The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [314]
“You give permission to going outside camp, perhaps?”
“Well, no, not outside the ramparts, of course.”
“Ha!”
“But you must occupy yourself. You can’t remain here in this room for ever. Who knows how long the siege will go on?”
“Correct! You keep me prisoner but you pretend to yourself that you do not keeping prisoner myself and Prime Minister. You want me to kill for British perhaps my own little brothers and sisters who plead with me for lives, raising little hands very piteously? I will not do it, Mr Hopkin, I will rather die than do it, I can assure you. It is no good. You torture me first. I still not killing little brother and sister.”
“Oh, I say, look here...no one is asking you to kill your brother and sister. You mustn’t exaggerate.”
“Yes, you asking me to killing brother and sister and you asking Prime Minister to sticking with bayonet his very old widow mother lady!”
“Oh, what rubbish!”
“Oh, what rubbish, you say, but I knowing very different. All is not well that end well if I killing little babies for Queen, I assure you. I die rather than do that. Prime Minister also, to my way of thinking!”
The Prime Minister, sitting on his heap of straw, his eyes as expressionless as ever, had shown no sign of being partial either to killing babies or not killing them, or to anything whatsoever.
“If only the poor lad could have brought someone a bit more stimulating as a companion,” the Collector had thought miserably. “He’s pining away for lack of something to occupy his mind.”
Once again the Collector had to take out his handkerchief and hold it to his nose, this time because he was passing the open doors and windows of the hospital. He could not shut his ears, though, to the cries and groans; he even believed he could hear the monotonous chanting of the Crimean veteran as he hurried by, but he already had enough to think about with Hari. As he approached the tiger house he braced himself for the inevitable reproaches. But today, for some reason, Hari’s interest in the world seemed to have revived.
As usual he was striding up and down behind the bars while the Prime Minister sat passively on his heap of straw. There was a significant change, however. Hari was looking excited, indeed feverishly so...but something else had changed, too, and for a while the Collector could not think what it was. Then it came to him: the Prime Minister’s head was bare. It was not simply that he had removed his French military cap, he had removed his hair as well. His skull was shaved and oiled, and it gleamed in the lamplight. For some reason it was covered by a hair net with a large mesh.
The Collector assumed that this shaving of the Prime Minister’s skull had some religious significance; he knew that Hindus are always shaving their heads for one reason or another; but then he noticed that Hari’s eyes kept returning to the gleaming cranium as to a work of art. Looking a little closer, he noticed that what he had taken for the strings of a net were, in fact, ritual lines drawn in ink on the Prime Minister’s scalp.
“I become devotee of Frenloudji!” exclaimed Hari.
“Frenloudji?”
“Frenla-ji! Correct? Science of head!”
“Oh, phren ol ogy! I see what you mean!”
“Correct! Let me explain you about phrenology...Most interesting science and exceedingly useful for getting the measure of your man...I have got measure of Prime Minister without least difficulties. You see, head is furnished with vast apparatus of mental organ and each organs extend from the gentleman’s medulla oblongata, or top of spinal marrow, to surface of brain or cerebellum. Every gentleman possess all organ to greater or lesser degree. Let us say, he possess big organ of Wit, if he say very amusing things then organ of Wit is very big and powerful and we see large bump on right and left of forehead here...” and Hari pointed to a spot somewhat above each of the Prime Minister’s eyebrows.
“This organ is very big in Mr F. Rabelais and Mr J. Swift. In Prime Minister not so big. In you, Mr Hopkin, not so big. In