The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (15 page)

Suddenly I saw the bicycle. It was over to one side at the bottom of the steps,
and a small boy was holding it. The bicycle itself was quite ordinary, but on
the back of it, fixed somehow to the rear wheel-frame, was a huge placard,
about five feet square. On the placard were written the following words:

Imhrat
KHAN, THE MAN WHO SEES

WITHOUT
HIS EYES!

TODAY
MY EYES HAVE BEEN BANDAGED BY

HOSPITAL
DOCTORS!

APPEARING
TONIGHT AND

ALL
THIS WEEK AT

THE
ROYAL PALACE HALL,

ACACIA STREET, AT 7 P.M.

DON'T
MISS IT!

YOU
WILL SEE MIRACLES PERFORMED.

Our Indian had reached the bottom of the steps and now he walked straight over
to the bicycle. He said something to the boy and the boy smiled. The Indian
mounted the bicycle. The crowd made way for him. Then, lo and behold, this
fellow with the blocked-up, bandaged eyes now proceeded to ride across the
courtyard and straight out into the bustling honking traffic of the street
beyond! The crowd cheered louder than ever. The barefoot children ran after
him, squealing and laughing. For a minute or so, we were able to keep him in
sight. We saw him ride superbly down the busy street with motor-cars whizzing
past him and a bunch of children running in his wake. Then he turned a corner
and was gone.

"I feel quite giddy," Dr Marshall said. "I can't bring myself to
believe it."

"We have to believe it," I said. "He couldn't possibly have
removed the dough from under the bandages. We never let him out of our sight.
And as for unsealing his eyelids, that job would take him five minutes with
cotton-wool and alcohol."

"Do you know what I think," Dr Marshall said. "I think we have
witnessed a miracle."

We turned and walked slowly back into the hospital.

For the rest of the day, I was kept busy with patients in the hospital. At six
in the evening, I came off duty and drove back to my flat for a shower and a
change of clothes. It was the hottest time of year in Bombay, and even after
sundown the heat was like an open furnace. If you sat still in a chair and did
nothing, the sweat would come seeping out of your skin. Your face glistened
with dampness all day long and your shirt stuck to your chest. I took a long
cool shower. I drank a whisky and soda sitting on the veranda, with only a
towel round my waist. Then I put on some clean clothes. At ten minutes to
seven, I was outside the Royal Palace Hall in Acacia Street. It was not much of
a place. It was one of those smallish seedy halls that can be hired
inexpensively for meetings or dances. There was a fair-sized crowd of local
Indians milling round outside the ticket office, and a large poster over the
entrance proclaiming that THE INTERNATIONAL THEATRE COMPANY was performing
every night that week. It said there would be jugglers and conjurers and
acrobats and sword-
swallowers
and fire-eaters and
snake-charmers and a one-act play entitled
The
Rajah and the Tiger Lady.
But above all this and in far the largest
letters, it said IMHRAT KHAN, THE MIRACLE MAN WHO SEES WITHOUT HIS EYES.

I bought a ticket and went in.

The show lasted two hours. To my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it. All the
performers were excellent. I liked the man who juggled with cooking-utensils.
He had a saucepan, a frying-pan, a baking tray, a huge plate and a casserole
pot all flying through the air at the same time. The snake-charmer had a big
green snake that stood almost on the tip of its tail and swayed to the music of
his flute. The fire-eater ate fire and the sword-
swallower
pushed a thin pointed rapier at least four feet down his throat and into his
stomach. Last of all, to a great fanfare of trumpets, our friend
Imhrat
Khan came on to do his act. The bandages we had put
on him at the hospital had now been removed.

Members of the audience were called on to the stage to blindfold him with
sheets and scarves and turbans, and in the end there was so much material
wrapped around his head he could hardly keep his balance. He was then given a
revolver. A small boy came out and stood at the left of the stage. I recognized
him as the one who had held the bicycle outside the hospital that morning. The
boy placed a tin can on the top of his head and stood quite still. The audience
became deathly silent as
Imhrat
Khan took aim. He
fired. The bang made us all jump. The tin can flew off the boy's head and
clattered to the floor. The boy picked it up and showed the bullet-hole to the
audience. Everyone clapped and cheered. The boy smiled.

Then the boy stood against a wooden screen and
Imhrat
Khan threw knives all around his body, most of them going very close indeed.
This was a splendid act. Not many people could have thrown knives with such
accuracy even with their eyes uncovered, but here he was, this extraordinary
fellow, with his head so swathed in sheets it looked like a great snowball on a
stick, and he was flicking the sharp knives into the screen within a hair's
breadth of the boy's head. The boy smiled all the way through the act, and when
it was over the audience stamped its feet and screamed with excitement.

Imhrat
Khan's last act, though not so spectacular,
was even more impressive. A metal barrel was brought on stage. The audience was
invited to examine it, to make sure there were no holes. There were no holes.
The barrel was then placed over
Imhrat
Khan's already
bandaged head. It came down over his shoulders and as far as his elbows,
pinning the upper part of his arms to his sides. But he could still hold out
his forearms and his hands. Someone put a needle in one of his hands and a
length of cotton thread in the other. With no false moves, he neatly threaded
the cotton through the eye of the needle. I was flabbergasted.

As soon as the show was over, I made my way backstage. I found
Mr
Imhrat
Khan in a small but
clean dressing-room, sitting quietly on a wooden stool. The little Indian boy
was unwinding the masses of scarves and sheets from around his head.

"Ah," he said. "It is my friend the doctor from the hospital.
Come in, sir, come in."

"I saw the show," I said.

"And what did you think?"

"I liked it very much. I thought you were wonderful."

"Thank you," he said. "That is a high compliment."

