Books: Kim

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Kim coughed severely. Being young, he did not approve of her
flippancy. 'To importune the wise out of season is to invite
calamitv.'

'There is a talking mynah' - the thrust came back with the well-
remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger - 'over the stables
which has picked up the very tone of the family priest. Maybe I
forget honour to my guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists
into his belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: "Here is
the pain!" ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the hakim's
medicine. He sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as
Shiv's own bull. He does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the
child because of the in-auspicious colour of the bottles.'

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the
darkness towards the room prepared.

'Thou hast angered him, belike,' said Kim.

'Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None
but a grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit
for bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown,
he will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new hakim's
drugs.'

'Who is the hakim, Maharanee?'

'A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca - a
master of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by
means of a small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He
travels about now, vending preparations of great value. He has even
papers, printed in Angrezi, telling what things he has done for
weak-backed men and slack women. He has been here four days; but
hearing ye were coming (hakims and priests are snake and tiger the
world over) he has, as I take it, gone to cover.'

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant,
sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: 'This
house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and -
priests. Let the boy stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with
a grandmother?' He raised his voice respectfully: 'Sahiba, the hakim
sleeps after his meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecote'

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down- talk a
Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a
good game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally
himself, should be thrown aside for such an one. He knew those
curious bastard English advertisements at the backs of native
newspapers. St Xavier's boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to
snigger over among their mates; for the language of the grateful
patient recounting his symptoms is most simple and revealing. The
Oorya, not unanxious to play off one parasite against the other,
slunk away towards the dovecote

'Yes,' said Kim, with measured scorn. 'Their stock-in-trade is a
little coloured water and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are
broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in children
- who are not born.' The old lady chuckled. 'Do not be envious.
Charms are better, eh? I never gainsaid it. See that thy Holy One
writes me a good amulet by the morning.'

'None but the ignorant deny' - a thick, heavy voice boomed through
the darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting - 'None but the
ignorant deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the
value of medicines.'

'A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: "I will open a grocer's
shop,"' Kim retorted.

Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to
attention.

'The priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says
he: "Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great Ones."'
Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went
on: 'I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the
wisdom of the Sahibs.'

'The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children
when they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed,' piped the voice
inside the palanquin.

'I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and
angry men. Sina well compounded when the moon stands in the proper
House; yellow earths I have - arplan from China that makes a man
renew his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir,
and the best salep of Kabul. Many people have died before -'

'That I surely believe,' said Kim.

'They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere
ink in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which
descend and wrestle with the evil.'

'Very mightily they do so,' sighed the old lady.

The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and
bankruptcy, studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. 'But
for my fate, which overrules all, I had been now in Government
employ. I bear a degree from the great school at Calcutta - whither,
maybe, the son of this House shall go.'

'He shall indeed. If our neighbour's brat can in a few years be
made an F A' (First Arts - she used the English word, of which she
had heard so often), 'how much more shall children clever as some
that I know bear away prizes at rich Calcutta.'

'Never,' said the voice, 'have I seen such a child! Born in an
auspicious hour, and - but for that colic which, alas! turning into
black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon - destined to many
years, he is enviable.'

'Hai mai!' said the old lady. 'To praise children is inauspicious,
or I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is
unguarded, and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men,
and women we know ... The child's father is away too, and I must be
chowkedar [watchman] in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin.
Let the hakim and the young priest settle between them whether
charms or medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco
for the guests, and - round the homestead go I!'

The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde
of dogs. Twenty villages knew the Sahiba - her failings, her tongue,
and her large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial
custom, but no man would have stolen or robbed within her
jurisdiction for any gift under heaven. None the less, she made
great parade of her formal inspections, the riot of which could be
heard half-way to Mussoorie.

Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The hakim,
still squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim
pulled at the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional
debate, and perhaps a little free doctoring.

'To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with
teaching the peacock to sing,' said the hakim.

'True courtesy,' Kim echoed, 'is very often inattention.'

These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.

'Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg,' cried a scullion. 'Look at it!'

'Get hence! Remove!' said the hakim. 'Is it the habit of the place
to pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes.'

'If the Sahiba knew -' Kim began.

'Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young
Shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to
-'

'The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the
money-lender's head. Who speaks against her?' The old servitor
curled his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. 'I am
responsible for the honour of this house. Go!' and he drove the
underlings before him.

Said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips:
'How do you do, Mister O'Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again.'

Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road,
perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet
backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed
him, too, that he had been hoodwinked.

'Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow - resurgam - I shall rise again and
you shall not know me. How much did you bet - eh?'

He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed
uneasily.

'But why come here, Babuji?'

