A passage to India
arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence. And she regretted
afterwards that she had not kept to the real serious subject that
had caused her to visit India—namely the relationship between Ronny
and Adela. Would they, or would they not, succeed in becoming
engaged to be married?
CHAPTER VI
Aziz had not gone to the Bridge Party. Immediately after his
meeting with Mrs. Moore he was diverted to other matters. Several
surgical cases came in, and kept him busy. He ceased to be either
outcaste or poet, and became the medical student, very gay, and
full of details of operations which he poured into the shrinking
ears of his friends. His profession fascinated him at times, but
he required it to be exciting, and it was his hand, not his mind,
that was scientific. The knife he loved and used skilfully, and he
also liked pumping in the latest serums. But the boredom of regime
and hygiene repelled him, and after inoculating a man for enteric,
he would go away and drink unfiltered water himself. “What can you
expect from the fellow?” said dour Major Callendar. “No grits, no
guts.” But in his heart he knew that if Aziz and not he had operated
last year on Mrs. Graysford’s appendix, the old lady would probably
have lived. And this did not dispose him any better towards his
subordinate.
There was a row the morning after the mosque—they were always
having rows. The Major, who had been up half the night, wanted damn
well to know why Aziz had not come promptly when summoned.
“Sir, excuse me, I did. I mounted my bike, and it bust in front of
the Cow Hospital. So I had to find a tonga.”
“Bust in front of the Cow Hospital, did it? And how did you come
to be there?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh Lord, oh Lord! When I live here”—he kicked the gravel—“and you
live there—not ten minutes from me—and the Cow Hospital is right
ever so far away the other side of you—_there_—then how did you
come to be passing the Cow Hospital on the way to me? Now do some
work for a change.”
He strode away in a temper, without waiting for the excuse, which
as far as it went was a sound one: the Cow Hospital was in a
straight line between Hamidullah’s house and his own, so Aziz had
naturally passed it. He never realized that the educated Indians
visited one another constantly, and were weaving, however painfully,
a new social fabric. Caste “or something of the sort” would prevent
them. He only knew that no one ever told him the truth, although
he had been in the country for twenty years.
Aziz watched him go with amusement. When his spirits were up he
felt that the English are a comic institution, and he enjoyed being
misunderstood by them. But it was an amusement of the emotions and
nerves, which an accident or the passage of time might destroy; it
was apart from the fundamental gaiety that he reached when he was
with those whom he trusted. A disobliging simile involving Mrs.
Callendar occurred to his fancy. “I must tell that to Mahmoud Ali,
it’ll make him laugh,” he thought. Then he got to work. He was
competent and indispensable, and he knew it. The simile passed from
his mind while he exercised his professional skill.
During these pleasant and busy days, he heard vaguely that the
Collector was giving a party, and that the Nawab Bahadur said every
one ought to go to it. His fellow-assistant, Doctor Panna Lal, was
in ecstasies at the prospect, and was urgent that they should
attend it together in his new tum-tum. The arrangement suited them
both. Aziz was spared the indignity of a bicycle or the expense of
hiring, while Dr. Panna Lal, who was timid and elderly, secured
someone who could manage his horse. He could manage it himself,
but only just, and he was afraid of the motors and of the unknown
turn into the club grounds. “Disaster may come,” he said politely,
“but we shall at all events get there safe, even if we do not get
back.” And with more logic: “It will, I think, create a good
impression should two doctors arrive at the same time.”
But when the time came, Aziz was seized with a revulsion, and
determined not to go. For one thing his spell of work, lately
concluded, left him independent and healthy. For another, the day
chanced to fall on the anniversary of his wife’s death. She had
died soon after he had fallen in love with her; he had not loved
her at first. Touched by Western feeling, he disliked union with
a woman whom he had never seen; moreover, when he did see her, she
disappointed him, and he begat his first child in mere animality.
The change began after its birth. He was won by her love for him,
by a loyalty that implied something more than submission, and by
her efforts to educate herself against that lifting of the purdah
that would come in the next generation if not in theirs. She was
intelligent, yet had old-fashioned grace. Gradually he lost the
feeling that his relatives had chosen wrongly for him. Sensuous
enjoyment—well, even if he had had it, it would have dulled in a
year, and he had gained something instead, which seemed to increase
the longer they lived together. She became the mother of a son . . .
and in giving him a second son she died. Then he realized what
he had lost, and that no woman could ever take her place; a friend
would come nearer to her than another woman. She had gone, there
was no one like her, and what is that uniqueness but love? He
amused himself, he forgot her at times: but at other times he felt
that she had sent all the beauty and joy of the world into Paradise,
and he meditated suicide. Would he meet her beyond the tomb? Is
there such a meeting-place? Though orthodox, he did not know. God’s
unity was indubitable and indubitably announced, but on all other
points he wavered like the average Christian; his belief in the
life to come would pale to a hope, vanish, reappear, all in a
single sentence or a dozen heart-beats, so that the corpuscles of
his blood rather than he seemed to decide which opinion he should
hold, and for how long. It was so with all his opinions. Nothing
stayed, nothing passed that did not return; the circulation was
ceaseless and kept him young, and he mourned his wife the more
sincerely because he mourned her seldom.
