Chapter 5
Kim coughed a little as he put down the empty glass, and considered. This seemed a time for caution and fancy. Small boys who prowl about camps are generally turned out after a whipping. But he had received no stripes; the amulet was evidently working in his favour, and it looked as though the Ambala horoscope and the few words that he could remember of his father’s maunderings fitted in most miraculously. Else why did the fat padre seem so impressed, and why the glass of hot yellow drink from the lean one?
‘My father, he is dead in Lahore city since I was very little. The woman, she kept a junk-dealer shop near where the hire-carriages are.’ Kim began with a plunge, not quite sure how far the truth would serve him.
‘Your mother?’
‘No!’—with a gesture of disgust. ‘She went out when I was born. My father, he got these papers from the Jadoo-Gher what do you call that?’ (Bennett nodded) ‘because he was in good-standing. What do you call that?’ (again Bennett nodded). ‘My father told me that. He said, too, and also the Brahmin who made the drawing in the dust at Ambala two days ago, he said, that I shall find a Red Bull on a green field and that the Bull shall help me.’
‘A phenomenal little liar,’ muttered Bennett.
‘Powers of Darkness below, what a country!’ murmured Father Victor. ‘Go on, Kim.’
‘I did not thieve. Besides, I am just now disciple of a very holy man. He is sitting outside. We saw two men come with flags, making the place ready. That is always so in a dream, or on account of a—a—prophecy. So I knew it was come true. I saw the Red Bull on the green field, and my father he said: “Nine hundred pukka devils and the Colonel riding on a horse will look after you when you find the Red Bull!” I did not know what to do when I saw the Bull, but I went away and I came again when it was dark. I wanted to see the Bull again, and I saw the Bull again with the—the Sahibs praying to it. I think the Bull shall help me. The holy man said so too. He is sitting outside. Will you hurt him, if I call him a shout now? He is very holy. He can witness to all the things I say, and he knows I am not a thief.’
‘“Sahibs praying to a bull!” What in the world do you make of that?’ said Bennett. “‘Disciple of a holy man!” Is the boy mad?’
‘It’s O’Hara’s boy, sure enough. O’Hara’s boy leagued with all the Powers of Darkness. It’s very much what his father would have done if he was drunk. We’d better invite the holy man. He may know something.’
‘He does not know anything,’ said Kim. ‘I will show you him if you come. He is my master. Then afterwards we can go.’
‘Powers of Darkness!’ was all that Father Victor could say, as Bennett marched off, with a firm hand on Kim’s shoulder.
They found the lama where he had dropped.
‘The Search is at an end for me,’ shouted Kim in the vernacular. ‘I have found the Bull, but God knows what comes next. They will not hurt you. Come to the fat priest’s tent with this thin man and see the end. It is all new, and they cannot talk Hindi. They are only uncurried donkeys.’
‘Then it is not well to make a jest of their ignorance,’ the lama returned. ‘I am glad if you are rejoiced, chela.’
Dignified and unsuspicious, he strode into the little tent, saluted the Churches as a Churchman, and sat down by the open charcoal brazier. The yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made his face red-gold.
Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of ‘heathen’.
‘And what was the end of the Search? What gift has the Red Bull brought?’ The lama addressed himself to Kim.
‘He says, “What are you going to do?”’ Bennett was staring uneasily at Father Victor, and Kim, for his own ends, took upon himself the office of interpreter.
‘I do not see what concern this fakir has with the boy, who is probably his dupe or his confederate,’ Bennett began. ‘We cannot allow an English boy—Assuming that he is the son of a Mason, the sooner he goes to the Masonic Orphanage the better.’
‘Ah! That’s your opinion as Secretary to the Regimental Lodge,’ said Father Victor; ‘but we might as well tell the old man what we are going to do. He doesn’t look like a villain.’
‘My experience is that one can never fathom the Oriental mind. Now, Kimball, I wish you to tell this man what I say word for word.’
Kim gathered the import of the next few sentences and began thus:
‘Holy One, the thin fool who looks like a camel says that I am the son of a Sahib.’
‘But how?’
‘Oh, it is true. I knew it since my birth, but he could only find it out by rending the amulet from my neck and reading all the papers. He thinks that once a Sahib is always a Sahib, and between the two of them they purpose to keep me in this Regiment or to send me to a madrissah [a school]. It has happened before. I have always avoided it. The fat fool is of one mind and the camel-like one of another. But that is no odds. I may spend one night here and perhaps the next. It has happened before. Then I will run away and return to thee.’
