We had entered Babaji Rao’s house by now, and were sitting in his study on the ground floor—a room sparsely furnished with a desk, a few rickety chairs, some books, and a number of almanacs and photos on the walls—and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I had done wrong to bring Abdul’s sweetmeats with me into the house.
“Do you mind?” I asked.
“No. Why should I mind?”
“I’ve touched them.”
“That does not matter; but if it had been cooked meat I would not have taken it.”
When his little son Ram Chandra came into the room, Babaji Rao asked him playfully whether he would eat the sweets, and the child said he wouldn’t for they came from the hands of a European. But I blundered later on. While we were talking, a mosquito bit me on the hand and I slapped at it and killed it. Then, looking up, I saw that Babaji Rao’s brows were contracted.
“I say! I am sorry!” I exclaimed. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, not meeting my eye.
But clearly it did. There may be lives which for one reason or another it might not seem wanton to take—the life of a snake, for instance, of a rat, or of an offensive insect—and Babaji Rao would, I think, agree to this; but he would have to be hard put to it, nevertheless, before he would take even such a life himself, and by this much sensitiveness shrinks from seeing it done by others.
FEBRUARY 14TH
And Habib. He cannot be ignored, excluded from this picture. Looking back, I see that he has already introduced himself at the beginning of a process of obstinate attachment which has ended in his becoming my personal servant. I didn’t engage him. I didn’t want him. And I don’t know whether he just took me over of his own accord, or was detailed to do so, or, being denser than the other dozen or so servants, was left behind by them as a piece of wood is left by an ebbing tide upon the shore, in their languid withdrawal, after the first fuss and excitement of my arrival had subsided, from an unaccustomed life of action to their interrupted slumbers under the neem tree. At any rate it is very clear that he now belongs to me. The first occasion on which I remember noticing him as something more than an obstruction of the line of vision was one morning about a month ago. I had just got out of bed and was brushing my hair at the dressing-table when I heard the sound of heavy breathing behind me, and saw in the looking-glass a small, dusky boy of about twelve, with thick brown lips, eyes like wet toffee, and very dirty feet.
He was making the bed. That is to say, that after patting the pillow with a hand which, I was surprised to see, left no stain upon it, he drew up and tucked in the clothes I had just thrown back; then, picking up a clean pair of shoes, he made off with them. But I called him back by the only name which, as far as I then knew, he possessed—Boy!—and taking hold of the mattress by one corner I turned the whole caboodle on to the floor.
It wasn’t a very good thing to have done. I knew that, as soon as I perceived, from the blankness of his face, that I should now have to explain, if I could, why I had done it.
And why had I, anyway? What did it matter whether the bed was aired or not, or the mattress turned? No doubt my bed had been made after that fashion ever since I had been here, and I had slept in it without the least discomfort. But so accustomed was I at home to having my bedding turned and aired every morning, that I had come to think that such procedure was an indispensable part of bed-making, whereas in fact it made no difference to me at all. However, some explanation of my mysterious conduct was now clearly necessary, and the best way seemed to be to pick up the clothes and remake the bed myself. When I had finished, it did not look anything like as tidy as before; but I gazed hopefully at Habib. He presented an appearance wholly devoid of intelligence.
“Do you understand?” I asked in Hindi.
His thick lips unstuck a little and then cohered again.
“Oh, never mind!” I said irritably, feeling rather ridiculous; “Go away! Jao!” and I turned back to the dressing-table. But he stood there as though rooted to the spot, looking inquiringly from me to the bed, and I had at last to open the curtains and point his exit before he went, still gazing at me over his shoulder.
After this I began to observe that, among all the servants, he was the one upon whom chiefly I was depending; that what little was done for me was done by him.
Whenever I ran out of cigarettes and drew attention to this, which would otherwise not have been noticed, by placing the Gold Flake tin in the center of the verandah, it was always Habib who, apparently suspecting some connection between the emptiness and the exposure of the object, brought it back to me to elicit, by gesture, the reason for its having been placed where he found it. At the end of a month I gave him two rupees.
And now he haunts me. In a long, dingy, plum-colored coat buttoned up to the throat, and a dusty black skull-cap tied under the chin, he tidies the room from morning till night. I was never so much looked after in my life.
If I put a match in my ash-tray he patters in at once, picks it out, and bears it off to the rubbish-heap. But not, of course, without my permission. He never does anything without first getting my nod of assent. He holds the match towards me, almost under my nose. I am trying very hard to learn my lesson for Abdul, so I pretend not to notice. But it is no good.
“Sahib!” he urges confidingly, or sometimes “Huzoor!”—a very respectful form of address, usually reserved, I believe, for royalty.
