The Empire Trilogy Part 22

Soon after hearing the first reports of the mutiny, the British had killed hundreds of Indians as part of what an officer in the Punjab called a "prompt and stern initiative" of "striking terror" among the "semi-barbarous natives"-these preemptive killings by the British were carried out well before they heard about the ma.s.sacre in Cawnpore. Later, as the British regained control, tens of thousands of Indians were hanged, shot, or blown to pieces from the mouth of cannons. The reprisals were widely covered by such "embedded" journalists as William Howard Russell, who had written about the Crimean War and was to report on the Civil War in America. They were supported aggressively by a British public fed on exaggerated stories of rebel atrocities. Even Charles d.i.c.kens felt provoked enough to wish that the British would inflict even greater atrocities in return.

Queen Victoria's proclamation in 1858 finally ended the rule of the East India Company and made India formally part of the British Empire. But the press coverage given to the mutiny and its suppression had already made India seem a British possession to the British public, which had previously not much cared or known about what most of their peers were up to in India. British control over India until 1857 had benefited only the shareholders of the East India Company. Now, as the historian Charles Trevelyan put it, the mutiny "irresistibly reminded us that we were were an imperial race, holding our own on a conquered soil by dint of valour and foresight." an imperial race, holding our own on a conquered soil by dint of valour and foresight."

In Britain in the late nineteenth century, poets, dramatists, novelists, and journalists wrote copiously about Indian brutality in Cawnpore and British fort.i.tude in Lucknow, where British people trapped in the Residency, the official residence of administrators, held out for five months against mutineers, disease, and starvation in what came to be called the "Siege of Lucknow." The image of the Indian darkened; his deviousness set in sharper contrast the altruism and generosity of the British; and the stoically brave Christian soldier emerged as a new model of Victorian masculinity. Maud Diver and Flora Annie Steel were only the more prominent of novelists who worked with these stereotypes in the commercially lucrative genre of the "mutiny novel."

The rules of this genre, which lasted slightly beyond the Victorian era, were simple: The hero, who is an officer, meets the young charming lady, just out from England, or who happens to be in India from before, and falls in love or both come to India in the same s.h.i.+p, and strike a liking on board the s.h.i.+p itself. In India the historical situation is already ripe for mutiny, and the lovers are suddenly pitched into the upheaval.*

When in the early 1970s J. G. Farrell used the siege of Lucknow as a broad setting for his fifth novel, The Siege of Krishnapur The Siege of Krishnapur, the second in a trilogy of novels about the British Empire, he used the basic formula of the mutiny novel, which was then obsolete, while subverting its rules and dissolving its partriotism in irony and comedy. Born in 1935, Farrell was only twelve years old when India became free from British rule. He saw the British Empire unravel in his own lifetime, and become, in the hands of such novelists as Paul Scott and Anthony Burgess, a subject that could be treated not only without sentimentality but with vigorous skepticism and irreverence.

Farrell's main protagonist, George Fleury, arrives in Calcutta and meets a charming lady called Louise Dunstaple just as news of the first insurrections in the hinterland filters in. Unlike the das.h.i.+ng officers of previous mutiny novels, Fleury is a civilian and a bit of a romantic. He thinks that "civilization as it is now denatures man. Think of the mills and the furnaces..." and believes that what "was required was a completely different aspect of it...its spiritual, its mystical side, the side of the heart!"

Such views are inconvenient partly because Fleury has been commissioned by the East India Company to write a book "describing the advances that civilization had made in India under the Company rule" and partly because they do not much impress Louise, who seems more keen on flirting with the crudely philistine army men who resemble her brother, Lieutenant Harry Dunstaple.

Fleury and Louise first meet amid the flurry of social events that const.i.tute the life of the British ruling cla.s.s in Calcutta, the exuberant round of tea parties, dances, and picnics where people work hard at being British, to pretend "as if all this were taking place not in India but in some temperate land far away."

No Indians are allowed to enter this privileged realm. Nevertheless, the absence of Indian character in a novel set in India, apart from a somewhat effete, not very convincing prince, may seem more striking now than in the nineteenth century. Farrell may have been deterred by the technical problems of rendering Indian speech without turning Indian characters into c.o.c.kneys. But his decision to leave out Indian characters seems to have largely stemmed from an honest view of his experience of India.

The diaries he kept during his research trip to India in 1971 reveal that he was bewildered, even "defeated," by the strangeness of the people and the landscape. Rather than invent some implausible Indian characters, Farrell confined himself to describing the insular British and their claim to rule justly a country they, like Farrell, didn't, or couldn't, much understand.

The Collector of the fictional town of Krishnapur exemplifies what Farrell saw as the ambitions and delusions of British rule over India-the elaborate imperial self-deception which is the true subject of The Siege of Krishnapur The Siege of Krishnapur. The Collector has little knowledge of, or empathy with, Indians. He is content to possess what Conrad called the "idea," which is really an aggressive ideology of science, rationality, and progress. He is a member of many progressive societies, a fervent admirer of the Great Exhibition, which was held in Britain in 1851 to showcase scientific and technological advances, and he has "devoted a substantial part of his fortune to bringing out to India examples of European art and science in the belief that he was doing as once the Romans had done in Britain." These examples include statuettes in electro-metal of Dr. Johnson, Voltaire, Shakespeare, Keats, and Moliere.

