Kim

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Lurgan slightly inclined his head. 'He will not tell anything, if
that is what you are afraid of, Colonel Creighton.'

'It's only a boy, after all.'

'Ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows
what would happen. Also, he is very fond of Mahbub, and of me a
little.'

'Will he draw pay?' demanded the practical horse-dealer.

'Food and water allowance only. Twenty rupees a month.'

One advantage of the Secret Service is that it has no worrying
audit. That Service is ludicrously starved, of course, but the funds
are administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or
present itemized accounts. Mahbub's eyes lighted with almost a
Sikh's love of money. Even Lurgan's impassive face changed. He
considered the years to come when Kim would have been entered and
made to the Great Game that never ceases day and night, throughout
India. He foresaw honour and credit in the mouths of a chosen few,
coming to him from his pupil. Lurgan Sahib had made E what E was,
out of a bewildered, impertinent, lying, little North-West Province
man.

But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of
Kim when St Xavier's Head called him aside, with word that Colonel
Creighton had sent for him.

'I understand, O'Hara, that he has found you a place as an assistant
chain-man in the Canal Department: that comes of taking up
mathematics. It is great luck for you, for you are only sixteen; but
of course you understand that you do not become pukka [permanent]
till you have passed the autumn examination. So you must not think
you are going out into the world to enjoy yourself, or that your
fortune is made. There is a great deal of hard work before you.
Only, if you succeed in becoming pukka, you can rise, you know, to
four hundred and fifty a month.' Whereat the Principal gave him much
good advice as to his conduct, and his manners, and his morals; and
others, his elders, who had not been wafted into billets, talked as
only Anglo-Indian lads can, of favouritism and corruption. Indeed,
young Cazalet, whose father was a pensioner at Chunar, hinted very
broadly that Colonel Creighton's interest in Kim was directly
paternal; and Kim, instead 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 dustoorie [commission] 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 bazar. 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 paint-box, 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 dye-stuff 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.'

'Tadoo? [magic],'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 bazars 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 distance,
touched him with horrible soft fingers, but Mahbub's grip never
shifted from his neck till, relaxing with a sigh, the boy lost his
senses.

'Allah! How he fought! We should never have done it but for the
drugs. That was his white blood, I take it,' said Mahbub testily.
'Go on with the dawut [invocation]. Give him full Protection.'

'O Hearer! Thou that hearest with ears, be present. Listen, O
Hearer!' Huneefa moaned, her dead eyes turned to the west. The dark
room filled with moanings and snortings.

>From the outer balcony, a ponderous figure raised a round bullet
head and coughed nervously.

'Do not interrupt this ventriloquial necromanciss, my friend,' it
said in English. 'I opine that it is very disturbing to you, but no
enlightened observer is jolly-well upset.'

'..........I will lay a plot for their ruin! O Prophet, bear with
the unbelievers. Let them alone awhile!' Huneefa's face, turned to
the northward, worked horribly, and it was as though voices from the
ceiling answered her.

Hurree Babu returned to his note-book, balanced on the window-sill,
but his hand shook. Huneefa, in some sort of drugged ecstasy,
wrenched herself to and fro as she sat cross-legged by Kim's still
head, and called upon devil after devil, in the ancient order of the
ritual, binding them to avoid the boy's every action.

'With Him are the keys of the Secret Things! None knoweth them
besides Himself He knoweth that which is in the dry land and in the
sea!' Again broke out the unearthly whistling responses.

'I - I apprehend it is not at all malignant in its operation?' said
the Babu, watching the throat-muscles quiver and jerk as Huneefa
spoke with tongues. 'It - it is not likely that she has killed the
boy? If so, I decline to be witness at the trial .....What was the
last hypothetical devil mentioned?'

'Babuji,' said Mahbub in the vernacular. 'I have no regard for the
devils of Hind, but the Sons of Eblis are far otherwise, and whether
they be jumalee [well-affected] or jullalee [terrible) they love not
Kafirs.'

'Then you think I had better go?' said Hurree Babu, half rising.
'They are, of course, dematerialized phenomena. Spencer says '

Huneefa's crisis passed, as these things must, in a paroxysm of
howling, with a touch of froth at the lips. She lay spent and
motionless beside Kim, and the crazy voices ceased.

'Wah! That work is done. May the boy be better for it; and Huneefa
is surely a mistress of dawut. Help haul her aside, Babu. Do not be
afraid.'