‘But tell them that thou art my chela. Tell them how you did come to me when I was faint and bewildered. Tell them of our Search, and they will surely let thee go now.’
‘I have already told them. They laugh, and they talk of the police.
‘What are you saying?’ asked Mr Bennett.
‘Oah. He only says that if you do not let me go it will stop him in his business—his urgent private affairs.’ This last was a reminiscence of some talk with a Eurasian clerk in the Canal Department, but it only drew a smile, which nettled him. ‘And if you did know what his business was you would not be in such a beastly hurry to interfere.’
‘What is it then?’ said Father Victor, not without feeling, as he watched the lama’s face.
‘There is a River in this country which he wishes to find so very much. It was put out by an Arrow which—’ Kim tapped his foot impatiently as he translated in his own mind from the vernacular to his clumsy English. ‘Oah, it was made by our Lord God Buddha, you know, and if you wash there you are washed away from all your sins and made as white as cotton-wool.’ (Kim had heard mission-talk in his time.) ‘I am his disciple, and we must find that River. It is so verree valuable to us.’
‘Say that again,’ said Bennett. Kim obeyed, with amplifications.
‘But this is gross blasphemy!’ cried the Church of England.
‘Tck! Tck!’ said Father Victor sympathetically. ‘I’d give a good deal to be able to talk the vernacular. A river that washes away sin! And how long have you two been looking for it?’
‘Oh, many days. Now we wish to go away and look for it again. It is not here, you see.’
‘I see,’ said Father Victor gravely. ‘But he can’t go on in that old man’s company. It would be different, Kim, if you were not a soldier’s son. Tell him that the Regiment will take care of you and make you as good a man as your—as good a man as can be. Tell him that if he believes in miracles he must believe that—’
‘There is no need to play on his credulity,’ Bennett interrupted.
‘I’m doing no such thing. He must believe that the boy’s coming here—to his own Regiment—in search of his Red Bull is in the nature of a miracle. Consider the chances against it, Bennett. This one boy in all India, and our Regiment of all others on the line o’ march for him to meet with! It’s predestined on the face of it. Yes, tell him it’s Kismet. Kismet, mallum?’
He turned towards the lama, to whom he might as well have talked of Mesopotamia.
‘They say,’ the old man’s eye lighted at Kim’s speech, ‘they say that the meaning of my horoscope is now accomplished, and that being led back—though as you know I went out of curiosity—to these people and their Red Bull I must go to a madrissah and be turned into a Sahib. Now I make pretence of agreement, for at the worst it will be but a few meals eaten away from you. Then I will slip away and follow down the road to Saharunpore.
‘Therefore, Holy One, keep with that Kulu woman—on no account stray far from her cart till I come again. Past question, my sign is of War and of armed men. See how they have given me wine to drink and set me upon a bed of honour! My father must have been some great person. So if they raise me to honour among them, good. If not, good again. However it goes, I will run back to thee when I am tired. But stay with the Rajputni, or I shall miss your feet … Oh yes,’ said the boy, ‘I have told him everything you tell me to say.’
‘And I cannot see any need why he should wait,’ said Bennett, feeling in his trouser-pocket. ‘We can investigate the details later–and I will give him a–’
‘Give him time. Maybe he’s fond of the lad,’ said Father Victor, half arresting the clergyman’s motion.
The lama dragged forth his rosary and pulled his huge hat-brim over his eyes.
‘What can he want now?’
‘He says’—Kim put up one hand. ‘He says: “Be quiet.” He wants to speak to me by himself. You see, you do not know one little word of what he says, and I think if you talk he will perhaps give you very bad curses. When he takes those beads like that, you see, he always wants to be quiet.’
The two Englishmen sat overwhelmed, but there was a look in Bennett’s eye that promised ill for Kim when he should be relaxed to the religious arm.
‘A Sahib and the son of a Sahib—’ The lama’s voice was harsh with pain. ‘But no white man knows the land and the customs of the land as thou knowest. How comes it this is true?’
‘What matter, Holy One?—but remember it is only for a night or two. Remember, I can change swiftly. It will all be as it was when I first spoke to thee under Zam-Zammah the great gun—’
‘As a boy in the dress of white men—when I first went to the Wonder House. And a second time thou wast a Hindu. What shall the third incarnation be?’ He chuckled drearily. ‘Ah, chela, you have done a wrong to an old man because my heart went out to you.’
‘And mine to you. But how could I know that the Red Bull would bring me to this business?’
The lama covered his face afresh, and nervously rattled the rosary. Kim squatted beside him and laid hold upon a fold of his clothing.
