“It will come,” said Fielding, holding his hand.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Fielding; but when once an Indian has been arrested, we do not know where it will stop.” His manner was deferential3. “You are very good to greet me in this public fashion, I appreciate it; but, Mr. Fielding, nothing convinces a magistrate4 except evidence. Did Mr. McBryde make any remark when my card came in? Do you think my application annoyed him, will prejudice him against my friend at all? If so, I will gladly retire.”
“He’s not annoyed, and if he was, what does it matter?”
“Ah, it’s all very well for you to speak like that, but we have to live in this country.”
The leading barrister of Chandrapore, with the dignified5 manner and Cambridge degree, had been rattled6. He too loved Aziz, and knew he was calumniated7; but faith did not rule his heart, and he prated8 of “policy” and “evidence” in a way that saddened the Englishman. Fielding, too, had his anxieties—he didn’t like the field-glasses or the discrepancy9 over the guide—but he relegated10 them to the edge of his mind, and forbade them to infect its core. Aziz was innocent, and all action must be based on that, and the people who said he was guilty were wrong, and it was hopeless to try to propitiate11 them. At the moment when he was throwing in his lot with Indians, he realized the profundity12 of the gulf13 that divided him from them. They always do something disappointing. Aziz had tried to run away from the police, Mohammed Latif had not checked the pilfering14. And now Hamidullah!—instead of raging and denouncing, he temporized15. Are Indians cowards? No, but they are bad starters and occasionally jib. Fear is everywhere; the British Raj rests on it; the respect and courtesy Fielding himself enjoyed were unconscious acts of propitiation. He told Hamidullah to cheer up, all would end well; and Hamidullah did cheer up, and became pugnacious16 and sensible. McBryde’s remark, “If you leave the line, you leave a gap in the line,” was being illustrated17.
“First and foremost, the question of bail19 . . .”
Application must be made this afternoon. Fielding wanted to stand surety. Hamidullah thought the Nawab Bahadur should be approached.
“Why drag in him, though?”
To drag in everyone was precisely20 the barrister’s aim. He then suggested that the lawyer in charge of the case would be a Hindu; the defence would then make a wider appeal. He mentioned one or two names—men from a distance who would not be intimidated21 by local conditions—and said he should prefer Amritrao, a Calcutta barrister, who had a high reputation professionally and personally, but who was notoriously anti-British.
Fielding demurred22; this seemed to him going to the other extreme. Aziz must be cleared, but with a minimum of racial hatred23. Amritrao was loathed24 at the club. His retention25 would be regarded as a political challenge.
“Oh no, we must hit with all our strength. When I saw my friend’s private papers carried in just now in the arms of a dirty policeman, I said to myself, ‘Amritrao is the man to clear up this.’”
There was a lugubrious26 pause. The temple bell continued to jangle harshly. The interminable and disastrous27 day had scarcely reached its afternoon. Continuing their work, the wheels of Dominion28 now propelled a messenger on a horse from the Superintendent to the Magistrate with an official report of arrest. “Don’t complicate29, let the cards play themselves,” entreated30 Fielding, as he watched the man disappear into dust. “We’re bound to win, there’s nothing else we can do. She will never be able to substantiate31 the charge.”
This comforted Hamidullah, who remarked with complete sincerity32, “At a crisis, the English are really unequalled.”
“Good-bye, then, my dear Hamidullah (we must drop the ‘Mr.’ now). Give Aziz my love when you see him, and tell him to keep calm, calm, calm. I shall go back to the College now. If you want me, ring me up; if you don’t, don’t, for I shall be very busy.”
“Good-bye, my dear Fielding, and you actually are on our side against your own people?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
He regretted taking sides. To slink through India unlabelled was his aim. Henceforward he would be called “anti-British,” “seditious”—terms that bored him, and diminished his utility. He foresaw that besides being a tragedy, there would be a muddle33; already he saw several tiresome34 little knots, and each time his eye returned to them, they were larger. Born in freedom, he was not afraid of muddle, but he recognized its existence.
