Books: Kim

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'Look! It is coming into shape,' whispered Lurgan Sahib.

The jar had been smashed - yess, smashed - not the native word, he
would not think of that - but smashed - into fifty pieces, and
twice three was six, and thrice three was nine, and four times
three was twelve. He clung desperately to the repetition. The
shadow-outline of the jar cleared like a mist after rubbing eyes.
There were the broken shards; there was the spilt water drying in
the sun, and through the cracks of the veranda showed, all ribbed,
the white house-wall below - and thrice twelve was thirty-six!

'Look! Is it coming into shape?' asked Lurgan Sahib.

'But it is smashed - smashed,' he gasped - Lurgan Sahib had been
muttering softly for the last half-minute. Kim wrenched his head
aside. 'Look! Dekho! It is there as it was there.'

'It is there as it was there,' said Lurgan, watching Kim closely
while the boy rubbed his neck. 'But you are the first of many who
has ever seen it so.' He wiped his broad forehead.

'Was that more magic?' Kim asked suspiciously. The tingle had gone
from his veins; he felt unusually wide awake.

'No, that was not magic. It was only to see if there was - a flaw
in a jewel. Sometimes very fine jewels will fly all to pieces if a
man holds them in his hand, and knows the proper way. That is why
one must be careful before one sets them. Tell me, did you see the
shape of the pot?'

'For a little time. It began to grow like a flower from the
ground.'

'And then what did you do? I mean, how did you think?'

'Oah! I knew it was broken, and so, I think, that was what I
thought - and it was broken.'

'Hm! Has anyone ever done that same sort of magic to you before?'

'If it was,' said Kim 'do you think I should let it again? I should
run away.'

'And now you are not afraid - eh?'

'Not now.'

Lurgan Sahib looked at him more closely than ever. 'I shall ask
Mahbub Ali - not now, but some day later,' he muttered. 'I am
pleased with you - yes; and I am pleased with you - no. You are the
first that ever saved himself. I wish I knew what it was that ...
But you are right. You should not tell that - not even to me.'

He turned into the dusky gloom of the shop, and sat down at the
table, rubbing his hands softly. A small, husky sob came from
behind a pile of carpets. It was the Hindu child obediently facing
towards the wall. His thin shoulders worked with grief.

'Ah! He is jealous, so jealous. I wonder if he will try to poison
me again in my breakfast, and make me cook it twice.

'Kubbee - kubbee nahin [Never - never. No!]', came the broken
answer.

'And whether he will kill this other boy?'

'Kubbee - kubbee nahin.'

'What do you think he will do?' He turned suddenly on Kim.

'Oah! I do not know. Let him go, perhaps. Why did he want to poison
you?'

'Because he is so fond of me. Suppose you were fond of someone, and
you saw someone come, and the man you were fond of was more pleased
with him than he was with you, what would you do?'

Kim thought. Lurgan repeated the sentence slowly in the vernacular.
'I should not poison that man,' said Kim reflectively, 'but I
should beat that boy - if that boy was fond of my man. But first, I
would ask that boy if it were true.'

'Ah! He thinks everyone must be fond of me.'

'Then I think he is a fool.'

'Hearest thou?' said Lurgan Sahib to the shaking shoulders. 'The
Sahib's son thinks thou art a little fool. Come out, and next time
thy heart is troubled, do not try white arsenic quite so openly.
Surely the Devil Dasim was lord of our table-cloth that day! It
might have made me ill, child, and then a stranger would have
guarded the jewels. Come!'

The child, heavy-eyed with much weeping, crept out from behind the
bale and flung himself passionately at Lurgan Sahib's feet, with an
extravagance of remorse that impressed even Kim.

'I will look into the ink-pools - I will faithfully guard the
jewels! Oh, my Father and my Mother, send him away!' He indicated
Kim with a backward jerk of his bare heel.

'Not yet - not yet. In a little while he will go away again. But
now he is at school - at a new madrissah - and thou shalt be his
teacher. Play the Play of the Jewels against him. I will keep
tally.'

The child dried his tears at once, and dashed to the back of the
shop, whence he returned with a copper tray.

