A Passage to India Read online

  “I hardly think that would do. Surely.”

  “I was afraid you’ld say that. I should very much like to.”

  “She is in no state to see anyone. Besides, you don’t know her well.”

  “Hardly at all… . But you see I believe she’s under some hideous delusion, and that that wretched boy is innocent.”

  The policeman started in surprise, and a shadow passed over his face, for he could not bear his dispositions to be upset. “I had no idea that was in your mind,” he said, and looked for support at the signed deposition, which lay before him.

  “Those field-glasses upset me for a minute, but I’ve thought since: it’s impossible that, having attempted to assault her, he would put her glasses into his pocket.”

  “Quite possible, I’m afraid; when an Indian goes bad, he goes not only very bad, but very queer.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “How should you? When you think of crime you think of English crime. The psychology here is different. I dare say you’ll tell me next that he was quite normal when he came down from the hill to greet you. No reason he should not be. Read any of the Mutiny records; which, rather than the Bhagavad Gita, should be your Bible in this country. Though I’m not sure that the one and the other are not closely connected. Am I not being beastly? But, you see, Fielding, as I’ve said to you once before, you’re a schoolmaster, and consequently you come across these people at their best. That’s what puts you wrong. They can be charming as boys. But I know them as they really are, after they have developed into men. Look at this, for instance.” He held up Aziz’ pocket-case. “I am going through the contents. They are not edifying. Here is a letter from a friend who apparently keeps a brothel.”

  “I don’t want to hear his private letters.”

  “It’ll have to be quoted in Court, as bearing on his morals. He was fixing up to see women at Calcutta.”

  “Oh, that’ll do, that’ll do.”

  McBryde stopped, naively puzzled. It was obvious to him that any two sahibs ought to pool all they knew about any Indian, and he could not think where the objection came in.

  “I dare say you have the right to throw stones at a young man for doing that, but I haven’t. I did the same at his age.”

  So had the Superintendent of Police, but he considered that the conversation had taken a turn that was undesirable. He did not like Fielding’s next remark either.

  “Miss Quested really cannot be seen? You do know that for a certainty?”

  “You have never explained to me what’s in your mind here. Why on earth do you want to see her?”

  “On the off chance of her recanting before you send in that report and he’s committed for trial, and the whole thing goes to blazes. Old man, don’t argue about this, but do of your goodness just ring up your wife or Miss Derek and enquire. It’ll cost you nothing.”

  “It’s no use ringing up them,” he replied, stretching out for the telephone. “Callendar settles a question like that, of course. You haven’t grasped that she’s seriously ill.”

  “He’s sure to refuse, it’s all he exists for,” said the other desperately.

  The expected answer came back: the Major would not hear of the patient being troubled.

  “I only wanted to ask her whether she is certain, dead certain, that it was Aziz who followed her into the cave.”

  “Possibly my wife might ask her that much.”

  “But I wanted to ask her. I want someone who believes in him to ask her.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “She is among people who disbelieve in Indians.”

  “Well, she tells her own story, doesn’t she?”

  “I know, but she tells it to you.”

  McBryde raised his eyebrows, murmuring: “A bit too finespun. Anyhow, Callendar won’t hear of you seeing her. I’m sorry to say he gave a bad account just now. He says that she is by no means out of danger.”

  They were silent. Another card was brought into the office—Hamidullah’s. The opposite army was gathering.

  “I must put this report through now, Fielding.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “How can I not?”

  “I feel that things are rather unsatisfactory as well as most disastrous. We are heading for a most awful smash. I can see your prisoner, I suppose.”

  He hesitated. “His own people seem in touch with him all right.”

  “Well, when he’s done with them.”

  “I wouldn’t keep you waiting; good heavens, you take precedence of any Indian visitor, of course. I meant what’s the good. Why mix yourself up with pitch?”

  “I say he’s innocent——”

  “Innocence or guilt, why mix yourself up? What’s the good?”

