Kim (29 page)

‘Be still. Do not trouble the Holy One,’ a priest cried.

‘Go,’ Kim whispered. ‘Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food—curry, pulse, cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be swift!’

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and slim, in his sand-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary and the other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama. An English observer might have said that he looked rather like the young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a growing lad faint with emptiness.

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed. The Seeker—he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-away Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic—took no part in it, but meditated, as always, alone among the images. The others were very human; pressing small comforts upon the old man—a betel-box, a fine new iron pencase, a food-bag, and such-like—warning him against the dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy end to the Search. Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the steps, and swore to himself in the language of St Xavier’s.

‘But it is my own fault,’ he concluded. ‘With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub’s bread, or Lurgan Sahib’s. At St Xavier’s, three meals a day. Here I must jolly-well look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good training.
How
I could eat a plate of beef now! . . . Is it finished, Holy One?’

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate Chinese. ‘I must lean on thy shoulder,’ said he, as the temple gates closed. ‘We grow stiff, I think.’

The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for the way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

‘Here we eat,’ he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child in the other.

‘Fall to, Holy Ones!’ he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.) ‘Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with
hing
(asafoetida), curds and sugar. King of my fields,’—this to the small son—‘let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur can pay a service. . . . I had heard the Jains would eat nothing that they had not cooked, but truly’—he looked away politely over the broad river—‘where there is no eye there is no caste.’

‘And we,’ said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leafplatter for the lama, ‘are beyond all castes.’

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he had licked the last of the sticky sweetstuff from his little finger did Kim note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.

‘If our roads lie together,’ he said roughly, ‘I go with thee. One does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still weak. But
I
am not altogether a reed.’ He picked up his
lathi
—a five-foot male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron—and flourished it in the air. ‘The Jats are called quarrel-some, but that is not true. Except when we are crossed, we are like our own buffaloes.’

‘So be it,’ said Kim. ‘A good stick is a good reason.’

The lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged perspective the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-ghats by the river. Now and again, despite all municipal regulations, the fragment of a half-burned body bobbed by on the full current.

‘But for thee,’ said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his hairy breast, ‘I might today have gone thither—with this one. The priests tell us that Benares is holy—which none doubt—and desirable to die in. But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for money; and when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of none effect except one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour, drink, lave, and scatter flowers—but always pay the priests. No, the Punjab for me, and the soil of the Jullundur-
doab
for the best soil in it.’

‘I have said many times—in the Temple, I think—that if need be, the River will open at our feet. We will therefore go North,’ said the lama, rising. ‘I remember a pleasant place, set about with fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation—and the air is cooler there. It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.’

‘What is the name?’ said Kim.

‘How should I know? Didst thou not—no, that was after the Army rose out of the earth and took thee away. I abode there in meditation in a room against the dovecot—except when she talked eternally.’

‘Oho! the woman from Kulu. That is by Saharunpore.’ Kim laughed.

‘How does the spirit move thy master? Does he go afoot, for the sake of past sins?’ the Jat demanded cautiously. ‘It is a far cry to Delhi.’

‘No,’ said Kim. ‘I will beg a
tikkut
for the
te-rain
.’ One does not own to the possession of money in India.

‘Then, in the name of the Gods, let us take the fire-carriage. My son is best in his mother’s arms. The Government has brought on us many taxes, but it gives us one good thing—the
te-rain
that joins friends and unites the anxious. A wonderful matter is the
te-rain
.’

They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through the heat of the day. The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand questions as to the lama’s walk and work in life, and received some curious answers. Kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat North-Western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of fellow-passengers. Even today, tickets and ticket-clipping are dark oppression to Indian rustics. They do not understand why, when they have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch great pieces out of the charm. So, long and furious are the debates between travellers and Eurasian ticket-collectors. Kim assisted at two or three with grave advice, meant to darken counsel and to show off his wisdom before the lama and the admiring Kamboh. But at Somna Road the Fates sent him a matter to think upon. There tumbled into the compartment, as the train was moving off, a mean, lean little person—a Mahratta, so far as Kim could judge by the cock of the tight turban. His face was cut, his muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and one leg was bandaged. He told them that a country-cart had upset and nearly slain him: he was going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim watched him closely. If, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and over on the earth, there should have been signs of gravel-rash on the skin. But all his injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart could not cast a man into such extremity of terror. As, with shaking fingers, he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid bare an amulet of the kind called a keeper-up of the heart. Now, amulets are common enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver. There were none except the Kamboh and the lama in the compartment, which, luckily, was of an old type with solid ends. Kim made as to scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. The Mahratta’s face changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the amulet fairly on his breast.

‘Yes,’ he went on to the Kamboh, ‘I was in haste, and the cart, driven by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the harm done to me there was lost a full dish of
tarkeean
. I was not a Son of the Charm (a lucky man) that day.’

‘That was a great loss,’ said the Kamboh, withdrawing interest. His experience of Benares had made him suspicious.

‘Who cooked it?’ said Kim.

