Books: Kim

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'Those who beg in silence starve in silence,' said Kim, quoting a
native proverb. The lama tried to rise, but sank back again,
sighing for his disciple, dead in far-away Kulu. Kim watched head
to one side, considering and interested.

'Give me the bowl. I know the people of this city - all who are
charitable. Give, and I will bring it back filled.'

Simply as a child the old man handed him the bowl.
[start here]
'Rest, thou. I know the people.'

He trotted off to the open shop of a kunjri, a low-caste
vegetable-seller, which lay opposite the belt-tramway line down
the Motee Bazar. She knew Kim of old.

'Oho, hast thou turned yogi with thy begging-bowl?' she cried.

'Nay.' said Kim proudly. 'There is a new priest in the city a man
such as I have never seen.'

'Old priest - young tiger,' said the woman angrily. 'I am tired
of new priests! They settle on our wares like flies. Is the
father of my son a well of charity to give to all who ask?'

'No,' said Kim. 'Thy man is rather yagi [bad-tempered] than yogi
[a holy man]. But this priest is new. The Sahib in the Wonder
House has talked to him like a brother. O my mother, fill me this
bowl. He waits.'

'That bowl indeed! That cow-bellied basket! Thou hast as much
grace as the holy bull of Shiv. He has taken the best of a basket
of onions already, this morn; and forsooth, I must fill thy bowl.
He comes here again.'

The huge, mouse-coloured Brahmini bull of the ward was
shouldering his way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen
plantain hanging out of his mouth. He headed straight for the
shop, well knowing his privileges as a sacred beast, lowered his
head, and puffed heavily along the line of baskets ere making his
choice. Up flew Kim's hard little heel and caught him on his
moist blue nose. He snorted indignantly, and walked away across
the tram-rails, his hump quivering with rage.

'See! I have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. Now,
mother, a little rice and some dried fish atop - yes, and some
vegetable curry.'

A growl came out of the back of the shop, where a man lay.

'He drove away the bull,' said the woman in an undertone. 'It is
good to give to the poor.' She took the bowl and returned it full
of hot rice.

'But my yogi is not a cow,' said Kim gravely, making a hole with
his fingers in the top of the mound. 'A little curry is good, and
a fried cake, and a morsel of conserve would please him, I
think.'

'It is a hole as big as thy head,' said the woman fretfully. But
she filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable
curry, clapped a fried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified
butter on the cake, dabbed a lump of sour tamarind conserve at
the side; and Kim looked at the load lovingly.

'That is good. When I am in the bazar the bull shall not come to
this house. He is a bold beggar-man.'

'And thou?' laughed the woman. 'But speak well of bulls. Hast
thou not told me that some day a Red Bull will come out of a
field to help thee? Now hold all straight and ask for the holy
man's blessing upon me. Perhaps, too, he knows a cure for my
daughter's -sore eyes. Ask. him that also, O thou Little Friend
of all the World.'

But Kim had danced off ere the end of the sentence, dodging
pariah dogs and hungry acquaintances.

'Thus do we beg who know the way of it,' said he proudly to the
lama, who opened his eyes at the contents of the bowl. 'Eat now
and - I will eat with thee. Ohe, bhisti!' he called to the water-
carrier, sluicing the crotons by the Museum. 'Give water here. We
men are thirsty.'

'We men!' said the bhisti, laughing. 'Is one skinful enough for
such a pair? Drink, then, in the name of the Compassionate.'

He loosed a thin stream into Kim's hands, who drank nativefasion;
but the lama must needs pull out a cup from his inexhaustible
upper draperies and drink ceremonially.

'Pardesi [a foreigner],' Kim explained, as the old man delivered
in an unknown tongue what was evidently a blessing.

They ate together in great content, clearing the beggingbowl.
Then the lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd,
fingered his rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of
age, as the shadow of Zam-Zammah grew long.

Kim loafed over to the nearest tobacco-seller, a rather lively
young Mohammedan woman, and begged a rank cigar of the brand that
they sell to students of the Punjab University who copy English
customs. Then he smoked and thought, knees to chin, under the
belly of the gun, and the outcome of his thoughts was a sudden
and stealthy departure in the direction of Nila Ram's timber-
yard.

The lama did not wake till the evening life of the city had begun
with lamp-lighting and the return of white-robed clerks and
subordinates from the Government offices. He stared dizzily in
all directions, but none looked at him save a Hindu urchin in a
dirty turban and Isabella-coloured clothes. Suddenly he bowed his
head on his knees and wailed.

'What is this?' said the boy, standing before him. 'Hast thou
been robbed?'

