A visit to Biswas House (part 1)

Keith Jardim
Keith Jardim

The following is part three of Keith Jardim’s story featuring VS Naipaul. The first two instalments were

published on July 22 on August 5.

I was sitting there in the old Rover liking everything about Biswas House and what it meant for the island and the region and for history and people everywhere when someone knocked on the back window directly behind me. There they were, the Naipaul scholars, a handsome, grey-fleck-bearded Indian gentleman and a pretty blue-eyed woman with shoulder-length, almost blonde hair.

I got out and the Indian gentleman asked, “Are you the guide?”

I nodded and introduced myself.

“Franz,” he said and turned to the woman.

“Polly,” she said and extended her hand, smiling brightly.

I smiled back as best I could under the circumstances. “Franz and Polly,” I said, “the Naipaul scholars.”

They sensed my hesitation not just in believing their names – but in this entire enterprise. I asked Franz if he was from the West Indies; his voice hinted of it. “India,” he said. “Rajasthan.”

“Ah. And you both teach in New York.”

They said yes. Polly wondered about rain. We all looked up. The heat was warlike, the clouds still held. No breeze. An image of the winged vagrant came to me.

“It will rain,” I said, trying myself as a guide. “We’d better go in.”

As we entered the property Polly explained that when she’d spoken to the Professor she didn’t get a chance to ask his name. Her cheeks were a bit flushed as we went up the back stairs to the lecture room. I told them who the Professor was, and what he’d endured for the house. “Oh,” they both said together.

“A House for Trinidad and Tobago,” Franz said.

“Absolutely. He’s busier in retirement than he was when fully employed. Here’s too far to come from the east at this hour, especially with the traffic. So if it’s short notice, I usually show the place. I live nearby.”

Polly looked appeased. I’m doing well, I thought, my eyes a little too long on hers. Franz noticed, was frowningly studious.

The lecture room was dark. I switched on the lights and had to search for the A/C remotes. We were hot. There were two A/Cs on the wall and I was sweating; Polly too. “Always a setback in tropical places,” I said.

The scholars were faintly amused.

“You seem like a Shiva man,” Polly said.

“You mean one of his characters?” I remembered Tissa in the final travelogue in Shiva Naipaul’s last book, An Unfinished Journey, about a visit to Sri Lanka. I couldn’t read it without my whole heart being tugged in, I told Polly, true with all of Shiva’s writing, but more so with the Tissa narrative.

“A sweet, yet poignant melancholy,” she said. “With danger everywhere.”

“Yes, always waiting, on this island, too. All his writing feels set against that mood. Fado.”

“Saudade,” she said, wistfully. “The Portuguese.”

“It’s the world’s state,” Franz said. (I thought he said fate.) “They went everywhere, but it was already there. They followed it off their coast, found the world, and slavery.”

Several lines of Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold came to me, about Sophocles and the eternal note of sadness from the sea. I almost recited them.

I opened the door of the lecture room and led them into the house.

• Keith Jardim is the author of Near Open Water: Stories. He will resume teaching fiction workshops at the Naipaul House in September.

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"A visit to Biswas House (part 1)"

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