The Siege of Krishnapur

by James Gordon Farrell

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Dr McNab still hasn’t offered any evidence to support his strange methods which amount, it seems, to pumping water into cholera victims. Nor has he provided any evidence to support his belief that cholera is spread in drinking water. Now, ladies and gentlemen, shouldn’t we give him his opportunity ?” And Dr Dunstaple laughed, though in a rather chilling manner.

  As before in the cellar, all eyes turned to McNab who, once again, happened to be leaning against a wall at the back. On this occasion, however, his calm appeared to have been ruffled by Dr Dunstaple’s words and he replied with a note of impatience in his voice: “If any evidence were needed it would be enough to see what happens when a weak saline solution is injected into the veins of a patient in the condition of collapse. His shrunken skin becomes filled out and loses its coldness and pallor. His face assumes a natural look … he’s able to sit up and breathe more normally and for a time seems well … My dear Dr Dunstaple, perhaps you could explain to us why, if the symptoms are caused, as you seem to believe, by damage to the lungs or by a poison circulating in the blood and depressing the action of the heart … why it’s possible that these symptoms should thus be suspended by an injection of warm water holding a little salt in solution?”

  Dr McNab had asked this question with a smile. But the smile only irritated Dr Dunstaple and he bellowed: “Rubbish! Let Dr McNab give his reasons for saying that cholera is spread by the drinking of infected water!” He paused a moment to let his words sink in, and then added: “Perhaps he’ll explain away the case, reported officially to the Royal College of Physicians, of a dispenser who accidentally swallowed some of the so-called ‘rice-water’ matter voided by a patient in a state of collapse from cholera… but who suffered no ill-effects whatsoever!”

  “No, I can’t explain that,” replied McNab, who had now recovered his composure and was speaking in his usual calm tone. “Any more than I can explain why cholera should have always attacked those of our soldiers who had recently arrived in the Crimea in preference to those who had been there for some time … Or why, as has been suggested, Jews should be immune to cholera, and many other things about this mysterious disease.”

  Ah, it had been a mistake to mention Jews. The Magistrate could see people thinking: “Jews! Whatever next!”

  “How d’you explain its high incidence in places known to be malodorous?”

  “It should be obvious that in the crowded habitations of the poor, who live, cook, eat, and sleep in the same apartment and pay little regard to the washing of hands, the evacuations of cholera victims which are almost colourless and without odour can be passed from one person to another. It has often been noted that the disease is rarely contracted by medical, clerical or other visitors who don’t eat and drink in the sickroom. And consider how severely the mining districts were affected in each of the epidemics in Britain. The pits are without privies and the excrement of the workmen lies about everywhere so that the hands are liable to be soiled by it. The pitmen remain underground for eight or nine hours at a time and invariably take food down with them into the pits and eat it with unwashed hands and without a knife and fork. The result is that any case of cholera in the pits has an unusually favourable situation in which to spread.”

  “Gentlemen,” interrupted the Collector, “it’s clear that the difference between you is a deeply felt and scientific one which none of us here are qualified for adjudicating … To an impartial observer it seems that there’s something to be said on either side …” The Collector hesitated. “Let us therefore be content, until the … er … march of science has freed us from doubt, to take precautions against either eventuality. Let us take care, on the advice of Dr Dunstaple, to ventilate our rooms, our clothes and our persons as best we can lest cholera be present in an invisible poisonous miasma. And at the same time let us take care with washing and cleanliness and other precautions to see that we don’t ingest the morbid agent in any liquid or solid form. As for the treatment of those unfortunate enough to contract the disease, let them choose whichever approach seems to them the most expressive of reason.”

  The Collector fell silent, hoping that these words might bring the meeting to an end without leaving too great a schism between the two factions. But Dr Dunstaple’s bitterness was too great to be satisfied with this armistice.

