Kabanata Kabanata 31 · Chapter XXXI

. Chapter XXXI

Aziz had no sense of evidence. The sequence of his emotions decided

his beliefs, and led to the tragic coolness between himself and

his English friend. They had conquered but were not to be crowned.

Fielding was away at a conference, and after the rumour about Miss

Quested had been with him undisturbed for a few days, he assumed

it was true. He had no objection on moral grounds to his friends

amusing themselves, and Cyril, being middle-aged, could no longer

expect the pick of the female market, and must take his amusement

where he could find it. But he resented him making up to this

particular woman, whom he still regarded as his enemy; also, why

had he not been told? What is friendship without confidences? He

himself had told things sometimes regarded as shocking, and the

Englishman had listened, tolerant, but surrendering nothing in

return.

He met Fielding at the railway station on his return, agreed to

dine with him, and then started taxing him by the oblique method,

outwardly merry. An avowed European scandal there was—Mr. McBryde

and Miss Derek. Miss Derek’s faithful attachment to Chandrapore

was now explained: Mr. McBryde had been caught in her room, and

his wife was divorcing him. “That pure-minded fellow. However, he

will blame the Indian climate. Everything is our fault really. Now,

have I not discovered an important piece of news for you, Cyril?”

“Not very,” said Fielding, who took little interest in distant

sins. “Listen to mine.” Aziz’ face lit up. “At the conference, it

was settled. . . .”

“This evening will do for schoolmastery. I should go straight to

the Minto now, the cholera looks bad. We begin to have local cases

as well as imported. In fact, the whole of life is somewhat sad.

The new Civil Surgeon is the same as the last, but does not yet

dare to be. That is all any administrative change amounts to. All

my suffering has won nothing for us. But look here, Cyril, while

I remember it. There’s gossip about you as well as McBryde. They

say that you and Miss Quested became also rather too intimate

friends. To speak perfectly frankly, they say you and she have been

guilty of impropriety.”

“They would say that.”

“It’s all over the town, and may injure your reputation. You know,

everyone is by no means your supporter. I have tried all I could

to silence such a story.”

“Don’t bother. Miss Quested has cleared out at last.”

“It is those who stop in the country, not those who leave it, whom

such a story injures. Imagine my dismay and anxiety. I could

scarcely get a wink of sleep. First my name was coupled with her

and now it is yours.”

“Don’t use such exaggerated phrases.”

“As what?”

“As dismay and anxiety.”

“Have I not lived all my life in India? Do I not know what produces

a bad impression here?” His voice shot up rather crossly.

“Yes, but the scale, the scale. You always get the scale wrong, my

dear fellow. A pity there is this rumour, but such a very small

pity—so small that we may as well talk of something else.”

“You mind for Miss Quested’s sake, though. I can see from your

face.”

“As far as I do mind. I travel light.”

“Cyril, that boastfulness about travelling light will be your ruin.

It is raising up enemies against you on all sides, and makes me

feel excessively uneasy.”

“What enemies?”

Since Aziz had only himself in mind, he could not reply. Feeling

a fool, he became angrier. “I have given you list after list of

the people who cannot be trusted in this city. In your position I

should have the sense to know I was surrounded by enemies. You

observe I speak in a low voice. It is because I see your sais is

new. How do I know he isn’t a spy?” He lowered his voice: “Every

third servant is a spy.”

“Now, what is the matter?” he asked, smiling.

“Do you contradict my last remark?”

“It simply doesn’t affect me. Spies are as thick as mosquitoes,

but it’s years before I shall meet the one that kills me. You’ve

something else in your mind.”

“I’ve not; don’t be ridiculous.”

“You have. You’re cross with me about something or other.”

Any direct attack threw him out of action. Presently he said: “So

you and Madamsell Adela used to amuse one another in the evening,

naughty boy.”

Those drab and high-minded talks had scarcely made for dalliance.