This section of the day concluded in a queer vague talk with Professor Godbole. The interminable affair of the Russell’s Viper35 was again in question. Some weeks before, one of the masters at the College, an unpopular Parsi, had found a Russell’s Viper nosing round his class-room. Perhaps it had crawled in of itself, but perhaps it had not, and the staff still continued to interview their Principal about it, and to take up his time with their theories. The reptile36 is so poisonous that he did not like to cut them short, and this they knew. Thus when his mind was bursting with other troubles and he was debating whether he should compose a letter of appeal to Miss Quested, he was obliged to listen to a speech which lacked both basis and conclusion, and floated through air. At the end of it Godbole said, “May I now take my leave?”—always an indication that he had not come to his point yet. “Now I take my leave, I must tell you how glad I am to hear that after all you succeeded in reaching the Marabar. I feared my unpunctuality had prevented you, but you went (a far pleasanter method) in Miss Derek’s car. I hope the expedition was a successful one.”
“The news has not reached you yet, I can see.”
“Oh yes.”
“No; there has been a terrible catastrophe37 about Aziz.”
“Oh yes. That is all round the College.”
“Well, the expedition where that occurs can scarcely be called a successful one,” said Fielding, with an amazed stare.
“I cannot say. I was not present.”
He stared again—a most useless operation, for no eye could see what lay at the bottom of the Brahman’s mind, and yet he had a mind and a heart too, and all his friends trusted him, without knowing why. “I am most frightfully cut up,” he said.
“So I saw at once on entering your office. I must not detain you, but I have a small private difficulty on which I want your help; I am leaving your service shortly, as you know.”
“Yes, alas38!”
“And am returning to my birthplace in Central India to take charge of education there. I want to start a High School there on sound English lines, that shall be as like Government College as possible.”
“Well?” he sighed, trying to take an interest.
“At present there is only vernacular39 education at Mau. I shall feel it my duty to change all that. I shall advise His Highness to sanction at least a High School in the Capital, and if possible another in each pargana.”
Fielding sunk his head on his arms; really, Indians were sometimes unbearable40.
“The point—the point on which I desire your help is this: what name should be given to the school?”
“A name? A name for a school?” he said, feeling sickish suddenly, as he had done in the waiting-room.
“Yes, a name, a suitable title, by which it can be called, by which it may be generally known.”
“Really—I have no names for schools in my head. I can think of nothing but our poor Aziz. Have you grasped that at the present moment he is in prison?”
“Oh yes. Oh no, I do not expect an answer to my question now. I only meant that when you are at leisure, you might think the matter over, and suggest two or three alternative titles for schools. I had thought of the ‘Mr. Fielding High School,’ but failing that, the ‘King-Emperor George the Fifth.’”
“Godbole!”
The old fellow put his hands together, and looked sly and charming.
“Is Aziz innocent or guilty?”
“That is for the Court to decide. The verdict will be in strict accordance with the evidence, I make no doubt.”
“Yes, yes, but your personal opinion. Here’s a man we both like, generally esteemed41; he lives here quietly doing his work. Well, what’s one to make of it? Would he or would he not do such a thing?”
“Ah, that is rather a different question from your previous one, and also more difficult: I mean difficult in our philosophy. Dr. Aziz is a most worthy42 young man, I have a great regard for him; but I think you are asking me whether the individual can commit good actions or evil actions, and that is rather difficult for us.” He spoke43 without emotion and in short tripping syllables44.
“I ask you: did he do it or not? Is that plain? I know he didn’t, and from that I start. I mean to get at the true explanation in a couple of days. My last notion is that it’s the guide who went round with them. Malice45 on Miss Quested’s part—it couldn’t be that, though Hamidullah thinks so. She has certainly had some appalling46 experience. But you tell me, oh no—because good and evil are the same.”
“No, not exactly, please, according to our philosophy. Because nothing can be performed in isolation47. All perform a good action, when one is performed, and when an evil action is performed, all perform it. To illustrate18 my meaning, let me take the case in point as an example.
“I am informed that an evil action was performed in the Marabar Hills, and that a highly esteemed English lady is now seriously ill in consequence. My answer to that is this: that action was performed by Dr. Aziz.” He stopped and sucked in his thin cheeks. “It was performed by the guide.” He stopped again. “It was performed by you.” Now he had an air of daring and of coyness. “It was performed by me.” He looked shyly down the sleeve of his own coat. “And by my students. It was even performed by the lady herself. When evil occurs, it expresses the whole of the universe. Similarly when good occurs.”
“And similarly when suffering occurs, and so on and so forth48, and everything is anything and nothing something,” he muttered in his irritation49, for he needed the solid ground.