Farrell's postcolonial cynicism often borders on the burlesque. But it also makes for brisk economy while presenting the moral blindness of some of the characters. Louise's brother Harry Dunstaple earnestly advises Fleury that "you have to be careful thras.h.i.+ng a Hindu, George, because they have very weak chests and you can kill them.... "

Farrell's characters talk a great deal, and reveal themselves quickly. We know the diverse personalities and opinions of all the major protagonists well before Krishnapur erupts in violence and chaos. Here, for instance, is the opium agent, Rayne, admiring the wealth the British made by forcibly exporting Indian opium to China and turning millions of Chinese into opium addicts: Opium, even more than salt, is a great source of revenue of our own creation.... And who pays it? Why, John Chinaman...who prefers our opium to any other. That's what I call progress.

The Collector thinks this a limited ideal of progress: It's not simply to acquire wealth, but to acquire through wealth, that superior way of life which we loosely term civilization and which includes so many things.... The spreading of the Gospel on the one hand, the spreading of the railways on the other.... Both the poet and the Opium Agent are necessary to our scheme of things. What d'you say, Padre? wealth, that superior way of life which we loosely term civilization and which includes so many things.... The spreading of the Gospel on the one hand, the spreading of the railways on the other.... Both the poet and the Opium Agent are necessary to our scheme of things. What d'you say, Padre?

The padre, a former rowing man at Oxford, is happy to go along with imperialism, as long as the spreading of the railways allows him to spread the Gospel, although he is "afraid that the duties to which the Lord had called him might prove too much for this strength."

Though widely regarded as an eccentric, the Collector alone has premonitions of an impending a.s.sault by the invisible natives. He orders the digging of trenches and the building of mud fortifications. The news that Europeans in a nearby town have been ma.s.sacred forces the British community of Krishnapur to retreat to the Residency, and to deploy all able-bodied men in its defense.

As it turns out, British fort.i.tude is not shared equally across British cla.s.s divisions. The Collector's manservant, Vokins, for instance, lacks the broader view. He tended only to see the prospect of the Death of Vokins. Although some of the Collector's guests might have been hard put to it to think of what a man of Vokins's cla.s.s had to lose, to Vokins it was very clear what he had to lose: namely his life. He was not at all anxious to leave his skin on the Indian plains; he wanted to take it back to the slums of Soho or wherever it came from.

The attack on the Residency eventually comes in the form of flying musket b.a.l.l.s, and rash cavalry charges, and is barely resisted by such poorly equipped and inept British defenders as Harry and Fleury, respectively. As the attacks continue, and the casualties grow, the British try to keep up their rituals and hierarchies within the Residency. Dinner is as formal as ever; the respectable wives of officials keep a fastidious distance from Lucy, the fallen woman; and the debates about the pros and cons of civilization become even more heated.

Though tested by the uprising, the padre remains optimistic: "Our European civilization, which is rapidly uniting all the nations of the earth by means of railways, steamvessels and the Electric Telegraph, is the forerunner of an inevitable absorption of all other faiths into the One Faith of the white ruler."

The pedantic Fleury, who is learning to kill, and even to enjoy the mechanical aspect of weapons, pursues Louise in his spare time with such declarations as, "It's so important that we bring to India a civilization of the heart, and not only to India but to the whole world...rather than this sordid materialism."

Farrell doesn't ever abandon his inquiry into the moral justifications for imperialism. But he also has a comic purpose. He seems to have seen the men involved in imperialist adventures as acting out roles in an unscripted farce. It is why The Siege of Krishnapur The Siege of Krishnapur never seems ponderous. When during the heat of the monsoons a cloud of c.o.c.kchafers settles on Lucy, who has been abandoned by her lover, its falls to the virginal young men, Fleury and Harry, to sc.r.a.pe the black insects off her naked and unconscious body with boards torn from the Bible: never seems ponderous. When during the heat of the monsoons a cloud of c.o.c.kchafers settles on Lucy, who has been abandoned by her lover, its falls to the virginal young men, Fleury and Harry, to sc.r.a.pe the black insects off her naked and unconscious body with boards torn from the Bible: Her body, both young men were interested to discover, was remarkably like the statues of young women they had seen.... The only significant difference...was that Lucy had pubic hair; this caused them a bit of a surprise at first. It was not something that had ever occurred to them as possible, likely, or even desirable."D'you think this is supposed supposed to be here?" asked Harry, who had spent a moment or two sc.r.a.ping at it ineffectually with his board. Because the hair, too, was black it was hard to be sure that it was not simply matted and dried insects. to be here?" asked Harry, who had spent a moment or two sc.r.a.ping at it ineffectually with his board. Because the hair, too, was black it was hard to be sure that it was not simply matted and dried insects."That's odd," said Fleury, peering at it with interest; he had never seen anything like it on a statue. "Better leave it, anyway, for the time being. We can always come back to it later when we've done the rest."

