Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

own sake⁠—the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe, the sights and sounds of the women’s world on the flat roofs, and the headlong flight from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark. Then there were holy men, ash-smeared fakirs by their brick shrines under the trees at the riverside, with whom he was quite familiar⁠—greeting them as they returned from begging-tours, and, when no one was by, eating from the same dish. The woman who looked after him insisted with tears that he should wear European clothes⁠—trousers, a shirt and a battered hat. Kim found it easier to slip into Hindu or Mohammedan garb when engaged on certain businesses. One of the young men of fashion⁠—he who was found dead at the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquake⁠—had once given him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume of a low-caste street boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place under some baulks in Nila Ram’s timber-yard, beyond the Punjab High Court, where the fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after they have driven down the Ravi. When there was business or frolic afoot, Kim would use his properties, returning at dawn to the veranda, all tired out from shouting at the heels of a marriage procession, or yelling at a Hindu festival. Sometimes there was food in the house, more often there was not, and then Kim went out again to eat with his native friends.

As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and again from his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal and Abdullah the sweetmeat-seller’s son, to make a rude remark to the native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door. The big Punjabi grinned tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. So did the water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goatskin bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the Museum carpenter, bent over new packing-cases. So did everybody in sight except the peasants from the country, hurrying up to the Wonder House to view the things that men made in their own province and elsewhere. The Museum was given up to Indian arts and manufactures, and anybody who sought wisdom could ask the Curator to explain.

“Off! Off! Let me up!” cried Abdullah, climbing up Zam-Zammah’s wheel.

“Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi,” sang Kim. “All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!”

“Let me up!” shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered cap. His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but India is the only democratic land in the world.

“The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them off. Thy father was a pastry-cook⁠—”

He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring Motee Bazaar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had never seen. He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could Kim refer to any known trade or profession. At his belt hung a long openwork iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o’-shanter. His face was yellow and wrinkled, like that of Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the bazaar. His eyes turned up 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 in mouth, staring.

“Without doubt,” returned Kim; “but he is no man of India that I have ever seen.”

“A priest, perhaps,” said Chota Lal, spying the rosary. “See! He goes into the Wonder House!”

“Nay, nay,” said the policeman, shaking his head. “I do not understand your talk.” The constable spoke Punjabi. “O Friend of all the World, what does he say?”

“Send him hither,” said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah, flourishing his bare heels. “He is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo.”

The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. He was old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking artemisia of the mountain passes.

“O Children, what is that big house?” he said in very fair Urdu.

“The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!” Kim gave him no title⁠—such as Lala or Mian. He could not divine the man’s creed.

“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 you come far?” Kim asked.

“I came by Kulu⁠—from beyond the Kailas⁠—but what know you? From the Hills where”⁠—he sighed⁠—“the air and water are fresh and cool.”

“Aha! Khitai,”1 said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had once chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above the boots.

“Pahari,”2 said little Chota Lal.

“Aye, child⁠—a hillman from hills thou’lt never see. Didst hear of Bhotiyal?3 I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya,4 since you must know⁠—a lama⁠—or, say, a guru in your tongue.”

“A guru from Tibet,” said Kim. “I have not seen such a man. They be Hindus in Tibet, then?”

“We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our lamasseries, and I go to see the Four Holy Places before I die. Now do you, who are children, know as much as I do who am old.” 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 their acquaintance begged.

“I do not wish to eat yet.” He turned his head like an old tortoise in the sunlight. “Is it true that there are many images in the Wonder House of Lahore?” He repeated the last words as one making sure of an address.

“That is true,”