Books: Kim

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Be dumb!'

'I am blind - dumb. Forbear to curse! Co - come, child; we will
play a game of hiding. Do not, for my sake, look from under the
cloth.'

'I see hope,' said E23. 'What is thy scheme?'

'This comes next,' said Kim, plucking the thin body-shirt. E23
hesitated, with all a North-West man's dislike of baring his body.

'What is caste to a cut throat?' said Kim, rending it to the waist.
'We must make thee a yellow Saddhu all over. Strip - strip
swiftly, and shake thy hair over thine eyes while I scatter the ash.
Now, a caste-mark on thy forehead.' He drew from his bosom the
little Survey paint-box and a cake of crimson lake.

'Art thou only a beginner?' said E23, labouring literally for the
dear life, as he slid out of his body-wrappings and stood clear in
the loin-cloth while Kim splashed in a noble caste-mark on the ash-
smeared brow.

'But two days entered to the Game, brother,' Kim replied. 'Smear
more ash on the bosom.'

'Hast thou met - a physician of sick pearls?' He switched out his
long, tight-rolled turban-cloth and, with swiftest hands, rolled it
over and under about his loins into the intricate devices of a
Saddhu's cincture.

'Hah! Dost thou know his touch, then? He was my teacher for a
while. We must bar thy legs. Ash cures wounds. Smear it again.'

'I was his pride once, but thou art almost better. The Gods are
kind to us! Give me that.'

It was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's
bundle. E23 gulped down a half handful. 'They are good against
hunger, fear, and chill. And they make the eyes red too,' he
explained. 'Now I shall have heart to play the Game. We lack only
a Saddhu's tongs. What of the old clothes?'

Kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack folds of his
tunic. With a yellow-ochre paint cake he smeared the legs and the
breast, great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and
turmeric.

'The blood on them is enough to hang thee, brother.'

'Maybe; but no need to throw them out of the window ... It is
finished.' His voice thrilled with a boy's pure delight in the Game.
'Turn and look, O jat!'

'The Gods protect us,' said the hooded Kamboh, emerging like a
buffalo from the reeds. 'But - whither went the Mahratta? What hast
thou done?'

Kim had been trained by Lurgan Sahib; E23, by virtue of his
business, was no bad actor. In place of the tremulous, shrinking
trader there lolled against the corner an all but naked, ash-
smeared, ochre-barred, dusty-haired Saddhu, his swollen eyes - opium
takes quick effect on an empty stomach - luminous with insolence and
bestial lust, his legs crossed under him, Kim's brown rosary round
his neck, and a scant yard of worn, flowered chintz on his
shoulders. The child buried his face in his amazed father's arms.

'Look up, Princeling! We travel with warlocks, but they will not
hurt thee. Oh, do not cry ... What is the sense of curing a child
one day and killing him with fright the next?'

'The child will be fortunate all his life. He has seen a great
healing. When I was a child I made clay men and horses.'

'I have made them too. Sir Banas, he comes in the night and makes
them all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,' piped the child.

'And so thou art not frightened at anything. Eh, Prince?'

'I was frightened because my father was frightened. I felt his arms
shake.'

'Oh, chicken-man!' said Kim, and even the abashed Jat laughed. 'I
have done a healing on this poor trader. He must forsake his gains
and his account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to
overcome the malignity of his enemies. The Stars are against him.'

'The fewer money-lenders the better, say I; but, Saddhu or no
Saddhu, he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders.'

'So? But that is thy child on thy shoulder - given over to the
burning-ghat not two days ago. There remains one thing more. I did
this charm in thy presence because need was great. I changed his
shape and his soul. None the less, if, by any chance, O man from
Jullundur, thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the
elders sitting under the village tree, or in thine own house, or in
company of thy priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will
come among the buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the
corn-bins, and the curse of our Gods upon thy fields that they may
be barren before thy feet and after thy ploughshare.' This was part
of an old curse picked up from a fakir by the Taksali Gate in the
days of Kim's innocence. It lost nothing by repetition.

