The Empire Trilogy (101 page)

The Magistrate, standing in hesitation on the verandah, was illuminated by a rare shaft of watery sunlight for a moment and his whiskers flared more brilliantly than ever...but then the sun moved on, extinguishing them. He realized now that his belief in people was no longer alive...he no longer loved the poor as a revolutionary must love them. People were stupid. The poor were just as stupid as the rich; he had only contempt for both of them. His interest in humanity now was stone dead, and probably had been for some time. He no longer believed that it was possible to struggle against the cruel forces of capitalist wealth. Nor did he particularly care. He had given up in despair.

“Yes, we'll hold an auction,” he muttered. “That's the easiest thing.”

At the time appointed for the auction the poor and the thrifty were left to man the ramparts; everyone else crowded into the hall of the Residency which was considered to be the most suitable place for the proceedings. The goods to be sold had been piled up on the stairs where once “the possessions” had been piled; bottles of jam and honey, heaps of hermetically sealed provisions, bottles of wine, cakes of chocolate pliable with the heat, tins of biscuits and even a few mouldy hams had been stacked against the splintered stumps which were all that now remained of the banisters Fleury had found so elegant the first evening he had entered the Residency.

With an effort the Collector removed his eyes from the food and looked at the crowd assembled to bid for it. How starved they looked! Only Rayne, standing on the stairs with his fingers idly drumming on the lid of a tin of Scottish shortbread, still looked as sleek as he had before the siege. Was this because Rayne had been in charge of the Commissariat? Behind Rayne stood his two servants, Ant and Monkey, as thin as their master was fat; their job was to deliver the food to those who bid successfully for it.

But just as the auction was about to begin there was a commotion amongst the knot of gentlemen who had gathered around the foot of the stairs. The stocky figure of Dr Dunstaple was seen thrusting his way towards the stairs. He looked nervous and excited. He said something to Rayne which the Collector could not hear; Rayne shook his head. They argued for a moment and Dr Dunstaple fell back dissatisfied. Using the butt of a pistol as a gavel Rayne began the auction.

The first lot to be put up was a tin of sugar biscuits and a jar of “mendy”, a pomade of native origin for dyeing the hair black. Rayne started the bidding at a guinea and after some brisk competition among the gentlemen at the foot of the stairs it was knocked down to one of them for five guineas. Faces in the hall registered distress at this price as it became clear to many of those present that they would be unable to win anything with their limited resources. More tins of biscuits followed, then other foodstuffs. Then came a battle over a fine tooth-comb among the ladies who had lice in their hair; this ended at forty-five shillings amid tears and despair. A ham came next; after some frenzied bidding at the lower prices it climbed to thirteen guineas, then to fourteen where it seemed likely to stay until at the very last moment, a cautious male voice offered fifteen guineas.

“Vokins, what d'you need a ham for?”

Everyone was startled by the sound of the Collector's familiar, commanding tones, particularly Vokins. He mumbled unintelligibly and looked abashed. He had known it would be a mistake.

“And look here, man, how d'you think you're going to pay for it. You haven't a penny to your name.”

Again Vokins mumbled. “Speak up, man!”

“It's not for me, sir.”

“Then who is it for?”

“It's for Mr Rayne, sir.”

All eyes turned towards Rayne, who smiled apologetically and said, yes, that he had asked Vokins to bid on his behalf as he himself would be conducting the auction and it would clearly be difficult for him to put in bids and be auctioneer at the same time.

“Who else has been making bids for Mr Rayne?” A number of gentlemen raised their hands uncertainly and a gasp of surprise went up from the assembly as it became evident that almost all the food had been bought on Rayne's behalf.

“D'you have enough money to pay for all these goods, Mr Rayne?”

“Not at the moment, sir, but I soon will have.”

“You intend to sell them again?”

“Most of them, yes...There should be no difficulty...unless, of course,” Rayne added with a smile, “the relief comes sooner than expected.”

“Mr Rayne, d'you consider it honourable to profit from the distress of your comrades...of the men, women and children with whom you are fighting for your life?”