I glance crossly at him. He waves the match towards the door. The gesture is expressive:
“Are you willing that this match shall be thrown away and for ever lost?”
“Yes, yes—for Heaven’s sake!”
He departs happily, and I go on with my lesson, writing down the new words on a sheet of paper and learning them off by heart. Perhaps if that match had been Abdul’s, I think to myself, he would not have permitted it to be thrown away. Or, at any rate, he would have given the question more careful consideration. Might not the match be put to other uses, as a toothpick, a nail in the wall for light articles such as pretty empty match-boxes, or to dangle before the cat at the end of a piece of string? No doubt, I think to myself, Abdul has a tin box in which he collects his matchsticks. Having learned my words, I tear up the sheet of paper, and since there is no wastepaper-basket, drop the pieces absent-mindedly on the floor beside my chair. In patters Habib, and carefully collecting them, holds them under my nose.
“Huzoor!”
“Oh, do go away!” I groan.
But it is all of no use. I have begged and commanded him, both through Narayan and Babaji Rao, to leave my ashtray alone, but it is all of no use. It is still emptied about thirty times a day, and wiped on the door-curtains afterwards, so that I myself now hastily take out again anything which I inadvertently put into it. The bed is still made according to his original plan, and for a whole month the house has not been swept or dusted, so that when I walk about my rooms little puffs of dust rise up from under my feet. Lampblack and cigarette-ash lie thick on my books and papers, and rat-droppings all over the dressing-table; and while I dismally survey this dreary scene of dust and desolation, in patters the devoted Habib to pick the latest match out of the ash-tray. I gaze mournfully at him. Then I smile; he looks so absurd; and the thick brown lips part to disclose dazzling teeth in response, while he holds out the offensive, untidy match:
“Huzoor!”
FEBRUARY 15TH
His Highness’s pilgrimage has been postponed for a month. He is not well enough, and also the weather is too cold, he says, though personally I find it uncomfortably warm. It is a great disappointment to him; and perhaps it is; but the real cause of his disappointment, I suspect, dates back to the days when, believing his own departure unavoidable, he gave Napoleon III and me permission to take a holiday running concurrently with his. Napoleon III has already gone, and I’m off on Wednesday; but he himself now stays. Perhaps he is really unwell; but probably it is only an attack of the nervous disorders to which he is especially
prone whenever this pilgrimage to Gaya is attempted. He is really very nervous about his health, and consults every doctor he meets, and seldom takes their medicine because it is not the same as the medicine the last doctor prescribed, or because it is the same, or because his pundits advise him against it, or because the moon is in its eighth zodiac, or for some other reason. Most of the friends he invites here are army medical men, and we have an I.M.S. man, Captain Drood, and his wife staying in the Guest House at present. They are unusually pleasant Anglo-Indians, and are kind and patient with the little man. One needs patience. Captain Drood examined him the other day, and told me that the Maharajah’s complaint was locomotor ataxia and that he had made out a prescription for him to have dispensed at the local hospital. But the Maharajah brought it back next day. He had had it explained to him at the hospital and had recognized it. It was the same prescription that an Allahabad doctor had sent him recently. It contained potassium iodide, which was very disagreeable; it made his eyes water. Could not the Doctor Sahib put something else into the medicine instead of potassium iodide? Could he not put in, for example, nux vomica? Captain Drood told him that nux vomica was of no use for his particular trouble. His Highness quoted other drugs at random. Could he not have one of these—anything but that horrid potassium iodide? But Captain Drood, who was attending the Maharajah for the first time, continued to be reasonable. The most that he could do, he said, was to diminish the amount of potassium iodide he had prescribed, and if it still made His Highness’s eyes water this could be obviated by lengthening the intervals between the doses.
With this concession the Maharajah hobbled off, apparently reassured; but the next day Captain Drood learnt that the local doctor, a Hindoo following the European system, had cut out the potassium iodide altogether and substituted something else—no one seemed to know what. This vexed Drood considerably, no doubt in his professional dignity, though he pretended alarm for the Maharajah’s welfare in the hands of “these damned unscrupulous pundits,” and expressed a determination to give the little King a “good talking to.” But the “good talking to” did not long survive an interruptive question suddenly put by His Highness, who for some time had appeared inattentive, as to whether the Doctor Sahib (who happened to be slightly bald) shaved the top of his head.
