Among the cushions on the bed sat the King, smoking a cigarette. His legs had disappeared; they were folded up and tucked away beneath him, and only a small fragile body could be seen, sitting up erect on its base, like a nine-pin. How small, how thin he is! I thought, for I have never before seen him so lightly clad. He wore a fine white cambric nightshirt, on which a necklace gleamed, and a claret-colored silk shawl hung over his shoulder. His small head, with its soft untidy graying hair, was bare, and I saw for the first time his Hindoo lock hanging low down on the nape of his neck. Like a little monkey he looked; charming, I thought. I advanced to shake hands with him.
“No! no! You must not touch me,” he said, shrinking away. “Nor my bed,” he added. Then he laughed at my bewilderment.
“To-night I am holy,” he explained, still laughing as though it were the greatest joke, “because I have had my bath; and no one may touch me. Did you not know that? You must always say to me when you come here, ‘Is the Maharajah touchable or untouchable?’”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I must begin again. Is the Maharajah Sahib touchable or untouchable?”
“Untouchable,” he nodded, and directed me to sit down in the long chair.
“Is this your theater box?” I asked, looking round the room.
He was amused.
“This is my . . . living-room. I do everything here. I sleep and read here, and do all my business here. My wife used to live above.”
He laughed again at my obvious surprise and then called out some order in Hindi. The musicians tuned up.
“Now the Gods are coming,” he said; “and you must tell me which you like best.”
Immediately some servants came forward from the back and held outstretched between us and the scene a pretty blue velvet cloth, bordered with silver thread. The music began, a strange thrilling sound, accompanied by chanting; then the cloth was dropped, and Rama, one of the earthly manifestations of the God Vishnu, was revealed seated upon his throne with his wife Sita beside him. A maidservant stood on each side of the dais. All were boys. Rama was splendidly dressed in bright colors, a pink coat and gold silk trousers fastened round the ankles. He wore an enormous headdress and ropes of artificial pearls, and had a line of red and yellow paint down the bridge of his nose. Sita was also gilded, but not so gay, and wore a coronet. She sat in a heap with her chin on her chest, and looked very peevish. Both of them wore a single pearl suspended from the tips of their noses. The maidservants were also dressed in gold; they were very young, about twelve years old, and blinked self-consciously.
“What do you think of him? What do you think of him?” His Highness kept repeating.
“I don’t think I’m very impressed by him,” I said.
“No?” said His Highness, astonished.
“Will he dance?”
“No, he cannot dance.”
“May I go out and have a closer look?”—It was difficult to get a comprehensive view through the holes in the wall.
“Of course. But you must not smoke in front of the God, or tread on his carpet.”
The music still continued, repeating a perpetual phrase, but the Gods sat immovable. Then an elderly man dressed in female attire appeared upon the carpet in front of Rama. He wore a long heavy dark-blue silk skirt, a pink veil over his head and bells round his ankles. Addressing himself to the God, he performed a heel-and-toe dance, gyrating slowly with outstretched arms and chanting.
I returned to ask the King who this personage was, but he gave me no opportunity.
“What do you think of him?” he at once asked, still referring to Rama.
I said I thought he had good physique, but that he looked stupid, and I didn’t think him very nice.
His Highness seemed very surprised at this, and rather pained.
“And you do not think he is beautiful?” he asked.
“No, I don’t. Do you?”
“Of course; I think he is very beautiful.”
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Sixteen.”
“And what else does he do besides being a God?”
“Nothing. The Gods are not allowed to do any other work. And when they are seventeen years old they cannot be Gods any more.”
“What happens to them then?”
“They are all fools,” was all he said.
Meanwhile the dance had ended, the cloth was spread again, and when it was removed Rama had retired to be replaced by Krishna, with his favorite Gopi maiden, Radha, who was impersonated by the same boy who had played Sita. Krishna was a much nicer-looking boy than Rama, and I said so at once to His Highness’s prompt and inevitable question—a reply which seemed to intensify his astonishment. Krishna was dressed in bright green and wore bells round his ankles, which indicated that he was not a lily of the field like Rama, but was able, at any rate, to spin; but he began his performance by singing from his throne in a pleasant, rather monotonous voice, gesticulating awkwardly from side to side with stiff brown hands. Then he rose to his feet and performed a fine exhilarating dance (in which the elderly “lady,” who was now seated in the “wings,” eventually joined), beginning with heel taps and slow, stiff, dignified gyrations, which got faster and faster until he sank to the carpet and whirled like a top on his knees. This excited me to applaud, until I remembered Rama, and stopped for fear of causing jealousy. This boy was replaced by another, also impersonating Krishna, while Radha still occupied the other chair and took no part, and apparently little interest, in the proceedings.