“It's a question of fortune, Mr Hopkins. One has to make the best of a situation, after all. Besides, everyone else is bidding out of their next pay, just as I am. They can bid against me if they are prepared to risk it.”

“Is everyone bidding out of future pay?”

Several gentlemen nodded and someone said: “Nobody has cash, of course. That was the only way to do it.”

“Stand down, Mr Rayne.”

Rayne shrugged and ceded his place to the Collector. The Collector looked down at the gaunt, upturned faces gathered at the foot of the stairs. They stared back at him with dull eyes. One or two of the men were smiling. The Magistrate was smiling, and so were Mr Rose and Mr Ford, and so were the Schleissner brothers. The smile spread to more and more people, then turned into a laugh. Everyone was laughing; it was a bitter, unpleasant laugh which the Collector recognized as the sound of despair. Hardly any of the men making these rash bids expected to live to pay for them. In their present mood people would think nothing of mortgaging themselves for years ahead in order to acquire some trifling luxury like a jar of brandied peaches or a few leaves of tobacco.

“Listen to me. It may seem to some of you that there's very little hope left for us in Krishnapur. But this is not so. With every passing day our chances of relief improve. D'you think that the Government in Calcutta is prepared to leave us to our fate? Consider the immense resources available to our nation, consider the British soldiers who must now be converging on the mutinous Indian plains from every part of the Empire. Just think! Nearly three months have passed...by now a relieving force may be no more than a day's march away, and yet you're prepared to mortgage away your future lives as if they did not exist! At the very outside, relief can't be more than two weeks away. A mere few days are nothing when we've already survived so much!”

The Collector, surveying the crowd, felt a little hope begin to stir in the hungry and despairing bodies below him. After all, they seemed to be thinking, it was perfectly true, relief should not be much longer in arriving.

“I don't believe that this is the time for us to profit from each other's misery so I hereby cancel all sales of food which have taken place this afternoon. The food will be handed over to the Commissariat and distributed either among the garrison as a whole, or among the sick, depending on its nature. The Commissariat will henceforth be administered by Mr Simmons, and Mr Rayne will take up his duties at the ramparts; his bearers, however, will remain to assist in the Commissariat. Let me say finally, that it's my intention that we should all starve together, or all survive together.”

Once again there was silence. People looked at each other in astonishment. Then a man at the back of the hall began to clap, and someone else joined in. Soon the clapping became fierce applause. Such was the enthusiasm that you might have thought that the Collector had just sung an aria.

But hardly had the applause for the Collector died down when two hands reached up and dragged him down the stairs by his braces and into the crowd.

“I expect they're anxious to chair me around the hall,” thought the Collector triumphantly. His success had come as a complete surprise to him. However, nobody seemed anxious to chair him round the hall, or anywhere. Indeed, they seemed to have forgotten about him altogether, for the hands which had grasped his braces to drag him off his podium had belonged to Dr Dunstaple. No sooner had he freed the platform of the Collector's superfluous presence than the Doctor sprang into his place and held up his hand for silence. The Collector had already perceived that all was not well with the Doctor. While speaking he had been aware of the Doctor's red, exasperated features grimacing in the first rank at the foot of the stairs; he had seemed nervously excited, anxious, impatient that the auction should be over. “Disgraceful!” he had muttered. “We could all be dead.” But now the Doctor had begun to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Dr McNab still hasn't offered any evidence to support his strange methods which amount, it seems, to pumping water into cholera victims. Nor has he provided any evidence to support his belief that cholera is spread in drinking water. Now, ladies and gentlemen, shouldn't we give him his opportunity?” And Dr Dunstaple laughed, though in a rather chilling manner.

