Mr Little was impatient by nature. The humid heat of Bombay, which always covered his face with sweat, had not improved his nerves. He glanced up at the electric fan over his head, he shifted his chair, he shuffled papers. His throat felt parched. He wished he could get up to pour himself out a stiff whisky. But duty called; duty, stern voice of the daughter of God, and Wordsworth suffered from the effect of the heat.
He bent down to the table, stretching for the trays into which he had roughly sorted the letters. He knew he must attend to Sir Reginald’s orders first.
‘Screwwallah!’ he called.
A young Indian clerk came in, dressed in a white cotton English suit and boat-like black cap, the new National headgear with which he hoped to balance up the prestige of his motherland against his predilection for European dress. His dark face was full of fear, because he had never felt quite at ease with white men ever since one had kicked him at the corner of Hornby Road for no other crime than the childish curiosity which had made him stare with wonder and admiration at the Sahib. He stood tense and still.
‘For heaven’s sake sit down! You give me the creeps, standing there like that!’ shouted Mr Little.
‘Yes, sir,’ the clerk mumbled, his underlip quivering, his brown eyes full of fear and shame.
‘Take this down,’ ordered Mr Little in an even voice.
The clerk thought that the Sahib had recovered somewhat, and seated himself on an iron chair at the edge of the large desk. The cool draughts of air from the fan soothed the heat of his body. He lowered his eyes to the shorthand notebook to avoid staring at the Sahib and to be in readiness to take down the letter.
‘Wake up!’ shouted Mr Little suddenly, sending a wild wave of fear through the clerk’s body, so that he drew back instinctively as if he were being hit.
‘Wake up!’ the Sahib repeated, modulating his tone to evenness, as he saw that he had frightened the clerk almost out of his wits. ‘Begin,’ he continued. ‘Notice on top, spelling—N-O-T-I-C-E.’
At this moment a fly settled on Mr Little’s nose. He tried to brush it off. It came back as soon as he opened his mouth to speak.
‘Lalkaka!’ he shouted.
‘Sir,’ came the obedient voice, and following it, from behind the cane chic which discreetly screened the office from the gaze of the world, appeared the Parsee messenger-boy in a shirt and shorts, his profusely oiled hair parted in the middle and giving him a dignity which looked ridiculous in him.
‘Take this fly-killer and strike it on the fly when it settles anywhere in the room.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Lalkaka, and lifted the cane with the shaped leather flap attached to it.
‘Screwwallah!’ said the Sahib. ‘Write.’
The clerk applied pencil to paper.
‘In view of the present trade depression and currency crisis,’
Mr Little dictated, in a slow, deliberate manner, half-closing his eyes and puffing out his cheeks, till the words began to twist and roll like windy rhetoric,
‘the Board of Directors regret to announce that in order to keep the plant running and to curtail expenses, the Mills will go on short time, immediately. There will be no work for the fourth week in every month till further notice. No wages will be paid for that week, but the Management, having the welfare of the workers at heart, have sanctioned a substantial allowance. This change will take effect from May 10th.’
(signed) Sir Reginald White, Bart., President,
Sir George White Mills.
Mr Little was about to listen to the clerk’s usual recitation of what he had taken down, when the fly settled on his forehead. He looked frowningly at Lalkaka.
Lalkaka struck the flap of the fly-killer on the Sahib’s forehead, the Sahib’s frown having resolved his doubt about the advisability of killing the fly.
‘You damn fool! You bloody fool!’ fumed Mr Little, as he rose wildly from his chair, rubbing his forehead with his right hand and gesticulating impotently with the left. He would have kicked the boy out of the room, but the telephone bell rang the sudden, jarring refrains of its mechanical, steel song: ‘Terr-terr-terr-terr-terr.’
‘Hello! Hello!’ said Mr Little, snatching the receiver from the clerk’s hand. ‘Sir George White Mills!’ he confirmed, his face purple with rage and scarlet where the flap of the fly-killer had struck it. ‘Yes, oh yes, Sir Reginald . . . of course . . . of course! I have just dictated the notice . . . I will call Jimmie and hand it over to him . . . yes, yes . . . of course, you will . . . what time may we expect you? . . . Before lunch. . . . Right, Sir Reginald. . . . Good morning, Sir Reginald, good morning . . . yes. . . . Not too bad, you know. . . . Hot. . . . Stifling. . . . But the orders are coming through. . . . We shall expect you, then, immediately. . . . Good morning.’
