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 nasty.”
But the host wouldn’t allow the conversation to take this heavy turn. He turned to the old lady, who looked flustered and put out—he could not imagine why—and asked about her own plans. She replied that she should like to see over the College. Everyone immediately rose, with the exception of Professor Godbole, who was finishing a banana.
“Don’t you come too, Adela; you dislike institutions.”
“Yes, that is so,” said Miss Quested, and sat down again.
Aziz hesitated. His audience was splitting up. The more familiar half was going, but the more attentive remained. Reflecting that it was an “unconventional” afternoon, he stopped.
Talk went on as before. Could one offer the visitors unripe mangoes in a fool? “I speak now as a doctor: no.” Then the old man said, “But I will send you up a few healthy sweets. I will give myself that pleasure.”
“Miss Quested, Professor Godbole’s sweets are delicious,” said Aziz sadly, for he wanted to send sweets too and had no wife to cook them. “They will give you a real Indian treat. Ah, in my poor position I can give you nothing.”
“I don’t know why you say that, when you have so kindly asked us to your house.”
He thought again of his bungalow with horror. Good heavens, the stupid girl had taken him at his word! What was he to do? “Yes, all that is settled,” he cried. “I invite you all to see me in the Marabar Caves.”
“I shall be delighted.”
“Oh, that is a most magnificent entertainment compared to my poor sweets. But has not Miss Quested visited our caves already?”
“No. I’ve not even heard of them.”
“Not heard of them?” both cried. “The Marabar Caves in the Marabar Hills?”
“We hear nothing interesting up at the club. Only tennis and ridiculous gossip.”
The old man was silent, perhaps feeling that it was unseemly of her to criticize her race, perhaps fearing that if he agreed she would report him for disloyalty. But the young man uttered a rapid “I know.”
“Then tell me everything you will, or I shall never understand India. Are they the hills I sometimes see in the evening? What are these caves?”
Aziz undertook to explain, but it presently appeared that he had never visited the caves himself—had always been “meaning” to go, but work or private business had prevented him, and they were so far. Professor Godbole chaffed him pleasantly. “My dear young sir, the pot and the kettle! Have you ever heard of that useful proverb?”
“Are they large caves?” she asked.
“No, not large.”
“Do describe them, Professor Godbole.”
“It will be a great honour.” He drew up his chair and an expression of tension came over his face. Taking the cigarette box, she offered to him and to Aziz, and lit up herself. After an impressive pause, he said: “There is an entrance in the rock which you enter, and through the entrance is the cave.”
“Something like the caves at Elephanta?”
“Oh no, not at all; at Elephanta there are sculptures of Siva and Parvati. There are no sculptures at Marabar.”
“They are immensely holy, no doubt,” said Aziz, to help on the narrative. “Oh no, oh no.”
“Still, they are ornamented in some way.”
“Oh no.”
“Well, why are they so famous? We all talk of the famous Marabar Caves. Perhaps that is our empty brag.”
“No, I should not quite say that.”
“Describe
