“And similarly when suffering occurs, and so on and so forth, and everything is anything and nothing something,” he muttered in his irritation, for he needed the solid ground.
“Excuse me, you are now again changing the basis of our discussion. We were discussing good and evil. Suffering is merely a matter for the individual. If a young lady has sunstroke, that is a matter of no significance to the universe. Oh no, not at all. Oh no, not the least. It is an isolated matter, it only concerns herself. If she thought her head did not ache, she would not be ill, and that would end it. But it is far otherwise in the case of good and evil. They are not what we think them, they are what they are, and each of us has contributed to both.”
“You’re preaching that evil and good are the same.”
“Oh no, excuse me once again. Good and evil are different, as their names imply. But, in my own humble opinion, they are both of them aspects of my Lord. He is present in the one, absent in the other, and the difference between presence and absence is great, as great as my feeble mind can grasp. Yet absence implies presence, absence is not non-existence, and we are therefore entitled to repeat, ‘Come, come, come, come.’” And in the same breath, as if to cancel any beauty his words might have contained, he added, “But did you have time to visit any of the interesting Marabar antiquities?”
Fielding was silent, trying to meditate and rest his brain.
“Did you not even see the tank by the usual camping ground?” he nagged.
“Yes, yes,” he answered distractedly, wandering over half a dozen things at once.
“That is good, then you saw the Tank of the Dagger.” And he related a legend which might have been acceptable if he had told it at the tea-party a fortnight ago. It concerned a Hindu Rajah who had slain his own sister’s son, and the dagger with which he performed the deed remained clamped to his hand until in the course of years he came to the Marabar Hills, where he was thirsty and wanted to drink but saw a thirsty cow and ordered the water to be offered to her first, which, when done, “dagger fell from his hand, and to commemorate miracle he built Tank.” Professor Godbole’s conversations frequently culminated in a cow. Fielding received this one in gloomy silence.
In the afternoon he obtained a permit and saw Aziz, but found him unapproachable through misery. “You deserted me,” was the only coherent remark. He went away to write his letter to Miss Quested. Even if it reached her, it would do no good, and probably the McBrydes would withhold it. Miss Quested did pull him up short. She was such a dry, sensible girl, and quite without malice: the last person in Chandrapore wrongfully to accuse an Indian.