'How am I to fear the absolutely non-existent?' said Hurree Babu,
talking English to reassure himself. It is an awful thing still to
dread the magic that you contemptuously investigate -to collect
folk-lore for the Royal Society with a lively belief in all Powers
of Darkness.

Mahbub chuckled. He had been out with Hurree on the Road ere now.
'Let us finish the colouring,' said he. 'The boy is well protected
if - if the Lords of the Air have ears to hear. I am a Sufi [free-
thinker), but when one can get blind-sides of a woman, a stallion,
or a devil, why go round to invite a kick? Set him upon the way,
Babu, and see that old Red Hat does not lead him beyond our reach. I
must get back to my horses.'

'All raight,' said Hurree Babu. 'He is at present curious
spectacle.'

About third cockcrow, Kim woke after a sleep of thousands of years.
Huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily, but Mahbub was gone.

'I hope you were not frightened,' said an oily voice at his elbow.
'I superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from
ethnological point of view. It was high-class dawut.'

'Huh!' said Kim, recognizing Hurree Babu, who smiled ingratiatingly.

'And also I had honour to bring down from Lurgan your present
costume. I am not in the habit offeecially of carrying such gauds to
subordinates, but' - he giggled - 'your case is noted as exceptional
on the books. I hope Mr Lurgan will note my action.'

Kim yawned and stretched himself. It was good to turn and twist
within loose clothes once again.

'What is this?' He looked curiously at the heavy duffle-stuff loaded
with the scents of the far North.

'Oho! That is inconspicuous dress of chela attached to service of
lamaistic lama. Complete in every particular,' said Hurree Babu,
rolling into the balcony to clean his teeth at a goglet. 'I am of
opeenion it is not your old gentleman's precise releegion, but
rather sub-variant of same. I have contributed rejected notes To
Whom It May Concern: Asiatic Quarterly Review on these subjects. Now
it is curious that the old gentleman himself is totally devoid of
releegiosity. He is not a dam' particular.'

'Do you know him?'

Hurree Babu held up his hand to show he was engaged in the
prescribed rites that accompany tooth-cleaning and such things among
decently bred Bengalis. Then he recited in English an Arya-Somaj
prayer of a theistical nature, and stuffed his mouth with pan and
betel.

'Oah yes. I have met him several times at Benares, and also at Buddh
Gaya, to interrogate him on releegious points and devil-worship. He
is pure agnostic - same as me.'

Huneefa stirred in her sleep, and Hurree Babu jumped nervously to
the copper incense-burner, all black and discoloured in morning-
light, rubbed a finger in the accumulated lamp-black, and drew it
diagonally across his face.

'Who has died in thy house?' asked Kim in the vernacular.

'None. But she may have the Evil Eye - that sorceress,' the Babu
replied.

'What dost thou do now, then?'

'I will set thee on thy way to Benares, if thou goest thither, and
tell thee what must be known by Us.'

'I go. At what hour runs the te-rain?' He rose to his feet, looked
round the desolate chamber and at the yellow-wax face of Huneefa as
the low sun stole across the floor. 'Is there money to be paid that
witch?'

'No. She has charmed thee against all devils and all dangers in the
name of her devils. It was Mahbub's desire.' In English: 'He is
highly obsolete, I think, to indulge in such supersteetion. Why, it
is all ventriloquy. Belly-speak - eh?'

Kim snapped his fingers mechanically to avert whatever evil -
Mahbub, he knew, meditated none - might have crept in through
Huneefa's ministrations; and Hurree giggled once more. But as he
crossed the room he was careful not to step in Huneefa's blotched,
squat shadow on the boards. Witches -when their time is on them -
can lay hold of the heels of a man's soul if he does that.

'Now you must well listen,' said the Babu when they were in the
fresh air. 'Part of these ceremonies which we witnessed they include
supply of effeecient amulet to those of our Department. If you feel
in your neck you will find one small silver amulet, verree cheap.
That is ours. Do you understand?'

'Oah yes, hawa-dilli [a heart-lifter],' said Kim, feeling at his
neck.