This third boy was dressed in dark blue silk and was not at all attractive. He was stunted and had a tendency to spinal curvature; but he was said to act well in the play about to be performed. This was opened by the entry of a priest made fat with many pillows, which were supported by a broad green cummerbund. He carried a staff in one hand and some cooking utensils in the other, and was rendered still more farcical by the addition of a false beard, which seemed to sprout from his nostrils, and a string of wooden beads the size of cricket balls round his neck. The elderly “lady,” who was sitting patiently on the carpet, received him, and I was told that he was a Brahman come, according to custom, to honor her by eating in her presence on the occasion of the birth of her child.
Stones and sticks were brought, and a fire actually lighted to boil the priest’s pot; in the preparation of which he pretended that his beard had caught fire, a jest which provoked even Radha to merriment. Then, with the “lady” (she was a rich woman, a daughter of one of the Shepherd Kings, and inhabited a palace) opposite him, he sat down in front of the fire, and raising his eyes to heaven, called on the God Vishnu to bless the cooked food. But, taking advantage of the Brahman’s momentary abstraction, Krishna, who was supposed to represent the lady’s newly-born babe, slid from his throne, and crawling over to the priest’s food, touched it.
This angered the priest very much.
How dare a child of a woman of that caste touch the food of a Brahman! How dare the woman allow her child to do so! The child must be beaten! So he chased Krishna round the carpet, waving his rod and making irate noises until the woman pacified him and persuaded him to begin the ceremony all over again. This necessitated throwing the food away and washing not only the contaminated utensils but himself also; so he retired to a corner of the carpet and rolled about on his face and back as though he were in water, until one of Krishna’s maidservants said she was a tortoise and seized him by the leg, much to his indignation.
His Highness who was chewing betel-leaves and explaining the action of the play to me, was so amused by this incident that he choked and was obliged to eject most of his leaf into the spittoon.
So again the meal was prepared—and again the same thing happened. No sooner did the priest raise his eyes to invoke the blessing of Vishnu upon his food than the baby crawled over and touched it. Again the priest stormed and chased the child, and again the woman pacified him and persuaded him to begin all over again. But when it occurred the third time, and the priest
seemed too discouraged to do more than glare morosely at the provoking baby, the woman said:
“Why do you trouble this poor old man? Can you not leave him in peace?”
And the child answered:
“But he called upon me and I came. I am the God Vishnu.”
And so it was . . . Krishna the Shepherd King, the eighth incarnation of Vishnu; the priest bowed before him and praised him, and the play ended in a general dance.
“Did you like it?” asked His Highness.
“Yes, indeed! I thought it was all—”
“And which of the Gods did you like the best?”
“Krishna.”
“Hookah!” remarked the King.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
But his remark was not addressed to me. From the shadows behind the charpai, where, unnoticed by me, he had been squatting, a white-turbaned servant rose and left the chamber by the other door, returning in a few moments with a hookah pipe, ready lighted, which he set on the ground by the spittoon, laying the stem upon the table.
I looked at him with interest.
He was young and tall, with big bony hands and feet, but his face was strikingly handsome—fairer than usual and lighted by large glowing dark eyes, which every now and then rested curiously upon me.
He returned to the shadows, moving silently; and then I noticed that the King was watching me. He had uncurled, and his little thin legs were dangling over the edge of the charpai above the brazier.
“That is the barber’s son I spoke of,” he said, removing the stem of the hookah from his mouth. “He is my personal servant—my valet. Do you like him?”
“Well, I’ve hardly seen him,” I said, “but he seemed very handsome indeed.”
He opened wide his eyes, as though surprised.
“I will show him to you,” he said, and with a slight movement of his hand he brought the magnificent boy out of the shadows again into the patch of light that filtered through the reed blind. He moved noiselessly into it and stood there facing me, motionless, expressionless, awaiting my inspection.
But I couldn’t manage that—sitting there studying him as though he were a slave; so I hurriedly murmured my satisfaction, and another motion of the royal hand restored him to his shadows.
“Would you call him beautiful?” asked the King at once.
“Very beautiful,” I answered. “More beautiful than any of your Gods.”
“Oh—h!” The filmy eyes widened again. “More beautiful than Rama?”
“Yes, more beautiful than Rama.”
“Oh—h!”
For a few moments he bubbled into his hookah, then he laid the stem on the table beside him, clasped his hands round one updrawn knee, and turning his face towards me, asked:
“Would you call me an ugly man?”
This was a little disconcerting. Among the general descriptive words, “ugly” was certainly the most appropriate, and I do not think that any one would have contradicted it as misrepresentative; but I couldn’t very well say so, and his face was certainly not repellent, nor even disagreeable.
“Certainly not, Maharajah Sahib.”
He received this without the least sign, so that I wondered whether he had been listening; then drawing his legs beneath him again, he called his servant and gave him some order which sent him out of the room.
“I will show you something,” he said, throwing me a veiled glance and popping a betel-leaf into his mouth. In a few moments the boy returned with a small package of papers bound with tape which he handed to the King, or, rather, dropped into the royal hand from a height so that there should be no physical contact between them. His Highness undid the bundle and extracted a letter which he returned, by the same method, to the valet, who brought it to me.
