Hindoo Holiday

by J. R. Ackerley

  On the way back I asked Babaji Rao why Hindoos allow a lock of hair at the top of their heads to grow longer than the rest. He himself has a gray wisp about six inches long; the Dewan has a short stump of hair like a little tail, and a young man who has some work up here connected with the Guest House has a beautiful thick black tress, quite a foot long, which I saw him one day twist skillfully into a “bun” as he sat under the tree by the cook-house. But the Dewan’s tail is particularly striking because the rest of his hair has been cropped close to the skin.

  Babaji Rao informed me that, with the Sacred Thread worn round the neck, this tail of hair is the chief distinguishing mark of the Hindoo. It was the custom, he said, to grow it much longer; but European influence and education tended to curtail it.

  But he could not tell me what it meant.

  An armed guard is now posted on my verandah at night as well as on the Guest House steps. When I return from dinner I find them there—three or four dim shapes huddled together round a brazier on the concrete floor of my front loggia. Their rifles are stacked beside them. I do not know what they are intended to be guarding me from—unless from sleep, for they never stop chattering until midnight, and begin again at six in the morning. And even when they sleep they are not quiet, but moan and cry out in their dreams.

  JANUARY 1ST

  The other guests left this morning, and just before starting Mrs. Montgomery gave me final advice.

  “You’ll never understand the dark and tortuous minds of the natives,” she said; “and if you do I shan’t like you—you won’t be healthy.”

  His Highness and I went out again to-day in search of a mongoose. He asked the support of my arm down the Guest House steps to the car, stopping for a moment to say:

  “Now you shall decide for me, Mr. Ackerley, for I must see a mongoose to-day. I must see one. So shall we drive north, south, east, or west?”

  “West,” I said, after pondering the question deeply.

  When we were seated I asked him about omens, and he told me it was a good omen to see black buck, foxes or chinkara (deer) so long as they were on the right-hand side; if they were on the left-hand side it was a bad omen. But it didn’t matter on which side one saw one’s mongoose. There was also, he said, a blue bird, but it was very, very rare; indeed he himself had only seen it once and did not know its name, and had been unable to discover any other person who had ever seen it at all.

  “Like a robin-redbreast,” said he, “only blue.”

  “Not a blue jay?” I queried.

  “No, no, no,” he laughed, moving his hand protestingly; “I know the blue jay. It is a tiresome bird.”

  “And this blue bird of yours is a good omen?”

  “A very good omen! A very good omen!” he answered gravely. “But on the left side.”

  For some time we drove along in silence, and I watched the people on the road bowing low as the car passed, and making the gesture of scattering dust on their heads; then I studied the two men sitting in front of us, who always accompanied His Highness on his drives.

  One was the chauffeur, a small man of about thirty-five, with good features and small well-shaped hands, very neat in his brown round hat and jacket. I had once commented favorably on his appearance to the King, but had been met with the subtle argument of lowered eyelids and a faint smile, followed by the whisper:

  “He is a wolf.”

  The other was a much older man, who, like the storeroom keeper, St. Peter, always reminded me of pictures, dimly remembered from childhood, of the prophets of the Old Testament. When first I saw him I thought that he should have been the King, for, with his thick black-and-gray curling beard and fine, noble features, surmounted by his big white turban, he was a very majestic figure indeed; but as a matter of fact he was His Highness’s first cousin, and his only duty in life, so far as my observation went, was to hold the King’s silver cigarette case and box of matches and produce them when required. They very frequently were required; His Highness smoked incessantly, large dry Turkish cigarettes, and coughed a good deal over them, and wasn’t good at lighting matches.

  According to him, this cousin was very vain, and once, when I remarked on the beauty of his beard, His Highness had said: “Tell him! Tell him! He will be very pleased. He thinks of nothing else,” and had then dissolved into wheezy laughter. Also, like the chauffeur, he was “no good,” he was not to be trusted and was only employed so as to keep him out of mischief. Whether this was true I do not know; his appearance was that of a very benevolent old gentleman, but I was never under the necessity of putting my trust in it.