As the situation deteriorates inside the Residency, Farrell's descriptions acquire a surreal edge: The smell, which was so atrocious that the butchers had to work with cloths tied over their noses, came from rejected offal which they were in the habit of throwing over the wall in the hope that the vultures would deal with it. But the truth was that the scavengers of the district, both birds and animals, were already thoroughly bloated from the results of the first attack...the birds were so heavy with meat that they could hardly launch themselves into the air, the jackals could hardly drag themselves back to their lairs.

The heat grows more intense and bodies killed by cholera or the mutineers fill up graves. But the tea parties go on, if without tea; birthdays are celebrated, and meals of horse flesh consumed in the cramped quarters of the underdressed women. The rituals of courts.h.i.+p, too, go on. Fleury continues to pursue Louise and Harry falls for Lucy.

Long-cherished beliefs, however, are beginning to weaken inside the Residency. It is becoming clear that "India itself was now a different place; the fiction of happy natives being led forward along the road to civilization could no longer be sustained." The Collector wonders how it could ever be that the hundred and fifty million people living in India could ever have the social advantages that made young people like the Fleurys and the Dunstaples so delightful, so confident, and so charming.... Would Science and Political Economy ever be powerful enough to give them a life of ease and respectability?

As the mutineers press closer, the Collector's electrometal statuettes of European geniuses are beheaded, and the heads deployed as cannon fodder: The most effective of all had been Shakespeare's; it had scythed its way through a whole astonished platoon of sepoys advancing in single file through the jungle. The Collector suspected that the Bard's success in this respect might have a great deal to do with the ballistic advantages stemming from his baldness.

The head of Keats with its luxuriant metal growth is not as effective; and it is not surprising, given the changing view of progress inside the Residency, that Voltaire's head gets stuck in the cannon.

Weak and exhausted, the padre thinks he was mistaken to praise the Great Exhibition, the "Vanity Fair of materialism." The Collector, too, remembers with regret the extraordinary array of chains and fetters, manacles and shackles exhibited by Birmingham for export to America's slave states.... Well, he had never pretended that science and industry were good in themselves in themselves, of course...they still had to be used correctly. All the same, he should have thought a great deal more about what lay behind the exhibits....

"Feelings," the Collector is convinced by the end of the siege, are "just as important as ideas." But his conversion to a quasi-Bloomsbury ethic is less dramatic than Fleury's new and unqualified regard for the go-getting Victorian civilization. By the end of the siege, Fleury has "discovered the manly pleasures to be found in inventing things, in making things work, in getting results, in cause and effect. In short, he had identified himself at last with the spirit of the times."

"Ideas make us what we are," Fleury a.s.serts when years after the siege he runs into the Collector. But Farrell gives the last word to the Collector. In his old age he has the melancholy awareness that "one uses up so many options, so much energy, simply in trying to find out what life is all about," and that, in the end, there is not much that one can do to change it. Intellectual knowledge, or its inferior form, technical know-how, is not enough. In any case, a people or a nation is shaped not by ideas but "by other forces, of which it has little knowledge."

"There exists no great English novel," V.S. Naipaul once wrote, "in which the growth of national or imperial consciousness is chronicled." But this novel could not have been written when success of every sort attended the British venture in the world and novelists, even liberal ones like d.i.c.kens, embraced the a.s.sumptions of national and imperial superiority.

The Victorian faith in science, rationality, and progress, which first the Collector and then Fleury uphold, was to be badly mauled on the battlefields of the First World War. Its collapse partly gave E.M. Forster the confidence in A Pa.s.sage to India A Pa.s.sage to India (1924) to accuse the British in India of having an "undeveloped heart." But it took another world war and the disastrous part.i.tion of India before British novelists could properly examine the complacent att.i.tudes fostered during the high noon of empire. (1924) to accuse the British in India of having an "undeveloped heart." But it took another world war and the disastrous part.i.tion of India before British novelists could properly examine the complacent att.i.tudes fostered during the high noon of empire.

As Paul Scott described in what now seems one of the first great works of postcolonial literature, The Raj Quartet The Raj Quartet, the British had made India a part of a n.o.ble idea about themselves. But there was not much Conradian sense of duty in sight as the British packed their bags after hurriedly dividing India and as hundreds of thousands of Indians killed and displaced each other. With the part.i.tion of India, "the British came to the end of themselves as they were." Scott evoked the grubby last days of an imperial fantasy, the discarding of a tattered mask. It was Farrell's achievement to describe how tentatively the mask was first worn-in a sophisticated novel of ideas that is also an entertaining comic adventure.

-PANKAJ MISHRA

*Shailendra Dhari Singh, Novels on the Indian Mutiny Novels on the Indian Mutiny (New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann India, 1973) p. 183. (New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann India, 1973) p. 183.

For W. F. F.

Part One

1.

Anyone who has never before visited Krishnapur, and who approaches from the east, is likely to think he has reached the end of his journey a few miles sooner than he expected. While still some distance from Krishnapur he begins to ascend a shallow ridge. From here he will see what appears to be a town in the heat-distorted distance. He will see the white glitter of walls and roofs and a handsome grove of trees, perhaps even the dome of what might be a temple. Round about there will be the unending plain still, exactly as it has been for many miles back, a dreary ocean of bald earth, in the immensity of which an occasional field of sugar cane or mustard is utterly lost.

