Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (765 page)

‘Did he reckon by thy name-letters or by thy age?’

‘By my name, I think. I am no great scholar.’

‘Be merciful!’ said Mahmud. ‘No wonder thou art afflicted, O Zuhan Khan. Thy letter is Zad, which carries for its Name the Punisher. Its attribute is Terrible, and its quality Hate.’

‘All true,’ One Three Two returned. ‘Am I not here till I die? I submit myself to the fixed decree. And, certainly, were I free’ — he chuckled impiously — ’my kin on the hills would kill me. But I live. Why? Because a man may draw back-pay, as it were, for his good deeds. I dug my Captain, who is now Colonel, out of some ground that fell upon him in Frangistan (France). It was part of our work. He said nothing — nor I. But seven years after — when I was condemned for that affair of my burnt cousin — he spent money like water on lawyers and lying witnesses for my sake. Otherwise — ’ One Three Two jerked his beard towards a little black shed on a roof outside the high garden wall. No one had ever told William what it was for.

‘It may be thy good deed in saving that Captain’s life was permitted to count in thy balance,’ Mahmud volunteered.

‘And I am no more than a convict...What is the order, Baba? I am here.’

William had suddenly shut the pencase. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Bring again my eskootah, Busi-bandah. I will be a horseman. I will play polo.’

Now little snakes, who have a habit of coming out on damp garden- paths, cast no warning shadow when a low sun is blinded by thick mango-trees.

‘It is brought,’ said One Three Two; but in place of getting it he said to Mahmud: ‘While he rides, I will tell thee a tale of the Padishah which my Colonel told me.’

‘No! Let be my eskootah. I will listen to that tale. Make me my place!’ said William.

It was not five steps to the man’s side, but by the time William had taken them, an inviting lap awaited him, into which he dropped, his left cheek on the right shoulder in its prison blanket, his right hand twined in the beard, and the rest of him relaxed along the curve of the right arm.

‘Begin, Busi-bandah,’ he commanded from off his throne.

‘By thy permission,’ One Three Two began. ‘Early in the year when thou wast born, which was the year I came to be with thee, Baba, my Colonel told me this tale to comfort my heart. It was when I — when I — ’

‘Was to be hanged for thy bad cousin,’ said William, screwing up his eyes as he pointed with his left third finger to the hut on the roof. ‘I know.’

‘“Keep a thing from women and children, and sieves will hold water,”‘ Mahmud chuckled in his big, silver-black beard.

‘Yes, Baba, that was the time,’ said One Three Two, recovering himself. ‘My Colonel told me that after the war in Frangistan was ended, the Padishah commanded that every man who had died in his service — and there were multitudes upon multitudes — should be buried according to his faith.’

William nodded. When he went out, he always met funeral processions on their way to the Moslem cemetery near the race-course; and, being a child below the age of personality, there were few details of wedding or burial that he had not known since he could ask questions.

‘This was done as commanded, and to each man was his tomb, with his name, rank, and service cut in white stone, all one pattern, whether he had been General or Sweeper — Sahib — Mussulman — Yahudi — Hubashi — or heathen. My Colonel told me that the burial-places resembled walled towns, divided by paths, and planted with trees and flowers, where all the world might come and walk.’

‘On Fridays,’ murmured William. Friday is the day when Muhammedan families visit their dead. He had often begged afternoons off for the servants to go there.

‘And every day. And when all was done, and the People of the Graves were laid at ease and in honour, it pleased the Padishah to cross the little water between Belait and Frangistan, and look upon them. He give order for his going in this way. He said: “Let there be neither music nor elephants nor princes about my way, nor at my stirrup. For it is a pilgrimage. I go to salute the People of the Graves.” Then he went over. And where he saw his dead laid in their multitudes, there he drew rein; there he saluted; there he laid flowers upon great stones after the custom of his people: And for that matter,’ One Three Two addressed Mahmud, ‘so do our women on Fridays. Yes, and the old women and the little staring children of Frangistan pressed him close, as he halted among the bricks and the ashes and the broken wood of the towns which had been killed in the War.’

‘Killed in the War,’ William answered vaguely.

