The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

by Achmed Abdullah

  A low divan ran around the four sides of the room. There were three carved saj-wood chairs, a Kashmir walnut table of which the surface was deeply undercut with realistic chenar leaves, and a large water-pipe made of splendid Lucknow enamel. A huge, reddish-brown camel’s-hair rug covered the floor, and on tabourets distributed here and there were niello boxes filled with the roseleaf-and-honey confections beloved by Hindu women, pitchers and basins of that exquisite damascening called bidri, and a soft-colored silken scarf—coiled and crumpled, as if a woman had dropped it hurriedly.

  The walls were covered with blue glazed tiles; and on the one facing the outer door an inscription in inlaid work caught my attention. They were just a few words, in Sanskrit, and, somehow, they affected me strangely. They were the famous words from the Upanishad:

  “Recall, O mind, thy deeds—recall, recall!”

  The answer was clear. I said to myself, with a little bitter pang for remember that I liked the man—that here was one who had gone fantee, who had gone native; a man who had dropped overboard all the traditions, the customs, and decencies, the virtues, the blessed, saving prejudices of his race and faith to mire himself hopelessly in the slough of a foreign race and faith. For it is true that a man who goes fantee never acquires the good, but only the bad of the alien breed with which he mingles and blends—true, moreover, that such a man can never rise again, that the doors of the house of his birth shall be forever closed to him. He has blackened the crucible of his life and he will never find a single golden bead at the bottom of it; only hatred and despair and disgust, a longing for the irreparably lost, a bitter taste in the mouth of his soul.

  I started towards the door. Out into the free, open sunlight, I said to myself. For I knew what would happen. The man would come downstairs, carrying a square bottle and glasses. Presently he would become drunk—maudlin—he would pour his mean, dirty confidences into my ear and weep on my neck and—

  I reconsidered, quite suddenly. Why, this young American had not the earmarks of a man who had gone fantee. There was not that look in his eyes—that horrible, unbearable look, a composite of misery and lust, bred of bad thoughts, bad dreams, and worse hashish—

  The man—I had seen him in the merciless rays of the Indian sun—was keen-eyed, clean morally and physically. His laughter was fresh. His complexion was healthy—and yes, I continued my thoughts, he seemed happy, supremely, sublimely, enviably happy!

  “Sorry I kept you waiting,” came his voice from the farther door as he came into the room, dressed in the flowing, comfortable house robe of a wealthy native gentleman.

  He must have read my gyrating, unspoken thought. Perhaps I stared a little too inquisitively at his face for the tell-tale sign of the sordid tragedy which I suspect. For he smiled, a fine, thin smile, and he pointed to the Sanskrit inscription, reading the words out loud and with a certain gently exalted inflection as if his tongue, in forming the sonorous words, was tasting a special sort of psychic ambrosia.

  “Recall, O Mind, thy deeds—recall, re—”

  “Well,” I blurted out, brutally, tactlessly, before I realized what I was doing, “What is the answer—to this and that and this?” pointing, in turn, at the Indian furniture, the inscription, his dressing robe, and, though the stone-framed window, at the native houses which crowded the garden on all sides.

  He smiled. He was not the least bit angry, but frankly amused, like a typical, decently-bred American who can even relish a joker at his own expense. “You’re an inquisitive beggar,” he commenced, “but I’ll tell you rather than have some gossiping cackling hen of a deputy assistant commissioner’s mother-in-law tell you the wrong tale and make me lose your friendship. You see,” he continued with an air as if he was telling me a tremendous secret, “I am Stephen Denton.”

  “Well,” I asked, “what of that?” The name meant nothing to me.

  “What? Have they already forgotten my name? Gosh, that’s bully! In another year they will have forgotten the tale itself! You see,” he continued, dropping into one of the divans and waving me down beside him, “I’m the guy whom the kid subalterns over at the British barracks call ‘the man with the charmed life.’”

  I gave a cry—of surprise, amazement, incredulity. For I had heard tales—vague, fantastic, incredible. “You—” I stammered, “you—are—”

  “Yes,” he laughed, “I am that same man. Care to hear the story?”

