Kim
the _kilta_ was away—off his hands—out of his possession. He tried to
think of the lama—to wonder why he had tumbled into a brook—but the
bigness of the world, seen between the forecourt gates, swept linked
thought aside. Then he looked upon the trees and the broad fields, with
the thatched huts hidden among crops—looked with strange eyes unable to
take up the size and proportion and use of things—stared for a still
half-hour. All that while he felt, though he could not put it into
words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings—a cog-wheel
unconnected with any machinery, just like the idle cog-wheel of a cheap
Beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a corner. The breezes fanned over him,
the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house
behind—squabbles, orders, and reproofs—hit on dead ears.
“I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?” His soul repeated it again and
again.
He did not want to cry—had never felt less like crying in his life—but
of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an
almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on
the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an
instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be
walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be
tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and
true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his
clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in
his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful
eyes reported this move: “Let him go. I have done my share. Mother
Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes back from meditation,
tell him.”
There stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile away,
with a young banyan tree behind—a look-out, as it were, above some
new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as
he neared it. The ground was good clean dust—no new herbage that,
living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds
the seeds of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his
palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full
length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart. And Mother Earth
was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the
poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good
currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands
surrendered to her strength. The many-rooted tree above him, and even
the dead manhandled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did
not know. Hour upon hour he lay deeper than sleep.
Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons
smoke, came the lama and Mahbub Ali, both afoot, walking cautiously,
for the house had told them where he had gone.
“Allah! What a fool’s trick to play in open country!” muttered the
horse-dealer. “He could be shot a hundred times—but this is not the
Border.”
“And,” said the lama, repeating a many-times-told tale, “never was such
a _chela_. Temperate, kindly, wise, of ungrudging disposition, a merry
heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful, courteous.
Great is his reward!”
“I know the boy—as I have said.”
“And he was all those things?”
“Some of them—but I have not yet found a Red Hat’s charm for making him
overly truthful. He has certainly been well nursed.”
“The Sahiba is a heart of gold,” said the lama earnestly. “She looks
upon him as her son.”
“Hmph! Half Hind seems that way disposed. I only wished to see that the
boy had come to no harm and was a free agent. As thou knowest, he and I
were old friends in the first days of your pilgrimage together.”
“That is a bond between us.” The lama sat down. “We are at the end of
the pilgrimage.”
“No thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week back.
I heard what the Sahiba said to thee when we bore thee up on the cot.”
Mahbub laughed, and tugged his newly dyed beard.
“I was meditating upon other matters that tide. It was the _hakim_ from
Dacca broke my meditations.”
“Otherwise”—this was in Pushtu for decency’s sake—“thou wouldst have
ended thy meditations upon the sultry side of Hell—being an unbeliever
and an idolater for all thy child’s simplicity. But now, Red Hat, what
is to be done?”
“This very night,”—the words came slowly, vibrating with triumph—“this
very night he will be as free as I am from all taint of sin—assured as
I am, when he quits this body, of Freedom from the Wheel of Things. I
have a sign”—he laid his hand above the torn chart in his bosom—“that
my time is short; but I shall have safeguarded him throughout the
years. Remember, I have reached Knowledge, as I told thee only three
nights back.”
“It must be true, as the Tirah priest said when I stole his cousin’s
wife, that I am a _sufi_ (a free-thinker); for here I sit,” said Mahbub
to himself, “drinking in blasphemy unthinkable ... I remember the tale.
On that, then, he goes to _Jannatu l’Adn_ (the Gardens of Eden). But
how? Wilt thou slay him or drown him in that wonderful river from which
the Babu dragged thee?”
“I was dragged from no river,” said the lama simply. “Thou hast
forgotten what befell. I found it by Knowledge.”
“Oh, ay. True,” stammered Mahbub, divided between high indignation and
enormous mirth. “I had forgotten the exact run of what happened. Thou
didst find it knowingly.”
“And to say that I would take life is—not a sin, but a madness simple.
My _chela_ aided me to the River. It is his right to be cleansed from
sin—with me.”
“Ay, he needs cleansing. But afterwards, old man—afterwards?”
“What matter under all the Heavens? He is sure of Nibban—enlightened—as
I am.”
“Well said. I had a fear he might mount Mohammed’s Horse and fly away.”
“Nay—he must go forth as a teacher.”
“Aha! Now I see! That is the right gait for the colt. Certainly he must
go forth as a teacher. He is somewhat urgently needed as a scribe by
the State, for instance.”
“To that end he was prepared. I acquired merit in that I gave alms for
his sake. A good deed does not die. He aided me in my Search. I aided
him in his. Just is the Wheel, O horse-seller from the North. Let him
be a teacher; let him be a scribe—what matter? He will have attained
Freedom at the end. The rest is illusion.”
“What matter? When I must have him with me beyond Balkh in six months!
