Kabanata Kabanata 9 · Chapter IX

. 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

of whom strode stark naked through the streets. Asked what was the

name of the chief idol at Ujjain, he replied that he did not know,

he had disdained to enquire, he really could not waste his time

over such trivialities. His outburst took some time, and in his

excitement he fell into Punjabi (he came from that side) and was

unintelligible.

Aziz liked to hear his religion praised. It soothed the surface of

his mind, and allowed beautiful images to form beneath. When the

engineer’s noisy tirade was finished, he said, “That is exactly my

own view.” He held up his hand, palm outward, his eyes began to

glow, his heart to fill with tenderness. Issuing still farther from

his quilt, he recited a poem by Ghalib. It had no connection with

anything that had gone before, but it came from his heart and spoke

to theirs. They were overwhelmed by its pathos; pathos, they

agreed, is the highest quality in art; a poem should touch the

hearer with a sense of his own weakness, and should institute some

comparison between mankind and flowers. The squalid bedroom grew

quiet; the silly intrigues, the gossip, the shallow discontent were

stilled, while words accepted as immortal filled the indifferent

air. Not as a call to battle, but as a calm assurance came the

feeling that India was one; Moslem; always had been; an assurance

that lasted until they looked out of the door. Whatever Ghalib had

felt, he had anyhow lived in India, and this consolidated it for

them: he had gone with his own tulips and roses, but tulips and

roses do not go. And the sister kingdoms of the north—Arabia,

Persia, Ferghana, Turkestan—stretched out their hands as he sang,

sadly, because all beauty is sad, and greeted ridiculous Chandrapore,

where every street and house was divided against itself, and told

her that she was a continent and a unity.

Of the company, only Hamidullah had any comprehension of poetry.

The minds of the others were inferior and rough. Yet they listened

with pleasure, because literature had not been divorced from their

civilization. The police inspector, for instance, did not feel that

Aziz had degraded himself by reciting, nor break into the cheery

guffaw with which an Englishman averts the infection of beauty. He

just sat with his mind empty, and when his thoughts, which were

mainly ignoble, flowed back into it they had a pleasant freshness.

The poem had done no “good” to anyone, but it was a passing

reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale

between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna,

it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for

the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved. Aziz it

left thinking about women again, but in a different way: less

definite, more intense. Sometimes poetry had this effect on him,

sometimes it only increased his local desires, and he never knew

beforehand which effect would ensue: he could discover no rule for

this or for anything else in life.

Hamidullah had called in on his way to a worrying committee of

notables, nationalist in tendency, where Hindus, Moslems, two

Sikhs, two Parsis, a Jain, and a Native Christian tried to like

one another more than came natural to them. As long as someone

abused the English, all went well, but nothing constructive had

been achieved, and if the English were to leave India, the committee

would vanish also. He was glad that Aziz, whom he loved and whose

family was connected with his own, took no interest in politics,

which ruin the character and career, yet nothing can be achieved

without them. He thought of Cambridge—sadly, as of another poem

that had ended. How happy he had been there, twenty years ago!

Politics had not mattered in Mr. and Mrs. Bannister’s rectory.

There, games, work, and pleasant society had interwoven, and

appeared to be sufficient substructure for a national life. Here

all was wire-pulling and fear. Messrs. Syed Mohammed and Haq—he

couldn’t even trust them, although they had come in his carriage,

and the schoolboy was a scorpion. Bending down, he said, “Aziz,

Aziz, my dear boy, we must be going, we are already late. Get well

quickly, for I do not know what our little circle would do without

you.”

“I shall not forget those affectionate words,” replied Aziz.

“Add mine to them,” said the engineer.

“Thank you, Mr. Syed Mohammed, I will.”

“And mine,” “And, sir, accept mine,” cried the others, stirred each

according to his capacity towards goodwill. Little ineffectual

unquenchable flames! The company continued to sit on the bed and

to chew sugarcane, which Hassan had run for into the bazaar, and

Aziz drank a cup of spiced milk. Presently there was the sound of

another carriage. Dr. Panna Lal had arrived, driven by horrid Mr.

Ram Chand. The atmosphere of a sick-room was at once re-established,

and the invalid retired under his quilt.

“Gentlemen, you will excuse, I have come to enquire by Major

Callendar’s orders,” said the Hindu, nervous of the den of fanatics

into which his curiosity had called him.

“Here he lies,” said Hamidullah, indicating the prostrate form.

“Dr. Aziz, Dr, Aziz, I come to enquire.”

Aziz presented an expressionless face to the thermometer.

“Your hand also, please.” He took it, gazed at the flies on the

ceiling, and finally announced “Some temperature.”

