Books: Kim

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

The family priest, an old, tolerant Sarsut Brahmin, dropped in
later, and naturally started a theological argument to impress
the family. By creed, of course, they were all on their priest's
side, but the lama was the guest and the novelty. His gentle
kindliness, and his impressive Chinese quotations, that sounded
like spells, delighted them hugely; and in this sympathetic,
simple air, he expanded like the Bodhisat's own lotus, speaking
of his life in the great hills of Such-zen, before, as he said,
'I rose up to seek enlightenment.'

Then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a master-
hand at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family priest
led him on to describe his methods; each giving the planets names
that the other could not understand, and pointing upwards as the
big stars sailed across the dark. The children of the house
tugged unrebuked at his rosary; and he clean forgot the Rule
which forbids looking at women as he talked of enduring snows,
landslips, blocked passes, the remote cliffs where men find
sapphires and turquoise, and that wonderful upland road that
leads at last into Great China itself.

'How thinkest thou of this one?' said the cultivator aside to the
priest.

'A holy man - a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but
his feet are upon the Way,' was the answer. 'And his methods of
nativities, though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure.1

'Tell me,' said Kim lazily, 'whether I find my Red Bull on a
green field, as was promised me.'

'What knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?' the priest asked,
swelling with importance.

'Between first and second cockcrow of the first night in May.'

'Of what year?'

'I do not know; but upon the hour that I cried first fell the
great earthquake in Srinagar which is in Kashmir.' This Kim had
from the woman who took care of him, and she again from Kimball
O'Hara. The earthquake had been felt in India, and for long stood
a leading date in the Punjab.

'Ai!' said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim's
supernatural origin more certain. "Was not such an one's daughter
born then -'

'And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years all
likely boys,' cried the cultivator's wife, sitting outside the
circle in the shadow.

'None reared in the knowledge,' said the family priest, 'forget
how the planets stood in their Houses upon that night.' He began
to draw in the dust of the courtyard. 'At least thou hast good
claim to a half of the House of the Bull. How runs thy prophecy?'

'Upon a day,' said Kim, delighted at the sensation he was
creating, 'I shall be made great by means of a Red Bull on a
green field, but first there will enter two men making all things
ready.'

'Yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. A thick darkness that
clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the
place. Then begins the Sight. Two men - thou sayest? Ay, ay. The
Sun, leaving the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins.
Hence the two men of the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me
a twig, little one.'

He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched
again in the dust mysterious signs - to the wonder of all save
the lama, who, with fine instinct, forbore to interfere.

At the end of half an hour, he tossed the twig from him with a
grunt.

'Hm! Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to
make all things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign
over against him is the sign of War and armed men.'

'There was indeed a man of the Ludhiana Sikhs in the carriage
from Lahore,' said the cultivator's wife hopefully.

'Tck! Armed men - many hundreds. What concern hast thou with
war?' said the priest to Kim. 'Thine is a red and an angry sign
of War to be loosed very soon.'

'None - none.' said the lama earnestly. 'We seek only peace and
our River.'

Kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the dressing-
room. Decidedly he was a favourite of the stars.

The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. 'More than
this I cannot see. In three days comes the Bull to thee, boy.'

'And my River, my River,' pleaded the lama. 'I had hoped his Bull
would lead us both to the River.'

'Alas, for that wondrous River, my brother,' the priest replied.
'Such things are not common.'

Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted
on departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and
nearly three annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and
with many blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.

'Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from

'Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who
would give us meat and shelter?' quoth Kim, stepping merrily
under his burden.

'Yonder is a small stream. Let us look,' said the lama, and he
led from the white road across the fields; walking into a very
hornets' nest of pariah dogs.

Chapter 3

Yea, voice of every Soul that clung

To life that strove from rung to rung
When Devadatta's rule was young,
The warm wind brings Kamakura.

Buddha at Kamakura.

Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a
market-gardener, Arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers
for Umballa city, and well Kim knew the breed.

'Such an one,' said the lama, disregarding the dogs, 'is impolite
to strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. Be warned
by his demeanour, my disciple.'

'Ho, shameless beggars!' shouted the farmer. 'Begone! Get hence!'

