Books: Kim

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'As it were a novice?' said the lama, nodding his head. 'Art thou
freed from the schools? I would not have thee unripe.'

'I am all free. In due time I take service under the Government as a
scribe -'

'Not as a warrior. That is well.'

'But first I come to wander with thee. Therefore I am here. Who
begs for thee, these days?' he went on quickly. The ice was thin.

'Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here,
except when I come to look again at my disciple. From one end to
another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the te-rain. A great
and a wonderful land! But here, when I put in, is as though I were
in mv own Bhotiyal.'

He looked round the little clean cell complacently. A low cushion
gave him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-
legged attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black
teak-wood table, not twenty inches high, set with copper tea-cups,
was before him. In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily
carved teak, bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated Buddha and
fronted by a lamp, an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flower-
pots.

'The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by
giving me these a year since,' he said, following Kim's eye. 'When
one is far from one's own land such things carry remembrance; and we
must reverence the Lord for that He showed the Way. See!' He pointed
to a curiously-built mound of coloured rice crowned with a fantastic
metal ornament. 'When I was Abbot in my own place - before I came to
better knowledge I made that offering daily. It is the Sacrifice of
the Universe to the Lord. Thus do we of Bhotiyal offer all the world
daily to the Excellent Law. And I do it even now, though I know that
the Excellent One is beyond all pinchings and pattings.' He snuffed
from his gourd.

'It is well done, Holy One,' Kim murmured, sinking at ease on the
cushions, very happy and rather tired.

'And also,' the old man chuckled, 'I write pictures of the Wheel of
Life. Three days to a picture. I was busied on it - or it may be I
shut my eyes a little - when they brought word of thee. It is good
to have thee here: I will show thee my art - not for pride's sake,
but because thou must learn. The Sahibs have not all this world's
wisdom.'

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow
Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of Indian ink. In cleanest,
severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes,
whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance,
Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the Heavens and
Hells, and all the chances of human life. Men say that the Bodhisat
Himself first drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach His
disciples the cause of things. Many ages have crystallized it into a
most wonderful convention crowded with hundreds of little figures
whose every line carries a meaning. Few can translate the picture-
parable; there are not twenty in all the world who can draw it
surely without a copy: of those who can both draw and expound are
but three.

'I have a little learned to draw,' said Kim. 'But this is a marvel
beyond marvels.'

'I have written it for many years,' said the lama. 'Time was when I
could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next. I will
teach thee the art - after due preparation; and I will show thee the
meaning of the Wheel.'

'We take the Road, then?'

'The Road and our Search. I was but waiting for thee. It was made
plain to me in a hundred dreams - notably one that came upon the
night of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut that without
thee I should never find my River. Again and again, as thou knowest,
I put this from me, fearing an illusion. Therefore I would not take
thee with me that day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes. I would not
take thee till the. time was ripe and auspicious. From the Hills to
the Sea, from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain.
Then I remembered the Tataka.'

He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had
told it so often to the Jam priests.

'Further testimony is not needed,' he ended serenely. 'Thou wast
sent for an aid. That aid removed, my Search came to naught.
Therefore we will go out again together, and our Search sure.'

'Whither go we?'

'What matters, Friend of all the World? The Search, I say, is sure.
If need be, the River will break from the ground before us. I
acquired merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave
thee the jewel that is Wisdom. Thou didst return, I saw even now, a
follower of Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in
Bhotiyal. It is sufficient. We are together, and all things are as
they were - Friend of all the World -Friend of the Stars - my
chela!'

Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the
lama never demanded any details of life at St Xavier's, nor showed
the faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs. His
mind moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their
wonderful first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling,
till it pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old
age.

Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and
played with his ghost-dagger and rosary. The clamour of Benares,
oldest of all earth's cities awake before the Gods, day and night,
beat round the walls as the sea's roar round a breakwater. Now and
again, a Jain priest crossed the court, with some small offering to
the images, and swept the path about him lest by chance he should
take the life of a living thing. A lamp twinkled, and there followed
the sound of a prayer. Kim watched the stars as they rose one after
another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot
of the altar. That night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an
English word...

'Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,' he
said, about three o'clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking
from dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage. 'The Jat will be
here at the light.'

'I am well answered. In my haste I would have done a wrong.' He sat
down on the cushions and returned to his rosary. 'Surely old folk
are as children,' he said pathetically. 'They desire a matter -
behold, it must be done at once, or they fret and weep! Many times
when I was upon the Road I have been ready to stamp with my feet at
the hindrance of an ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust.
It was not so when I was a man - a long time ago. None the less it
is wrongful -'

'But thou art indeed old, Holy One.'