'Ah! Thatt is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to
congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at
Delhi. Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree
neat and handy. Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has
been in some dam'-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He
told me; I tell Mr Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely.
All the Department is pleased.'

For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it
can be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise -
ensnaring praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow-
workers. Earth has nothing on the same plane to compare with it.
But, cried the Oriental in him, Babus do not travel far to retail
compliments.

'Tell thy tale, Babu,' he said authoritatively.

'Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in
about what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Creighton -
' He looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.

'The Colonel Sahib,' the boy from St Xavier's corrected. 'Of
course. He found me at a loose string, and I had to go down to
Chitor to find that beastly letter. I do not like the South - too
much railway travel; but I drew good travelling allowance. Ha! Ha! I
meet our mutual at Delhi on the way back. He lies quiett just now,
and says Saddhu-disguise suits him to the ground. Well, there I
hear what you have done so well, so quickly, upon the instantaneous
spur of the moment. I tell our mutual you take the bally bun, by
Jove! It was splendid. I come to tell you so.'

'Umm!'

The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her
setting. Some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night
and to beat upon a drum. Kim's next sentence was in the vernacular.

'How didst thou follow us?'

'Oah. Thatt was nothing. I know from our mutual friend you go to
Saharunpore. So I come on. Red Lamas are not inconspicuous persons.
I buy myself my drug-box, and I am very good doctor really. I go to
Akrola of the Ford, and hear all about you, and I talk here and talk
there. All the common people know what you do. I knew when the
hospitable old lady sent the dooli. They have great recollections of
the old lama's visits here. I know old ladies cannot keep their
hands from medicines. So I am a doctor, and - you hear my talk? I
think it is verree good. My word, Mister O'Hara, they know about
you and the lama for fifty miles - the common people. So I come. Do
you mind?'

'Babuji,' said Kim, looking up at the broad, grinning face, 'I am a
Sahib.'

'My dear Mister O'Hara

'And I hope to play the Great Game.'

'You are subordinate to me departmentally at present.'

'Then why talk like an ape in a tree? Men do not come after one from
Simla and change their dress, for the sake of a few sweet words. I
am not a child. Talk Hindi and let us get to the yolk of the egg.
Thou art here - speaking not one word of truth in ten. Why art thou
here? Give a straight answer.'

'That is so verree disconcerting of the Europeans, Mister O'Hara.
you should know a heap better at your time of life.'

'But I want to know,' said Kim, laughing. 'If it is the Game, I may
help. How can I do anything if you bukh [babble] all round the
shop?'

Hurree Babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it guggled
again.

'Now I will speak vernacular. You sit tight, Mister O'Hara . . . It
concerns the pedigree of a white stallion.'

'Still? That was finished long ago.'

'When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before.
Listen to me till the end. There were Five Kings who prepared a
sudden war three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion's
pedigree by Mahbub Ali. Upon them, because of that news, and ere
they were ready, fell our Army.'

'Ay - eight thousand men with guns. I remember that night.'

'But the war was not pushed. That is the Government custom. The
troops were recalled because the Government believed the Five Kings
were cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high Passes.
HilaS and Bunar - Rajahs with guns - undertook for a price to guard
the Passes against all coming from the North. They protested both
fear and friendship.' He broke off with a giggle into English: "Of
course, I tell you this unoffeecialiv to elucidate political
situation, Mister O'Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from
criticizing any action of superiors. Now I go on. - This pleased the
Government, anxious to avoid expense, and a bond was made for so
many rupees a month that Hilas and Bunar should guard the Passes as
soon as the State's troops were withdrawn. At that time - it was
after we two met - I, who had been selling tea in Leh, became a
clerk of accounts in the Army. When the troops were withdrawn, I
was left behind to pay the coolies who made new roads in the Hills.
This road-making was part of the bond between Bunar, Hilas, and the
Government.'

'So? And then?'

'I tell you, it was jolly-beastly cold up there too, after summer,'
said Hurree Babu confidentially. 'I was afraid these Bunar men would
cut my throat every night for thee pay-chest. My native sepoy-guard,
they laughed at me! By Jove! I was such a fearful man. Nevar mind
thatt. I go on colloquially ... I send word many times that these
two Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet
farther North, amply confirmed it. Nothing was done. Only my feet
were frozen, and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for
which I was paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet
of strangers and enemies.'

'For?'

'For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies.
Then I was called down to tell what I knew by speech of tongue.
Mahbub came South too. See the end! Over the Passes this year after
snow-melting' - he shivered afresh - come two strangers under cover
of shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear also chains
and levels and compasses.'

'Oho! The thing gets clearer.'