'We go,' the lama returned, with quiet dignity. 'We go from these
unblessed fields.'

'Ah,' said Kim, sucking in his breath. 'If the next crops fail,
thou canst only blame thine own tongue.'

The man shuffled uneasily in his slippers. 'The land is full of
beggars,' he began, half apologetically.

'And by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, O
Mali?' said Kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener
least likes. 'All we sought was to look at that river beyond the
field there.'

'River, forsooth!' the man snorted. 'What city do ye hail from
not to know a canal-cut? It runs as straight as an arrow ' and I
pay for the water as though it were molten silver. There is a
branch of a river beyond. But if ye need water I can give that -
and milk.'

'Nay, we will go to the river,' said the lama, striding out.

'Milk and a meal.' the man stammered, as he looked at the strange
tall figure. 'I - I would not draw evil upon myself - or my
crops. But beggars are so many in these hard days.'

'Take notice.' The lama turned to Kim. 'He was led to speak
harshly by the Red Mist of anger. That clearing from his eyes, he
becomes courteous and of an affable heart. May his fields be
blessed! Beware not to judge men too hastily, O farmer.'

'I have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone
to byre,' said Kim to the abashed man. 'Is he not wise and holy?
I am his disciple.'

He cocked his nose in the air loftily and stepped across the
narrow field-borders with great dignity.

'There is no pride,' said the lama, after a pause, 'there is no
pride among such as follow the Middle Way.'

'But thou hast said he was low-caste and discourteous.'

'Low-caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not?
Afterwards he amended his discourtesy, and I forgot the offence.
Moreover, he is as we are, bound upon the Wheel of Things; but he
does not tread the way of deliverance.' He halted at a little
runlet among the fields, and considered the hoof-pitted bank.

'Now, how wilt thou know thy River?' said Kim, squatting in the
shade of some tall sugar-cane.

'When I find it, an enlightenment will surely be given. This, I
feel, is not the place. O littlest among the waters, if only thou
couldst tell me where runs my River! But be thou blessed to make
the fields bear!'

'Look! Look!' Kim sprang to his side and dragged him back. A
yellow-and-brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to
the bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still -
a big cobra with fixed, lidless eyes.

'I have no stick - I have no stick,' said Kim. '1 will get me one
and break his back.'

'Why? He is upon the Wheel as we are - a life ascending or
descending - very far from deliverance. Great evil must the soul
have done that is cast into this shape.'

'I hate all snakes,' said Kim. No native training can quench the
white man's horror of the Serpent.

'Let him live out his life.' The coiled thing hissed and half
opened its hood. 'May thy release come soon, brother!' the lama
continued placidly. 'Hast thou knowledge, by chance, of my
River?'

'Never have I seen such a man as thou art,' Kim whispered,
overwhelmed. 'Do the very snakes understand thy talk?'

'Who knows?' He passed within a foot of the cobra's poised head.
It flattened itself among the dusty coils.

'Come, thou!' he called over his shoulder.

'Not I,' said Kim'. 'I go round.'

'Come. He does no hurt.'

Kim hesitated for a moment. The lama backed his order by some
droned Chinese quotation which Kim took for a charm. He obeyed
and bounded across the rivulet, and the snake, indeed, made no
sign.

'Never have I seen such a man.' Kim wiped the sweat from his
forehead. 'And now, whither go we?'

'That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger - far from my
own place. But that the rel-carriage fills my head with noises of
devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now ... Yet by so going
we may miss the River. Let us find another river.'

Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year
through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes,
and nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to
every glimpse of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping
villages at noonday; the lama replying to the volleyed questions
with an unswerving simplicity. They sought a River a River of
miraculous healing. Had any one knowledge of such a stream?
Sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the
end and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a
meal. The women were always kind, and the little children as
children are the world over, alternately shy and venturesome.
Evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-
walled, mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle
came in from the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day's
last meal. They had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens
round hungry Umballa, and were among the mile-wide green of the
staple crops.

He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining
strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set
warm cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the
evening ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for
the village priest.

Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of
Lahore, of railway travel, and such-like city things, while the
men talked, slowly as their cattle chew the cud.

'I cannot fathom it,' said the headman at last to the priest.
'How readest thou this talk?' The lama, his tale told, was
silently telling his beads.

