บทที่ บทที่ 2 · Chapter II

. Chapter II

Abandoning his bicycle, which fell before a servant could catch

it, the young man sprang up on to the verandah. He was all

animation. “Hamidullah, Hamidullah! am I late?” he cried.

“Do not apologize,” said his host. “You are always late.”

“Kindly answer my question. Am I late? Has Mahmoud Ali eaten all

the food? If so I go elsewhere. Mr. Mahmoud Ali, how are you?”

“Thank you, Dr. Aziz, I am dying.”

“Dying before your dinner? Oh, poor Mahmoud Ali!”

“Hamidullah here is actually dead. He passed away just as you rode

up on your bike.”

“Yes, that is so,” said the other. “Imagine us both as addressing

you from another and a happier world.”

“Does there happen to be such a thing as a hookah in that happier

world of yours?”

“Aziz, don’t chatter. We are having a very sad talk.”

The hookah had been packed too tight, as was usual in his friend’s

house, and bubbled sulkily. He coaxed it. Yielding at last, the

tobacco jetted up into his lungs and nostrils, driving out the

smoke of burning cow dung that had filled them as he rode through

the bazaar. It was delicious. He lay in a trance, sensuous but

healthy, through which the talk of the two others did not seem

particularly sad—they were discussing as to whether or no it is

possible to be friends with an Englishman. Mahmoud Ali argued that

it was not, Hamidullah disagreed, but with so many reservations

that there was no friction between them. Delicious indeed to lie

on the broad verandah with the moon rising in front and the servants

preparing dinner behind, and no trouble happening.

“Well, look at my own experience this morning.”

“I only contend that it is possible in England,” replied Hamidullah,

who had been to that country long ago, before the big rush, and

had received a cordial welcome at Cambridge.

“It is impossible here. Aziz! The red-nosed boy has again insulted

me in Court. I do not blame him. He was told that he ought to

insult me. Until lately he was quite a nice boy, but the others

have got hold of him.”

“Yes, they have no chance here, that is my point. They come out

intending to be gentlemen, and are told it will not do. Look at

Lesley, look at Blakiston, now it is your red-nosed boy, and

Fielding will go next. Why, I remember when Turton came out first.

It was in another part of the Province. You fellows will not

believe me, but I have driven with Turton in his carriage—Turton!

Oh yes, we were once quite intimate. He has shown me his stamp

collection.”

“He would expect you to steal it now. Turton! But red-nosed boy

will be far worse than Turton!”

“I do not think so. They all become exactly the same, not worse,

not better. I give any Englishman two years, be he Turton or

Burton. It is only the difference of a letter. And I give any

Englishwoman six months. All are exactly alike. Do you not agree

with me?”

“I do not,” replied Mahmoud Ali, entering into the bitter fun, and

feeling both pain and amusement at each word that was uttered. “For

my own part I find such profound differences among our rulers.

Red-nose mumbles, Turton talks distinctly, Mrs. Turton takes

bribes, Mrs. Red-nose does not and cannot, because so far there is

no Mrs. Red-nose.”

“Bribes?”

“Did you not know that when they were lent to Central India over

a Canal Scheme, some Rajah or other gave her a sewing machine in

solid gold so that the water should run through his state.”

“And does it?”

“No, that is where Mrs. Turton is so skilful. When we poor blacks

take bribes, we perform what we are bribed to perform, and the law

discovers us in consequence. The English take and do nothing. I

admire them.”

“We all admire them. Aziz, please pass me the hookah.”

“Oh, not yet—hookah is so jolly now.”

“You are a very selfish boy.” He raised his voice suddenly, and

shouted for dinner. Servants shouted back that it was ready. They

meant that they wished it was ready, and were so understood, for

nobody moved. Then Hamidullah continued, but with changed manner

and evident emotion.

“But take my case—the case of young Hugh Bannister. Here is the

son of my dear, my dead friends, the Reverend and Mrs. Bannister,

whose goodness to me in England I shall never forget or describe.

They were father and mother to me, I talked to them as I do now.

In the vacations their Rectory became my home. They entrusted all

their children to me—I often carried little Hugh about—I took him

up to the Funeral of Queen Victoria, and held him in my arms above

the crowd.”

“Queen Victoria was different,” murmured Mahmoud Ali.

“I learn now that this boy is in business as a leather merchant at

Cawnpore. Imagine how I long to see him and to pay his fare that

this house may be his home. But it is useless. The other

Anglo-Indians will have got hold of him long ago. He will probably

think that I want something, and I cannot face that from the son

of my old friends. Oh, what in this country has gone wrong with

everything, Vakil Sahib? I ask you.”