  “Dr McNab still hasn’t granted my request for evidence that cholera is spread by drinking water. Does he expect us to be convinced by his words about the prevalence of cholera in the pits? Ha! He’s forgotten to mention, by some slip of the memory, the one fact about the pits which is known to everyone … the impurity of the air breathed by the pitmen! Moreover, I should warn those present of the risks they expose themselves to under McNab’s treatment … which is, however, not a treatment at all, but a waste of time. Let him who is prepared, should McNab decide on another experiment, to have needles driven into his stomach, allow himself to be treated by this charlatan. I believe I’ve done my duty in making this plain.”

  “I shall also give a warning to those present, to the effect that, in my view, nothing could be worse for the treatment of cholera than the warm baths, mustard-plasters and compresses recommended by Dr Dunstaple, which can only further reduce the water content of the blood … No medicine could be more dangerous in cholera collapse than opium, and calomel in the form of a pill is utterly useless.”

  “Thank you, Dr McNab,” put in the Collector hurriedly, but McNab paid no attention to him.

  “As for the evidence that cholera is spread in drinking-water, there is, as Dr Dunstaple should be well aware, a considerable amount of evidence to support this view. I’ll mention one small part of it only … evidence collected as a result of the epidemics of 1853 and 1854 by Dr Snow and which concerns the southern districts of London. These districts, with the exception of Greenwich and part of Lewisham and Rotherhithe, are supplied with water by two water companies, one called the Lambeth Company, and the other the Southwark and Vauxhall Company. Throughout the greater part of these districts the supply of water is intimately mixed, the pipes of both companies going down all the streets and into almost all the courts and alleys. At one time the two water companies were in active competition and any person paying the rates, whether landlord or tenant, could change his water company as easily as his butcher or baker … and although this state of things has long since ceased, and the companies have come to an arrangement so that the people cannot now change their supply, all the same, the result of their earlier competition remains. Here and there one may find a row of houses all having the same supply, but very often two adjacent houses are supplied differently. And there’s no difference in the circumstances of the people supplied by the two companies each company supplies rich and poor alike.

  “Now in 1849 both companies supplied virtually the same water … the Lambeth Company got theirs from the Thames close to the Hungerford Bridge; the Southwark and Vauxhall Company got theirs at Battersea-fields. Each kind of water contained the sewage of London and was supplied with very little attempt at purification. In 1849 the cholera epidemic was almost equally severe in the districts supplied by each company.

  “Between the epidemic of 1849 and that of 1853 the Lambeth Company removed their works from Hungerford Bridge to Thames Ditton, beyond the influence of the tide and out of reach of London’s sewage. During the epidemic of 1854 Dr Snow uncovered the following facts … out of 134 deaths from cholera during the first four weeks, 115 of the fatal cases occurred in houses supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Company, only 14 in that of the Lambeth Company’s houses, and the remainder in houses that got their water from pump wells or direct from the river. Remember, this was in districts where houses standing next to each other very often had a different water supply.”

  “Pure reason!” ejaculated the Magistrate. “It will be too much for them. Ha! Ha!” If anything was destined to distract the assembly from an objective consideration of rival arguments it was this strange, almost mad, outbur
st from the Magistrate. Dr McNab continued, however: “During the epidemic as a whole which lasted ten weeks there were 2,443 deaths in houses supplied by Southwark and Vauxhall as against 313 in those supplied by the Lambeth Company. Admittedly the former supplied twice as many houses as the latter… but if the fatal cases of cholera during the entire epidemic are taken in proportion to the houses supplied, it will be seen that there were 610 deaths out of 10,000 houses supplied by the South wark and Vauxhall Company, whereas there were only 119 out of 10,000 supplied by the Lambeth Company. I challenge Dr Dunstaple to deny in the face of this evidence that cholera is not spread by drinking water!”

  The effect of Dr McNab’s arguments was by no means as overwhelming as might be supposed; with the best will in the world and in ideal circumstances it is next to impossible to escape cerebral indigestion as someone quotes comparative figures as fluently as Dr McNab had just been doing. The audience, their minds gone blank, stared craftily at Dr McNab wondering whether this was a conjuring trick in which he took advantage of their stupidity. Very likely it was. The audience, too, was painfully hungry and yet in the presence of food which was not apparently destined for their stomachs; this made them feel weak and peevish. The heat, too, was atrocious; the air in the hall was stagnant and the audience stinking. Every time you took a breath of that foul air you could not help imagining the cholera poison gnawing at your lungs. Even Fleury, who was perfectly conscious of the force of McNab’s arguments, nevertheless gave a visceral assent to those of Dr Dunstaple.