“Read it,” said the King, “and tell me what you think. Tell me frankly. Don’t be beaten in the bush.”
It was a confidential letter from a British official to some friend of his, and the very last person by whom the writer would have wished it to be seen was the King—for he was its subject.
I do not remember very much about it. True, I read it through, and was aware of good criticism while I blushed for it; but I was thinking all the time of the letters that I myself had written home, and for the fate of which I was suddenly deeply concerned. Here, indeed, for all its merciless exposure, was impartial thought and strict, respectful treatment; the writer had not been betrayed, as I had been, into the easy ways of ridicule; there were no caricatures in the margin. I remembered those caricatures, which I had once thought so good, with considerably less appreciation; and I also remembered how I had imprudently dropped them into the State letter-box, or had even entrusted them to a half-witted Mohammedan boy to post for me.
So I do not remember very much about that letter; only one or two sentences recur to me.
“. . . He is a weak man, and a bad ruler, having no real interest in the affairs of the State . . . wasteful . . . generous to a fault . . . a loyal friend . . . he is a very ugly man.”
When I had finished reading it I looked up. He was not attending to me, but was gazing into the air; my movement disturbed him, however, and he turned his head.
“Have you finished?”
“Yes.”
Probably I was a little flustered, for I got up to restore it to him, but he restrained me.
“Put it on the table beside you. Now; what do you think of it?”
“I think it’s a very good letter, and the writer seems to be friendly on the whole; but I don’t agree with many of the things he says.”
“What don’t you agree with?”
I’d been talking at random, but I reverted to the subject of ugliness, and then retired into the question of how he had got hold of it.
“It came to me by chance,” he said, without expression.
“And what do you think of it, Maharajah Sahib?”
“It is the truth,” he said, with finality. “I like it very much.” I began to say something else to him, but he cut me off.
“And now you should go,” he said. “Good night, Mr. Ackerley.”
I got up, feeling suddenly rather like a schoolboy.
“Good night, Maharajah Sahib,” I said, bowing to him, and went on, past the cow, to where my chariot was awaiting me in the moonlight to convey me back to the house on the hill.
JANUARY 4TH
This evening as I was returning to the Guest House, I met His Highness’s “valet” coming from it. With him was the young man who has that fine tress of black hair I mentioned elsewhere, and who is connected in some official capacity with the Guest House, probably as a clerk or accountant. I have seen him about here a good deal, and have noticed him for his pleasant, clean and dignified appearance. He speaks a little English, always giving me a “Good morning,” no matter what time of the day.
Hindoo men wear a peculiar nether garment, called a dhoti. This is a very long single piece of cloth which they wind round their waists and between their legs. With the poorer people it shrinks to a coarse loincloth, twisted untidily about their middles; but it can be a very graceful garment indeed, when it is made of fine muslin and properly put on so that it drops in front almost to the ankles in two loops which loosely sheathe the legs.
The Dewan in my sketch (page 229) can be seen wearing one; but he has not put it on very well. To arrange it symmetrically, so that the loops fall equally to the most becoming length, requires a certain amount of care which a man like Babaji Rao, for instance, would not trouble to give; also, since it may have to be taken off, or at any rate disarranged for various reasons, a number of times a day, it must be difficult to have it always quite right. Our trousers are no bother; however often we put them off and on we never find one leg shorter than the other; but the dhoti requires attention and skill, and is seldom properly worn.
The young man with the tress of black hair looks particularly graceful in his. It is of the finest, softest muslin, with a narrow border of dark blue, and
falls almost to the silver buckles of his black shoes. And as he moves, one catches glimpses behind of his slim brown calves and ankles.
JANUARY 5TH
His Highness has told his “valet” that I thought more beautiful than the Gods. This morning, after breakfast, the young clerk whom I saw with the valet yesterday followed me to the house and asked if he might come in. He told me at once that he knew I had seen the Gods dance.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“My friend,” he murmured, “he tell me . . . my friend you say ‘like Krishna.’”
“Better than Krishna,” I said. “So the Maharajah Sahib told him?”
“Yes,” he answered; then added, after a moment, “But do not say to Maharajah Sahib, or he will be angry with me.”
I promised.
“Do you like Europeans?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he is so wisdom.”
JANUARY 6TH
To the Hindoo all life is sacred. He may not kill, and he may not eat meat. If he does eat meat he is outcaste. Babaji Rao, the Secretary Sahib, is extremely orthodox, and the mere mention of meat discomposes him. No doubt this is one of the reasons why the Guest House accounts are in such confusion, and the monthly bill for supplies, which has to be met from the State funds, causes the Dewan much anxiety. The Secretary’s signature is required as a check to the stores list; but he signs with averted eyes. He took me off in his tonga this morning to inspect the jail, but the old St. Peter—Munshi, as they call him—who keeps the keys of the storeroom, waylaid us near the Palace with indents for the Secretary to check. The inevitable crowd of small children and loafers at once collected.
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