Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Chapter 8 Page 1
Something I owe to the soil that grew - More to the life that fed - But most to Allah Who gave me two Separate sides to my head.
I would go without shirts or shoes, Friends, tobacco or bread Sooner than for an instant lose Either side of my head.'
The Two-Sided Man.
'Then in God's name take blue for red,' said Mahbub, alluding to the Hindu colour of Kim's disreputable turban.
Kim countered with the old proverb, 'I will change my faith and my bedding, but thou must pay for it.'
The dealer laughed till he nearly fell from his horse. At a shop on the outskirts of the city the change was made, and Kim stood up, externally at least, a Mohammedan.
Mahbub hired a room over against the railway station, sent for a cooked meal of the finest with the almond-curd sweet-meats (balushai we call it) and fine-chopped Lucknow tobacco.
'This is better than some otmeat that I ate with the Sikh,' said Kim, grinning as he squatted, 'and assuredly they give no such victuals at my madrissah.'
'I have a desire to hear of that same madrissah.' Mahbub stuffed himself with great boluses of spiced mutton fried in fat with cabbage and golden-brown onions. 'But tell me first, altogether and truthfully, the manner of thy escape. For, O Friend of all the World,' - he loosed his cracking belt - 'I do not think it is often that a Sahib and the son of a Sahib runs away from there.'
'How should they? They do not know the land. It was nothing,' said Kim, and began his tale. When he came to the disguisement and the interview with the girl in the bazar, Mahbub Ali's gravity went from him. He laughed aloud and beat his hand on his thigh.
'Shabash! Shabash! Oh, well done, little one! will the healer of turquoises say to this? Now, slowly, let us hear what befell afterwards - step by step, omitting nothing.'
Step by step then, Kim told his adventures between coughs as the full-flavoured tobacco caught his lungs.
'I said,' growled Mahbub Ali to himself, 'I said it was the pony breaking out to play polo. The fruit is ripe already -except that he must learn his distances and his pacings, and his rods and his compasses. Listen now. I have turned aside the Colonel's whip from thy skin, and that is no small service.'
'True.' Kim pulled serenely. 'That is true.'
'But it is not to be thought that this running out and in is any way good.'
'It was my holiday, Hajji. I was a slave for many weeks. Why should I not run away when the school was shut? Look, too, how I, living upon my friends or working for my bread, as I did with the Sikh, have saved the Colonel Sahib a great expense.'
Mahbub's lips twitched under his well-pruned Mohammedan moustache.
'What are a few rupees' - the Pathan threw out his open hand carelessly - 'to the Colonel Sahib? He spends them for a purpose, not in any way for love of thee.'
'That,' said Kim slowly, 'I knew a very long time ago.'
'Who told?'
'The Colonel Sahib himself. Not in those many words, but plainly enough for one who is not altogether a mud-head. Yea, he told me in the te-rain when we went down to Lucknow.'
'It was forfeit to me,' said Kim, with deep relish, 'in Umballa, when thou didst pick me up on the horse after the drummer-boy beat me.'
'Speak a little plainer. All the world may tell lies save thou and I. For equally is thy life forfeit to me if I chose to raise my finger here.'
'And this is known to me also,' said Kim, readjusting the live charcoal-ball on the weed. 'It is a very sure tie between us. Indeed, thy hold is surer even than mine; for who would miss a boy beaten to death, or, it may be, thrown into a well by the roadside? Most people here and in Simla and across the passes behind the Hills would, on the other hand, say: "What has come to Mahbub Ali?" if he were found dead among his horses. Surely, too, the Colonel Sahib would make inquiries. But again,'- Kim's face puckered with cunning, - 'he would not make overlong inquiry, lest people should ask: "What has this Colonel Sahib to do with that horse-dealer?" But I - if I lived -'
'As thou wouldst surely die -'
'Maybe; but I say, if I lived, I, and I alone, would know that one had come by night, as a common thief perhaps, to Mahbub Ali's bulkhead in the serai, and there had slain him, either before or after that thief had made a full search into his saddlebags and between the soles of his slippers. Is that news to tell to the Colonel, or would he say to me - (I have not forgotten when he sent me back for a cigar-case that he had not left behind him) - "What is Mahbub Ali to me?"?'
Up went a gout of heavy smoke. There was a long pause: then Mahbub Ali spoke in admiration: 'And with these things on thy mind, dost thou lie down and rise again among all the Sahibs' little sons at the madrissah and meekly take instruction from thy teachers?'
'It is an order,' said Kim blandly. 'Who am I to dispute an order?'
'A most finished Son of Eblis,' said Mahbub Ali. 'But is this tale of the thief and the search?'
'Ha!' Mahbub Ali smiled gently. 'And seeing these things, what tale didst thou fashion to thyself, Well of the Truth?'
'None. I put my hand upon my amulet, which lies always next to my skin, and, remembering the pedigree of a white stallion that I had bitten out of a piece of Mussalmani bread, I went away to Umballa perceiving that a heavy trust was laid upon me. At that hour, had I chosen, thy head was forfeit. It needed only to say to that man, "I have here a paper concerning a horse which I cannot read." And then?' Kim peered at Mahbub under his eyebrows.