  “Is there an Absolute?” asked His Highness suddenly. “That is what I want you to tell me. I look upon you as a kind of weezard; you must tell me these things. Is there an Absolute? Is there a God? Is there a future life?”

  “Well,” I said, “you know the prayer of one of the Cato Street conspirators before his head was chopped off?”

  “No,” said His Highness, looking at me with great expectancy. “What was the prayer?”

  “He said, ‘O God—if there is a God—save my soul—if I have a soul.’”

  I smiled, and he hid his face in his sleeve and his small body shook with laughter; then looking up at me again, he said: “What did he mean?”

  I explained.

  “You are right,” he said, with a gesture of despair, gazing gloomily out of the window; “it is unknowable. But do you say it is hidden from us on purpose? Do you think we are meant not to know it?”

  “But that’s the same question all over again,” I said, feeling very sorry for the little man. “Why don’t you just believe what seems most agreeable to you, Maharajah Sahib? Why don’t you pick the nicest God you know—Krishna, for example, if you don’t get on with Christ—and then give up all further philosophic readings?”

  It was at this moment that we came across some deer.

  The chauffeur saw them first and nudged the old gentleman, who became very excited, waving his arms and calling to the King. Unhappily the deer were on the left-hand side of the road. His Highness plunged forward.

  “Turn the car! Turn the car!” he cried, and the car was whisked round with such speed that he was thrown against me and his hat slid over his nose. But the fleeing deer were now safely on the right.

  “So!” breathed His Highness, leaning back again with obvious satisfaction. Then he gave me a quizzical, sidelong glance from beneath lowered lids.

  “Now if you can do that with your omens,” I said, “why in the world can’t you do the same thing with your faith—take the most comforting belief and keep it always on your right-hand side, even if it means turning round and round to do so?”

  He was most pleased with this, and clapped his hands together. “Oh, that is very good! That is very good!” he cried, and then remained silent for some time during which I thought he was considering it; but apparently this was not so.

  “What is the difference between lust, passion, and love?” he suddenly asked.

  I tried to think.

  “I asked Major Pomby that,” he resumed, “and he said to me, ‘Maharajah! you are a very bad man!’ Am I a very bad man to ask such a question?”

  “What nonsense!” I said. “Major Pomby is a very bad man to have said so.”

  This encouraged him, and he reached the subject of friendship as understood by the classic Greeks, and spoke of a book he had in his library which contained some beautiful photographs of Greek and Roman statuary. But now, he said, young men were never wholly beautiful. Some had beautiful faces, but ugly bodies; some beautiful faces and bodies, but ugly hands or feet; some were physically completely beautiful, but these were stupid—and spiritual beauty alone was not enough.

  “There must be beautiful form to excite my cupidity,” he said.

  “Your what, Maharajah Sahib?”

  Cupidity. What does it mean?”

  “Lust.”

  “But you have Cupid, the God of Love?”

  Thi
s floored me; and while I was considering Latin derivations, he continued:

  “Now, take Mr. Lowes Dickinson. I like him very much; very, very much, and honor and respect his wisdom and goodness . . . but he does not excite my cupidity. Goodness, wisdom, and beauty—that is what the Greeks worshipped, and that is what I want . . . a good, wise, and beautiful friend.”

  “Well,” I said, “if I come back here to remain with you we will join in cultivating beauty in Chhokrapur; we’ll wed beauty to beauty and beget beauty. In fact, we’ll turn your realm between us into a classic Greek state.”

  He clapped his hands.

  “You are quite right! You are quite right!” he said enthusiastically. “Now I love you.”

  The huge Guest House is now empty and the waiter Hashim has only me to look after. He is a queer, inscrutable man, a Mohammedan, rather handsome in his blue-and-white turban and his long close-fitting blue uniform coat. But he seems vaguely hostile. At any rate he doesn’t respond to friendliness; his broad face reflects nothing, and his steady, expressionless eyes discourage me. He is a little alarming too. Although he produces nothing more than an occasional low mutter when I attempt to convey my wishes to him, I often feel that he really understands English quite well; and since he walks with bare feet I can’t hear him move about, and am frequently startled to find him beside me or close behind my chair.

