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

how bewildering she found it, the echoing contradictory world!

“Put her away, she is of no importance, she is dead,” said Aziz gently. “I showed her to you because I have nothing else to show. You may look round the whole of my bungalow now, and empty everything. I have no other secrets, my three children live away with their grandmamma, and that is all.”

Fielding sat down by the bed, flattered at the trust reposed in him, yet rather sad. He felt old. He wished that he too could be carried away on waves of emotion. The next time they met, Aziz might be cautious and standoffish. He realized this, and it made him sad that he should realize it. Kindness, kindness, and more kindness⁠—yes, that he might supply, but was that really all that the queer nation needed? Did it not also demand an occasional intoxication of the blood? What had he done to deserve this outburst of confidence, and what hostage could he give in exchange? He looked back at his own life. What a poor crop of secrets it had produced! There were things in it that he had shown to no one, but they were so uninteresting, it wasn’t worth while lifting a purdah on their account. He’d been in love, engaged to be married, lady broke it off, memories of her and thoughts about her had kept him from other women for a time; then indulgence, followed by repentance and equilibrium. Meagre really except the equilibrium, and Aziz didn’t want to have that confided to him⁠—he would have called it “everything ranged coldly on shelves.”

“I shall not really be intimate with this fellow,” Fielding thought, and then “nor with anyone.” That was the corollary. And he had to confess that he really didn’t mind, that he was content to help people, and like them as long as they didn’t object, and if they objected pass on serenely. Experience can do much, and all that he had learnt in England and Europe was an assistance to him, and helped him towards clarity, but clarity prevented him from experiencing something else.

“How did you like the two ladies you met last Thursday?” he asked.

Aziz shook his head distastefully. The question reminded him of his rash remark about the Marabar Caves.

“How do you like Englishwomen generally?”

“Hamidullah liked them in England. Here we never look at them. Oh no, much too careful. Let’s talk of something else.”

“Hamidullah’s right: they are much nicer in England. There’s something that doesn’t suit them out here.”

Aziz after another silence said, “Why are you not married?”

Fielding was pleased that he had asked. “Because I have more or less come through without it,” he replied.

“I was thinking of telling you a little about myself some day if I can make it interesting enough. The lady I liked wouldn’t marry me⁠—that is the main point, but that’s fifteen years ago and now means nothing.”

“But you haven’t children.”

“None.”

“Excuse the following question: have you any illegitimate children?”

“No. I’d willingly tell you if I had.”

“Then your name will entirely die out.”

“It must.”

“Well.” He shook his head. “This indifference is what the Oriental will never understand.”

“I don’t care for children.”

“Caring has nothing to do with it,” he said impatiently.

“I don’t feel their absence, I don’t want them weeping around my deathbed and being polite about me afterwards, which I believe is the general notion. I’d far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children. No obligation, with England getting so chock-a-block and overrunning India for jobs.”

“Why don’t you marry Miss Quested?”

“Good God! why, the girl’s a prig.”

“Prig, prig? Kindly explain. Isn’t that a bad word?”

“Oh, I don’t know her, but she struck me as one of the more pathetic products of Western education. She depresses me.”

“But prig, Mr. Fielding? How’s that?”

“She goes on and on as if she’s at a lecture⁠—trying ever so hard to understand India and life, and occasionally taking a note.”

“I thought her so nice and sincere.”

“So she probably is,” said Fielding, ashamed of his roughness: any suggestion that he should marry always does produce overstatements on the part of the bachelor, and a mental breeze. “But I can’t marry her if I wanted to, for she has just become engaged to the City Magistrate.”

“Has she indeed? I am so glad!” he exclaimed with relief, for this exempted him from the Marabar expedition: he would scarcely be expected to entertain regular Anglo-Indians.

“It’s the old mother’s doing. She was afraid her dear boy would choose for himself, so she brought out the girl on purpose, and flung them together until it happened.”

“Mrs. Moore did not mention that to me among her plans.”

“I may have got it wrong⁠—I’m out of club gossip. But anyhow they’re engaged to be married.”

“Yes, you’re out of it, my poor chap,” he smiled. “No Miss Quested for Mr. Fielding. However, she was not beautiful. She has practically no breasts, if you come to think of it.”

He smiled too, but found a touch of bad taste in the reference to a lady’s breasts.

“For the City Magistrate they shall be sufficient perhaps, and he for her. For you I shall arrange a lady with breasts like mangoes.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, you won’t.”

“I will not really, and besides your position makes it dangerous for you.” His mind had slipped from matrimony to Calcutta. His face grew grave. Fancy if he had persuaded the Principal to accompany him there, and then got him into trouble! And abruptly he took up a new attitude towards his friend, the attitude of the protector who knows the dangers of India and is admonitory. “You can’t be too careful in every way, Mr. Fielding; whatever you say or do in this damned country there is always some envious fellow on the lookout. You may be surprised to know that there were at least three spies sitting here when you came to enquire. I was really a good deal upset that you talked in that fashion about God. They will certainly report it.”

“To whom?”

“That’s all very