MILLICENT
BELL
107
love," is separated only by a misplaced letter from Mrs. Moore's own
belief. Her influence restores understanding between Aziz and
Fielding, though they cannot be friends. She is remembered by Pro–
fessor Godbole who associates her with a wasp whom he finds it pos–
sible to love as part of the All (and the reader remembers how she
had once looked affectionately at a wasp). She is present in her
daughter, now Fielding's wife, and her son - who have their mother's
"oriental" sensibility.
The festival itself pulses with a mixture of elements more
ludicrous than splendid. "This approaching triumph of India was a
muddle ... a frustration of reason and form." The image of the
God, "the size of a teaspoon," is surrounded by hopeless clutter and
noise; the sacred mood expresses itself in childish games in which the
worshippers smear each other with butter or greasy rice and play
rude jokes. Godbole is hardly inspiring: "He was barefoot and in
white, he wore a pale blue turban; his gold pince-nez had caught in a
jasmine garland, and lay sideways down his nose." And he dances–
"his little legs twinkling ... noise, noise, the Europeanized band
louder, incense on the altar, sweat, the blaze of lights, wind in the
bananas, noise, thunder, eleven-fifty by his wrist-watch, seen as he
threw up his hands." One can see why the filmmaker preferred to
substitute a vague
picturesqe~ness
for such scenes. And Alec Gui–
ness can do no more with Godbole than make him an old bore who
had irritated Fielding earlier by mouthing transcendental platitudes
when called upon to support Aziz:
"The action was performed by Dr. Aziz." He stopped and sucked
in his thin cheeks. "It was performed by the guide." He stopped
again. "It was performed by you." Now he had an air of daring
and coyness. "It was performed by me." He looked shyly down
the sleeve of his own coat. "And by my students. It was even per–
formed by the lady herself. When evil occurs it expresses the
whole of the universe. Similarly when good occurs."
The film is unable to suggest that the Hindu's "all is one," though
presented with a certain irony by Forster, was an answer to indeter–
mmacy.
Forster did not disapprove when Miss Rau omitted the last sec–
tion of the novel in a 1960 play version. He said, "I tried to indicate
the human predicament in a universe which is not, so far, compre–
hensible to our minds. This aspect of the novel is displayed in its