'The thing was done. A Cause was put out into the world, and, old or
young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the
effect of that Cause? Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it -
or a drunkard? Chela, this is a great and a terrible world.'

'I think it good,' Kim yawned. 'What is there to eat? I have not
eaten since yesterday even.'

'I had forgotten thy need. Yonder is good Bhotiyal tea and cold
rice.'

'We cannot walk far on such stuff.' Kim felt all the European's lust
for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple. Yet,
instead of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his
stomach on slabs of cold rice till the full dawn. It brought the
farmer, voluble, stuttering with gratitude.

'In the night the fever broke and the sweat came, he cried. 'Feel
here - his skin is fresh and new! He esteemed the salt lozenges, and
took milk with greed.' He drew the cloth from the child's face, and
it smiled sleepily at Kim. A little knot of Jain priests, silent
but all-observant, gathered by the temple door. They knew, and Kim
knew that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple. Being
courteous folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by
presence, word, or gesture. Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun
rose.

'Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother,' he said, not knowing how
those Gods were named. 'The fever is indeed broken.'

'Look! See!' The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of
three years. 'Was there ever such a chela? He follows our Lord the
Healer.'

Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed,
as well as the Lingam and the Snake. They wear the Brahminical
thread; they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law. But, because
they knew and loved the lama, because he was an old man, because he
sought the Way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued
long of nights with the head-priest - as free-thinking a
metaphysician as ever split one hair into seventy - they murmured
assent.

'Remember,' - Kim bent over the child -. 'this trouble may come
again.

'Not if thou hast the proper spell,' said the father.

'But in a little while we go away.'

'True,' said the lama to all the Jains. 'We go now together upon the
Search whereof I have often spoken. I waited till my chela was ripe.
Behold him! We go North. Never again shall I look upon this place of
my rest, O people of good will.'

'But I am not a beggar.' The cultivator rose to his feet, clutching
the child.

'Be still. Do not trouble the Holy One,' a priest cried.

'Go,' Kim whispered. 'Meet us again under the big railway bridge,
and for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food - curry,
pulse, cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be
swift!'

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and
slim, in his sand-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary
and the other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from
the lama. An English observer might have said that he looked rather
like the young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a
growing lad faint with emptiness.

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed.
The Seeker - he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-
away Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic -took no part in it,
but meditated, as always, alone among the images. The others were
very human; pressing small comforts upon the old man - a betel-box,
a fine new iron pencase, a food-bag, and such-like - warning him
against the dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy
end to the Search. Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the
steps, and swore to himself in the language of St Xavier's.

'But it is my own fault,' he concluded. 'With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub's
bread, or Lurgan Sahib's. At St Xavier's, three meals a day. Here I
must jolly-well look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good
training. How I could eat a plate of beef now! ... Is it finished,
Holy One?'

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate
Chinese. 'I must lean on thy shoulder,' said he, as the temple gates
closed. 'We grow stiff, I think.'

The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of
crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for
the way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

'Here we eat,' he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and
smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child in the
other.

'Fall to, Holy Ones!' he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the
shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.)
'Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with hing
[asafoetida], curds and sugar. King of my fields,' -this to the
small son - 'let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur
can pay a service . . . I had heard the Jains would eat nothing that
they had not cooked, but truly' - he looked away politely over the
broad river - 'where there is no eye there is no caste.'

'And we,' said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leafplatter for
the lama, 'are beyond all castes.'

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he had
licked the last of the sticky sweetstuff from his little finger did
Kim note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.

'If our roads lie together,' he said roughly, 'I go with thee. One
does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still
weak. But I am not altogether a reed.' He picked up his lathi - a
five-foot male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron - and
flourished it in the air. 'The Jats are called quarrel-some, but
that is not true. Except when we are crossed, we are like our own
buffaloes.'

'So be it,' said Kim. 'A good stick is a good reason.'

The lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged
perspective the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-
ghats by the river. Now and again, despite all municipal
regulations, the fragment of a half-burned body bobbed by on the
full current.

'But for thee,' said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his
hairy breast, 'I might today have gone thither - with this one. The
priests tell us that Benares is holy - which none doubt - and
desirable to die in. But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for
money; and when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of
none effect except one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour,
drink, lave, and scatter flowers -but always pay the priests. No,
the Punjab for me, and the soil of the Jullundur-doab for the best
soil in it.

'I have said many times - in the Temple, I think - that if need be,
the River will open at our feet. We will therefore go North,' said
the lama, rising. 'I remember a pleasant place, set about with
fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation - and the air is
cooler there. It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.'

'What is the name?' said Kim.

