The Empire Trilogy

by J. G. Farrell

  The Collector gave him a worried look. In the few days since the siege had begun a disturbing change had come over the Doctor. In normal times the Collector found this fat little man endearing and slightly ridiculous. His arms and legs looked too short for his round body; his energy made you want to laugh. But recently his plump, good-humoured face had set into lines of bad temper and bitterness. His rosy complexion had taken on a deeper, unhealthy flush, and although clearly exhausted, he was, nevertheless, in a constant state of frenetic activity and fuss, talking now of one thing, now of another. There was something very harrowing about the way the Doctor passed from one subject to another without logical connection, yet what disturbed the Collector even more was the fact that he so often returned to the same topic:...that of Dr McNab. Of course, he had always enjoyed making fun of McNab, retailing stories about drastic remedies for simple ailments and that sort of thing. Alas, the Doctor had become increasingly convinced that McNab was experimenting, was ignoring his medical training to follow fanciful notions of his own.

  Dr Dunstaple had begun to talk about the patient beside whose bed, a soiled straw mattress on a charpoy, the Collector found himself standing; the man was a Eurasian of very pale skin and dark eyes which feverishly swept the room. He was suffering, explained the Doctor in a rapid, overbearing tone as if expecting the Collector to disagree with him, from severe laceration, the result of a shrapnel burst, of the soft parts of the right hand; the thumb was partially detached near the upper end of the metacarpal bone. Though the lips of the wound were retracted and gaping there was no haemorrhage and it seemed possible that the deep arteries had escaped injury...

  “Was that unreasonable to suppose?” demanded the Doctor suddenly. The Collector, who had been listening uncomfortably to these explanations, shook his head, but only slightly, not wanting to give the impression that he was passing judgement either one way or the other. At the same time he had become aware that another patient, an English private soldier who had escaped from Captainganj only to be wounded at Cutter’s battery during the attack of the first of June, and who was strapped down to a charpoy near where the Padre was kneeling, had begun to sing, loudly and monotonously, as if to keep up his spirits. His song finished he immediately began it again, and so loudly as almost to drown the Doctor’s vehement medical commentary:

  “I’m ax’d for a song and ’mong soldiers ’tis plain,

  I’d best sing a battle, a siege or campaign.

  Of victories to choose from we Britons have store,

  And need but go back to eighteen fifty-four.”

  “A compress, dipped in cold water, placed on the palm after the edges of the wound had been evenly approximated and two or three interrupted sutures applied...then strapped, bandaged...”

  “The Czar of all Russia, a potentate grand,

  Would help the poor Sultan to manage his land;

  But Britannia stept in, in her lady-like way,

  To side with the weakest and fight for fair play.”

  “Stop that noise!” roared the Doctor. “Look here, Mr Hopkins, after twenty-four hours the integuments of the palm were flaccid and discoloured...Imagine how I felt! If you put any pressure on the wound a thin, sanious fluid with bubbles of gas escaped, causing considerable pain...”

  “On Alma’s steep banks, and on Inkerman’s plain,

  At famed Balaklava, the foe tried in vain

  To wrest off the laurels that Britons long bore

  But always got whopped in eight een fifty-four...”

  “Then,” said the Doctor, gripping the Collector’s arm for he had stepped back, dizzy from the heat and smell, not to mention the noise (for, in addition to this desperate chanting there were groans and cries of men calling for attention), “the thumb was dark and cold and insensible. Another twelve hours and the dark hue of mortification had already spread over half the palm...the thumb and two fingers were already cold, livid and without sensation...”

  “It’s true at a distance they fought very well

  With round shot and grape shot and rocket and shell

  But when our lads closed and bayonets got play

  They didn’t quite like it and so...ran away!”

  “The pulse was small and frequent, the smell from the mortifying parts was particularly offensive, Mr Hopkins. I now advised amputation of the forearm, close to the carpal end... Silence! I had thought that it would be enough to remove part of the hand only, but this was out of the question...Ah, this wasn’t good enough for McNab! He said gangrene must follow...d’you hear? So forty-eight hours it was left wrapped in a linseed poultice. This was not my idea. I knew the whole hand must come off in the end and that there would be no gangrene of the stump...Here, sir, you can see for yourself the way the flaps are uniting in healthy granulations. D’you think that was McNab’s linseed poultice? Had we waited a moment longer the man would have sunk completely!”

