A passage to India
“Chandrapore? The man’s made a mistake,” Fielding exclaimed.
“Oh no, why?” He was disappointed, but made light of it; no doubt
the two young ladies were great friends. He would prefer to give
breakfast to all four; still, guests must do as they wish, or they
become prisoners. He went away cheerfully to inspect the porridge
and the ice.
“What’s happened?” asked Fielding, who felt at once that something
had gone queer. All the way out Miss Derek had chattered about the
picnic, called it an unexpected treat, and said that she preferred
Indians who didn’t invite her to their entertainments to those who
did it. Mrs. Moore sat swinging her foot, and appeared sulky and
stupid. She said: “Miss Derek is most unsatisfactory and restless,
always in a hurry, always wanting something new; she will do
anything in the world except go back to the Indian lady who pays
her.”
Fielding, who didn’t dislike Miss Derek, replied: “She wasn’t in
a hurry when I left her. There was no question of returning to
Chandrapore. It looks to me as if Miss Quested’s in the hurry.”
“Adela?—she’s never been in a hurry in her life,” said the old lady
sharply.
“I say it’ll prove to be Miss Quested’s wish, in fact I know it
is,” persisted the schoolmaster. He was annoyed—chiefly with
himself. He had begun by missing a train—a sin he was never guilty
of—and now that he did arrive it was to upset Aziz’ arrangements
for the second time. He wanted someone to share the blame, and
frowned at Mrs. Moore rather magisterially. “Aziz is a charming
fellow,” he announced.
“I know,” she answered, with a yawn.
“He has taken endless trouble to make a success of our picnic.”
They knew one another very little, and felt rather awkward at being
drawn together by an Indian. The racial problem can take subtle
forms. In their case it had induced a sort of jealousy, a mutual
suspicion. He tried to goad her enthusiasm; she scarcely spoke.
Aziz fetched them to breakfast.
“It is quite natural about Miss Quested,” he remarked, for he had
been working the incident a little in his mind, to get rid of its
roughnesses. “We were having an interesting talk with our guide,
then the car was seen, so she decided to go down to her friend.”
Incurably inaccurate, he already thought that this was what had
occurred. He was inaccurate because he was sensitive. He did not
like to remember Miss Quested’s remark about polygamy, because it
was unworthy of a guest, so he put it from his mind, and with it
the knowledge that he had bolted into a cave to get away from her.
He was inaccurate because he desired to honour her, and—facts being
entangled—he had to arrange them in her vicinity, as one tidies
the ground after extracting a weed. Before breakfast was over, he
had told a good many lies. “She ran to her friend, I to mine,” he
went on, smiling. “And now I am with my friends and they are with
me and each other, which is happiness.”
Loving them both, he expected them to love each other. They didn’t
want to. Fielding thought with hostility, “I knew these women would
make trouble,” and Mrs. Moore thought, “This man, having missed
the train, tries to blame us”; but her thoughts were feeble; since
her faintness in the cave she was sunk in apathy and cynicism. The
wonderful India of her opening weeks, with its cool nights and
acceptable hints of infinity, had vanished.
Fielding ran up to see one cave. He wasn’t impressed. Then they
got on the elephant and the picnic began to unwind out of the
corridor and escaped under the precipice towards the railway
station, pursued by stabs of hot air. They came to the place where
he had quitted the car. A disagreeable thought now struck him, and
he said: “Aziz, exactly where and how did you leave Miss Quested?”
“Up there.” He indicated the Kawa Dol cheerfully.
“But how——” A gully, or rather a crease, showed among the rocks at
this place; it was scurfy with cactuses. “I suppose the guide
helped her.”
“Oh, rather, most helpful.”
“Is there a path off the top?”
“Millions of paths, my dear fellow.”
Fielding could see nothing but the crease. Everywhere else the
glaring granite plunged into the earth.
“But you saw them get down safe?”
“Yes, yes, she and Miss Derek, and go off in the car.”
“Then the guide came back to you?”
“Exactly. Got a cigarette?”
“I hope she wasn’t ill,” pursued the Englishman. The crease
continued as a nullah across the plain, the water draining off this
way towards the Ganges.
“She would have wanted me, if she was ill, to attend her.”
“Yes, that sounds sense.”
“I see you’re worrying, let’s talk of other things,” he said
kindly. “Miss Quested was always to do what she wished, it was our
arrangement. I see you are worrying on my account, but really I
don’t mind, I never notice trifles.”
“I do worry on your account. I consider they have been impolite!”
said Fielding, lowering his voice. “She had no right to dash away
from your party, and Miss Derek had no right to abet her.”
So touchy as a rule, Aziz was unassailable. The wings that uplifted
him did not falter, because he was a Mogul emperor who had done
his duty. Perched on his elephant, he watched the Marabar Hills
recede, and saw again, as provinces of his kingdom, the grim untidy
plain, the frantic and feeble movements of the buckets, the white
shrines, the shallow graves, the suave sky, the snake that looked
like a tree. He had given his guests as good a time as he could,
and if they came late or left early that was not his affair. Mrs.
Moore slept, swaying against the rods of the howdah, Mohammed Latif
embraced her with efficiency and respect, and by his own side sat
Fielding, whom he began to think of as “Cyril.”
“Aziz, have you figured out what this picnic will cost you?”