  “You bet!” I replied fervently, and that very moment came once more the sound of laughter from upstairs—soft, tinkling, silvery—

  CHAPTER II.

  THE CALL.

  I broke the night’s primeval bars

  I dared the old abysmal curse

  And flashed through ranks of frightened stars

  Suddenly on the universe!

  —Rupert Brooke

  * * * *

  Stephen Denton interrupted his tale now and then with shrewd and picturesque sidelights on native life, customs, and characters which proved how deep he had got below the skin of India. But I shall omit them here—doubtless at a future date, he himself will embody them in the great book on India which he is writing—and, in the following, I shall only give the pith of his incredible tale. I only regret that there is no way of reproducing his voice with the printed word—his happy, frank voice, unmistakably American in its intonations, yet once in a while with a quaint inflection which showed that he had begun to think at times in Hindustani.

  You see, he commenced, it was all originally Roos-Keppel’s doing—fault, if you prefer to call it that. Roos-Keppel—“Tubby” Roos-Keppel—you must have met him over at the Jockey Club, or in the evening, in the Eden Gardens, driving about in his old-fashioned C-spring barouche—big, paunchy, brick-faced Britisher, who won the Calcutta Sweepstakes—in 1900. Why, everybody in India knows the tale, how a sudden, mad prosperity went to his head; how he gave up his job in the Bengal Civil Service and painted Calcutta crimson for three years; how he lost his hold on everything, including himself; everything that is, except his hospitality, his fantastic ideas, his infectious, daredevil madness.

  I met him the day after I got here. How did I get here? Why? When?

  Well, two years tomorrow, to answer your last question first, and as to why and how, there’s a native proverb which says that fate and self-exertion are half and half in power.

  I came here on a sight-seeing trip after I’d got through Yale. I had money of my own, my parents were dead, there was nobody to say no—and I had an idea it would do me good to get a nodding acquaintance with the world and its denizens before I settled down in the Back Bay section—yes—you guessed it—originally I’m just that sort of a Bostonian.

  Everything back home—with the dear old, white-haired lawyer, who was my guardian, and his little plump spinster sister who kept house for him, and the black walnut furniture and the antimacassars and the bound volumes, of Emerson and Longfellow and Thoreau—it seemed all so confounded safe and sure. Even timid. Respectably, irreproachably timid, if you get the idea.

  Stephen Denton smiled reminiscently.

  Preordained, too, it seemed. Preordained from the mild cocktail before dinner to the hoary place on the bench I was expected to grace some day. I had every reason to be happy, don’t you think? And I was happy. Quite!

  And then I smelled a whiff of wanderlust. And so it happened that that red faced Britisher of a Roos-Keppel kicked me, figuratively speaking, in the stomach—and I’m grateful to him—always shall be grateful.

  I met him at the Jockey Club. He took to me and invited me to dinner at the Hotel Semiramis, where he had a gorgeous suite of rooms. It was some little dinner—just the two of us—and you know the sort of host he is. We tried every barreled, fermented, and bottled refreshment from Syrian raki to yellow-ribbon Grand Marnier; and it was at the end of the party—I was busy with a large cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy, and he with a small cup of coffee and a large glass of brandy—that he cut loose and told me tales about Indi
a—tales in which he had been either principal or witness—and, in half an hour, he had taught me more about the hidden nooks and corners of this land than there is in all the travel books, Murray’s government, and missionary reports put together. What’s more his tales were true.

  So I asked him, like a tactless young cub: “Heavens, man, with your knowledge of India—why did you throw your chance away? Why didn’t you stick to it? You would have made a great, big, bouncing, twenty-four carat success!”

  “And I would have wound up with a G. C. S. I., a bloody knighthood, a pension of ten thousand rupees a year, and a two-inch space in the obituary column of the Calcutta Times—English papers please copy—when I’ve kicked the bally bucket!” He guffawed, and he hiccuped a little. For he had been hitting the brandy bottle, and all the other assorted bottles, like a cornstalk sailor on a shore spree after two dry months on a lime-juicer without making port. “Success?” he continued, “why, my lad, I am a success. A number one—waterproof—and, damn my eyes, whisky-proof for that matter?”

