A passage to India
“Hamidullah liked them in England. Here we never look at them. Oh
no, much too careful. Let’s talk of something else.”
“Hamidullah’s right: they are much nicer in England. There’s
something that doesn’t suit them out here.”
Aziz after another silence said, “Why are you not married?”
Fielding was pleased that he had asked. “Because I have more or
less come through without it,” he replied.
“I was thinking of telling you a little about myself some day if
I can make it interesting enough. The lady I liked wouldn’t marry
me—that is the main point, but that’s fifteen years ago and now
means nothing.”
“But you haven’t children.”
“None.”
“Excuse the following question: have you any illegitimate children?”
“No. I’d willingly tell you if I had.”
“Then your name will entirely die out.”
“It must.”
“Well.” He shook his head. “This indifference is what the Oriental
will never understand.”
“I don’t care for children.”
“Caring has nothing to do with it,” he said impatiently.
“I don’t feel their absence, I don’t want them weeping around my
death-bed and being polite about me afterwards, which I believe is
the general notion. I’d far rather leave a thought behind me than
a child. Other people can have children. No obligation, with
England getting so chock-a-block and overrunning India for jobs.”
“Why don’t you marry Miss Quested?”
“Good God! why, the girl’s a prig.”
“Prig, prig? Kindly explain. Isn’t that a bad word?”
“Oh, I don’t know her, but she struck me as one of the more pathetic
products of Western education. She depresses me.”
“But prig, Mr. Fielding? How’s that?”
“She goes on and on as if she’s at a lecture—trying ever so hard
to understand India and life, and occasionally taking a note.”
“I thought her so nice and sincere.”
“So she probably is,” said Fielding, ashamed of his roughness: any
suggestion that he should marry always does produce overstatements
on the part of the bachelor, and a mental breeze. “But I can’t
marry her if I wanted to, for she has just become engaged to the
City Magistrate.”
“Has she indeed? I am so glad!” he exclaimed with relief, for this
exempted him from the Marabar expedition: he would scarcely be
expected to entertain regular Anglo-Indians.
“It’s the old mother’s doing. She was afraid her dear boy would
choose for himself, so she brought out the girl on purpose, and
flung them together until it happened.”
“Mrs. Moore did not mention that to me among her plans.”
“I may have got it wrong—I’m out of club gossip. But anyhow they’re
engaged to be married.”
“Yes, you’re out of it, my poor chap,” he smiled. “No Miss Quested
for Mr. Fielding. However, she was not beautiful. She has
practically no breasts, if you come to think of it.”
He smiled too, but found a touch of bad taste in the reference to
a lady’s breasts.
“For the City Magistrate they shall be sufficient perhaps, and he
for her. For you I shall arrange a lady with breasts like mangoes.
. . .”
“No, you won’t.”
“I will not really, and besides your position makes it dangerous
for you.” His mind had slipped from matrimony to Calcutta. His face
grew grave. Fancy if he had persuaded the Principal to accompany
him there, and then got him into trouble! And abruptly he took up
a new attitude towards his friend, the attitude of the protector
who knows the dangers of India and is admonitory. “You can’t be
too careful in every way, Mr. Fielding; whatever you say or do in
this damned country there is always some envious fellow on the
look-out. You may be surprised to know that there were at least
three spies sitting here when you came to enquire. I was really a
good deal upset that you talked in that fashion about God. They
will certainly report it.”
“To whom?”
“That’s all very well, but you spoke against morality also, and
you said you had come to take other people’s jobs. All that was
very unwise. This is an awful place for scandal. Why, actually one
of your own pupils was listening.”
“Thanks for telling me that; yes, I must try and be more careful.
If I’m interested, I’m apt to forget myself. Still, it doesn’t do
real harm.”
“But speaking out may get you into trouble.”
“It’s often done so in the past.”
“There, listen to that! But the end of it might be that you lost
your job.”
“If I do, I do. I shall survive it. I travel light.”
“Travel light! You are a most extraordinary race,” said Aziz,
turning away as if he were going to sleep, and immediately turning
back again. “Is it your climate, or what?”
“Plenty of Indians travel light too—saddhus and such. It’s one of
the things I admire about your country. Any man can travel light
until he has a wife or children. That’s part of my case against
marriage. I’m a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your
three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.”
Aziz was charmed and interested, and turned the new idea over in
his mind. So this was why Mr. Fielding and a few others were so
fearless! They had nothing to lose. But he himself was rooted in
society and Islam. He belonged to a tradition which bound him, and
he had brought children into the world, the society of the future.
Though he lived so vaguely in this flimsy bungalow, nevertheless
he was placed, placed.
“I can’t be sacked from my job, because my job’s Education. I
believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand
other individuals. It’s the only thing I do believe in. At
Government College, I mix it up with trigonometry, and so on. When
I’m a saddhu, I shall mix it up with something else.”
He concluded his manifesto, and both were silent. The eye-flies
became worse than ever and danced close up to their pupils, or
crawled into their ears. Fielding hit about wildly. The exercise
made him hot, and he got up to go.
“You might tell your servant to bring my horse. He doesn’t seem to
appreciate my Urdu.”
