Aziz fell ill as he foretold—slightly ill. Three days
later he lay abed in his bungalow, pretending to be very
ill. It was a touch of fever, which he would have neglected
if there was anything important at the hospital.
Now and then he groaned and thought he should die,
but did not think so for long, and a very little diverted him.
It was Sunday, always an equivocal day in the East,
and an excuse for slacking. He could hear church bells
as he drowsed, both from the civil station and from the
missionaries out beyond the slaughter house—different
bells and rung with different intent, for one set was calling
firmly to Anglo-India, and the other feebly to mankind.
He did not object to the first set; the other he ignored,
knowing their inefficiency. Old Mr. Graysford and young
Mr. Sorley made converts during a famine, because they
distributed food; but when times improved they were
naturally left alone again, and though surprised and
aggrieved each time this happened, they never learnt
wisdom. “No Englishman understands us except Mr.
Fielding,” he thought; “but how shall I see him again?
If he entered this room the disgrace of it would kill me.”
He called to Hassan to clear up, but Hassan, who was
testing his wages by ringing them on the step of the
verandah, found it possible not to hear him; heard and
didn’t hear, just as Aziz had called and hadn’t called.
“That’s India all over . . . how like us . . . there we
are . . .” He dozed again, and his thoughts wandered
over the varied surface of life.
Gradually they steadied upon a certain spot—the
Bottomless Pit according to missionaries, but he had
never regarded it as more than a dimple. Yes, he did
want to spend an evening with some girls, singing and
all that, the vague jollity that would culminate in
voluptuousness. Yes, that was what he did want. How
could it be managed? If Major Callendar had been an
Indian, he would have remembered what young men are,
and granted two or three days’ leave to Calcutta without
asking questions. But the Major assumed either that his
subordinates were made of ice, or that they repaired to
the Chandrapore bazaars—disgusting ideas both. It was
only Mr. Fielding who——
“Hassan!”
The servant came running.
“Look at those flies, brother;” and he pointed to the
horrible mass that hung from the ceiling. The nucleus
was a wire which had been inserted as a homage to electricity.
Electricity had paid no attention, and a colony
of eye-flies had come instead and blackened the coils
with their bodies.
“Huzoor, those are flies.”
“Good, good, they are, excellent, but why have I
called you?”
“To drive them elsewhere,” said Hassan, after painful
thought.
“Driven elsewhere, they always return.”
“Huzoor.”
“You must make some arrangement against flies; that
is why you are my servant,” said Aziz gently.
Hassan would call the little boy to borrow the step-ladder
from Mahmoud Ali’s house; he would order the
cook to light the Primus stove and heat water; he
would personally ascend the steps with a bucket in his
arms, and dip the end of the coil into it.
“Good, very good. Now what have you to do?”
“Kill flies.”
“Good. Do it.”
Hassan withdrew, the plan almost lodged in his head,
and began to look for the little boy. Not finding him, his
steps grew slower, and he stole back to his post on the
verandah, but did not go on testing his rupees, in case
his master heard them clink. On twittered the Sunday
bells; the East had returned to the East via the suburbs
of England, and had become ridiculous during the detour.
Aziz continued to think about beautiful women.
His mind here was hard and direct, though not brutal.
He had learnt all he needed concerning his own constitution
many years ago, thanks to the social order into
which he had been born, and when he came to study medicine
he was repelled by the pedantry and fuss with which
Europe tabulates the facts of sex. Science seemed to
discuss everything from the wrong end. It didn’t interpret
his experiences when he found them in a German
manual, because by being there they ceased to be his
experiences. What he had been told by his father or
mother or had picked up from servants—it was information
of that sort that he found useful, and handed on as
occasion offered to others.
But he must not bring any disgrace on his children by
some silly escapade. Imagine if it got about that he
was not respectable! His professional position too must
be considered, whatever Major Callendar thought. Aziz
upheld the proprieties, though he did not invest them
with any moral halo, and it was here that he chiefly
differed from an Englishman. His conventions were
social. There is no harm in deceiving society as long
as she does not find you out, because it is only when
she finds you out that you have harmed her; she is not
like a friend or God, who are injured by the mere existence
of unfaithfulness. Quite clear about this, he meditated
what type of lie he should tell to get away to Calcutta,
and had thought of a man there who could be trusted
to send him a wire and a letter that he could show to
Major Callendar, when the noise of wheels was heard in
his compound. Someone had called to enquire. The
thought of sympathy increased his fever, and with a
sincere groan he wrapped himself in his quilt.
