by Tabish Khair
The policeman walks past in his blue frockcoat. Solid and dour, he eyes Amir Ali ambivalently, unable to choose between his natural deference for rich clothing and a native suspicion of foreigners. At the last moment, he tips his hat to Amir, and Amir reciprocates with a low, very Oriental, very ornamental bow.
20
They are huddled in a corner of the Great Mogul, with its elaborate and clearly fake pretensions to an exotic royalty, a place better ventilated and hence less warm than the Prize of War. John May is still sipping his first beer, but both Shields and One-eyed Jack are on their third, since the drinks are on May. It is a relief to see that the extra beers have not affected Jack’s demeanour in any obvious way: his languor has neither increased nor decreased. John May gives Shields the signal they had agreed on, and Shields broaches the subject.
‘You have worked as a resurrectionist, haven’t you, Jack?’ Shields asks.
‘Yes, sir, that I have. Two years running: supplied King’s College too. Top quality Things. Whatever Jack does, he does well, sir.’
‘How would you like to get back into the business?’
‘Ain’t the same, guv’nor’, replies Jack, addressing John May now, as if he has guessed that Shields is asking questions on his behalf. ‘Too much danger, now, guv’nor, and less money. The Italian boy affair was bad for the business, y’know. Trust the rich to get all upset like about a rosy-cheeked Latino; had he been a London potboy, no one would have noticed and the police wouldn’t never have begunned hopping about...’
‘What if it paid twice what you think, Jacky’, says Shields.
‘Ah, sir, that would be ’nother matter.’
‘And what if it paid four times more, if only one got the right Thing?’
‘Freshly buried, y’mean?’
‘Yes, Jacky. Or, shall we say, buried with some help from you.’
‘Nah, that is a thought, that is.’
‘Isn’t it, Jacky? Four times more, say. In ready silver.’
‘That is a thought. It sure is, guv’nor.’
‘Perhaps another ale will help you think about it, Jack’, says John May.
‘That it might, guv’nor. It just might.’
21
Much to Captain Meadows’ barely hidden annoyance, in the draped and curtained ‘lecture hall’ of the London Society of Phrenology, a large neoclassical room adorned with plaster casts of skulls on dark wooden pedestals, Lord Batterstone was in full flow and an audience of thirty-nine men and five women were captivated by his eloquence. One of the drawbacks of the increasing prestige of the Society had been this: they had moved from meetings at inns to their own premises. Captain Meadows wondered with a bitter smile if Lord Batterstone would have demeaned himself to the extent of delivering his harangue in a public place; here, he was thundering away, mesmerizing his audience with the sheer audacity of his decibels.
‘Gentlemen, it is not my purpose to defend the Mosaic estimate of creation: my faith is not a blade of leaf that can be blown into perdition by the revised accountancy of years.’ The right hon’ble Lord Batterstone paused for a second and looked at his notes. He was not wearing a mask here. He did not need to wear a mask in this company. But just as the mask never hid his authority so that, unbidden, John May always called him M’lord, his bare face, slightly podgy but noble in its dimensions, high-cheeked and full-jowled, attested to the inherited prestige of his family name. He raised that heavy noble face to his audience and continued: ‘Nor will I dispute the whispering few among us who suggest that man owes his origins to an unknown tadpole hatched in the misty swamps of the past.’
Lord Batterstone waited for the smiles and mutters to subside.