'It is my new chela [disciple] that is gone away from me, and I
know not where he is.'

'And what like of man was thy disciple?'

'It was a boy who came to me in place of him who died, on account
of the merit which I had gained when I bowed before the Law
within there.' He pointed towards the Museum. 'He came upon me to
show me a road which I had lost. He led me into the Wonder House,
and by his talk emboldened me to speak to the Keeper of the
Images, so that I was cheered and made strong. And when I was
faint with hunger he begged for me, as would a chela for his
teacher. Suddenly was he sent. Suddenly has he gone away. It was
in my mind to have taught him the Law upon the road to Benares.'

Kim stood amazed at this, because he had overheard the talk in
the Museum, and knew that the old man was speaking the truth,
which is a thing a native on the road seldom presents to a
stranger.

'But I see now that he was but sent for a purpose. By this I know
that I shall find a certain River for which I seek.'

'The River of the Arrow?' said Kim, with a superior smile.

'Is this yet another Sending?' cried the lama. 'To none have I
spoken of my search, save to the Priest of the Images. Who art
thou?'

'Thy chela,' said Kim simply, sitting on his heels. 'I have never
seen anyone like to thee in all this my life. I go with thee to
Benares. And, too, I think that so old a man as thou, speaking
the truth to chance-met people at dusk, is in great need of a
disciple.'

'But the River - the River of the Arrow?'

'Oh, that I heard when thou wast speaking to the- Englishman. I
lay against the door.'

The lama sighed. 'I thought thou hadst been a guide permitted.
Such things fall sometimes - but I am not worthy. Thou dost not,
then, know the River?'

'Not U Kim laughed uneasily. 'I go to look for - for a bull a
Red. Bull on a green field who shall help me.' Boylike, if an
acquaintance had a scheme, Kim was quite ready with one of his own;
and, boylike, he had really thought for as much as twenty minutes at a
time of his father's prophecy.

'To what, child?' said the lama.

'God knows, but so my father told me'. I heard thy talk in the
Wonder House of all those new strange places in the Hills, and if
one so old and so little - so used to truth-telling - may go out
for the small matter of a river, it seemed to me that I too must
go a-travelling. If it is our fate to find those things we shall
find them - thou, thy River; and I, my Bull, and the Strong
Pillars and some other matters that I forget.'

'It is not pillars but a Wheel from which I would be free,' said
the lama.

'That is all one. Perhaps they will make me a king,' said Kim,
serenely prepared for anything.

'I will teach thee other and better desires upon the road,' the
lama replied in the voice of authority. 'Let us go to Benares.'

'Not by night. Thieves are abroad. Wait till the day.'

'But there is no place to sleep.' The old man was used to the
order of his monastery, and though he slept on the ground, as the
Rule decrees, preferred a decency in these things.

'We shall get good lodging at the Kashmir Serai,' said Kim,
laughing at his perplexity. 'I have a friend there. Come!'

The hot and crowded bazars blazed with light as they made their
way through the press of all the races in Upper India, and the
lama mooned through it like a man in a dream. It was his first
experience of a large manufacturing city, and the crowded tram-
car with its continually squealing brakes frightened him. Half
pushed, half towed, he arrived at the high gate of the Kashmir
Serai: that huge open square over against the railway station,
surrounded with arched cloisters, where the camel and horse
caravans put up on their return from Central Asia. Here were all
manner of Northern folk, tending tethered ponies and kneeling
camels; loading and unloading bales and bundles; drawing water
for the evening meal at the creaking well-windlasses; piling
grass before the shrieking, wild-eyed stallions; cuffing the
surly caravan dogs; paying off camel-drivers; taking on new
grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing, and chaffering in the packed
square. The cloisters, reached by three or four masonry steps,
made a haven of refuge around this turbulent sea. Most of them
were rented to traders, as we rent the arches of a viaduct; the
space between pillar and pillar being bricked or boarded off into
rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden doors and cumbrous
native padlocks. Locked doors showed that the owner was away, and
a few rude - sometimes very rude - chalk or paint scratches told
where he had gone. Thus: 'Lutuf Ullah is gone to Kurdistan.'
Below, in coarse verse: 'O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on
the coat of a Kabuli, why hast thou allowed this louse Lutuf to
live so long?'

Kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts,
sidled along the cloisters to the far end, nearest the -railway
station, where Mahbub Ali, the horse-trader, lived when he came
in from that mysterious land beyond the Passes of the North.