Fielding was so startled at the story being taken seriously, and

so disliked being called a naughty boy, that he lost his head and

cried: “You little rotter! Well, I’m damned. Amusement indeed. Is

it likely at such a time?”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, I’m sure. The licentious Oriental

imagination was at work,” he replied, speaking gaily, but cut to

the heart; for hours after his mistake he bled inwardly.

“You see, Aziz, the circumstances . . . also the girl was still

engaged to Heaslop, also I never felt . . .”

“Yes, yes; but you didn’t contradict what I said, so I thought it

was true. Oh dear, East and West. Most misleading. Will you please

put your little rotter down at his hospital?”

“You’re not offended?”

“Most certainly I am not.”

“If you are, this must be cleared up later on.”

“It has been,” he answered, dignified. “I believe absolutely what

you say, and of that there need be no further question.”

“But the way I said it must be cleared up. I was unintentionally

rude. Unreserved regrets.”

“The fault is entirely mine.”

Tangles like this still interrupted their intercourse. A pause in

the wrong place, an intonation misunderstood, and a whole

conversation went awry. Fielding had been startled, not shocked,

but how convey the difference? There is always trouble when two

people do not think of sex at the same moment, always mutual

resentment and surprise, even when the two people are of the same

race. He began to recapitulate his feelings about Miss Quested.

Aziz cut him short with: “But I believe you, I believe. Mohammed

Latif shall be severely punished for inventing this.”

“Oh, leave it alone, like all gossip—it’s merely one of those

half-alive things that try to crowd out real life. Take no notice,

it’ll vanish, like poor old Mrs. Moore’s tombs.”

“Mohammed Latif has taken to intriguing. We are already much

displeased with him. Will it satisfy you if we send him back to

his family without a present?”

“We’ll discuss M.L. at dinner.”

His eyes went clotted and hard. “Dinner. This is most unlucky—— I

forgot. I have promised to dine with Das.”

“Bring Das to me.”

“He will have invited other friends.”

“You are coming to dinner with me as arranged,” said Fielding,

looking away. “I don’t stand this. You are coming to dinner with

me. You come.”

They had reached the hospital now. Fielding continued round the

Maidan alone. He was annoyed with himself, but counted on dinner

to pull things straight. At the post office he saw the Collector.

Their vehicles were parked side by side while their servants

competed in the interior of the building. “Good morning; so you

are back,” said Turton icily. “I should be glad if you will put in

your appearance at the club this evening.”

“I have accepted re-election, sir. Do you regard it as necessary

I should come? I should be glad to be excused; indeed, I have a

dinner engagement this evening.”

“It is not a question of your feelings, but of the wish of the

Lieutenant-Governor. Perhaps you will ask me whether I speak

officially. I do. I shall expect you this evening at six. We shall

not interfere with your subsequent plans.”

He attended the grim little function in due course. The skeletons

of hospitality rattled—“Have a peg, have a drink.” He talked for

five minutes to Mrs. Blakiston, who was the only surviving female.

He talked to McBryde, who was defiant about his divorce, conscious

that he had sinned as a sahib. He talked to Major Roberts, the new

Civil Surgeon; and to young Milner, the new City Magistrate; but

the more the club changed, the more it promised to be the same

thing. “It is no good,” he thought, as he returned past the mosque,

“we all build upon sand; and the more modern the country gets, the

worse’ll be the crash. In the old eighteenth century, when cruelty

and injustice raged, an invisible power repaired their ravages.

Everything echoes now; there’s no stopping the echo. The original

sound may be harmless, but the echo is always evil.” This reflection

about an echo lay at the verge of Fielding’s mind. He could never

develop it. It belonged to the universe that he had missed or

rejected. And the mosque missed it too. Like himself, those shallow

arcades provided but a limited asylum. “There is no God but God”

doesn’t carry us far through the complexities of matter and spirit;

it is only a game with words, really, a religious pun, not a

religious truth.

He found Aziz overtired and dispirited, and he determined not to

allude to their misunderstanding until the end of the evening; it

would be more acceptable then. He made a clean breast about the

club—said he had only gone under compulsion, and should never

attend again unless the order was renewed. “In other words, probably

never; for I am going quite soon to England.”