‘Go and call the foreman Sahib,’ he said, turning to Lalkaka, who stood near the door, paralysed with fright.
Lalkaka ran out, but came back.
‘Sir, the Sahib is coming.’
‘Hello, Jimmie, good morning. The mill is going on short work from next week.’
‘Goddam all the natives!’ said Jimmie. ‘A peg?’
‘On the sideboard! I am thirsty too. Phew!’
‘What’s it all about?’ said Jimmie, mopping his bald head, and helping himself from the whisky bottle.
‘Screwwallah is typing the notice,’ said Mr Little.
‘Well, here’s to it!’ said Jimmie, handing over a tumbler half full of neat whisky to Mr Little.
‘Reggie will be here before lunch, sonny boy,’ warned the manager. ‘You had better keep steady.’
‘Your funeral,’ returned Jimmie. ‘You’ve got to render the accounts. I don’t need to keep the plant going. It goes on its own.’
‘See that the coolies get the notice only after Reggie has been,’ said Mr Little. ‘You know there are all kinds of fanatics among them.’
‘No, I’ve chucked out the only fanatic,’ assured Jimmie. ‘A fellow who has worked at the Tatas’ and was getting a bit above himself at the instigation of the Reds. Good worker, you know, but we can’t have sedition going about.’
‘Oh, I’ve received an application for his reinstatement from the All India Trade Union Congress this morning. I was going to ask you about him,’ said Little. ‘These damned swine are spreading discontent fast. I wonder why the Government does not do something about it.’
‘There are two factions in it now,’ informed Jimmie, twirling his moustache. ‘The old Indian Trade Union Congress started by Onkar Nath and the Red Flag Union, recently started by a fellow called Jackson, from Manchester.’
‘They should all be put up against a wall and shot, the whole darned lot of them,’ burst out Mr Little.
The sharp hoot of a car outside the office put an end to Little’s vituperation. He rushed out. Jimmie put the glasses away and, lifting the chic on the floor, emerged on to the veranda, steadying himself.
‘Good morning, Little, good morning, Jimmie.’ Sir Reginald greeted, as the liveried English chauffeur opened the door and the middle-aged baronet came out, a tall and well built man with a rather handsome face.
‘Has the notice been posted and explained, Jimmie?’
‘No, sir, I am just going to announce it,’ replied the foreman, feeling the heat of the sun on his scalp as he stood hatless in the compound.
‘I should ask your wife to put on a few more clothes,’ said Sir Reginald, looking towards the foreman’s bungalow, where Mrs Thomas stood in a dressing-gown, excitedly watching the rare event of Sir Reginald’s visit to the factory.
Jimmie flushed red and, glancing towards his bungalow, fumed with anger and then looked up to Sir Reginald apologetically.
‘Well then, Little,’ Sir Reginald began as he proceeded towards the office, where Lalkaka raised the chic for the entry of the great man and the flies. ‘Well, you see, the Board of Directors had serious news about a threatening crisis at home. And in view of the Company’s interests, not only in this mill, b
ut in the Calcutta Jute Mills and the Madras Mines, and to guard against any loss to the shareholders, we have had to take this unfortunate decision. I am awaiting a cable from home and from Clive Street to see how we stand, but if this awful crisis, you see—’
‘The auditors are checking the accounts, Sir Reginald,’ interrupted Little, ‘and the registers are all away. But I think we are quite safe. The last month’s orders have been fairly substantial. But outside competition is pressing—’
‘I am going to the Viceroy with a delegation, recommending a high tariff on foreign goods,’ said Sir Reginald. ‘But the Government is well aware of the position. Lord Wolverhampton is a fine diplomat in the best Disraeli tradition, you know, and we have a sound man at the helm in London. But the trouble is that these Indians are getting more and more restive, and the socialists at home, you know . . . it is all very difficult, what with the Quakers and Gandhists. Did you hear that the Stephenson Mills have been bought over by the Jamsetji Jijibhoy group? That makes the Indian interests in the cotton industry 75 per cent to our 25. It is a bad look-out. ‘But,’ he continued, taking out his watch, ‘it all depends on how . . . well, I will be late for my appointment. Send up the accounts, will you, Little.’ He turned and waited for the manager to lift the chic, then shuffled away, saying: ‘good-bye, good-bye,’ as if a sudden fit of absent-mindedness had made him oblivious of everyone around him.