As before in the cellar, all eyes turned to McNab who, once again, happened to be leaning against a wall at the back. On this occasion, however, his calm appeared to have been ruffled by Dr Dunstaple's words and he replied with a note of impatience in his voice: “If any evidence were needed it would be enough to see what happens when a weak saline solution is injected into the veins of a patient in the condition of collapse. His shrunken skin becomes filled out and loses its coldness and pallor. His face assumes a natural look...he's able to sit up and breathe more normally and for a time seems well...My dear Dr Dunstaple, perhaps you could explain to us why, if the symptoms are caused, as you seem to believe, by damage to the lungs or by a poison circulating in the blood and depressing the action of the heart...why it's possible that these symptoms should thus be suspended by an injection of warm water holding a little salt in solution?”

Dr McNab had asked this question with a smile. But the smile only irritated Dr Dunstaple and he bellowed: “Rubbish! Let Dr McNab give his reasons for saying that cholera is spread by the drinking of infected water!” He paused a moment to let his words sink in, and then added: “Perhaps he'll explain away the case, reported
officially
to the Royal College of Physicians, of a dispenser who accidentally swallowed some of the so-called ‘rice-water' matter voided by a patient in a state of collapse from cholera...
but who suffered no ill-effects whatsoever
!”

“No, I can't explain that,” replied McNab, who had now recovered his composure and was speaking in his usual calm tone. “Any more than I can explain why cholera should have always attacked those of our soldiers who had recently arrived in the Crimea in preference to those who had been there for some time...Or why, as has been suggested, Jews should be immune to cholera, and many other things about this mysterious disease.”

Ah, it had been a mistake to mention Jews. The Magistrate could see people thinking: “Jews! Whatever next!”

“How d'you explain its high incidence in places known to be malodorous?”

“It should be obvious that in the crowded habitations of the poor, who live, cook, eat, and sleep in the same apartment and pay little regard to the washing of hands, the evacuations of cholera victims which are almost colourless and without odour can be passed from one person to another. It has often been noted that the disease is rarely contracted by medical, clerical or other visitors who don't eat and drink in the sickroom. And consider how severely the mining districts were affected in each of the epidemics in Britain. The pits are without privies and the excrement of the workmen lies about everywhere so that the hands are liable to be soiled by it. The pitmen remain underground for eight or nine hours at a time and invariably take food down with them into the pits and eat it with unwashed hands and without a knife and fork. The result is that any case of cholera in the pits has an unusually favourable situation in which to spread.”

“Gentlemen,” interrupted the Collector, “it's clear that the difference between you is a deeply felt and scientific one which none of us here are qualified for adjudicating...To an impartial observer it seems that there's something to be said on either side...” The Collector hesitated. “Let us therefore be content, until the...er...march of science has freed us from doubt, to take precautions against either eventuality. Let us take care, on the advice of Dr Dunstaple, to ventilate our rooms, our clothes and our persons as best we can lest cholera be present in an invisible poisonous miasma. And at the same time let us take care with washing and cleanliness and other precautions to see that we don't ingest the morbid agent in any liquid or solid form. As for the treatment of those unfortunate enough to contract the disease, let them choose whichever approach seems to them the most expressive of reason.”

The Collector fell silent, hoping that these words might bring the meeting to an end without leaving too great a schism between the two factions. But Dr Dunstaple's bitterness was too great to be satisfied with this armistice.

“Dr McNab still hasn't granted my request for evidence that cholera is spread by drinking water. Does he expect us to be convinced by his words about the prevalence of cholera in the pits? Ha! He's forgotten to mention, by some slip of the memory, the one fact about the pits which is known to everyone...the impurity of the air breathed by the pitmen! Moreover, I should warn those present of the risks they expose themselves to under McNab's treatment...which is, however, not a treatment at all, but a waste of time. Let him who is prepared, should McNab decide on another experiment, to have needles driven into his stomach, allow himself to be treated by this charlatan. I believe I've done my duty in making this plain.”

“I shall also give a warning to those present, to the effect that, in my view, nothing could be worse for the treatment of cholera than the warm baths, mustard-plasters and compresses recommended by Dr Dunstaple, which can only further reduce the water content of the blood...No medicine could be more dangerous in cholera collapse than opium, and calomel in the form of a pill is utterly useless.”