  “No, no,” broke in the Collector hurriedly. “Please don’t undo the dressing. I shall see it when you’re discharged fit,” he added brightly to the patient who paid no attention to him whatsoever; the man’s eyes continued to roam about feverishly.

  The Doctor tried to detain him for further explanations but the Collector forced him aside, unable to spend another moment by this bedside. He strode to the nearest window and looked out, clumsily knocking over a pitcher of water as he did so. It emptied itself in slow gulps on to the earthen floor by his feet. Beyond the deep shadow in which the horses of the Sikh cavalry stamped and thrashed in a frenzy of irritation from the flies which attacked them, he thought he could perceive a splash of colour from the few surviving roses beneath the shade of the wickerwork screens. He gazed at them greedily.

  Then Fleury came into view, carrying the bottles of mustard and looking excited. Seeing the Collector at the window he called: “Mrs Scott has been taken ill.”

  The Collector immediately put his finger to his lips and shook his head vigorously, pointing towards the next ward, to indicate that Fleury should inform McNab. Fleury, however, simply stopped in his tracks and stared at the Collector in astonishment, unable to comprehend why the most important personage in the garrison should suddenly resort to this baffling pantomine. He came closer and the Collector, concluding that Fleury was a dimwit (a conclusion supported, moreover, by his peculiar ideas on civilization) said in an undertone: “Tell Dr McNab. Dunstaple already has too much to do. He must be spared. Here, give me those.” And he took the bottles of mustard through the window, thinking: “What a time the poor mite has chosen to come into the world!”

  The Doctor seemed surprised at first to be presented with the mustard and looked so irritated that the Collector wondered whether there had not been some mistake. But then the Doctor remembered, he had a case of cholera...it was almost certainly cholera, though sometimes when the men first reported sick it was hard to know from their symptoms whether they were suffering from cholera or from bilious remittent fever.

  Cholera. The Collector could see Dr Dunstaple’s anger swelling, as if himself infected by the mere sound of the three syllables. And the Collector dreaded what was to come, for the subject of cholera invariably acted like a stimulant on the already overwrought Doctor. Cholera, evidently, had been the cause of the dispute between him and McNab which had brought about an unfortunate rift between the two doctors. Now he began, once again, to speak with a terrible eloquence about the iniquities of McNab’s “experimental” treatments and quackery cures. Suddenly, he seized the Collector’s wrist and dragged him across the ward to a mattress on which, pale as milk beneath a cloud of flies, a gaunt man lay shivering, stark naked.

  “He’s now in the consecutive fever...How d’you think I cured this man? How d’you think I saved his life?”

  The Collector offered no suggestions so the Doctor explained that he had used the best treatment known to medical science, the way he had been taught as a student, the treatment which, for want of a specific, every physician worthy of the name accorde
d his cholera patients...calomel, opium and poultices, together with brandy as a stimulant. Every half hour he gave pills of calomel (half a grain), opium and capsicum (of each one-eighth of a grain). Calomel, the Collector probably didn’t know, was an admirable aperient for cleansing the upper intestinal canal of the morbid cholera poison. At the same time, to relieve the cramps he had applied flannels wrung out of hot water and sprinkled with chloroform or turpentine to the feet, legs, stomach and chest, and even to the hands and arms. Then he had replaced them with flannels spread with mustard as his dispensers were now doing...At this point the Doctor tried to pull the Collector to yet another bed, where a Eurasian orderly was spreading mustard thickly with a knife on the chest and stomach of yet another tossing, groaning figure. But the Collector could stand no more and, shaking himself free, made for the door with the Doctor in pursuit.

  The Doctor was grinning now and wanted to show the Collector a piece of paper. The Collector allowed himself to be halted as soon as he had inhaled a draught of fresh air. He stared in dismay at the unnaturally bright flush of the Doctor’s features, at the parody of good humour they wore, remembering many happier times when the good humour had been real.