‘Now it is understood that the boy is a Sahib?’ he went on in a muffled tone. ‘Such a Sahib as was he who kept the images in the Wonder House.’ The lama’s experience of white men was limited. He seemed to be repeating a lesson. ‘So then it is not seemly that he should do other than as the Sahibs do. He must go back to his own people.’
‘For a day and a night and a day,’ Kim pleaded.
‘No, ye don’t!’ Father Victor saw Kim edging towards the door, and interposed a strong leg.
‘I do not understand the customs of white men. The Priest of the Images in the Wonder House in Lahore was more courteous than the thin one here. This boy will be taken from me. They will make a Sahib of my disciple? Woe to me! How shall I find my River? Have they no disciples? Ask.’
‘He says he is very sorree that he cannot find the River now any more. He says, Why have you no disciples, and stop bothering him? He wants to be washed of his sins.’
Neither Bennett nor Father Victor found any answer ready.
Said Kim in English, distressed for the lama’s agony: ‘I think if you will let me go now we will walk away quietly and not steal. We will look for that River like before I was caught. I wish I did not come here to find the Red Bull and all that sort of thing. I do not want it.’
‘It’s the very best day’s work you ever did for yourself, young man,’ said Bennett.
‘Good heavens, I don’t know how to console him,’ said Father Victor, watching the lama intently. ‘He can’t take the boy away with him, and yet he’s a good man—I’m sure he’s a good man. Bennett, if you give him that rupee he’ll curse you root and branch!’
They listened to each other’s breathing—three—five full minutes. Then the lama raised his head, and looked forth across them into space and emptiness.
‘And I am a Follower of the Way,’ he said bitterly. ‘The sin is mine and the punishment is mine. I made believe to myself for now I see it was but make-belief—that you will sent to me to aid in the Search. So my heart went out to you for your charity and thy courtesy and the wisdom of your little years. But those who follow the Way must permit not the fire of any desire or attachment, for that is all Illusion. As says …’ He quoted an old, old Chinese text, backed it with another, and reinforced these with a third. ‘I stepped aside from the Way, my chela. It was no fault of yours. I delighted in the sight of life, the new people upon the roads, and in your joy at seeing these things. I was pleased with you who should have considered my Search and my Search alone. Now I am sorrowful because you are taken away and my River is far from me. It is the Law which I have broken!’
‘Powers of Darkness below!’ said Father Victor, who, wise in the confessional, heard the pain in every sentence.
‘I see now that the sign of the Red Bull was a sign for me as well as for you. All Desire is red—and evil. I will do penance and find my River alone.’
‘At least go back to the Kulu woman,’ said Kim, ‘otherwise thou wilt be lost upon the roads. She will feed you till I run back to thee.’
The lama waved a hand to show that the matter was finally settled in his mind.
‘Now,’—his tone altered as he turned to Kim,—’what will they do with you? At least I may, acquiring merit, wipe out past ill.’
‘Make me a Sahib—so they think. The day after tomorrow I return. Do not grieve.’
‘Of what sort? Such an one as this or that man?’ He pointed to Father Victor. ‘Such an one as those I saw this evening, men wearing swords and stamping heavily?’
‘Maybe.’
‘That is not well. These men follow desire and come to emptiness. You must not be of their sort.’
‘The Ambala priest said that my Star was War,’ Kim interjected. ‘I will ask these fools—but there is truly no need. I will run away this night, for all I wanted to see the new things.’
Kim put two or three questions in English to Father Victor, translating the replies to the lama.
Then: ‘He says, “You take him from me and you cannot say what you will make him.” He says, “Tell me before I go, for it is not a small thing to make a child.”’
‘You will be sent to a school. Later on, we shall see. Kimball, I suppose you’d like to be a soldier?’
‘Gorah-log [white-folk]. No-ah! No-ah!’ Kim shook his head violently. There was nothing in his composition to which drill and routine appealed. ‘I will not be a soldier.’
‘You will be what you’re told to be,’ said Bennett; ‘and you should be grateful that we’re going to help you.’
Kim smiled compassionately. If these men lay under the delusion that he would do anything that he did not fancy, so much the better.
Another long silence followed. Bennett fidgeted with impatience, and suggested calling a sentry to evict the fakir.
‘Do they give or sell learning among the Sahibs? Ask them,’ said the lama, and Kim interpreted.
‘They say that money is paid to the teacher—but that money the Regiment will give … What need? It is only for a night.’
