Hindoo Holiday (19 page)

“
Very
intelligent.
Very
. He has great . . .
decision
. Indeed he makes me feel quite ashamed.”

But Napoleon the Third was only one of many such troubles. There was His Highness's spiritual leader, for instance, who had been with him for thirty years and was quite indispensable. He also was demanding money. Unless His Highness gave him eight hundred rupees he must leave the State, for he was dying of starvation. . . .

“Like wolves!” said His Highness, with a gesture. “They are all like wolves . . . wolves!”

“Dreadful!” I said. “But since you are undergoing this persecution, I think I must add my voice to the general howl and ask whether you don't think it's about time—since I've been here over seven weeks—that I received a month's salary, or even two?”

This remark seemed to amuse him, and quite restored him to his earlier good-humor.

It struck me the other day, while walking with Abdul, that the streets of Chhokrapur have no names and the houses no numbers. I asked him how letters were addressed, and he said either by indicating the quarter (i.e. Talaiya Quarter: the vicinity of the Small Tank), or by describing the position of the house in relation to other houses or public buildings. His own address, for example, was: Near the Kotwali, near the house of Baldeo Deni.

He then showed me the mosque in which, draped in long white robes, he worshipped five times a day. Abdul's God dwells in the shape of a burning light in the seventh heaven, and Abdul has great faith in Him because He frequently grants his requests. Has He not, on various occasions, bestowed upon Abdul a wife, a son, and even a sum of rupees, for all of which blessings Abdul had prayed? Of course, He has not granted
all
Abdul's requests—but then He had not got Abdul for a tutor.

At about nine o'clock this evening the carriage arrived and took me down to the Palace, where the pleasant-looking boy with single ear-ring came forward to receive me. I have learnt from Narayan that his name is Bundi.

“Bund'gi Bundi,” I said.

“Bund'gi” means “I bow to you,” and is not, therefore, the way to speak to a servant. He seemed very pleased.

The music was in full swing when I entered the theater, and His Highness, who was sitting just inside the doorway of his sanctum, from which the reed blind had been drawn aside, indicated that I was to sit on a solitary chair placed in front of the carpet with its back to him. There was only one throne on the stage, and the occupant of this, His Highness informed me (by chortling bashfully when I looked to him for confirmation of my supposition), was Napoleon the Third.

He was diminutive and dark, with very large eyes and an air of self-possession. A streak of white paint decorated his forehead, a single pearl his nose, and his cheeks were vividly colored with vermilion. Whether this description bears any resemblance to the real Napoleon the Third I do not know. If I ever saw a picture of that monarch in his youth, I have forgotten it, and so, I imagine, has His Highness.

He was dressed in the Basant color; a high-waisted yellow silk dress, heavily ornamented and flecked with gold tissue, and a headdress like the rising sun.

After a time he danced, and danced very prettily, with tremulous, almost imperceptible movements of the head and hands, like a bird fluttering its wings, and the gold tissue, shaken from his whirling skirt, filled the air around him with a glittering dust.

But his singing voice, with which he accompanied his dance, was discordant and rather fretful. My attention wandered after a moment and found more pleasure in the figure of a very old man who sat cross-legged beside the carpet. He was wrapped in a fine soft cream-colored cloth which fell in beautiful lines from his head, and a bright-red Kashmir shawl hung loosely on his thin shoulders. Round his neck, against his bare brown chest, a garland of jasmine hung. The worn, gray-bearded face in the frame of his garment was very impressive, and his eyes, raised to the dancing god, were full of a gentle benignity. The dance was still in progress when His Highness, unable to contain himself any longer, cried out:

“What do you think of him? What do you think of him?” referring of course, to Napoleon the Third.

“Oh, Prince!” I said; “he is a bronze Ganymede!”

Gust upon gust of wheezy laughter greeted this sally.

“Then where is the eagle? Where is the eagle?” he cried, clapping his hands together.

“Who should know better than you, O Zeus!” I returned; “since you sent it to Cawnpore to snatch the little boy!”

Then I had to go. I thought he was going to choke; his betelstained tongue, like a piece of red flannel, rushed in and out of his mouth; the music stopped, and even Napoleon the Third came to a standstill and was infected by the sovereign mirth.