  “Oh, good, good,” he cried, feeling that every earth was being stopped. “One’s got to breathe occasionally, at least I have. I mayn’t see her, and now I mayn’t see him. I promised him to come up here with him to you, but Turton called me off before I could get two steps.”

  “Sort of all-white thing the Burra Sahib would do,” he muttered sentimentally. And trying not to sound patronizing, he stretched his hand over the table, and said: “We shall all have to hang together, old man, I’m afraid. I’m your junior in years, I know, but very much your senior in service; you don’t happen to know this poisonous country as well as I do, and you must take it from me that the general situation is going to be nasty at Chandrapore during the next few weeks, very nasty indeed.”

  “So I have just told you.”

  “But at a time like this there’s no room for—well—personal views. The man who doesn’t toe the line is lost.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “No, you don’t see entirely. He not only loses himself, he weakens his friends. If you leave the line, you leave a gap in the line. These jackals”—he pointed at the lawyers’ cards—“are looking with all their eyes for a gap.”

  “Can I visit Aziz?” was his answer.

  “No.” Now that he knew of Turton’s attitude, the policeman had no doubts. “You may see him on a magistrate’s order, but on my own responsibility I don’t feel justified. It might lead to more complications.”

  Fielding paused, reflecting that if he had been either ten years younger or ten years longer in India, he would have responded to McBryde’s appeal. The bit between his teeth, he then said, “To whom do I apply for an order?”

  “City Magistrate.”

  “That sounds comfortable!”

  “Yes, one can’t very well worry poor Heaslop.”

  More “evidence” appeared at this moment—the table-drawer from Aziz’ bungalow, borne with triumph in a corporal’s arms.

  “Photographs of women. Ah!”

  “That’s his wife,” said Fielding, wincing.

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me.”

  McBryde gave a faint, incredulous smile, and started rummaging in the drawer. His face became inquisitive and slightly bestial. “Wife indeed, I know those wives!” he was thinking. Aloud he said: “Well, you must trot off now, old man, and the Lord help us, the Lord help us all… .”

  As if his prayer had been heard, there was a sudden rackety-dacket on a temple bell.

  Chapter 19

  HAMIDULLAH was the next stage. He was waiting outside the Superintendent’s office, and sprang up respectfully when he saw Fielding. To the Englishman’s passionate “It’s all a mistake,” he answered, “Ah, ah, has some evidence come?”

  “It will come,” said Fielding, holding his hand.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Fielding; but when once an Indian has been arrested, we do not know where it will stop.” His manner was deferential. “You are very good to greet me in this public fashion, I appreciate it; but, Mr. Fielding, nothing convinces a magistrate except evidence. Did Mr. McBryde make any remark when my card came in? Do you think my application annoyed him, will prejudice him against my friend at all? If so, I will gladly r
etire.”

  “He’s not annoyed, and if he was, what does it matter?”

  “Ah, it’s all very well for you to speak like that, but we have to live in this country.”

  The leading barrister of Chandrapore, with the dignified manner and Cambridge degree, had been rattled. He too loved Aziz, and knew he was calumniated; but faith did not rule his heart, and he prated of “policy” and “evidence” in a way that saddened the Englishman. Fielding, too, had his anxieties—he didn’t like the field-glasses or the discrepancy over the guide—but he relegated them to the edge of his mind, and forbade them to infect its core. Aziz was innocent, and all action must be based on that, and the people who said he was guilty were wrong, and it was hopeless to try to propitiate them. At the moment when he was throwing in his lot with Indians, he realized the profundity of the gulf that divided him from them. They always do something disappointing. Aziz had tried to run away from the police, Mohammed Latif had not checked the pilfering. And now Hamidullah!—instead of raging and denouncing, he temporized. Are Indians cowards? No, but they are bad starters and occasionally jib. Fear is everywhere; the British Raj rests on it; the respect and courtesy Fielding himself enjoyed were unconscious acts of propitiation. He told Hamidullah to cheer up, all would end well; and Hamidullah did cheer up, and became pugnacious and sensible. McBryde’s remark, “If you leave the line, you leave a gap in the line,” was being illustrated.