'How should I know? Didst thou not - no, that was after the Army
rose out of the earth and took thee away. I abode there in
meditation in a room against the dovecot - except when she talked
eternally.'

'Oho! the woman from Kulu. That is by Saharunpore.' Kim laughed.

'How does the spirit move thy master? Does he go afoot, for the sake
of past sins?' the Jat demanded cautiously. 'It is a far cry to
Delhi.'

'No,' said Kim. 'I will beg a tikkut for the te-rain.' One does not
own to the possession of money in India.

'Then, in the name of the Gods, let us take the fire-carriage. My
son is best in his mother's arms. The Government has brought on us
many taxes, but it gives us one good thing - the te-rain that joins
friends and unites the anxious. A wonderful matter is the te-rain.'

They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through
the heat of the day. The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand
questions as to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some
curious answers. Kim was content to be where he was, to look out
upon the flat North-Western landscape, and to talk to the
changing mob of fellow-passengers. Even today, tickets and ticket-
clipping are dark oppression to Indian rustics. They do not
understand why, when they have paid for a magic piece of paper,
strangers should punch great pieces out of the charm. So, long and
furious are the debates between travellers and Eurasian ticket-
collectors. Kim assisted at two or three with grave advice, meant to
darken counsel and to show off his wisdom before the lama and the
admiring Kamboh. But at Somna Road the Fates sent him a matter to
think upon. There tumbled into the compartment, as the train was
moving off, a mean, lean little person - a Mahratta, so far as Kim
could judge by the cock of the tight turban. His face was cut, his
muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and one leg was bandaged. He
told them that a country-cart had upset and nearlv slain him: he
was going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim watched him closely.
If, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and over on the earth,
there should have been signs of gravel-rash on the skin. But all his
injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart could not
cast a man into such extremity of terror. As, with shaking fingers,
he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid bare an amulet
of the kind called a keeper-up of the heart. Now, amulets are common
enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited copper
wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver. There
were none except the Kamboh and the lama in the compartment, which,
luckily, was of an old type with solid ends. Kim made as to scratch
in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. The Mahratta's face
changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the amulet fairly on
his breast.

'Yes,' he went on to the Kamboh, 'I was in haste, and the cart,
driven by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the
harm done to me there was lost a full dish of tarkeean. I was not a
Son of the Charm [a lucky man] that day.'

'That was a great loss,' said the Kamboh, withdrawing interest. His
experience of Benares had made him suspicious.

'Who cooked it?' said Kim.

'A woman.' The Mahratta raised his eyes.

'But all women can cook tarkeean,' said the Kamboh. 'It is a good
curry, as I know.'

'Oh yes, it is a good curry,' said the Mahratta.

'And cheap,' said Kim. 'But what about caste?'

'Oh, there is no caste where men go to - look for tarkeean,' the
Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence. 'Of whose service art
thou?'

'Of the service of this Holy One.' Kim pointed to the happy, drowsy
lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word.

'Ah, he was sent from Heaven to aid me. He is called the Friend of
all the World. He is also called the Friend of the Stars. He walks
as a physician - his time being ripe. Great is his wisdom.'

'And a Son of the Charm,' said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh
made haste to prepare a pipe lest the Mahratta should beg.

'And who is that?' the Mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously.

'One whose child I - we have cured, who lies under great debt to us.
Sit by the window, man from Jullundur. Here is a sick one.'

'Humph! I have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. My ears
are not long. I am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.' The Jat
slid himself heavily into a far corner.

'Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in calamity,'
cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.

'This man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him,' Kim
retorted. 'None interfered between thy babe and me.'

'I am rebuked,' said the Kamboh meekly. 'I am thy debtor for the
life of my son. Thou art a miracle-worker - I know it.'

'Show me the cuts.' Kim bent over the Mahratta's neck, his heart
nearly choking him; for this was the Great Game with a vengeance.
'Now, tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm.'

'I come from the South, where my work lay. One of us they slew by
the roadside. Hast thou heard?' Kim shook his head. He, of course,
knew nothing of E's predecessor, slain down South in the habit of an
Arab trader. 'Having found a certain letter which I was sent to
seek, I came away. I escaped from the city and ran to Mhow. So sure
was I that none knew, I did not change my face. At Mhow a woman
brought charge against me of theft of jewellery in that city which I
had left. Then I saw the cry was out against me. I ran from Mhow by
night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over
without question to my enemies in the South. Then I lay in old
Chitor city a week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid
of the letter which was my charge. I buried it under the Queen's
Stone, at Chitor, in the place known to us all.'

Kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the
thread.