After all, His Highness had already got from Captain Drood all that he really wanted—his medical opinion that the Maharajh was not in a fit state of health to undertake the pilgrimage to Gaya. Mrs. Drood also used her talents to bring about the happy result of another postponement. His Highness loves her. As is common among large, blowsy, highly colored women, she is amiable and kind-hearted; but this is not the point: she tells his fortune with cards. He never tires of this; it is one of his invariable claims upon all his new female visitors, and he seems quite surprised when he is told by any one of them that she does not know how to do it, as though he has always considered this talent an accomplishment possessed by all women of the West. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Drood herself pleaded ignorance at his first request; but His Highness begged her so earnestly at any rate to try, that she gave way and, on what little she remembered of the subject, contrived a system by which not only His Highness but she herself, it seems, is now quite taken in. She allows him to have two or three wishes a day—the wish-card being the nine of hearts, and, while she spreads out the cards into a pattern, he sits beside her with his eyes closed and a very solemn expression indeed on his face, concentratedly wishing.
What is he wishing for? For health, perhaps, for friendship, or for everlasting life; for a vision of heaven, or revision of earth; for the art of the classic Greeks, or the power of the Roman Emperors—or for the return of Napoleon the Third.
Sometimes he gets his nine of hearts and is contented and grateful; when it does not occur he grows ill at ease. But Mrs. Drood usually manages to offer him some compensation. If the nine itself is not turned up, something near to it may be—the seven, eight, or ten; and she tells him that though it does not seem that he is yet to be granted his full wish, it will be realized at any rate in part.
“How many annas?” he cries, never slow to accept the opportunity of twisting omens to his advantage, as once he turned his car to keep the blackbuck on the right. If the nine of hearts is fullness—sixteen annas to the rupee—what is the eight of hearts? How many annas?
She helps him; his chances are never less than ten annas, and even when, as invariably happens, he drops the cards in shuffling (for this is an accomplishment which no amount of practice can teach him), she is never impatient, but finds good omens in those that fall to the ground.
When the moon was in its seventh zodiac he was always coming to Mrs. Drood for wishes, for this was a very propitious time for him; but only for three days. Then the moon would be in its eighth zodiac, which he told her, was predicted to be such an unlucky period for him that he would be ill advised then to have his fortune told. He could not, however, refrain, but came to her during this unfavorable period too, and anxiously begged that he might be allowed to have one wish, just one.
“Of course, Maharajah Sahib,” she said at once; “and if the nine of hearts does not turn up we shall blame the moon for muddling the cards.”
“You are quite right! That is very true!” he agreed, immediately restored to confidence, and glanced at me as much as to say “Did you hear? Such intelligence!”
The occurrence or non-occurrence of the wish-card, though of primary importance, is not of course the end of the matter; there is all sorts of interesting information to be gleaned from the combinations of the cards when they are spread, and one of His Highness’s most frequent inquiries is for news of his future health. This news, Mrs. Drood sees to it, is always good; though once she told me, with a solemnity quite equal to his, that the cards had clearly indicated that he was soon to be very seriously ill. However, since I now find myself, when driving out with him, quite infected by his anxiety over the mongoose, and experience relief or depression according to whether we see one or not, I can hardly say anything more about that. Anyway, his pilgrimage has been postponed until March; the stethoscope and the cards have gone into the scale of his disinclination against the advice of the pundits and of Babaji Rao, who has already made all the elaborate arrangements for his transport; and His Highness is “very disappointed.”
If Habib is a pest, Abdul is a positive incubus.
During the last week I have become so involved in his affairs that now I do not know how to extricate myself; he is an old man of the sea round my neck, and the knowledge that I gave him permission, so to speak, to sit there does not help me to bear his weight philosophically now that I cannot shake him off. After he had presented his petition to the Maharajah I wrote to the latter, at Abdul’s request, to confirm it, saying that I hoped he would not forget his promise and that Abdul might be given the managership of the Guest House at twentyfive rupees a month as soon as possible.
I selected that particular employment from among Abdul’s other suggestions because it seemed least liable to interfere with any one else’s interests, and because the Guest House, according to the bills which upset the Dewan every quarter, is badly in need of management. Narayan says that much of the extravagance is due to the pilferings of the venerable Munshi, who has the keys of the storeroom and is therefore in a splendid position to supply himself, his relations, and his friends, the Doctor and the Collector, with whatever they want. That, says Narayan, is how the port goes, and the whisky goes, and the cigarettes, and Fortnum & Mason’s preserved fruits. The Collector is nominally the manager, but he is too busy a man according to Babaji Rao, and too artful a one according to Narayan, to give undivided attention. Advice is always being sought for reducing the terrific expenditure, and it was once suggested that I should take the whole thing over myself as one of my duties; but when I began my campaign against extravagance by cutting out Fortnum & Mason’s preserved fruit (which I don’t happen to like), I was said to be too extreme an economist and p
olitely released from my new duty. So the appointment of Abdul as a resident manager seemed to me a good idea. Later in the day I was told by His Highness that this was arranged, and that Abdul had been appointed manager on probation from that day at twenty rupees a month. Abdul didn’t seem as pleased with this news as I expected.
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