Aziz joined in. “Why talk about the English? Brrrr . . . ! Why be

either friends with the fellows or not friends? Let us shut them

out and be jolly. Queen Victoria and Mrs. Bannister were the only

exceptions, and they’re dead.”

“No, no, I do not admit that, I have met others.”

“So have I,” said Mahmoud Ali, unexpectedly veering. “All ladies

are far from alike.” Their mood was changed, and they recalled

little kindnesses and courtesies. “She said ‘Thank you so much’ in

the most natural way.” “She offered me a lozenge when the dust

irritated my throat.” Hamidullah could remember more important

examples of angelic ministration, but the other, who only knew

Anglo-India, had to ransack his memory for scraps, and it was not

surprising that he should return to “But of course all this is

exceptional. The exception does not prove the rule. The average

woman is like Mrs. Turton, and, Aziz, you know what she is.” Aziz

did not know, but said he did. He too generalized from his

disappointments—it is difficult for members of a subject race to

do otherwise. Granted the exceptions, he agreed that all Englishwomen

are haughty and venal. The gleam passed from the conversation,

whose wintry surface unrolled and expanded interminably.

A servant announced dinner. They ignored him. The elder men had

reached their eternal politics, Aziz drifted into the garden. The

trees smelt sweet—green-blossomed champak—and scraps of Persian

poetry came into his head. Dinner, dinner, dinner . . . but when

he returned to the house for it, Mahmoud Ali had drifted away in

his turn, to speak to his sais. “Come and see my wife a little

then,” said Hamidullah, and they spent twenty minutes behind the

purdah. Hamidullah Begum was a distant aunt of Aziz, and the only

female relative he had in Chandrapore, and she had much to say to

him on this occasion about a family circumcision that had been

celebrated with imperfect pomp. It was difficult to get away,

because until they had had their dinner she would not begin hers,

and consequently prolonged her remarks in case they should suppose

she was impatient. Having censured the circumcision, she bethought

her of kindred topics, and asked Aziz when he was going to be

married.

Respectful but irritated, he answered, “Once is enough.”

“Yes, he has done his duty,” said Hamidullah. “Do not tease him

so. He carries on his family, two boys and their sister.”

“Aunt, they live most comfortably with my wife’s mother, where she

was living when she died. I can see them whenever I like. They are

such very, very small children.”

“And he sends them the whole of his salary and lives like a

low-grade clerk, and tells no one the reason. What more do you

require him to do?”

But this was not Hamidullah Begum’s point, and having courteously

changed the conversation for a few moments she returned and made

it. She said, “What is to become of all our daughters if men refuse

to marry? They will marry beneath them, or——” And she began the

oft-told tale of a lady of Imperial descent who could find no

husband in the narrow circle where her pride permitted her to mate,

and had lived on unwed, her age now thirty, and would die unwed,

for no one would have her now. While the tale was in progress, it

convinced the two men, the tragedy seemed a slur on the whole

community; better polygamy almost, than that a woman should die

without the joys God has intended her to receive. Wedlock,

motherhood, power in the house—for what else is she born, and how

can the man who has denied them to her stand up to face her creator

and his own at the last day? Aziz took his leave saying “Perhaps

. . . but later . . .” —his invariable reply to such an appeal.

“You mustn’t put off what you think right,” said Hamidullah. “That

is why India is in such a plight, because we put off things.” But

seeing that his young relative looked worried, he added a few

soothing words, and thus wiped out any impression that his wife

might have made.

During their absence, Mahmoud Ali had gone off in his carriage

leaving a message that he should be back in five minutes, but they

were on no account to wait. They sat down to meat with a distant

cousin of the house, Mohammed Latif, who lived on Hamidullah’s

bounty and who occupied the position neither of a servant nor of

an equal. He did not speak unless spoken to, and since no one spoke

kept unoffended silence. Now and then he belched, in compliment to

the richness of the food. A gentle, happy and dishonest old man;

all his life he had never done a stroke of work. So long as some

one of his relatives had a house he was sure of a home, and it was

unlikely that so large a family would all go bankrupt. His wife

led a similar existence some hundreds of miles away—he did not

visit her, owing to the expense of the railway ticket. Presently

Aziz chaffed him, also the servants, and then began quoting poetry,

Persian, Urdu, a little Arabic. His memory was good, and for so

young a man he had read largely; the themes he preferred were the

decay of Islam and the brevity of love. They listened delighted,

for they took the public view of poetry, not the private which

obtains in England. It never bored them to hear words, words; they

breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse;

the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee.

