'Make tea, Hasan,' said Halliday.
'There is a room for me?' said Birkin.
To both of which questions the man grinned, and murmured.
He made Gerald uncertain, because, being tall and slender and reticent,
he looked like a gentleman.
'Who is your servant?' he asked of Halliday. 'He looks a swell.' 'Oh yes--that's because he's dressed in another man's clothes. He's
anything but a swell, really. We found him in the road, starving. So I
took him here, and another man gave him clothes. He's anything but what
he seems to be--his only advantage is that he can't speak English and
can't understand it, so he's perfectly safe.' 'He's very dirty,' said the young Russian swiftly and silently.
Directly, the man appeared in the doorway.
'What is it?' said Halliday.
The Hindu grinned, and murmured shyly: 'Want to speak to master.' Gerald watched curiously. The fellow in the doorway was goodlooking and
clean-limbed, his bearing was calm, he looked elegant, aristocratic.
Yet he was half a savage, grinning foolishly. Halliday went out into
the corridor to speak with him.
'What?' they heard his voice. 'What? What do you say? Tell me again.
What? Want money? Want MORE money? But what do you want money for?'
There was the confused sound of the Hindu's talking, then Halliday
appeared in the room, smiling also foolishly, and saying: 'He says he wants money to buy underclothing. Can anybody lend me a
shilling? Oh thanks, a shilling will do to buy all the underclothes he
wants.' He took the money from Gerald and went out into the passage
again, where they heard him saying, 'You can't want more money, you had
three and six yesterday. You mustn't ask for any more. Bring the tea in
quickly.' Gerald looked round the room. It was an ordinary London sitting-room in
a flat, evidently taken furnished, rather common and ugly. But there
were several negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa, strange and
disturbing, the carved negroes looked almost like the foetus of a human
being. One was a woman sitting naked in a strange posture, and looking
tortured, her abdomen stuck out. The young Russian explained that she
was sitting in child-birth, clutching the ends of the band that hung
from her neck, one in each hand, so that she could bear down, and help
labour. The strange, transfixed, rudimentary face of the woman again
reminded Gerald of a foetus, it was also rather wonderful, conveying
the suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation, beyond the limits
of mental consciousness.
'Aren't they rather obscene?' he asked, disapproving.