The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [276]
The Magistrate, looking harassed, was sitting at his desk. From the wall the portrait of the young Queen surveyed her two subjects with bulging blue eyes.
“What on earth is the matter with them?”
“They want to come into the enclave. They say they’re loyal to the Company and that as Christians they’ll certainly be murdered by the sepoys. They’re probably right, at that.” Noting the look of dismay on the Collector’s face he added: “I know, but what can we possibly do? I suppose we could take in the Eurasians at a pinch but we can’t possibly have any more native Christians...We have more than enough as it is. We haven’t enough food.”
“We can’t just leave them out there to be massacred, for Heaven’s sake!” cried the Collector, who had turned pale and was groping for a chair. The Magistrate was taken aback by the Collector’s show of emotion. He said: “I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to stand a siege for any time at all if we have to feed such a crowd. Of course, it’s up to you to decide, but I can’t recommend you to take them in.”
“Is there nothing we can do?”
“We’ll take in the ‘crannies’, if you like...They would be the most in danger, anyway. All I can suggest for the native Christians is that we give each of them a certificate to say that they’ve been loyal to the Government, for when these difficulties are over. They can be rewarded afterwards.”
“A fat lot of good a certificate will be!” groaned the Collector, but there was no alternative that he could see. He stayed for an hour in the Cutcherry helping the Magistrate to sign and issue the certificates. All the time he remained there the high-pitched, resonant humming did not cease for a moment.
It was only as he was walking back to the Residency that he remembered the General and summoned a bearer, telling him to go and enquire how the General was. The bearer, however, did not move. Instead, he replied quietly that it was unnecessary...He had just heard...he dropped his eyes and after a moment’s hesitation murmured...“... is dunniah fänê sā; rehlat keah” (that his spirit had begun its march from this transitory world).
It was about noon that the General died. The humming of the native Christians was the only sound to break the silence. As the afternoon wore on, the humming was silenced by the great heat; all living creatures were obliged to crawl into some shade in order to survive. For a while the silence now became profound at the Residency, as it did every afternoon. Besides, there was nothing further for the garrison to do; by now they had made their defences as secure as was possible in the circumstances. The ladies, having fought polite but ruthless battles for a place under those punkahs in the billiard room that were still moving (that is to say, those which still had a native attached to the other end), lay stretched out on charpoys and mattresses in their chemises and petticoats like arrangements of wilted flowers, their faces, necks, and arms shining with perspiration. Flies and mosquitoes tormented them and they longed for the evening which would bring, if not coolness, at least a fall in the temperature.
About three o’clock the deathly silence was broken by a terrible noise of banging and hammering which startled them awake. It was the native carpenters knocking together a coffin for the General. The Padre was to bury him that evening. Towards four o’clock, when the heat had at last begun to die down a little, the aggrieved humming started up again. This time it came from a little further away...from outside the Residency gates, where the native Christians had been moved, each holding his certificate of loyalty to the Company.
The Padre, too, was distressed by this humming. He had complained to the Collector about the Christians being left outside, just as he had complained about the storing of great jars of grain and powder at the back of the Church, but it had done no