India—a hundred Indias—whispered outside beneath the indifferent

moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they

regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented,

they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly. A

servant in scarlet interrupted him; he was the chuprassi of the

Civil Surgeon, and he handed Aziz a note.

“Old Callendar wants to see me at his bungalow,” he said, not

rising. “He might have the politeness to say why.”

“Some case, I daresay.”

“I daresay not, I daresay nothing. He has found out our dinner

hour, that’s all, and chooses to interrupt us every time, in order

to show his power.”

“On the one hand he always does this, on the other it may be a

serious case, and you cannot know,” said Hamidullah, considerately

paving the way towards obedience. “Had you not better clean your

teeth after pan?”

“If my teeth are to be cleaned, I don’t go at all. I am an Indian,

it is an Indian habit to take pan. The Civil Surgeon must put up

with it. Mohammed Latif, my bike, please.”

The poor relation got up. Slightly immersed in the realms of

matter, he laid his hand on the bicycle’s saddle, while a servant

did the actual wheeling. Between them they took it over a tintack.

Aziz held his hands under the ewer, dried them, fitted on his green

felt hat, and then with unexpected energy whizzed out of Hamidullah’s

compound.

“Aziz, Aziz, imprudent boy. . . .” But he was far down the bazaar,

riding furiously. He had neither light nor bell nor had he a brake,

but what use are such adjuncts in a land where the cyclist’s only

hope is to coast from face to face, and just before he collides

with each it vanishes? And the city was fairly empty at this hour.

When his tyre went flat, he leapt off and shouted for a tonga.

He did not at first find one, and he had also to dispose of his

bicycle at a friend’s house. He dallied furthermore to clean his

teeth. But at last he was rattling towards the civil lines, with

a vivid sense of speed. As he entered their arid tidiness,

depression suddenly seized him. The roads, named after victorious

generals and intersecting at right angles, were symbolic of the

net Great Britain had thrown over India. He felt caught in their

meshes. When he turned into Major Callendar’s compound he could

with difficulty restrain himself from getting down from the tonga

and approaching the bungalow on foot, and this not because his soul

was servile but because his feelings—the sensitive edges of

him—feared a gross snub. There had been a “case” last year—an

Indian gentleman had driven up to an official’s house and been

turned back by the servants and been told to approach more

suitably—only one case among thousands of visits to hundreds of

officials, but its fame spread wide. The young man shrank from a

repetition of it. He compromised, and stopped the driver just

outside the flood of light that fell across the verandah.

The Civil Surgeon was out.

“But the sahib has left me some message?”

The servant returned an indifferent “No.” Aziz was in despair. It

was a servant whom he had forgotten to tip, and he could do nothing

now because there were people in the hall. He was convinced that

there was a message, and that the man was withholding it out of

revenge. While they argued, the people came out. Both were ladies.

Aziz lifted his hat. The first, who was in evening dress, glanced

at the Indian and turned instinctively away.

“Mrs. Lesley, it _is_ a tonga,” she cried.

“Ours?” enquired the second, also seeing Aziz, and doing likewise.

“Take the gifts the gods provide, anyhow,” she screeched, and both

jumped in. “O Tonga wallah, club, club. Why doesn’t the fool go?”

“Go, I will pay you to-morrow,” said Aziz to the driver, and as

they went off he called courteously, “You are most welcome, ladies.”

They did not reply, being full of their own affairs.

So it had come, the usual thing—just as Mahmoud Ali said. The

inevitable snub—his bow ignored, his carriage taken. It might have

been worse, for it comforted him somehow that Mesdames Callendar

and Lesley should both be fat and weigh the tonga down behind.

Beautiful women would have pained him. He turned to the servant,

gave him a couple of rupees, and asked again whether there was a

message. The man, now very civil, returned the same answer. Major

Callendar had driven away half an hour before.

“Saying nothing?”

He had as a matter of fact said, “Damn Aziz”—words that the servant

understood, but was too polite to repeat. One can tip too much as

well as too little, indeed the coin that buys the exact truth has

not yet been minted.

“Then I will write him a letter.”

He was offered the use of the house, but was too dignified to enter

it. Paper and ink were brought on to the verandah. He began: “Dear

Sir,—At your express command I have hastened as a subordinate

should——” and then stopped. “Tell him I have called, that is

sufficient,” he said, tearing the protest up. “Here is my card.

