A Passage to India (8 page)

THIS Mr. Fielding had been caught by India late. He was over forty when he entered that oddest portal, the Victoria Terminus at Bombay, and—having bribed a European ticket inspector—took his luggage into the compartment of his first tropical train. The journey remained in his mind as significant. Of his two carriage companions one was a youth, fresh to the East like himself, the other a seasoned Anglo-Indian of his own age. A gulf divided him from either; he had seen too many cities and men to be the first or to become the second. New impressions crowded on him, but they were not the orthodox new impressions; the past conditioned them, and so it was with his mistakes. To regard an Indian as if he were an Italian is not, for instance, a common error, nor perhaps a fatal one, and Fielding often attempted analogies between this peninsula and that other, smaller and more exquisitely shaped, that stretches into the classic waters of the Mediterranean.

His career, though scholastic, was varied, and had included going to the bad and repenting thereafter. By now he was a hard-bitten, good-tempered, intelligent fellow on the verge of middle age, with a belief in education. He did not mind whom he taught; public schoolboys, mental defectives and policemen, had all come his way, and he had no objection to adding Indians. Through the influence of friends, he was nominated Principal of the little college at Chandrapore, liked it, and assumed he was a success. He did succeed with his pupils, but the gulf between himself and his countrymen, which he had noticed in the train, widened distressingly. He could not at first see what was wrong. He was not unpatriotic, he always got on with Englishmen in England, all his best friends were English, so why was it not the same out here? Outwardly of the large shaggy type, with sprawling limbs and blue eyes, he appeared to inspire confidence until he spoke. Then something in his manner puzzled people and failed to allay the distrust which his profession naturally inspired. There needs must be this evil of brains in India, but woe to him through whom they are increased! The feeling grew that Mr. Fielding was a disruptive force, and rightly, for ideas are fatal to caste, and he used ideas by that most potent method—interchange. Neither a missionary nor a student, he was happiest in the give-and-take of a private conversation. The world, he believed, is a globe of men who are trying to reach one another and can best do so by the help of good will plus culture and intelligence—a creed ill suited to Chandrapore, but he had come out too late to lose it. He had no racial feeling—not because he was superior to his brother civilians, but because he had matured in a different atmosphere, where the herd-instinct does not flourish. The remark that did him most harm at the club was a silly aside to the effect that the so-called white races are really pinko-grey. He only said this to be cheery, he did not realize that “white” has no more to do with a colour than “God save the King” with a god, and that it is the height of impropriety to consider what it does connote. The pinko-grey male whom he addressed was subtly scandalized; his sense of insecurity was awoken, and he communicated it to the rest of the herd.

Still, the men tolerated him for the sake of his good heart and strong body; it was their wives who decided that he was not a sahib really. They disliked him. He took no notice of them, and this, which would have passed without comment in feminist England, did him harm in a community where the male is expected to be lively and helpful. Mr. Fielding never advised one about dogs or horses, or dined, or paid his midday calls, or decorated trees for one’s children at Christmas, and though he came to the club, it was only to get his tennis or billiards, and to go. This was true. He had discovered that it is possible to keep in with Indians and Englishmen, but that he who would also keep in with Englishwomen must drop the Indians. The two wouldn’t combine. Useless to blame either party, useless to blame them for blaming one another. It just was so, and one had to choose. Most Englishmen preferred their own kinswomen, who, coming out in increasing numbers, made life on the home pattern yearly more possible. He had found it convenient and pleasant to associate with Indians and he must pay the price. As a rule no Englishwoman entered the College except for official functions, and if he invited Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested to tea, it was because they were new-comers who would view everything with an equal if superficial eye, and would not turn on a special voice when speaking to his other guests.

The College itself had been slapped down by the Public Works Department, but its grounds included an ancient garden and a garden-house, and here he lived for much of the year. He was dressing after a bath when Dr. Aziz was announced. Lifting up his voice, he shouted from the bedroom, “Please make yourself at home.” The remark was unpremeditated, like most of his actions; it was what he felt inclined to say.

