Tara shrugged, to say that it was none of her...
Tara shrugged, to say that it was none of her business; and this hurt MrBiswas, for it emphasized his loneliness: Tara's interest in Shama might have made everything more bearableHe thought he would show an equal unconcernLightly, smiling back at Ajodha, he asked Tara, "I suppose they vex with me now over there, eh?"
His tone angered her"What's the matter? Are you afraid of them already, like every other man in that place?"
"Afraid? No
But it was some days before he could make up his mind to go backHe didn't know what his rights were, didn't believe in the shop at The Chase, and his plans were vagueOnly, he doubted that he would return to the back trace, and when he packed, he packed everything, Bipti crying happily all the whileAs he cycled past the unfinished, open houses on the County Road, he wondered how many nights he would spend behind the closed facade of Hanuman mulberry bags House


"What?" Shama said in English"You come back already? You tired catching crab in Pagotes?"
Despite the adventurousness and danger of his calling, the crab-catcher was considered the lowest of the low
"I thought I would come and help all-you catch some here," MrBiswas replied, and killed the giggles in the hall
No other comment was madeHe had expected to be met by silence, stares, hostility and perhaps a little fearHe got the stares; the noise continued; the fear was, of course, only a wild hope; and he couldn't be sure of the hostilityThe interest in his return was momentary and superficialNo one referred to his absence or return, not Seth, not MrsTulsi, both of whom continued, as they had done even before he left, hardly to notice himHe heard nothing about the visits of Bipti and TaraThe house was too full, too busy; such events were insignificant because he mattered little to the houseHis chanel quilted bags status there was now fixedHe was troublesome and disloyal, and could not be trustedHe was weak and therefore contemptible
He had not expected to hear any more about the shop in The ChaseHe began to doubt that it existedHe went on with his sign-writing and spent as much time as he could out of the houseBut he was unknown in Arwacas and jobs were scarceTime hung heavily on his hands until he met an equally underemployed man called Misir, the Arwacas correspondent of the _Trinidad Sentinel_They discussed jobs, Hinduism, India and their respective familiesBiswas had to prepare afresh for his return to Hanuman House, though once he had pushed open the tall gate at the side it was a short journey, across the courtyard, through the hall, up the steps, along the verandah, through the Book Room, to his share of the long roomThere he stripped to pants and vest, lay down on his bedding and read, leaning cheap chanel purses on one elbowHis pants, made by Bipti from floursacks, were unfortunateDespite many washings they were still bright with letters and even whole words; they went down to his knees and made him look smaller than he wasIt was not long before the children got to know about these pants, but MrBiswas, refusing to yield to laughter, comments from the hall and Shama's pleas, continued to parade them
It was impossible to keep anything secret from the childrenAs soon as darkness fell beds were made for them in the Book Room and all along the verandah upstairsAs the evening wore on, more and more beds were unrolled and the old upstairs became choked with sleepers; sleepers filled the wooden bridge that connected the old upstairs with the concrete houseBeyond the bridge, called "the new room", lay the seclusion and space of the drawingroom that had impressed BiptiBut even if that part of the house was not balenciaga motorcycle handbag reserved for Seth, MrsTulsi and her two sons, MrBiswas would not have cared to go thereIt was a forbidding room, with its large brass pots and marble topped tablesThere was nothing to sit on apart from the two chairs which Bipti had described as thronelikeAnd the room was made oppressive by the many statues of Hindu gods, heavy and ugly, which Pundit Tulsi had brought back from his Indian visits"He must have bought them wholesale from some godshop," MrBiswas told Shama laterAbove that was the greater seclusion of the prayer-room, reached from the drawingroom by a staircase as steep as a ship's companionway (a means of testing the faithful, or it might simply have been that Pundit Tulsi, like most builders in the island, got ideas as he went along)But in the prayer-room there was no furniture at all, the ground was of course sacred, and he found the smell of incense and sandalwood classic chanel quilted bag insupportable