“Aziz, my dear fellow, we are greatly concerned,”
said Hamidullah’s voice. One, two, three, four bumps,
as people sat down upon his bed.
“When a doctor falls ill it is a serious matter,” said the
voice of Mr. Syed Mohammed, the assistant engineer.
“When an engineer falls ill, it is equally important,”
said the voice of Mr. Haq, a police inspector.
“Oh yes, we are all jolly important, our salaries prove
it.”
“Dr. Aziz took tea with our Principal last Thursday
afternoon,” piped Rafi, the engineer’s nephew. “Professor
Godbole, who also attended, has sickened too, which
seems rather a curious thing, sir, does it not?”
Flames of suspicion leapt up in the breast of each man.
“Humbug!” exclaimed Hamidullah, in authoritative
tones, quenching them.
“Humbug, most certainly,” echoed the others, ashamed
of themselves. The wicked schoolboy, having failed to
start a scandal, lost confidence and stood up with his
back to the wall.
“Is Professor Godbole ill?” enquired Aziz, penetrated
by the news. “I am sincerely sorry.” Intelligent and
compassionate, his face peeped out of the bright crimson
folds of the quilt. “How do you do, Mr. Syed Mohammed,
Mr. Haq? How very kind of you to enquire after my
health! How do you do, Hamidullah? But you bring
me bad news. What is wrong with him, the excellent
fellow?”
“Why don’t you answer, Rafi? You’re the great
authority,” said his uncle.
“Yes, Rafi’s the great man,” said Hamidullah, rubbing
it in. “Rafi is the Sherlock Holmes of Chandrapore.
Speak up, Rafi.”
Less than the dust, the schoolboy murmured the
word “Diarrhœa,” but took courage as soon as it had
been uttered, for it improved his position. Flames of
suspicion shot up again in the breasts of his elders, though
in a different direction. Could what was called diarrhœa
really be an early case of cholera?
“If this is so, this is a very serious thing: this is scarcely
the end of March. Why have I not been informed?”
cried Aziz.
“Dr. Panna Lal attends him, sir.”
“Oh yes, both Hindus; there we have it; they hang
together like flies and keep everything dark. Rafi, come
here. Sit down. Tell me all the details. Is there
vomiting also?”
“Oh yes indeed, sir, and the serious pains.”
“That settles it. In twenty-four hours he will be
dead.”
Everybody looked and felt shocked, but Professor
Godbole had diminished his appeal by linking himself
with a co-religionist. He moved them less than when he
had appeared as a suffering individual. Before long
they began to condemn him as a source of infection.
“All illness proceeds from Hindus,” Mr. Haq said.
Mr. Syed Mohammed had visited religious fairs, at
Allahabad and at Ujjain, and described them with
biting scorn. At Allahabad there was flowing water,
which carried impurities away, but at Ujjain the little
river Sipra was banked up, and thousands of bathers
deposited their germs in the pool. He spoke with disgust
of the hot sun, the cow-dung and marigold flowers,
and the encampment of saddhus, some of whom strode
stark naked through the streets. Asked what was the
name of the chief idol at Ujjain, he replied that he did
not know, he had disdained to enquire, he really could not
waste his time over such trivialities. His outburst took
some time, and in his excitement he fell into Punjabi (he
came from that side) and was unintelligible.
Aziz liked to hear his religion praised. It soothed the
surface of his mind, and allowed beautiful images to form
beneath. When the engineer’s noisy tirade was finished,
he said, “That is exactly my own view.” He held up his
hand, palm outward, his eyes began to glow, his heart to fill
with tenderness. Issuing still farther from his quilt, he
recited a poem by Ghalib. It had no connection with anything
that had gone before, but it came from his heart and
spoke to theirs. They were overwhelmed by its pathos;
pathos, they agreed, is the highest quality in art; a
poem should touch the hearer with a sense of his own
weakness, and should institute some comparison between
mankind and flowers. The squalid bedroom grew quiet;
the silly intrigues, the gossip, the shallow discontent were
stilled, while words accepted as immortal filled the indifferent
air. Not as a call to battle, but as a calm assurance
came the feeling that India was one; Moslem;
always had been; an assurance that lasted until they
looked out of the door. Whatever Ghalib had felt, he
had anyhow lived in India, and this consolidated it for
them: he had gone with his own tulips and roses, but
tulips and roses do not go. And the sister kingdoms
of the north—Arabia, Persia, Ferghana, Turkestan—stretched
out their hands as he sang, sadly, because all
beauty is sad, and greeted ridiculous Chandrapore, where
every street and house was divided against itself, and
told her that she was a continent and a unity.