I visited Abdul's house with him to-day. It was a low, irregular, whitewashed wall, with a portal and a window above it. The portal was not more than five feet high, and was closed with two solid unvarnished wooden doors, studded with nails, and badly slung on their hinges. The window, behind which, he said, his wife and mother lived, was curtained with sacking. The effect of the whole was that of a blind beggar. Abdul rapped on the door; whereupon a man poked his head out, peered at us and retired. This person, Abdul explained, was his brother-in-law, who lived with him and who had kindly lent his services for the occasion; he had gone in to warn the women of my arrival so that they might conceal themselves. This did not take long; a cry from within signalized that the coast was clear, and we entered. The low portal gave upon three small dark rooms which were quite bare and empty and looked as though they were made of mud. The doorways that gave them intercommunication were even smaller than the street-entrance, so that I had to double up to get through to the little open yard that lay beyond. This was weedy and so neglected that the walls and buildings on the further side had crumbled into ruins. It contained nothing but a puppy, which immediately rolled over on its back. Abdul ignored it. He picked his way past it, and guided me up a short flight of stone steps which were built against the wall on our left and led back on to the roof of the three rooms through which we had passed. This was our destination.

The major part of Abdul's house, a low, one storied building with two doors, faced me. One of the doors was curtained and must have been the room into which the women had just been herded—the room whose window was veiled with sacking. The other door was open and probably led to the kitchen.

The minor part of the house was a tiny compartment about five feet square sprouting all by itself from a corner of the roof. It looked like a box, without its cover, standing on end. It was Abdul's private bed-stitting-room. The door-way was open, and a tongue of stained and faded purple cloth protruded across the threshold.

Behind this box, balancing a similar structure on the other corner, rose a low open turret approached by very narrow ladder-like steps. These turrets, said Abdul, were used either as storerooms or as sleeping-out places in summer—each being just large enough to take a
charpai
.

It was very hot standing on the roof in the full glare of the sun, and I was glad when he invited me to enter his room. I shuffled off my shoes and crawled like a fly over the purple tongue. There was no furniture in the room. It was so small that one could neither stand up nor lie down in it at full length. There was a white sheet spread upon the floor, and on this, copying as nearly as I could Abdul's attitude, I squatted beside him. We filled the room.

And yet, in spite of its smallness, it contained all Abdul's worldly goods. These either hung from innumerable nails in the walls, or were neatly piled along the sides; and I never saw such a remarkable collection. One would have thought that never in his life had he thrown anything away, however worthless or useless. Empty tins and boxes; worn-out shoes; remnants of socks and other articles of clothing; books and bits of books—these were neatly stacked and surmounted by a small cotton-tree in a pot; while on the wall were hanging almanacs and photos, a hat, a bladeless knife, a glove, some broken pieces of glass and metal, and all manner of quite useless and unornamental things. It was, somehow, very like Abdul himself, this room of his: very like his mind, small, mean, tidy, uncomfortable, and full of rubbishy things. There was a smell of mold.

“Your tree looks dead,” I said.

“Yes,” said Abdul, “it is dead.”

I was then introduced to his son, who was brought by the brother-in-law and placed on the purple cloth in front of us. He was a sturdy and rather pretty little chap of about five, with a very large head and
tarbush
and a distended stomach.

Abdul offered me cigarettes, spices, and scent upon a tray. There were three scent-bottles, one containing a brown, gummy Indian scent and another a cheap French perfume bought in Calcutta. The third bottle was shaped like a slender sausage and contained a little transparent fluid. I took it up curiously.

“Is this good?” I asked.

“No very,” said Abdul.

“How does it open?”

“No one can open,” he replied. “Only my father, who is dead.”

His father had been dead for two years, but I was not discouraged until I perceived that in the small brass neck at either end the glass stopper had been broken off short. I handed it back to him, wondering why, since it could only be opened by his father who was dead, he continued to offer the scent in it to his guests. No doubt it looked mysterious and important on the tray with the others. After I had rubbed a little of the Indian scent upon my hands, he showed me some of his treasures—cheap, highly colored plates of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, and some “holy books” which were tied up with string and suspended from nails in the roof. He also showed me an early family group, so faded as to be scarcely discernible, in which he figured as a little boy.

“That is me in my lovelyhood,” he said.