“I think not much,” said Ram Chand, desirous of fomenting trouble.

“Some; he should remain in bed,” repeated Dr. Panna Lal, and shook

the thermometer down, so that its altitude remained for ever

unknown. He loathed his young colleague since the disasters with

Dapple, and he would have liked to do him a bad turn and report to

Major Callendar that he was shamming. But he might want a day in

bed himself soon,—besides, though Major Callendar always believed

the worst of natives, he never believed them when they carried

tales about one another. Sympathy seemed the safer course. “How is

stomach?” he enquired, “how head?” And catching sight of the empty

cup, he recommended a milk diet.

“This is a great relief to us, it is very good of you to call,

Doctor Sahib,” said Hamidullah, buttering him up a bit.

“It is only my duty.”

“We know how busy you are.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“And how much illness there is in the city.”

The doctor suspected a trap in this remark; if he admitted that

there was or was not illness, either statement might be used

against him. “There is always illness,” he replied, “and I am

always busy—it is a doctor’s nature.”

“He has not a minute, he is due double sharp at Government College

now,” said Ram Chand.

“You attend Professor Godbole there perhaps?”

The doctor looked professional and was silent.

“We hope his diarrhœa is ceasing.”

“He progresses, but not from diarrhœa.”

“We are in some anxiety over him—he and Dr. Aziz are great friends.

If you could tell us the name of his complaint we should be grateful

to you.”

After a cautious pause he said, “Hæmorrhoids.”

“And so much, my dear Rafi, for your cholera,” hooted Aziz, unable

to restrain himself.

“Cholera, cholera, what next, what now?” cried the doctor, greatly

fussed. “Who spreads such untrue reports about my patients?”

Hamidullah pointed to the culprit.

“I hear cholera, I hear bubonic plague, I hear every species of

lie. Where will it end, I ask myself sometimes. This city is full

of misstatements, and the originators of them ought to be discovered

and punished authoritatively.”

“Rafi, do you hear that? Now why do you stuff us up with all this

humbug?”

The schoolboy murmured that another boy had told him, also that

the bad English grammar the Government obliged them to use often

gave the wrong meaning for words, and so led scholars into mistakes.

“That is no reason you should bring a charge against a doctor,”

said Ram Chand.

“Exactly, exactly,” agreed Hamidullah, anxious to avoid an

unpleasantness. Quarrels spread so quickly and so far, and Messrs.

Syed Mohammed and Haq looked cross, and ready to fly out. “You must

apologize properly, Rafi, I can see your uncle wishes it,” he said.

“You have not yet said that you are sorry for the trouble you have

caused this gentleman by your carelessness.”

“It is only a boy,” said Dr. Panna Lal, appeased.

“Even boys must learn,” said Ram Chand.

“Your own son failing to pass the lowest standard, I think,” said

Syed Mohammed suddenly.

“Oh, indeed? Oh yes, perhaps. He has not the advantage of a relative

in the Prosperity Printing Press.”

“Nor you the advantage of conducting their cases in the Courts any

longer.”

Their voices rose. They attacked one another with obscure allusions

and had a silly quarrel. Hamidullah and the doctor tried to make

peace between them. In the midst of the din someone said, “I say!

Is he ill or isn’t he ill?” Mr. Fielding had entered unobserved.

All rose to their feet, and Hassan, to do an Englishman honour,

struck with a sugar-cane at the coil of flies.

Aziz said, “Sit down,” coldly. What a room! What a meeting! Squalor

and ugly talk, the floor strewn with fragments of cane and nuts,

and spotted with ink, the pictures crooked upon the dirty walls,

no punkah! He hadn’t meant to live like this or among these

third-rate people. And in his confusion he thought only of the

insignificant Rafi, whom he had laughed at, and allowed to be

teased. The boy must be sent away happy, or hospitality would have

failed, along the whole line.

“It is good of Mr. Fielding to condescend to visit our friend,”

said the police inspector. “We are touched by this great kindness.”

“Don’t talk to him like that, he doesn’t want it, and he doesn’t

want three chairs; he’s not three Englishmen,” he flashed. “Rafi,

come here. Sit down again. I’m delighted you could come with Mr.

Hamidullah, my dear boy; it will help me to recover, seeing you.”

“Forgive my mistakes,” said Rafi, to consolidate himself.

“Well, are you ill, Aziz, or aren’t you?” Fielding repeated.

“No doubt Major Callendar has told you that I am shamming.”

“Well, are you?” The company laughed, friendly and pleased. “An

Englishman at his best,” they thought; “so genial.”

“Enquire from Dr. Panna Lal.”

“You’re sure I don’t tire you by stopping?”

“Why, no! There are six people present in my small room already.

