Bab Bab 6 · Chapter VI

. 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

by bad characters in the meantime. Would you have that? The cook

is deaf—I can never count on my cook—and the boy is only a little

boy. Never, never do I and Hassan leave the house at the same time

together. It is my fixed rule.” He said all this and much more out

of civility, to save Dr. Lal’s face. It was not offered as truth

and should not have been criticized as such. But the other

demolished it—an easy and ignoble task. “Even if this so, what

prevents leaving a chit saying where you go?” and so on. Aziz

detested ill breeding, and made his pony caper. “Farther away, or

mine will start out of sympathy,” he wailed, revealing the true

source of his irritation. “It has been so rough and wild this

afternoon. It spoiled some most valuable blossoms in the club

garden, and had to be dragged back by four men. English ladies and

gentlemen looking on, and the Collector Sahib himself taking a

note. But, Dr. Aziz, I’ll not take up your valuable time. This will

not interest you, who have so many engagements and telegrams. I am

just a poor old doctor who thought right to pay my respects when

I was asked and where I was asked. Your absence, I may remark, drew

commentaries.”

“They can damn well comment.”

“It is fine to be young. Damn well! Oh, very fine. Damn whom?”

“I go or not as I please.”

“Yet you promise me, and then fabricate this tale of a telegram.

Go forward, Dapple.”

They went, and Aziz had a wild desire to make an enemy for life.

He could do it so easily by galloping near them. He did it. Dapple

bolted. He thundered back on to the Maidan. The glory of his play

with the subaltern remained for a little, he galloped and swooped

till he poured with sweat, and until he returned the pony to

Hamidullah’s stable he felt the equal of any man. Once on his feet,

he had creeping fears. Was he in bad odour with the powers that

be? Had he offended the Collector by absenting himself? Dr. Panna

Lal was a person of no importance, yet was it wise to have

quarrelled even with him? The complexion of his mind turned from

human to political. He thought no longer, “Can I get on with

people?” but “Are they stronger than I?” breathing the prevalent

miasma.

At his home a chit was awaiting him, bearing the Government stamp.

It lay on his table like a high explosive, which at a touch might

blow his flimsy bungalow to bits. He was going to be cashiered

because he had not turned up at the party. When he opened the note,

it proved to be quite different; an invitation from Mr. Fielding,

the Principal of Government College, asking him to come to tea the

day after to-morrow. His spirits revived with violence. They would

have revived in any case, for he possessed a soul that could suffer

but not stifle, and led a steady life beneath his mutability. But

this invitation gave him particular joy, because Fielding had asked

him to tea a month ago, and he had forgotten about it—never

answered, never gone, just forgotten.

And here came a second invitation, without a rebuke or even an

allusion to his slip. Here was true courtesy—the civil deed that

shows the good heart—and snatching up his pen he wrote an

affectionate reply, and hurried back for news to Hamidullah’s. For

he had never met the Principal, and believed that the one serious

gap in his life was going to be filled. He longed to know everything

about the splendid fellow—his salary, preferences, antecedents,

how best one might please him. But Hamidullah was still out, and

Mahmoud Ali, who was in, would only make silly rude jokes about

the party.