Books: Kim

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'Thy Gods useless, heh? Try mine. I am the Woman of Shamlegh.' She
hailed hoarsely, and there came out of a cow-pen her two husbands
and three others with a dooli, the rude native litter of the Hills,
that they use for carrying the sick and for visits of state. 'These
cattle' - she did not condescend to look at them - 'are thine for so
long as thou shalt need.'

'But we will not go Simla-way. We will not go near the Sahibs,'
cried the first husband.

'They will not run away as the others did, nor will they steal
baggage. Two I know for weaklings. Stand to the rear-pole, Sonoo and
Taree.' They obeyed swiftly. 'Lower now, and lift in that holy man.
I will see to the village and your virtuous wives till ye return.'

'When will that be?'

'Ask the priests. Do not pester me. Lay the food-bag at the foot, it
balances better so.'

'Oh, Holy One, thy Hills are kinder than our Plains!' cried Kim,
relieved, as the lama tottered to the litter. 'It is a very king's
bed - a place of honour and ease. And we owe it to -'

'A woman of ill-omen. I need thy blessings as much as I do thy
curses. It is my order and none of thine. Lift and away! Here! Hast
thou money for the road?'

She beckoned Kim to her hut, and stooped above a battered English
cash-box under her cot.

'I do not need anything,' said Kim, angered where he should have
been grateful. 'I am already rudely loaded with favours.'

She looked up with a curious smile and laid a hand on his shoulder.
'At least, thank me. I am foul-faced and a hillwoman, but, as thy
talk goes, I have acquired merit. Shall I show thee how the Sahibs
render thanks?' and her hard eyes softened.

'I am but a wandering priest,' said Kim, his eyes lighting in
answer. 'Thou needest neither my blessings nor my curses.'

'Nay. But for one little moment - thou canst overtake the dooli in
ten strides - if thou wast a Sahib, shall I show thee what thou
wouldst do?' -

'How if I guess, though?' said Kim, and putting his arm round her
waist, he kissed her on the cheek, adding in English: 'Thank you
verree much, my dear.'

Kissing is practically unknown among Asiatics, which may have been
the reason that she leaned back with wide-open eyes and a face of
panic.

'Next time,' Kim went on, 'you must not be so sure of your heatthen
priests. Now I say good-bye.' He held out his hand English-fashion.
She took it mechanically. 'Good-bye, my dear.'

'Good-bye, and - and' - she was remembering her English words one by
one -'you will come back again? Good-bye, and - thee God bless you.'

Half an hour later, as the creaking litter jolted up the hill path
that leads south-easterly from Shamlegh, Kim saw a tiny figure at
the hut door waving a white rag.

'She has acquired merit beyond all others,' said the lama. 'For to
set a man upon the way to Freedom is half as great as though she had
herself found it.'

'Umm,' said Kim thoughtfully, considering the past. 'It may be that
I have acquired merit also ... At least she did not treat me like a
child.' He hitched the front of his robe, where lay the slab of
documents and maps, re-stowed the precious food-bag at the lama's
feet, laid his hand on the litter's edge, and buckled down to the
slow pace of the grunting husbands.

'These also acquire merit,' said the lama after three miles.

'More than that, they shall be paid in silver,' quoth Kim. The Woman
of Shamlegh had given it to him; and it was only fair, he argued,
that her men should earn it back again.

Chapter 15

I'd not give room for an Emperor -
I'd hold my road for a King.
To the Triple Crown I'd not bow down -
But this is a different thing!
I'll not fight with the Powers of Air -
Sentry, pass him through!
Drawbridge let fall - He's the Lord of us all -
The Dreamer whose dream came true!

The Siege of the Fairies.

Two hundred miles north of Chini, on the blue shale of Ladakh, lies
Yankling Sahib, the merry-minded man, spy-glassing wrathfully across
the ridges for some sign of his pet tracker - a man from Ao-chung.
But that renegade, with a new Mannlicher rifle and two hundred
cartridges, is elsewhere, shooting musk-deer for the market, and
Yankling Sahib will learn next season how very ill he has been.