It would have been simpler to tell Dr. Lal that he had changed his
mind about the party, but until the last minute he did not know
that he had changed it; indeed, he didn’t change it, it changed
itself. Unconquerable aversion welled. Mrs. Callendar, Mrs.
Lesley—no, he couldn’t stand them in his sorrow: they would guess
it—for he dowered the British matron with strange insight—and would
delight in torturing him, they would mock him to their husbands.
When he should have been ready, he stood at the Post Office,
writing a telegram to his children, and found on his return that
Dr. Lal had called for him, and gone on. Well, let him go on, as
befitted the coarseness of his nature. For his own part, he would
commune with the dead.
And unlocking a drawer, he took out his wife’s photograph. He gazed
at it, and tears spouted from his eyes. He thought, “How unhappy
I am!” But because he really was unhappy, another emotion soon
mingled with his self-pity: he desired to remember his wife and
could not. Why could he remember people whom he did not love? They
were always so vivid to him, whereas the more he looked at this
photograph, the less he saw. She had eluded him thus, ever since
they had carried her to her tomb. He had known that she would pass
from his hands and eyes, but had thought she could live in his
mind, not realizing that the very fact that we have loved the dead
increases their unreality, and that the more passionately we invoke
them the further they recede. A piece of brown cardboard and three
children—that was all that was left of his wife. It was unbearable,
and he thought again, “How unhappy I am!” and became happier. He
had breathed for an instant the mortal air that surrounds Orientals
and all men, and he drew back from it with a gasp, for he was
young. “Never, never shall I get over this,” he told himself. “Most
certainly my career is a failure, and my sons will be badly brought
up.” Since it was certain, he strove to avert it, and looked at
some notes he had made on a case at the hospital. Perhaps some day
a rich person might require this particular operation, and he gain
a large sum. The notes interesting him on their own account, he
locked the photograph up again. Its moment was over, and he did
not think about his wife any more.
After tea his spirits improved, and he went round to see Hamidullah.
Hamidullah had gone to the party, but his pony had not, so Aziz
borrowed it, also his friend’s riding breeches and polo mallet. He
repaired to the Maidan. It was deserted except at its rim, where
some bazaar youths were training. Training for what? They would
have found it hard to say, but the word had got into the air. Round
they ran, weedy and knock-kneed—the local physique was wretched—with
an expression on their faces not so much of determination as of a
determination to be determined. “Maharajah, salaam,” he called for
a joke. The youths stopped and laughed. He advised them not to
exert themselves. They promised they would not, and ran on.
Riding into the middle, he began to knock the ball about. He could
not play, but his pony could, and he set himself to learn, free
from all human tension. He forgot the whole damned business of
living as he scurried over the brown platter of the Maidan, with
the evening wind on his forehead, and the encircling trees soothing
his eyes. The ball shot away towards a stray subaltern who was also
practising; he hit it back to Aziz and called, “Send it along
again.”
“All right.”
The new-comer had some notion of what to do, but his horse had
none, and forces were equal. Concentrated on the ball, they somehow
became fond of one another, and smiled when they drew rein to rest.
Aziz liked soldiers—they either accepted you or swore at you, which
was preferable to the civilian’s hauteur—and the subaltern liked
anyone who could ride.
“Often play?” he asked.
“Never.”
“Let’s have another chukker.”
As he hit, his horse bucked and off he went, cried, “Oh God!” and
jumped on again. “Don’t you ever fall off?”
“Plenty.”
“Not you.”
They reined up again, the fire of good fellowship in their eyes.
But it cooled with their bodies, for athletics can only raise a
temporary glow. Nationality was returning, but before it could
exert its poison they parted, saluting each other. “If only they
were all like that,” each thought.
Now it was sunset. A few of his co-religionists had come to the
Maidan, and were praying with their faces towards Mecca. A Brahminy
Bull walked towards them, and Aziz, though disinclined to pray
himself, did not see why they should be bothered with the clumsy
and idolatrous animal. He gave it a tap with his polo mallet. As
he did so, a voice from the road hailed him: it was Dr. Panna Lal,
returning in high distress from the Collector’s party.
“Dr. Aziz, Dr. Aziz, where you been? I waited ten full minutes’
time at your house, then I went.”
“I am so awfully sorry—I was compelled to go to the Post Office.”
One of his own circle would have accepted this as meaning that he
had changed his mind, an event too common to merit censure. But
Dr. Lal, being of low extraction, was not sure whether an insult
had not been intended, and he was further annoyed because Aziz had
buffeted the Brahminy Bull. “Post Office? Do you not send your
servants?” he said.
“I have so few—my scale is very small.”
“Your servant spoke to me. I saw your servant.”
“But, Dr. Lal, consider. How could I send my servant when you were
coming: you come, we go, my house is left alone, my servant comes
back perhaps, and all my portable property has been carried away