'He is a Seeker.' the priest answered. 'The land is full of such.
Remember him who came only last, month - the fakir with the
tortoise?'

'Ay, but that man had right and reason, for Krishna Himself
appeared in a vision promising him Paradise without the burning-
pyre if he journeyed to Prayag. This man seeks no God who is
within my knowledge.'

'Peace, he is old: he comes from far off, and he is mad,' the
smooth-shaven priest replied. 'Hear me.' He turned to the lama.
'Three koss [six miles] to the westward runs the great road to
Calcutta.'

'But I would go to Benares - to Benares.'

'And to Benares also. It crosses all streams on this side of
Hind. Now my word to thee, Holy One, is rest here till tomorrow.
Then take the road' (it was the Grand Trunk Road he meant) 'and
test each stream that it overpasses; for, as I understand, the
virtue of thy River lies neither in one pool nor place, but
throughout its length. Then, if thy Gods will, be assured that
thou wilt come upon thy freedom.'

'That is well said.' The lama was much impressed by the plan. 'We
will begin tomorrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet
such a near road.' A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed
the sentence. Even the priest was impressed, and the headman
feared an evil spell: but none could look at the lama's simple,
eager face and doubt him long.

'Seest thou my chela?' he said, diving into his snuff-gourd with
an important sniff. It was his duty to repay courtesy with
courtesy.

'I see - and hear.' The headman rolled his eye where Kim was
chatting to a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns on a
fire.

'He also has a Search of his own. No river, but a Bull. Yea, a
Red Bull on a green field will some day raise him to honour. He
is, I think, not altogether of this world. He was sent of a
sudden to aid me in this search, and his name is Friend of all
the World.'

The priest smiled. 'Ho, there, Friend of all the World,' he cried
across the sharp-smelling smoke, 'what art thou?'

'This Holy One's disciple,' said Kim.

'He says thou are a but [a spirit].'

'Can buts eat?' said Kim, with a twinkle. 'For I am hungry.'

'It is no jest,' cried the lama. 'A certain astrologer of that city
whose name I have forgotten -'

'That is no more than the city of Umballa where we slept last
night,' Kim whispered to the priest.

'Ay, Umballa was it? He cast a horoscope and declared that my
chela should find his desire within two days. But what said he of
the meaning of the stars, Friend of all the World?'

Kim cleared his throat and looked around at the village
greybeards.

'The meaning of my Star is War,' he replied pompously.

Somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the
brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have
lain down, Kim's white blood set him upon his feet.

'Ay, War,' he answered.

'That is a sure prophecy,' rumbled a deep voice. 'For there is
always war along the Border -as I know.'

It was an old, withered man, who had served the Government in the
days of the Mutiny as a native officer in a newly raised cavalry
regiment. The Government had given him a good holding in the
village, and though the demands of his sons, now grey-bearded
officers on their own account, had impoverished him, he was still
a person of consequence. English officials - Deputy Commissioners
even - turned aside from the main road to visit him, and on those
occasions he dressed himself in the uniform of ancient days, and
stood up like a ramrod.

'But this shall be a great war - a war of eight thousand.' Kim's
voice shrilled across the quick-gathering crowd, astonishing
himself.

'Redcoats or our own regiments?' the old man snapped, as though
he were asking an equal. His tone made men respect Kim.

'Redcoats,' said Kim at a venture. 'Redcoats and guns.'

'But - but the astrologer said no word of this,' cried the lama,
snuffing prodigiously in his excitement.

'But I know. The word has come to me, who am this Holy One's
disciple. There will rise a war - a war of eight thousand redcoats.
From Pindi and Peshawur they will be drawn. This is
sure.

'The boy has heard bazar-talk,' said the priest.

'But he was always by my side,' said the lama. 'How should he know?
I did not know.'

'He will make a clever juggler when the old man is dead,' muttered
the priest to the headman. 'What new trick is this?'

'A sign. Give me a sign,' thundered the old soldier suddenly. 'If
there were war my sons would have told me.'

'When all is ready, thy sons, doubt not, will be told. But it is a
long road from thy sons to the man in whose hands these things
lie.' Kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences
in the letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he
pretended to know more than he knew. But now he was playing for
larger things - the sheer excitement and the sense of power. He
drew a new breath and went on.