‘A woman.’ The Mahratta raised his eyes.

‘But all women can cook
tarkeean
,’ said the Kamboh. ‘It is a good curry, as I know.’

‘Oh yes, it is a good curry,’ said the Mahratta.

‘And cheap,’ said Kim. ‘But what about caste?’

‘Oh, there is no caste where men go to—look for
tarkeean
,’ the Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence. ‘Of whose service art thou?’

‘Of the service of this Holy One.’ Kim pointed to the happy, drowsy lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word.

‘Ah, he was sent from Heaven to aid me. He is called the Friend of all the World. He is also called the Friend of the Stars. He walks as a physician—his time being ripe. Great is his wisdom.’

‘And a Son of the Charm,’ said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh made haste to prepare a pipe lest the Mahratta should beg.

‘And who is
that?
’ the Mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously.

‘One whose child I—we have cured, who lies under great debt to us. Sit by the window, man from Jullundur. Here is a sick one.’

‘Humph!
I
have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels.
My
ears are not long.
I
am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.’ The Jat slid himself heavily into a far corner.

‘Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in calamity,’ cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.

‘This man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him,’ Kim retorted. ‘None interfered between thy babe and me.’

‘I am rebuked,’ said the Kamboh meekly. ‘I am thy debtor for the life of my son. Thou art a miracle-worker—I know it.’

‘Show me the cuts.’ Kim bent over the Mahratta’s neck, his heart nearly choking him; for this was the Great Game with a vengeance. ‘Now, tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm.’

‘I come from the South, where my work lay. One of us they slew by the roadside. Hast thou heard?’ Kim shook his head. He, of course, knew nothing of E.23’s predecessor, slain down South in the habit of an Arab trader. ‘Having found a certain letter which I was sent to seek, I came away. I escaped from the city and ran to Mhow. So sure was I that none knew, I did not change my face. At Mhow a woman brought charge against me of theft of jewellery in that city which I had left. Then I saw the cry was out against me. I ran from Mhow by night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without question to my enemies in the South. Then I lay in old Chitor city a week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid of the letter which was my charge. I buried it under the Queen’s Stone, at Chitor, in the place known to us all.’

Kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the thread.

‘At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings’ country; for Kotah to the east is beyond the Queen’s law, and east again lie Jaipur and Gwalior. Neither love spies, and there is no justice. I was hunted like a wet jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard there was a charge against me of murder in the city I had left—of the murder of a boy. They have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting.’

‘But cannot the Government protect?’

‘We of the Game are beyond protection. If we die, we die. Our names are blotted from the book. That is all. At Bandakui, where lives one of Us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made me a Mahratta. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to Chitor to recover the letter. So sure I was I had slipped them. Therefore I did not send a
tar
(telegram) to any one saying where the letter lay. I wished the credit of it all.’

Kim nodded. He understood that feeling well.

‘But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me, and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts then and there. Oh, they are clever in the South! He recognised me as his agent for cotton. May he burn in Hell for it!’

‘And wast thou?’

‘O fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter! I ran into the Fleshers’ Ward and came out by the House of the Jew, who feared a riot and pushed me forth. I came afoot to Somna Road—I had only money for my
tikkut
to Delhi—and there, while I lay in a ditch with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and cut me and searched me from head to foot. Within earshot of the
te-rain
it was!’

‘Why did he not slay thee out of hand?’

‘They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the instance of lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder, my body is handed over to the State that desires it. I go back guarded, and then—I die slowly for an example to the rest of Us. The South is not my country. I run in circles—like a goat with one eye. I have not eaten for two days. I am marked’—he touched the filthy bandage on his leg—‘so that they will know me at Delhi.’

‘Thou art safe in the
te-rain
, at least.’

‘Live a year at the Great Game and tell me that again! The wires will be out against me at Delhi, describing every tear and rag upon me. Twenty—a hundred, if need be—will have seen me slay that boy. And thou art useless!’

Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the case would be deadly complete—even to the corpse. The Mahratta twitched his fingers with pain from time to time. The Kamboh in his corner glared sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and Kim, fumbling doctor-fashion at the man’s neck, thought out his plan between invocations.

‘Hast thou a charm to change my shape? Else I am dead. Five—ten minutes alone, if I had not been so pressed, and I might——’

‘Is he cured yet, miracle-worker?’ said the Kamboh jealously. ‘Thou hast chanted long enough.’

‘Nay. There is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for three days in the habit of a
bairagi
.’ This is a common penance, often imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher.

‘One priest always goes about to make another priest,’ was the retort. Like most grossly superstitious folk, the Kamboh could not keep his tongue from deriding his Church.

‘Will thy son be a priest, then? It is time he took more of my quinine.’

‘We Jats are all buffaloes,’ said the Kamboh, softening anew.

Kim rubbed a finger-tip of bitterness on the child’s trusting little lips. ‘I have asked for nothing,’ he said sternly to the father, ‘except food. Dost thou grudge me that? I go to heal another man. Have I thy leave—Prince?’