‘But the People of the Graves waited behind their white walls, among the grass and flowers — orderly in their lines — as it were an inspection with all gear set out on the cots.’

One Three Two gathered the child closer as he grew heavier.

‘My Colonel told me this. And my Colonel said — and Allah be my witness I know! — it was killing cold weather. Frangistan is colder than all my own hills in winter — cold that cuts off a man’s toes. Yes! That is why I lack two toes, Baba. And bitter it was when the Padishah came in spring. The sun shone, but the winds cut. And, at the last, and the last, was a narrow cemetery, walled with high walls, entered by one door in a corner. Yes — like this Gaol-Khana. It was filled with our own people for the most part — Mussulmans who had served. It lay outside a city, among fields where the winds blew. Now, in the order of the Padishah’s pilgrimage, it was commanded that wheresoever he chose to draw rein, there should wait on him some General-sahib, who had fought near that place in the long War. Not princes, priests, nor elephants, but a General of his service. And so to this narrow, high- walled burial-place of the one gate came a General-sahib, sworded and spurred, with many medals, to wait the Padishah’s coming. And while he waited he clothed himself — for he had been sick — in his big coat, his Baritish warrum.’

‘I know,’ said William, rousing himself. ‘Mahmud made me a little one out of the old one of my father, when he came back. But Mahmud would not sew me any crowns or stars on the shoulder.’

Mahmud drew a quick breath (he had been putting away his hand sewing- machine) and went softly into the house. The sun was setting, and there was a change in the air.

‘Yes, all the world knows Baritish warrum. So the General waited, sheltering himself from the wind that blew through that gate till the feet of the Padishah were heard walking across the waste ground without.’

One Three Two reached up his left hand, took the cold-weather dressing-gown that Mahmud fetched from the nursery, and laid it lightly over William.

His voice went on in a soothing purr. ‘And when the feet of the Padishah were heard without the gate, that General stripped off his heavy coat and stood forth in his medalled uniform, as the order is. Then the Padishah entered. The General saluted, but the Padishah did not heed. He signed with his open hand thus, from right to left — my Colonel showed me — and he cried out “By Allah, O man, I conjure thee put on that coat on one breath! This is no season to catch sickness.” And he named the very sickness that was to fall upon himself five years after. So the General cast himself into that big coat again with speed, and in one breath the Padishah became in all respects again the Padishah. His equerries rehearsed the General’s name and honours, and the General saluted and put forward his sword-hilt to be touched, and he did the Padishah duty and attendance in that place through the appointed hour. And on the out-going the Padishah said to him: “Take heed that never again, O man, do I find thee at such seasons without thy thick coat upon thee. For the good are scarce.” And he went down to the sea, and they cast off in the silence of ten thousand bare- headed. (He had forbidden music because it was a haj [pilgrimage].) And thus it was accomplished; and this, my Colonel told me, was his last act in his haj to the People of the Graves...Wait thy prayer awhile, Mahmud. The child sleeps. When the Padishah was gone the General said to my Colonel, who was on leave in Frangistan, “By Allah, to the Padishah do I owe my life, for an hour coatless in that chill would have slain me!”‘

‘The Padishah forenamed the sickness that fell upon himself?’ Mahmud asked.

William breathed evenly.

‘That very sickness — five full years before it fell.’

‘It may be a sign,’ Mahmud conceded, ‘even though it is a little one.’

‘A man’s life is not a little thing. See what a tamasha (circus) that fat Hindu pig of a judge made over the one I spilled.’

‘A little thing beside the great things which the Padishah does daily, in his power.’

‘What do we know of them? He is Padishah. The more part of his rule is worked by his headmen — as, but for my Colonel, my hanging would have been. Nay! Nay! We say, in the Regiment: “How does a man bear himself off parade?” And we say in our Hills, of those cursed crooked Kabul- made rifles: “A gun does not throw true unless it has been bored true.” But thou art no soldier.’

‘True! And yet in my trade we say: “As the silk, so the least shred of it. As the heart, so the hand.”‘

‘And it is truth! This deed that the Padishah did among the People of the Graves declared the quality and nature of the Padishah himself. It was a fair blood-debt between a man and a man. The life of that General is owing to the Padishah. I hold it will be paid to him, and that the Padishah will live.’