  “First and foremost, the question of bail …”

  Application must be made this afternoon. Fielding wanted to stand surety. Hamidullah thought the Nawab Bahadur should be approached.

  “Why drag in him, though?”

  To drag in everyone was precisely the barrister’s aim. He then suggested that the lawyer in charge of the case would be a Hindu; the defence would then make a wider appeal. He mentioned one or two names—men from a distance who would not be intimidated by local conditions—and said he should prefer Amritrao, a Calcutta barrister, who had a high reputation professionally and personally, but who was notoriously anti-British.

  Fielding demurred; this seemed to him going to the other extreme. Aziz must be cleared, but with a minimum of racial hatred. Amritrao was loathed at the club. His retention would be regarded as a political challenge.

  “Oh no, we must hit with all our strength. When I saw my friend’s private papers carried in just now in the arms of a dirty policeman, I said to myself, ‘Amritrao is the man to clear up this.’”

  There was a lugubrious pause. The temple bell continued to jangle harshly. The interminable and disastrous day had scarcely reached its afternoon. Continuing their work, the wheels of Dominion now propelled a messenger on a horse from the Superintendent to the Magistrate with an official report of arrest. “Don’t complicate, let the cards play themselves,” entreated Fielding, as he watched the man disappear into dust. “We’re bound to win, there’s nothing else we can do. She will never be able to substantiate the charge.”

  This comforted Hamidullah, who remarked with complete sincerity, “At a crisis, the English are really unequalled.”

  “Good-bye, then, my dear Hamidullah (we must drop the ‘Mr.’ now). Give Aziz my love when you see him, and tell him to keep calm, calm, calm. I shall go back to the College now. If you want me, ring me up; if you don’t, don’t, for I shall be very busy.”

  “Good-bye, my dear Fielding, and you actually are on our side against your own people?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  He regretted taking sides. To slink through India unlabelled was his aim. Henceforward he would be called “anti-British,” “seditious”—terms that bored him, and diminished his utility. He foresaw that besides being a tragedy, there would be a muddle; already he saw several tiresome little knots, and each time his eye returned to them, they were larger. Born in freedom, he was not afraid of the muddle, but he recognized its existence.

  This section of the day concluded in a queer vague talk with Professor Godbole. The interminable affair of the Russell’s Viper was again in question. Some weeks before, one of the masters at the College, an unpopular Parsi, had found a Russell’s Viper nosing round his classroom. Perhaps it had crawled in of itself, but perhaps it had not, and the staff still continued to interview their Principal about it, and to take up his time with their theories. The reptile is so poisonous that he did not like to cut them short, and this they knew. Thus when his mind was bursting with other troubles and he was debating whether he should compose a letter of appeal to Miss Quested, he was obliged to listen to a speech which lacked both basis and conclusion, and floated through air. At the end of it Godbole said, “May I now take my leave?”—always an indication that he had not come to his point yet. “Now I take my leave, I must tell you how glad I am to hear that after all you succeeded in reaching the Marabar. I feared my unpunctuality had prevented you, but you went (a far pleasanter method) in Miss Derek’s car. I hope the expedition was a successful one.”

  “The news has not reached you yet, I can see.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “No; there has been a terrible catastrophe about Aziz.”

  “Oh yes. That is all round the College.”

  “Well, the expedition where that occurs can scarcely be called a successful one,” said Fielding, with an amazed stare.

  “I cannot say. I was not present.”

  He stared again—a most useless operation, for no eye could see what lay at the bottom of the Brahman’s mind, and yet he had a mind and a heart too, and all his friends trusted him, without knowing why. “I am most frightfully cut up,” he said.

  “So I saw at once on entering your office. I must not detain you, but I have a small private difficulty on which I want your help; I am leaving your service shortly, as you know.”

  “Yes, alas!”