  “I copied it from the quack’s medical diary...With his permission, of course. He’s always making notes. No doubt he thinks he will make an impression with them. Read it. It concerns a cholera case...He wrote it, I believe, in Muttra about three years ago. Go on. Read it...” And he winked encouragingly at the Collector.

  The Collector took the paper with reluctance and read:

  “She had almost no pulse. Body as cold as that of a corpse. Breath unbelievably cold, like that from the door of an ice-cavern. She has persistent cramps and vomits constantly a thin, gruel-like fluid without odour. Her face has taken on a terribly cadaverous aspect, sunken eyes, starting bones, worse than that of a corpse. Opening a vein it is hard to get any blood...what there is, is of a dark, treacly aspect..."

  The Collector looked up, puzzled. “Why d’you show me this?”

  “That was his wife!” cried the Doctor triumphantly. “Don’t you see, he takes notes all the time. Nothing will stop him...Even his wife! Nothing!”

  Again, as the Collector put on his pith helmet and gave the brim a twitch, came the monotonous, desperate chanting he had heard before.

  “Now, now my brave boys, that the Russian is shamed

  Beat, bothered, and bowed down and peace is proclaimed,

  Let’s drink to our Queen, may she never want store,

  Of heroes like those of eighteenfifty-four.”

  14

  From the beginning of the siege the Union Jack had floated from the highest point of the Residency roof and had constantly drawn the fire of the sepoy sharpshooters. Passing into the shadow of the Residency on his way to Cutter’s battery, the Collector looked up and saw that the flag was once again in difficulties. The halyards had been severed and great splinters of wood had been struck off the shaft so that it looked as if a strong wind might well bring it down altogether. On one occasion, indeed, the staff had been completely shattered and a great cheer had gone up from the sepoys...but as soon as darkness permitted, another staff and new halyards had been erected in its place. The flag was crucial to the morale of the garrison; it reminded one that one was fighting for something more important than one’s own skin; that’s what it reminded the Collector of, anyway. And somewhere up there, too, in the most perilous position of all within the enclave, there was an officer crouching all day behind the low brick wall of the tower, watching the movements of the sepoys with a telescope.

  While the Collector’s eyes had been lifted to the sky a loathsome creature had approached him along the ground; it was the hideous pariah dog, looking for Fleury. Since the Collector had last set eyes on the animal a ricocheting musket ball had taken off part of its rat-like tail, which now terminated in a repulsive running sore. The Collector launched a kick at it and it hopped away yelping.

  As the Collector raised his eyes again for a last, inspirational glance at the flag before moving on, a dreadful smell of putrefaction was borne to his nostrils and he thought: “I must have something done about that tonight before we have an epidemic.” This smell was no longer coming from the bodies of men and horses rotting outside the ramparts as it had done for the first few days; these, thank Heaven, had now been cleaned by the kites, vultures and jackals; it came from the dead horses and artillery bullocks that lay scattered over the Residency lawns and gardens, hit by the random shot and shells that unceasingly poured into the compound. But there was also a powerful and atrocious smell from behind the wall he had built to shield the croquet court, which lay between the Residency and Dunstaple’s house. Here it was that Mr Rayne, aided by Eurasians from the opium agency, conducted the slaughter and butchery of the Commissariat sheep, commandeered at the outbreak of the mutiny from the Krishnapur Mutton Club on the Collector’s instructions.

  The smell, which was so atrocious that the butchers had to work with cloths tied over their noses, came from rejected offal which they were in the habit of throwing over the wall in the hope that the vultures would deal with it. But the truth was that the scavengers of the district, both birds and animals, were already thoroughly bloated from the results of the first attack...the birds were so heavy with meat that they could hardly launch themselves into the air, the jackals could hardly drag themselves back to their lairs. And so, out of the garrison’s sight, but not out of range of their noses, a mountain of corruption had steadily built up. Combined with the animals scattered on the lawns, the smells from the hospital and from the privies, and from the human beings living in too close contact with insufficient water for frequent bathing, an olfactory background, silent but terrible, was unrolling itself behind the siege.