'Give me!' he said to Lurgan Sahib. 'Let them come from thy hand,
for he may say that I knew them before.'

'Gently - gently,' the man replied, and from a drawer under the
table dealt a half-handful of clattering trifles into the tray.

'Now,' said the child, waving an old newspaper. 'Look on them as
long as thou wilt, stranger. Count and, if need be, handle. One
look is enough for me.' He turned his back proudly.

'But what is the game?'

'When thou hast counted and handled and art sure that thou canst
remember them all, I cover them with this paper, and thou must tell
over the tally to Lurgan Sahib. I will write mine.'

'Oah!' The instinct of competition waked in his breast. He bent
over the tray. There were but fifteen stones on it. 'That is easy,'
he said after a minute. The child slipped the paper over the
winking jewels and scribbled in a native account-book.

'There are under that paper five blue stones - one big, one
smaller, and three small,' said Kim, all in haste. 'There are four
green stones, and one with a hole in it; there is one yellow stone
that I can see through, and one like a pipe-stem. There are two red
stones, and - and - I made the count fifteen, but two I have
forgotten. No! Give me time. One was of ivory, little and brownish;
and - and - give me time...'

'One - two' - Lurgan Sahib counted him out up to ten. Kim shook his
head.

'Hear my count!' the child burst in, trilling with laughter.
'First, are two flawed sapphires - one of two ruttees and one of
four as I should judge. The four-ruttee sapphire is chipped at the
edge. There is one Turkestan turquoise, plain with black veins, and
there are two inscribed - one with a Name of God in gilt, and the
other being cracked across, for it came out of an old ring, I
cannot read. We have now all five blue stones. Four flawed emeralds
there are, but one is drilled in two places, and one is a little
carven-'

'Their weights?' said Lurgan Sahib impassively.

'Three - five - five - and four ruttees as I judge it. There is one
piece of old greenish pipe amber, and a cut topaz from Europe.
There is one ruby of Burma, of two ruttees, without a flaw, and
there is a balas-ruby, flawed, of two ruttees. There is a carved
ivory from China representing a rat sucking an egg; and there is
last - ah ha! - a ball of crystal as big as a bean set on a gold
leaf.'

He clapped his hands at the close.

'He is thy master,' said Lurgan Sahib, smiling.

'Huh! He knew the names of the stones,' said Kim, flushing. 'Try
again! With common things such as he and I both know.'

They heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the
shop, and even the kitchen, and every time the child won, till Kim
marvelled.

'Bind my eyes - let me feel once with my fingers, and even then I
will leave thee opened-eyed behind,' he challenged.

Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good.

'If it were men - or horses,' he said, 'I could do better. This
playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little.'

'Learn first - teach later,' said Lurgan Sahib. 'Is he thy master?'

'Truly. But how is it done?'

'By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly - for it is
worth doing.'

The Hindu boy, in highest feather, actually patted Kim on the back.

'Do not despair,' he said. 'I myself will teach thee.'

'And I will see that thou art well taught,' said Lurgan Sahib,
still speaking in the vernacular, 'for except my boy here - it was
foolish of him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked,
I could have given it - except my boy here I have not in a long
time met with one better worth teaching. And there are ten days
more ere thou canst return to Lucknao where they teach nothing - at
the long price. We shall, I think, be friends.'

