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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 a harlot and a 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 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 Bird-cage—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. To-night 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 boy-like 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.’

      ‘Jadoo?’ (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 clish-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 beside 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, dematerialised 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 СКАЧАТЬ