Up the valleys of Bushahr - the far-beholding eagles of the
Himalayas swerve at his new blue-and-white gored umbrella - hurries
a Bengali, once fat and well-looking, now lean and weather-worn. He
has received the thanks of two foreigners of distinction, piloted
not unskilfully to Mashobra tunnel, which leads to the great and gay
capital of India. It was not his fault that, blanketed by wet mists,
he conveyed them past the telegraph-station and European colony of
Kotgarh. It was not his fault, but that of the Gods, of whom he
discoursed so engagingly, that he led them into the borders of
Nahan, where the Rahah of that State mistook them for deserting
British soldiery. Hurree Babu explained the greatness and glory, in
their own country, of his companions, till the drowsy kinglet
smiled. He explained it to everyone who asked - many times - aloud -
variously. He begged food, arranged accommodation, proved a skilful
leech for an injury of the groin - such a blow as one may receive
rolling down a rock-covered hillside in the dark - and in all things
indispensable. The reason of his friendliness did him credit. With
millions of fellow-serfs, he had learned to look upon Russia as the
great deliverer from the North. He was a fearful man. He had been
afraid that he could not save his illustrious employers from the
anger of an excited peasantry. He himself would just as lief hit a
holy man as not, but ... He was deeply grateful and sincerely
rejoiced that he had done his 'little possible' towards bringing
their venture to - barring the lost baggage - a successful issue, he
had forgotten the blows; denied that any blows had been dealt that
unseemly first night under the pines. He asked neither pension nor
retaining fee, but, if they deemed him worthy, would they write him
a testimonial? It might be useful to him later, if others, their
friends, came over the Passes. He begged them to remember him in
their future greatnesses, for he 'opined subtly' that he, even he,
Mohendro Lal Dutt, MA of Calcutta, had 'done the State some
service'.

They gave him a certificate praising his courtesy, helpfulness, and
unerring skill as a guide. He put it in his waist-belt and sobbed
with emotion; they had endured so many dangers together. He led them
at high noon along crowded Simla Mall to the Alliance Bank of Simla,
where they wished to establish their identity. Thence he vanished
like a dawn-cloud on Jakko.

Behold him, too fine-drawn to sweat, too pressed to vaunt the drugs
in his little brass-bound box, ascending Shamlegh slope, a just man
made perfect. Watch him, all Babudom laid aside, smoking at noon on
a cot, while a woman with turquoise-studded headgear points south-
easterly across the bare grass. Litters, she says, do not travel as
fast as single men, but his birds should now be in the Plains. The
holy man would not stay though Lispeth pressed him. The Babu groans
heavily, girds up his huge loins, and is off again. He does not care
to travel after dusk; but his days' marches - there is none to enter
them in a book - would astonish folk who mock at his race. Kindly
villagers, remembering the Dacca drug-vendor of two months ago, give
him shelter against evil spirits of the wood. He dreams of Bengali
Gods, University text-books of education, and the Royal Society,
London, England. Next dawn the bobbing blue-and-white umbrella goes
forward.

On the edge of the Doon, Mussoorie well behind them and the Plains
spread out in golden dust before, rests a worn litter in which - all
the Hills know it - lies a sick lama who seeks a River for his
healing. Villages have almost come to blows over the honour of
bearing it, for not only has the lama given them blessings, but his
disciple good money - full one-third Sahibs' prices. Twelve miles a
day has the dooli travelled, as the greasy, rubbed pole-ends show,
and by roads that few Sahibs use. Over the Nilang Pass in storm when
the driven snow-dust filled every fold of the impassive lama's
drapery; between the black horns of Raieng where they heard the
whistle of the wild goats through the clouds; pitching and strained
on the shale below; hard-held between shoulder and clenched jaw when
they rounded the hideous curves of the Cut Road under Bhagirati;
swinging and creaking to the steady jog-trot of the descent into the
Valley of the Waters; pressed along the steamy levels of that locked
valley; up, up and out again, to meet the roaring gusts off
Kedarnath; set down of mid-days in the dun gloom of kindly oak-
forests; passed from village to village in dawn-chill, when even
devotees may be forgiven for swearing at impatient holy men; or by
torchlight, when the least fearful think of ghosts - the dooli has
reached her last stage. The little hill-folk sweat in the modified
heat of the lower Siwaliks, and gather round the priests for their
blessing and their wage.

'Ye have acquired merit,' says the lama. 'Merit greater than your
knowing. And ye will return to the Hills,' he sighs.

'Surely. The high Hills as soon as may be.' The bearer rubs his
shoulder, drinks water, spits it out again, and readjusts his grass
sandal. Kim - his face is drawn and tired - pays very small silver
from his belt', heaves out the food-bag, crams an oilskin packet -
they are holy writings - into his bosom, and helps the lama to his
feet. The peace has come again into the old man's eyes, and he does
not look for the hills to fall down and crush him as he did that
terrible night when they were delayed by the flooded river.

