The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [336]
Meanwhile, the Magistrate had ordered the native pensioners to collect up the vernacular records and documents which lay in shallow drifts in the new trenches...all that now remained of the experimental greenhouse in which he had observed the progress and ubiquity of the Company’s stupidity. More papers lay scattered thickly over the ground between the churchyard wall and the rubble of the Cutcherry but they could not be collected because musket fire once more swept the open spaces. The Magistrate did not mind. He had no love for documents. And these had certainly proved more useful than most.
20
Such was the emotion caused by the attack that it was some time before any of the defenders recalled that the Collector had not been feeling well and wondered what had become of him. There was the binding of wounds and examining of bruises to be considered, and the saying of prayers and sewing-up in bedding of those whose lives had been forfeit...and above all there was a great deal of talking to be done, for, as the Magistrate scientifically observed, nothing unusual can happen among human beings without generating an immense, compensating volume of chatter.
Fleury, as it happened, wanted to borrow a book and finding the door open took a few respectful steps towards where the Collector was sitting...which was on the floor, for some reason. The light was poor in the Collector’s bedroom and Fleury might not have noticed how red and swollen his face was, had the Collector not presently fallen sideways, rapping his head on the floor. Immediately all became clear to Fleury and he drew back with horror, thinking: “Cholera!” Then he raced away to find a doctor.
But when Fleury breathlessly informed Dr McNab of his diagnosis McNab did not seem to take it very seriously. He said to Miriam, who was helping him dress the wounds of those hurt in the recent engagement: “The poor Collector has erysipelas. I feared as much when I saw him this morning.”
Miriam knew that people can die of erysipelas and when she saw what a state the Collector was in, rolling on the floor in delirium, his face red and swollen, she received an unpleasant shock. Fleury was quite wrong in thinking that Miriam had been nourishing amorous ambitions as far as the Collector was concerned; on the contrary, throughout the siege she had taken great pains not to allow her feelings to attach themselves to any individual man. Once in her life already she had become attached to someone and had allowed herself to be swept down with him in his lonely vortex into the silent depths where nothing moves but drowned sailors coughing sea-weed; only Miriam herself knew how much it had cost her to ascend again from that fascinating, ghostly world towards light and life. She knew that if she were whirled down again it would be for the last time. But there was yet another reason: Miriam was tired of womanhood. She wanted simply to experience life as an anonymous human being of flesh and blood. She was tired of having to adjust to other people’s ideas of what a woman should be. And nothing condemned a woman so swiftly to womanhood as grappling with a man. All the same, she was shocked to think that the Collector might not survive.
“It is not yet too severe,” said McNab, “but it can spread quickly. We must give him nourishment for it’s a very lowering, debilitating disease. I’ll ask you to prepare beef tea and arrowroot, Mrs Lang. Your brother perhaps will not mind fetching them from the Commissariat. And a bottle of brandy, too.”
While Fleury hurried away for the stores Dr McNab wrote down the details of the Collector’s illness...Subject to rigors and vomiting, redness and swelling of the face, pulse 86, respirations 30.
“Why d’you write down everything in that book?” demanded Miriam sharply, irritated by the Doctor’s methodical habits. She had a vision