A Passage to India Read online

  “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 di
d 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?

  Chapter 3

  THE third act of Cousin Kate was well advanced by the time Mrs. Moore re-entered the club. Windows were barred, lest the servants should see their mem-sahibs acting, and the heat was consequently immense. One electric fan revolved like a wounded bird, another was out of order. Disinclined to return to the audience, she went into the billiard room, where she was greeted by “I want to see the real India,” and her appropriate life came back with a rush. This was Adela Quested, the queer, cautious girl whom Ronny had commissioned her to bring from England, and Ronny was her son, also cautious, whom Miss Quested would probably though not certainly marry, and she herself was an elderly lady.

  “I want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the Turtons will arrange something for next Tuesday.”

  “It’ll end in an elephant ride, it always does. Look at this evening. Cousin Kate! Imagine, Cousin Kate! But where have you been off to? Did you succeed in catching the moon in the Ganges?”

  The two ladies had happened, the night before, to see the moon’s reflection in a distant channel of the stream. The water had drawn it out, so that it had seemed larger than the real moon, and brighter, which had pleased them.

&n
bsp; “I went to the mosque, but I did not catch the moon.”

  “The angle would have altered—she rises later.”

  “Later and later,” yawned Mrs. Moore, who was tired after her walk. “Let me think—we don’t see the other side of the moon out here, no.”

  “Come, India’s not as bad as all that,” said a pleasant voice. “Other side of the earth, if you like, but we stick to the same old moon.”

  Neither of them knew the speaker nor did they ever see him again.He passed with his friendly word through red-brick pillars into the darkness.

  “We aren’t even seeing the other side of the world; that’s our complaint,” said Adela. Mrs. Moore agreed; she too was disappointed at the dullness of their new life. They had made such a romantic voyage across the Mediterranean and through the sands of Egypt to the harbour of Bombay, to find only a gridiron of bungalows at the end of it. But she did not take the disappointment as seriously as Miss Quested, for the reason that she was forty years older, and had learnt that Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually. She said again that she hoped that something interesting would be arranged for next Tuesday.