'Old man, give me a sign. Do underlings order the goings of eight
thousand redcoats -with guns?'

'No.' Still the old man answered as though Kim were an equal.

'Dost thou know who He is, then, that gives the order?'

'I have seen Him.'

'To know again?'

'I have known Him since he was a lieutenant in the topkhana (the
Artillery].'

'A tall man. A tall man with black hair, walking thus?' Kim took
a few paces in a stiff, wooden style.

'Ay. But that anyone may have seen.' The crowd were breathless-
still through all this talk.

'That is true,' said Kim. 'But I will say more. Look now. First
the great man walks thus. Then He thinks thus.' (Kim drew a
forefinger over his forehead and downwards till it came to rest
by the angle of the jaw.) 'Anon He twitches his fingers thus.
Anon He thrusts his hat under his left armpit.' Kim illustrated
the motion and stood like a stork.

The old man groaned, inarticulate with amazement; and the crowd
shivered.

'So - so - so. But what does He when He is about to give an order?'

'He rubs the skin at the back of his neck - thus. Then falls one
finger on the table and He makes a small sniffing noise through
his nose. Then He speaks, saying: "Loose such and such a regiment.
Call out such guns."'

The old man rose stiffly and saluted.

'"For"' - Kim translated into the vernacular the clinching
sentences he had heard in the dressing-room at Umballa - '"For,"
says He, "we should have done this long ago. It is not war - it is
a chastisement. Snff!"'

'Enough. I believe. I have seen Him thus in the smoke of battles.
Seen and heard. It is He!'

'I saw no smoke' - Kim's voice shifted to the rapt sing-song of the
wayside fortune-teller. 'I saw this in darkness. First came a man
to make things clear. Then came horsemen. Then came He. standing in
a ring of light. The rest followed as I have said. Old man, have I
spoken truth?'

'It is He. Past all doubt it is He.'

The crowd drew a long, quavering breath, staring alternately at the
old man, still at attention, and ragged Kim against the purple
twilight.

'Said I not - said I not he was from the other world?' cried the
lama proudly. 'He is the Friend of all the World. He is the
Friend of the Stars!'

'At least it does not concern us,' a man cried. 'O thou young
soothsayer, if the gift abides with thee at all seasons, I have a
red-spotted cow. She may be sister to thy Bull for aught I know -
'

'Or I care,' said Kim. 'My Stars do not concern themselves with thy
cattle.'

'Nay, but she is very sick,' a woman struck in. 'My man is a
buffalo, or he would have chosen his words better. Tell me if she
recover?'

Had Kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the
play; but one does not know Lahore city, and least of all the
fakirs by the Taksali Gate, for thirteen years without also knowing
human nature.

The priest looked at him sideways, something bitterly - a dry and
blighting smile.

'Is there no priest, then, in the village? I thought I had seen a
great one even now,' cried Kim.

'Ay - but -' the woman began.

'But thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful
of thanks.' The shot told: they were notoriously the closest-fisted
couple in the village. 'It is not well to cheat the temples. Give a
young calf to thine own priest, and, unless thy Gods are angry past
recall, she will give milk within a month.'

'A master-beggar art thou,' purred the priest approvingly. 'Not the
cunning of forty years could have done better. Surely thou hast
made the old man rich?'

'A little flour, a little butter and a mouthful of cardamoms,' Kim
retorted, flushed with the praise, but still cautious -'Does one
grow rich on that? And, as thou canst see, he is mad. But it serves
me while I learn the road at least."

He knew what the fakirs of the Taksali Gate were like when they
talked among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their
lewd disciples.

'Is his Search, then, truth or a cloak to other ends? It may be
treasure.'

'He is mad - many times mad. There is nothing else.'

Here the old soldier bobbled up and asked if Kim would accept his
hospitality for the night. The priest recommended him to do so, but
insisted that the honour of entertaining the lama belonged to the
temple - at which the lama smiled guilelessly. Kim glanced from one
face to the other, and drew his own conclusions.

'Where is the money?' he whispered, beckoning the old man off into
the darkness.

'In my bosom. Where else?'

'Give it me. Quietly and swiftly give it me.'