‘These are matters in which theology and science have decided to look at different aspects of the same experiment: where science sees the steps leading to the temple of creation, theology sees the full resplendent temple. I am a man of science though unlike some, it has merely strengthened my faith in God and His Son. I am a man of science and I do not want to examine issues, like the Mosaic estimate of creation or the amphibian ancestors of man, which are either the realm of religion or not susceptible to practical observation and analytical reasoning. However, when some of you — following the insinuations of Combe and talking of man in the same breath as animals — go on to suggest on the analogy of botany that there is little difference between the skulls of animals and men, and even less between those of the races and nations of men, then, gentlemen, I have to raise my voice and remind you that what you claim runs counter to scientific evidence. As Watson has noted, evolution in the realms of geology and botany does not, I say, does not (thumping the podium for emphasis) prove evolution in the human species. And even Combe, who obdurately, irreligiously and unscientifically placed man at the end of a chain of animals, conceded that whatever the state of the body of man, his brain is unquestionably the workmanship of God. If so, is God’s workmanship so uncertain and so fickle that we cannot distinguish between the skull of an ape and that of a man except in the degree to which a certain faculty is present? Is God’s workmanship so slight that we can distinguish between the various races and classes only on the basis of wrinkles on the face and the turn of lips? Everything we know of nature and God militates against such an assumption.’
Long pause for effect, and a sip from the glass of watered-down white wine in front of him.
‘But then, the question is implied in some of our circles, is the skull of a Negro or a Chinaman the same as the skull of a Caucasian except in degree? Has the Caucasian simply developed from other forms of man, perchance sharing an ancestor with the lowly Negro? I have, gentlemen, two objections to this contention. First, to make the Caucasian a child of the Negro or some other race, is to blur the essential difference between the races, and forget the lessons of history, which records Greek and Roman antiquity as the cradle of every civilization, as well as the lessons of biology, which reveals a slow degradation of the species, the ill characteristics of the father being strengthened in the son in direct proportion to the loss of vitality that comes with time to both man and civilizations. Second, our science of phrenology — of whose scientific truth not one of us has any doubt (pause for the confirmatory shaking of heads to subside) — our science of phrenology argues against the assumption that the Chinaman or the Negro is almost a Caucasian, failing only in degree. There is a difference in the size of the brain and the organic quality of the body, with which the brain must inevitably correspond. We know that a piece of wrought iron is tougher than a piece of cast iron of the same size: why should we suppose that both will cut as deeply if fashioned into a sword?’
Longer pause, in which thumps of support were mixed with a few murmurs of dissent, the loudest from Captain Meadows.
‘Moreover, gentlemen, we phrenologists know that organs and faculties do not operate in isolation: one faculty is tempered by another. Forsooth, there is no organ for murder, but indeed, there is a faculty intended to impart energy, force and effectiveness in character and action. In races such as the Red Indian, where these faculties are not restrained by firmness, conscientiousness, ideality and by the more conservative powers of the mind, or where they are accentuated by the faculties of destructiveness and acquisitiveness, as in the Negro, we need not look for an organ for murder before adducing that the individual concerned will be, or is, a murderer.’
Was this a reference to his exhibition earlier today of Amir Ali, wondered Captain Meadows. Should he object? But no, the reference was too oblique, and an objection would sound churlish. But why did he find Lord Batterstone’s ideas so hard to accept? They did not contain many differences, perhaps nothing beyond Batterstone’s belief in the final irreducibility of difference and his related conviction that character had to be read from the skull and not from ‘incidental’ attributes like eyebrows and ears. And why was it so hard for Lord Batterstone to countenance any opposition in that area? Was it, thought Meadows, because of Lord Batterstone’s blue blood, his ari
stocratic pedigree, while Meadows himself, being only a middle-class gentleman, having risen over the past three generations through trade, found it as difficult to accept a world not capable of progress, evolution, movement towards a greater sharing, a sameness of peoples?
He brought himself back to M’lord’s speech. ‘The brain in texture, size and configuration reflects the soul, whose seat it is. And as the brain is the means by which we may recognize the shadowy workings of our eternal soul, so is the cranium a reflection of the brain. On its bony casement may be read, in universal forms and particular elevations, in folds and depressions, a correct and indisputable outline of the moral character and intellectual propensities of that man. But just as God did not give the same soul to all men (more murmurs of dissent here, which made Captain Meadows hopeful) — some are saved and some are not and some, it is argued, do not have souls — just as God did not create all beings equal, it stands to reason that the marks on the skull are as permanent as souls and not liable to be erased by education, or wealth.’