To Aziz it had a very definite meaning. “May I really, Mr. Fielding? It’s very good of you,” he called back; “I like unconventional behaviour so extremely.” His spirits flared up, he glanced round the living-room. Some luxury in it, but no order—nothing to intimidate poor Indians. It was also a very beautiful room, opening into the garden through three high arches of wood. “The fact is I have long wanted to meet you,” he continued. “I have heard so much about your warm heart from the Nawab Bahadur. But where is one to meet in a wretched hole like Chandrapore?” He came close up to the door. “When I was greener here, I’ll tell you what. I used to wish you to fall ill so that we could meet that way.” They laughed, and encouraged by his success he began to improvise. “I said to myself, How does Mr. Fielding look this morning? Perhaps pale. And the Civil Surgeon is pale too, he will not be able to attend upon him when the shivering commences. I should have been sent for instead. Then we would have had jolly talks, for you are a celebrated student of Persian poetry.”

“You know me by sight, then.”

“Of course, of course. You know me?”

“I know you very well by name.”

“I have been here such a short time, and always in the bazaar. No wonder you have never seen me, and I wonder you know my name. I say, Mr. Fielding?”

“Yes?”

“Guess what I look like before you come out. That will be a kind of game.”

“You’re five feet nine inches high,” said Fielding, surmising this much through the ground glass of the bedroom door.

“Jolly good. What next? Have I not a venerable white beard?”

“Blast!”

“Anything wrong?”

“I’ve stamped on my last collar stud.”

“Take mine, take mine.”

“Have you a spare one?”

“Yes, yes, one minute.”

“Not if you’re wearing it yourself.”

“No, no, one in my pocket.” Stepping aside, so that his outline might vanish, he wrenched off his collar, and pulled out of his shirt the back stud, a gold stud, which was part of a set that his brother-inlaw had brought him from Europe. “Here it is,” he cried.

“Come in with it if you don’t mind the unconventionality.”

“One minute again.” Replacing his collar, he prayed that it would not spring up at the back during tea. Fielding’s bearer, who was helping him to dress, opened the door for him.

“Many thanks.” They shook hands smiling. He began to look round, as he would have with any old friend. Fielding was not surprised at the rapidity of their intimacy. With so emotional a people it was apt to come at once or never, and he and Aziz, having heard only good of each other, could afford to dispense with preliminaries.

“But I always thought that Englishmen kept their rooms so tidy. It seems that this is not so. I need not be so ashamed.” He sat down gaily on the bed; then, forgetting himself entirely, drew up his legs and folded them under him. “Everything ranged coldly on shelves was what
I
thought—I say, Mr. Fielding, is the stud going to go in?”

“I hae ma doots.”

“What’s that last sentence, please? Will you teach me some new words and so improve my English?”

Fielding doubted whether “everything ranged coldly on shelves” could be improved. He was often struck with the liveliness with which the younger generation handled a foreign tongue. They altered the idiom, but they could say whatever they wanted to say quickly; there were none of the babuisms ascribed to them up at the club. But then the club moved slowly; it still declared that few Mohammedans and no Hindus would eat at an Englishman’s table, and that all Indian ladies were in impenetrable purdah. Individually it knew better; as a club it declined to change.

“Let me put in your stud. I see … the shirt back’s hole is rather small and to rip it wider a pity.”

“Why in hell does one wear collars at all?” grumbled Fielding as he bent his neck.

“We wear them to pass the Police.”

“What’s that?”

“If I’m biking in English dress—starch collar, hat with ditch—they take no notice. When I wear a fez, they cry, ‘Your lamp’s out!’ Lord Curzon did not consider this when he urged natives of India to retain their picturesque costumes—Hooray! Stud’s gone in—Sometimes I shut my eyes and dream I have splendid clothes again and am riding into battle behind Alamgir. Mr. Fielding, must not India have been beautiful then, with the Mogul Empire at its height and Alamgir reigning at Delhi upon the Peacock Throne?”

“Two ladies are coming to tea to meet you—I think you know them.”

“Meet me? I know no ladies.”

“Not Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested?”

“Oh yes—I remember.” The romance at the mosque had sunk out of his consciousness as soon as it was over. “An excessively aged lady; but will you please repeat the name of her companion?”

