The Raj Quartet, Volume 3: The Towers of Silence

The four volumes of the Raj Quartet overlap and complement one another, while at the same time forwarding the main storyline of the slow twilight of the British ascendancy in India, always with the rape of a white girl by Indian men as the central lodestone everpresent in the background, the nightmare which is seldom mentioned but which none can drive from their minds. Events occur, are discussed, witnessed as newspaper reports, court documents, interviews, vague recollections from years later, or perceived directly by the main characters. Then the next volume will take two or three steps back into previous events, and these same events will be perceived from another angle, perhaps only as a vague report heard far away across the Indian plain, or witnessed directly by another character, or discussed in detail long after their occurrence over drinks on a verandah. This may at times seem like rehashing, indeed as one reads the four volumes one will be subjected to the account of the rape in the Bibighar Gardens many times over; but what will also become apparent is that additional details, sometimes minor variations in interpretation and sometimes crucial facts, are being added slowly to the events discussed, as though the window to the past were being progressively wiped cleaner and cleaner with successive strokes of Scott's pen. In this way he draws the picture of the last days of the Raj not in a conventional linear fashion, but recursively, and from multiple angles. One gets the clear impression of life in India during the first half of the 20th century as similar in nature: Fragmented, multifaceted, largely dependent upon perspective and experience and never perceived whole or all at once.Book 3 is the shortest of the four volumes, and may almost be termed a "chamber novel," focusing as it does on the peripheral character of Barbie Batchelor, a retired missionary and lodger at the Laytons' ancestral home. Barbie is an instantly recognizable character: The kind of person who always lurks about the edges of society, awkward, embarrassing, barely tolerated by her peers. Book 3 covers much of the same time period as Book 2, this time from Barbie's point of view and also from that of Teddie Bingham, Susan Layton's husband. Teddie meets Ronald Merrick while on duty and more of Merrick's character and history is filled in. Book 3 then moves beyond the point at which Book 2 ended and continues Barbie's story, her eventual ouster from the Layton's home and slow descent into illness and madness.

This is by far the best and most important book in Scott's Raj Quartet (though you need to have read the first two to appreciate it). The character of Barbie Batchelor makes this the masterpiece that it is. Scott's ability to create a sweeping historical, political, and philosophical panorama through the mind of such a seemingly marginal figure -- a retired missionary teacher of no great brilliance, who may be slowly losing her mind -- is a real achievement.

TOWERS OF SILENCE by Paul Scott is the third book in the Raj Quartet and continues the story of the last days of British rule in India as told mostly from the perspective of English people living in India during this period. The "towers" of the title are many things including quite literally the place where the dead of a particular Indian relgious sect are laid out and their bodies exposed to carrion who devour them. Metaphorically, the towers may represent the place to which the mentally ill retreat after they witness what they believe to be the death of God. In TOWERS at least two people appear visably "mad" -- Susan Layton and Barbie Bachelor. Others may be equally insane but these two defy established conventions and disrupt the equilibrium of those around them to the point they must be incarcerated. Susan has been made a widow by the death of her new husband. She is pregnant at the beginning of the book and gives birth to Edward shortly after a terrible experience with another death. Afterward she suffers from postpartum depression. Barbie is an ex-missionary--now retired--who has lived with Old Mrs. Mabel Layton for the past five years. Suddenly, Barbie finds herself without a home and with no relatives or close friends. She exhibits behavior deemed odd by the establishment. Barbie also has an uncanny way of pointing to the truth others refuse to acknowledge -- except Sarah Layton. Once again, Sarah reacts very negatively to the obviously bizarre Ronald Merrick whom she visits in a Calcutta hospital in place of her sister who is too ill to travel. Sarah first met Ronald when he served as best man at Susan's wedding. He has since been wounded in a failed attempt to save Susan's husband who died in combat in Maylasia. Merrick provided his spin on the events at Mayapore to Sarah in DAY OF THE SCORPION. Sarah does not believe he tells the truth. In a conversation with Barbie Bachelor, Sarah exclaims regarding the Mayapore incident (first described in JEWEL IN THE CROWN but retold several times from many different perspectives), "Someone should be haunted by it." The four books of the Raj Quartet are haunted by the events in Mayapore in August 1942.Barbie Bachelor becomes aware that Sarah has seen the Manners child in Srinigar. She feels the presence of the "unknown Indian." In the end she feels and sees too much. She writes to her friend Miss Jolley, "After many years of believing I knew what love is I now suspect I do not which means I do not know and have never known what God is either."Philosophical, mystical, this book must be read in succession with the others in the series. You will never forget these people.

Each volume of Scott's The Raj Quartet has its own beauty and power. This volume could perhaps be said to view of India from the English point of view... although that viewpoint is, like India itself, always shifting, sometimes hallucinatory. The character I love most in this volume is the missionary, who comes to live in Rose Cottage... she is a link between the first volume, and the symbolic picture "The Jewel in the Crown", and the post-war India to come. To say what happens to her would give away the story... suffice to say that Scott's powers of characterization are as brilliant as ever. If you have read the first 2 volumes, you are already hooked, and will hardly need this review to read on!The Raj Quartet is one of the finest works of literature I have read. Don't miss it.