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178 pages

English

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. O ye who tread the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to judgment Day, Be gentle when 'the heathen' pray To Buddha at Kamakura!

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819912880
Langue	English

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Chapter 1
O ye who tread the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare tojudgment Day, Be gentle when 'the heathen' pray To Buddha atKamakura!
Buddha at Kamakura.
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride thegun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher -the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who holdZam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for thegreat green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror'sloot.
There was some justification for Kim - he had kickedLala Dinanath's boy off the trunnions - since the English held thePunjab and Kim was English. Though he was burned black as anynative; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and hismother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consortedon terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kimwas white - a poor white of the very poorest. The half-caste womanwho looked after him (she smoked opium, and pretended to keep asecond-hand furniture shop by the square where the cheap cabs wait)told the missionaries that she was Kim's mother's sister; but hismother had been nursemaid in a Colonel's family and had marriedKimball O'Hara, a young colour-sergeant of the Mavericks, an Irishregiment. He afterwards took a post on the Sind, Punjab, and DelhiRailway, and his Regiment went home without him. The wife died ofcholera in Ferozepore, and O'Hara fell to drink and loafing up anddown the line with the keen-eyed three-year-old baby. Societies andchaplains, anxious for the child, tried to catch him, but O'Haradrifted away, till he came across the woman who took opium andlearned the taste from her, and died as poor whites die in India.His estate at death consisted of three papers - one he called his'ne varietur' because those words were written below his signaturethereon, and another his 'clearance-certificate'. The third wasKim's birth-certificate. Those things, he was used to say, in hisglorious opium-hours, would yet make little Kimball a man. On noaccount was Kim to part with them, for they belonged to a greatpiece of magic - such magic as men practised over yonder behind theMuseum, in the big blue-and-white Jadoo-Gher - the Magic House, aswe name the Masonic Lodge. It would, he said, all come right someday, and Kim's horn would be exalted between pillars - monstrouspillars - of beauty and strength. The Colonel himself, riding on ahorse, at the head of the finest Regiment in the world, wouldattend to Kim - little Kim that should have been better off thanhis father. Nine hundred first-class devils, whose God was a RedBull on a green field, would attend to Kim, if they had notforgotten O'Hara - poor O'Hara that was gang-foreman on theFerozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in the broken rushchair on the veranda. So it came about after his death that thewoman sewed parchment, paper, and birth-certificate into a leatheramulet-case which she strung round Kim's neck.
'And some day,' she said, confusedly rememberingO'Hara's prophecies, 'there will come for you a great Red Bull on agreen field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'dropping into English - 'nine hundred devils.'
'Ah,' said Kim, 'I shall remember. A Red Bull and aColonel on a horse will come, but first, my father said, will comethe two men making ready the ground for these matters. That is howmy father said they always did; and it is always so when men workmagic.'
If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gherwith those papers, he would, of course, have been taken over by theProvincial Lodge, and sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills;but what she had heard of magic she distrusted. Kim, too, heldviews of his own. As he reached the years of indiscretion, helearned to avoid missionaries and white men of serious aspect whoasked who he was, and what he did. For Kim did nothing with animmense success. True, he knew the wonderful walled city of Lahorefrom the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was hand in glove withmen who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al Raschid dreamedof; and he lived in a life wild as that of the Arabian Nights, butmissionaries and secretaries of charitable societies could not seethe beauty of it. His nickname through the wards was 'Little Friendof all the World'; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous,he executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleekand shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigue, - of course heknew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speak, -but what he loved was the game for its own sake - the stealthyprowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe,the sights and sounds of the women's world on the flat roofs, andthe headlong flight from housetop to housetop under cover of thehot dark. Then there were holy men, ash-smeared fakirs by theirbrick shrines under the