Kim

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'I am chela to Teshoo Lama, an Holy One from Bhotiyal -within there.
He bade me come. I wait. Tell him.'

'Do not forget the child,' cried the importunate Jat over his
shoulder, and then bellowed in Punjabi; 'O Holy One - O disciple of
the Holy One - O Gods above all the Worlds -behold affliction
sitting at the gate!' That cry is so common in Benares that the
passers never turned their heads.

The Oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the
darkness behind him, and the easy, uncounted Eastern minutes slid
by; for the lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake
him. When the click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner
court where the calm images of the Arhats stand, a novice whispered,
'Thy chela is here,' and the old man strode forth, forgetting the
end of that prayer.

Hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the Jat ran
before him, and, lifting up the child, cried: 'Look upon this, Holy
One; and if the Gods will, he lives - he lives!'

He fumbled in his waist-belt and drew out a small silver coin.

'What is now?' The lama's eyes turned to Kim. It was noticeable he
spoke far clearer Urdu than long ago, under ZamZammah; but
father would allow no private talk.

'It is no more than a fever,' said Kim. 'The child is not well fed.'

'He sickens at everything, and his mother is not here.'

'If it be permitted, I may cure, Holy One.'

'What! Have they made thee a healer? Wait here,' said the lama, and
he sat down by the Jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while
Kim, looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little
betel-box. He had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama
as a Sahib - of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself -
boy's dreams all. There was more drama in this abstracted, brow-
puckered search through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and
there for thought and a muttered invocation between whiles. Quinine
he had in tablets, and dark brown meat-lozenges - beef most
probably, but that was not his business. The little thing would not
eat, but it sucked at a lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt
taste.

'Take then these six.' Kim handed them to the man. 'Praise the Gods,
and boil three in milk; other three in water. After he has drunk the
milk give him this' (it was the half of a quinine pill), 'and wrap
him warm. Give him the water of the other three, and the other half
of this white pill when he wakes. Meantime, here is another brown
medicine that he may suck at on the way home.'

'Gods, what wisdom!' said the Kamboh, snatching.

It was as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout
of autumn malaria - if you except the patter that he added to
impress the lama.

'Now go! Come again in the morning.'

'But the price - the price,' said the Jat, and threw back his sturdy
shoulders. 'My son is my son. Now that he will be whole again, how
shall I go back to his mother and say I took help by the wayside and
did not even give a bowl of curds in return?'

'They are alike, these Jats,' said Kim softly. 'The Jat stood on his
dunghill and the King's elephants went by. "O driver," said he,
"what will you sell those little donkeys for?"'

The Jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the
lama. 'It is the saying of my own country the very talk of it. So
are we Jats all. I will come tomorrow with the child; and the
blessing of the Gods of the Homesteads - who are good little Gods -
be on you both ... Now, son, we grow strong again. Do not spit it
out, little Princeling! King of my Heart, do not spit it out, and we
shall be strong men, wrestlers and club-wielders, by morning.'

He moved away, crooning and mumbling. The lama turned to Kim, and
all the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes.

'To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge.
That was wisely done, O Friend of all the World.'

'I was made wise by thee, Holy One,' said Kim, forgetting the little
play just ended; forgetting St Xavier's; forgetting his white blood;
forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan-fashion, to
touch his master's feet in the dust of the Jain temple. 'My teaching
I owe to thee. I have eaten thy bread three years. My time is
finished. I am loosed from the schools. I come to thee.'

'Herein is my reward. Enter! Enter! And is all well?' They passed to
the inner court, where the afternoon sun sloped golden across.
'Stand that I may see. So!' He peered critically. 'It is no longer a
child, but a man, ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician. I did
well - I did well when I gave thee up to the armed men on that black
night. Dost thou remember our first day under Zam-Zammah?'

'Ay,' said Kim. 'Dost thou remember when I leapt off the carriage
the first day I went to -'

'The Gates of Learning? Truly. And the day that we ate the cakes
together at the back of the river by Nucklao. Aha! Many times hast
thou begged for me, but that day I begged for thee.'

'Good reason,' quoth Kim. 'I was then a scholar in the Gates of
Learning, and attired as a Sahib. Do not forget, Holy One,' he went
on playfully. 'I am still a Sahib - by thy favour.'

'True. And a Sahib in most high esteem. Come to my cell, chela.'

'How is that known to thee?'

