A Passage to India by E. M. Forster (top novels to read .txt) 📕

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 sickroom was at once reestablished, 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 forever 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 sugarcane 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.