I come up with ten lame horses and three strong-backed men—thanks to
that chicken of a Babu—to break a sick boy by force out of an old
trot’s house. It seems that I stand by while a young Sahib is hoisted
into Allah knows what of an idolater’s Heaven by means of old Red Hat.
And I am reckoned something of a player of the Game myself! But the
madman is fond of the boy; and I must be very reasonably mad too.”
“What is the prayer?” said the lama, as the rough Pushtu rumbled into
the red beard.
“No matter at all; but now I understand that the boy, sure of Paradise,
can yet enter Government service, my mind is easier. I must get to my
horses. It grows dark. Do not wake him. I have no wish to hear him call
thee master.”
“But he _is_ my disciple. What else?”
“He has told me.” Mahbub choked down his touch of spleen and rose
laughing. “I am not altogether of thy faith, Red Hat—if so small a
matter concern thee.”
“It is nothing,” said the lama.
“I thought not. Therefore it will not move thee, sinless, new-washed
and three parts drowned to boot, when I call thee a good man—a very
good man. We have talked together some four or five evenings now, and
for all I am a horse-coper I can still, as the saying is, see holiness
beyond the legs of a horse. Yea, can see, too, how our Friend of all
the World put his hand in thine at the first. Use him well, and suffer
him to return to the world as a teacher, when thou hast—bathed his
legs, if that be the proper medicine for the colt.”
“Why not follow the Way thyself, and so accompany the boy?”
Mahbub stared stupefied at the magnificent insolence of the demand,
which across the Border he would have paid with more than a blow. Then
the humour of it touched his worldly soul.
“Softly—softly—one foot at a time, as the lame gelding went over the
Umballa jumps. I may come to Paradise later—I have workings that
way—great motions—and I owe them to thy simplicity. Thou hast never
lied?”
“What need?”
“O Allah, hear him! ‘What need’ in this Thy world! Nor ever harmed a
man?”
“Once—with a pencase—before I was wise.”
“So? I think the better of thee. Thy teachings are good. Thou hast
turned one man that I know from the path of strife.” He laughed
immensely. “He came here open-minded to commit a _dacoity_ (a
house-robbery with violence). Yes, to cut, rob, kill, and carry off
what he desired.”
“A great foolishness!”
“Oh! black shame too. So he thought after he had seen thee—and a few
others, male and female. So he abandoned it; and now he goes to beat a
big fat Babu man.”
“I do not understand.”
“Allah forbid it! Some men are strong in knowledge, Red Hat. Thy
strength is stronger still. Keep it—I think thou wilt. If the boy be
not a good servant, pull his ears off.”
With a hitch of his broad Bokhariot belt the Pathan swaggered off into
the gloaming, and the lama came down from his clouds so far as to look
at the broad back.
“That person lacks courtesy, and is deceived by the shadow of
appearances. But he spoke well of my _chela_, who now enters upon his
reward. Let me make the prayer! ... Wake, O fortunate above all born of
women. Wake! It is found!”
Kim came up from those deep wells, and the lama attended his yawning
pleasure; duly snapping fingers to head off evil spirits.
“I have slept a hundred years. Where—? Holy One, hast _thou_ been here
long? I went out to look for thee, but”—he laughed drowsily—“I slept by
the way. I am all well now. Hast thou eaten? Let us go to the house. It
is many days since I tended thee. And the Sahiba fed thee well? Who
shampooed thy legs? What of the weaknesses—the belly and the neck, and
the beating in the ears?”
“Gone—all gone. Dost thou not know?”
“I know nothing, but that I have not seen thee in a monkey’s age. Know
what?”
“Strange the knowledge did not reach out to thee, when all my thoughts
were theeward.”
“I cannot see the face, but the voice is like a gong. Has the Sahiba
made a young man of thee by her cookery?”
He peered at the cross-legged figure, outlined jet-black against the
lemon-coloured drift of light. So does the stone Bodhisat sit who looks
down upon the patent self-registering turnstiles of the Lahore Museum.
The lama held his peace. Except for the click of the rosary and a faint
_clop-clop_ of Mahbub’s retreating feet, the soft, smoky silence of
evening in India wrapped them close.
“Hear me! I bring news.”
“But let us—”
Out shot the long yellow hand compelling silence. Kim tucked his feet
under his robe-edge obediently.
“Hear me! I bring news! The Search is finished. Comes now the Reward...
Thus. When we were among the Hills, I lived on thy strength till the
young branch bowed and nigh broke. When we came out of the Hills, I was
troubled for thee and for other matters which I held in my heart. The
boat of my soul lacked direction; I could not see into the Cause of
Things. So I gave thee over to the virtuous woman altogether. I took no
food. I drank no water. Still I saw not the Way. They pressed food upon
me and cried at my shut door. So I removed myself to a hollow under a
tree. I took no food. I took no water. I sat in meditation two days and
two nights, abstracting my mind; inbreathing and outbreathing in the
required manner ... Upon the second night—so great was my reward—the