“Miss Quested.”

“Just as you wish.” He was disappointed that other guests were coming, for he preferred to be alone with his new friend.

“You can talk to Miss Quested about the Peacock Throne if you like—she’s artistic, they say.”

“Is she a Post Impressionist?”

“Post Impressionism, indeed! Come along to tea. This world is getting too much for me altogether.”

Aziz was offended. The remark suggested that he, an obscure Indian, had no right to have heard of Post Impressionism—a privilege reserved for the Ruling Race, that. He said stiffly, “I do not consider Mrs. Moore my friend, I only met her accidentally in my mosque,” and was adding “a single meeting is too short to make a friend,” but before he could finish the sentence the stiffness vanished from it, because he felt Fielding’s fundamental good will. His own went out to it, and grappled beneath the shifting tides of emotion which can alone bear the voyager to an anchorage but may also carry him across it on to the rocks. He was safe really—as safe as the shore-dweller who can only understand stability and supposes that every ship must be wrecked, and he had sensations the shore-dweller cannot know. Indeed, he was sensitive rather than responsive. In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the true meaning, and his life though vivid was largely a dream. Fielding, for instance, had not meant that Indians are obscure, but that Post Impressionism is; a gulf divided his remark from Mrs. Turton’s “Why, they speak English,” but to Aziz the two sounded alike. Fielding saw that something had gone wrong, and equally that it had come right, but he didn’t fidget, being an optimist where personal relations were concerned, and their talk rattled on as before.

“Besides the ladies I am expecting one of my assistants—Narayan Godbole.”

“Oho, the Deccani Brahman!”

“He wants the past back too, but not precisely Alamgir.”

“I should think not. Do you know what Deccani Brahmans say? That England conquered India from them—from them, mind, and not from the Moguls. Is not that like their cheek? They have even bribed it to appear in text-books, for they are so subtle and immensely rich. Professor Godbole must be quite unlike all other Deccani Brahmans from all I can hear say. A most sincere chap.”

“Why don’t you fellows run a club in Chandrapore, Aziz?”

“Perhaps—some day … just now I see Mrs. Moore and—what’s her name—coming.”

How fortunate that it was an “unconventional” party, where formalities are ruled out! On this basis Aziz found the English ladies easy to talk to, he treated them like men. Beauty would have troubled him, for it entails rules of its own, but Mrs. Moore was so old and Miss Quested so plain that he was spared this anxiety. Adela’s angular body and the freckles on her face were terrible defects in his eyes, and he wondered how God could have been so unkind to any female form. His attitude towards her remained entirely straightforward in consequence.

“I want to ask you something, Dr. Aziz,” she began. “I heard from Mrs. Moore how helpful you were to her in the mosque, and how interesting. She learnt more about India in those few minutes’ talk with you than in the three weeks since we landed.”

“Oh, please do not mention a little thing like that. Is there anything else I may tell you about my country?”

“I want you to explain a disappointment we had this morning; it must be some point of Indian etiquette.”

“There honestly is none,” he replied. “We are by nature a most informal people.”

“I am afraid we must have made some blunder and given offence,” said Mrs. Moore.

“That is even more impossible. But may I know the facts?”

“An Indian lady and gentleman were to send their carriage for us this morning at nine. It has never come. We waited and waited and waited; we can’t think what happened.”

“Some misunderstanding,” said Fielding, seeing at once that it was the type of incident that had better not be cleared up.

“Oh no, it wasn’t that,” Miss Quested persisted. “They even gave up going to Calcutta to entertain us. We must have made some stupid blunder, we both feel sure.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“Exactly what Mr. Heaslop tells me,” she retorted, reddening a little. “If one doesn’t worry, how’s one to understand?”

The host was inclined to change the subject, but Aziz took it up warmly, and on learning fragments of the delinquents’ name pronounced that they were Hindus.

“Slack Hindus—they have no idea of society; I know them very well because of a doctor at the hospital. Such a slack, unpunctual fellow! It is as well you did not go to their house, for it would give you a wrong idea of India. Nothing sanitary. I think for my own part they grew ashamed of their house and that is why they did not send.”