Kim had had many dealings with Mahbub in his little life,
especially between his tenth and his thirteenth year - and the
big burly Afghan, his beard dyed scarlet with lime (for he was
elderly and did not wish his grey hairs to show), knew the boy's
value as a gossip. Sometimes he would tell Kim to watch a man who
had nothing whatever to do with horses: to follow him for one
whole day and report every soul with whom he talked. Kim would
deliver himself of his tale at evening, and Mahbub would listen
without a word or gesture. It was intrigue of some kind, Kim
knew; but its worth lay in saying nothing whatever to anyone
except Mahbub, who gave him beautiful meals all hot from the
cookshop at the head of the serai, and once as much as eight
annas in money.

'He is here,' said Kim, hitting a bad-tempered camel on the nose.
'Ohe. Mahbub Ali!' He halted at a dark arch and slipped behind
the bewildered lama.

The horse-trader, his deep, embroidered Bokhariot belt unloosed,
was lying on a pair of silk carpet saddle-bags, pulling lazily at
an immense silver hookah. He turned his head very slightly at the
cry; and seeing only the tall silent figure, chuckled in his
deep. chest.

'Allah! A lama! A Red Lama! It is far from Lahore to the Passes.
What dost thou do here?'

The lama held out the begging-bowl mechanically.

'God's curse on all unbelievers!' said Mahbub. 'I do not give to
a lousy Tibetan; but ask my Baltis over yonder behind the camels.
They may value your blessings. Oh, horseboys, here is a
countryman of yours. See if he be hungry.'

A shaven, crouching Balti, who had come down with the horses, and
who was nominally some sort of degraded Buddhist, fawned upon the
priest, and in thick gutturals besought the Holy One to sit at
the horseboys' fire.

'Go!' said Kim, pushing him lightly, and the lama strode away,
leaving Kim at the edge of the cloister.

'Go!' said Mahbub Ali, returning to his hookah. 'Little Hindu,
run away. God's curse on all unbelievers! Beg from those of my
tail who are of thy faith.'

'Maharaj,' whined Kim, using the Hindu form of address, and
thoroughly enjoying the situation; 'my father is dead - my mother
is dead - my stomach is empty.'

'Beg from my men among the horses, I say. There must be some
Hindus in my tall.'

'Oh, Mahbub Ali, but am I a Hindu?' said Kim in English.

The trader gave no sign of astonishment, but looked under shaggy
eyebrows.

'Little Friend of all the World,' said he, 'what is this?'

'Nothing. I am now that holy man's disciple; and we go a
pilgrimage together - to Benares, he says. He is quite mad, and I
am tired of Lahore city. I wish new air and water.'

'But for whom dost thou work? Why come to me?' The voice was
harsh with suspicion.

'To whom else should I come? I have no money. It is not good to
go about without money. Thou wilt sell many horses to the
officers. They are very fine horses, these new ones: I have seen
them. Give me a rupee, Mahbub Ali, and when I come to my wealth I
will give thee a bond and pay.'

'Um!' said Mahbub Ali, thinking swiftly. 'Thou hast never before
lied to me. Call that lama - stand back in the dark.'

'Oh, our tales will agree,' said Kim, laughing.

'We go to Benares,' said the lama, as soon as he understood the
drift of Mahbub Ali's questions. 'The boy and I, I go to seek for
a certain River.'

'Maybe - but the boy?'

'He is my disciple. He was sent, I think, to guide me to that
River. Sitting under a. gun was I when he came suddenly. Such
things have befallen the fortunate to whom guidance was allowed.
But I remember now, he said he was of this world - a Hindu.'

'And his name?'

'That I did not ask. Is he not my disciple?'

'His country - his race - his village? Mussalman - Sikh Hindu -
Jain - low caste or high?'

'Why should I ask? There is neither high nor low in the Middle
Way. If he is my chela - does - will - can anyone take him from
me? for, look you, without him I shall not find my River.' He
wagged his head solemnly.

'None shall take him from thee. Go, sit among my Baltis,' said
Mahbub Ali, and the lama drifted off, soothed by the promise.

'Is he not quite mad?' said Kim, coming forward to the light
again. 'Why should I lie to thee, Hajji?'

Mahbub puffed his hookah in silence. Then he began, almost
whispering: 'Umballa is on the road to Benares - if indeed ye two
go there.'

'Tck! Tck! I tell thee he does not know how to lie - as we two
know.'

'And if thou wilt carry a message for me as far as Umballa, I
will give thee money. It concerns a horse - a white stallion
which I have sold to an officer upon the last time I returned
from the Passes. But then - stand nearer and hold up hands as
begging -the pedigree of the white stallion was not fully
established, and that officer, who is now at Umballa, bade me
make it clear.' (Mahbub here described the horse and the
appearance of the officer.) 'So the message to that officer will
be: "The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established." By
this will he know that thou comest from me. He will then say
"What proof hast thou?" and thou wilt answer: "Mahbub Ali has
given me the proof."'

