Rudyard Kipling : The Complete Novels and Stories. Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

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СКАЧАТЬ I will see that thou art well taught,’ said Lurgan Sahib, still speaking in the vernacular, ‘for except my boy here—it was foolish of him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, I could have given it—except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one better worth teaching. And there are ten days more ere thou canst return to Lucknao [Lucknow] where they teach nothing—at the long price. We shall, I think, be friends.’

      They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself too much to reflect on their craziness. In the morning they played the Jewel Game—sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of swords and daggers, sometimes with photographs of natives. Through the afternoons he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in the shop, sitting dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching Mr. Lurgan’s many and very curious visitors. There were small Rajahs, escorts coughing in the verandah, who came to buy curiosities—such as phonographs and mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it seemed to Kim—but his mind may have been vitiated by early training—in search of the ladies; natives from independent and feudatory courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken necklaces—rivers of light poured out upon the table—but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young Rajahs. There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes. There were occasional gatherings of long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in English and Bengali, to Mr. Lurgan’s great edification. He was always interested in religions. At the end of the day, Kim and the Hindu boy—whose name varied at Lurgan’s pleasure—were expected to give a detailed account of all that they had seen and heard—their view of each man’s character, as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions of his real errand. After dinner, Lurgan Sahib’s fancy turned more to what might be called dressing-up, in which game he took a most informing interest. He could paint faces to a marvel; with a brush-dab here and a line there changing them past recognition. The shop was full of all manner of dresses and turbans, and Kim was apparelled variously as a young Mohammedan of good family, an oilman, and once—which was a joyous evening—as the son of an Oudh landholder in the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk’s eye to detect the least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-wood couch, would explain by the half-hour together how such and such a caste talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since ‘hows’ matter little in this world, the ‘why’ of everything. The Hindu child played this game clumsily. That little mind, keen as an icicle where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to enter another’s soul; but a demon in Kim woke up and sang with joy as he put on the changing dresses, and changed speech and gesture therewith.

      Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one evening how the disciples of a certain caste of faquir, old Lahore acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour—cross-legged, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that time entered a hulking, obese Babu whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib—this annoyed Kim—watched the Babu and not the play.

      ‘I think,’ said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, ‘I am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance. Except that you had told me I should have opined that—that—that you were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him.’

      ‘That is what he must learn at Lucknow.’

      ‘Then order him to be jolly dam-quick. Good-night, Lurgan.’ The Babu swung out with the gait of a bogged cow.

      When they were telling over the day’s list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib asked Kim who he thought the man might be.

      ‘God knows!’ said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls.

      ‘That is true. God, He knows; but I wish to know what you think.’

      Kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of compelling truth.

      ‘I—I think he will want me when I come from the school, but’—confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded approval—‘I do not understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.’

      ‘Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales for a certain Colonel. His honour is great only in Simla, and it is noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter—that is a custom among us.’

      ‘And is there a price upon his head too—as upon Mah—all the others?’

      ‘Not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went—look, the door is open!—as far as a certain house with a red-painted verandah, behind that which was the old theatre in the Lower Bazar, and whispered through the shutters: “Hurree Chunder Mookerjee bore the bad news of last month,” that boy might take away a belt full of rupees.’

      ‘How many?’ said Kim promptly.

      ‘Five hundred—a thousand—as many as he might ask for.’

      ‘Good. And how long might such a boy live after the news was told?’ He smiled merrily at Lurgan Sahib’s very beard.

      ‘Ah! That is to be well thought of. Perhaps if he were very clever, he might live out the day—but not the night. By no means the night.’

      ‘Then what is the Babu’s pay if so much is put upon his head?’

      ‘Eighty—perhaps a hundred—perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees; but the pay is the least part of the work. From time to time, God causes men to be born—and thou art one of them—who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news—to-day it may be of far-off things, to-morrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some near-by men who have done a foolishness against the State. These souls are very few; and of these few, not more than ten are of the best. Among these ten I count the Babu, and that is curious. How great therefore and desirable must be a business that brazens the heart of a Bengali!’

      ‘True. But the days go slowly for me. I am yet a boy, and it is only within two months I learned to write Angrezi. Even now I cannot read it well. And there are yet years and years and long years before I can be even a chain-man.’

      ‘Have patience, Friend of all the World’—Kim started at the title. ‘Would I had a few of the years that so irk thee. I have proved thee in several small ways. This will not be forgotten when I make my report to the Colonel Sahib.’ Then, changing suddenly into English with a deep laugh:—

      ‘By Jove! O’Hara, I think there is a great deal in you; but you must not become proud and you must not talk. You must go back to Lucknow and be a good little boy and mind your book, as the English say, and perhaps, next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!’ Kim’s face fell. ‘Oh, I mean if you like. I know where you want to go.’

      Four days later a seat was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion was the whale-like Babu, who, with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat open-work-stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in the morning chill.

      ‘How comes it that this man is one of us?’ thought Kim, considering the jelly-back as they jolted down the road; and the reflection threw him into most pleasant day-dreams. СКАЧАТЬ