‘And—the more money is paid the better learning is given?’ The lama disregarded Kim’s plans for an early flight. ‘It is no wrong to pay for learning. To help the ignorant to wisdom is always a merit.’ The rosary clicked furiously as an abacus. Then he faced his oppressors.
‘Ask them for how much money do they give a wise and suitable teaching? And in what city is that teaching given?’
‘Well,’ said Father Victor in English, when Kim had translated, ‘that depends. The Regiment would pay for you all the time you are at the Military Orphanage; or you might go on the Punjab Masonic Orphanage’s list (not that he or you would understand what that means); but the best schooling a boy can get in India is, of course, at St Xavier’s in Partibus at Lucknow.’ This took some time to interpret, for Bennett wished to cut it short.
‘He wants to know how much?’ said Kim placidly.
‘Two or three hundred rupees a year.’ Father Victor was long past any sense of amazement. Bennett, impatient, did not understand.
‘He says: “Write that name and the money upon a paper and give it him.” And he says you must write your name below, because he is going to write a letter in some days to you. He says you are a good man.
He says the other man is a fool. He is going away.’
The lama rose suddenly. ‘I follow my Search,’ he cried, and was gone.
‘He’ll run slap into the sentries,’ cried Father Victor, jumping up as the lama stalked out; ‘but I can’t leave the boy.’ Kim made swift motion to follow, but checked himself. There was no sound of challenge outside. The lama had disappeared.
Kim settled himself composedly on the Chaplain’s cot. At least the lama had promised that he would stay with the Raiput woman from Kulu, and the rest was of the smallest importance. It pleased him that the two padres were so evidently excited. They talked long in undertones, Father Victor urging some scheme on Mr Bennett, who seemed incredulous. All this was very new and fascinating, but Kim felt sleepy. They called men into the tent—one of them certainly was the Colonel, as his father had prophesied—and they asked him an infinity of questions, chiefly about the woman who looked after him, all of which Kim answered truthfully. They did not seem to think the woman a good guardian.
After all, this was the newest of his experiences. Sooner or later, if he chose, he could escape into great, grey, formless India, beyond tents and padres and colonels. Meantime, if the Sahibs were to be impressed, he would do his best to impress them. He too was a white man.
After much talk that he could not comprehend, they handed him over to a sergeant, who had strict instructions not to let him escape. The Regiment would go on to Ambala, and Kim would be sent up, partly at the expense of the Lodge and in part by subscription, to a place called Sanawar.
‘It’s miraculous past all whooping, Colonel,’ said Father Victor, when he had talked without a break for ‘It’s miraculous past all whooping, Colonel,’ said Father Victor, when he had talked without a break for ten minutes. ‘His Buddhist friend has levanted after taking my name and address. I can’t quite make out whether he’ll pay for the boy’s education or whether he is preparing some sort of witchcraft on his own account.’ Then to Kim: ‘You’ll live to be grateful to your friend the Red Bull yet. We’ll make a man of you at Sanawar—even at the price of making you a Protestant.’
‘Certainly—most certainly,’ said Bennett.
‘But you will not go to Sanawar,’ said Kim.
‘But we will go to Sanawar, little man. That’s the order of the Commander-in-Chief, who’s a trifle more important than O’Hara’s son.’
‘You will not go to Sanawar. You will go to thee War.’
There was a shout of laughter from the full tent.
‘When you know your own Regiment a trifle better you won’t confuse the line of march with line of battle, Kim. We hope to go to “thee War” sometime.’
‘Oah, I know all thatt.’ Kim drew his bow again at a venture. If they were not going to the war, at least they did not know what he knew of the talk in the veranda at Ambala.
‘I know you are not at thee war now; but I tell you that as soon as you get to Ambala you will be sent to the war—the new war. It is a war of eight thousand men, besides the guns.’
‘That’s explicit. D’you add prophecy to your other gifts? Take him along, sergeant. Take up a suit for him from the Drums, and take care he doesn’t slip through your fingers. Who says the age of miracles is gone by? I think I’ll go to bed. My poor mind’s weakening.’
At the far end of the camp, silent as a wild animal, an hour later sat Kim, newly washed all over, in a horrible stiff suit that rasped his arms and legs.
‘A most amazing young bird,’ said the sergeant. ‘He turns up in charge of a yellow-headed buck-Brahmin priest, with his father’s Lodge certificates round his neck, talking God knows what all of a red bull. The buck-Brahmin evaporates without explanations, and the bhoy sets cross-legged on the Chaplain’s bed prophesizing bloody war to the men at large. Injia’s a wild land for a God-fearing man. I’ll just tie his leg to the tent-pole in case he’ll go through the roof.
