Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Be you deaf and dumb!” he insisted. “These are your friends, who are taking you to the Medical College on the Chakpo Hill outside Lhasa, hoping you may be cured by a miracle. Yeh-tschah-tschah! And a miracle it is, when they cure anybody! Anatomy they know — a little — since they cut up corpses; and they have nine poisons that are unknown to the European chemists, but they are the worst doctors in the world! Be you a doctor, Ramsden. Toothache is their commonest complaint. Pull teeth for nothing, and so win their gratitude — because the monks charge too much. If they are grateful they may not be so suspicious. But you mustn’t talk — nah-nah — not one word — niemals! You have had a curse put on you by a Hindu hakim; the babu can tell that story, he being a very good one at inventing lies. The Tibetans know all about curses. They know too much about them! If you cure their toothaches they will not ask many questions. But, though you say you are going to Chakpo, don’t you let their doctors touch you! They are devils — bad, ignorant devils, yet they know altogether too much! If they suspect you they will simply poison your body! But better that than fall into the power of certain others! There are sons of evil up there!”

  The road is free and open into Kashmir, which is a tourists’ Mecca nowadays, with shops for the sale of imported souvenirs and a better system for fleecing Americans than even Deauville and the Riviera boast. We went by train to Rawalpindi — third class, trying out our new disguises — and I did so well that I was actually struck by an Eurasian conductor, who mistook my silence for fear of himself and his official buttons.

  Because he overlooks no chance to turn a profit, and also, perhaps, to make our own peculiarly packed loads less conspicuous, Benjamin entrusted us with nearly two tons of merchandise consigned to his agents in Srinagar. So we hired an auto-truck in Rawalpindi, along with a driver and two helpers; but we had to wait three days for Benjamin’s freight to overtake us, and a letter from Benjamin reached us by special messenger (not one of his own clerks, however) three or four hours before the freight train dawdled in.

  The letter was alarming. We had left Tsang-Mondrong, we imagined, snugly incommunicado in the jail, the expected thirty-day sentence having been promptly passed on him by the Mohammedan magistrate. Nevertheless, Benjamin wrote that a Tibetan had been hanging around the store and asking questions.

  “As for me, I told him nothing, but he may have learned much from one of my assistants, who is a Klapperstorch. Nor do I dare to send one of my own men with this letter, lest the Tibetan should follow him. This messenger has been paid, but you will do well to pay him again, so that he may go away and get drunk and perhaps get himself into a trouble before he makes a greater one for you.”

  So we paid the man twice what the service was worth, and Grim took him off to a reeking hole where an Eurasian sold arrack, nor left him until he had drunk the best part of a bottle of the stuff and was in no fit state to tell an intelligible story, to Tibetans or anyone else. Meanwhile, Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose spread talk through the bazaar that might lead people to believe we were heading southward again. Then, hoping at any rate that we had thrown spies off the scent, we stacked our loads on to the truck and started for Murree and the Kashmir Pass.

  We had a letter from Benjamin, containing hardly fifty words, in a language that only Grim could read, which the old Jew guaranteed should open for us a route along which pursuit would be impossible; but before we could use that key we must put all of Kashmir behind us. Beyond the Kashmir Valley, between us and Ladakh where the secret route began, was the Zogi-la Pass, eleven thousand feet above sea-level. The road across the Zogi-la is open all winter long, except for a dozen miles or so, but those dozen miles might as well be fifty, once the winter storms begin; so our first task was to cross the Zogi-la before the snow fell, after which the sooner the nor’westers should blow the drifts deep into the narrow gorge and shut off all pursuit, the better.

  It was the end of the summer season. Tourists and officials on vacation poured out through the pass, the stream of motor-cars and carts constantly delaying us, since there are only certain places where wheeled traffic can pass. Threading our way patiently against the hurrying flood of tourist-cars and luggage trucks, we might have excited curiosity if we had been dressed as Europeans, but as Kashmiri merchants we only drew down objurgations on our heads.

  In spite of old Benjamin’s mysterious hints, we felt like schoolboys on a picnic. There was exhilaration in the air — a certain winelike sharpness and a wind that bore the dust along in clouds, but not a hint yet of the Himalayan winter, although Narayan Singh swore once or twice that he could smell snow. We mocked his pessimism and enjoyed the scenery, behind a driver who scorned precipices.