'Cease, Holy One! In mercy, cease!' cried the Jat. 'Do not curse
the household. I saw nothing! I heard nothing! I am thy cow!' and
he made to grab at Kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the
carriage floor. 'But since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the
matter of a pinch of flour and a little opium and such trifles as I
have honoured by using in my art, so will the Gods return a
blessing,' and he gave it at length, to the man's immense relief. It
was one that he had learned from Lurgan Sahib.

The lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the
business of disguisement. 'Friend of the Stars,' he said at last,
'thou hast acquired great wisdom. Beware that it do not give birth
to pride. No man having the Law before his eyes speaks hastily of
any matter which he has seen or encountered.'

'No - no - no, indeed,' cried the farmer, fearful lest the master
should be minded to improve on the pupil. E23, with relaxed mouth,
gave himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to
the spent Asiatic.

So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into
Delhi about lamp-lighting time.

Chapter 12

Who hath desired the Sea - the sight of salt-water unbounded?
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber
wind-hounded?
The sleek-barrelled swell before storm - grey, foamless, enormous,
and growing?
Stark calm on the lap of the Line - or the crazy-eyed hurricane
blowing?
His Sea in no showing the same - his Sea and the same 'neath all
showing -
His Sea that his being fulfils?
So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise hill-men desire their
Hills!

The Sea and the Hills.

'I have found my heart again,' said E23, under cover of the
platform's tumult. 'Hunger and fear make men dazed, or I might have
thought of this escape before. I was right. They come to hunt for
me. Thou hast saved my head.'

A group of yellow-trousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and
perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages.
Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who
looked like a lawyer's tout.

'See the young Sahib reading from a paper. My description is in his
hand,' said E23. 'Thev go carriage by carriage, like fisher-folk
netting a pool.'

When the procession reached their compartment, E23 was counting his
beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while Kim jeered at him for
being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the
Saddhu's distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared
straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up
his belongings.

'Nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies,' said the Englishman
aloud, and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police
mean extortion to the native all India over.

'The trouble now, ' whispered E23, 'lies in sending a wire as to the
place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. I cannot go to the
tar-office in this guise.'

'Is it not enough I have saved thy neck?'

'Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick
pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah!'

This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police -
belt, helmet, polished spurs and all - strutting and twirling his
dark moustache.

'What fools are these Police Sahibs!' said Kim genially.

E23 glanced up under his eyelids. 'It is well said,' he muttered in
a changed voice. 'I go to drink water. Keep my place.'

He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was bad-
worded in clumsy Urdu.

'Tum mut? You drunk? You mustn't bang about as though Delhi
station belonged to you, my friend.'

E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream
of the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced. It reminded
him of the drummer-boys and the barrack- sweepers at Umballa in the
terrible time of his first schooling.

'My good fool,' the Englishman drawled. 'Nickle-jao! Go back to
your carriage.'

Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping his voice, the
yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the D.S.P. to
remotest posterity, by - here Kim almost jumped - by the curse of
the Queen's Stone, by the writing under the Queen's Stone, and by an
assortment of Gods "with wholly, new names.

'I don't know what you're saving,' - the Englishman flushed angrily
- 'but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of that!'

E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which
the Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand.

'Oh, zoolum! What oppression!' growled the Jat from his corner.
'All for the sake of a jest too.' He had been grinning at the
freedom of the Saddhu's tongue. 'Thy charms do not work well today,
Holy One!'

The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. The
ruck of passengers, busy, with their babies andtheir bundles, had
not noticed the affair. Kim slipped outbehind him; for it flashed
through his head that he had heardthis angry, stupid Sahib
discoursing loud personalities to an oldlady near Umballa three
years ago.

'It is well', the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling,
shouting, bewildered press - a Persian greyhound between his feet
and a cageful of yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in
the small of his back. 'He has gone now to send word of the letter
which I hid. Thev told me he was in Peshawur. I might have known
that he is like the crocodile - always at the other ford. He has
saved me from present calamity, but I owe my life to thee.'

