Kim
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_
(asafœtida), 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’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 recognized 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