The coolies were pouring into the compound from the sheds, after hearing the announcement about short work. They gesticulated behind the Chimta Sahib. They saw the long, black, polished body of the Daimler swerve round. They rushed towards it, vaguely aware that the master of the mill was being driven away after pronouncing their doom. They would have fallen at his feet with joined hands if the car had not slid away. They rushed at the Chimta Sahib and begged him with entreaties and prayers not to declare the factory on short work.
The Chimta Sahib abused and threatened to strike any native who came near him or touched him with his dirty hands.
They prayed, they wept, they cried, they stretched their joined hands and prostrated themselves on the earth before him, for they believed somehow that he was the god, the master who could save or destroy them. The Chimta Sahib broke away to the safety of his bungalow. Nadir Khan dispersed the crowd.
Munoo, who knew nothing about directors and shareholders and threatening crises, believed that it was Ratan’s dismissal that had been the cause of this uproar. He determined to go to Chimta Sahib’s bungalow stealthily and beg him to take Ratan back.
He darted into the godown of the factory at the back of the shed where the water-pump stood. There was a vantage point at the far end of the godown whence one could jump over the fence into the garden surrounding the Chimta Sahib’s bungalow.
A brisk run brought him beyond the pump, and he looked back to see that he was not being followed or observed. No. Everything was as good as he could have wished.
He put his left hand on the sharp bamboo edge of the fence and jumped clean over the thorns of the rose trees that grew in the garden.
He hesitated a little on the dusty pathway that led through the garden bowers to the veranda, because no one seemed to be in sight at the bungalow and he did not know how he could approach the Chimta Sahib.
A vision of the foreman’s hulking shape hovering over the veranda urged him on.
His heart was thumping as he came up to the steps of the veranda and faced a memsahib, whom he presumed to be the foreman’s wife.
Nellie Thomas, a dried-up small woman with streaks of grey mixed with her shock of brown hair, her sharp face bright with enthusiasm, her thin hands knitting a jumper with austere impatience, sat with her legs spreading wide on the arm-chair, in defiance of all Munoo’s conception of modesty.
The boy stood afraid for a moment. Then he raised his hand to his forehead and said, ‘Salaam.’
‘Salaam,’ she whispered. And turning to where Jimmie stood helping himself to a peg, shrilled with alacrity: ‘Oh, oh, pretty boy, you do look pretty. You are the worse off for drink and ’ere is an employee to see yer.’
Jimmie Thomas veered round where he stood and flung the bottle of whisky in his hand straight at Munoo, believing that the coolie had come to stab him with a dagger to revenge himself and the other employees for the notice of short work.
‘Murder! Murder!’ shouted Nellie, jumping from the chair.
The coolies of the Sir George White factory crept like ghosts through the waste lands of the mills that afternoon. They seemed to have died all of a sudden; that little spark of life which made them move about willingly had died, and left them a queer race of men, dried-up, shrivelled, hollow-chested, hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed. Their wretchedness had passed beyond the confines of suffering and left them careless, resigned.
‘I went to see the Chimta Sahib about getting your job back,’ said Munoo to Ratan. ‘But he was very angry. He threw a bottle at me. He must be very angry with you that he has passed the order about short work for all of us.’
‘It isn’t his anger with me, idiot, but the big Sahib that is responsible for the order,’ said Ratan. ‘You come with me to the meeting and you will understand. The coolies from all the factories are coming, and the Trade Union is going to declare a strike.’
‘Oh!’ Munoo exclaimed. ‘Then I blamed the Chimta Sahib for nothing.’
