human love will soon be at its height.' But no one knew better than Forster that this is more easily said than done and that false or premature connections, connections made by rule and not achieved through total realization of the personality, can destroy and corrupt.
A pacifist, Forster refused to fight in World War I and instead served in the International Red Cross in Egypt. In Alexandria he had his first significant sexual relationship, with Mohammed el Adl, an Egyptian tram conductor; he feared social disapproval less there than in England, where, not long after Oscar Wilde's infamous prosecution for homosexual offenses, he hid his personal life from public scrutiny.
He traveled to India in 1912 and 1922, and in his last (for Forster published no
more fiction during his life) and best-known novel, A Passage to India (1924), he takes
the fraught relations between British and colonized Indians in the subcontinent as a
background for the most searching and complex of all his explorations of the possi
bilities and limitations, the promises and pitfalls, of human relationships. Published
posthumously was another novel, Maurice, written more than fifty years before and
circulated privately during his life, in which he tried to define and do justice to homo
sexual love, which had played an important part in his life. In addition to fiction
Forster also wrote critical, autobiographical, and descriptive prose, notably Aspects of
the Novel (1927), which, as a discussion of the techniques of fiction by a practicing
novelist, has become a minor classic of criticism.
'The Other Boat,' which concerns cross-ethnic homosexual attraction that collides
with the sexual taboos and racial hierarchies of empire, is an unusually long and rich
short story that Forster originally intended to turn into a novel, beginning it around
1913 but not completing it until 1957?58, and it was not published until after his
death, first appearing in The Life to Come and Other Stories (1972). The first part of
the story tells of a British family's journey by ship from India to England, and the rest
of the story, set some years later, reverses direction, the journey into the Mediterra
nean and on toward India becoming the backdrop for the loosening?and then drastic
reassertion?of British imperial norms of order, discipline, racial superiority, and
heterosexuality. As in other of Forster's works, the passage into another cultural geog
raphy calls into question British middle-class values, which exact a high price in
repression, tragically conflict with the protagonist's sensual and emotional desires,
and ultimately explode into violence.
The Other Boat
I
'Cocoanut, come and play at soldiers.'
'I cannot, I am beesy.'
'But you must, Lion wants you.'
.
2060 / E. M. FORSTER
'Yes, come along, man,' said Lionel, running up with some paper cocked hats' and a sash. It was long long ago, and little boys still went to their deaths stiffly, and dressed in as many clothes as they could find.
'I cannot, I am beesy,' repeated Cocoanut.
'But man, what are you busy about?'
'I have soh many things to arrange, man.'
'Let's leave him and play by ourselves,' said Olive. 'We've Joan and Noel and Baby and Lieutenant Bodkin. Who wants Cocoanut?'
'Oh, shut up! I want him. We must have him. He's the only one who falls down when he's killed. All you others go on fighting long too long. The battle this morning was a perfect fast. Mother said so.'
Well, I'll die.'
'So you say beforehand, but when it comes to the point you won't. Noel won't. Joan won't. Baby doesn't do anything properly?of course he's too little?and you can't expect Lieutenant Bodkin to fall down. Cocoanut, man, do.'
'I?weel?not.'
'Cocoanut cocoanut cocoanut cocoanut cocoanut cocoanut,' said Baby.
The little boy rolled on the deck screaming happily. He liked to be pressed by these handsome good-natured children. 'I must go and see the m'm m'm m'm,' he said.