The surprising thing is that this plain is not quite deserted, as one might expect. As he crosses it towards the white walls in the distance the traveller may notice an occasional figure way out somewhere between the road and the horizon, a man walking with a burden on his head in one direction or another...even though, at least to the eye of a stranger, within the limit of the horizon there does not appear to be anywhere worth walking to, unless perhaps to that distant town he has spotted; one part looks quite as good as another. But if you look closely and s.h.i.+eld your eyes from the glare you will make out tiny villages here and there, difficult to see because they are made of the same mud as the plain they came from; and no doubt they melt back into it again during the rainy season, for there is no lime in these parts, no clay or shale that you can burn into bricks, no substance hard enough to resist the seasons over the years.

Sometimes the village crouches in a grove of bamboo and possesses a frightful pond with a water-buffalo or two; more often there is just a well to be worked from dawn till dusk by the same two men and two bullocks every single day in their lives. But whether there is a pond or not hardly matters to a traveller; in either case there is no comfort here, nothing that a European might recognize as civilization. All the more reason for him to press on, therefore, towards those distant white walls which are clearly made of bricks. Bricks are undoubtedly an essential ingredient of civilization; one gets nowhere at all without them.

But as he approaches he will see that this supposed town is utterly deserted; it is merely a melancholy cl.u.s.ter of white domes and planes surrounded by a few trees. There are no people to be seen. Everything lies perfectly still. Nearer again, of course, he will see that it is not a town at all, but one of those ancient cemeteries that are called "Cities of the Silent", which one occasionally comes across in northern India. Perhaps a rare traveller will turn off the road to rest in the shade of a mango grove which separates the white tombs from a dilapidated mosque; sometimes one may find incense left smouldering in an earthenware saucer by an unseen hand. But otherwise there is no life here; even the rustling leaves have a dead sound.

Krishnapur itself had once been the centre of civil administration for a large district. At that time European bungalows had been built there on a lavish scale, even small palaces standing in grounds of several acres to house the Company representatives of the day who lived in magnificent style and sometimes even, in imitation of the native princes, kept tigers and mistresses and heaven knows what else. But then the importance of Krishnapur declined and these magnificent officials moved elsewhere. Their splendid bungalows were left shuttered and empty; their gardens ran wild during the rainy season and for the rest of the year dried up into deserts, over whose baked earth whirlwinds of dust glided back and forth like ghostly dancers.

Now with the creaking of loose shutters and the sighing of the wind in the tall gra.s.s, the cantonment has the air of a place you might see in a melancholy dream; a visitor might well find himself reminded of the "City of the Silent" he had pa.s.sed on his way to Krishnapur.

The first sign of trouble at Krishnapur came with a mysterious distribution of chapatis, made of coa.r.s.e flour and about the size and thickness of a biscuit; towards the end of February 1857, they swept the countryside like an epidemic.

One evening, in the room he used as a study the Collector, Mr Hopkins, opened a despatch box and, instead of the doc.u.ments he had expected, found four chapatis. After a moment's surprise and annoyance he called the khansamah khansamah, an elderly man who had been in his service for several years and whom he trusted. He showed him the open despatch box and the chapatis inside. The khansamah khansamah's normally impa.s.sive face displayed shock. He was clearly no less taken aback than the Collector himself. He stared at the purple despatch box for some moments before picking the chapatis out of it respectfully, as if the box had a personal dignity of its own that might have been offended. The Collector with a frown gestured to him to remove the wretched things. A little later he overheard the khansamah khansamah shouting at the bearers, evidently convinced that they were responsible for a reckless practical joke. shouting at the bearers, evidently convinced that they were responsible for a reckless practical joke.

The Collector was busy at that time. In addition to his official duties, which had been swollen and complicated by the illness of the Joint Magistrate, he had a number of domestic matters on his mind; his wife, too, had been in poor health for the past few months and must now be sent home before the hot weather.

It is unlikely, given his other preoccupations, that the Collector would even have noticed the second pile of chapatis had his eye not been led towards them by a column of ants; the ants were issuing from a crevice between two flagstones and their thin column pa.s.sed within a few inches of his shoes on its way to the chapatis. The chapatis had a grimy and scorched appearance; again there were four of them and they had been left on the top step of the brick portico which provided the main entrance to the Residency. The Collector had stepped out on to the portico for a breath of air. He hesitated for a moment, on the point of calling the khansamah khansamah again, but then he noticed the sweeper working not far away; he watched for a while as the man progressed, sitting on his heels and sweeping rather indiscriminately, with a bundle of twigs as a broom. No doubt the chapatis on the portico were the property of the sweeper. The Collector went inside again, dismissing the matter from his mind. again, but then he noticed the sweeper working not far away; he watched for a while as the man progressed, sitting on his heels and sweeping rather indiscriminately, with a bundle of twigs as a broom. No doubt the chapatis on the portico were the property of the sweeper. The Collector went inside again, dismissing the matter from his mind.