Pause, again, as Lord Batterstone prepared to end his speech.
‘It is indisputable, at least in scientific circles, that the brain is the organ of the mind and that each faculty of the mind has its special organ in the brain. The contention that the brain functions in a general way can be dismissed with the help of practical experiments as well as, and more importantly, by analogical reasoning. Throughout nature, each function has devoted to itself a particular organ. Sight has the eye; digestion, the stomach. It may be further observed that wherever the function is compound, the organ is correspondingly so, as in the case of the tongue, which has a nerve that subserves the sense of feeling and another that conveys the sense of taste. In short, ladies and gentlemen, in the entire human frame there is, as far as we know, not a single instance of one nerve performing two functions, or of two nerves performing the same function. Why is it then, as the honourable Captain Meadows has suggested, though not said in so many words, why is it, gentlemen, that Nature, so consistent in all matters, should break her established mould when it comes to that bony casement which is the record of the brain and in which is seated, like God Almighty on his throne in Heaven, that divine spark, the eternal soul of man?
‘As I have already said, it is true that there is no organ of murder, but there is a faculty intended to impart force and effectiveness in character and action which, when large, active and not restrained by the more conservative powers of the mind, may, nay, will inevitably lead to murder. While it is true, as the honourable Captain has argued, that every faculty of the human mind may be strengthened by judicious culture or weakened by disuse, it is also true that in some men, and in some races, the balance of countervailing faculties is so uneven that their faculty for force, unrestrained by their puny organs of ideality and conscientiousness, predisposes them towards violence and bloodshed. In that sense, gentlemen, one may consider a highly developed organ for force in the Caucasian brain almost the equivalent of an organ for murder in a certain kind of Asiatic or Negroid cranium: it will inevitably cause this Asiatic or Negroid man to commit murder, though it might not have the same result in the case of the Caucasian, whose brain most excels in the countervailing special organs of ideality, conscientiousness, amativeness and mirthfulness.’
Lord Batterstone’s trademark gesture of draining his glass of wine and pushing it away: end of speech. His noble face lit up by the sincerity of his convictions, the purity of his heart and blood. A moment of silence. Then thunderous applause from almost everyone except Captain Meadows and the Captain’s two staunch supporters, Mrs Grayper and her daughter, the lovely Mary. Meadows wondered what they would tell Major Grayper when he joined the three of them for dinner at the Grayper residence later that evening. He was looking forward to the dinner, as he always looked forward to his moments with Mary, but he could not help feeling that the steely Major Grayper, with those piercing grey eyes and pursed lips, tight in thought and suspicion, would side with Lord Batterstone.
22
Night has fallen when the three men walk into the opium den. The woman who runs it recognizes one of them as the man who had tossed her a coin just for messing up her hair when she — the old woman chuckles — had been preparing herself for more, much more than that. She does not like him but he obviously has money, and she likes money. Oh, she loves money, much more than her niece Jenny, who should be coming back soon, wants her to. But Jenny, thinks the old woman, Jenny has ideas. She is a nice girl, an affectionate, hard-working girl, but she has ideas, and she will get into trouble because of them. Like gambolling around with that Indian prince she has brought to this place twice already. Not that the old woman has anything against Indians and Chinese and suchlike, they pay more readily than the English do, but whoever heard of a charwoman and servant gambolling with a prince!
She bestirs herself for the new guests — there are three men already lying in an opiate daze in her den — and prepares a pipe for them. But only one of them, the tall wasted one with an eye-patch and the slow gestures of someone long acquainted with opium, accepts the pipe and pulls on it with appreciation. She is surprised. But they pay double what anyone would and she does not complain. What she does not like is the way they keep staring at her and looking around her den. Could they be policemen? But no, nothing she does is seriously illegal, and would a policeman come in and smoke? Still, perhaps she should ask around a little, find out if others had reported the presence of such men in their places too.
