The Siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell [104]
Now at last the Collector’s long day was over. A lamp was burning in his study and in the glass of the bookcases he saw his own image, shadowy in detail, wearing an already rather tattered morning coat, the face also in shadow, anonymous, the face of a man like other men, who in a few years would be lost to history, whose personality would be no more individual than this shadowy reflection in the glass. “How alike we all are, really...There’s so little difference between one man and another when one comes to think of it.”
As he moved to turn out the lamp before going upstairs he thought how normal everything still was here. It might have been any evening of the years he had spent in Krishnapur. Only his ragged coat, his boots soiled from digging graves, his poorly trimmed whiskers, and his exhausted appearance would have given one to suspect that there was anything amiss. That and the sound of gunfire from the compound.
On his way upstairs he passed Miriam in the hall and without particularly meaning to he put his arm around her. She was on her hands and knees when this happened, searching the floor with a candle for some pearls she had dropped when the string she was wearing had broken; in spite of their increasingly ragged appearance it had become the habit for the ladies to wear all the jewellery they possessed for safe-keeping. They should have been quite easy to find but some had rolled away into the forest of dusty, carved legs of tables and chairs which here comprised the lumber of “possessions”. When the Collector touched her she did not faint or seem offended; she returned the pressure quite firmly and then sat back on her heels, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes with her knuckles because her hands were dirty. She looked at him for a long time but did not say anything. After a while she went on looking for her pearls and he went on his way upstairs. He did not know what had made him do that. It had been discouragement more than anything. At that moment he had been feeling the need for some kind of comfort...perhaps any kind would have done...a good bottle of claret, for example, instead. Still, Mrs Lang was a sensible woman and he did not think she would mind. “Funny creatures, women, all the same,” he mused. “One never knows quite what goes on in their minds.”
Later, while he was drinking tea at the table in his bedroom with three young subalterns from Captainganj a succession of musket balls came through the window, attracted by the oillamp...one, two, three, and then a fourth, one after another. The officers dived smartly under the table, leaving the Collector to drink his tea alone. After a while they re-emerged smiling sheepishly, deeply impressed by the Collector’s sangfroid. Realizing that he had forgotten to sweeten his tea, the Collector dipped a teaspoon into the sugar-bowl. But then he found that he was unable to keep the sugar on the spoon: as quickly as he scooped it up, it danced off again. It was clear that he would never get it from the sugar-bowl to his cup without scattering it over the table, so in the end he was obliged to push the sugar