Kim

‘If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?’

‘By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things,’ the lama went on, unheeding. ‘The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some little stream, may be—dried in the heats? But the Holy One would never so cheat an old man.’

‘I do not know. I do not know.’

The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a handsbreadth from the Englishman’s. ‘I see thou dost not know. Not being of the Law, the matter is hid from thee.’

‘Ay—hidden—hidden.’

‘We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I’—he rose with a sweep of the soft thick drapery—‘I go to cut myself free. Come also!’

‘I am bound,’ said the curator. ‘But whither goest thou?’

‘First to Kashi (Benares): where else? There I shall meet one of the pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker in secret, and from him haply I may learn. May be he will go with me to Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there will I seek for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go—for the place is not known where the arrow fell.’

‘And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to Benares.’

‘By road and the trains. From Pathânkot, having left the Hills, I came hither in a te-rain. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed to see those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and snatching up their threads,’—he illustrated the stoop and whirl of a telegraphpole flashing past the train. ‘But later, I was cramped and desired to walk, as I am used.’

‘And thou art sure of thy road?’ said the curator.

‘Oh, for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the appointed persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much I knew in my lamassery from sure report,’ said the lama proudly.

‘And when dost thou go?’ The curator smiled at the mixture of old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of India to-day.

‘As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come to the River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of the hours of the trains that go south.’

‘And for food?’ Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere about them, but the curator wished to make sure.

‘For the journey, I take up the Master’s begging-bowl. Yes. Even as He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was with me when I left the hills a chela (disciple) who begged for me as the Rule demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took him and he died. I have now no chela, but I will take the alms-bowl and thus enable the charitable to acquire merit.’ He nodded his head valiantly. Learned doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an enthusiast in this quest.

‘Be it so,’ said the curator, smiling. ‘Suffer me now to acquire merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three—thick and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles.’

The curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but the power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid into the lama’s hand, saying: ‘Try these.’

‘A feather! A very feather upon the face!’ The old man turned his head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. ‘How scarcely do I feel them! How clearly do I see!’

‘They be bilaur—crystal and will never scratch. May they help thee to thy River, for they are thine.’

‘I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,’ said the lama, ‘as a sign of friendship between priest and priest—and now—’ he fumbled at his belt, detached the open iron-work pencase, and laid it on the curator’s table. ‘That is for a memory between thee and me—my pencase. It is something old—even as I am.’

It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not smelted these days; and the collector’s heart in the curator’s bosom had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would the lama resume his gift.

‘When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a written picture of the Padma Samthora—such as I used to make on silk at the lamassery. Yes—and of the Wheel of Life,’ he chuckled, ‘for we be 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 investi gated 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 milk-woman’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 bazar 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 Brahminee 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 dried 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 beggarman.’