A passage to India
“What made you call it a ghost?”
“Call what a ghost?”
“The animal thing that hit us. Didn’t you say ‘Oh, a ghost,’ in
passing.”
“I couldn’t have been thinking of what I was saying.”
“It was probably a hyena, as a matter of fact.”
“Ah, very likely.”
And they went on with their Patience. Down in Chandrapore the Nawab
Bahadur waited for his car. He sat behind his town house (a small
unfurnished building which he rarely entered) in the midst of the
little court that always improvises itself round Indians of
position. As if turbans were the natural product of darkness a
fresh one would occasionally froth to the front, incline itself
towards him, and retire. He was preoccupied, his diction was
appropriate to a religious subject. Nine years previously, when
first he had had a car, he had driven it over a drunken man and
killed him, and the man had been waiting for him ever since. The
Nawab Bahadur was innocent before God and the Law, he had paid
double the compensation necessary; but it was no use, the man
continued to wait in an unspeakable form, close to the scene of
his death. None of the English people knew of this, nor did the
chauffeur; it was a racial secret communicable more by blood than
speech. He spoke now in horror of the particular circumstances; he
had led others into danger, he had risked the lives of two innocent
and honoured guests. He repeated, “If I had been killed, what
matter? it must happen sometime; but they who trusted me——”
The company shuddered and invoked the mercy of God. Only Aziz held
aloof, because a personal experience restrained him: was it not by
despising ghosts that he had come to know Mrs. Moore? “You know,
Nureddin,” he whispered to the grandson—an effeminate youth whom
he seldom met, always liked, and invariably forgot—“you know, my
dear fellow, we Moslems simply must get rid of these superstitions,
or India will never advance. How long must I hear of the savage
pig upon the Marabar Road?” Nureddin looked down. Aziz continued:
“Your grandfather belongs to another generation, and I respect and
love the old gentleman, as you know. I say nothing against him,
only that it is wrong for us, because we are young. I want you to
promise me—Nureddin, are you listening?—not to believe in Evil
Spirits, and if I die (for my health grows very weak) to bring up
my three children to disbelieve in them too.” Nureddin smiled, and
a suitable answer rose to his pretty lips, but before he could make
it the car arrived, and his grandfather took him away.
The game of Patience up in the civil lines went on longer than
this. Mrs. Moore continued to murmur “Red ten on a black knave,”
Miss Quested to assist her, and to intersperse among the intricacies
of the play details about the hyena, the engagement, the Maharani
of Mudkul, the Bhattacharyas, and the day generally, whose rough
desiccated surface acquired as it receded a definite outline, as
India itself might, could it be viewed from the moon. Presently
the players went to bed, but not before other people had woken up
elsewhere, people whose emotions they could not share, and whose
existence they ignored. Never tranquil, never perfectly dark, the
night wore itself away, distinguished from other nights by two or
three blasts of wind, which seemed to fall perpendicularly out of
the sky and to bounce back into it, hard and compact, leaving no
freshness behind them: the hot weather was approaching.
CHAPTER IX
Aziz fell ill as he foretold—slightly ill. Three days later he lay
abed in his bungalow, pretending to be very ill. It was a touch of
fever, which he would have neglected if there was anything important
at the hospital. Now and then he groaned and thought he should die,
but did not think so for long, and a very little diverted him. It
was Sunday, always an equivocal day in the East, and an excuse for
slacking. He could hear church bells as he drowsed, both from the
civil station and from the missionaries out beyond the slaughter
house—different bells and rung with different intent, for one set
was calling firmly to Anglo-India, and the other feebly to mankind.
He did not object to the first set; the other he ignored, knowing
their inefficiency. Old Mr. Graysford and young Mr. Sorley made
converts during a famine, because they distributed food; but when
times improved they were naturally left alone again, and though
surprised and aggrieved each time this happened, they never learnt
wisdom. “No Englishman understands us except Mr. Fielding,” he
thought; “but how shall I see him again? If he entered this room
the disgrace of it would kill me.” He called to Hassan to clear
up, but Hassan, who was testing his wages by ringing them on the
step of the verandah, found it possible not to hear him; heard and
didn’t hear, just as Aziz had called and hadn’t called. “That’s
India all over . . . how like us . . . there we are . . .” He dozed
again, and his thoughts wandered over the varied surface of life.
Gradually they steadied upon a certain spot—the Bottomless Pit
according to missionaries, but he had never regarded it as more
than a dimple. Yes, he did want to spend an evening with some
girls, singing and all that, the vague jollity that would culminate
in voluptuousness. Yes, that was what he did want. How could it be
managed? If Major Callendar had been an Indian, he would have
remembered what young men are, and granted two or three days’ leave
to Calcutta without asking questions. But the Major assumed either
that his subordinates were made of ice, or that they repaired to
the Chandrapore bazaars—disgusting ideas both. It was only Mr.
Fielding who——
“Hassan!”
The servant came running.
“Look at those flies, brother;” and he pointed to the horrible mass
that hung from the ceiling. The nucleus was a wire which had been
inserted as a homage to electricity. Electricity had paid no
attention, and a colony of eye-flies had come instead and blackened
the coils with their bodies.
“Huzoor, those are flies.”