'Is he also one of Us?' Kim ducked under a Mewar camel-driver's
greasy armpit and cannoned off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons.

'Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate! I will make
report to him of what thou hast done. I am safe under his
protection.'

He bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the carriages, and
squatted by the bench near the telegraph-office.

'Return, or they take thy place! Have no fear for the work, brother
- or my life. Thou hast given me breathing-space, and Strickland
Sahib has pulled me to land. We may work together at the Game yet.
Farewell!'

Kim hurried to his carriage: elated, bewildered, but a little
nettled in that he had no key to the secrets about him.

'I am only a beginner at the Game, that is sure. I could not have
leaped into safety as did the Saddhu. He knew it was darkest under
the lamp. I could not have thought to tell news under pretence of
cursing ... and how clever was the Sahib! No matter, I savcd the
life of one ... Where is the Kamboh gone, Holy One?' he whispered,
as he took his seat in the now crowded compartment.

'A fear gripped him,' the lama replied, with a touch of tender
malice. 'He saw thee change the Mahratta to a Saddhu in the
twinkling of an eye, as a protection against evil. That shook him.
Then he saw the Saddhu fall sheer into the hands of the polis - all
the effect of thy art. Then he gathered up his son and fled; for he
said that thou didst change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier
of words with the Sahibs, and he feared a like fate. Where is the
Saddhu?'

'With the polis,' said Kim . . . 'Yet I saved the Kamboh's child.'

The lama snuffed blandly.

'Ah, chela, see how thou art overtaken! Thou didst cure the
Kamboh's child solely to acquire merit. But thou didst put a spell
on the Mahratta with prideful workings - I watched thee - and with
sidelong glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer:
whence calamity and suspicion.'

Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. Not more
than any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged,
but he saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of Delhi
into the night.

'It is true,' he murmured. 'Where I have offended thee I have done
wrong.'

'It is more, chela. Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as
a stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not
tell how far.'

This ignorance was well both for Kim's vanity and for the lama's
peace of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at
Simla a code-wire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more
important, the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to -
abstract. Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on
charge of murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant
Ajmir cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland
on Delhi platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the
locked heart of Delhi city. In two hours several telegrams had
reached the angry minister of a southern State reporting that all
trace of a somewhat bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time
the leisurely train halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the
stone Kim had helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a
mosque in far-away Roum - where it disturbed a pious man at prayers.

The lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougainvillea-trellis
near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of
his disciple. 'We will put these things behind us,' he said,
indicating the brazen engine and the gleaming track. 'The jolting of
the te-rain - though a wonderful thing - has turned my bones to
water. We will use clean air henceforward.'

'Let us go to the Kulu woman's house' said Kim, and stepped forth
cheerily under the bundles. Early morning Saharunpore-way is clean
and well scented. He thought of the other mornings at St Xavier's,
and it topped his already thrice-heaped contentment.

'Where is this new haste born from? Wise men do not run about like
chickens in the sun. We have come hundreds upon hundreds of koss
already, and, till now, I have scarcely been alone with thee an
instant. How canst thou receive instruction all jostled of crowds?
How can I, whelmed by a flux of talk, meditate upon the Way?'

'Her tongue grows no shorter with the years, then?' the disciple
smiled.

'Nor her desire for charms. I remember once when I spoke of the
Wheel of Life' - the lama fumbled in his bosom for his latest copy -
'she was only curious about the devils that besiege children. She
shall acquire merit by entertaining us - in a little while - at an
after-occasion - softly, softly. Now we will wander loose-foot,
waiting upon the Chain of Things. The Search is sure.'