The lama smiled. 'First by means of letters from the kindly priest
whom we met in the camp of armed men; but he is now gone to his own
country, and I sent the money to his brother.' Colonel Creighton,
who had succeeded to the trusteeship when Father Victor went to
England with the Mavericks, was hardly the Chaplain's brother. 'But
I do not well understand Sahibs' letters. They must be interpreted
to me. I chose a surer way. Many times when I returned from my
Search to this Temple, which has always been a nest to me, there
came one seeking Enlightenment - a man from Leh - that had been, he
said, a Hindu, but wearied of all those Gods.' The lama pointed to
the Arhats.

'A fat man?' said Kim, a twinkle in his eye.

'Very fat; but I perceived in a little his mind was wholly given up
to useless things - such as devils and charms and the form and
fashion of our tea-drinkings in the monasteries, and by what road we
initiated the novices. A man abounding in questions; but he was a
friend of thine, chela. He told me that thou wast on the road to
much honour as a scribe. And I see thou art a physician.'

'Yes, that am I - a scribe, when I am a Sahib, but it is set aside
when I come as thy disciple. I have accomplished the years appointed
for a Sahib.'

'As it were a novice?' said the lama, nodding his head. 'Art thou
freed from the schools? I would not have thee unripe.'

'I am all free. In due time I take service under the Government as a
scribe -'

'Not as a warrior. That is well.'

'But first I come to wander with thee. Therefore I am here. Who
begs for thee, these days?' he went on quickly. The ice was thin.

'Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here,
except when I come to look again at my disciple. From one end to
another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the te-rain. A great
and a wonderful land! But here, when I put in, is as though I were
in mv own Bhotiyal.'

He looked round the little clean cell complacently. A low cushion
gave him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-
legged attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black
teak-wood table, not twenty inches high, set with copper tea-cups,
was before him. In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily
carved teak, bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated Buddha and
fronted by a lamp, an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flower-
pots.

'The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by
giving me these a year since,' he said, following Kim's eye. 'When
one is far from one's own land such things carry remembrance; and we
must reverence the Lord for that He showed the Way. See!' He pointed
to a curiously-built mound of coloured rice crowned with a fantastic
metal ornament. 'When I was Abbot in my own place - before I came to
better knowledge I made that offering daily. It is the Sacrifice of
the Universe to the Lord. Thus do we of Bhotiyal offer all the world
daily to the Excellent Law. And I do it even now, though I know that
the Excellent One is beyond all pinchings and pattings.' He snuffed
from his gourd.

'It is well done, Holy One,' Kim murmured, sinking at ease on the
cushions, very happy and rather tired.

'And also,' the old man chuckled, 'I write pictures of the Wheel of
Life. Three days to a picture. I was busied on it - or it may be I
shut my eyes a little - when they brought word of thee. It is good
to have thee here: I will show thee my art - not for pride's sake,
but because thou must learn. The Sahibs have not all this world's
wisdom.'

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow
Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of Indian ink. In cleanest,
severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes,
whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance,
Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the Heavens and
Hells, and all the chances of human life. Men say that the Bodhisat
Himself first drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach His
disciples the cause of things. Many ages have crystallized it into a
most wonderful convention crowded with hundreds of little figures
whose every line carries a meaning. Few can translate the picture-
parable; there are not twenty in all the world who can draw it
surely without a copy: of those who can both draw and expound are
but three.

'I have a little learned to draw,' said Kim. 'But this is a marvel
beyond marvels.'

'I have written it for many years,' said the lama. 'Time was when I
could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next. I will
teach thee the art - after due preparation; and I will show thee the
meaning of the Wheel.'

'We take the Road, then?'

'The Road and our Search. I was but waiting for thee. It was made
plain to me in a hundred dreams - notably one that came upon the
night of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut that without
thee I should never find my River. Again and again, as thou knowest,
I put this from me, fearing an illusion. Therefore I would not take
thee with me that day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes. I would not
take thee till the. time was ripe and auspicious. From the Hills to
the Sea, from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain.
Then I remembered the Tataka.'

He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had
told it so often to the Jam priests.

'Further testimony is not needed,' he ended serenely. 'Thou wast
sent for an aid. That aid removed, my Search came to naught.
Therefore we will go out again together, and our Search sure.'

'Whither go we?'

'What matters, Friend of all the World? The Search, I say, is sure.
If need be, the River will break from the ground before us. I
acquired merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave
thee the jewel that is Wisdom. Thou didst return, I saw even now, a
follower of Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in
Bhotiyal. It is sufficient. We are together, and all things are as
they were - Friend of all the World -Friend of the Stars - my
chela!'

Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the
lama never demanded any details of life at St Xavier's, nor showed
the faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs. His
mind moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their
wonderful first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling,
till it pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old
age.

Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and
played with his ghost-dagger and rosary. The clamour of Benares,
oldest of all earth's cities awake before the Gods, day and night,
beat round the walls as the sea's roar round a breakwater. Now and
again, a Jain priest crossed the court, with some small offering to
the images, and swept the path about him lest by chance he should
take the life of a living thing. A lamp twinkled, and there followed
the sound of a prayer. Kim watched the stars as they rose one after
another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot
of the altar. That night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an
English word...

'Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,' he
said, about three o'clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking
from dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage. 'The Jat will be
here at the light.'

'I am well answered. In my haste I would have done a wrong.' He sat
down on the cushions and returned to his rosary. 'Surely old folk
are as children,' he said pathetically. 'They desire a matter -
behold, it must be done at once, or they fret and weep! Many times
when I was upon the Road I have been ready to stamp with my feet at
the hindrance of an ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust.
It was not so when I was a man - a long time ago. None the less it
is wrongful -'

'But thou art indeed old, Holy One.'

'The thing was done. A Cause was put out into the world, and, old or
young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the
effect of that Cause? Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it -
or a drunkard? Chela, this is a great and a terrible world.'

'I think it good,' Kim yawned. 'What is there to eat? I have not
eaten since yesterday even.'

'I had forgotten thy need. Yonder is good Bhotiyal tea and cold
rice.'

'We cannot walk far on such stuff.' Kim felt all the European's lust
for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple. Yet,
instead of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his
stomach on slabs of cold rice till the full dawn. It brought the
farmer, voluble, stuttering with gratitude.

'In the night the fever broke and the sweat came, he cried. 'Feel
here - his skin is fresh and new! He esteemed the salt lozenges, and
took milk with greed.' He drew the cloth from the child's face, and
it smiled sleepily at Kim. A little knot of Jain priests, silent
but all-observant, gathered by the temple door. They knew, and Kim
knew that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple. Being
courteous folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by
presence, word, or gesture. Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun
rose.

'Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother,' he said, not knowing how
those Gods were named. 'The fever is indeed broken.'

'Look! See!' The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of
three years. 'Was there ever such a chela? He follows our Lord the
Healer.'

Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed,
as well as the Lingam and the Snake. They wear the Brahminical
thread; they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law. But, because
they knew and loved the lama, because he was an old man, because he
sought the Way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued
long of nights with the head-priest - as free-thinking a
metaphysician as ever split one hair into seventy - they murmured
assent.

'Remember,' - Kim bent over the child -. 'this trouble may come
again.

'Not if thou hast the proper spell,' said the father.

'But in a little while we go away.'

'True,' said the lama to all the Jains. 'We go now together upon the
Search whereof I have often spoken. I waited till my chela was ripe.
Behold him! We go North. Never again shall I look upon this place of
my rest, O people of good will.'

'But I am not a beggar.' The cultivator rose to his feet, clutching
the child.

'Be still. Do not trouble the Holy One,' a priest cried.

'Go,' Kim whispered. 'Meet us again under the big railway bridge,
and for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food - curry,
pulse, cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be
swift!'

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and
slim, in his sand-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary
and the other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from
the lama. An English observer might have said that he looked rather
like the young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a
growing lad faint with emptiness.

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed.
The Seeker - he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-
away Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic -took no part in it,
but meditated, as always, alone among the images. The others were
very human; pressing small comforts upon the old man - a betel-box,
a fine new iron pencase, a food-bag, and such-like - warning him
against the dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy
end to the Search. Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the
steps, and swore to himself in the language of St Xavier's.

'But it is my own fault,' he concluded. 'With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub's
bread, or Lurgan Sahib's. At St Xavier's, three meals a day. Here I
must jolly-well look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good
training. How I could eat a plate of beef now! ... Is it finished,
Holy One?'

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate
Chinese. 'I must lean on thy shoulder,' said he, as the temple gates
closed. 'We grow stiff, I think.'

The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of
crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for
the way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

'Here we eat,' he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and
smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child in the
other.

'Fall to, Holy Ones!' he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the
shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.)
'Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with king
[asafoetida), curds and sugar. King of my fields,' -this to the
small son - 'let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur
can pay a service . . . I had heard the Jams would eat nothing that
they had not cooked, but truly' - he looked away politely over the
broad river - 'where there is no eye there is no caste.'

'And we,' said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leafplatter for
the lama, 'are beyond all castes.'

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he had
licked the last of the sticky sweetstuff from his little finger did
Kim note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.