Then, when the attractions of the room were exhausted, he sent his brother-in-law, who, with Abdul's son and two other idle spectators, was hanging about outside, to bring the sweetmeats. In a few moments these arrived, in saucers, on a tray, preceded and accompanied by a cloud of flies and followed by a cat of the most mangy and sinister appearance. It was covered with half-concealed sores, and its almost hairless tail was rigid and twisted like a stiff piece of rope.

Abdul greeted it affectionately.

“I told you I had a cat,” he said.

I gazed with disgust at this wretched object, which, I am thankful to say, did not come into the room. It sat just outside on the purple cloth and peered short-sightedly, from beneath drooping pink lids, at the sweetmeats which were set before us. These were chiefly mustard-colored or pale gray, and looked rather like bread pellets moulded by grubby schoolboy fingers into various sizes for flipping at other schoolboys across the table. A little sugar clung to them, and a thin, adhesive silver tissue (also edible, said Abdul) which fluttered in the slight breeze. He handed me a spoon, and with his own attempted to beat off the flies which swarmed so obstinately upon the food that they appeared to prefer death to separation from it. Personally I could not pretend to their enthusiasm. but gingerly digging with my spoon to the center of one of the piles, I selected, with a care which may have seemed rather rude, three of the smallest pellets I could find.

These, which were no larger than peas, I swallowed, and, recollecting Mrs. Bristow's dire prophecy of a month ago, had little doubt but that in a very short space of time I should be dead of cholera.

But Abdul was watching me, and, protesting loudly against my modesty and politeness, pressed other and larger sweetmeats upon me, which I firmly refused.

He seemed very upset. If I did not care for Indian sweetmeats, he said, he had some English cakes he had bought in Calcutta; but I pleaded a recent lunch, remembering that he had not been in Calcutta for over six months. He gazed unhappily at the loaded tray. He had hoped, he said, that we would share it between us. It was a great disappointment. Indeed, so depressed did he look that I suggested that, since I did not feel inclined for food at present, I might be allowed to carry some back with me to my house to eat another time.

This seemed to him an excellent plan; his spirits revived at once, and he sent his son with the sweetmeats to make up a bundle for me to take away. But in a few moments the little boy returned to say that unfortunately nothing could be found in which to tie up the food; whereupon Abdul, never at a loss, drew from his pocket a soiled handkerchief which he tossed over to his son. Then, in spite of my refusal, he ordered tea, which was brought, already mixed with milk and sugar, in a kettle; but owing no doubt to its not having been made with boiling water it was found to be so thick with tealeaves that it could scarcely trickle through the spout, and was sent back to be strained. I accepted a glass when at last it returned to make up for my refusal of the food; but it was sickly sweet and tepid, and I did not drink much. Shortly afterwards I left, carrying with me the sweetmeats tied up in Abdul's handkerchief.

For a day or two I shall keep them exposed to view on a plate in my sitting-room, throwing away a few from time to time, so that he may think they are being steadily consumed. He said he couldn't express his pride and satisfaction that I had visited his house, which, he added, cost him two rupees a month in rent.

Since his show of irresolution a few days ago His Highness has not spoken to me again about his pilgrimage. Such incidental allusions as he has made to it have implied that he has accepted the inevitable with resignation; and though he does not cease to complain of ill-health, it seems settled that he will depart in four days' time. It is my own fault, I expect, that I don't know much about it. Since the original plan was that we should synchronize our holidays, I naturally tried to keep him up to the mark, feeling that my own tour depended upon his; and, since my urgings have increased with his reluctance, he no doubt feels me to be out of sympathy with him and leaves the subject alone. But now that, what with introductory letters and invitations and one thing and another, it seems assured that, independently of his plans, I am to leave for Benares on the 19th, it makes no difference to me whether he goes on his pilgrimage or not. So while we were driving to-day I carefully approached the subject to find out if he was feeling any more cheerful about it. He wasn't. He was very gloomy, and said there was no improvement in his health, and that the medicine the doctors gave him made his eyes water. I asked what the exact object of his pilgrimage was, and he explained that he was under obligation to perform certain religious rites at certain holy places to obtain absolution for the souls of his ancestors. There was no definite punishment for failing to do this, but the souls would continue in everlasting need of it, and this neglect would count as a bad act against him and, along with such other bad acts as he may have committed, operate to send him to hell and delay his passage through the cycle of transmigrations to reabsorption into the one Universal Spirit.