The men leave in fifteen minutes, and when they push aside the flap that serves as the curtain of the door, they almost run into the young woman coming in. Her clothes are dirty and she smells of sweat and dust, but she is uncommonly pretty, with straight, well-formed limbs and high cheekbones, long hair done up in a clean bun; the men notice her. They are also too sober a group and at least John May is too well-dressed for this place; she notices them too, if only in passing.
‘Oy Jenny, yer back’, says the old woman in a voice, like her life, of bits and pieces, saving and borrowing and patching and hoarding. An’ ain’t no Injun prince wi’ yer, m’gul? Wuz’t ’is granpa the Great Mogul they ses just upped and died in Inja?’
She chortles at her own joke and starts hustling the customers out, for she knows that Jenny does not like to see too much evidence of her trade, and it is time for the aunt and daughter to retire for the night. It has been nineteen or twenty years now, she recalls, that they have been sharing these smelly, dank quarters; ever since Jenny’s mother first handed her the girl, then a baby of four, or was it three, before being taken to Newgate and from there to that upside-down place, the land of black swans, Australia. That is where she must have died, for they never heard of, or from her, again.
23
Mrs Grayper and Mary withdrew for a few moments, as was proper, and the men moved to the parlour fireplace to smoke. Carried away by the conversation and Mary’s presence, Captain Meadows had drunk and eaten more than he should have, and he welcomed the opportunity to stand up and smoke a pipe. Major Grayper never smoked a pipe; it was one of his idiosyncracies: he lit his trademark cigar, studying its end for almost a minute before biting it off instead of using a clipper. The men puffed in silence, Meadows reclining against the fireplace, the Major sitting in his favourite armchair in one corner of the room.
The two men were used to such silences between them: they preferred them to discussions which were likely to go awry. For, while they were polite and courteous to a fault — the Major because it was the wish of his wife who considered Meadows a good catch for her daughter, and Captain Meadows for the sake of Mary — the two men seldom agreed on anything.
It was a sign of the high esteem in which he was held by his peers that, despite Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Rowan’s and Richard Mayne’s total agreement with Sir Robert Peel on the issue of not employing gentlemen of the retired officer class, Major Grayper had been made a superintendent in the new force. He was known to be one of the most succ
essful Metropolitan police superintendents in the land, once praised by Sir Peel in person and reportedly admired even by the famous private investigator, Mr Seaton Holmes, but he was also known as a man who did not give criminals, or anyone, a second chance. No, Major Grayper did not hold much hope for those who had failed even once. One life, one chance. You needed to be the Son of God to raise the dead, and even He did not raise them from death twice, did He?
It was only when Mary and Mrs Grayper returned to join the men that the conversation resumed. And it resumed on the topic that had engrossed the three, under the Major’s bemused gaze, through most of dinner: Captain Meadows’ pet, the thug he had brought from India and whose tale he was transcribing. Major Grayper sat back, his eyes half closed, and listened to the women enthuse about the thug, Mr Ali as his wife called him, who, it appeared, had been displayed yet again to the gathering at that society of phrenology his wife and Captain Meadows kept asking him to subscribe to. Major Grayper had nothing against phrenology, but he did not need to feel the skull of a man to know whether he was a criminal: you could tell from any scoundrel’s background, language, gait, clothes, eyes, from so many things. Criminality always revealed itself: only the blind refused to see it.
‘It impresses me, Captain’, his wife said, gasping a little as she often did these days when she got excited or exerted herself, ‘the way you underline the possibilities of the science not as an instrument of condemnation but as a corrective, a possibility, and I suppose this is what Lord Batterstone cannot accept.’
‘There is a lot that Lord Batterstone cannot accept, Mama.’ Mary laughed, her yellow hair rippling like her laughter in the firelight.
‘No, Mary, I think what he finds most difficult is exactly this. In Captain Meadows’ hands, Mr Ali is proof of what a proper study of character can be used for, how it can be employed to redeem a person, perhaps even an entire race. But for Lord Batterstone, everything has to remain the way it is, people cannot be changed.’