So they travelled very easily across and among the broad bloomful
fruit-gardens - by way of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford,
and little Phulesa - the line of the Siwaliks always to the north,
and behind them again the snows. After long, sweet sleep under the
dry stars came the lordly, leisurely passage through a waking
village - begging-bowl held forth in silence, but eyes roving in
defiance of the Law from sky's edge to sky's edge. Then would Kim
return soft-footed through the soft dust to his master under the
shadow of a mango-tree or the thinner shade of a white Doon siris,
to eat and drink at ease. At mid-day, after talk and a little
wayfaring, they slept; meeting the world refreshed when the air was
cooler. Night found them adventuring into new territory - some
chosen village spied three hours before across the fat land, and
much discussed upon the road.

There they told their tale - a new one each evening so far as Kim
was concerned - and there were they made welcome, either by priest
or headman, after the custom of the kindly East.

When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon
Kim, there was always the Wheel of Life to draw forth, to hold flat
under wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle.
Here sat the Gods on high - and they were dreams of dreams. Here was
our Heaven and the world of the demi-Gods - horsemen fighting among
the hills. Here were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls
ascending or descending the ladder and therefore not to be
interfered with. Here were the Hells, hot and cold, and the abodes
of tormented ghosts. Let the chela study the troubles that come from
over-eating - bloated stomach and burning bowels. Obediently, then,
with bowed head and brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did
the chela study; but when they came to the Human World, busy and
profitless, that is just above the Hells, his mind was distracted;
for by the roadside trundled the very Wheel itself, eating,
drinking, trading, marrying, and quarrelling - all warmly alive.
Often the lama made the living pictures the matter of his text,
bidding Kim - too ready - note how the flesh takes a thousand
shapes, desirable or detestable as men reckon, but in truth of no
account either way; and how the stupid spirit, bond-slave to the
Hog, the Dove, and the Serpent - lusting after betel-nut, a new yoke
of oxen, women, or the favour of kings - is bound to follow the body
through all the Heavens and all the Hells, and strictly round again.
Sometimes a woman or a poor man, watching the ritual - it was
nothing less - when the great yellow chart was unfolded, would throw
a few flowers or a handful of cowries upon its edge. It sufficed
these humble ones that they had met a Holy One who might be moved to
remember them in his prayers.

'Cure them if they are sick,' said the lama, when Kim's sporting
instincts woke. 'Cure them if they have fever, but by no means work
charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta.'

'Then all Doing is evil?' Kim replied, lying out under a big tree at
the fork of the Doon road, watching the little ants run over his
hand.

'To abstain from action is well - except to acquire merit.'

'At the Gates of Learning we were taught that to abstain from action
was unbefitting a Sahib. And I am a Sahib.'

'Friend of all the World,' - the lama looked directly at Kim - 'I am
an old man - pleased with shows as are children. To those who
follow the Way there is neither black nor white, Hind nor Bhotiyal.
We be all souls seeking escape. No matter what thy wisdom learned
among Sahibs, when we come to my River thou wilt be freed from all
illusion - at my side. Hai! My bones ache for that River, as they
ached in the te-rain; but my spirit sits above my bones, waiting.
The Search is sure!'

'I am answered. Is it permitted to ask a question?'

The lama inclined his stately head.

'I ate thy bread for three years - as thou knowest. Holy One,
whence came -?'

'There is much wealth, as men count it, in Bhotiyal,' the lama
returned with composure. 'In my own place I have the illusion of
honour. I ask for that I need. I am not concerned with the account.
That is for my monastery. Ai! The black high seats in the
monastery, and novices all in order!'

And he told stories, tracing with a finger in the dust, of the
immense and sumptuous ritual of avalanche-guarded cathedrals; of
processions and devil-dances; of the changing of monks and nuns into
swine; of holy cities fifteen thousand feet in the air; of intrigue
between monastery and monastery; of voices among the hills, and of
that mysterious mirage that dances on dry snow. He spoke even of
Lhassa and of the Dalai Lama, whom he had seen and adored.