‘If God please,’ said Mahmud, and laid out his mat. The sun had set, and it was time for the fourth prayer of the day. Mahmud, as Imam of a mosque, was strict in ritual, but One Three Two only prayed at dawn and full dark. So he sat till he heard the Doctor’s car challenged at the Gaol gate before he carried William in to the nursery. ‘What did the Man in the Bokkus tell about the King?’ William asked his mother when she kissed him good-night in his cot. He was all but asleep.

‘Only the same as this morning. Shall I hear your prayers, little man?’

‘No need!’ muttered William. Then he sat bolt upright, intensely awake, and speaking in chosen English: ‘Because Busi-bandah says the King will get well, anyhow. He says it is his back-pay for making the cold General put on his Baritish warrum.’

He flopped back, burrowed in his pillow, grunted, and dived far beneath the floods of sleep.

Akbar’s Bridge

JELALUDIN Muhammed Akbar, Guardian of Mankind. Moved his standards out of Delhi to Jaunpore of lower Hind. Where a mosque was to be builded, and a lovelier ne’er was planned; And Munim Khan, his Viceroy, slid the drawings ‘neath his hand.

(High as Hope upsheered her towers to the promised Heavens above. Deep as Faith and dark as Judgment her unplumbed foundations dove. Wide as Mercy, white as moonlight, stretched her fore courts to the dawn; And Akbar gave commandment, ‘Let it rise as it is drawn.’)

Then he wearied — the mood moving — of the men and things he ruled. And he walked beside the Goomti while the flaming sunset cooled. Simply, without mark or ensign — singly, without guard or guide. And he heard an angry woman screeching by the riverside.

‘Twas the Widow of the Potter, a virago feared and known. In haste to cross the ferry, but the ferry-man had gone. So she cursed him and his office, and hearing Akbar’s tread. (She was very old and darkling) turned her wrath upon his head.

But he answered — being Akbar — ’Suffer me to scull you o’er.’ Called her ‘Mother,’ stowed her bundles, worked the clumsy scow from shore. Till they grounded on a sand-bank, and the Widow loosed her mind; And the stars stole out and chuckled at the Guardian of Mankind.

‘Oh, most impotent of bunglers! Oh, my daughter’s daughter’s brood. Waiting hungry on the threshold for I cannot bring their food. Till a fool has learned his business at their virtuous grandam’s cost. And a greater fool, our Viceroy, trifles while her name is lost!

‘Munim Khan, that Sire of Asses, sees me daily come and go As it suits a drunken boatman, or this ox who cannot row. Munim Khan, the Owl’s Own Uncle — Munim Khan, the Capon’s seed. Must build a mosque to Allah when a bridge is all we need!

‘Eighty years I eat oppression and extortion and delays — Snake and crocodile and fever — flood and drouth, beset my ways. But Munim Khan must tax us for his mosque whate’er befall; Allah knowing (May He hear me!) that a bridge would save us all!’

While she stormed that other laboured and, when they touched the shore. Laughing brought her on his shoulder to her hovel’s very door. But his mirth renewed her anger, for she thought he mocked the weak; So she scored him with her talons, drawing blood on either cheek...

Jelaludin Muhammed Akbar, Guardian of Mankind. Spoke with Munim Khan his Viceroy, ere the midnight stars declined — Girt and sworded, robed and jewelled, but, on either cheek appeared Four shameless scratches running from the turban to the beard.

‘Allah burn all Potters’ Widows! Yet, since this same night was young. One has shown me by sure token, there was wisdom on her tongue. Yes, I ferried her for hire. Yes,’ he pointed, ‘I was paid.’ And he told the tale rehearsing all the Widow did and said.

And he ended, ‘Sire of Asses — Capon — Owl’s Own Uncle — know I — most impotent of bunglers — I — this ox who cannot row I — Jelaludin Muhammed Akbar, Guardian of Mankind — Bid thee build the hag her bridge and put our mosque from out thy mind.’