  JANUARY 2ND

  During our drive to-day His Highness returned to the subject of the ancient Greeks.

  “Would you call me an imaginary man?” he asked.

  I said I thought it suited him very well.

  “There was an English lady staying with me once,” he continued, “who said to me, ‘Maharajah, you soar like a skylark and then fall on the ground.’”

  He was overcome with merriment, and hid his face in his sleeve. “What did she mean?” he asked, when he had recovered himself.

  “She meant,” I said, “that although they sometimes came down to earth, your thoughts are usually on higher things.”

  “Yes, yes; that I am an imaginary and not a practical man?”

  “Quite so, Maharajah Sahib.”

  “You know, Mr. Ackerley, I like the old times. I like the Greeks and Romans. I think of them always, always. I would like to have all my people dressed like Greeks and Romans. In my Palace I keep a Greek toga, and when my friends in England used to come to stay with me and talk about those times, I would put on my toga and recline on my couch like this.” He laid the palm of one hand against his cheek, setting the other on his hip, and sank sideways into the corner of the car, which pushed his hat rather tipsily to one side. “And my friends would clap their hands and say ‘The Greeks have been born again in Chhokrapur.’” He sat up. “Ah, I like those old times. And Charles the First and all the Stuarts. I like them very much.”

  “Why Charles the First?” I asked, very bewildered.

  “I find many things in him like myself. And the Tsar. Don’t they say ‘Like likes like’?”

  Some monkeys fled into the bushes before the car’s approach, and their antics were so absurd that I burst out laughing.

  “They are disgraced monkeys,” remarked His Highness contemptuously; “for when the God Rama went to fight against Ravana he was helped by monkeys . . . all the monkeys . . . every kind. But these monkeys fled away from the battle . . . they were all white then; but they were cursed because they fled away, and their faces turned black; so we call them disgraced monkeys.”

  We were now about a mile from Chhokrapur, returning along the Deori road, and I was noticing with interest a hill in the near distance which, although I had not seen it before from this angle, I suddenly recognized as being the southern end and highest point of the stony ridge on the other end of which, about half a mile away, stood the Guest House. Covering now the remainder of the ridge, it received, from its apparent isolation, a prominent and single character, like the near man in a passing line of soldiers; and I noticed that it carried on its summit a small, ruined, cairn-like shrine.

  “That’s a pleasant little hill,” I said, pointing to it.

  “It is a very bad hill,” retorted the King flatly, turning away his face. “Every year some man is bitten there by a snake. It is called Tom-tom Hill.”

  “Somebody’s lighted a bonfire at the foot of it,” I said; “is that to frighten away the snakes?”

  “No, no, my dear sir; they are burning a body. All bodies are burnt there. It is full of ghosts. It is a very bad hill.”

  It was clear that he did not like this subject, and he changed it immediately.

  “One day you shall come to my Palace,” he said, “and I will show the Gods to you.”

  I had heard of this entertainment from other sources, and had been anxiously hoping for an invitation, rarely extended to Europeans.

  “I should like that very much,” I said.

  “And you shall tell me which of the boys you like best.”

  I readily agreed and he was very pleased.

  “Will you come the day after to-morrow?”

  “Yes, whenever you like.”

  “Or perhaps to-morrow late I could arrange something. If I can, I will send a carriage for you.”

  “That will be very nice,” I said. “And will there be dancing?”

  “Yes, yes. Music and dancing. And the boys will be dressed like the Gods.”

  “Will they paint their faces?”

  “No, no paint. I have done away with paint. I don’t like all this . . . tattooing. But you must tell me which you like best.”

  “Of course I will,” I said. “Are they very beautiful?”

  “Very beautiful. But you will see.”

  “It will be good to see a beautiful face,” I said; “for I haven’t yet seen one in Chhokrapur, and I’ve been looking about for a bearer for myself. In fact, only yesterday I was saying to your Tahsildar,[1] ‘I want a bearer, please, but he must be young and beautiful.’”