'At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings' country; for Kotah to the
east is beyond the Queen's law, and east again lie Jaipur and
Gwalior. Neither love spies, and there is no justice. I was hunted
like a wet jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard
there was a charge against me of murder in the city I had left - of
the murder of a boy. They have both the corpse and the witnesses
waiting.'

'But cannot the Government protect?'

'We of the Game are beyond protection. If we die, we die. Our names
are blotted from the book. That is all. At Bandakui, where lives one
of Us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made
me a Mahratta. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to
Chitor to recover the letter. So sure I was I had slipped them.
Therefore I did not send a tar [telegram] to any one saying where
the letter lay. I wished the credit of it all.'

Kim nodded. He understood that feeling well.

'But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me,
and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts
then and there. Oh, they are clever in the South! He recognized me
as his agent for cotton. May he burn in Hell for it!'

'And wast thou?'

'O fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter! I
ran into the Fleshers' Ward and came out by the House of the Jew,
who feared a riot and pushed me forth. I came afoot to Somna Road -
I had only money for my tikkut to Delhi - and there, while I lay in
a ditch with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and
cut me and searched me from head to foot. Within earshot of the te-
rain it was!'

'Why did he not slay thee out of hand?'

'They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the instance of
lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder, my body is handed over to
the State that desires it. I go back guarded, and then - I die
slowly for an example to the rest of Us. The South is not my
country. I run in circles - like a goat with one eye. I have not
eaten for two days. I am marked' - he touched the filthy bandage on
his leg - 'so that they will know me at Delhi.'

'Thou art safe in the te-rain, at least.'

'Live a year at the Great Game and tell me that again! The wires
will be out against me at Delhi, describing every tear and rag upon
me. Twenty - a hundred, if need be - will have seen me slay that
boy. And thou art useless!'

Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the
case would be deadly complete - even to the corpse. The Mahratta
twitched his fingers with pain from time to time. The Kamboh in his
corner glared sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and Kim,
fumbling doctor-fashion at the man's neck, thought out his plan
between invocations.

'Hast thou a charm to change my shape? Else I am dead. Five - ten
minutes alone, if I had not been so pressed, and I might -'

'Is he cured yet, miracle-worker?' said the Kamboh jealously. 'Thou
hast chanted long enough.'

'Nay. There is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for
three days in the habit of a bairagi.' This is a common penance,
often imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher.

'One priest always goes about to make another priest,' was the
retort. Like most grossly superstitious folk, the Kamboh could not
keep his tongue from deriding his Church.

'Will thy son be a priest, then? It is time he took more of my
quinine.'

'We Jats are all buffaloes,' said the Kamboh, softening anew.

Kim rubbed a finger-tip of bitterness on the child's trusting little
lips. 'I have asked for nothing,' he said sternly to the father,
'except food. Dost thou grudge me that? I go to heal another man.
Have I thy leave - Prince?'

Up flew the man's huge paws in supplication. 'Nay - nay. Do not mock
me thus.'

'It pleases me to cure this sick one. Thou shalt acquire merit by
aiding. What colour ash is there in thy pipe-bowl? White. That is
auspicious. Was there raw turmeric among thy foodstuffs?'

'I - I -'

'Open thy bundle!'

It was the usual collection of small oddments: bits of cloth, quack
medicines, cheap fairings, a clothful of atta - greyish, rough-
ground native flour - twists of down-country tobacco, tawdry pipe-
stems, and a packet of curry-stuff, all wrapped in. a quilt. Kim
turned it over with the air of a wise warlock, muttering a
Mohammedan invocation.

'This is wisdom I learned from the Sahibs,' he whispered to the
lama; and here, when one thinks of his training at Lurgan's, he
spoke no more than the truth. 'There is a great evil in this man's
fortune, as shown by the Stars, which - which troubles him. Shall I
take it away?'

'Friend of the Stars, thou hast done well in all things. Let it be
at thy pleasure. Is it another healing?'

'Quick! Be quick!' gasped the Mahratta. 'The train may stop.'

'A healing against the shadow of death,' said Kim, mixing the
Kamboh's flour with the mingled charcoal and tobacco ash in the red-
earth bowl of the pipe. E, without a word, slipped off his turban
and shook down his long black hair.

'That is my food - priest,' the jat growled.

'A buffalo in the temple! Hast thou dared to look even thus far?'
said Kim. 'I must do mysteries before fools; but have a care for
thine eyes. Is there a film before them already? I save the babe,
and for return thou - oh, shameless!' The man flinched at the direct
gaze, for Kim was wholly in earnest.

'Shall I curse thee, or shall I -' He picked up the outer cloth of
the bundle and threw it over the bowed head. 'Dare so much as to
think a wish to see, and - and - even I cannot save thee. Sit!

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