“Excuse me, you are now again changing the basis of our discussion. We were discussing good and evil. Suffering is merely a matter for the individual. If a young lady has sunstroke, that is a matter of no significance to the universe. Oh no, not at all. Oh no, not the least. It is an isolated50 matter, it only concerns herself. If she thought her head did not ache, she would not be ill, and that would end it. But it is far otherwise in the case of good and evil. They are not what we think them, they are what they are, and each of us has contributed to both.”
“You’re preaching that evil and good are the same.”
“Oh no, excuse me once again. Good and evil are different, as their names imply. But, in my own humble51 opinion, they are both of them aspects of my Lord. He is present in the one, absent in the other, and the difference between presence and absence is great, as great as my feeble mind can grasp. Yet absence implies presence, absence is not non-existence, and we are therefore entitled to repeat, ‘Come, come, come, come.’” And in the same breath, as if to cancel any beauty his words might have contained, he added, “But did you have time to visit any of the interesting Marabar antiquities52?”
Fielding was silent, trying to meditate53 and rest his brain.
“Did you not even see the tank by the usual camping ground?” he nagged54.
“Yes, yes,” he answered distractedly, wandering over half a dozen things at once.
“That is good, then you saw the Tank of the Dagger55.” And he related a legend which might have been acceptable if he had told it at the tea-party a fortnight ago. It concerned a Hindu Rajah who had slain56 his own sister’s son, and the dagger with which he performed the deed remained clamped to his hand until in the course of years he came to the Marabar Hills, where he was thirsty and wanted to drink but saw a thirsty cow and ordered the water to be offered to her first, which, when done, “dagger fell from his hand, and to commemorate57 miracle he built Tank.” Professor Godbole’s conversations frequently culminated58 in a cow. Fielding received this one in gloomy silence.
In the afternoon he obtained a permit and saw Aziz, but found him unapproachable through misery59. “You deserted60 me,” was the only coherent remark. He went away to write his letter to Miss Quested. Even if it reached her, it would do no good, and probably the McBrydes would withhold61 it. Miss Quested did pull him up short. She was such a dry, sensible girl, and quite without malice: the last person in Chandrapore wrongfully to accuse an Indian.
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1
superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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deferential
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| adj. 敬意的，恭敬的 | |
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magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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calumniated
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| v.诽谤，中伤( calumniate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prated
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| v.（古时用语）唠叨，啰唆( prate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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discrepancy
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| n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾 | |
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relegated
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| v.使降级( relegate的过去式和过去分词 )；使降职；转移；把…归类 | |
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propitiate
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| v.慰解，劝解 | |
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profundity
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| n.渊博；深奥，深刻 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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pilfering
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| v.偷窃（小东西），小偷( pilfer的现在分词 )；偷窃（一般指小偷小摸） | |
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15
temporized
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| v.敷衍( temporize的过去式和过去分词 )；拖延；顺应时势；暂时同意 | |
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pugnacious
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| adj.好斗的 | |
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illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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bail
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| v.舀（水），保释；n.保证金，保释，保释人 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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intimidated
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| v.恐吓；威胁adj.害怕的；受到威胁的 | |
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demurred
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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retention
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| n.保留，保持，保持力，记忆力 | |
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lugubrious
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| adj.悲哀的，忧郁的 | |
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27
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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complicate
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| vt.使复杂化，使混乱，使难懂 | |
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30
entreated
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| 恳求，乞求( entreat的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31
substantiate
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| v.证实；证明...有根据 | |
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32
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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33
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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34
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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viper
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| n.毒蛇；危险的人 | |
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36
reptile
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| n.爬行动物；两栖动物 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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38
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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39
vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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40
unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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41
esteemed
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| adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
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42
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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43
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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44
syllables
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| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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45
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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46
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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47
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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48
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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49
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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50
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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51
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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52
antiquities
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| n.古老( antiquity的名词复数 )；古迹；古人们；古代的风俗习惯 | |
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53
meditate
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| v.想，考虑，（尤指宗教上的）沉思，冥想 | |
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54
nagged
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| adj.经常遭责怪的；被压制的；感到厌烦的；被激怒的v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的过去式和过去分词 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责 | |
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55
dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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56
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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57
commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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58
culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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60
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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61
withhold
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| v.拒绝，不给；使停止，阻挡 | |
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