“Good, good, they are, excellent, but why have I called you?”
“To drive them elsewhere,” said Hassan, after painful thought.
“Driven elsewhere, they always return.”
“Huzoor.”
“You must make some arrangement against flies; that is why you are
my servant,” said Aziz gently.
Hassan would call the little boy to borrow the step-ladder from
Mahmoud Ali’s house; he would order the cook to light the Primus
stove and heat water; he would personally ascend the steps with a
bucket in his arms, and dip the end of the coil into it.
“Good, very good. Now what have you to do?”
“Kill flies.”
“Good. Do it.”
Hassan withdrew, the plan almost lodged in his head, and began to
look for the little boy. Not finding him, his steps grew slower,
and he stole back to his post on the verandah, but did not go on
testing his rupees, in case his master heard them clink. On
twittered the Sunday bells; the East had returned to the East via
the suburbs of England, and had become ridiculous during the
detour.
Aziz continued to think about beautiful women.
His mind here was hard and direct, though not brutal. He had learnt
all he needed concerning his own constitution many years ago,
thanks to the social order into which he had been born, and when
he came to study medicine he was repelled by the pedantry and fuss
with which Europe tabulates the facts of sex. Science seemed to
discuss everything from the wrong end. It didn’t interpret his
experiences when he found them in a German manual, because by being
there they ceased to be his experiences. What he had been told by
his father or mother or had picked up from servants—it was
information of that sort that he found useful, and handed on as
occasion offered to others.
But he must not bring any disgrace on his children by some silly
escapade. Imagine if it got about that he was not respectable! His
professional position too must be considered, whatever Major
Callendar thought. Aziz upheld the proprieties, though he did not
invest them with any moral halo, and it was here that he chiefly
differed from an Englishman. His conventions were social. There is
no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out,
because it is only when she finds you out that you have harmed her;
she is not like a friend or God, who are injured by the mere
existence of unfaithfulness. Quite clear about this, he meditated
what type of lie he should tell to get away to Calcutta, and had
thought of a man there who could be trusted to send him a wire and
a letter that he could show to Major Callendar, when the noise of
wheels was heard in his compound. Someone had called to enquire.
The thought of sympathy increased his fever, and with a sincere
groan he wrapped himself in his quilt.
“Aziz, my dear fellow, we are greatly concerned,” said Hamidullah’s
voice. One, two, three, four bumps, as people sat down upon his
bed.
“When a doctor falls ill it is a serious matter,” said the voice
of Mr. Syed Mohammed, the assistant engineer.
“When an engineer falls ill, it is equally important,” said the
voice of Mr. Haq, a police inspector.
“Oh yes, we are all jolly important, our salaries prove it.”
“Dr. Aziz took tea with our Principal last Thursday afternoon,”
piped Rafi, the engineer’s nephew. “Professor Godbole, who also
attended, has sickened too, which seems rather a curious thing,
sir, does it not?”
Flames of suspicion leapt up in the breast of each man.
“Humbug!” exclaimed Hamidullah, in authoritative tones, quenching
them.
“Humbug, most certainly,” echoed the others, ashamed of themselves.
The wicked schoolboy, having failed to start a scandal, lost
confidence and stood up with his back to the wall.
“Is Professor Godbole ill?” enquired Aziz, penetrated by the news.
“I am sincerely sorry.” Intelligent and compassionate, his face
peeped out of the bright crimson folds of the quilt. “How do you
do, Mr. Syed Mohammed, Mr. Haq? How very kind of you to enquire
after my health! How do you do, Hamidullah? But you bring me bad
news. What is wrong with him, the excellent fellow?”
“Why don’t you answer, Rafi? You’re the great authority,” said his
uncle.
“Yes, Rafi’s the great man,” said Hamidullah, rubbing it in. “Rafi
is the Sherlock Holmes of Chandrapore. Speak up, Rafi.”
Less than the dust, the schoolboy murmured the word “Diarrhœa,”
but took courage as soon as it had been uttered, for it improved
his position. Flames of suspicion shot up again in the breasts of
his elders, though in a different direction. Could what was called
diarrhœa really be an early case of cholera?
“If this is so, this is a very serious thing: this is scarcely the
end of March. Why have I not been informed?” cried Aziz.
“Dr. Panna Lal attends him, sir.”
“Oh yes, both Hindus; there we have it; they hang together like
flies and keep everything dark. Rafi, come here. Sit down. Tell me
all the details. Is there vomiting also?”
“Oh yes indeed, sir, and the serious pains.”
“That settles it. In twenty-four hours he will be dead.”
Everybody looked and felt shocked, but Professor Godbole had
diminished his appeal by linking himself with a co-religionist. He
moved them less than when he had appeared as a suffering individual.
Before long they began to condemn him as a source of infection.
“All illness proceeds from Hindus,” Mr. Haq said. Mr. Syed Mohammed
had visited religious fairs, at Allahabad and at Ujjain, and
described them with biting scorn. At Allahabad there was flowing
water, which carried impurities away, but at Ujjain the little
river Sipra was banked up, and thousands of bathers deposited their
germs in the pool. He spoke with disgust of the hot sun, the
cow-dung and marigold flowers, and the encampment of saddhus, some