  What would have happened if Dr Dunstaple had replied to Dr McNab’s challenge it is hard to say. He had taken a seat on the stairs while McNab was speaking. As he finished, however, he sprang to his feet, his face working with rage, his complexion tinged with lavender. He opened his mouth to speak but his words were drowned by a volley of musket fire nearby and the crash of a round shot which brought down a shower of plaster on the heads of his audience.

  “Stand to arms!” came a cry from outside, and immediately everyone began to disperse in pandemonium (and more than one tin of food was accidentally grabbed up in the confusion). The Doctor was left to wave his arms and shout; he could not be heard above the din. However, he had one final argument, more crushing than any he had yet delivered, and for this he needed no words. From his alpaca coat he whipped a medicine bottle of colourless fluid, flourished it significantly at Dr McNab and drank it all off. What was in the bottle that he had thus publicly drained to the last drop? The Doctor himself did not say. Yet it did not require much imagination to see that it could only be one thing: the so-called “rice-water” fluid from a cholera patient, which Dr McNab claimed was so deadly. Against this argument Dr McNab’s tiresome statistics could not hope to compete.

  27

  At first, there had been great enthusiasm over the Collector’s decision to suppress the rights of property in the food that was to have been auctioned and to give a share to everybody. But this enthusiasm swiftly evaporated and soon it became difficult to find anyone who was satisfied with it, let alone enthusiastic. A share for everybody would mean less than half a mouthful … and if “everybody” meant natives as well, the amount you received would hardly be worth opening your jaws for. The food in question had, of course, belonged to the dead; but now the living who still possessed their own meagre stores began to fear for their safety. Prices had already quadrupled during the siege; now a frenzy of economic activity took place in which more than one lady gave a handful of pearls for a bottle of honey or a box of dates. This was regarded by many of the erstwhile “bolting” party as the twilight of reason before the Collector’s increasingly communistic inclinations demanded that you give up not only your stores, but perhaps your spare clothes, and, who knows? maybe even your wife as well. Others, conscious that they were eating the equivalent of a diamond brooch or a sapphire pendant, sat down to a last giddy meal, eating before the Collector could get his hands on it, all at once, what they had hoarded for weeks. Exasperated by this foolishness, the Collector told Mr Simmons to distribute the extra food with the rations as quickly as possible.

  “The rations?”

  “The normal daily rations of the food in the Commissariat.” The Collector looked at Mr Simmons as if he were being obtuse.

  “There’s no food left in the Commissariat … None to speak of, anyway.”

  The Collector went with Mr Simmons to have a look. What he had said was quite true; there was almost nothing left. There remained a little grain and rice in the Church, but in the vestry there was nothing. So again the rations had to be reduced. Since there was no meat left now, the ration from now on until the supplies were exhausted would consist of one handful of either rice or dal and one of flour per person, the men being given a more generous helping than the women and children. The Collector estimated that at this rate they might carry on for another two or three weeks. Then it would all be over.

  It was not only food that was running short; the Collector was shocked to see how little powder and shot remained … the mine, the fougasses, and the firing of chain shot to clear the foliage had seriously depleted what he had considered an ample provision of powder; if used sparingly it might last for two weeks, but the shot was almost exhausted. Of ready-made balled cartridge there remained only two full boxes and one half full. As for cannon balls, canister, and so forth … The Collector scowled disagreeably.