Each long, perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him off
from his race and his mother-tongue. He slipped back to thinking
and dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama's
ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old
man's mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned
to the steadfast snows. His River troubled him nothing. Now and
again, indeed, he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig,
expecting, he said, the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing;
but he was content to be with his disciple, at ease in the temperate
wind that comes down from the Doon. This was not Ceylon, nor Buddh
Gaya, nor Bombay, nor some grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to
have stumbled upon two years ago. He spoke of those places as a
scholar removed from vanity, as a Seeker walking in humility, as an
old man, wise and temperate, illumining knowledge with brilliant
insight. Bit by bit, disconnectedly, each tale called up by some
wayside thing, he spoke of all his wanderings up and down Hind; till
Kim, who had loved him without reason, now loved him for fifty good
reasons. So they enjoyed themselves in high felicity, abstaining,
as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over-
eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. Their
stomachs told them the time, and the people brought them their food,
as the saying is. They were lords of the villages of Aminabad,
Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and little Phulesa, where Kim gave
the soulless woman a blessing.

But news travels fast in India, and too soon shuffled across the
crop-land, bearing a basket of fruits with a box of Kabul grapes and
gilt oranges, a white-whiskered servitor - a lean, dry Oorya -
begging them to bring the honour of their presence to his mistress,
distressed in her mind that the lama had neglected her so long.

'Now do I remember' - the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new
proposition. 'She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker.'

Kim was sitting on the edge of a cow's manger, telling stories to a
village smith's children.

'She will only ask for another son for her daughter. I have not
forgotten her,' he said. 'Let her acquire merit. Send word that we
will come.'

They covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and were
overwhelmed with attentions at the end; for the old lady held a fine
tradition of hospitality, to which she forced her son-in-law, who
was under the thumb of his women-folk and bought peace by borrowing
of the money-lender. Age had not weakened her tongue or her memory,
and from a discreetly barred upper window, in the hearing of not
less than a dozen servants, she paid Kim compliments that would have
flung European audiences into unclean dismay.

'But thou art still the shameless beggar-brat of the parao,' she
shrilled. 'I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye and eat. The father of
my daughter's son is gone away awhile. So we poor women are dumb and
useless.'

For proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till food
and drink were brought; and in the evening - the smoke-scented
evening, copper-dun and turquoise across the fields - it pleased her
to order her palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by
smoky torchlight; and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains,
she gossiped.

'Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him otherwise;
but with this rogue, who can be too careful?'

'Maharanee,' said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, 'is it
my fault that none other than a Sahib - a polis-Sahib - called the
Maharanee whose face he -' 'Chutt! That was on the pilgrimage.
When we travel - thou knowest the proverb.'

'Called the Maharanee a Breaker of Hearts and a Dispenser of
Delights?'

'To remember that! It was true. So he did. That was in the time of
the bloom of my beauty.' She chuckled like a contented parrot above
the sugar lump. 'Now tell me of thy goings and comings - as much as
may be without shame. How many maids, and whose wives, hang upon
thine eyelashes? Ye hail from Benares? I would have gone there again
this year, but my daughter - we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is
the effect of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I
would ask thy Holy One - stand aside, rogue - a charm against most
lamentable windy colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter's
eldest. Two years back he gave me a powerful spell.'

'Oh, Holy One!' said Kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama's rueful
face.

'It is true. I gave her one against wind.'

'Teeth - teeth - teeth, ' snapped the old woman.

"'Cure them if they are sick,"' Kim quoted relishingly, "'but by no
means work charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta."'

'That was two Rains ago; she wearied me with her continual
importunity.' The lama groaned as the Unjust judge had groaned
before him. 'Thus it comes - take note, my chela - that even those
who would follow the Way are thrust aside by idle women. Three days
through, when the child was sick, she talked to me.'

'Arre! and to whom else should I talk? The boy's mother knew
nothing, and the father - in the nights of the cold weather it was -
"Pray to the Gods," said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!'

'I gave her the charm. What is an old man to do?'

"'To abstain from action is well - except to acquire merit."'

'Ah chela, if thou desertest me, I am all alone.'

'He found his milk-teeth easily at any rate,' said the old lady.
'But all priests are alike.'

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