Call me a tonga.”

“Huzoor, all are at the club.”

“Then telephone for one down to the railway station.” And since

the man hastened to do this he said, “Enough, enough, I prefer to

walk.” He commandeered a match and lit a cigarette. These

attentions, though purchased, soothed him. They would last as long

as he had rupees, which is something. But to shake the dust of

Anglo-India off his feet! To escape from the net and be back among

manners and gestures that he knew! He began a walk, an unwonted

exercise.

He was an athletic little man, daintily put together, but really

very strong. Nevertheless walking fatigued him, as it fatigues

everyone in India except the new-comer. There is something hostile

in that soil. It either yields, and the foot sinks into a

depression, or else it is unexpectedly rigid and sharp, pressing

stones or crystals against the tread. A series of these little

surprises exhausts; and he was wearing pumps, a poor preparation

for any country. At the edge of the civil station he turned into

a mosque to rest.

He had always liked this mosque. It was gracious, and the

arrangement pleased him. The courtyard—entered through a ruined

gate—contained an ablution tank of fresh clear water, which was

always in motion, being indeed part of a conduit that supplied the

city. The courtyard was paved with broken slabs. The covered part

of the mosque was deeper than is usual; its effect was that of an

English parish church whose side has been taken out. Where he sat,

he looked into three arcades whose darkness was illuminated by a

small hanging lamp and by the moon. The front—in full moonlight—had

the appearance of marble, and the ninety-nine names of God on the

frieze stood out black, as the frieze stood out white against the

sky. The contest between this dualism and the contention of shadows

within pleased Aziz, and he tried to symbolize the whole into some

truth of religion or love. A mosque by winning his approval let

loose his imagination. The temple of another creed, Hindu,

Christian, or Greek, would have bored him and failed to awaken his

sense of beauty. Here was Islam, his own country, more than a

Faith, more than a battle-cry, more, much more . . . Islam, an

attitude towards life both exquisite and durable, where his body

and his thoughts found their home.

His seat was the low wall that bounded the courtyard on the left.

The ground fell away beneath him towards the city, visible as a

blur of trees, and in the stillness he heard many small sounds. On

the right, over in the club, the English community contributed an

amateur orchestra. Elsewhere some Hindus were drumming—he knew they

were Hindus, because the rhythm was uncongenial to him,—and others

were bewailing a corpse—he knew whose, having certified it in the

afternoon. There were owls, the Punjab mail . . . and flowers smelt

deliciously in the station-master’s garden. But the mosque—that

alone signified, and he returned to it from the complex appeal of

the night, and decked it with meanings the builder had never

intended. Some day he too would build a mosque, smaller than this

but in perfect taste, so that all who passed by should experience

the happiness he felt now. And near it, under a low dome, should

be his tomb, with a Persian inscription:

Alas, without me for thousands of years

The Rose will blossom and the Spring will bloom,

But those who have secretly understood my heart—

They will approach and visit the grave where I lie.

He had seen the quatrain on the tomb of a Deccan king, and regarded

it as profound philosophy—he always held pathos to be profound.

The secret understanding of the heart! He repeated the phrase with

tears in his eyes, and as he did so one of the pillars of the

mosque seemed to quiver. It swayed in the gloom and detached

itself. Belief in ghosts ran in his blood, but he sat firm. Another

pillar moved, a third, and then an Englishwoman stepped out into

the moonlight. Suddenly he was furiously angry and shouted: “Madam!

Madam! Madam!”

“Oh! Oh!” the woman gasped.

“Madam, this is a mosque, you have no right here at all; you should

have taken off your shoes; this is a holy place for Moslems.”

“I have taken them off.”

“You have?”

“I left them at the entrance.”

“Then I ask your pardon.”

Still startled, the woman moved out, keeping the ablution-tank

between them. He called after her, “I am truly sorry for speaking.”

“Yes, I was right, was I not? If I remove my shoes, I am allowed?”

“Of course, but so few ladies take the trouble, especially if

thinking no one is there to see.”

“That makes no difference. God is here.”

“Madam!”

“Please let me go.”

“Oh, can I do you some service now or at any time?”

“No, thank you, really none—good night.”

“May I know your name?”

She was now in the shadow of the gateway, so that he could not see

her face, but she saw his, and she said with a change of voice,

“Mrs. Moore.”

“Mrs.——” Advancing, he found that she was old.