"I must congratulate your assistant as well," I said, nodding to the
small boy. "He is very brave."

"He cannot speak English," the Indian said. "But I will tell him
what you said." He spoke rapidly to the boy in Hindustani and the boy
nodded solemnly but said nothing.

"Look," I said. "I did you a small
favour
this morning. Would you do me one in return? Would you consent to come out and
have supper with me?"

All the wrappings were off his head now. He smiled at me and said, "I
think you are feeling curious, doctor. Am I not right?"

"Very curious," I said. "I'd like to talk to you."

Once again, I was struck by the peculiarly thick matting of black hair growing
on the outsides of his ears. I had not seen anything quite like it on another
person. "I have never been questioned by a doctor before," he said.
"But I have no objection. It would be a pleasure to have supper with
you."

"Shall I wait in the car?"

"Yes, please," he said. "I must wash myself and get out of these
dirty clothes."

I told him what my car looked like and said I would be waiting outside.

He emerged fifteen minutes later, wearing a clean white cotton robe and the
usual sandals on his bare feet. And soon the two of us were sitting comfortably
in a small restaurant that I sometimes went to because it made the best curry
in the city. I drank beer with my curry.
Imhrat
Khan
drank lemonade.

"I am not a writer," I said to him. "I am a doctor. But if you
will tell me your story from the beginning, if you will explain to me how you
developed this magical power of being able to see without your eyes, I will
write it down as faithfully as I can. And then, perhaps, I can get it published
in the
British Medical Journal
or
even in some famous magazine. And because I am a doctor and not just some
writer trying to sell a story for money, people will be far more inclined to
take seriously what I say. It would help you, wouldn't it, to become better
known?"

"It would help me very much," he said. "But why should you want
to do this?"

"Because I am madly curious," I answered. "That is the only
reason."

Imhrat
Khan took a mouthful of curried rice and
chewed it slowly. Then he said, "Very well, my friend. I will do it."

"Splendid!" I cried. "Let's go back to my flat as soon as we've
finished eating and then we can talk without anyone disturbing us."

We finished our meal. I paid the bill. Then I drove
Imhrat
Khan back to my flat.

In the living-room, I got out paper and pencils so that I could make notes. I
have a sort of private shorthand of my own that I use for taking down the
medical history of patients, and with it I am able to record most of what a
person says if he doesn't speak too quickly. I think I got just about
everything
Imhrat
Khan said to me that evening, word
for word, and here it is. I give it to you exactly as he spoke it:

"I am an Indian, a Hindu," said
Imhrat
Khan, "and I was born in
Akhnur
, in Kashmir
State, in 1905. My family is poor and my father worked as a ticket inspector on
the railway. When I was a small boy of thirteen, an Indian conjurer comes to
our school and gives a performance. His name, I remember, is Professor Moor --
all conjurers in India call themselves 'professor' -- and his tricks are very
good. I am tremendously impressed. I think it is real magic. I feel -- how shall
I call it -- I feel a powerful wish to learn about this magic myself, so two
days later I run away from home, determined to find and to follow my new hero,
Professor Moor. I take all my savings, fourteen rupees, and only the clothes I
am wearing. I am wearing a white dhoti and sandals. This is in 1918 and I am
thirteen years old.

"I find out that Professor Moor has gone to Lahore, two hundred miles
away, so all alone, I take a ticket, third class, and I get on the train and
follow him. In Lahore, I discover the Professor. He is working at his conjuring
in a very cheap-type show. I tell him of my admiration and offer myself to him
as assistant. He accepts me.
My pay?
Ah yes, my pay is
eight
annas
a day.

"The Professor teaches me to do the linking-rings trick and my job is to
stand in the street before the theatre doing this trick and calling to the
people to come in and see the show.

"For six whole weeks this is very fine. It is much better than going to
school. But then what a terrible bombshell I receive when suddenly it comes to
me that there is no real magic in Professor Moor, that all is trickery and
quickness of the hand. Immediately the Professor is no longer my hero. I lose
every bit of interest in my job, but at the same time my whole mind becomes
filled with a very strong longing. I long above all things to find out about
the real magic and to discover something about the strange power which is
called yoga.

"To do this, I must find a yogi who is willing to let me become his
disciple. This is not going to be easy. True yogis do not grow on trees. There
are very few of them in the whole of India. Also, they are fanatically
religious people. Therefore, if I am to have success in finding a teacher, I
too will have to pretend to be a very religious man.

"No, I am actually not religious. And because of that, I am what you would
call a bit of a cheat. I wanted to acquire yoga powers purely for selfish
reasons. I wanted to use these powers to get fame and fortune.

"Now this was something the true yogi would despise more than anything in
the world. In fact, the true yogi believes that any yogi who misuses his powers
will die an early and sudden death. A yogi must never perform in public. He
must
practise
his art only in absolute privacy and as
a religious
service,
otherwise he will be smitten to
death. This I did not believe and I still don't.

"So now my search for a yogi instructor begins. I leave Professor Moor and
go to a town called
Amritsar
in the Punjab, where I
join a
travelling
theatre company. I have to make a
living while I am searching for the secret, and already I have had success in
amateur acting at my school. So for three years I travel with this theatre
group all over the Punjab and by the end of it, when I am sixteen and a half
years old, I am playing top of the bill. All the time I am saving money and now
I have altogether a very great sum, two thousand rupees.

"It is at this moment that I hear news of a man called
Banerjee
.
This
Banerjee
, it is said, is one of the truly great
yogis of India, and he possesses extraordinary powers. Above all, people are
telling of how he has acquired the rare power of levitation, so that when he
prays his whole body leaves the ground and becomes suspended in the air
eighteen inches from the soil.