'They are well received by Hilas and Bunar. They make great
promises; they speak as the mouthpiece of a Kaisar with gifts. Up
the valleys, down the valleys go they, saying, "Here is a place to
build a breastwork; here can ye pitch a fort. Here can ye hold the
road against an army" - the very roads for which I paid out the
rupees monthly. The Government knows', but does nothing. The three
other Kings, who were not paid for guarding the Passes, tell them by
runner of the bad faith of Bunar and Hilas. When all the evil is
done, look you - when these two strangers with the levels and the
compasses make the Five Kings to believe that a great army will
sweep the Passes tomorrow or the next day - Hill-people are all
fools - comes the order to me, Hurree Babu, "Go North and see what
those strangers do." I say to Creighton Sahib, "This is not a
lawsuit, that we go about to collect evidence."'Hurree returned to
his English with a jerk: "'By Jove," I said, "why the dooce do you
not issue demi-offeecial orders to some brave man to poison them,
for an example? It is, if you permit the observation, most
reprehensible laxity on your part." And Colonel Creighton, he
laughed at me! It is all your beastly English pride. You think no
one dare conspire! That is all tommy-rott.'

Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood
it, in his quick mind.

'Then thou goest forth to follow the strangers?'

'No. To meet them. They are coming in to Simla to send down their
horns and heads to be dressed at Calcutta. They are exclusively
sporting gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the
Government. Of course, we always do that. It is our British pride.'

'Then what is to fear from them?'

'By Jove, they are not black people. I can do all sorts of things
with black people, of course. They are Russians, and highly
unscrupulous people. I - I do not want to consort with them without
a witness.'

'Will they kill thee?'

'Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I
trust, to meet little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you
know. But - but they may beat me.'

'Why?'

Hurree Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. 'Of course I shall
affeeliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity as perhaps
interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or some such
thing. And then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That is as
easy for me as playing Mister Doctor to the old lady. Onlee - onlee
- you see, Mister O'Hara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is
serious detriment in some respects. And all-so I am Bengali - a
fearful man.'

'God made the Hare and the Bengali. What shame?' said Kim, quoting
the proverb.

'It was process of Evolution, I think, from Primal Necessity, but
the fact remains in all the cui bono. I am, oh, awfully fearful! - I
remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa.
(No, I have never reached to Lhassa.) I sat down and cried, Mister
O'Hara, anticipating Chinese tortures. I do not suppose these two
gentlemen will torture me, but I like to provide for possible
contingency with European assistance in emergency.' He coughed and
spat out the cardamoms. 'It is purely unoffeecial indent, to which
you can say "No, Babu". If you have no pressing engagement with your
old man - perhaps you might divert him; perhaps I can seduce his
fancies - I should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me
till I find those sporting coves. I have great opeenion of you
since I met my friend at Delhi. And also I will embody your name in
my offeecial report when matter is finally adjudicated. It will be
a great feather in your cap. That is why I come really.

'Humph! The end of the tale, I think, is true; but what of the
fore-part?'

'About the Five Kings? Oah! there is ever so much truth in it. A
lots more than you would suppose,' said Hurree earnestly. 'You come
- eh? I go from here straight into the Doon. It is verree verdant
and painted meads. I shall go to Mussoorie to good old Munsoorie
Pahar, as the gentlemen and ladies say. Then by Rampur into Chini.
That is the only way they can come. I do not like waiting in the
cold, but we must wait for them. I want to walk with them to Simla.
You see, one Russian is a Frenchman, and I know my French pretty
well. I have friends in Chandernagore.'

'He would certainly rejoice to see the Hills again,' said Kim
meditatively. 'All his speech these ten days past has been of little
else. If we go together -'

'Oah! We can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I
shall just be four or five miles ahead. There is no hurry for Hurree
- that is an Europe pun, ha! ha! - and you come after. There is
plenty of time; they will plot and survey and map, of course. I
shall go tomorrow, and you the next day, if you choose. Eh? You go
think on it till morning. By Jove, it is near morning now.' He
yawned ponderously, and with never a civil word lumbered off to his
sleeping-place. But Kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in
Hindustani:

'Well is the Game called great! I was four days a scullion at
Quetta, waiting on the wife of the man whose book I stole. And that
was part of the Great Game! From the South - God knows how far -
came up the Mahratta, playing the Great Game in fear of his life.
Now I shall go far and far into the North playing the Great Game.
Truly, it runs like a shuttle throughout all Hind. And my share and
my joy' - he smiled to the darkness-'I owe to the lama here. Also to
Mahbub Ali - also to Creighton Sahib, but chiefly to the Holy One.
He is right - a great and a wonderful world - and I am Kim - Kim -
Kim - alone - one person - in the middle of it all. But I will see
these strangers with their levels and chains . . .'

