Was enough being done about the vegetation? Indeed, was anything at all being done? This was the question, an understandable one in the circumstances, that the garrison soon began to ask. Any moment now they expected that the Collector would make up his mind to do something about it. But he did not seem to be in any hurry. What he was expected to do exactly, nobody quite knew. The vegetation clearly could not be burned off. It was too wet for that. As for cutting it away, it was obvious that to wander about on the other side of the rampart was to invite certain death. The only idea that seemed feasible was for the Collector to put on the rusty suit of armour which stood in the banqueting hall and to go out there with a scythe. But when this idea was mentioned to him he said nothing. He showed no enthusiasm. It was plain that he was in no hurry to execute it.
In the end it was Harry Dunstaple who approached him with a really sensible idea. They must fire chain shot. If chain shot were capable of removing a ship’s rigging it should do the same for the jungle.
“We haven’t got any,” said the Collector.
“We have some chains. There’s a pile of them in the stables. We could cut them into lengths if we had a file.”
“Have we a file? Yes, so we have.”
The Collector remembered that he not only had a file but a fine British one at that. He went upstairs to his shattered bedroom to fetch it for Harry. He had often wished for an opportunity to try out this splendid tool in peaceful days gone by. But the Resident even of a relatively unimportant station like Krishnapur cannot really allow himself to file things, even surreptitiously. The natives would quickly lose their respect for the Company if he did.
This file, or one identical to it, had emerged the victor of a curious contest at the Exhibition between Turtons’ English Files and a French company which manufactured another brand of file. Even though Turtons’ had selected their file indiscriminately from stock to do battle with the French champion, even though the French company had brought over a special engineer to manipulate their product while Turtons’ had picked a man at random from the Sappers and Miners at the Exhibition, the French file had been humiliated. Two pieces of steel had been fixed in vices and the two men had set to work on them simultaneously. What a cheer had gone up as the Englishman with Turtons’ file had filed the steel down to the vice before the Frenchman was one third the way through! As he stood by the glass cabinet in his bedroom where the file had reclined on a couch of red velvet since the Exhibition recuperating from its victory, the Collector remembered, with amazement and disgust at his petty chauvinism, how pleased he had been by this trivial affair. He was frowning as he took the victor downstairs to Harry.
“Where shall I start the operation, Mr Hopkins?” Harry wanted to know.
Several people were standing nearby when the Collector made his reply to this reasonable question. They all heard clearly what he said, difficult though they found it to believe. He said: “Please yourself.”
Even Harry, who was not unaccustomed to the caprices of superiors, could not help looking astonished.
“Please yourself,” repeated the Collector in a flat tone. “I’m going to bed. If you have any questions ask the Magistrate.”
One or two of the bystanders, filled with dread, knowing already that the catastrophe had occurred but unable to prevent themselves verifying the fact, discreetly consulted their time-pieces. It was as they thought. The time was not yet noon.
25
While the Collector went off to bed in the middle of the day, Harry made a round of the Residency wheel accompanied by the giant Sikh, Hookum Singh, festooned in lengths of chain. Soon the chain was singing out through the foliage, cutting empty avenues through the greenery. The garrison kept an eye on the Collector’s bedroom, expecting to see his face appear for an inspection of Harry’s work. Although worried by the expense in powder Harry continued to open one green avenue after another, but the Collector’s window remained empty.
As one day followed another the garrison could not help wondering what was going on behind the Collector’s closed door. Very likely he was simply lying on his bed in a state of dejection and, perhaps, of remorse for his massacre of “the possessions” which was now generally thought not to have been necessary. They pictured him lying abandoned to the grip of despair. He was believed to sleep a good deal and to groan occasionally. On one occasion the door to his bedroom was left open and if you had passed along the corridor you could have caught a glimpse of the Collector, slumped on his bed, haggard and ginger-whiskered, the very picture of despair. The siege was being left to pursue its course without the participation of its principal author, the begetter of “mud walls” and cunning fortifications. No wonder that people grew despondent.
The garrison, in spite of everything and without the assistance of the Collector, continued to labour between one downpour and the next to prevent their walls of mud from oozing back into the plain from which they had been dug, but the number of men available to wield a shovel had suddenly begun to decrease alarmingly. This was not because of the enemy fire, which was less frequent now than it had ever been, for evidently the sepoys had decided to bide their time until the end of the rains. It was because an epidemic of cholera, with black banners fluttering, was advancing in solemn, deadly procession through the streets of the enclave.
In the hospital the constant retching of the cholera patients made breathing a torment; the air was alive with flies which crawled over your face and beneath your shirt, covered the food of those who were able to eat, and floated in their tea. The Padre found that they even sometimes flew into his throat while he was reading or praying with a dying man. By the last week of August the mortal sickness in the wards had become so general that he could no longer hope to pray individually with the dying. The best he could do was to take up a central position in the ward, using a chair for a hassock, and to make a general supplication for all the patients collectively. Afterwards, he would read aloud from the Bible, but with difficulty because the letters on the page seemed to crawl before his eyes like flies, and sometimes were flies. Once, in a moment of despair, he snapped his Bible shut and squashed them to a paste.
It was in these unpromising circumstances that the great cholera controversy, which had been smouldering for some time, at last burst into flame. The rift between the two doctors had grown steadily wider as the siege progressed. It had become clear to the garrison that not only did the doctors sometimes apply different remedies to the same illness, in certain cases these remedies were diametrically opposed to each other. So what was a sick man to do? As cholera began its measured advance through the garrison people instructed their friends privately as to which doctor they should be carried to in case of illness.
Certain people, perhaps because they were friendly with one doctor but held a higher opinion of the professional ability of the other, took to carrying cards in their pockets which gave the relevant instructions in case they should find themselves too far gone to claim the doctor they wanted. Sometimes, too, there was evidence on these cards of the conflicts which were raging in the minds of the garrison. You might read: “In case of cholera please carry the bearer of this card to Dr Dunstaple” … the name of Dr McNab being carefully scratched out and that of Dr Dunstaple substituted. And you might even find the names of both doctors scratched out and substituted more than once, such was the atmosphere of indecision which gripped the enclave.