Of the company, only Hamidullah had any comprehension
of poetry. The minds of the others were inferior
and rough. Yet they listened with pleasure, because
literature had not been divorced from their civilization.
The police inspector, for instance, did not feel that Aziz
had degraded himself by reciting, nor break into the cheery
guffaw with which an Englishman averts the infection of
beauty. He just sat with his mind empty, and when
his thoughts, which were mainly ignoble, flowed back into
it they had a pleasant freshness. The poem had done
no “good” to anyone, but it was a passing reminder,
a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale
between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call
to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our
isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet
is not entirely disproved. Aziz it left thinking about
women again, but in a different way: less definite, more
intense. Sometimes poetry had this effect on him,
sometimes it only increased his local desires, and he never
knew beforehand which effect would ensue: he could
discover no rule for this or for anything else in life.
Hamidullah had called in on his way to a worrying
committee of notables, nationalist in tendency, where
Hindus, Moslems, two Sikhs, two Parsis, a Jain, and a
Native Christian tried to like one another more than
came natural to them. As long as someone abused the
English, all went well, but nothing constructive had been
achieved, and if the English were to leave India, the
committee would vanish also. He was glad that Aziz, whom
he loved and whose family was connected with his own,
took no interest in politics, which ruin the character and
career, yet nothing can be achieved without them. He
thought of Cambridge—sadly, as of another poem that
had ended. How happy he had been there, twenty years
ago! Politics had not mattered in Mr. and Mrs. Bannister’s
rectory. There, games, work, and pleasant
society had interwoven, and appeared to be sufficient
substructure for a national life. Here all was wire-pulling
and fear. Messrs. Syed Mohammed and Haq—he
couldn’t even trust them, although they had come in
his carriage, and the schoolboy was a scorpion. Bending
down, he said, “Aziz, Aziz, my dear boy, we must be
going, we are already late. Get well quickly, for I do
not know what our little circle would do without you.”
“I shall not forget those affectionate words,” replied
Aziz.
“Add mine to them,” said the engineer.
“Thank you, Mr. Syed Mohammed, I will.”
“And mine,” “And, sir, accept mine,” cried the
others, stirred each according to his capacity towards
goodwill. Little ineffectual unquenchable flames! The
company continued to sit on the bed and to chew sugarcane,
which Hassan had run for into the bazaar, and Aziz
drank a cup of spiced milk. Presently there was the
sound of another carriage. Dr. Panna Lal had arrived,
driven by horrid Mr. Ram Chand. The atmosphere of
a sick-room was at once re-established, and the invalid
retired under his quilt.
“Gentlemen, you will excuse, I have come to enquire
by Major Callendar’s orders,” said the Hindu, nervous of
the den of fanatics into which his curiosity had called
him.
“Here he lies,” said Hamidullah, indicating the prostrate
form.
“Dr. Aziz, Dr, Aziz, I come to enquire.”
Aziz presented an expressionless face to the thermometer.
“Your hand also, please.” He took it, gazed at the flies
on the ceiling, and finally announced “Some temperature.”
“I think not much,” said Ram Chand, desirous of
fomenting trouble.
“Some; he should remain in bed,” repeated Dr. Panna
Lal, and shook the thermometer down, so that its altitude
remained for ever unknown. He loathed his young
colleague since the disasters with Dapple, and he would
have liked to do him a bad turn and report to Major
Callendar that he was shamming. But he might want
a day in bed himself soon,—besides, though Major Callendar
always believed the worst of natives, he never believed
them when they carried tales about one another. Sympathy
seemed the safer course. “How is stomach?”
he enquired, “how head?” And catching sight of
the empty cup, he recommended a milk diet.
“This is a great relief to us, it is very good of you to
call, Doctor Sahib,” Said Hamidullah, buttering him up
a bit.
“It is only my duty.”
“We know how busy you are.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“And how much illness there is in the city.”