  The back wall of Dr Dunstaple’s house, which like the Residency was built of wafer-like red bricks, had been amazingly pocked by the shot which dashed against it; hardly a square foot of smooth surface remained now to be seen. In some places round shot had smashed through one wall after another so that if you had been unwise enough to raise your head to the appropriate angle you could have followed their passage through a series of rooms. After one such journey, the Collector had been told, a shot had finally burst through the wall into the Doctor’s drawing-room on the other side of the building, scattering candlesticks and dropping them to roll along the carpet, right up to where Mrs Dunstaple and a group of disobedient ladies playing truant from the suffocating air of the cellar were cowering under the piano. From these larger holes in the wall Enfield rifles bristled and occasionally orange flowers blossomed from their muzzles; the wall in the room behind them had been painted black so that no movement could be seen against them.

  From the house a shallow trench had been dug out towards the crescent of earthworks behind which the cannons had been placed. Here, too, there was a pit about fourteen feet deep with a ladder against the side, down which the Collector now stiffly climbed. Lieutenant Cutter was standing at the bottom with his finger to his lips.

  “Are they mining?”

  “Yes. We’re digging a listening gallery.” Cutter described in a whisper what was happening: at the head of the gallery a man sat and worked with a short-handled pick or crowbar to loosen the earth; just behind him sat another man with an empty wine case to fill up with the loose earth; when full, this was drawn back by a rope.

  The sepoys here were very close and it was thought inevitable that sooner or later they would begin mining, given the number of men at their disposal. For several nights the Collector had stayed up until dawn reading his military manuals by the light of an oil-lamp in his study to instruct himself in the art of military mining; only Cutter of the officers, two Cornish privates from Captainganj, and one or two Sikhs, had had any experience of mining before. What an advantage that knowledge can be stored in books! The knowledge lies there like hermetically sealed provisions waiting for the day when you may need a meal. Surely what the Collector wa
s doing as he pored over his military manuals, was proving the superiority of the European way of doing things, of European culture itself. This was a culture so flexible that whatever he needed was there in a book at his elbow. An ordinary sort of man, he could, with the help of an oil-lamp, turn himself into a great military engineer, a bishop, an explorer or a General overnight, if the fancy took him. As the Collector pored over his manuals, from time to time rubbing his tired eyes, he knew that he was using science and progress to help him out of his difficulties and he was pleased. The inventions on his desk, the carriage which supplied its own track and the effervescent drinking vessel, watched him in silent admiration as he worked.

  The Collector had learned that there are two cardinal rules of defensive mining...One is that your branch galleries (whose purpose is for listening to the approaching enemy miners) should run obliquely forward in order not to present their sides to the action of enemy mines ...The other is that the distance between the ends of the branch galleries should be such that the enemy cannot burrow between them unheard (a distance which varies with the nature of the soil but which can be roughly taken as twenty yards).

  The trouble with these cardinal rules, though wonderful in their way, was that they required a great deal of digging. No doubt they would have served perfectly if there had been enough men in the garrison to dig listening galleries in the approved manner, reaching towards the enemy like the spread fingers of a hand. But Cutter lacked men. The best he and the Collector had been able to devise was a single lateral tunnel, slightly crescent-shaped to follow the contour of the ramparts, and which more resembled the hook of a man whose hand had been amputated.

  The Collector, at the head of the gallery, strained his ears despondently for the scrape of the sepoy picks, but the only sound that came to them was the ghostly echo of a phrase of Vauban he had read: Place assiégée, place prise! For the Collector knew the truth of the matter: the sepoys did not even have to resort to mining. By using their artillery to make a breach in the defences and then digging a properly directed series of saps to approach it, they would be able to take the Residency in a matter of days. It was a commonplace of siege-craft that there was no way of countering such a methodical attack except by making sorties to harass the enemy and destroy his works...But where could he find the men to make sorties without hopelessly denuding the ramparts in several places?