The Siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell [21]
Gradually, as the weather grew hotter and the list of dignitaries whom he evidently believed it unwise not to warn grew no shorter, the Collector began to take on a frayed appearance, even though his shirt remained as white and his morning coat as carefully pressed. Then, in April, another story about the Collector went the rounds, though where it originated was a mystery. It was said that although he was still to be seen criss-crossing the city, he was no longer paying calls on anyone. During those first few days after his wife’s departure everyone Fleury came across, if they had not been visited themselves, at least had a friend, or a friend of a friend, whom the Collector had visited “to draw his attention to the grave state of unrest in which the native finds himself”. But now, if you asked in any of the drawing-rooms you frequented, there would be plenty of people who had seen the Collector on the road but nobody would have heard of him having reached a destination.
Moreover, now that the sun was scorching hot during the middle of the day the Collector was frequently to be seen (you would have seen him yourself if you had been out and about in Calcutta at that time) standing at the roadside in the shade of a tree, he would be standing there lost in thought (thinking, people chuckled, of a way to get a new civilization to advance with the railways into the Mofussil to soothe the natives) like a man waiting for the end of a shower, though, of course, there was not a cloud in sight. But whatever the reason for these long pauses under trees they certainly fostered the belief that the Collector had given up paying warning visits to people. But why, in that case, he should not simply have remained at home, no one could explain.
Of course, there was another explanation that nobody suggested. Now that it was no longer considered to be the height of fashion to be called on and warned by the Collector (indeed, it was thought to be rather ridiculous, for if he had waited this long before coming you were clearly not very high on his list of influential people) a number of those he visited were no doubt declining to see him on the grounds that they were too busy.
And then, one day, quite suddenly, he had disappeared. Evidently he had decided to leave Calcutta to its ignorance and had returned to Krishnapur to take up his duties. For a time nothing more was heard of him.
The cemetery where Fleury’s mother was buried is still to be seen in Calcutta, in Park Street, a short distance from the maidan. Nowadays it is an astonishing and lonely place, untended and overgrown. Many of the more ambitious Victorian tombs tilt unevenly, others have collapsed or have been deliberately smashed. Very often, too, the lead letters have been picked out of the inscriptions, a small tax imposed by the living on the dead. Near the gate a couple of destitute families huddle uneasily in huts they have built of sticks and rags; no wonder they are so ill at ease, for even to a Christian the atmosphere here is ominous.
In Fleury’s day, however, the grass was cut and the graves well cared for. Besides, as you might expect, he was fond of graveyards; he enjoyed brooding in them and letting his heart respond to the abbreviated biographies he found engraved in their stones...so eloquent, so succinct! All the same, once he had spent an hour