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.