“I know. I gave him orders not to. Such are the tricks we play on
unfortunate Englishmen. Poor Mr. Fielding! But I will release you
now. Oh dear! With the exception of yourself and Hamidullah, I have
no one to talk to in this place. You like Hamidullah, don’t you?”
“Very much.”
“Do you promise to come at once to us when you are in trouble?”
“I never can be in trouble.”
“There goes a queer chap, I trust he won’t come to grief,” thought
Aziz, left alone. His period of admiration was over, and he reacted
towards patronage. It was difficult for him to remain in awe of
anyone who played with all his cards on the table. Fielding, he
discovered on closer acquaintance, was truly warm-hearted and
unconventional, but not what can be called wise. That frankness of
speech in the presence of Ram Chand, Rafi and Co. was dangerous
and inelegant. It served no useful end.
But they were friends, brothers. That part was settled, their
compact had been subscribed by the photograph, they trusted one
another, affection had triumphed for once in a way. He dropped off
to sleep amid the happier memories of the last two hours—poetry of
Ghalib, female grace, good old Hamidullah, good Fielding, his
honoured wife and dear boys. He passed into a region where these
joys had no enemies but bloomed harmoniously in an eternal garden,
or ran down watershoots of ribbed marble, or rose into domes
whereunder were inscribed, black against white, the ninety-nine
attributes of God.
PART II: CAVES
CHAPTER XII
The Ganges, though flowing from the foot of Vishnu and through
Siva’s hair, is not an ancient stream. Geology, looking further
than religion, knows of a time when neither the river nor the
Himalayas that nourished it existed, and an ocean flowed over the
holy places of Hindustan. The mountains rose, their debris silted
up the ocean, the gods took their seats on them and contrived the
river, and the India we call immemorial came into being. But India
is really far older. In the days of the prehistoric ocean the
southern part of the peninsula already existed, and the high places
of Dravidia have been land since land began, and have seen on the
one side the sinking of a continent that joined them to Africa,
and on the other the upheaval of the Himalayas from a sea. They
are older than anything in the world. No water has ever covered
them, and the sun who has watched them for countless æons may still
discern in their outlines forms that were his before our globe was
torn from his bosom. If flesh of the sun’s flesh is to be touched
anywhere, it is here, among the incredible antiquity of these
hills.
Yet even they are altering. As Himalayan India rose, this India,
the primal, has been depressed, and is slowly re-entering the curve
of the earth. It may be that in æons to come an ocean will flow
here too, and cover the sun-born rocks with slime. Meanwhile the
plain of the Ganges encroaches on them with something of the sea’s
action. They are sinking beneath the newer lands. Their main mass
is untouched, but at the edge their outposts have been cut off and
stand knee-deep, throat-deep, in the advancing soil. There is
something unspeakable in these outposts. They are like nothing else
in the world, and a glimpse of them makes the breath catch. They
rise abruptly, insanely, without the proportion that is kept by
the wildest hills elsewhere, they bear no relation to anything
dreamt or seen. To call them “uncanny” suggests ghosts, and they
are older than all spirit. Hinduism has scratched and plastered a
few rocks, but the shrines are unfrequented, as if pilgrims, who
generally seek the extraordinary, had here found too much of it.
Some saddhus did once settle in a cave, but they were smoked out,
and even Buddha, who must have passed this way down to the Bo Tree
of Gya, shunned a renunciation more complete than his own, and has
left no legend of struggle or victory in the Marabar.
The caves are readily described. A tunnel eight feet long, five
feet high, three feet wide, leads to a circular chamber about
twenty feet in diameter. This arrangement occurs again and again
throughout the group of hills, and this is all, this is a Marabar
Cave. Having seen one such cave, having seen two, having seen
three, four, fourteen, twenty-four, the visitor returns to
Chandrapore uncertain whether he has had an interesting experience
or a dull one or any experience at all. He finds it difficult to
discuss the caves, or to keep them apart in his mind, for the
pattern never varies, and no carving, not even a bees’-nest or a
bat distinguishes one from another. Nothing, nothing attaches to
them, and their reputation—for they have one—does not depend upon
human speech. It is as if the surrounding plain or the passing
birds have taken upon themselves to exclaim “extraordinary,” and
the word has taken root in the air, and been inhaled by mankind.
They are dark caves. Even when they open towards the sun, very
little light penetrates down the entrance tunnel into the circular
chamber. There is little to see, and no eye to see it, until the
visitor arrives for his five minutes, and strikes a match.
Immediately another flame rises in the depths of the rock and moves
towards the surface like an imprisoned spirit: the walls of the
circular chamber have been most marvellously polished. The two
flames approach and strive to unite, but cannot, because one of
them breathes air, the other stone. A mirror inlaid with lovely
colours divides the lovers, delicate stars of pink and grey
interpose, exquisite nebulæ, shadings fainter than the tail of a
comet or the midday moon, all the evanescent life of the granite,
only here visible. Fists and fingers thrust above the advancing
soil—here at last is their skin, finer than any covering acquired
by the animals, smoother than windless water, more voluptuous than