  “You are—what?” I asked, amazed for the man was serious, perfectly serious, mind you; and he kept right on with his philippic monologue, extravagant in diction and gesture, but the core of it—why it was serene, grotesquely serene!

  “I am a success, I repeat: don’t you believe me?” He lowered a purple-veined eyelid in a fat, Falstaffian leer. “Take a good look at these rooms of mine—best rooms in the Semiramis, in Calcutta, in India, hang it all—in the whole plurry empire!” He pointed at the gorgeous furniture and the silk hangings, “Viceroys by the score have occupied them—and the Prince of Wales—and four assorted Russian grand dukes—and three bloated Yankee plutocrats. And our little supper—look at the bottles and dishes—how much do you think it’ll cost? I tell you—five hundred rupees—without the tip! And,” he laughed, “I haven’t even got enough of the ready to tip the black-lacquered Eurasian majordomo who uncorked our sherry and, doubtless, swiped the first glass.”

  I made an instinctive gesture toward my pocket-book, but he stopped me with another laugh. “Don’t make a silly ass of yourself,” he said. “I don’t want to borrow any money. All I want to prove to you is that I live and I do as I please—forgetful of the yesterday, careless of the morrow—serene in my belief in my own particular fate. Tonight I am broke—hopelessly, desperately broke, you’d call it. For I haven’t got a rupee in the world. My bank account is concave, I owe wages to my servants, I owe for my stable service and horse feed. Everything I have—even my old C-spring barouche, even my old, patched, green bedroom slippers are mortgaged. But what of it? I’ll sleep tonight as quiet and untouched as a little babe. Something is sure to happen tomorrow—always does happen. I always kick through—somehow—”

  “But—how?” I was beginning to get worried for him—I liked him.

  “How? Because I am a success—a success with reverse English. The world? Why, I put it all over this fool of a world. For I believe in myself. That’s why I win out. Everybody who believes in himself wins out—in what he wants to win out. You, Denton,” he went on after a short pause, “are a nice lad, clean and well-bred and no end proper. But you are too damned smug—no offense meant—you are like a respectable spinster owl with respectable astigmatism. Cut away from it. See life. Make life. Take life by the tail and swing it about your head and force it to disgorge. Take a chance—say to yourself that nothing can happen to you!”

  “Pretty little theory,” I interrupted.

  “Theory—the devil!” he cried. “It’s the truth! Don’t take me as an example if you don’t want to. Take people who have done real things. Take you own adored George Washington—take the Duke of Wellington, take Moltke, Ghengis Khan, U. S. Grant, Attila, Tamerlane, Joffre, or Theodore Roosevelt! They lived through to the end until they had achieved what they wanted to achieve. They made their own fate. The bullet was not run, the sword was not forged which could kill these—for they had willed to live, willed to succeed! They—” a little superstitious hush came into his voice, “they bore the charmed life—”

  He poured himself another stiff drink, gulped it down, and pointed through the open window, out at the streets of Calcutta, which lay at our feet, bathed in moonlight.

  I looked, and the sight of it, the scent of it, the strange, inexpressible feel of it crept through me—yes, that’s it—it crept through me. You know this town—this Calcutta—this melting pot of all India—and remember, that brick-faced reprobate of a Roos-Keppel had been telling me tales of it—grim, fantastic, true tales—and here they were at my feet, the witnesses and actors, the heroes and villains in his tales—hurrying along the street in a never-ending procession—a vast panorama of Asia’s uncounted races. There were men from Bengal, black, ungainly, slightly Hebraic shuffling along on their eternal, sissified patent leather pumps. There were some bearded Rajputs—weaponless, that being the law of Calcutta, but carrying about them somehow the scent of naked steel—and next to them their blood enemies—fur-capped, wide shouldered, sneering Afghans, with screaming voices, brushing through the crowds like the bullies they are—doubtless dreaming of loot and rapine and murder. There were furtive Madrases—“monkey men” we call them here—and a few red-faced duffle-clad hillmen from the North—thin, stunted desertmen from Bikaneer, with their lean jaws bandaged after the manner of the land, and Sikhs and Chinamen and Eurasians and what-not.

