The Other Log of Phileas Fogg

11

When they returned to the bungalow, they found the Parsi still snoring beneath the tree and Sir Francis in the same position in which they had left him. They restored Kiouni to his spot beneath the tree where the beast, half-asleep, began ripping off branches and stuffing them into his mouth. Fogg and Passepartout crept into the bungalow, lay down, and this time both slipped away.

Two hours later, they were awakened by the Parsi. Mr. Fogg asked him if he was tired because of standing watch all night. The Parsi replied that he did not feel in the least fatigued. He could go for several days without a wink of sleep. Mr. Fogg, of course, made no comment.

At six o’clock, two refreshed and two tired men crawled onto the elephant. Kiouni, despite lack of food and sleep, seemed to have vast reservoirs of strength. He went almost as speedily as the day before. Nevertheless, the guide remarked about the beast’s tendency to shy at any sudden movements of the brush or the animals in it. And they had to pause for half an hour to allow Kiouni to eat and so quell some of the rumblings in his stomach.

They passed down the lower branches of the Vindhya Mountains and near noon went by a village on the Kani River, a branch of the great Ganges. The mahout steered Kiouni away from habitations for safety’s sake. Mr. Fogg agreed privately with this decision. The dead rajah’s men would be out looking for them. There was no reason to trouble the Parsi and the general with the story of last night, which, in any event, they would not have believed.

When Allahabad was twelve miles away, they stopped by some banana trees to refresh themselves and Kiouni. Around two, they plunged into another dense jungle. Passepartout was happy that they were so hidden in this but was apprehensive about their nearness to the capital city of Bundelcund. Two hours later, they were still in the dense forest, though the Parsi said that they would soon be out. Passepartout was about to ask him how soon was soon when the beast suddenly stopped.

“What the devil now?” Sir Francis said, sticking his head out of the howdah.

“I do not know, sir,” the Parsi said.

They heard voices, as of many people, coming through the jungle. After a few minutes, they could distinguish both voices and musical instruments of brass and wood. The Parsi descended, tied Kiouni to a tree, and wriggled away through the bush. In a moment, he returned.

“A procession of Brahmins approaches. We must hide.”

He untied the rope from the tree and led the animal with its riders into the green thickness. From their vantage, the three on Kiouni could see the procession. First came priests, then many men, women, and children. The crowd was singing a sad chant intermingled with the beat of tambourines and the clash of cymbals and the wailing of pipes and the strumming of various stringed instruments. After the crowd came a large car with huge wheels drawn by four zebus.

Sir Francis, seeing the hideous statue in the car, whispered to the others, “It’s Kali, the goddess of love and death.”

“Perhaps she is of death,” Passepartout said. “But of love? That old hag? Never!”

The Parsi gestured for silence.

A mob of long-bearded and naked old fakirs were dancing wildly around the idol and cutting themselves with knives.

After them came more Brahmins. They led a young woman who did not seem to be a voluntary member of the parade. Despite her dull expression and dragging steps, she was beautiful. Her hair was black, and her eyes were brown, but her skin was as free of pigment as any Yorkshireman’s. She wore a gold-edged tunic and a light muslin robe which clung to a splendid figure. Bracelets, rings, and earrings set with jewels of many kinds loaded her down.

Accompanying her were men evidently charged with seeing that she did not run away. These carried sabers and long decorated pistols. Four of them also carried a palanquin on which lay a richly dressed corpse.

Fogg said nothing. Passepartout hissed with astonishment. The body was that of the rajah of Bundelcund.

Behind it were musicians and more dancing bloodied fakirs.

Sir Francis, looking sorrowful, said, “It’s a suttee.”

When the parade had passed, Fogg said, “What is a suttee?”

This seems a strange thing for the highly knowledgeable Fogg to ask. Perhaps Verne inserted this question to give Sir Francis a chance to enlighten the reader.

“A suttee is a voluntary human sacrifice. The woman you’ve just seen will be burned at dawn tomorrow.”

“Oh, the scoundrels!” Passepartout cried.

“And the corpse?” Mr. Fogg asked.

“It is that of her husband, an independent rajah of Bundelcund.”

Fogg said, emotionlessly, “Is it possible that these barbarous customs still exist in India? Why haven’t we put a stop to them?”

“They have been terminated in most of India. But we have no power in the savage areas and especially in Bundelcund. The whole district north of the Vindhyas is the theater of unceasing murders and pillage.”

“The miserable woman!” Passepartout said. “Burned alive!”

Sir Francis explained that if a widow somehow got out of the sacrifice, she would be treated with utmost contempt by her relatives, indeed, by all who knew of her refusal to become ashes with her husband. She would have to shave her head and exist on the scantiest of food. She would be less than a pariah, because even a pariah had his own kind to associate with. Eventually, she would die of shame and heartbreak.

Sir Francis did not know that this was not exactly the case with this poor woman. If she could have escaped from Bundelcund, she would have gone to live with her relatives in far-off Bombay. These were Parsis who did not hold with suttee. This sect, descended from Persian fire worshippers whose prophet was Zoroaster, had customs as different from the Hindus as those of the Orthodox Jews from their Gentile neighbors.