They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself too much to
reflect on their craziness. In the morning they played the Jewel
Game - sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of
swords and daggers, sometimes with photo-graphs of natives. Through
the afternoons he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in the shop,
sitting dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching Mr
Lurgan's many and very curious visitors. There were small Rajahs,
escorts coughing in the veranda, who came to buy curiosities - such
as phonographs and mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of
necklaces, and men, it seemed to Kim - but his mind may have been
vitiated by early training - in search of the ladies; natives from
independent and feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the
repair of broken necklaces - rivers of light poured out upon the
table - but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry
Maharanees or young Rajahs. There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib
talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of each
interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes.
There were occasional gatherings of long-coated theatrical natives
who discussed metaphysics in English and Bengali, to Mr Lurgan's
great edification. He was always interested in religions. At the
end of the day, Kim and the Hindu boy - whose name varied at
Lurgan's pleasure - were expected to give a detailed account of all
that they had seen and heard - their view of each man's character,
as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions of his
real errand. After dinner, Lurgan Sahib's fancy turned more to what
might be called dressing-up, in which game he took a most informing
interest. He could paint faces to a marvel; with a brush-dab here
and a line there changing them past recognition. The shop was full
of all manner of dresses and turbans, and Kim was apparelled
variously as a young Mohammedan of good family, an oilman, and once
- which was a joyous evening - as the son of an Oudh landholder in
the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk's eye to detect
the least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-wood couch,
would explain by the half-hour together how such and such a caste
talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since
'hows' matter little in this world, the 'why' of everything. The
Hindu child played this game clumsily. That little mind, keen as an
icicle where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temper itself
to enter another's soul; but a demon in Kim woke up and sang with
joy as he put on the changing dresses, and changed speech and
gesture therewith.

Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one
evening how the disciples of a certain caste of fakir, old Lahore
acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of
language he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going
to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed
immensely, and begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an
hour - cross-legged, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room.
At the end of that time entered a hulking, obese Babu whose
stockinged legs shook with fat, and Kim opened on him with a shower
of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib - this annoyed Kim - watched the
Babu and not the play.

'I think,' said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, 'I am of
opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance.
Except that you had told me I should have opined that- that- that
you were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately
effeecient chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him.'

'That is what he must learn at Lucknow.'

'Then order him to be jolly-dam'-quick. Good-night, Lurgan.' The
Babu swung out with the gait of a bogged cow.

When they were telling over the day's list of visitors, Lurgan
Sahib asked Kim who he thought the man might be.

'God knows!' said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived
Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls.

'That is true. God, He knows; but I wish to know what you think.'

Kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of
compelling truth.

'I - I think he will want me when I come from the school, but' -
confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded approval - 'I do not
understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.'

'Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales
for a certain Colonel. His honour is great only in Simla, and it is
noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter -
that is a custom among us.'

'And is there a price upon his head too - as upon Mah - all the
others?'

'Not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went -
look, the door is open! - as far as a certain house with a red-
painted veranda, behind that which was the old theatre in the Lower
Bazar, and whispered through the shutters: "Hurree Chunder
Mookerjee bore the bad news of last month", that boy might take
away a belt full of rupees.'

'How many?' said Kim promptly.

'Five hundred - a thousand - as many as he might ask for.'

'Good. And for how long might such a boy live after the news was
told?' He smiled merrily at Lurgan's Sahib's very beard.

'Ah! That is to be well thought of. Perhaps if he were very clever,
he might live out the day - but not the night. By no means the
night.'

'Then what is the Babu's pay if so much is put upon his head?'

'Eighty - perhaps a hundred - perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees;
but the pay is the least part of the work. From time to time,
God causes men to be born - and thou art one of them -who have a
lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news -
today it may be of far-off things, tomorrow of some hidden mountain,
and the next day of some near-by men who have done a foolishness
against the State. These souls are very few; and of these few, not
more than ten are of the best. Among these ten I count the Babu,
and that is curious. How great, therefore, and desirable must be a
business that brazens the heart of a Bengali!'

'True. But the days go slowly for me. I am yet a boy, and it is only
within two months I learned to write Angrezi. Even now I cannot
read it well. And there are yet years and years and long years
before I can be even a chain-man.'

'Have patience, Friend of all the World' - Kim started at the title.
'Would I had a few of the years that so irk thee. I have proved thee
in several small ways. This will not be forgotten when I make my
report to the Colonel Sahib.' Then, changing suddenly into English
with a deep laugh:

'By Jove! O'Hara, I think there is a great deal in you; but you must
not become proud and you must not talk. You must go back to Lucknow
and be a good little boy and mind your book, as the English say, and
perhaps, next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!' Kim's
face fell. 'Oh, I mean if you like. I know where you want to go.'

Four days later a seat was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the
rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion was the whale-like Babu, who,
with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat openwork-
stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in the
morning chill.