trees at the riverside, with whom he wasquite familiar - greeting them as they returned from begging-tours,and, when no one was by, eating from the same dish. The woman wholooked after him insisted with tears that he should wear Europeanclothes - trousers, a shirt and a battered hat. Kim found it easierto slip into Hindu or Mohammedan garb when engaged on certainbusinesses. One of the young men of fashion - he who was found deadat the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquake had oncegiven him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume of a lowcastestreet boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place under some baulksin Nila Ram's timber-yard, beyond the Punjab High Court, where thefragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after they have driven down theRavi. When there was business or frolic afoot, Kim would use hisproperties, returning at dawn to the veranda, all tired out fromshouting at the heels of a marriage procession, or yelling at aHindu festival. Sometimes there was food in the house, more oftenthere was not, and then Kim went out again to eat with his nativefriends.
As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turnednow and again from his king-of-the-castle game with little ChotaLal and Abdullah the sweetmeat-seller's son, to make a rude remarkto the native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the Museumdoor. The big Punjabi grinned tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. Sodid the water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from hisgoat-skin bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the Museum carpenter, bentover new packing-cases. So did everybody in sight except thepeasants from the country, hurrying up to the Wonder House to viewthe things that men made in their own province and elsewhere. TheMuseum was given up to Indian arts and manufactures, and anybodywho sought wisdom could ask the Curator to explain.
'Off ! Off ! Let me up!' cried Abdullah, climbing upZamZammah's wheel.
'Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole theghi" sang Kim. 'All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!'
'Let me up!' shrilled little Chota Lal in hisgilt-embroidered cap. His father was worth perhaps half a millionsterling, but India is the only democratic land in the world.
'The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmanspushed them off. Thy father was a pastry-cook -'
He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner,from the roaring Motee Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought heknew all castes, had never seen. He was nearly six feet high,dressed in fold upon fold of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, andnot one fold of it could Kim refer to any known trade orprofession. At his belt hung a long open-work iron pencase and awooden rosary such as holy men wear. On his head was a giganticsort of tam-o'-shanter. His face was yellow and wrinkled, like thatof Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the bazar. His eyes turnedup at the corners and looked like little slits of onyx.
'Who is that?' said Kim to his companions.
'Perhaps it is a man,' said Abdullah, finger inmouth, staring.
'Without doubt.' returned Kim; 'but he is no man ofIndia that I have ever seen.'
'A priest, perhaps,' said Chota Lal, spying therosary. 'See! He goes into the Wonder House!'
'Nay, nay,' said the policeman, shaking his head. 'Ido not understand your talk.' The constable spoke Punjabi. 'OFriend of all the World, what does he say?'
'Send him hither,' said Kim, dropping fromZam-Zammah, flourishing his bare heels. 'He is a foreigner, andthou art a buffalo.'
The man turned helplessly and drifted towards theboys. He was old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of thestinking artemisia of the mountain passes.
'O Children, what is that big house?' he said invery fair Urdu.
'The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!' Kim gave him notitle - such as Lala or Mian. He could not divine the man'screed.
'Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?'
'It is written above the door - all can enter.'
'Without payment?'
'I go in and out. I am no banker,' laughed Kim.
'Alas! I am an old man. I did not know.' Then,fingering his rosary, he half turned to the Museum.
'What is your caste? Where is your house? Have youcome far?' Kim asked.
'I came by Kulu - from beyond the Kailas - but whatknow you? >From the Hills where' - he sighed - 'the air andwater are fresh and cool.'
'Aha! Khitai [a Chinaman] ,' saidAbdullah proudly. Fook Shing had once chased him out of his shopfor spitting at the joss above the boots.
'Pahari [a hillman] ,' said littleChota Lal.
'Aye, child - a hillman from hills thou'lt neversee. Didst hear of Bhotiyal [Tibet] ? I am no Khitai,but a Bhotiya [Tibetan] , since you must know - alama - or, say, a guru in your tongue.'
'A guru from Tibet,' said Kim. 'I have not seen sucha man. They be Hindus in Tibet, then?'
'We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peacein our lamasseries, and I go to see the Four Holy Places before Idie. Now do you, who are children, know as much as I do who amold.' He smiled benignantly on the boys.
'Hast thou eaten?'
He fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn,wooden begging-bowl. The boys nodded. All priests of theiracquai