'But why? Here is no ticket to buy.'

'Am I thy chela, or am I not? Do I not safeguard thy old feet about
the ways? Give me the money and at dawn I will return it.' He
slipped his hand above the lama's girdle and brought away the
purse.

'Be it so - be it so.' The old man nodded his head. 'This is a
great and terrible world. I never knew there were so many men alive
in it.'

Next morning the priest was in a very bad temper, but the lama was
quite happy; and Kim had enjoyed a most interesting evening with
the old man, who brought out his cavalry sabre and, balancing it on
his dry knees, told tales of the Mutiny and young captains thirty
years in their graves, till Kim dropped off to sleep.

'Certainly the air of this country is good,' said the lama. 'I
sleep lightly, as do all old men; but last night I slept unwaking
till broad day. Even now I am heavy.'

'Drink a draught of hot milk,' said Kim, who had carried not a few
such remedies to opium-smokers of his acquaintance. 'It is time to
take the Road again.'

'The long Road that overpasses all the rivers of Hind,' said the
lama gaily. 'Let us go. But how thinkest thou, chela, to recompense
these people, and especially the priest, for their great kindness?
Truly they are but-parast, but in other lives, maybe, they will
receive enlightenment. A rupee to the temple? The thing within is
no more than stone and red paint, but the heart of man we must
acknowledge when and where it is good.'

'Holy One, hast thou ever taken the Road alone?' Kim looked up
sharply, like the Indian crows so busy about the fields.

'Surely, child: from Kulu to Pathankot - from Kulu, where my first
chela died. When men were kind to us we made offerings, and all men
were well-disposed throughout all the Hills.'

'It is otherwise in Hind,' said Kim drily. 'Their Gods are many-
armed and malignant. Let them alone.'

'I would set thee on thy road for a little, Friend of all the World
thou and thy yellow man.' The old soldier ambled up the village
street, all shadowy in the dawn, on a punt, scissor-hocked pony.
'Last night broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried
heart, and it was as a blessing to me. Truly there is war abroad in
the air. I smell it. See! I have brought my sword.'

He sat long-legged on the little beast, with the big sword at his
side -hand dropped on the pommel - staring fiercely over the flat
lands towards the North. 'Tell me again how He showed in thy
vision. Come up and sit behind me. The beast will carry two.'

'I am this Holy One's disciple,' said Kim, as they cleared the
village-gate. The villagers seemed almost sorry to be rid of them,
but the priest's farewell was cold and distant. He had wasted some
opium on a man who carried no money.

'That is well spoken. I am not much used to holy men, but respect
is always good. There is no respect in these days - not even when
a Commissioner Sahib comes to see me. But why should one whose
Star leads him to war follow a holy man?'

'But he is a holy man,' said Kim earnestly. 'In truth, and in talk
and in act, holy. He is not like the others. I have never seen such
an one. We be not fortune-tellers, or jugglers, or beggars.'

'Thou art not. That I can see. But I do not know that other. He
marches well, though.'

The first freshness of the day carried the lama forward with long,
easy, camel-like strides. He was deep in meditation, mechanically
clicking his rosary.

They followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across
the flat between the great dark-green mango-groves, the line of the
snowcapped Himalayas faint to the eastward. All India was at work
in the fields, to the creaking of well-wheels, the shouting of
ploughmen behind their cattle, and the clamour of the crows. Even
the pony felt the good influence and almost broke into a trot as
Kim laid a hand on the stirrup-leather.

'It repents me that I did not give a rupee to the shrine,' said the
lama on the last bead of his eighty-one.

The old soldier growled in his beard, so that the lama for the
first time was aware of him.

'Seekest thou the River also?' said he, turning.

'The day is new,' was the reply. 'What need of a river save to
water at before sundown? I come to show thee a short lane to the
Big Road.'

'That is a courtesy to be remembered, O man of good will. But why
the sword?'

The old soldier looked as abashed as a child interrupted in his
game of make-believe.

'The sword,' he said, fumbling it. 'Oh, that was a fancy of mine
an old man's fancy. Truly the police orders are that no man must
bear weapons throughout Hind, but' - he cheered up and slapped the
hilt - 'all the constabeels hereabout know me.'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24