Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

of retaliating, did not even use language. He was thinking of the immense fun to come, of Mahbub’s letter of the day before, all neatly written in English, making appointment for that afternoon in a house the very name of which would have crisped the Principal’s hair with horror⁠ ⁠…

Said Kim to Mahbub in Lucknow railway station that evening, above the luggage-scales: “I feared lest at the last, the roof would fall upon me and cheat me. It is indeed all finished, O my father?”

Mahbub snapped his fingers to show the utterness of that end, and his eyes blazed like red coals.

“Then where is the pistol that I may wear it?”

“Softly! A half-year, to run without heel-ropes. I begged that much from Colonel Creighton Sahib. At twenty rupees a month. Old Red Hat knows that thou art coming.”

“I will pay thee dustoorie43 on my pay for three months,” said Kim gravely. “Yea, two rupees a month. But first we must get rid of these.” He plucked his thin linen trousers and dragged at his collar. “I have brought with me all that I need on the Road. My trunk has gone up to Lurgan Sahib’s.”

“Who sends his salaams to thee⁠—Sahib.”

“Lurgan Sahib is a very clever man. But what dost thou do?”

“I go North again, upon the Great Game. What else? Is thy mind still set on following old Red Hat?”

“Do not forget he made me that I am⁠—though he did not know it. Year by year, he sent the money that taught me.”

“I would have done as much⁠—had it struck my thick head,” Mahbub growled. “Come away. The lamps are lit now, and none will mark thee in the bazaar. We go to Huneefa’s house.”

On the way thither, Mahbub gave him much the same sort of advice as his mother gave to Lemuel, and curiously enough, Mahbub was exact to point out how Huneefa and her likes destroyed kings.

“And I remember,” he quoted maliciously, “one who said, ‘Trust a snake before an harlot, and an harlot before a Pathan, Mahbub Ali.’ Now, excepting as to Pathans, of whom I am one, all that is true. Most true is it in the Great Game, for it is by means of women that all plans come to ruin and we lie out in the dawning with our throats cut. So it happened to such a one.” He gave the reddest particulars.

“Then why⁠—?” Kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to the warm darkness of an upper chamber, in the ward that is behind Azim Ullah’s tobacco-shop. Those who know it call it The Birdcage⁠—it is so full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings.

The room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck, wrist, arm, waist, and ankle with heavy native jewellery. When she turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. A lean cat in the balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. Kim checked, bewildered, at the door-curtain.

“Is that the new stuff, Mahbub?” said Huneefa lazily, scarce troubling to remove the mouthpiece from her lips. “O Buktanoos!”⁠—like most of her kind, she swore by the Djinns⁠—“O Buktanoos! He is very good to look upon.”

“That is part of the selling of the horse,” Mahbub explained to Kim, who laughed.

“I have heard that talk since my Sixth Day,” he replied, squatting by the light. “Whither does it lead?”

“To protection. Tonight we change thy colour. This sleeping under roofs has blanched thee like an almond. But Huneefa has the secret of a colour that catches. No painting of a day or two. Also, we fortify thee against the chances of the Road. That is my gift to thee, my son. Take out all metals on thee and lay them here. Make ready, Huneefa.”

Kim dragged forth his compass, Survey paintbox, and the new-filled medicine-box. They had all accompanied his travels, and boylike he valued them immensely.

The woman rose slowly and moved with her hands a little spread before her. Then Kim saw that she was blind. “No, no,” she muttered, “the Pathan speaks truth⁠—my colour does not go in a week or a month, and those whom I protect are under strong guard.”

“When one is far off and alone, it would not be well to grow blotched and leprous of a sudden,” said Mahbub. “When thou wast with me I could oversee the matter. Besides, a Pathan is a fair-skin. Strip to the waist now and look how thou art whitened.” Huneefa felt her way back from an inner room. “It is no matter, she cannot see.” He took a pewter bowl from her ringed hand.

The dyestuff showed blue and gummy. Kim experimented on the back of his wrist, with a dab of cotton-wool; but Huneefa heard him.

“No, no,” she cried, “the thing is not done thus, but with the proper ceremonies. The colouring is the least part. I give thee the full protection of the Road.”

“Jadoo?”44 said Kim, with a half start. He did not like the white, sightless eyes. Mahbub’s hand on his neck bowed him to the floor, nose within an inch of the boards.

“Be still. No harm comes to thee, my son. I am thy sacrifice!”

He could not see what the woman was about, but heard the dish-clash of her jewellery for many minutes. A match lit up the darkness; he caught the well-known purr and fizzle of grains of incense. Then the room filled with smoke⁠—heavy aromatic, and stupefying. Through growing drowse he heard the names of devils⁠—of Zulbazan, Son of Eblis, who lives in bazaars and paraos, making all the sudden lewd wickedness of wayside halts; of Dulhan, invisible about mosques, the dweller among the slippers of the faithful, who hinders folk from their prayers; and Musboot, Lord of lies and panic. Huneefa, now whispering in his ear, now talking as from an immense