'If our roads lie together,' he said roughly, 'I go with thee. One
does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still
weak. But I am not altogether a reed.' He picked up his lathi - a
five-foot male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron - and
flourished it in the air. 'The Jats are called quarrel-some, but
that is not true. Except when we are crossed, we are like our own
buffaloes.'

'So be it,' said Kim. 'A good stick is a good reason.'

The lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged
perspective the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-
ghats by the river. Now and again, despite all municipal
regulations, the fragment of a half-burned body bobbed by on the
full current.

'But for thee,' said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his
hairy breast, 'I might today have gone thither - with this one. The
priests tell us that Benares is holy - which none doubt - and
desirable to die in. But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for
money; and when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of
none effect except one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour,
drink, lave, and scatter flowers -but always pay the priests. No,
the Punjab for me, and the soil of the Jullundur-doab for the best
soil in it.

'I have said many times - in the Temple, I think - that if need be,
the River will open at our feet. We will therefore go North,' said
the lama, rising. 'I remember a pleasant place, set about with
fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation - and the air is
cooler there. It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.'

'What is the name?' said Kim.

'How should I know? Didst thou not - no, that was after the Army
rose out of the earth and took thee away. I abode there in
meditation in a room against the dovecot - except when she talked
eternally.'

'Oho! the woman from Kulu. That is by Saharunpore.' Kim laughed.

'How does the spirit move thy master? Does he go afoot, for the sake
of past sins?' the Jat demanded cautiously. 'It is a far cry to
Delhi.'

'No,' said Kim. 'I will beg a tikkut for the te-rain.' One does not
own to the possession of money in India.

'Then, in the name of the Gods, let us take the fire-carriage. My
son is best in his mother's arms. The Government has brought on us
many taxes, but it gives us one good thing - the te-rain that joins
friends and unites the anxious. A wonderful matter is the te-rain.'

They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through
the heat of the day. The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand
questions as to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some
curious answers. Kim was content to be where he was, to look out
upon the flat North-Western landscape, and to talk to the
changing mob of fellow-passengers. Even today, tickets and ticket-
clipping are dark oppression to Indian rustics. They do not
understand why, when they have paid for a magic piece of paper,
strangers should punch great pieces out of the charm. So, long and
furious are the debates between travellers and Eurasian ticket-
collectors. Kim assisted at two or three with grave advice, meant to
darken counsel and to show off his wisdom before the lama and the
admiring Kamboh. But at Somna Road the Fates sent him a matter to
think upon. There tumbled into the compartment, as the train was
moving off, a mean, lean little person - a Mahratta, so far as Kim
could judge by the cock of the tight turban. His face was cut, his
muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and one leg was bandaged. He
told them that a country-cart had upset and nearlv slain him: he
was going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim watched him closely.
If, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and over on the earth,
there should have been signs of gravel-rash on the skin. But all his
injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart could not
cast a man into such extremity of terror. As, with shaking fingers,
he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid bare an amulet
of the kind called a keeper-up of the heart. Now, amulets are common
enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited copper
wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver. There
were none except the Kamboh and the lama in the compartment, which,
luckily, was of an old type with solid ends. Kim made as to scratch
in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. The Mahratta's face
changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the amulet fairly on
his breast.

'Yes,' he went on to the Kamboh, 'I was in haste, and the cart,
driven by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the
harm done to me there was lost a full dish of tarkeean. I was not a
Son of the Charm [a lucky man] that day.'

'That was a great loss,' said the Kamboh, withdrawing interest. His
experience of Benares had made him suspicious.

'Who cooked it?' said Kim.

'A woman.' The Mahratta raised his eyes.

'But all women can cook tarkeean,' said the Kamboh. 'It is a good
curry, as I know.'

'Oh yes, it is a good curry,' said the Mahratta.

'And cheap,' said Kim. 'But what about caste?'

'Oh, there is no caste where men go to - look for tarkeean,' the
Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence. 'Of whose service art
thou?'

'Of the service of this Holy One.' Kim pointed to the happy, drowsy
lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word.

'Ah, he was sent from Heaven to aid me. He is called the Friend of
all the World. He is also called the Friend of the Stars. He walks
as a physician - his time being ripe. Great is his wisdom.'

'And a Son of the Charm,' said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh
made haste to prepare a pipe lest the Mahratta should beg.

'And who is that?' the Mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously.

'One whose child I - we have cured, who lies under great debt to us.
Sit by the window, man from Jullundur. Here is a sick one.'

'Humph! I have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. My ears
are not long. I am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.' The Jat
slid himself heavily into a far corner.

'Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in calamity,'
cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.

'This man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him,' Kim
retorted. 'None interfered between thy babe and me.'

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