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

thinking of the modern method as exemplified in her son. “Rupees don’t last forever, I’m afraid,” she said.

“Mine would. God would give me more when he saw I gave. Always be giving, like the Nawab Bahadur. My father was the same, that is why he died poor.” And pointing about the room he peopled it with clerks and officials, all benevolent because they lived long ago. “So we would sit giving forever⁠—on a carpet instead of chairs, that is the chief change between now and then, but I think we would never punish anyone.”

The ladies agreed.

“Poor criminal, give him another chance. It only makes a man worse to go to prison and be corrupted.” His face grew very tender⁠—the tenderness of one incapable of administration, and unable to grasp that if the poor criminal is let off he will again rob the poor widow. He was tender to everyone except a few family enemies whom he did not consider human: on these he desired revenge. He was even tender to the English; he knew at the bottom of his heart that they could not help being so cold and odd and circulating like an ice stream through his land. “We punish no one, no one,” he repeated, “and in the evening we will give a great banquet with a nautch and lovely girls shall shine on every side of the tank with fireworks in their hands, and all shall be feasting and happiness until the next day, when there shall be justice as before⁠—fifty rupees, a hundred, a thousand⁠—till peace comes. Ah, why didn’t we live in that time?⁠—But are you admiring Mr. Fielding’s house? Do look how the pillars are painted blue, and the verandah’s pavilions⁠—what do you call them?⁠—that are above us inside are blue also. Look at the carving on the pavilions. Think of the hours it took. Their little roofs are curved to imitate bamboo. So pretty⁠—and the bamboos waving by the tank outside. Mrs. Moore! Mrs. Moore!”

“Well?” she said, laughing.

“You remember the water by our mosque? It comes down and fills this tank⁠—a skilful arrangement of the Emperors. They stopped here going down into Bengal. They loved water. Wherever they went they created fountains, gardens, hammams. I was telling Mr. Fielding I would give anything to serve them.”

He was wrong about the water, which no Emperor, however skilful, can cause to gravitate uphill; a depression of some depth together with the whole of Chandrapore lay between the mosque and Fielding’s house. Ronny would have pulled him up, Turton would have wanted to pull him up, but restrained himself. Fielding did not even want to pull him up; he had dulled his craving for verbal truth and cared chiefly for truth of mood. As for Miss Quested, she accepted everything Aziz said as true verbally. In her ignorance, she regarded him as “India,” and never surmised that his outlook was limited and his method inaccurate, and that no one is India.

He was now much excited, chattering away hard, and even saying damn when he got mixed up in his sentences. He told them of his profession, and of the operations he had witnessed and performed, and he went into details that scared Mrs. Moore, though Miss Quested mistook them for proofs of his broad-mindedness; she had heard such talk at home in advanced academic circles, deliberately free. She supposed him to be emancipated as well as reliable, and placed him on a pinnacle which he could not retain. He was high enough for the moment, to be sure, but not on any pinnacle. Wings bore him up, and flagging would deposit him.

The arrival of Professor Godbole quieted him somewhat, but it remained his afternoon. The Brahman, polite and enigmatic, did not impede his eloquence, and even applauded it. He took his tea at a little distance from the outcasts, from a low table placed slightly behind him, to which he stretched back, and as it were encountered food by accident; all feigned indifference to Professor Godbole’s tea. He was elderly and wizen with a grey moustache and grey-blue eyes, and his complexion was as fair as a European’s. He wore a turban that looked like pale purple macaroni, coat, waistcoat, dhoti, socks with clocks. The clocks matched the turban, and his whole appearance suggested harmony⁠—as if he had reconciled the products of East and West, mental as well as physical, and could never be discomposed. The ladies were interested in him, and hoped that he would supplement Dr. Aziz by saying something about religion. But he only ate⁠—ate and ate, smiling, never letting his eyes catch sight of his hand.

Leaving the Mogul Emperors, Aziz turned to topics that could distress no one. He described the ripening of the mangoes, and how in his boyhood he used to run out in the Rains to a big mango grove belonging to an uncle and gorge there. “Then back with water streaming over you and perhaps rather a pain inside. But I did not mind. All my friends were paining with me. We have a proverb in Urdu: ‘What does unhappiness matter when we are all unhappy together?’ which comes in conveniently after mangoes. Miss Quested, do wait for mangoes. Why not settle altogether in India?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Adela. She made the remark without thinking what it meant. To her, as to the three men, it seemed in key with the rest of the conversation, and not for several minutes⁠—indeed, not for half an hour⁠—did she realize that it was an important remark, and ought to have been made in the first place to Ronny.

“Visitors like you are too rare.”

“They are indeed,” said Professor Godbole. “Such affability is seldom seen. But what can we offer to detain them?”

“Mangoes, mangoes.”

They laughed. “Even mangoes can be got in England now,” put in Fielding. “They ship them in ice-cold rooms. You can make India in England apparently, just as you can make England in India.”

“Frightfully expensive in both cases,” said the girl.

“I suppose so.”

“And