'Huneefa she makes them for two rupees twelve annas with - oh, all
sorts of exorcisms. They are quite common, except they are partially
black enamel, and there is a paper inside each one full of names of
local saints and such things. Thatt is Huneefa's look-out, you see?
Huneefa makes them onlee for us, but in case she does not, when we
get them we put in, before issue, one small piece of turquoise. Mr
Lurgan he gives them. There is no other source of supply; but it was
me invented all this. It is strictly unoffeecial of course, but
convenient for subordinates. Colonel Creighton he does not know. He
is European. The turquoise is wrapped in the paper . . . Yes, that
is road to railway station . . . Now suppose you go with the lama,
or with me, I hope, some day, or with Mahbub. Suppose we get into a
dam'-tight place. I am a fearful man - most fearful - but I tell you
I have been in dam'-tight places more than hairs on my head. You
say: "I am Son of the Charm." Verree good.'

'I do not understand quite. We must not be heard talking English
here.'

'That is all raight. I am only Babu showing off my English to you.
All we Babus talk English to show off;' said Hurree, flinging his
shoulder-cloth jauntily. 'As I was about to say, "Son of the Charm"
means that you may be member of the Sat Bhai - the Seven Brothers,
which is Hindi and Tantric. It is popularly supposed to be extinct
Society, but I have written notes to show it is still extant. You
see, it is all my invention. Verree good. Sat Bhai has many members,
and perhaps before they jolly-well-cut-your-throat they may give you
just a chance of life. That is useful, anyhow. And moreover, these
foolish natives - if they are not too excited - they always stop to
think before they kill a man who says he belongs to any speecific
organization. You see? You say then when you are in tight place, "I
am Son of the Charm", and you get - perhaps - ah -your second wind.
That is only in extreme instances, or to open negotiations with a
stranger. Can you quite see? Verree good. But suppose now, I, or any
one of the Department, come to you dressed quite different. You
would not know me at all unless I choose, I bet you. Some day I will
prove it. I come as Ladakhi trader - oh, anything - and I say to
you: "You want to buy precious stones?" You say: "Do I look like a
man who buys precious stones?" Then I say: "Even verree poor man can
buy a turquoise or tarkeean." '

'That is kichree - vegetable curry,' said Kim.

'Of course it is. You say: "Let me see the tarkeean." Then I say:
"It was cooked by a woman, and perhaps it is bad for your caste."
Then you say: "There is no caste when men go to - look for
tarkeean." You stop a little between those words, "to - look". That
is thee whole secret. The little stop before the words.'

Kim repeated the test-sentence.

'That is all right. Then I will show you my turquoise if there is
time, and then you know who I am, and then we exchange views and
documents and those-all things. And so it is with any other man of
us. We talk sometimes about turquoises and sometimes about tarkeean,
but always with that little stop in the words. It is verree easy.
First, "Son of the Charm", if you are in a tight place. Perhaps that
may help you - perhaps not. Then what I have told you about the
tarkeean, if you want to transact offeecial business with a strange
man. Of course, at present, you have no offeecial business. You are
- ah ha! - supernumerary on probation. Quite unique specimen. If you
were Asiatic of birth you might be employed right off; but this
half-year of leave is to make you de~Englishized, you see? The lama
he expects you, because I have demi-offeecially informed him you
have passed all your examinations, and will soon obtain Government
appointment. Oh ho! You are on acting-allowance, you see: so if you
are called upon to help Sons of the Charm mind you jolly-well try.
Now I shall say good-bye, my dear fellow, and I hope you - ah - will
come out top-side all raight.'

Hurree Babu stepped back a pace or two into the crowd at the
entrance of Lucknow station and -- was gone. Kim drew a deep breath
and hugged himself all over. The nickel-plated revolver he could
feel in the bosom of his sad-coloured robe, the amulet was on his
neck; begging-gourd, rosary, and ghost-dagger (Mr Lurgan had
forgotten nothing) were all to hand, with medicine, paint-box, and
compass, and in a worn old purse-belt embroidered with porcupine-
quill patterns lay a month's pay. Kings could be no richer. He
bought sweetmeats in a leaf-cup from a Hindu trader, and ate them
with glad rapture till a policeman ordered him off the steps.

Chapter ll

Give the man who is not made
To his trade
Swords to fling and catch again,
Coins to ring and snatch again,
Men to harm and cure again,
Snakes to charm and lure again -
He'll be hurt by his own blade,
By his serpents disobeyed,
By his clumsiness bewrayed,'
By the people mocked to scorn -
So 'tis not with juggler born!
Pinch of dust or withered flower,
Chance-flung fruit or borrowed staff,
Serve his need and shore his power,
Bind the spell, or loose the laugh!
But a man who, etc.