  Towards evening Fleury was leaning against the rampart at the banqueting hall staring dully out over the foliage, occupied in vague thoughts about food and reviewing in his mind various outstanding meals he had eaten in the course of his existence. What a fool he had been to waste so much time being “poetic” and not eating. He uttered a groan of anguish. On the cantonment and river sides of the banqueting hall there had been no firing of chain shot to clear the jungle: this was partly to save powder, partly because the banqueting hall was, anyway, higher than the surrounding land and thus more difficult to surprise; there were also natural clearings to be seen here and there where the ground was too stony for a thick growth. From the edge of one of these clearings Chloë suddenly flushed a sepoy.

  Although he had not recognized her immediately Fleury had noticed Chloë a moment earlier as she came trotting into the clearing; since he had last set eyes on her Chloë’s golden curls had grown foul and matted and in places mange had already begun to remove them; a cloud of flies followed her and every few yards she stopped to scratch. Abruptly she noticed that a man was hiding in the under-growth and some recollection of the carefree days of her life before the siege must have stirred in her. Instead of taking to her heels, as any sensible pariah dog would have done, she advanced wagging her tail to sniff at him. For a few seconds the sepoy tried discreetly to shoo her away, hoping to be able to continue unobserved his stealthy creeping through the jungle. But Chloë, still under the influence of distant memory, thought that he was playing a game with her and wagged her tail even harder. Infuriated, the sepoy sprang out of his hiding and flourished his sabre with the clear intention of butchering this loathsome feringhee dog. Again and again he swiped at Chloë, but she remained convinced that this was a game and every time her friend approached she darted away and went to sit somewhere else in the clearing, her tail brushing the ground frantically.

  Fleury urgently pointed out the sepoy to Ram; he had left his own rifle inside the hall. He watched in agony as Ram, with the deliberate movements of long service and old age, tore the cartridge, emptied the powder into the muzzle, and took his ramrod to drive down the rest of the cartridge.

  Having finished loading, Ram stopped to scratch the back of his head, which was rather itchy, and then his elbow, which had been bitten by a mosquito some days earlier but which still itched occasionally. All this time Fleury gazed speechless and appalled as the sepoy sped back and forth in the clearing like a trout in a restaurant tank. Ram was now raising his gun as calmly as the waiter who dips his net into the tank … ah, but Ram had paused again, this time to cough and t
o smooth back his white mustaches which had been somewhat disarranged by the gust of air from his cough … then he took aim at the gliding sepoy, there was a sudden wild foaming and thrashing of water, and the sepoy lay gasping on the turf. A final electric spasm shook his frame, and then he lay still.

  Fleury turned away, sickened, for Chloë had wasted no time in bounding forward to eat away the sepoy’s face. He told Ram to kill her as well and hurried away to take refuge in the banqueting hall and try to erase from his mind the scene he had just witnessed. Presently, as he sat by himself in a remote corner of the banqueting hall, he noticed on the wall beside him an ascending column of white ants; as they reached the ceiling they spread their wings and slowly drifted down in a delicate living veil. Once they reached the ground they shook their wings violently, until they fell off. Then the white, wingless creatures crawled away.

  “How strange it is,” mused Fleury, feeling the futility of everything yet at the same time enjoying the feeling, “that these millions of wings, with all their wonderful machinery of nerves and muscles, should be made to serve the purpose of a single flight. How sad it is to behold how little importance life has for nature, these myriads of creatures called into being only to be immediately destroyed.” And he sat for a long time in a melancholy reverie as the ants continued to drift down, thinking of the futility of all endeavour. When at last he came to his senses, rather ashamed of his lapse into sensitivity, the floor around him was thickly carpeted with tiny discarded wings, as if with the residue of his own aerial poetic thoughts.

  Fleury had been expecting that Louise would pay him a visit before she retired to bed. While indulging his melancholy thoughts he had taken care to position himself in a nobly pensive attitude, with the candle at his side lending a glistening aureole to his dark profile. But in due course the candle coughed, spat, and went out, and there was no sign of Louise. Later in the evening a rumour spread that Dr Dunstaple had cholera. Harry immediately hurried away to the Residency, very agitated. Fleury would have liked to have gone, too, but both he and Harry could not go at the same time; someone had to stay behind to fight off the sepoys.