Please remain seated, if you will excuse the informality.” He

turned away and continued to address Rafi, who was terrified at

the arrival of his Principal, remembered that he had tried to

spread slander about him, and yearned to get away.

“He is ill and he is not ill,” said Hamidullah, offering a

cigarette. “And I suppose that most of us are in that same case.”

Fielding agreed; he and the pleasant sensitive barrister got on

well. They were fairly intimate and beginning to trust each other.

“The whole world looks to be dying, still it doesn’t die, so we

must assume the existence of a beneficent Providence.”

“Oh, that is true, how true!” said the policeman, thinking religion

had been praised.

“Does Mr. Fielding think it’s true?”

“Think which true? The world isn’t dying. I’m certain of that!”

“No, no—the existence of Providence.”

“Well, I don’t believe in Providence.”

“But how then can you believe in God?” asked Syed Mohammed.

“I don’t believe in God.”

A tiny movement as of “I told you so!” passed round the company,

and Aziz looked up for an instant, scandalized. “Is it correct that

most are atheists in England now?” Hamidullah enquired.

“The educated thoughtful people? I should say so, though they don’t

like the name. The truth is that the West doesn’t bother much over

belief and disbelief in these days. Fifty years ago, or even when

you and I were young, much more fuss was made.”

“And does not morality also decline?”

“It depends what you call—yes, yes, I suppose morality does

decline.”

“Excuse the question, but if this is the case, how is England

justified in holding India?”

There they were! Politics again. “It’s a question I can’t get my

mind on to,” he replied. “I’m out here personally because I needed

a job. I cannot tell you why England is here or whether she ought

to be here. It’s beyond me.”

“Well-qualified Indians also need jobs in the educational.”

“I guess they do; I got in first,” said Fielding, smiling.

“Then excuse me again—is it fair an Englishman should occupy one

when Indians are available? Of course I mean nothing personally.

Personally we are delighted you should be here, and we benefit

greatly by this frank talk.”

There is only one answer to a conversation of this type: “England

holds India for her good.” Yet Fielding was disinclined to give

it. The zeal for honesty had eaten him up. He said, “I’m delighted

to be here too—that’s my answer, there’s my only excuse. I can’t

tell you anything about fairness. It mayn’t have been fair I should

have been born. I take up some other fellow’s air, don’t I, whenever

I breathe? Still, I’m glad it’s happened, and I’m glad I’m out

here. However big a badmash one is—if one’s happy in consequence,

that is some justification.”

The Indians were bewildered. The line of thought was not alien to

them, but the words were too definite and bleak. Unless a sentence

paid a few compliments to Justice and Morality in passing, its

grammar wounded their ears and paralysed their minds. What they

said and what they felt were (except in the case of affection)

seldom the same. They had numerous mental conventions and when

these were flouted they found it very difficult to function.

Hamidullah bore up best. “And those Englishmen who are not delighted

to be in India—have they no excuse?” he asked.

“None. Chuck ’em out.”

“It may be difficult to separate them from the rest,” he laughed.

“Worse than difficult, wrong,” said Mr. Ram Chand. “No Indian

gentleman approves chucking out as a proper thing. Here we differ

from those other nations. We are so spiritual.”

“Oh that is true, how true!” said the police inspector.

“Is it true, Mr. Haq? I don’t consider us spiritual. We can’t

co-ordinate, we can’t co-ordinate, it only comes to that. We can’t

keep engagements, we can’t catch trains. What more than this is

the so-called spirituality of India? You and I ought to be at the

Committee of Notables, we’re not; our friend Dr. Lal ought to be

with his patients, he isn’t. So we go on, and so we shall continue

to go, I think, until the end of time.”

“It is not the end of time, it is scarcely ten-thirty, ha, ha!”

cried Dr. Panna Lal, who was again in confident mood. “Gentlemen,

if I may be allowed to say a few words, what an interesting talk,

also thankfulness and gratitude to Mr. Fielding in the first place

teaches our sons and gives them all the great benefits of his

experience and judgment——”

“Dr. Lal!”

“Dr. Aziz?”

“You sit on my leg.”

“I beg pardon, but some might say your leg kicks.”

“Come along, we tire the invalid in either case,” said Fielding,

and they filed out—four Mohammedans, two Hindus and the Englishman.

They stood on the verandah while their conveyances were summoned

out of various patches of shade.

“Aziz has a high opinion of you, he only did not speak because of

his illness.”

“I quite understand,” said Fielding, who was rather disappointed

with his call. The Club comment, “making himself cheap as usual,”

passed through his mind. He couldn’t even get his horse brought

up. He had liked Aziz so much at their first meeting, and had hoped

for developments.