Hindoo Holiday

by J. R. Ackerley

  “I know quite well what you are going to say,” I said.

  But he could not allow that.

  “It is a very simple request—a request you are able to grant very easily, with no trouble or inconvenience to yourself. May I make my request and will you promise to grant it?”

  “I think it’s time you went,” I said.

  “We have our festival to-morrow which I spoke of, and there is much expense—we have to buy food and sweetmeats and invite our friends to our house and—I am a poor man, Mr. Ackerley. Will you be so kind as to grant me a little money? You will do me the greatest service, and I shall thank you from my heart, and remember you all my lifetime and—”

  “Good-bye, Abdul,” I said, “I won’t do anything more for you.”

  “Ah, Mr. Ackerley, only three or four rupees—if you will be so kind—my family members . . .”

  “Run along, Abdul.”

  He got up without any sign of disappointment.

  “Very well, Mr. Ackerley; I am going. At what time tomorrow may I bring my gift?”

  “Send it,” I said.

  “Send it? Not bring it?” His eyebrows went up.

  “Yes, Abdul, send it.”

  “Very well, Mr. Ackerley, I will send it. Good evening, Mr. Ackerley—and do not say a word to any other person of what we have been talking. You will not?”

  “Oh, go away!” I cried angrily.

  He fled.

  I spoke to His Highness the other day about Narayan.

  “Prince, I want to speak in honor of Narayan,” I said.

  “Say what you wish.”

  “You told me once in Garha that although he is the grandson of your old physician, whom you loved, you didn’t know much about him—in fact, that you had never even looked him closely in the face.”

  “It is quite true.”

  “No doubt. Otherwise you wouldn’t listen to discreditable stories about him.”

  “Do you want me to give him more salary?”

  “No, I want you to give him more respect”—and I went on to say all the nice things I could think of about Narayan, laying particular emphasis upon his loyalty. When I had finished he seemed rather pleased.

  Later on, Narayan informed me that His Highness had called him and told him that I had spoken very highly of him, and because of this, and for no other reason, he himself was well disposed to Narayan, would examine him to verify the truth of my belief, and if he was satisfied, would give him employment in the Palace and a good salary.

  So Narayan was to come to him for examination every third or fourth evening for a month, and they would converse together. Narayan had inquired, rather suspiciously perhaps, what sort of employment was meant, and had been told that the position he would get would be that once held by a greatly valued servant “who did all works for me and on whom I very greatly depended.” Beyond that His Highness had not been disposed to commit himself.

  “What did the Sahib say about me?” Narayan had asked.

  “No need to tell,” replied the Maharajah. “But you may be sure that no one could have spoken more highly of any man.”

  So the interview had ended and (shades of Abdul!) produced uneasiness in at least three minds. Narayan himself was a little alarmed at this prospect of employment in the Palace, and neither his father nor Sharma felt quite comfortable about it. Both had recommended him to ask my advice.

  “Go and ask the Sahib,” Sharma had said, “and do whatever he tells you.”

  Narayan’s father had said:

  “Go to your master and talk to him.”

  That is what we were all doing here this evening while I had my dinner.

  I offered Sharma a sweet, but he shook his head.

  “Ask him why he won’t take a sweet from me,” I said to Narayan.

  “He say me ‘How can it be? I am an Indian and you are a European,’” interpreted Narayan, laughing.

  “Does he know that we know that he eats and drinks all manner of sinful things in his house—such as eggs and invalid port?” I asked.

  “Yes, he know.”

  “Then tell him he is a foolbuchcha and I will not give him an ice!”

  This produced consternation in Sharma; ices being permissible food and much appreciated; but we all looked very sternly at him, and even the grave, expressionless Hashim joined in the little joke, keeping back the third ice in the kitchen.

  Sharma did not quite know what to make of it all; his nervous gaze darted from one face to another, and now he laughed and now he looked very serious, until our gravity broke down and he ran into the kitchen and got his ice himself. When they went I said I would walk with them, and getting a lantern from Hashim—for there was no moon—I strolled out with Sharma, leaving Narayan, who was talking to the cook, to follow. After a moment Sharma took the lantern from me, without a word, and carried it himself, on his far side so that it should not knock against me. His near hand was in his coat pocket. I put my arm through his.

  Immediately he took his hand from his pocket, so that for a second I thought myself rebuffed; but instead he seized my hand in his and linked his fingers with mine.

  MAY 8TH

  “How is Napoleon the Third, Prince? I hope he has quite got over his leprosy?”

  “Yes, yes, he is better. But now he has had his choti cut off by mistake, and he is quite in-inconsolable.”

  “Poor Napoleon!” I said. “And what is his choti?”