“I thought you might end in England,” he said very quietly, then

changed the conversation. Rather awkwardly they ate their dinner,

then went out to sit in the Mogul garden-house.

“I am only going for a little time. On official business. My

service is anxious to get me away from Chandrapore for a bit. It

is obliged to value me highly, but does not care for me. The

situation is somewhat humorous.”

“What is the nature of the business? Will it leave you much spare

time?”

“Enough to see my friends.”

“I expected you to make such a reply. You are a faithful friend.

Shall we now talk about something else?”

“Willingly. What subject?”

“Poetry,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “Let us discuss why

poetry has lost the power of making men brave. My mother’s father

was also a poet, and fought against you in the Mutiny. I might

equal him if there was another mutiny. As it is, I am a doctor,

who has won a case and has three children to support, and whose

chief subject of conversation is official plans.”

“Let us talk about poetry.” He turned his mind to the innocuous

subject. “You people are sadly circumstanced. Whatever are you to

write about? You cannot say, ‘The rose is faded,’ for evermore. We

know it’s faded. Yet you can’t have patriotic poetry of the ‘India,

my India’ type, when it’s nobody’s India.”

“I like this conversation. It may lead to something interesting.”

“You are quite right in thinking that poetry must touch life. When

I knew you first, you used it as an incantation.”

“I was a child when you knew me first. Everyone was my friend then.

The Friend: a Persian expression for God. But I do not want to be

a religious poet either.”

“I hoped you would be.”

“Why, when you yourself are an atheist?”

“There is something in religion that may not be true, but has not

yet been sung.”

“Explain in detail.”

“Something that the Hindus have perhaps found.”

“Let them sing it.”

“Hindus are unable to sing.”

“Cyril, you sometimes make a sensible remark. That will do for

poetry for the present. Let us now return to your English visit.”

“We haven’t discussed poetry for two seconds,” said the other,

smiling.

But Aziz was addicted to cameos. He held the tiny conversation in

his hand, and felt it epitomized his problem. For an instant he

recalled his wife, and, as happens when a memory is intense, the

past became the future, and he saw her with him in a quiet Hindu

jungle native state, far away from foreigners. He said: “I suppose

you will visit Miss Quested.”

“If I have time. It will be strange seeing her in Hampstead.”

“What is Hampstead?”

“An artistic and thoughtful little suburb of London——”

“And there she lives in comfort: you will enjoy seeing her. . . .

Dear me, I’ve got a headache this evening. Perhaps I am going to

have cholera. With your permission, I’ll leave early.”

“When would you like the carriage?”

“Don’t trouble—I’ll bike.”

“But you haven’t got your bicycle. My carriage fetched you—let it

take you away.”

“Sound reasoning,” he said, trying to be gay. “I have not got my

bicycle. But I am seen too often in your carriage. I am thought to

take advantage of your generosity by Mr. Ram Chand.” He was out of

sorts and uneasy. The conversation jumped from topic to topic in

a broken-backed fashion. They were affectionate and intimate, but

nothing clicked tight.

“Aziz, you have forgiven me the stupid remark I made this morning?”

“When you called me a little rotter?”

“Yes, to my eternal confusion. You know how fond I am of you.”

“That is nothing, of course, we all of us make mistakes. In a

friendship such as ours a few slips are of no consequence.”

But as he drove off, something depressed him—a dull pain of body

or mind, waiting to rise to the surface. When he reached the

bungalow he wanted to return and say something very affectionate;

instead, he gave the sais a heavy tip, and sat down gloomily on

the bed, and Hassan massaged him incompetently. The eye-flies had

colonized the top of an almeira; the red stains on the durry were

thicker, for Mohammed Latif had slept here during his imprisonment

and spat a good deal; the table drawer was scarred where the police

had forced it open; everything in Chandrapore was used up, including

the air. The trouble rose to the surface now: he was suspicious;

he suspected his friend of intending to marry Miss Quested for the

sake of her money, and of going to England for that purpose.

“Huzoor?”—for he had muttered.