  “I have the son of my barber,” said His Highness. “He works for me. I will show him to you. He is very beautiful . . . fair, but unreadable. I call him the White Sphinx. He is sixteen, and has been with me for two years; but he does nothing, nothing, but look at motors and go to sleep.”

  For some time after this he was thoughtful; then he asked: “Haven’t you a saying in England, ‘No man can be a hero to his valet’?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I will tell you to-morrow,” he said mysteriously, and called for a cigarette.

  JANUARY 3RD

  At eight o’clock to-night His Highness sent a carriage for me to bring me to the Palace. I was reading in my house when I heard the trampling of horses up the drive, and ran out in time to see the royal coach come thundering up out of the darkness.

  A pair of spirited piebald stallions drew it, and two erect postillions were balanced so lightly behind that in their floating white cotton garments they seemed to fly, winged figures, unsupported through the air.

  Up towards the Guest House it went, and then, deflecting, swept a grand circle round the plateau to where I stood, and as the charioteer pulled up abruptly in front of me, the postboys vaulted lightly to the ground and ran, one to the horses’ heads, the other to open the carriage door for me. All three salaamed. The dust subsided. It was very impressive.

  “Salaam,” I said, and climbed up into the shabby open victoria.

  Nothing more was said. The door was closed, the coachman cracked his whip, and the postboys swung themselves back on to their perches as we rolled off down the hill. The coachman had a clapper bell beside him, which he rang all the time as though we were a fire-engine. We drew up at the back of the Palace, where a canvas screen is always stretched at night to conceal the King’s private entrance and form a small enclosure in which he may walk. A servant was awaiting me here and guided me behind, where another white-clad servant, a good-looking boy with very bright teeth and a single ear-ring, took charge and beckoned me past the sentries and up the steps to an enorm
ous plaster porch. I followed him through the entrance, and found myself in a small dark stone room which contained a cow.

  Another doorway opposite brought me into the “theater.” This was an open courtyard with a concrete floor. Ordinarily, it seemed, it was quite bare; but now it was prepared for the “Gods.” I was entering from the back, I found, for the scene was set facing away from me towards the wall on my left. From the audience’s point of view, then, there was a dais in the center of the court on which two wooden chairs were set arm to arm. A carpet was spread in front of it. To the left, along the edge of the carpet, squatted four musicians, having between them two tom-toms, a pair of small brass cymbals, and three instruments resembling fiddles. On the right, rather removed, was a low divan, covered with a sheet. A charcoal fire in an earthenware basin glowed beside it. Over all, under the sky, a huge carpet was spread like an umbrella, a stout pole supporting it in the middle and supplying the handle. I took these things in gradually. The four musicians salaamed. Except for them the place seemed empty. My guide indicated the divan. I was to sit on it. I did so, leaving room for His Highness beside me.

  “How do you do, Mr. Ackerley?”

  I scrambled to my feet again and looked round, but could not see him anywhere; then his husky laughter drew my attention to the wall which the scene faced, and I realized that he was on the other side of it. There was a green reed blind in the center which covered a doorway, and on both sides of this the stone wall had been grilled to form windows of a latticed design.

  “Are you comfortable there? Are you warm? Would you like to come in here? Then come.”

  The servant held the reed blind aside for me, and I stepped into His Highness’s private closet. It was a very small room, measuring about six feet by twelve, furnished with a charpai (a simple low wooden Indian bedstead, without back or sides, strung with hempen bands), and, a little removed from it, a chaise-longue, both draped in white sheets. A small three-legged table, provided with an ashtray and some loose brown cigarettes, stood by each, the charpai being further equipped with a second small table which carried a tray of betel-leaves, and, on the floor, a basin of charcoal and a spittoon. An oil lamp by the chair shed light and completed the furniture. There was no carpet and no decoration. A second curtained doorway diagonally opposed the one by which I had entered, and one of the walls had been recessed to form what looked like a large sink.