The men pick up the dooli and swing out of sight between the scrub
clumps.

The lama raises a hand toward the rampart of the Himalayas. 'Not
with you, O blessed among all hills, fell the Arrow of Our Lord! And
never shall I breathe your airs again!'

'But thou art ten times the stronger man in this good air,' says
Kim, for to his wearied soul appeal the well-cropped, kindly Plains.
'Here, or hereabouts, fell the Arrow, yes. We will go very softly,
perhaps, a koss a day, for the Search is sure. But the bag weighs
heavy.'

'Ay, our Search is sure. I have come out of great temptation.'

It was never more than a couple of miles a day now, and Kim's
shoulders bore all the weight of it - the burden of an old man, the
burden of the heavy food-bag with the locked books, the load of the
writings on his heart, and the details of the daily routine. He
begged in the dawn, set blankets for the lama's meditation, held the
weary head on his lap through the noonday heats, fanning away the
flies till his wrists ached, begged again in the evenings, and
rubbed the lama's feet, who rewarded him with promise of Freedom -
today, tomorrow, or, at furthest, the next day.

'Never was such a chela. I doubt at times whether Ananda more
faithfully nursed Our Lord. And thou art a Sahib? When I was a man -
a long time ago - I forgot that. Now I look upon thee often, and
every time I remember that thou art a Sahib. It is strange.'

'Thou hast said there is neither black nor white. Why plague me with
this talk, Holy One? Let me rub the other foot. It vexes me. I am
not a Sahib. I am thy chela, and my head is heavy on my shoulders.'

'Patience a little! We reach Freedom together. Then thou and I, upon
the far bank of the River, will look back upon our lives as in the
Hills we saw our days' marches laid out behind us. Perhaps I was once
a Sahib.'

"Was -never a Sahib like thee, I swear it.'

'I am certain the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House was in
past life a very wise Abbot. But even his spectacles do not make my
eyes see. There fall shadows when I would look steadily. No matter -
we know the tricks of the poor stupid carcass - shadow changing to
another shadow. I am bound by the illusion of Time and Space. How
far came we today in the flesh?'

'Perhaps half a koss.' (Three quarters of a mile, and it was a
weary march.)

'Half a koss. Ha! I went ten thousand thousand in the spirit. How,
we are all lapped and swathed and swaddled in these senseless
things.' He looked at his thin blue-veined hand that found the beads
so heavy. 'Chela, hast thou never a wish to leave me?'

Kim thought of the oilskin packet and the books in the food- bag. If
someone duly authorized would only take delivery of them the Great
Game might play itself for aught he then cared. He was tired and hot
in his head, and a cough that came from the stomach worried him.

'No.' he said almost sternly. 'I am not a dog or a snake to bite
when I have learned to love.'

'Thou art too tender towards me.'

'Not that either. I have moved in one matter without consulting
thee. I have sent a message to the Kulu woman by that woman who gave
us the goat's milk this morn, saying that thou wast a little feeble
and wouldst need a litter. I beat myself in mv mind that I did not
do it when we entered the Doon. We stay in this place till the
litter returns.'

'I am content. She is a woman with a heart of gold, as thou sayest,
but a talker - something of a talker.'

'She will not weary thee. I have looked to that also. Holy One, my
heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee.' An
hysterical catch rose in his throat. 'I have walked thee too far: I
have not picked good food always for thee; I have not considered the
heat; I have talked to people on the road and left thee alone ... I
have - I have ... Hai mai! But I love thee ... and it is all too
late ... I was a child . . . Oh, why was I not a man? . . .'
Overborne by strain, fatigue, and the weight beyond his years, Kim
broke down and sobbed at the lama's feet.

'What a to-do is here!' said the old man gently. 'Thou hast never
stepped a hair's breadth from the Way of Obedience. Neglect me?
Child, I have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime
of a new wall. Day by day, since Shamlegh down, I have stolen
strength from thee. Therefore, not through any sin of thine, art
thou weakened. It is the Body - the silly, stupid Body - that speaks
now. Not the assured Soul. Be comforted! Know at least the devils
that thou fightest. They are earth-born - children of illusion. We
will go to the woman from Kulu. She shall acquire merit in housing
us, and specially in tending me. Thou shalt run free till strength
returns. I had forgotten the stupid Body. If there be any blame, I
bear it. But we are too close to the Gates of Deliverance to weigh
blame. I could praise thee, but what need? In a little - in a very
little - we shall sit beyond all needs.'