‘No, not for nothing,’ shouted Ratan, wildly. ‘He is a scoundrel. I will break his head, you wait and see. And I will break the head of that burra Sahib who comes in his motor-car and cuts your pay.’
Hari walked, bent-backed and bandy-legged, behind them, the blind rage in his heart catching fire from Ratan’s blasting tongue, but smothered by the weight of misery that oppressed him. The other coolies followed, grim and tense like Hari, treading the earth with their big feet and occasionally shaking their heads to greet each other, and spreading out their hands in vague gestures of despair.
The sun cast angry glances at the chimneys of the mills as the huge crowd gathered in the desolate ground outside the bungalow which served as the headquarters of the All India Trade Union Congress. The figures of the coolies were silhouetted against the earth as they waited for the speakers. The babble of many tongues whispering, half in fear, half in expectation, rose in waves. The loud words of an official from the middle of the throng shrilled aloft as a kite or a crow flying in a zigzag curve across the sky. A phrase like ‘down with wage cuts’ soared in the shimmering air and posed itself like a song-bird above the horizon, the fluctuating voice of the myriads of men becoming the one pointed symbol of their poverty, a pregnant cry reverberating with the pain of all these dwellers of the slums, the feeble new-born babes, the naked children with distended stomachs, the youths disfigured by smallpox and sores, the men who were old without ever having been young, the women whose bellies were always protuberant with the weight of the unborn, the aged who hobbled about slobbering down the sides of their mouths and stinking, so that they were the butts for the jokes of their own smelly sons and sons’ sons.
‘Down, down with the Union Jack; up, up with the Red Flag,’ cries rose, and stilled the whole crowd for a moment.
The hatred and revenge latent in the slogan stirred the chords of their beings till their faces flushed and gleams of wild, hot fire shot from their eyes and hovered on their lips.
‘This is an evil age,’ said a wizened old workman, fetching the words from somewhere in the depths of his chest.
‘Indeed?’ said a middle-aged man. ‘How can we live in such times?’
‘By protesting against the wage cuts,’ said a youngster.
‘Aye,’ said the old man, ‘the youths of today have no respect for anybody.’
‘Grandfather,’ returned the youth. ‘I join my hands to you every morning, do I not? But I will not prostrate myself before the burra Sahib in the motor-car. He rides in comfort and I have to walk on the dusty road under the sun. And then he declares the factory on short work.’
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p; ‘Han, he is a bad master, indeed,’ agreed the middle-aged man. ‘My children have no shoes. The little girl hurt her foot on a bit of glass the other day and the doctor says her foot must be cut off.’
‘These Englishmen think a mere pittance can keep us, while they talk git-mit, git-mit with their lendis,’ said the youth, half mockingly. Then he became earnest and exclaimed: ‘But we are members of the Union. What is the Union going to do about it?’
The cry was taken up.
‘What is the Union going to do about it?’ the more enthusiastic members of the congregation shouted.
‘Chup!’ said Ratan, standing up. ‘Onkar Nath, President of the Union, is going to speak to us. Then Sauda Sahib, Mishta Muzaffar and Jackson Sahib of the Red Flag Union. The President, the President; come on. President!’ His face flushed with the dramatic flourish with which he ended up.
‘Come on, President!’ Munoo shouted, taking the cue from his hero.
‘Come on, President!’ the cry was taken up by other members of the throng.
Lalla Onkar Nath, a prim, well-groomed man, dressed in a homespun silk tunic and silk dhoti, came up to the dais. He was about forty, but his hair was greying prematurely, and his eyes and brow wrinkled darkly near the edges of the expensive tortoise-shell glasses. His lower lip was twisted into a sardonic contempt of everything but himself, and gave his whole sleek, clean-shaven face a curious, conceited look which adequately expressed what had happened to him since his Oxford days. He had sought glory for himself through the adoption of a Socialist programme, thinking that either Gandhi or the Government would buy him off in recognition of his balanced policy of compromise. But he had missed the bus. Now he had plunged into the lap of ancient and honourable Mother India and gone back on the modernity he had cultivated in England, though he said he tried to mingle the message of East and West by relating the old Indian ideas of Labour and Capital.
‘Brothers,’ he said, with a dignity that fell flat.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 45