“Sh! my dear chap, don’t mention that part. Hundreds and hundreds
of rupees. The completed account will be too awful; my friends’
servants have robbed me right and left, and as for an elephant,
she apparently eats gold. I can trust you not to repeat this. And
M.L.—please employ initials, he listens—is far the worst of all.”
“I told you he’s no good.”
“He is plenty of good for himself; his dishonesty will ruin me.”
“Aziz, how monstrous!”
“I am delighted with him really, he has made my guests comfortable;
besides, it is my duty to employ him, he is my cousin. If money
goes, money comes. If money stays, death comes. Did you ever hear
that useful Urdu proverb? Probably not, for I have just invented
it.”
“My proverbs are: A penny saved is a penny earned; A stitch in time
saves nine; Look before you leap; and the British Empire rests on
them. You will never kick us out, you know, until you cease
employing M.L.’s and such.”
“Oh, kick you out? Why should I trouble over that dirty job? Leave
it to the politicians. . . . No, when I was a student I got excited
over your damned countrymen, certainly; but if they’ll let me get
on with my profession and not be too rude to me officially, I
really don’t ask for more.”
“But you do; you take them to a picnic.”
“This picnic is nothing to do with English or Indian; it is an
expedition of friends.”
So the cavalcade ended, partly pleasant, partly not; the Brahman
cook was picked up, the train arrived, pushing its burning throat
over the plain, and the twentieth century took over from the
sixteenth. Mrs. Moore entered her carriage, the three men went to
theirs, adjusted the shutters, turned on the electric fan and tried
to get some sleep. In the twilight, all resembled corpses, and the
train itself seemed dead though it moved—a coffin from the
scientific north which troubled the scenery four times a day. As
it left the Marabars, their nasty little cosmos disappeared, and
gave place to the Marabars seen from a distance, finite and rather
romantic. The train halted once under a pump, to drench the stock
of coal in its tender. Then it caught sight of the main line in
the distance, took courage, and bumped forward, rounded the civil
station, surmounted the level-crossing (the rails were scorching
now), and clanked to a stand-still. Chandrapore, Chandrapore! The
expedition was over.
And as it ended, as they sat up in the gloom and prepared to enter
ordinary life, suddenly the long drawn strangeness of the morning
snapped. Mr. Haq, the Inspector of Police, flung open the door of
their carriage and said in shrill tones: “Dr. Aziz, it is my highly
painful duty to arrest you.”
“Hullo, some mistake,” said Fielding, at once taking charge of the
situation.
“Sir, they are my instructions. I know nothing.”
“On what charge do you arrest him?”
“I am under instructions not to say.”
“Don’t answer me like that. Produce your warrant.”
“Sir, excuse me, no warrant is required under these particular
circumstances. Refer to Mr. McBryde.”
“Very well, so we will. Come along, Aziz, old man; nothing to fuss
about, some blunder.”
“Dr. Aziz, will you kindly come?—a closed conveyance stands in
readiness.”
The young man sobbed—his first sound—and tried to escape out of
the opposite door on to the line.
“That will compel me to use force,” Mr. Haq wailed.
“Oh, for God’s sake——” cried Fielding, his own nerves breaking
under the contagion, and pulled him back before a scandal started,
and shook him like a baby. A second later, and he would have been
out, whistles blowing, a man-hunt. . . . “Dear fellow, we’re coming
to McBryde together, and enquire what’s gone wrong—he’s a decent
fellow, it’s all unintentional . . . he’ll apologize. Never, never
act the criminal.”
“My children and my name!” he gasped, his wings broken.
“Nothing of the sort. Put your hat straight and take my arm. I’ll
see you through.”
“Ah, thank God, he comes,” the Inspector exclaimed. They emerged
into the midday heat, arm in arm. The station was seething.
Passengers and porters rushed out of every recess, many Government
servants, more police. Ronny escorted Mrs. Moore. Mohammed Latif
began wailing. And before they could make their way through the
chaos, Fielding was called off by the authoritative tones of Mr.
Turton, and Aziz went on to prison alone.
CHAPTER XVII
The Collector had watched the arrest from the interior of the
waiting-room, and throwing open its perforated doors of zinc, he
was now revealed like a god in a shrine. When Fielding entered the
doors clapped to, and were guarded by a servant, while a punkah,
to mark the importance of the moment, flapped dirty petticoats over
their heads. The Collector could not speak at first. His face was
white, fanatical, and rather beautiful—the expression that all
English faces were to wear at Chandrapore for many days. Always
brave and unselfish, he was now fused by some white and generous
heat; he would have killed himself, obviously, if he had thought
it right to do so. He spoke at last. “The worst thing in my whole
career has happened,” he said. “Miss Quested has been insulted in
one of the Marabar caves.”
“Oh no, oh no, no,” gasped the other, feeling sickish.
“She escaped—by God’s grace.”
“Oh no, no, but not Aziz . . . not Aziz . . .”
He nodded.
“Absolutely impossible, grotesque.”
“I called you to preserve you from the odium that would attach to
you if you were seen accompanying him to the Police Station,” said
Turton, paying no attention to his protest, indeed scarcely hearing
it.
He repeated “Oh no,” like a fool. He couldn’t frame other words.
He felt that a mass of madness had arisen and tried to overwhelm
them all; it had to be shoved back into its pit somehow, and he
didn’t know how to do it, because he did not understand madness:
he had always gone about sensibly and quietly until a difficulty
came right. “Who lodges this infamous charge?” he asked, pulling
himself together.