  “And am returning to my birthplace in Central India to take charge of education there. I want to start a High School there on sound English lines, that shall be as like Government College as possible.”

  “Well?” he sighed, trying to take an interest.

  “At present there is only vernacular education at Mau. I shall feel it my duty to change all that. I shall advise His Highness to sanction at least a High School in the Capital, and if possible another in each pargana.”

  Fielding sunk his head on his arms; really, Indians were sometimes unbearable.

  “The point—the point on which I desire your help is this: what name should be given to the school?”

  “A name? A name for a school?” he said, feeling sickish suddenly, as he had done in the waiting-room.

  “Yes, a name, a suitable title, by which it can be called, by which it may be generally known.”

  “Really—I have no names for schools in my head. I can think of nothing but our poor Aziz. Have you grasped that at the present moment he is in prison?”

  “Oh yes. Oh no, I do not expect an answer to my question now. I only meant that when you are at leisure, you might think the matter over, and suggest two or three alternative titles for schools. I had thought of the ‘Mr. Fielding High School,’ but failing that, the ‘King-Emperor George the Fifth.’”

  “Godbole!”

  The old fellow put his hands together, and looked sly and charming.

  “Is Aziz innocent or guilty?”

  “That is for the Court to decide. The verdict will be in strict accordance with the evidence, I make no doubt.”

  “Yes, yes, but your personal opinion. Here’s a man we both like, generally esteemed; he lives here quietly doing his work. Well, what’s one to make of it? Would he or would he not do such a thing?”

  “Ah, that is rather a different question from your previous one, and also more difficult: I mean difficult in our philosophy. Dr. Aziz is a most worthy young man, I have a great regard for him; but I think you are asking me whether the individual can commit good actions or evil actions, and that is rather difficult for us.” He spoke without emotion and in short tripping syllables.

&n
bsp; “I ask you: did he do it or not? Is that plain? I know he didn’t, and from that I start. I mean to get at the true explanation in a couple of days. My last notion is that it’s the guide who went round with them. Malice on Miss Quested’s part—it couldn’t be that, though Hamidullah thinks so. She has certainly had some appalling experience. But you tell me, oh no—because good and evil are the same.”

  “No, not exactly, please, according to our philosophy. Because nothing can be performed in isolation. All perform a good action, when one is performed, and when an evil action is performed, all perform it. To illustrate my meaning, let me take the case in point as an example.

  “I am informed that an evil action was performed in the Marabar Hills, and that a highly esteemed English lady is now seriously ill in consequence. My answer to that is this: that action was performed by Dr. Aziz.” He stopped and sucked in his thin cheeks. “It was performed by the guide.” He stopped again. “It was performed by you.” Now he had an air of daring and of coyness. “It was performed by me.” He looked shyly down the sleeve of his own coat. “And by my students. It was even performed by the lady herself. When evil occurs, it expresses the whole of the universe. Similarly when good occurs.”

  “And similarly when suffering occurs, and so on and so forth, and everything is anything and nothing something,” he muttered in his irritation, for he needed the solid ground.

  “Excuse me, you are now again changing the basis of our discussion. We were discussing good and evil. Suffering is merely a matter for the individual. If a young lady has sunstroke, that is a matter of no significance to the universe. Oh no, not at all. Oh no, not the least. It is an isolated matter, it only concerns herself. If she thought her head did not ache, she would not be ill, and that would end it. But it is far otherwise in the case of good and evil. They are not what we think them, they are what they are, and each of us has contributed to both.”

  “You’re preaching that evil and good are the same.”

  “Oh no, excuse me once again. Good and evil are different, as their names imply. But, in my own humble opinion, they are both of them aspects of my Lord. He is present in the one, absent in the other, and the difference between presence and absence is great, as great as my feeble mind can grasp. Yet absence implies presence, absence is not non-existence, and we are therefore entitled to repeat, ‘Come, come, come, come.’” And in the same breath, as if to cancel any beauty his words might have contained, he added, “But did you have time to visit any of the interesting Marabar antiquities?”