“Look at those flies on the ceiling. Why have you not drowned

them?”

“Huzoor, they return.”

“Like all evil things.”

To divert the conversation, Hassan related how the kitchen-boy had

killed a snake, good, but killed it by cutting it in two, bad,

because it becomes two snakes.

“When he breaks a plate, does it become two plates?”

“Glasses and a new teapot will similarly be required, also for

myself a coat.”

Aziz sighed. Each for himself. One man needs a coat, another a rich

wife; each approaches his goal by a clever detour. Fielding had

saved the girl a fine of twenty thousand rupees, and now followed

her to England. If he desired to marry her, all was explained; she

would bring him a larger dowry. Aziz did not believe his own

suspicions—better if he had, for then he would have denounced and

cleared the situation up. Suspicion and belief could in his mind

exist side by side. They sprang from different sources, and need

never intermingle. Suspicion in the Oriental is a sort of malignant

tumour, a mental malady, that makes him self-conscious and

unfriendly suddenly; he trusts and mistrusts at the same time in

a way the Westerner cannot comprehend. It is his demon, as the

Westerner’s is hypocrisy. Aziz was seized by it, and his fancy

built a satanic castle, of which the foundation had been laid when

he talked at Dilkusha under the stars. The girl had surely been

Cyril’s mistress when she stopped in the College—Mohammed Latif

was right. But was that all? Perhaps it was Cyril who followed her

into the cave. . . . No; impossible. Cyril hadn’t been on the Kawa

Dol at all. Impossible. Ridiculous. Yet the fancy left him trembling

with misery. Such treachery—if true—would have been the worst in

Indian history; nothing so vile, not even the murder of Afzul Khan

by Sivaji. He was shaken, as though by a truth, and told Hassan to

leave him.

Next day he decided to take his children back to Mussoorie. They

had come down for the trial, that he might bid them farewell, and

had stayed on at Hamidullah’s for the rejoicings. Major Roberts

would give him leave, and during his absence Fielding would go off

to England. The idea suited both his beliefs and his suspicions.

Events would prove which was right, and preserve, in either case,

his dignity.

Fielding was conscious of something hostile, and because he was

really fond of Aziz his optimism failed him. Travelling light is

less easy as soon as affection is involved. Unable to jog forward

in the serene hope that all would come right, he wrote an elaborate

letter in the rather modern style: “It is on my mind that you think

me a prude about women. I had rather you thought anything else of

me. If I live impeccably now, it is only because I am well on the

forties—a period of revision. In the eighties I shall revise again.

And before the nineties come—I shall be revised! But, alive or

dead, I am absolutely devoid of morals. Do kindly grasp this about

me.” Aziz did not care for the letter at all. It hurt his delicacy.

He liked confidences, however gross, but generalizations and

comparisons always repelled him. Life is not a scientific manual.

He replied coldly, regretting his inability to return from Mussoorie

before his friend sailed: “But I must take my poor little holiday

while I can. All must be economy henceforward, all hopes of Kashmir

have vanished for ever and ever. When you return I shall be slaving

far away in some new post.”

And Fielding went, and in the last gutterings of Chandrapore—heaven

and earth both looking like toffee—the Indian’s bad fancies were

confirmed. His friends encouraged them, for though they had liked

the Principal, they felt uneasy at his getting to know so much

about their private affairs. Mahmoud Ali soon declared that

treachery was afoot. Hamidullah murmured, “Certainly of late he no

longer addressed us with his former frankness,” and warned Aziz

“not to expect too much—he and she are, after all, both members of

another race.” “Where are my twenty thousand rupees?” he thought.

He was absolutely indifferent to money—not merely generous with

it, but promptly paying his debts when he could remember to do

so—yet these rupees haunted his mind, because he had been tricked

about them, and allowed them to escape overseas, like so much of

the wealth of India. Cyril would marry Miss Quested—he grew certain

of it, all the unexplained residue of the Marabar contributing. It

was the natural conclusion of the horrible senseless picnic, and

before long he persuaded himself that the wedding had actually

taken place.