The following afternoon, however, he found four more chapatis. This time they were not in his study but on the desk in his office, neatly arranged beside some papers. Though there was still nothing very menacing about them, as soon as he saw them he knew beyond doubt that there was going to be trouble. He examined them carefully but this told him nothing, except that they were rather dirty.

The Collector was a large and handsome man. He wore low side-whiskers which he kept carefully trimmed but which nevertheless sprouted out stiffly like the ruff of a cat. He dressed fastidiously: the high collars which he habitually wore were sufficiently unusual in a country station like Krishnapur to make a deep impression on all who saw him. He was a man of considerable dignity, too, with a keen, but erratic, sense of social proprieties. Not surprisingly, he was held in awe by the European community; no doubt this was partly because they could not see his faults very clearly. In private he was inclined to be moody and overbearing with his family, and sometimes careless over matters which others might regard as of great importance...for example although he had seven children, and was living in a country of high mortality for Europeans, he had not yet brought himself to make a will; an unfortunate lapse of his usually powerful sense of duty.

At that moment he happened to be alone in the office, one of a number of rooms in a part of the Residency set aside for Government business. He was not fond of this room; its bleak, official aspect displeased him and usually he preferred to work in his study, situated in a more domestic part of the building. The office contained only a few overloaded shelves, a couple of wooden chairs for those rare visitors whose rank ent.i.tled them to be seated in his presence, and his own desk, untidily strewn with papers and despatch boxes; the person who had placed the offending chapatis on it had had to clear a s.p.a.ce for them. On one of the lateral walls was a portrait of the young Queen with rather bulging blue eyes and a vigorous appearance.

Disturbed, and having now forgotten the reason he had gone to his office in the first place, he made his way slowly back towards the hall of the Residency, wondering whether certain measures might be taken to palliate the effects of this approaching, but still hypothetical, trouble, or even to avoid it altogether. "Just supposing that serious trouble should break out in Krishnapur...an insurrection, for instance,...where could we find shelter? Could the Residency, merely as a matter of interest, of course, be defended?"

As he stood in the hall pondering this question the Collector experienced a sensation of coolness and great tranquillity. During the daytime the light here came from a great distance; it came between the low arches of the verandah, across cool flagstones, through the green louvred windows known as "jilmils" let into the immensely thick walls, and, at last, in the form of a pleasant, reflected twilight, to where he was standing. One felt very safe here. The walls, which were built of enormous numbers of the pink, wafer-like bricks of British India, were so very thick...you could see yourself how thick they were.

The Residency was more or less in the shape of a church, that is, if you can imagine a church which one entered by stepping over the altar. The transept, as you stand on the altar looking in, was formed by, on the left, a library well furnished with everything but books, of which there was only a meagre supply, some having been borrowed and not returned, some eaten by the ubiquitous ants, and some having simply vanished n.o.body knew where; yet others, imprisoned, glumly pressed their spines against the gla.s.s of cabinets whose keys had been lost...and on the right, a drawing-room, lofty, s.p.a.cious and gracious. Immediately facing you in the nave was a magnificent marble staircase, a relic of the important days of Krishnapur when things were still done properly. Behind the staircase the dining-room, together with a number of other rooms having to do in some way with eating or with European servants or with children, ran along the rest of the nave which was flanked on each side by deep verandahs. The building was of two storeys, if you discount the twin towers which rose somewhat higher. From one of these towers the Union Jack fluttered from dawn till dusk; on the other the Collector sometimes set up a telescope when the mood took him to scrutinize the heavens.

The Collector, whose mind had returned to browse on chapatis, gave a start as a man's voice issued loudly from the open door of the drawing-room nearby. "The mind is furnished," declared the voice in a tone which did not invite debate, "with a vast apparatus of mental organs for enabling it to manifest its energies. Thus, when aided by optical and auditory nerves, the mind sees and hears; when a.s.sisted by an organ of cautiousness it feels fear, by an organ of causality it reasons."

"What nonsense!" muttered the Collector, who had recognized the voice as belonging to the Magistrate and had now remembered that he himself should be sitting in the drawing-room at this moment for the fortnightly meeting of the Krishnapur Poetry Society was due to begin...indeed, had already begun, since the Magistrate was holding forth, though not apparently about poetry.

"Dr Gall of Vienna, who discovered this remarkable science, happened to notice while still at school that those of his fellow students who were good at learning by heart tended to have bulging eyes. By degrees he also found external characteristics which indicated a disposition for painting, music, and the mechanical arts..."

"I really must go in," thought the Collector, and reflecting that, after all, as President of the Society it was his duty, he took a few firm steps towards the door, but again he hesitated, this time standing in the open doorway itself. From here he could see a dozen ladies of the cantonment sitting apprehensively on chairs facing the Magistrate. Many of these ladies held sheaves of paper densely covered with verse of their own devising, and it was the sight of all this verse which had caused the Collector to hesitate involuntarily at the very last moment. Behind the ladies his four older children, aged from four to sixteen, all girls (the two boys were at school in England), sat in a despairing row. They took no part in these proceedings but he considered it healthy to expose them to artistic endeavour. Only the youngest, still a baby, was excused attendance.