'And all for the sake of a white stallion,' said Kim, with a
giggle, his eyes aflame.

'That pedigree I will give thee now - in my own fashion and some
hard words as well.' A shadow passed behind Kim, and a feeding
camel. Mahbub Ali raised his voice.

'Allah! Art thou the only beggar in the city? Thy mother is dead.
Thy father is dead. So is it with all of them. Well, well - '

He turned as feeling on the floor beside him and tossed a flap of
soft, greasy Mussalman bread to the boy. 'Go and lie down among
my horseboys for tonight - thou and the lama. Tomorrow I may give
thee service.'

Kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he
found a small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oilskin, with
three silver rupees - enormous largesse. He smiled and thrust
money and paper into his leather amulet-case. The lama,
sumptuously fed by Mahbub's Baltis, was already asleep in a
corner of one of the stalls. Kim lay down beside him and laughed.
He knew he had rendered a service to Mahbub Ali, and not for one
little minute did he believe the tale of the stallion's pedigree.

But Kim did not suspect that Mahbub Ali, known as one of the best
horse-dealers in the Punjab, a wealthy and enterprising trader,
whose caravans penetrated far and far into the Back of Beyond,
was registered in one of the locked books of the Indian Survey
Department as C25 IB. Twice or thrice yearly C25 would send in a
little story, baldly told but most interesting, and generally -
it was checked by the statements of R17 and M4 - quite true. It
concerned all manner of out-of-the-way mountain principalities,
explorers of nationalities other than English, and the guntrade -
was, in brief, a small portion of that vast mass of 'information
received' on which the Indian Government acts. But, recently,
five confederated Kings, who had no business to confederate, had
been informed by a kindly Northern Power that there was a leakage
of news from their territories into British India. So those
Kings' Prime Ministers were seriously annoyed and took steps,
after the Oriental fashion. They suspected, among many others,
the bullying, red-bearded horsedealer whose caravans ploughed
through their fastnesses belly-deep in snow. At least, his
caravan that season had been ambushed and shot at twice on the
way down, when Mahbub's men accounted for three strange ruffians
who might, or might not, have been hired for the job. Therefore
Mahbub had avoided halting at the insalubrious city of Peshawur,
and had come through without stop to Lahore, where, knowing his
country-people, he anticipated curious developments.

And there was that on Mahbub Ali which he did not wish to keep an
hour longer than was necessary - a wad of closely folded tissue-
paper, wrapped in oilskin - an impersonal, unaddressed statement,
with five microscopic pin-holes in one corner, that most
scandalously betrayed the five confederated Kings, the
sympathetic Northern Power, a Hindu banker in Peshawur, a firm of
gun-makers in Belgium, and an important, semi-independent
Mohammedan ruler to the south. This last was R17's work, which
Mahbub had picked up beyond the Dora Pass and was carrying in for
R17, who, owing to circumstances over which he had no control,
could not leave his post of observation. Dynamite was milky and
innocuous beside that report Of C25; and even an Oriental, with
an Oriental's views of the value of time, could see that the
sooner it was in the proper hands the better. Mahbub had no
particular desire to die by violence, because two or three family
blood-feuds across the Border hung unfinished on his hands, and
when these scores were cleared he intended to settle down as a
more or less virtuous citizen. He had never passed the serai gate
since his arrival two days ago, but had been ostentatious in
sending telegrams to Bombay, where he banked some of his money;
to Delhi, where a sub-partner of his own clan was selling horses
to the agent of a Rajputana state; and to Umballa, where an
Englishman was excitedly demanding the pedigree of a white
stallion. The public letter-writer, who knew English, composed
excellent telegrams, such as: 'Creighton, Laurel Bank, Umballa.
Horse is Arabian as already advised. Sorrowful delayed pedigree
which am translating.' And later to the same address: 'Much
sorrowful delay. Will forward pedigree.' To his sub-partner at
Delhi he wired: 'Lutuf Ullah. Have wired two thousand rupees your
credit Luchman Narain's bank-' This was entirely in the way of
trade, but every one of those telegrams was discussed and re-
discussed, by parties who conceived themselves to be interested,
before they went over to the railway station in charge of a
foolish Balti, who allowed all sorts of people to read them on
the road.

When, in Mahbub's own picturesque language, he had muddied the
wells of inquiry with the stick of precaution, Kim had dropped on
him, sent from Heaven; and, being as prompt as he was
unscrupulous, Mahbub Ali used to taking all sorts of gusty
chances, pressed him into service on the spot.