The doctor suspected a trap in this remark; if he
admitted that there was or was not illness, either statement
might be used against him. “There is always
illness,” he replied, “and I am always busy—it is a doctor’s
nature.”
“He has not a minute, he is due double sharp at
Government College now,” said Ram Chand.
“You attend Professor Godbole there perhaps?”
The doctor looked professional and was silent.
“We hope his diarrhœa is ceasing.”
“He progresses, but not from diarrhœa.”
“We are in some anxiety over him—he and Dr. Aziz
are great friends. If you could tell us the name of his
complaint we should be grateful to you.”
After a cautious pause he said, “Hæmorrhoids.”
“And so much, my dear Rafi, for your cholera,” hooted
Aziz, unable to restrain himself.
“Cholera, cholera, what next, what now?” cried the
doctor, greatly fussed. “Who spreads such untrue
reports about my patients?”
Hamidullah pointed to the culprit.
“I hear cholera, I hear bubonic plague, I hear every
species of lie. Where will it end, I ask myself sometimes.
This city is full of misstatements, and the originators of
them ought to be discovered and punished authoritatively.”
“Rafi, do you hear that? Now why do you stuff us
up with all this humbug?”
The schoolboy murmured that another boy had told
him, also that the bad English grammar the Government
obliged them to use often gave the wrong meaning for
words, and so led scholars into mistakes.
“That is no reason you should bring a charge against a
doctor,” said Ram Chand.
“Exactly, exactly,” agreed Hamidullah, anxious to
avoid an unpleasantness. Quarrels spread so quickly
and so far, and Messrs. Syed Mohammed and Haq looked
cross, and ready to fly out. “You must apologize
properly, Rafi, I can see your uncle wishes it,” he said.
“You have not yet said that you are sorry for the trouble
you have caused this gentleman by your carelessness.”
“It is only a boy,” said Dr. Panna Lal, appeased.
“Even boys must learn,” said Ram Chand.
“Your own son failing to pass the lowest standard, I
think,” said Syed Mohammed suddenly.
“Oh, indeed? Oh yes, perhaps. He has not the
advantage of a relative in the Prosperity Printing
Press.”
“Nor you the advantage of conducting their cases
in the Courts any longer.”
Their voices rose. They attacked one another with
obscure allusions and had a silly quarrel. Hamidullah
and the doctor tried to make peace between them. In
the midst of the din someone said, “I say! Is he ill
or isn’t he ill?” Mr. Fielding had entered unobserved.
All rose to their feet, and Hassan, to do an Englishman
honour, struck with a sugar-cane at the coil of flies.
Aziz said, “Sit down,” coldly. What a room! What
a meeting! Squalor and ugly talk, the floor strewn with
fragments of cane and nuts, and spotted with ink, the
pictures crooked upon the dirty walls, no punkah! He
hadn’t meant to live like this or among these third-rate
people. And in his confusion he thought only of the
insignificant Rafi, whom he had laughed at, and allowed
to be teased. The boy must be sent away happy, or
hospitality would have failed, along the whole line.
“It is good of Mr. Fielding to condescend to visit our
friend,” said the police inspector. “We are touched by
this great kindness.”
“Don’t talk to him like that, he doesn’t want it, and
he doesn’t want three chairs; he’s not three Englishmen,”
he flashed. “Rafi, come here. Sit down again. I’m
delighted you could come with Mr. Hamidullah, my
dear boy; it will help me to recover, seeing you.”
“Forgive my mistakes,” said Rafi, to consolidate
himself.
“Well, are you ill, Aziz, or aren’t you?” Fielding
repeated.
“No doubt Major Callendar has told you that I am
shamming.”
“Well, are you?” The company laughed, friendly
and pleased. “An Englishman at his best,” they thought;
“so genial.”
“Enquire from Dr. Panna Lal.”
“You’re sure I don’t tire you by stopping?”
“Why, no! There are six people present in my
small room already. Please remain seated, if you will
excuse the informality.” He turned away and continued
to address Rafi, who was terrified at the arrival of his
Principal, remembered that he had tried to spread
slander about him, and yearned to get away.
“He is ill and he is not ill,” said Hamidullah, offering
a cigarette. “And I suppose that most of us are in that
same case.”
Fielding agreed; he and the pleasant sensitive barrister
got on well. They were fairly intimate and beginning
to trust each other.