Unaware that the President of their Society was lingering at the door, the ladies stared at the Magistrate as if hypnotized, but very likely they did not hear a single word he said; they would be in far too great anxiety as to the fate of their verses to listen to him discoursing on phrenology, a subject in which only he found any interest. Soon the moment would come when they would read their works and the Magistrate would p.r.o.nounce sentence on them, a moment which they both desired and dreaded. The Collector, however, only dreaded it. This was not because of the low standard of the verse, but because the Magistrate's judgements were invariably pitiless, and even, at times when he became excited, verged on the insulting. Why the ladies put up with it and still returned week after week for their poems to be subjected to such indignities was more than the Collector could fathom.

Yet it was the Collector himself who was responsible for this fortnightly torment since it was he who had founded the Society. He had done so partly because he was a believer in the enn.o.bling powers of literature, and partly because he was sorry for the ladies of the cantonment who had, particularly during the hot season, so little to occupy them. At first he had been pleased with the ladies' enthusiasm and had considered the plan a success...but then he had made the mistake of inviting Tom Willoughby, the Magistrate. The Magistrate suffered from the disability of a free-thinking turn of mind and from a life that was barren and dreary to match. To make things worse, he was married, but in the celibate manner of so many English "civilians". The Collector had eyed the Magistrate's marriage with complacent pity: his wife, imported from England, had stayed two or three years in India until driven home by the heat, the boredom and a fortuitous pregnancy. Ah, the Collector had witnessed this sad story so often during his time in India! And now, though later than most, it seemed that his own marriage, which had survived so long in this arduous climate, must suffer a similar fate, for his wife, Caroline, sitting nervously in the front row with her own sheaf of poems, would soon be sailing from Calcutta. Such was the reward for complacency, he reflected, not without a certain stern satisfaction at the justice of this retribution.

"Oh, there's Mr Hopkins," said the Magistrate, ending his discourse abruptly as he caught sight of the Collector lurking in the doorway. And the Collector was obliged to step forward smiling, as if in antic.i.p.ation of the poetry that would soon be gratifying his ears.

An empty chair had been placed beside the Magistrate, who was somewhat younger than the Collector and had the red hair and ginger whiskers of the born atheist; his face wore a constant expression of cynical surprise, one eyebrow raised and the corner of his mouth compressed, as far as one could make out beneath the growth of whiskers which here varied from ginger to cinnamon. It was said in the cantonment that he even slept with one eyebrow raised; the Collector did not know if there was any truth in this.

At one time everyone had sat in a circle and every member of the Society had been willing to voice an opinion on the poem which had just been read. Those were the days when every single poem had bristled with good qualities like a hedgehog and had glutted itself with praise like a jackal, the happy days before the Magistrate had been invited. Soon after his arrival the circle had begun to disintegrate, the ladies had progressively dropped away from each side of him until, soon, they faced him in a semi-circle, and now, at last, directly, as if in the dock. The Collector had bravely installed himself at the Magistrate's side in order to plead mitigating circ.u.mstances.

By this time the poetry reading had begun and Mrs Worseley, wife of one of the railway engineers, had faltered to the end of a sonnet about an erl-king. Everyone, including the Collector, was now watching the Magistrate in dismay, waiting for his verdict; although sure about most things, the Collector lacked confidence in his own judgement when it came to poetry and was obliged to defer to the Magistrate, but not without the private suspicion that his own judgement might be superior after all.

"Mrs Worseley, I found your poem defective in metre, rhyme, and invention. And to be quite honest I consider that we've had far too many erl-kings in recent weeks, though I can a.s.sure you that even one erl-king would be more than enough for me." Mrs Worseley hung her head, but looked quite relieved, thinking that she had got off lightly.

Mrs Adams, a senior lady, the wife of a recently retired judge, now read in a commanding voice a long poem of which the Collector could make neither head nor tail, though it seemed to have something to do with Nature, serpents, and the fall of Troy. He allowed his mind to wander and, as his eyes came to rest on his wife, he thought that if there should indeed be trouble at Krishnapur it was just as well that she would not be there to see it; perhaps he should have insisted that the children go home with her; he would have done so but he had feared that the fuss, even if the ayah ayah went too, would be too much for her nerves...Never mind, he had almost decided to retire in a year's time, at the end of the next cold season. He did not have to worry, as did the poor Magistrate, about securing a pension. He had a glorious and interesting life awaiting him in England whenever he considered that his duty in India was done. went too, would be too much for her nerves...Never mind, he had almost decided to retire in a year's time, at the end of the next cold season. He did not have to worry, as did the poor Magistrate, about securing a pension. He had a glorious and interesting life awaiting him in England whenever he considered that his duty in India was done.

But still those chapatis lodged in his mind, undissolved. In this room it was even harder to believe in trouble than it had been in the hall, indeed, it was hard to believe that one was in India at all, except for the punkahs. His eyes roamed with satisfaction over the walls, thickly armoured with paintings in oil and water-colour, with mirrors and gla.s.s cases containing stuffed birds and other wonders, over chairs and sofas upholstered in plum cretonne, over showcases of minerals and a cobra floating in a bottle of bluish alcohol, over occasional tables draped to the floor with heavy tablecloths on which stood statuettes in electro-metal of great men of literature, of Dr Johnson, of Moliere, Keats, Voltaire and, of course, Shakespeare...but now he was obliged to return his attention to the proceedings.