'Then thou wouldst have drunk water twice - perhaps thrice, afterwards. I do not think more than thrice,' said Mahbub simply.
'It is true. I thought of a little, but most I thought that I loved thee, Mahbub. Therefore I went to Umballa, as thou knowest, but (and this thou dost not know) I lay hid in the garden-grass to see what Colonel Creighton Sahib might do upon reading the white stallion's pedigree.'
'Dost thou give news for love, or dost thou sell it?' Kim asked.
'I sell and - I buy.' Mahbub took a four-anna piece out of his belt and held it up.
'Eight!' said Kim, mechanically following the huckster instinct of the East.
'Very good. I saw the Jang-i-Lat Sahib (the Commander-in-Chief) come to a big dinner. I saw him in Creighton Sahib's office. I saw the two read the white stallion's pedigree. I heard the very orders given for the opening of a great war.'
'I made the news as it were a hook to catch me victual and honour among the villagers in a village whose priest drugged my lama. But I bore away the old man's purse, and the Brahmin found nothing. So next morning he was angry. Ho! Ho! And I also used the news when I fell into the hands of that white Regiment with their Bull!'
'So I think now, and moreover, it did me no sort of good. But that was very long ago,' he made as to brush it all away with a thin brown hand - 'and since then, and especially in the nights under the punkah at the madrissah, I have thought very greatly.'
'Is it permitted to ask whither the Heaven-born's thought might have led?' said Mahbub, with an elaborate sarcasm, smoothing his scarlet beard.
'It is permitted,' said Kim, and threw back the very tone. 'They say at Nucklao that no Sahib must tell a black man that he has made a fault.'
'Well said. Especially are distances and numbers and the manner of using compasses to be learned in that game. One waits in the Hills above to show thee.'
'I will learn their teaching upon a condition - that my time is given to me without question when the madrissah is shut. Ask that for me of the Colonel.'
'But why not ask the Colonel in the Sahibs' tongue?'
'This great and beautiful land,' said Kim, waving his paw round the little clay-walled room where the oil-lamp in its niche burned heavily through the tobacco-smoke. 'And, further, I would see my lama again. And, further, I need money.'
'That is the need of everyone,' said Mahbub ruefully. 'I will give thee eight annas, for much money is not picked out of horses' hooves, and it must suffice for many days. As to all the rest, I am well pleased, and no further talk is needed. Make haste to learn, and in three years, or it may be less, thou wilt be an aid - even to me.'
'Have I been such a hindrance till now?' said Kim, with a boy's giggle.
'Do not give answers,' Mahbub grunted. 'Thou art my new horse-boy. Go and bed among my men. They are near the north end of the station, with the horses.'
'They will beat me to the south end of the station if I come without authority.'
Mahbub felt in his belt, wetted his thumb on a cake of Chinese ink, and dabbed the impression on a piece of soft native paper. From Balkh to Bombay men know that rough-ridged print with the old scar running diagonally across it.
'By which road?' said Kim.
'By the road from the city. There is but one, and then we return to Creighton Sahib. I have saved thee a beating.'
'Allah! What is a beating the very head is loose on the shoulders?'
Kim slid out quietly into the night, walked half round the house, keeping close to the walls, and headed away from the station for a mile or so. Then, fetching a wide compass, he worked back at leisure, for he needed time to invent a story if any of Mahbub's retainers asked questions.
Followed the usual aimless babble that every low-caste native must raise on every occasion. It died down, and Kim lay out behind the little knot of Mahbub's followers, almost under the wheels of a horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering. Now a bed among brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded horses and unwashed Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy. Change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots of St Xavier's all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the multiplication-table in English.
'I am very old,' he thought sleepily. 'Every month I become a year more old. I was very young, and a fool to boot, when I took Mahbub's message to Umballa. Even when I was with that white Regiment I was very young and small and had no wisdom. But now I learn every day, and in three years the Colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let me go upon the Road with Mahbub hunting for horses' pedigrees, or maybe I shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with him. Yes; that is best. To walk again as a chela with my lama when he comes back to Benares.'
The thoughts came more slowly and disconnectedly. He was plunging into a beautiful dreamland when his ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp, above the monotonous babble round the fire. It came from behind the iron-skinned horse-truck.
'He is not here, then?'
'Where should he be but roystering in the city. Who looks for a rat in a frog-pond? Come away. He is not our man.'
'He must not go back beyond the Passes a second time. It is the order.'
'Hire some woman to drug him. It is a few rupees only, and there is no evidence.'
'Except the woman. It must be more certain; and remember the price upon his head.'
'Ay, but the police have a long arm, and we are far from the Border. If it were in Peshawur, now!'
'Yes - in Peshawur,' the second voice sneered. 'Peshawur, full of his blood-kin - full of bolt-holes and women behind whose clothes he will hide. Yes, Peshawur or Jehannum would suit us equally well.'
'Then what is the plan?'
'O fool, have I not told it a hundred times? Wait till he comes to lie down, and then one sure shot. The trucks are between us and pursuit. We have but to run back over the lines and go our way. They will not see whence the shot came. Wait here at least till the dawn. What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?'