Kim
craftsmen together, thou and I.”
The Curator would have detained him: they are few in the world who
still have the secret of the conventional brush-pen Buddhist pictures
which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. But the lama strode
out, head high in air, and pausing an instant before the great statue
of a Bodhisat in meditation, brushed through the turnstiles.
Kim followed like a shadow. What he had overheard excited him wildly.
This man was entirely new to all his experience, and he meant to
investigate further, precisely as he would have investigated a new
building or a strange festival in Lahore city. The lama was his trove,
and he purposed to take possession. Kim’s mother had been Irish, too.
The old man halted by Zam-Zammah and looked round till his eye fell on
Kim. The inspiration of his pilgrimage had left him for awhile, and he
felt old, forlorn, and very empty.
“Do not sit under that gun,” said the policeman loftily.
“Huh! Owl!” was Kim’s retort on the lama’s behalf. “Sit under that gun
if it please thee. When didst thou steal the milkwoman’s slippers,
Dunnoo?”
That was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the moment,
but it silenced Dunnoo, who knew that Kim’s clear yell could call up
legions of bad bazaar boys if need arose.
“And whom didst thou worship within?” said Kim affably, squatting in
the shade beside the lama.
“I worshipped none, child. I bowed before the Excellent Law.”
Kim accepted this new God without emotion. He knew already a few score.
“And what dost thou do?”
“I beg. I remember now it is long since I have eaten or drunk. What is
the custom of charity in this town? In silence, as we do of Tibet, or
speaking aloud?”
“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.
“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. Ohé _bhistie!_” he called to the water-carrier, sluicing
the crotons by the Museum. “Give water here. We men are thirsty.”
“We men!” said the _bhistie_, 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 native fashion; 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 I,” 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 therailway station, where
Mahbub Ali, the horse-trader, lived when he came in from that
mysterious land beyond the Passes of the North.