Miss Carpenter had begun to read a poem in praise of the Great Exhibition; the Collector groaned inwardly, not because he found the subject unsuitable, but because it had so evidently been chosen as homage to himself; poems about the Exhibition recurred every few weeks and seldom failed to excite the Magistrate's most cutting remarks. This was undoubtedly because his own interest in the Exhibition was as well-known to the Magistrate as to the ladies; indeed, it was more than an interest for he had been a prominent member of the selection committee for the Bengal Presidency and, having taken his furlough in 1851, had attended the Exhibition in an official capacity. It was generally held in the cantonment that the Magistrate resented the fact that the Collector should be in with all the "big dogs" in the Company simply because he was in the habit of collecting artistic and scientific bric a brac.

"Power, like the trunk of Afric's wondrous brute, Had, on that stage, its double triumph found, To lift the forest monarch by the root, Or pick a quivering needle from the ground."

Although it was usually considered unwise to offer explanations to the Magistrate as you went along, Miss Carpenter was unable to prevent herself explaining that this image of the Exhibition was a reference to the versatile talent of Edmund Burke. But as the air of interrogation among her fellow poetesses only deepened as a result of this explanation she was obliged to add an explanation to her explanation, to the effect that this talent of Burke's had been compared to an elephant's trunk, which could uproot an oak or pick up a needle. The ladies s.h.i.+fted their terrified eyes to the Magistrate to see how he was responding; his face remained ominously impa.s.sive, however, beneath its ginger growth. Miss Carpenter bravely proceeded: "Whilst they, the Royal Founders of the scene, Through ranks of gazing myriads calmly move, And Britons throng to proffer to their Queen The willing dues of loyalty and love."

"Really, this is not at all bad," thought the Collector in spite of his alarm on her behalf; he was fond of Miss Carpenter, who was serious and pretty, and anxious to please.

"Pebbles and sh.e.l.ls which little children find Of rainbow-tinted hues, on ocean's sh.o.r.e; Though full of learning to the thoughtful mind, Themselves how vain, how shortly seen no more!"

"How excellent, how serious! The girl has a remarkable gift." The Collector was surprised to find himself responding to a poem composed by one of the ladies; hitherto he had considered the poems of value only for their therapeutic properties. Alas, Miss Carpenter had been unable to resist appending yet another explanation: that this last verse was a reference to Newton's description of himself as "only a child picking up pebbles on the sh.o.r.e of the great ocean of truth". This was altogether too much for the Magistrate. "Half of this poem appears to have been copied from books, Miss Carpenter, and the other half is plainly rubbish. It's entirely beyond my understanding why you should feel you have to say 'Afric's wondrous brute' instead of 'elephant' like everyone else, and 'forest monarch' instead of 'tree'. n.o.body in his right mind goes about calling trees 'forest monarchs'...I've really never heard such nonsense!"

The ladies gasped at this frontal attack, not just on poor Miss Carpenter, but on poetry itself. If you can't call an elephant Afric's wondrous brute" what can can you call it? Why write poetry at all? Miss Carpenter's eyes filled with tears. you call it? Why write poetry at all? Miss Carpenter's eyes filled with tears.

"Look here, Tom, that's very extreme," grumbled the Collector, displeased. "I found it a very fine poem indeed. One of the best we've heard, I should think. Mind you," he added as his confidence once more deserted him, "the subject of the Exhibition, as you know, is one that holds a particular interest for me."

Miss Carpenter coloured prettily at this speech and appeared not to hear the Magistrate's derisive: "Ha!" "The fellow is quite impossible!" mused the Collector crossly.

Not everyone, the Collector was aware, is improved by the job he does in life; some people are visibly disimproved. The Magistrate had performed his duties for the Company conscientiously but they had not had a good effect on him: they had made him cynical, fatalistic, and too enamoured of the rational. His interest in phrenology, too, had had a bad effect; it had reinforced the determinism which had sapped his ideals, for he evidently believed that all one's acts were limited by the shape of one's skull. Given the swelling above and behind the ear on each side of his skull (he had once insinuated) there was not very much the Collector could do to remedy his inability to make rapid decisions...Though, of course, one could not be "absolutely sure" without making exact measurements. He had also begun to say something about a b.u.mp on each side of the Collector's crown which signified "love of approbation", but noticing, at last, how badly the Collector was responding to this opportunity for self-knowledge he had desisted with a sigh.

"By the way, Tom," said the Collector as the meeting broke up, "I found something odd on my desk in the office just now. Four chapatis, to be exact. And yesterday I found some in a despatch box. What d'you make of it?"

"That's strange. I found some too." The two men looked at each other, surprised.