And so he petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on
that little-understood beast, our Body, who, being but a delusion,
insists on posing as the Soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the
immense multiplication of unnecessary devils.

'Hai! hai! Let us talk of the woman from Kulu. Think you she will
ask another charm for her grandsons? When I was a young man, a very
long time ago, I was plagued with these vapours - and some others -
and I went to an Abbot - a very holy man and a seeker after truth,
though then I knew it not. Sit up and listen, child of my soul! My
tale was told. Said he to me, "Chela, know this. There are many lies
in the world, and not a few liars, but there are no liars like our
bodies, except it be the sensations of our bodies." Considering this
I was comforted, and of his great favour he suffered me to drink tea
In his presence. Suffer me now to drink tea, for I am thirsty.'

With a laugh across his tears, Kim kissed the lama's feet, and set
about the tea-making.

'Thou leanest on me in the body, Holy One, but I lean on thee for
some other things. Dost know it?'

'I have guessed maybe,' and the lama's eyes twinkled. 'We must
change that.'

So, when with scufflings and scrapings and a hot air of importance,
paddled up nothing less than the Sahiba's pet palanquin sent twenty
miles, with that same grizzled old Oorya servant in charge, and when
they reached the disorderly order of the long white rambling house
behind Saharunpore, the lama took his own measures.

Said the Sahiba cheerily from an upper window, after compliments:
'What is the good of an old woman's advice to an old man? I told
thee - I told thee, Holy One, to keep an eye upon the chela. How
didst thou do it? Never answer me! I know. He has been running among
the women. Look at his eyes - hollow and sunk - and the Betraying
Line from the nose down! He has been sifted out! Fie! Fie! And a
priest, too!'

Kim looked up, over-weary to smile, shaking his head in denial.

'Do not jest,' said the lama. 'That time is done. We are here upon
great matters. A sickness of soul took me in the Hills, and him a
sickness of the body. Since then I have lived upon his strength -
eating him.'

'Children together - young and old,' she sniffed, but forbore to
make any new jokes. 'May this present hospitality restore ye! Hold
awhile and I will come to gossip of the high good Hills.'

At evening time - her son-in-law was returned, so she did not need
to go on inspection round the farm - she won to the meat of the
matter, explained low-voicedly by the lama. The two old heads nodded
wisely together. Kim had reeled to a room with a cot in it, and was
dozing soddenly. The lama had forbidden him to set blankets or get
food.

'I know - I know. Who but I?' she cackled. 'We who go down to the
burning-ghats clutch at the hands of those coming up from the River
of Life with full water-jars - yes, brimming water-jars. I did the
boy wrong. He lent thee his strength? It is true that the old eat
the young daily. Stands now we must restore him.'

'Thou hast many times acquired merit -'

'My merit. What is it? Old bag of bones making curries for men
who do not ask "Who cooked this?" Now if it were stored up for my
grandson -'

'He that had the belly-pain?'

'To think the Holy One remembers that! I must tell his mother. It is
most singular honour! "He that had the belly-pain" - straightway the
Holy One remembered. She will be proud.'

'My chela is to me as is a son to the unenlightened.'

'Say grandson, rather. Mothers have not the wisdom of our years. If
a child cries they say the heavens are falling. Now a grandmother is
far enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of
giving the breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or
the wind. And since thou speakest once again of wind, when last the
Holy One was here, maybe I offended in pressing for charms.'

'Sister,' said the lama, using that form of address a Buddhist monk
may sometimes employ towards a nun, 'if charms comfort thee -'

'They are better than ten thousand doctors.'

'I say, if they comfort thee, I who was Abbot of Such-zen, will make
as many as thou mayest desire. I have never seen thy face -'

'That even the monkeys who steal our loquats count for again. Hee!
hee!'

'But as he who sleeps there said,' - he nodded at the shut door of
the guest-chamber across the forecourt - 'thou hast a heart of gold
... And he is in the spirit my very "grandson" to me'

'Good! I am the Holy One's cow." This was pure Hinduism, but the
lama never heeded. 'I am old. I have borne sons in the body. Oh,
once I could please men! Now I can cure them.' He heard her armlets
tinkle as though she bared arms for action. 'I will take over the
boy and dose him, and stuff him, and make him all whole. Hat! hai'!
We old people know something yet.'

Wherefore when Kim, aching in every bone, opened his eyes, and would
go to the cook-house to get his master's food, he found strong
coercion about him, and a veiled old figure at the door, flanked by
the grizzled manservant, who told him very precisely the things that
he was on no account to do.