The Juggler's Song, op. 15

Followed a sudden natural reaction.

'Now am I alone all alone,' he thought. 'In all India is no one so
alone as I! If I die today, who shall bring the news -and to whom?
If I live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I
am a Son of the Charm - I, Kim.'

A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves
into a mazement as it were by repeating their own names over and
over again to themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation
as to what is called personal identity. When one grows older, the
power, usually, departs, but while it lasts it may descend upon a man
at any moment.

'Who is Kim - Kim - Kim?'

He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from all
other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to pin-
points. In a minute - in another half-second - he felt he would
arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always
happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with a rush of a
wounded bird, and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his
head.

A long-haired Hindu bairagi [holy man], who had just bought a
ticket, halted before him at that moment and stared intently.

'I also have lost it,' he said sadly. 'It is one of the Gates to the
Way, but for me it has been shut many years.'

'What is the talk?' said Kim, abashed.

'Thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what manner of thing thy
soul might be. The seizure came of a sudden. I know. Who should know
but I? Whither goest thou?'

'Toward Kashi [Benares].'

'There are no Gods there. I have proved them. I go to Prayag
[Allahabad] for the fifth time - seeking the Road to Enlightenment.
Of what faith art thou?'

'I too am a Seeker,' said Kim, using one of the lama's pet words.
'Though'- he forgot his Northern dress for the moment - 'though
Allah alone knoweth what I seek.'

The old fellow slipped the bairagi's crutch under his armpit and sat
down on a patch of ruddy leopard's skin as Kim rose at the call for
the Benares train.

'Go in hope, little brother,' he said. 'It is a long road to the
feet of the One; but thither do we all travel.'

Kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he had sat out twenty
miles in the crowded compartment, was cheering his neighbours with a
string of most wonderful yarns about his own and his master's
magical gifts.

Benares struck him as a peculiarly filthy city, though it was
pleasant to find how his cloth was respected. At least one-third of
the population prays eternally to some group or other of the many
million deities, and so reveres every sort of holy man. Kim was
guided to the Temple of the Tirthankars, about a mile outside the
city, near Sarnath, by a chance-met Punjabi farmer - a Kamboh from
Jullundur-way who had appealed in vain to every God of his homestead
to cure his small son, and was trying Benares as a last resort.

'Thou art from the North?' he asked, shouldering through the press
of the narrow, stinking streets much like his own pet bull at home.

'Ay, I know the Punjab. My mother was a pahareen, but my father came
from Amritzar - by Jandiala,' said Kim, oiling his ready tongue for
the needs of the Road.

'Jandiala - Jullundur? Oho! Then we be neighbours in some sort, as
it were.' He nodded tenderly to the wailing child in his arms. 'Whom
dost thou serve?'

'A most holy man at the Temple of the Tirthankers.'

'They are all most holy and - most greedy,' said the Jat with
bitterness. 'I have walked the pillars and trodden the temples till
my feet are flayed, and the child is no whit better. And the mother
being sick too ... Hush, then, little one ... We changed his name
when the fever came. We put him into girl's clothes. There was
nothing we did not do, except - I said to his mother when she
bundled me off to Benares -she should have come with me - I said
Sakhi Sarwar Sultan would serve us best. We know His generosity, but
these down-country Gods are strangers.'

The child turned on the cushion of the huge corded arms and looked
at Kim through heavy eyelids.

'And was it all worthless?' Kim asked, with easy interest.

'All worthless - all worthless,' said the child, lips cracking with
fever.

'The Gods have given him a good mind, at least' said the father
proudly. 'To think he should have listened so cleverly. Yonder is
thy Temple. Now I am a poor man - many priests have dealt with me -
but my son is my son, and if a gift to thy master can cure him - I
am at my very wits' end.'

Kim considered for a while, tingling with pride. Three years ago he
would have made prompt profit on the situation and gone his way
without a thought; but now, the very respect the Jat paid him proved
that he was a man. Moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice
already, and knew enough to recognize starvation when he saw it.

'Call him forth and I will give him a bond on my best yoke, so that
the child is cured.'

Kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple. A white-clad
Oswal banker from Ajmir, his sins of usury new wiped out, asked
him what he did.

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