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

stood a large unfinished house belonging to two brothers, astrologers, and a squirrel hung head-downwards on it, pressing its belly against burning scaffolding and twitching a mangy tail. It seemed the only occupant of the house, and the squeals it gave were in tune with the infinite, no doubt, but not attractive except to other squirrels. More noises came from a dusty tree, where brown birds creaked and floundered about looking for insects; another bird, the invisible coppersmith, had started his “ponk ponk.” It matters so little to the majority of living beings what the minority, that calls itself human, desires or decides. Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of England concerned about England, but in the tropics the indifference is more prominent, the inarticulate world is closer at hand and readier to resume control as soon as men are tired. When the seven gentlemen who had held such various opinions inside the bungalow came out of it, they were aware of a common burden, a vague threat which they called “the bad weather coming.” They felt that they could not do their work, or would not be paid enough for doing it. The space between them and their carriages, instead of being empty, was clogged with a medium that pressed against their flesh, the carriage cushions scalded their trousers, their eyes pricked, domes of hot water accumulated under their headgear and poured down their cheeks. Salaaming feebly, they dispersed for the interior of other bungalows, to recover their self-esteem and the qualities that distinguished them from each other.

All over the city and over much of India the same retreat on the part of humanity was beginning, into cellars, up hills, under trees. April, herald of horrors, is at hand. The sun was returning to his kingdom with power but without beauty⁠—that was the sinister feature. If only there had been beauty! His cruelty would have been tolerable then. Through excess of light, he failed to triumph, he also; in his yellowy-white overflow not only matter, but brightness itself lay drowned. He was not the unattainable friend, either of men or birds or other suns, he was not the eternal promise, the never-withdrawn suggestion that haunts our consciousness; he was merely a creature, like the rest, and so debarred from glory.

XI

Although the Indians had driven off, and Fielding could see his horse standing in a small shed in the corner of the compound, no one troubled to bring it to him. He started to get it himself, but was stopped by a call from the house. Aziz was sitting up in bed, looking dishevelled and sad. “Here’s your home,” he said sardonically. “Here’s the celebrated hospitality of the East. Look at the flies. Look at the chunam coming off the walls. Isn’t it jolly? Now I suppose you want to be off, having seen an Oriental interior.”

“Anyhow, you want to rest.”

“I can rest the whole day, thanks to worthy Dr. Lal. Major Callendar’s spy, I suppose you know, but this time it didn’t work. I am allowed to have a slight temperature.”

“Callendar doesn’t trust anyone, English or Indian: that’s his character, and I wish you weren’t under him; but you are, and that’s that.”

“Before you go, for you are evidently in a great hurry, will you please unlock that drawer? Do you see a piece of brown paper at the top?”

“Yes.”

“Open it.”

“Who is this?”

“She was my wife. You are the first Englishman she has ever come before. Now put her photograph away.”

He was astonished, as a traveller who suddenly sees, between the stones of the desert, flowers. The flowers have been there all the time, but suddenly he sees them. He tried to look at the photograph, but in itself it was just a woman in a sari, facing the world. He muttered, “Really, I don’t know why you pay me this great compliment, Aziz, but I do appreciate it.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, she was not a highly educated woman or even beautiful, but put it away. You would have seen her, so why should you not see her photograph?”

“You would have allowed me to see her?”

“Why not? I believe in the purdah, but I should have told her you were my brother, and she would have seen you. Hamidullah saw her, and several others.”

“Did she think they were your brothers?”

“Of course not, but the word exists and is convenient. All men are my brothers, and as soon as one behaves as such he may see my wife.”

“And when the whole world behaves as such, there will be no more purdah?”

“It is because you can say and feel such a remark as that, that I show you the photograph,” said Aziz gravely.

“It is beyond the power of most men. It is because you behave well while I behave badly that I show it you. I never expected you to come back just now when I called you. I thought, ‘He has certainly done with me; I have insulted him.’ Mr. Fielding, no one can ever realize how much kindness we Indians need, we do not even realize it ourselves. But we know when it has been given. We do not forget, though we may seem to. Kindness, more kindness, and even after that more kindness. I assure you it is the only hope.” His voice seemed to arise from a dream. Altering it, yet still deep below his normal surface, he said, “We can’t build up India except on what we feel. What is the use of all these reforms, and Conciliation Committees for Mohurram, and shall we cut the tazia short or shall we carry it another route, and Councils of Notables and official parties where the English sneer at our skins?”

“It’s beginning at the wrong end, isn’t it? I know, but institutions and the governments don’t.” He looked again at the photograph. The lady faced the world at her husband’s wish and her own, but