A wandering lama with a low-caste boy-servant might attract a
moment's interest as they wandered about India, the land of
pilgrims; but no one would suspect them or, what was more to the
point, rob.

He called for a new light-ball to his hookah, and considered the
case. If the worst came to the worst, and the boy came to harm,
the paper would incriminate nobody. And he would go up to Umballa
leisurely and - at a certain risk of exciting fresh suspicion -
repeat his tale by word of mouth to the people concerned.

But R17's report was the kernel of the whole affair, and it would
be distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand.
However, God was great, and Mahbub Ali felt he had done all he
could for the time being. Kim was the one soul in the world who
had never told him a lie. That would have been a fatal blot on
Kim's character if Mahbub had not known that to others, for his
own ends or Mahbub's business, Kim could lie like an Oriental.

Then Mahbub Ali rolled across the serai to the Gate of the
Harpies who paint their eyes and trap the stranger, and was at
some pains to call on the one girl who, he had reason to believe,
was a particular friend of a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit who had
waylaid his simple Balti in the matter of the telegrams. It was
an utterly foolish thing to do; because they fell to drinking
perfumed brandy against the Law of the Prophet, and Mahbub grew
wonderfully drunk, and the gates of his mouth were loosened, and
he pursued the Flower of Delight with the feet of intoxication
till he fell flat among the cushions, where the Flower of
Delight, aided by a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit, searched him
from head to foot most thoroughly.

About the same hour Kim heard soft feet in Mahbub's deserted
stall. The horse-trader, curiously enough, had left his door
unlocked, and his men were busy celebrating their return to India
with a whole sheep of Mahbub's bounty. A sleek young gentleman
from Delhi, armed with a bunch of keys which the Flower had
unshackled from the senseless one's belt, went through every
single box, bundle, mat, and saddle-bag in Mahbub's possession
even more systematically than the Flower and the pundit were
searching the owner.

'And I think.' said the Flower scornfully an hour later, one
rounded elbow on the snoring carcass, 'that he is no more than a
pig of an Afghan horse-dealer, with no thought except women and
horses. Moreover, he may have sent it away by now - if ever there
were such a thing.'

'Nay - in a matter touching Five Kings it would be next his black
heart,' said the pundit. 'Was there nothing?'

The Delhi man laughed and resettled his turban as he entered. 'I
searched between the soles of his slippers as the Flower searched
his clothes. This is not the man but another. I leave little
unseen.'

'They did not say he was the very man,' said the pundit
thoughtfully. 'They said, "Look if he be the man, since our
counsels are troubled."'

'That North country is full of horse-dealers as an old coat of
lice. There is Sikandar Khan, Nur Ali Beg, and Farrukh Shah all
heads of kafilas [caravans] - who deal there,' said the Flower.

'They have not yet come in,' said the pundit. 'Thou must ensnare
them later.'

Phew!' said the Flower with deep disgust, rolling Mahbub's head
from her lap. 'I earn my money. Farrukh Shah is a bear, Ali Beg a
swashbuckler, and old Sikandar Khan - yaie! Go! I sleep now. This
swine will not stir till dawn.'

When Mahbub woke, the Flower talked to him severely on the sin of
drunkenness. Asiatics do not wink when they have outmanoeuvred an
enemy, but as Mahbub Ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt,
and staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very
near to it.

'What a colt's trick!' said he to himself 'As if every girl in
Peshawur did not use it! But 'twas prettily done. Now God He
knows how many more there be upon the Road who have orders to
test me - perhaps with the knife. So it stands that the boy must
go to Umballa - and by rail -for the writing is something
urgent. I abide here, following the Flower and drinking wine as
an Afghan coper should.'

He halted at the stall next but one to his own. His men lay there
heavy with sleep. There was no sign of Kim or the lama.

'Up! He stirred a sleeper. 'Whither went those who lay here last
even - the lama and the boy? Is aught missing?'

'Nay,' grunted the man, 'the old madman rose at second cockcrow
saying he would go to Benares, and the young one led him away.'

'The curse of Allah on all unbelievers!' said Mahbub heartily,
and climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard.

But it was Kim who had wakened the lama - Kim with one eye laid
against a knot-hole in the planking, who had seen the Delhi man's
search through the boxes. This was no common thief that turned
over letters, bills, and saddles - no mere burglar who ran a
little knife sideways into the soles of Mahbub's slippers, or
picked the seams of the saddle-bags so deftly. At first Kim had
been minded to give the alarm - the long-drawn cho-or -choor!
[thief! thief!] that sets the serai ablaze of nights; but he
looked more carefully, and, hand on amulet, drew his own
conclusions.

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