswas visited his eldest brother Pratap. And there he had a surprise. He found that his mother had been living with Pratap for some weeks. For long Mr. Biswas had considered Bipti useless, depressing and obstinate; he wondered how Pratap had managed to communicate with her and persuade her to leave the hut in the back trace at Pagotes. But she had come and she had changed. She was active and lucid; she was a lively and important part of Pratap’s household. Mr. Biswas felt reproached and anxious. His luck had been too sudden, his purchase on the world too slight. When he got back late that evening to the Sentinel office he sat down at a desk, his own (his towel in the bottom drawer), and with memories coming from he knew not where, he wrote:

Scarlet Pimpernel Spends Night in a Tree

Anguish of Six-Hour Vigil

Oink! Oink!

The frogs croaked all around me. Nothing but that and the sound of the rain on trees in the black night.

I was dripping wet. My motorcycle had broken down miles from anywhere. It was midnight and I was alone.

The report then described a sleepless night, encounters with snakes and bats, the two cars that passed in the night, heedless of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s cries, the rescue early in the morning by peasants who recognized the Scarlet Pimpernel and claimed their prize.

It was not long after this that Mr. Biswas went to Arwacas. He got there in the middle of the morning but did not go to Hanuman House until after four, when he knew the store would be closed, the children back from school and the sisters in the hall and kitchen. His return was as magnificent as he had wished. He was still climbing up the steps from the courtyard when he was greeted by shouts, scampering and laughter.

“You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize!”

He went around, dropping Sentinel dollar-tokens into eager hands.

“Send this in with the coupon from the Sentinel. Your money will come the day after tomorrow.”

Savi and Anand at once took possession of him.

Shama, emerging from the black kitchen, said, “Anand, you will get your father’s suit dirty.”

It was as though he had never left. Neither Shama nor the children nor the hall carried any mark of his absence.

Shama dusted a bench at the table and asked whether he had eaten. He didn’t reply, but sat where she had dusted. The children asked questions continually, and it was easy not to pay attention to Shama as she brought the food out.

“Uncle Mohun, Uncle Mohun. You really spend a night up a tree?”

“What do you think, Jai?”

“Ma say you make it up. And I don’t see how you could climb up a tree.”

“I can’t tell you how often I fall down.”

It was better than he had imagined to be back in the sooty green hall with the shelflike loft, the long pitchpine table, the unrelated pieces of furniture, the photographs of Pundit Tulsi, the kitchen safe with the Japanese coffee-set.

“Uncle Mohun, that man did really chase you with a cutlass when you try to give a coupon to his wife?”

“Yes.”

“Why you didn’t give him one too?”

“Go away. You children getting too smart for me.”

He ate and washed his hands and gargled. Shama urged him to be careful of his tie and jacket: as though they were not new to her, as though she had a wifely interest even in clothes she had not known from the start.

He went up the stairs, past the landing with the broken piano. In the verandah he saw Hari, the holy man, and Hari’s wife. They barely greeted him. They both seemed untouched by his new fame or his new suit. Hari, in his pundit’s clothes, looked jaundiced and unwell as always; his wife’s solemnity was tinged with worry and fatigue. Mr. Biswas had often surprised them in similar quiet domestic scenes, withdrawn from the life about them.

He felt he was intruding, and hurried past the door with the coloured glass panes into the Book Room, which smelled mustily of old paper and worm-eaten wood. His books were there with traces of their soaking: bleached covers, stained and crinkled pages. Anand came into the room. His hair was long on his big head; he was in his “home-clothes”. Mr. Biswas held Anand to his leg and Anand rubbed against it. He asked Anand about school and got shy, unintelligible replies. They had little to talk about.

“Exactly when they did start seeing my name in the papers?” Mr. Biswas asked.

Anand smiled, raised one foot off the floor, and mumbled.