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

caves⁠—not out of unkindness, but to make the guests laugh. The old man assented with slight sideway motions of the head: he was always willing to be ridiculed, and he bade Aziz not spare him. Elated by his importance, he began an indecent anecdote.

“Tell me another time, brother, when I have more leisure, for now, as I have already explained, we have to give pleasure to non-Muslims. Three will be Europeans, one a Hindu, which must not be forgotten. Every attention must be paid to Professor Godbole, lest he feel that he is inferior to my other guests.”

“I will discuss philosophy with him.”

“That will be kind of you; but the servants are even more important. We must not convey an impression of disorganization. It can be done, and I expect you to do it⁠ ⁠…”

A shriek from the purdah carriage. The train had started.

“Merciful God!” cried Mohammed Latif. He flung himself at the train, and leapt on to the footboard of a carriage. Aziz did likewise. It was an easy feat, for a branch-line train is slow to assume special airs. “We’re monkeys, don’t worry,” he called, hanging on to a bar and laughing. Then he howled, “Mr. Fielding! Mr. Fielding!”

There were Fielding and old Godbole, held up at the level-crossing. Appalling catastrophe! The gates had been closed earlier than usual. They leapt from their tonga; they gesticulated, but what was the good. So near and yet so far! As the train joggled past over the points, there was time for agonized words.

“Bad, bad, you have destroyed me.”

“Godbole’s pujah did it,” cried the Englishman.

The Brahman lowered his eyes, ashamed of religion. For it was so: he had miscalculated the length of a prayer.

“Jump on, I must have you,” screamed Aziz, beside himself.

“Right, give a hand.”

“He’s not to, he’ll kill himself,” Mrs. Moore protested. He jumped, he failed, missed his friend’s hand, and fell back on to the line. The train rumbled past. He scrambled on to his feet, and bawled after them, “I’m all right, you’re all right, don’t worry,” and then they passed beyond range of his voice.

“Mrs. Moore, Miss Quested, our expedition is a ruin.” He swung himself along the footboard, almost in tears.

“Get in, get in; you’ll kill yourself as well as Mr. Fielding. I see no ruin.”

“How is that? Oh, explain to me!” he said piteously, like a child.

“We shall be all Muslims together now, as you promised.”

She was perfect as always, his dear Mrs. Moore. All the love for her he had felt at the mosque welled up again, the fresher for forgetfulness. There was nothing he would not do for her. He would die to make her happy.

“Get in, Dr. Aziz, you make us giddy,” the other lady called. “If they’re so foolish as to miss the train, that’s their loss, not ours.”

“I am to blame. I am the host.”

“Nonsense, go to your carriage. We’re going to have a delightful time without them.”

Not perfect like Mrs. Moore, but very sincere and kind. Wonderful ladies, both of them, and for one precious morning his guests. He felt important and competent. Fielding was a loss personally, being a friend, increasingly dear, yet if Fielding had come, he himself would have remained in leading-strings. “Indians are incapable of responsibility,” said the officials, and Hamidullah sometimes said so too. He would show those pessimists that they were wrong. Smiling proudly, he glanced outward at the country, which was still invisible except as a dark movement in the darkness; then upwards at the sky, where the stars of the sprawling Scorpion had begun to pale. Then he dived through a window into a second-class carriage.

“Mohammed Latif, by the way, what is in these caves, brother? Why are we all going to see them?”

Such a question was beyond the poor relative’s scope. He could only reply that God and the local villagers knew, and that the latter would gladly act as guides.

XIV

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself,” or, “I am horrified,” we are insincere. “As far as I feel anything, it is enjoyment, horror”⁠—it’s no more than that really, and a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent.

It so happened that Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested had felt nothing acutely for a fortnight. Ever since Professor Godbole had sung his queer little song, they had lived more or less inside cocoons, and the difference between them was that the elder lady accepted her own apathy, while the younger resented hers. It was Adela’s faith that the whole stream of events is important and interesting, and if she grew bored she blamed herself severely and compelled her lips to utter enthusiasms. This was the only insincerity in a character otherwise sincere, and it was indeed the intellectual protest of her youth. She was particularly vexed now because she was both in India and engaged to be married, which double event should have made every instant sublime.

India was certainly dim this morning, though seen under the auspices of Indians. Her wish had been granted, but too late. She could not get excited over Aziz and his arrangements. She was not the least unhappy or depressed, and the various odd objects that surrounded her⁠—the comic “purdah” carriage, the piles of rugs and bolsters, the rolling melons, the scent of sweet oils, the ladder, the brassbound box, the sudden irruption of Mahmoud Ali’s butler from the lavatory with tea and poached eggs upon a tray⁠—they were all new and amusing, and led her to comment appropriately, but they wouldn’t bite into her mind. So she tried