The Parsi did not agree with Sir Francis.

“The sacrifice is not willing,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“Everybody knows about this affair in Bundelcund.”

This statement is another of the many puzzlers in Around The World in Eighty Days. The Parsi lived only thirty miles from the borders of Bundelcund. Yet, what with the mountains, the jungle, and the isolation of his small village, he might as well have lived three hundred miles away. The Bundelcundians were hostile to his people and were not likely to exchange news with him through the so-called grapevine, even if it existed. And how would he know that the rajah had died? He had spoken to no one except the three Europeans since the journey started, and the rajah had died only the night before. Yet Verne says he knew all about it.

The truth seems to be that none of the travelers could possibly have known about the situation if Verne’s story were as he reported it. Fogg and Passepartout knew, of course, that the rajah was dead. But they could not say so, and Verne was unaware of what had really happened that night.

However, the Parsi did say that the rajah’s widow was drugged with fumes of hemp and opium. This would have indicated to him that she had been put into a state wherein she would not disgrace herself or the community by resisting.

This is what happened. Verne, like every good novelist, had inserted some remarks of a purely fictional character to inform the reader swiftly about what was going on.

Still, would the impulse to save the woman from this horrible rite have been strong enough for Fogg to act on it? Why should he have endangered his all-important mission and the wager to attempt a seemingly hopeless rescue? Was it just humanity that caused him to interfere? Perhaps it was. Perhaps there was also the fact, unrecorded by anyone, that Fogg fell in love at first sight with the beautiful woman. But the log reveals that there was another, and no doubt stronger, motive. An Eridanean had been planted in the heart of the rajah’s palace. This was the one who had slipped out a description of the domed room in which the rajah kept his distorter. She, for this Eridanean was female, had gotten as close to the rajah as it was possible for anyone to get. Her beauty and charm enabled her to attract the rajah’s attention easily, and from this to marriage was another easy step.

Fogg had been told all this a long time ago by Stuart via a whist game. This is why, just as the journey was about to be resumed, Fogg said, “Suppose we save this woman?”

Sir Francis exclaimed, “What, save this woman, Mr. Fogg?”

“I have twelve hours to spare. I can devote them to this.”

“Why,” Sir Francis said, “you are a man of heart!”

“Sometimes, when I have the time,” Fogg replied.

Sir Francis must have wondered about this man whose emotions could apparently be turned on or off as if they ran through a spigot. What he did not know, of course, was that Fogg could not decide whether or not he would have a certain emotion or not. The emotion came, willy-nilly, but he could shunt it aside, store it in neural circuit where the emotional charge ran around and around the track, like a current in today’s superconductive circuit. But he could not kill the emotion, because it would not die. Sooner or later, he had to pay for the storage, and he would pay double or treble the bill by the time he released it.

The two other Europeans were all for this idea. But what about the Parsi guide? He could not be expected to risk his life, but he might agree to stay behind and wait for them. Even this would be dangerous for him.

He answered that he was a Parsi and that the woman was a Parsi. He was in this with them all the way.

Verne says that the Parsi knew all about her. Probably, Verne got this from Fogg’s public log and inserted the informational conversation about her in the Parsi’s mouth for the benefit of the reader. In any event, we know that she was a famous beauty, the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Bombay. If she were that famous, then the Parsi may have heard about her after all. Travelers coming through his remote village may have gossiped about her.

The woman’s name was Aouda Jejeebhoy, and she had been educated in an English school in Bombay. This, plus her light skin, enabled her to pass as a European. She was related to the wealthy Parsi who had been created a baronet by the queen. He was Sir Jametsee Jejeebhoy, whom the curious reader may find listed, with some biographical details, in Burke’s Peerage.

The Parsi said that after her parents had died, she had been forced to marry the rajah.

(This, of course, was what the rajah and the public believed. She had succeeded in making it look as if she were a victim. If she had been eager to marry him, she would have aroused his suspicions.)

The Parsi, however, was right in saying that she had fled as soon as the rajah died but had been captured and returned to the capital city. The rajah’s relatives were insistent that she perform the suttee, since they did not wish her to inherit the rajah’s wealth.

This was probably true, Fogg thought. If Nemo had found out, or even suspected, that she was an Eridanean, he would have saved her from the suttee. She would be too valuable as a source of information for him to allow her to be wasted on the funeral pyre. But it was possible that Nemo no longer had any influence in Bundelcund and was helpless to prevent her-to him-too-early death.

The Parsi guided the travelers to the temple of Pillaji, where the distressing ceremony was to take place. Thirty minutes later, they were hidden in a dense copse about one hundred and sixty-seven yards from the Brahmin temple. Kiouni made much noise by tearing off branches and eating them, but this could not be helped. The beast was very hungry, and any efforts to stop him might result in his making even more noise. Fortunately, the distance from the crowd, the uproar it was making, and the thick vegetation that surrounded the travelers would keep the Bundelcundians from noticing the sounds the elephant was making.