'Thou must have? Thou shalt have nothing. What? A locked box in
which to keep holy books? Oh, that is another matter. Heavens
forbid I should come between a priest and his prayers! It shall be
brought, and thou shalt keep the key.'

They pushed the coffer under his cot, and Kim shut away Mahbub's
pistol, the oilskin packet of letters, and the locked books and
diaries, with a groan of relief. For some absurd reason their weight
on his shoulders was nothing to their weight on his poor mind. His
neck ached under it of nights.

'Thine is a sickness uncommon in youth these days: since young folk
have given up tending their betters. The remedy is sleep, and
certain drugs,' said the Sahiba; and he was glad to give himself up
to the blankness that half menaced and half soothed him.

She brewed drinks, in some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the
still-room - drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She
stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after
they had come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced
it by means of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his
scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the
authority of the Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants,
calves, dogs, hens, and the like, fetched a wide compass by those
parts. Best of all, when the body was cleared, she cut out from the
mass of poor relations that crowded the back of the buildings -
house-hold dogs, we name them - a cousin's widow, skilled in what
Europeans, who know nothing about it, call massage. And the two of
them, laying him east and west, that the mysterious earth-currents
which thrill the clay of our bodies might help and not hinder, took
him to pieces all one long afternoon - bone by bone, muscle by
muscle, ligament by ligament, and lastly, nerve by nerve. Kneaded to
irresponsible pulp, half hypnotized by the perpetual flick and
readjustment of the uneasy chudders that veiled their eyes, Kim slid
ten thousand miles into slumber - thirty-six hours of it - sleep
that soaked like rain after drought.

Then she fed him, and the house spun to her clamour. She caused
fowls to be slain; she sent for vegetables, and the sober, slow-
thinking gardener, nigh as old as she, sweated for it; she took
spices, and milk, and onion, with little fish from the brooks - anon
limes for sherbets, fat quails from the pits, then chicken-livers
upon a skewer, with sliced ginger between.

'I have seen something of this world,' she said over the crowded
trays, 'and there are but two sorts of women in it -those who take
the strength out of a man and those who put it back. Once I was that
one, and now I am this. Nay - do not play the priestling with me.
Mine was but a jest. If it does not hold good now, it will when thou
takest the road again. Cousin,' - this to the poor relation, never
wearied of extolling her patroness's charity -'he is getting a bloom
on the skin of a new-curried horse. Our work is like polishing
jewels to be thrown to a dance-girl - eh?'

Kim sat up and smiled. The terrible weakness had dropped from him
like an old shoe. His tongue itched for free speech again, and but a
week back the lightest word clogged it like ashes. The pain in his
neck (he must have caught it from the lama) had gone with the heavy
dengue-aches and the evil taste in the mouth. The two old women, a
little, but not much, more careful about their veils now, clucked as
merrily as the hens that had entered pecking through the open door.

'Where is my Holy One?' he demanded.

'Hear him! Thy Holy One is well,' she snapped viciously. 'Though
that is none of his merit., Knew I a charm to make him wise, I'd
sell my jewels and buy it. To refuse good food that I cooked myself
- and go roving into the fields for two nights on an empty belly -
and to tumble into a brook at the end of it - call you that
holiness? Then, when he has nearly broken what thou hast left of my
heart with anxiety, he tells me that he has acquired merit. Oh, how
like are all men! No, that was not it - he tells me that he is freed
from all sin. I could have told him that before he wetted himself
all over. He is well now - this happened a week ago - but burn me
such holiness! A babe of three would do better. Do not fret thyself
for the Holy One. He keeps both eyes on thee when he is not wading
our brooks.'

'I do not remember to have seen him. I remember that the days and
nights passed like bars of white and black, opening and shutting. I
was not sick: I was but tired."

'A lethargy that comes by right some few score years later. But it is
done now.'

'Maharanee,' Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it
to the title of plain love - 'Mother, I owe my life to thee. How
shall I make thanks? Ten thousand blessings upon thy house and -'

'The house be unblessed!' (It is impossible to give exactly the old
lady's word.) 'Thank the Gods as a priest if thou wilt, but thank
me, if thou carest, as a son. Heavens above! Have I shifted thee and
lifted thee and slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts flung
at my head? Somewhere a mother must have borne thee to break her
heart. What used thou to her - son?'

'I had no mother, my mother,' said Kim. 'She died, they tell me,
when I was young.'

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