  And, directly below our window, there was a Brahman priest, a slow, fanatic fire in his eyes—the light from our room caught in them—a caste mark of diagonal stripes of white and black on his forehead, chanting in Sanskrit the praises of the hero and demi-god Gandharbasena—

  “…and thus did the great hero persuade the king of Dhara to give to him in marriage his daughter. Ho! Let all men listen to the Jataka for he was the son of Indra.…”

  Roos-Keppel’s thick, alcoholic voice sounded at my elbow. “India,” he hiccuped, “and the horror, the beauty, the wonder, the cruelty, the mad color and scent which is India!” He clutched my arm. “My game’s played down to the last rubber, Denton, and my score is nearly settled—but you—why, you’ve got a stack of chips—you are strong and young—your eyes are clear—and—Gad, I wish I had your chance! I’d take this town by the throat—I’d jump into its damned mazes, regardless of consequences. Heavens, man, can’t you feel it beckon and wink and smile—and leer? Listen—” momentarily he was silent, and, from the street came a confused mass of sounds—voices in many languages, rising, then decreasing, the shouts of the street-vendors, the tinkle-tinkle of a woman’s glass bracelet—the sounds leaped up like gay fragments of some mocking tunes, again like the tragic chorus of some world—old, world—sad tune. “India!” he continued, “can you resist the call of it?”

  It was a psychological moment. Yes—it was that often misquoted, decidedly overworked psychological moment—the brandy and champagne fumes were working in my brain—and something tugged at my soul—if I had wings to fly from the window, to launch myself across the purple haze of the town, to alight on the flat roofs and look into the houses, the lives, the gaieties, the mysteries, the sorrows of this colorful, turbaned throng. And then everything I was—racially, traditionally, you understand—the Back Bay of Boston; the old lawyer, my preordained place on the bench, the antimacassars, Phi Beta Kappa, and all the rest of it, made a last rally in my defense.

  “But,” I said, and I guess my voice was thin, apologetic—just as if Roos-Keppel was the driving master of my destinies, “this is said to be a dangerous place—away from the beaten paths—so what is the of—”

  “The use? The use?” he cut in with a bellow of laughter, and then suddenly his voice was low and quiet “Why, just because it’s dangerous, that’s why you should try your chance—and your life.” He pointed again through the window, east, where, on the horizon, a deep-gray smudge lay across the bent of glimmer and glitter. “See that patch of darkness?” he asked, with something of a challenge in his accents which were getting more and
more unsteady, “that’s the Colootallah Section—cha—charming little bunch of real estate—worst in the world, not even excepting Aden, Naples and all the wickedness and crimes of Port Said. Only two men are safe there, and they aren’t quite safe,” he laughed, and to my quickly interjected question, he replied, “Why, a fakir—holy man, you know—and a member of the filthy castes who thrive there—you know even criminal have their own castes in India, and they all seem to congregate there—thugs and thieves and murderers and what-not.

  “Wait—” he stopped my questions with a gesture—“perhaps, mind you, I say ‘perhaps,’ an exceptional detective of the Metropolitan Police in Lal Bazaar may be safe there for three minutes, but—” He was silent and leered at me.

  “But what?” I asked impatiently.

  “I’d tackle it just the same if I were you, young and strong. No white man has done it before. By Jupiter, I’d tackle it if I had a char—char—charmed life—” and quite suddenly he fell into snoring, alcoholic slumber.

  I stepped out on the balcony. India was at my feet, cruel, beckoning, mysterious, scented, minatory, fascinating, inexplicable. Right then it got below my skin.

  I gave a low laugh. No, I don’t know why I laughed.

  Stephen Denton was silent for a moment. He was thinking deeply. Then he shook his head.

  Honestly, I don’t know why I laughed. I don’t know why I did any of the things I did that night, until I came to the wall at the other end of Ibrahim Khan’s Gully. No, no. I had imbibed quite a little—couldn’t help it with Roos-Keppel—but I was not drunk. Not a bit of it.