Fogg questioned the guide about the layout of the area around the temple, its interior design, and the behavior of the Hindus at such occasions. Verne says that the Parsi was familiar with the temple. But why would a Parsi ever have gone into a Hindu temple, especially one in hostile territory? Perhaps, being intelligent, and hence curious, the Parsi had picked up his knowledge by questioning various Hindus of his village, or travelers, who had worshipped there. The Pillaji temple seems to have been a famous one.

The party waited in the copse until night fell. Meanwhile, they were still apprehensive about being discovered. Kiouni had not stopped feeding, and now and then children wandered off from the crowd and came close to the hiding place. Once, three ten-year-olds, playing some sort of hide and seek, started toward the copse. They were quite close when the mother of one came after them. Kiouni was stuffing some broken branches into his mouth at that time, so there was no snapping and cracking of wood to attract her. Also, the wind was blowing toward the travelers and helped to carry the noise away from the crowd.

Even so, they had some anxious moments.

As the sun set, the noise of the mob began to die. Kiouni had by then stripped half of the trees, but, his belly full, was now dozing. The celebrators were not only worn out; they were sleepy from the effects of liquid opium mixed with hemp. This use of such drugs and some other features of Verne’s description of them indicate that the Bundelcundians did not belong to a conventional sect of Hinduism. The Bundelcundians were, after all, devotees of Kali and undoubtedly considered unorthodox even by other branches of this particular worship. There were elements of a pre-Hindu religion in the Bundelcundian religion, probably adopted from the original inhabitants, the small dark peoples who now survived only in the mountain jungles.

Fogg’s record validates Verne’s description, so we can accept it as true that these Kalians did indeed use opium and other drugs.

After dark, the Parsi stole out to observe the situation at close range. He found that all the mob were lying in a stupor, children included. The unfortunate exceptions were the priests and the guards, alert within the temple. Fogg, hearing this, was unperturbed. They would wait on the chance that the people in the temple might go to sleep later.

At midnight, it became apparent that the guards intended to stay up all night. Fogg gave an order, and the travelers went out into a night which lacked a moon, since it was covered by heavy clouds. They stopped at the rear wall of the temple and began chipping away with their pocketknives. Fortunately, after one brick had been removed, the others came out without much labor. Once, they had to retreat into the woods because the guards were disturbed by a cry. This caused Sir Francis and the Parsi to argue that they should give up their rescue attempt. Whatever had caused the cry, the guards would now be even more vigilant. And daylight would soon come.

Fogg replied that he wished to stay until all hope was gone. Something might happen to their advantage.

Passepartout, watching from the branches of a tree, had a sudden inspiration. Without a word to the others, he got down off the tree and slipped off. His act was motivated only by humanity. He had no idea at that time that the woman was a fellow Eridanean.

At dawn, Aouda Jejeebhoy was brought out of the temple. The crowd recovered from its stupor, and the voices and the music became as loud as before. Aouda struggled until she was held over burning hemp and opium and forced to breathe. Sir Francis, greatly moved by this pitiful scene, grabbed Fog g’s hand and found in it an open knife. But Fogg did not rush into the crowd brandishing the knife in a vain effort to save her. Verne says that, at this point, Fogg and the other two men mingled in the rear ranks of the crowd and followed it to the pyre. This is obviously not true, since they would have been noticed at once and set upon. In actuality, they remained at some distance and took care to hide behind bushes.

Verne fails to say what Fogg thought of Passepartout’s unauthorized disappearance. Fogg records that he had assumed that the Frenchman was still up in the tree posted as their lookout.

The three men saw the now senseless woman placed beside the corpse. They saw the oil-soaked wood of the pyre being ignited with a torch. Fogg seems to have lost his self-control. He was about to dash through the crowd when Sir Francis and the Parsi grabbed him. Despite their efforts, he broke free and was about to launch himself again when something unexpected and terrifying happened. The whole crowd, screaming with terror, threw itself on its face and cowered.

The dead rajah had sat up, gotten to his feet, lifted Aouda in his arms, and was now coming down from the pyre. Smoke flowered about him as if he were a devil carrying a poor lost soul through the fires of Hell. He walked through the prostrate mob straight to the party in the rear, all of whom had come out from their concealment.

The reanimated rajah, as everybody knows, was Passepartout. In the darkness, while the crowd slept, he had stripped the corpse, buried it under sticks of wood, put on its clothes, and then lain down in the posture and place of the dead man. In fact, the dead rajah was directly below.

A few moments later, Kiouni, aroused from his sleep, bearing five on his back now, was tearing along as if he fully understood the necessity for a speedy departure. Cries and gunshots sounded behind him, and a bullet pierced Mr. Fogg’s hat. The fire had by then exposed the naked body of the rajah. The worshippers of Kali at once understood not only that they had been duped but in what manner. Inasmuch as they had no elephants or horses at hand, they were soon hopelessly outdistanced.