'What was the upshot of last night's babble?' said the lama, after
his orisons

'There came a strolling seller of drugs - a hanger-on of the
Sahiba's. Him I abolished by arguments and prayers, proving that
our charms are worthier than his coloured waters.'

'Alas, my charms! Is the virtuous woman still bent upon a new one?'

'Very strictly.'

'Then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour.'
He fumbled at his pencase.

'In the Plains,' said Kim, 'are always too many people. In the
Hills, as I understand, there are fewer.'

'Oh! the Hills, and the snows upon the Hills.' The lami tore off a
tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet. 'But what dost thou
know of the Hills?'

'They are very close.' Kim thrust open the door and looked at the
long, peaceful line of the Himalayas flushed in morning- gold.
'Except in the dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them.'

The lama snuffed the wind wistfully.

'If we go North,' - Kim put the question to the waking sunrise -
'would not much mid-day heat be avoided by walking among the lower
hills at least? ... Is the charm made, Holy One?'

'I have written the names of seven silly devils - not one of whom is
worth a grain of dust in the eye. Thus do foolish women drag us
from the Way!'

Hurree Babu came out from behind the dovecote washing his teeth with
ostentatious ritual. Full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and
deep-voiced, he did not look like 'a fearful man'. Kim signed
almost imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the
morning toilet was over, Hurree Babu, in flowery speech, came to do
honour to the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the
old lady, more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital
business of green-mango colics in the young. The lama's knowledge of
medicine "was, of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the
dung of a black horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-
skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested
him far more than the science. Hurree Babu deferred to these views
with enchanting politeness, so that the lama called him a courteous
physician. Hurree Babu replied that he was no more than an inexpert
dabbler in the mysteries; but at least - he thanked the Gods
therefore - he knew when he sat in the presence of a master. He
himself had been taught by the Sahibs, who do not consider expense,
in the lordly halls of Calcutta; but, as he was ever first to
acknowledge, there lay a wisdom behind earthly wisdom - the high and
lonely lore of meditation. Kim looked on with envy. The Hurree Babu
of his knowledge - oily, effusive, and nervous - was gone; gone,
too, was the brazen drug-vendor of overnight. There remained -
polished, polite, attentive - a sober, learned son of experience and
adversity, gathering wisdom from the lama's lips. The old lady
confided to Kim that these rare levels were beyond her. She liked
charms with plenty of ink that one could wash off in water, swallow,
and be done with. Else what was the use of the Gods? She liked men
and women, and she spoke of them - of kinglets she had known in the
past; of her own youth and beauty; of the depredations of leopards
and the eccentricities of love Asiatic; of the incidence of
taxation, rack-renting, funeral ceremonies, her son-in-law (this by
allusion, easy to be followed), the care of the young, and the age's
lack of decency. And Kim, as interested in the life of this world as
she soon to leave it, squatted with his feet under the hem of his
robe, drinking all in, while the lama demolished one after another
every theory of body-curing put forward by Hurree Babu.

At noon the Babu strapped up his brass-bound drug-box, took his
patent-leather shoes of ceremony in one hand, a gay blue-and-white
umbrella in the other, and set off northwards to the Doon, where, he
said, he was in demand among the lesser kings of those parts.

'We will go in the cool of the evening, chela,' said the lama. 'That
doctor, learned in physic and courtesy, affirms that the people
among these lower hills are devout, generous, and much in need of a
teacher. In a very short time - so says the hakim - we come to cool
air and the smell of pines.'

'Ye go to the Hills? And by Kulu road? Oh, thrice happy!' shrilled
the old lady. 'But that I am a little pressed with the care of the
homestead I would take palanquin ... but that would be shameless,
and my reputation would be cracked. Ho! Ho! I know the road - every
march of the road I know. Ye will find charity throughout - it is
not denied to the well-looking. I will give orders for provision. A
servant to set you forth upon your journey? No ... Then I will at
least cook ye good food.'

'What a woman is the Sahiba!' said the white-bearded Oorya, when a
tumult rose by the kitchen quarters. 'She has never forgotten a
friend: she has never forgotten an enemy in all her years. And her
cookery - wah!' He rubbed his slim stomach.

There were cakes, there were sweetmeats, there was cold fowl stewed
to rags with rice and prunes - enough to burden Kim like a mule.

'I am old and useless,' she said. 'None now love me - and none
respect - but there are few to compare with me when I call on the
Gods and squat to my cooking-pots. Come again, O people of good
will. Holy One and disciple, come again. The room is always
prepared; the welcome is always ready ... See the women do not
follow thy chela too openly. I know the women of Kulu. Take heed,
chela, lest he run away when he smells his Hills again ... Hai! Do
not tilt the rice-bag upside down ... Bless the household, Holy One,
and forgive thy servant her stupidities.'

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