As soon as the landau had arrived at the opium factory the Collector handed Miriam over to Mr Rayne and vanished about his business in the neighbourhood. Mr Rayne then handed her over in turn to one of his deputies, Mr Simmons, and instructed him to show her the process by which opium is refined. Mr Simmons was a little younger, Miriam found, than her brother; he was a nice young man whose freckled skin was peeling seriously in several places. Not many ladies visited the factory and Mr Simmons, in any case, was unused to their company. His manner was excessively deferential and he blushed frequently for no apparent reason. In addition, he was very zealous in his explanations and allowed few details of the preparation of opium to escape Miriam’s notice. He conducted her round immense iron vats and invited her to peer at mysterious fermenting liquids … mysterious because although Miriam was told all about them, she discovered that Mr Simmons’s words slipped through her mind like fish through a sluice-gate the instant after he had spoken them … this was embarrassing and she had to be careful that he did not notice. But gradually it became clear that although Mr Simmons was overwhelmed by the superior qualities of the gentler sex, to the extent that a too personal smile or frown from her would have crushed him as easily as a moth beneath the sole of her shoe, he did not include the possibility of intelligence among these qualities. He did not expect to be understood or remembered from one instant to the next.
Miriam was content, however. The drowsy scent of the poppy hung everywhere in the hot darkness of the warehouses and lulled her senses. She felt wonderfully at peace and was sorry when at last the tour came to an end and she was taken to watch the workmen making the finished opium into great balls, each as big as a man’s head, which would be packed forty to a chest and auctioned in Calcutta. Each of these head-sized balls, explained Mr Simmons quietly but with the air of someone speaking his words into a high wind, would fetch about seventy-six shillings, while to the ryot and his family the Government paid a mere four shillings a pound. As he talked he nervously scratched his peeling wrists and brow while Miriam, diverted, sleepily tried to think of a sensible question and watched the falling flakes of skin drift to the ground.
When the Collector returned, Miriam smuggled a last yawn into her gloved hand, said goodbye to Mr Simmons and climbed back into the landau, which now had its hood raised against the sun. Mr Simmons blushed again and a few more flakes of skin drifted away. Miriam raised her gloved hand to wave and the yawn it was holding seemed to float away on the poppy-scented air. She would have liked to recommend a certain pomade to Mn Simmons but was afraid that in doing so she might crush him like a moth beneath her shoe. How sleepy she felt! If the Collector began to talk to her she would never be able to stay awake.
Before they had properly emerged from the jungle of scrub on to the road an incident occurred to revive her. A naked man suddenly stepped out on to the track they were following. He was tall and well built; in one hand he carried the trident of the devotee of Siva, in the other a brass pot containing smouldening embers. His hair and beard hung in untidy yellowish ropes over his bronzed body, almost as far as his male pants. In a moment the landau had creaked and swayed past him; the path was deeply rutted and they kept rising and falling, as if in a small boat breasting a succession of unexpected waves. The Collector could not help turning to Miriam sternly, shocked on her behalf… but Miriam’s cheeks had only pinkened slightly and she said with a faint smile: “You must tell me why such men do not wear clothes, Mr Hopkins. In winter they must surely feel the cold.”
“I believe that he must belong to a Hindu sect which has renounced the material world. Such men see their nakedness as a symbol of this renunciation and keep a fire constantly burning at their side to signify the burning up of earthly desires.” He added reluctantly: “One can’t help but admire the rigour with which they pursue their beliefs.”
“Even though they follow an erroneous path?”
“One has to admit, Mrs Lang, that few Christians follow the true one with as much zeal. Indeed, this renders the conversion of the native very difficult for beside this ascetic fervour he sees the Christian priest living in a comfortable house with a wife and family … and I fear he’s not impressed. Not only the clergyman but the whole Christian community must seem very dissolute to him, I’m afraid … What use is it if we bring the advantages of our civilization to India without also displaying a superior morality? I believe that we are all part of a society which by its communal efforts of faith and reason is gradually raising itself to a higher state … There are rules of morality to be followed if we are to advance, just as there are rules of scientific investigation … Mrs Lang, we are raising ourselves, however painfully, so that mankind may enjoy in the future a superior life which now we can hardly conceive! The foundations on which the new men will build their lives are Faith, Science, Respectability, Geology, Mechanical Invention, Ventilation and Rotation of Crops! …”
The Collector talked on and on but Miriam, soothed by the heat and the poppy fumes, cradled by the worn leather upholstery of the landau, found that her eyelids kept creeping down in spite of herself. Even when the Collector began to shout, as he presently did, about the progress of mankind, about the ventilation of populous quarters of cities, about the conquest of ignorance and prejudice by the glistening sabre of man’s intelligence, she could not manage to keep her eyes properly open.
And so, as the landau creaked away into the distance, dust pouring back from the chimneys of its wheels, the Collector’s shouts rang emptily over the Indian plain which stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction, and Miriam fell at last into a deep sleep.
In the meantime, although Fleuny had not yet noticed it, Hari’s good humour had deserted him. He continued to point things out to Fleury … some embroidered rugs and parasols, and a collection of sea-shells, but he did so carelessly, as if it were of no importance to him whether on not Fleury found them of interest.
“You know also how to make daguerrotype, I suppose.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Not? Ah? But I thought all advance people …” Hari raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Hari,” said Fleuny presently, and from his tone it was hard to tell whether he was breathless with excitement or was simply having trouble keeping up with his host, who was now bounding along a dim inner corridor at the greatest speed. “I say, I hope you don’t mind me calling you Hari, but I feel that we understand each other so well …”
The speed and gloom which attended their progress prevented Fleury from seeing Hari’s frostily raised eyebrow.
“Would you mind if we went a little slower? It’s fearfully hot.” But Hari appeared not to hear this request.
“Do we understand each other? Sit here, please.”
They had entered a whitewashed room giving on to the courtyard Fleuny had seen earlier from above. No sooner had he stepped over the threshold than he was seized by a fit of coughing, for the air in here was laden with mercury vapour and a variety of other fumes no less toxic, emanating from crystals and solutions of chlorine, bromine, iodine, and potassium cyanide. On a table there was a mercury bath, a metal container in the shape of an invented pyramid with a spirit lamp already burning beneath it. A camera box had been placed on an ornate metal stand, pointing at a chair by the window. Still coughing, Fleury was steered towards the chair and made to sit down; it had a nod at the back surmounted by an iron crescent for keeping the sitter’s head still. Fleuny’s head was forced firmly back into it and some adjustments were made behind him, tightening two thin metal clamps which nestled in his hair above each ear.