“The whole world looks to be dying, still it doesn’t die,
so we must assume the existence of a beneficent Providence.”
“Oh, that is true, how true!” said the policeman,
thinking religion had been praised.
“Does Mr. Fielding think it’s true?.”
“Think which true? The world isn’t dying. I’m
certain of that!”
“No, no—the existence of Providence.”
“Well, I don’t believe in Providence.”
“But how then can you believe in God?” asked Syed
Mohammed.
“I don’t believe in God.”
A tiny movement as of “I told you so!” passed
round the company, and Aziz looked up for an instant,
scandalized. “Is it correct that most are atheists in
England now?” Hamidullah enquired.
“The educated thoughtful people? I should say so,
though they don’t like the name. The truth is that the
West doesn’t bother much over belief and disbelief in
these days. Fifty years ago, or even when you and I
were young, much more fuss was made.”
“And does not morality also decline?”
“It depends what you call—yes, yes, I suppose morality
does decline.”
“Excuse the question, but if this is the case, how is
England justified in holding India?”
There they were! Politics again. “It’s a question
I can’t get my mind on to,” he replied. “I’m out here
personally because I needed a job. I cannot tell you
why England is here or whether she ought to be here.
It’s beyond me.”
“Well-qualified Indians also need jobs in the educational.”
“I guess they do; I got in first,” said Fielding, smiling.
“Then excuse me again—is it fair an Englishman
should occupy one when Indians are available? Of
course I mean nothing personally. Personally we are
delighted you should be here, and we benefit greatly
by this frank talk.”
There is only one answer to a conversation of this
type: “England holds India for her good.” Yet
Fielding was disinclined to give it. The zeal for honesty
had eaten him up. He said, “I’m delighted to be here
too—that’s my answer, there’s my only excuse. I
can’t tell you anything about fairness. It mayn’t have
been fair I should have been born. I take up some
other fellow’s air, don’t I, whenever I breathe? Still,
I’m glad it’s happened, and I’m glad I’m out here.
However big a badmash one is—if one’s happy in consequence,
that is some justification.”
The Indians were bewildered. The line of thought
was not alien to them, but the words were too definite
and bleak. Unless a sentence paid a few compliments
to Justice and Morality in passing, its grammar wounded
their ears and paralysed their minds. What they said
and what they felt were (except in the case of affection)
seldom the same. They had numerous mental conventions
and when these were flouted they found it very
difficult to function. Hamidullah bore up best. “And
those Englishmen who are not delighted to be in
India—have they no excuse?” he asked.
“None. Chuck ’em out.”
“It may be difficult to separate them from the rest,”
he laughed.
“Worse than difficult, wrong,” said Mr. Ram Chand.
“No Indian gentleman approves chucking out as a
proper thing. Here we differ from those other nations.
We are so spiritual.”
“Oh that is true, how true!” said the police inspector.
“Is it true, Mr. Haq? I don’t consider us spiritual.
We can’t co-ordinate, we can’t co-ordinate, it only comes
to that. We can’t keep engagements, we can’t catch
trains. What more than this is the so-called spirituality
of India? You and I ought to be at the Committee
of Notables, we’re not; our friend Dr. Lal ought to be
with his patients, he isn’t. So we go on, and so we
shall continue to go, I think, until the end of time.”
“It is not the end of time, it is scarcely ten-thirty,
ha, ha!” cried Dr. Panna Lal, who was again in confident
mood. “Gentlemen, if I may be allowed to say
a few words, what an interesting talk, also thankfulness
and gratitude to Mr. Fielding in the first place teaches
our sons and gives them all the great benefits of his
experience and judgment——”
“Dr. Lal!”
“Dr. Aziz?”
“You sit on my leg.”
“I beg pardon, but some might say your leg kicks.”
“Come along, we tire the invalid in either case,” said
Fielding, and they filed out—four Mohammedans, two
Hindus and the Englishman. They stood on the verandah
while their conveyances were summoned out of various
patches of shade.
“Aziz has a high opinion of you, he only did not speak
because of his illness.”
“I quite understand,” said Fielding, who was rather
disappointed with his call. The Club comment, “making
himself cheap as usual,” passed through his mind. He
couldn’t even get his horse brought up. He had liked
Aziz so much at their first meeting, and had hoped for
developments.