Presently they heard that chapatis were turning up all over Krishnapur. The Padre had found some on the steps of the Church and had a.s.sumed that they were some sort of superst.i.tious offering. Mr Barlow, who worked in the Salt Agency, had been brought some by his watchman. Mr Rayne who, in addition to his official duties at the opium factory, was the Honorary Secretary of the Krishnapur Mutton Club and of the Ice Club, was shown chapatis by the watchmen employed in the protection of both these inst.i.tutions. It soon became clear that it was chiefly among the watchmen that the chapatis were circulating; they had been given them by watchmen from other districts, without apparently knowing for what purpose, and told to bake more and then pa.s.s them on again to watchmen of yet other districts. The Collector discovered by questioning his own watchman that it was he who had left the chapatis on the desk in his office. Although he had baked twelve more chapatis and pa.s.sed them on, as he had been instructed, he had felt it his duty to inform the Collector Sahib and so had left them on his desk. He denied any knowledge of those in the despatch box and on the portico. Where these came from the Collector never discovered.

In due course an even more curious fact emerged. The chapatis were appearing not just in Krishnapur but in stations all over northern India. Not only the Collector found this disturbing; for a while no one in Krishnapur could talk of anything else. Again and again the watchmen were interrogated, but they seemed genuinely to have no idea what the purpose of it had been. Some said they had pa.s.sed on the chapatis because they believed it to be the order of the Government, that the purpose had been to see how quickly messages could be pa.s.sed on.

In Calcutta the Government held an enquiry, but no reason for the phenomenon came to light and the excitement it caused died down within a few days. It was suggested that it might be a superst.i.tious attempt to avert an epidemic of cholera. Only the Collector remained convinced that trouble was coming. He half remembered having heard of a similar distribution of chapatis on some other occasion. Surely there had been something of the kind before the mutiny at Vellore? He asked everyone he met whether they had heard of it, but no one had.

Before leaving Krishnapur to escort his wife to Calcutta, where she was to embark for England, the Collector took a strange decision. He ordered the digging of a deep trench combined with a thick wall of earth "for drainage during the monsoon" all the way round the perimeter of the Residency compound.

"The Collector's weakness appears to have found him," observed the Magistrate lightly to Mr Ford, one of the railway engineers, as they smilingly surveyed the progress of this work.

2.

It was during this winter that George Fleury arrived in Calcutta with his sister and first set eyes on Louise Dunstaple. It was hoped that something might come of this meeting for Fleury was not married and Louise, though not quite his social equal, was considered to be at the very height of her beauty...indeed, she was being talked of everywhere in Calcutta as the beauty of the cold season. She was very fair and pale and a little remote; one or two people thought her "insipid", which is a danger blonde people sometimes run. She was remote, at least, in Fleury's presence, but once he glimpsed her at the race-course, flirting chastely with some young officers.

Dr Dunstaple in those days was the civil surgeon at Krishnapur. But somehow he had managed to get himself and his family to Calcutta for the cold season, leaving the Krishnapur civilians to the tender mercies of Dr McNab, who had taken over as regimental surgeon and who was known to be in favour of some of the most alarmingly direct methods known to civilized medicine.

The Doctor had left his son Harry behind in Krishnapur, however. Thanks to the help of a friend in Fort William young Harry had been posted as an ensign to one of the native infantry regiments stationed at Krishnapur (or rather at Captainganj, five miles away) where his parents could keep an eye on him and see that he did not get into debt. Harry, who by now was a lieutenant, was quite content to be left behind when his family, which included little f.a.n.n.y, aged twelve, went away to enjoy themselves in Calcutta; being "military" he tended these days to look with condescension upon civilians, and Calcutta was undoubtedly riddled with the fellows.

Nor was Mrs Dunstaple displeased that her son should stay in Krishnapur, though this meant that he would be away from her side. Harry was at a vulnerable age and Calcutta swarmed with ambitious mammas anxious to expose young officers like Harry to the charms of their daughters. Alas, Mrs Dunstaple well knew that India was full of young lieutenants who had ruined their careers at the outset by disastrous marriages. All the same, this consideration, as applied to Harry, did not prevent her from hoping to be able to show off the charms of Louise before suitable young men. In the East the roses in a girl's cheeks fly away so quickly, so very quickly (though, strictly speaking, this did not apply to Louise whose beauty was of the pale sort).

The Season had been unusually successful, and not only for Louise (who had shown herself hard to please, however, in the matter of proposals). There had been many splendid b.a.l.l.s and an unusual number of weddings and other entertainments. Moreover, the Turf, which had fallen into a decline in recent years had revived wonderfully. Of course, you would be likely to see the same mounts in the Planters' Handicap as in the Merchants' Plate or the Bengal Club Cup but it was a season of remarkable horses, for this was the era of Legerdemain, Mercury, and of the great mare, Beeswing. But the cold season was nearing its end by the time Fleury and his sister, Miriam, arrived and new faces like theirs were longed for in Calcutta drawing-rooms; (by this time all the old faces were so familiar that they could hardly be looked at any more). Besides, it was known that their father was a Director, with all the social standing which that implied in the Company's India. It was also rumoured that young Fleury had scarcely been half an hour in India before Lord Canning had offered him a cigar. No wonder the news of his arrival caused some excitement in the Dunstaples' house in Alipore.