'How comes it that this man is one of us?' thought Kim considering
the jelly back as they jolted down the road; and the reflection
threw him into most pleasant day-dreams. Lurgan Sahib had given him
five rupees - a splendid sum - as well as the assurance of his
protection if he worked. Unlike Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib had spoken most
explicitly of the reward that would follow obedience, and Kim was
content. If only, like the Babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a
letter and a number - and a price upon his head! Some day he would
be all that and more. Some day he might be almost as great as Mahbub
Ali! The housetops of his search should be half India; he would
follow Kings and Ministers, as in the old days he had followed
vakils and lawyers' touts across Lahore city for Mahbub Ali's sake.
Meantime, there was the present, and not at all unpleasant, fact of
St Xavier's immediately before him. There would be new boys to
condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday adventures to
hear. Young Martin, son of the tea-planter at Manipur, had boasted
that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the head-hunters.

That might be, but it was certain young Martin had not been blown
half across the forecourt of a Patiala palace by an explosion of
fireworks; nor had he... Kim fell to telling himself the story of
his own adventures through the last three months. He could paralyse
St Xavier's - even the biggest boys who shaved - with the recital,
were that permitted. But it was, of course, out of the question.
There would be a price upon his head in good time, as Lurgan Sahib
had assured him; and if he talked foolishly now, not only would that
price never be set, but Colonel Creighton would cast him off - and
he would be left to the wrath of Lurgan Sahib and Mahbub Ali - for
the short space of life that would remain to him.

'So I should lose Delhi for the sake of a fish,' was his proverbial
philosophy. It behoved him to forget his holidays (there would
always remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as
Lurgan Sahib had said, to work. Of all the boys hurrying back to St
Xavier's, from Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the palms, none
was so filled with virtue as Kimball O'Hara, jiggeting down to
Umballa behind Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, whose name on the books of
one section of the Ethnological Survey was R.17.

And if additional spur were needed, the Babu supplied it. After a
huge meal at Kalka, he spoke uninterruptedly. Was Kim going to
school? Then he, an M A of Calcutta University, would explain the
advantages of education. There were marks to be gained by due
attention to Latin and Wordsworth's Excursion (all this was Greek to
Kim). French, too was vital, and the best was to be picked up in
Chandernagore a few miles from Calcutta. Also a man might go far, as
he himself had done, by strict attention to plays called Lear and
Julius Caesar, both much in demand by examiners. Lear was not so
full of historical allusions as Julius Caesar; the book cost four
annas, but could be bought second-hand in Bow Bazar for two. Still
more important than Wordsworth, or the eminent authors, Burke and
Hare, was the art and science of mensuration. A boy who had passed
his examination in these branches - for which, by the way, there
were no cram-books - could, by merely marching over a country with a
compass and a level and a straight eye, carry away a picture of that
country which might be sold for large sums in coined silver. But as
it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains a
boy would do well to know the precise length of his own foot-pace,
so that when he was deprived of what Hurree Chunder called
adventitious aids' he might still tread his distances. To keep count
of thousands of paces, Hurree Chunder's experience had shown him
nothing more valuable than a rosary of eighty-one or a hundred and
eight beads, for 'it was divisible and sub-divisible into many
multiples and sub-multiples'. Through the volleying drifts of
English, Kim caught the general trend of the talk, and it interested
him very much. Here was a new craft that a man could tuck away in
his head and by the look of the large wide world unfolding itself
before him, it seemed that the more a man knew the better for him.

Said the Babu when he had talked for an hour and a half 'I hope some
day to enjoy your offeecial acquaintance. Ad interim, if I may be
pardoned that expression, I shall give you this betel-box, which is
highly valuable article and cost me two rupees only four years ago.'
It was a cheap, heart-shaped brass thing with three compartments for
carrying the eternal betel-nut, lime and pan-leaf; but it was filled
with little tabloid-bottles. 'That is reward of merit for your
performance in character of that holy man. You see, you are so young
you think you will last for ever and not take care of your body. It
is great nuisance to go sick in the middle of business. I am fond of
drugs myself, and they are handy to cure poor people too. These are
good Departmental drugs - quinine and so on. I give it you for
souvenir. Now good-bye. I have urgent private business here by the
roadside.'