A fabric bigger than the mosque fell to pieces, and he did not know

whether he was glad or sorry. She was older than Hamidullah Begum,

with a red face and white hair. Her voice had deceived him.

“Mrs. Moore, I am afraid I startled you. I shall tell my

community—our friends—about you. That God is here—very good, very

fine indeed. I think you are newly arrived in India.”

“Yes—how did you know?”

“By the way you address me. No, but can I call you a carriage?”

“I have only come from the club. They are doing a play that I have

seen in London, and it was so hot.”

“What was the name of the play?”

_“Cousin Kate.”_

“I think you ought not to walk at night alone, Mrs. Moore. There

are bad characters about and leopards may come across from the

Marabar Hills. Snakes also.”

She exclaimed; she had forgotten the snakes.

“For example, a six-spot beetle,” he continued, “You pick it up,

it bites, you die.”

“But you walk about yourself.”

“Oh, I am used to it.”

“Used to snakes?”

They both laughed. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “Snakes don’t dare bite

me.” They sat down side by side in the entrance, and slipped on

their evening shoes. “Please may I ask you a question now? Why do

you come to India at this time of year, just as the cold weather

is ending?”

“I intended to start earlier, but there was an unavoidable delay.”

“It will soon be so unhealthy for you! And why ever do you come to

Chandrapore?”

“To visit my son. He is the City Magistrate here.”

“Oh no, excuse me, that is quite impossible. Our City Magistrate’s

name is Mr. Heaslop. I know him intimately.”

“He’s my son all the same,” she said, smiling.

“But, Mrs. Moore, how can he be?”

“I was married twice.”

“Yes, now I see, and your first husband died.”

“He did, and so did my second husband.”

“Then we are in the same box,” he said cryptically. “Then is the

City Magistrate the entire of your family now?”

“No, there are the younger ones—Ralph and Stella in England.”

“And the gentleman here, is he Ralph and Stella’s half-brother?”

“Quite right.”

“Mrs. Moore, this is all extremely strange, because like yourself

I have also two sons and a daughter. Is not this the same box with

a vengeance?”

“What are their names? Not also Ronny, Ralph, and Stella, surely?”

The suggestion delighted him. “No, indeed. How funny it sounds!

Their names are quite different and will surprise you. Listen,

please. I am about to tell you my children’s names. The first is

called Ahmed, the second is called Karim, the third—she is the

eldest—Jamila. Three children are enough. Do not you agree with

me?”

“I do.”

They were both silent for a little, thinking of their respective

families. She sighed and rose to go.

“Would you care to see over the Minto Hospital one morning?” he

enquired. “I have nothing else to offer at Chandrapore.”

“Thank you, I have seen it already, or I should have liked to come

with you very much.”

“I suppose the Civil Surgeon took you.”

“Yes, and Mrs. Callendar.”

His voice altered. “Ah! A very charming lady.”

“Possibly, when one knows her better.”

“What? What? You didn’t like her?”

“She was certainly intending to be kind, but I did not find her

exactly charming.”

He burst out with: “She has just taken my tonga without my

permission—do you call that being charming?—and Major Callendar

interrupts me night after night from where I am dining with my

friends and I go at once, breaking up a most pleasant entertainment,

and he is not there and not even a message. Is this charming, pray?

But what does it matter? I can do nothing and he knows it. I am

just a subordinate, my time is of no value, the verandah is good

enough for an Indian, yes, yes, let him stand, and Mrs. Callendar

takes my carriage and cuts me dead . . .”

She listened.

He was excited partly by his wrongs, but much more by the knowledge

that someone sympathized with them. It was this that led him to

repeat, exaggerate, contradict. She had proved her sympathy by

criticizing her fellow-countrywoman to him, but even earlier he

had known. The flame that not even beauty can nourish was springing

up, and though his words were querulous his heart began to glow

secretly. Presently it burst into speech.

“You understand me, you know what others feel. Oh, if others

resembled you!”

Rather surprised, she replied: “I don’t think I understand people

very well. I only know whether I like or dislike them.”

“Then you are an Oriental.”

She accepted his escort back to the club, and said at the gate that

she wished she was a member, so that she could have asked him in.

“Indians are not allowed into the Chandrapore Club even as guests,”

he said simply. He did not expatiate on his wrongs now, being

happy. As he strolled downhill beneath the lovely moon, and again

saw the lovely mosque, he seemed to own the land as much as anyone

owned it. What did it matter if a few flabby Hindus had preceded

him there, and a few chilly English succeeded?