  “Do you not know?” His Highness shook with husky laughter. “It is pigtail! What is pigtail?”

  It appeared that Napoleon had taken a sudden fancy for a European hair-cut, so the court barber was sent for and the operation performed. Naturally his little tail of hair had been snipped off; but Napoleon had not intended this to go, and realizing too late what had happened, had burst into lamentations, saying that they had shamed him, they had turned him into a Mohammedan and what would his people say?

  “We have all tried to comfort him,” said His Highness, between gasps, “but he will not speak to any of us. He is very angry indeed.”

  “Five days!” said Narayan sadly, as we all three sat on the verandah yesterday evening. Sharma, who was sitting on the other side of me catching fireflies and watching them glow on his dark palm, understood both these words and, suddenly apprehensive, asked Narayan what he meant.

  “The Sahib is going away in five days.”

  Sharma’s face at once took on an expression of the deepest despair. I told him that that did not mean that we should never meet again, and that meanwhile I would send him picture postcards of Piccadilly; but he refused to be comforted; he turned his face away and gazed, with ominously bright eyes, over the dark countryside, responding neither to my smiles nor to the pressure of my hand in his.

  “He got much sorrow,” explained Narayan.

  They both wept together all the way back to the city; but this morning, when Narayan told me this, the sky was serene again, and each presented me with a jasmine blossom from the garden of Dilkhusha or Heart’s Ease.

  His Highness said this evening that it was a pity I was not staying on through the rainy season, for the country looked very beautiful during the rains, though he was afraid, for some reason or other, that they were going to be particularly heavy this year, as bad, perhaps, as they had been some years ago, when the rivers had overflowed and flooded the whole countryside. It had been a terrible time, he said; the rains had gone on and on, far beyond their normal period, as though they were never going to stop, and there was much panic, for the people thought it was a judgment upon them and offered sacrifice to Indra, the God of Rain.

  His Highness began to shake with suppressed amusement.

  At that time, he said, there had been a boy in Chhokrapur named Dhama who came to him one day and told him that he had had a vision. He had dreamed, he said, that if a pair of baskets were attached to the shoulders of a certain other boy named Kanaya, and he were thrown up into the air, he would be enabled to fly to Indra and pet
ition him to turn off his devastating rain.

  Dhama, as His Highness very well knew, was always teasing Kanaya, for they were both sons of rival jewelers; but Dhama told his vision so convincingly that Kanaya was immediately sent for and baskets were fastened to his shoulders without loss of time.

  These baskets, said His Highness, were shaped rather like elephant’s ears and used for sifting grain.

  Rather surprised at these proceedings, Kanaya asked for an explanation, and His Highness, amused and excited, informed him that he was going to be sent to heaven, and that when he got there he must find Indra and beg him to stop the rain. And no sooner were the baskets attached than Kanaya was bundled out into the Palace courtyard by Dhama and four or five servants. There, in the pouring rain, he was firmly grasped by the legs and ankles, raised from the ground, and with the impetus of half a dozen preliminary swings, flung high into the air.

  “Fly! fly!” cried Dhama, as he heaved.

  “Fly! fly!” cried every one.

  But Kanaya didn’t. He fell, instead, on to his head, and was severely bruised, much to the surprise of the spectators—and to their subsequent delight when Dhama confessed that he had never had a vision at all. His Highness rocked and choked with laughter.

  “I expected to see him go up! up! up!—but he fell down on his head! Such a bang!”

  The car trickled on over the dusty roads through the shifting, blinding haze, and His Highness said that to-day he was going to take leave of me at the Palace, and the car would then convey me back to the Guest House.

  “If I give you land,” he cried, “will you come with all your family and live here?”

  I said at once that I thought it might be arranged, knowing that immediate acquiescence was the most effective way of quenching his singular enthusiasms; and, indeed, it was in a far less eager voice that he asked:

  “How much land will you want?”

  I gazed out over the stony, unmanageable jungle.

  “Just enough to sit on,” I said.

  He nodded pensively. We reached the Palace at last. Under the pink porch the armed guard, in a dilapidated khaki uniform, with puttees but no boots or socks, was dozing with his back against one of the pillars. Some servants were gossiping on the steps. Through the doorway at the top the hindquarters of the sacred cow protruded.

  “Honk!” said the car.

  The servants scrambled to their feet and bowed their foreheads to the ground; the guard, his turban over his nose, started upright and executed a shaky presentation of arms; the tail of the sacred cow twitched to and fro.

  The car stopped; His Highness descended; leaning on the shoulder of his gray-bearded cousin, he climbed stiffly up the steps, and pushing the cow to one side, disappeared into the Palace.