He slipped out noiselessly as a cat, on the Umballa road, hailed a
passing cart and jingled away, while Kim, tongue-tied, twiddled the
brass betel-box in his hands.

The record of a boy's education interests few save his parents, and,
as you know, Kim was an orphan. It is written in the books of St
Xavier's in Partibus that a report of Kim's progress was forwarded
at the end of each term to Colonel Creighton and to Father Victor,
from whose hands duly came the money for his schooling. It is
further recorded in the same books that he showed a great aptitude
for mathematical studies as well as map-making, and carried away a
prize (The Life of Lord Lawrence, tree-calf, two vols., nine rupees,
eight annas) for proficiency therein; and the same term played in St
Xavier's eleven against the Alighur Mohammedan College, his age
being fourteen years and ten months. He was also re-vaccinated (from
which we may assume that there had been another epidemic of smallpox
at Lucknow) about the same time. Pencil notes on the edge of an old
muster-roll record that he was punished several times for
'conversing with improper persons', and it seems that he was once
sentenced to heavy pains for 'absenting himself for a day in the
company of a street beggar'. That was when he got over the gate and
pleaded with the lama through a whole day down the banks of the
Gumti to accompany him on the Road next holidays - for one month -
for a little week; and the lama set his face as a flint against it,
averring that the time had not yet come. Kim's business, said the
old man as they ate cakes together, was to get all the wisdom of the
Sahibs and then he would see. The Hand of Friendship must in some
way have averted the Whip of Calamity, for six weeks later Kim seems
to have passed an examination in elementary surveying 'with great
credit', his age being fifteen years and eight months. From this
date the record is silent. His name does not appear in the year's
batch of those who entered for the subordinate Survey of India, but
against it stand the words 'removed on appointment.

Several times in those three years, cast up at the Temple of the
Tirthankars in Benares the lama, a little thinner and a shade
yellower, if that were possible, but gentle and untainted as ever.
Sometimes it was from the South that he came - from south of
Tuticorin, whence the wonderful fire-boats go to Ceylon where are
priests who know Pali; sometimes it was from the wet green West and
the thousand cotton-factory chimneys that ring Bombay; and once from
the North, where he had doubled back eight hundred miles to talk for
a day with the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House. He would
stride to his cell in the cool, cut marble - the priests of the
Temple were good to the old man, - wash off the dust of travel, make
prayer, and depart for Lucknow, well accustomed now to the way of
the rail, in a third-class carriage. Returning, it was noticeable,
as his friend the Seeker pointed out to the head-priest, that he
ceased for a while to mourn the loss of his River, or to draw
wondrous pictures of the Wheel of Life, but preferred to talk of the
beauty and wisdom of a certain mysterious chela whom no man of the
Temple had ever seen. Yes, he had followed the traces of the Blessed
Feet throughout all India. (The Curator has still in his possession
a most marvellous account of his wanderings and meditations.) There
remained nothing more in life but to find the River of the Arrow.
Yet it was shown to him in dreams that it was a matter not to be
undertaken with any hope of success unless that seeker had with him
the one chela appointed to bring the event to a happy issue, and
versed in great wisdom - such wisdom as white-haired Keepers of
Images possess. For example (here came out the snuff-gourd, and the
kindly Jain priests made haste to be silent):

'Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares -let all
listen to theTataka! - an elephant was captured for a time by the
king's hunters and ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous
legiron. This he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart,
and hurrying up and down the forests, besought his brother-elephants
to wrench it asunder. One by one, with their strong trunks, they
tried and failed. At the last they gave it as their opinion that the
ring was not to be broken by any bestial power. And in a thicket,
new-born, wet with moisture of birth, lay a day-old calf of the herd
whose mother had died. The fettered elephant, forgetting his own
agony, said: "If I do not help this suckling it will perish under
our feet." So he stood above the young thing, making his legs
buttresses against the uneasily moving herd; and he begged milk of a
virtuous cow, and the calf throve, and the ringed elephant was the
calf's guide and defence. Now the days of an elephant - let all
listen to the Tataka! - are thirty-five years to his full strength,
and through thirty-five Rains the ringed elephant befriended the
younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh.

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