  I had not adopted the deaf and dumb role yet, but kept my head wrapped in a shawl, pretending to have toothache on both sides of my mouth, in order to avoid conversation with strangers. But by night, when we cooked our meal beside the truck preparatory to sleeping underneath it, we were at the mercy of benevolence. There is a freemasonry of sickness, and the native Indian is nothing if not inquisitive. Men camped nearby came to sit beside us and compare notes, keeping Grim, Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose in turn busy answering questions about what ailed me, and I was offered remedies that ranged all the way from opium to powdered brick from a Moslem martyr’s tomb.

  However, we were not in actual danger of discovery until we bumped and swung downhill toward the Kashmir Valley, where the River Jhelum lay like a turquoise ribbon winding through a paradise of green and amber. At the foot of the last decline, beside a bridge, Kashmiri officials waited to take toll of our belongings and examine all loads for contraband; and while they overhauled the truck, I sat down in its shadow.

  Grim talked to the officials and so entertained them that they neglected to open our important bundles, in which the unregistered rifles were concealed; and Chullunder Ghose explained to Kashmiris, who were loafing, looking on, over-curious, that I was suffering from a disease so contagious as to poison people if my breath should touch them.

  That was all very well for the time being, but one of them, out of the kindness of his heart, went and fetched a Parsee doctor, who was making his way in a car to the plains after a vacation spent in Srinagar.

  The Parsee was as kind and fussy and insistent as if I had been his wife’s relation. He not knowing more of the Kashmiri tongue than I did, it was easy enough to escape suspicion on the score of language, but I had to show him my mouth and the absence of any signs of sickness puzzled him. He took my temperature, and, finding that normal, invited me to strip myself and submit to a swift physical examination.

  I refused for religious reasons — always a reliable excuse for anything in India, and though he continued to try to persuade me, making use of every argument a decent doctor could, I think he had about exhausted both his patience and enthusiasm and would have left me to rot of any disease I wished, but for one of those apparently insignificant incidents that so often upset calculations.

  Narayan Singh, begging a ride on a government mule-wagon, had gone forward into Srinagar to see about our lodgings for the night and there was nobody near our truck except the Parsee doctor and myself. One of our heavier loads, disarranged by the customs crew, teetered on the truck’s edge and would have fallen on the Parsee, had I not jumped and caught it, guiding it to the ground. So far, well and good; but now habit took charge of me: instinctively, at once, without a second thought, I hove it back in place. It was a load that probably two normally active men would find it all they could do to lift.

  The Parsee gaped at me; but the worst of it was that an English doctor, passing in an auto on his way to Rawalpindi, saw the incident and, knowing the Parsee, called out to him

  “Studying anatomy? By gad, where did you find that Hercules? What is he?”

  The Parsee invited him to come and look, with the result that I was faced by two inquisitors instead of one, and jealousy, that was racial as well as professional, impelled them both to put me through another t
hird degree. I had to rehearse my symptoms all over again, and it happened that the Englishman was one of those inquiring geniuses who take their profession extremely seriously.

  It is easy enough to deceive a doctor, provided you avoid all technicalities and merely complain of agony; his anxiety to relieve you makes him take complaints for granted. He suspected me of some obscure nervous trouble, possibly due to overstrain, made me flex all my muscles, asked even what village I came from and of what disease my grandfather had died — nodded — made notes in a memorandum book — and offered me a seat in his auto to Rawalpindi, where he offered to treat me in the hospital free of charge.

  Then Grim came to the rescue with a string of lies about a doctor in the Punjab who had recommended winter in the Kashmir Valley as a cure, and in the end the English doctor gave the Parsee a lift, the two driving off toward Rawalpindi discussing nervous maladies with the argumentative enthusiasm of professional zealots.

  That would not have mattered, had they not continued the discussion that evening in the dak — a sort of hotel midway of the pass — where there was a large assorted company, some of whom joined in the conversation and were treated to a description of me, an account of my feat of strength and, no doubt, to some very interesting medical theories. However, we did not know that until later.

  About nine o’clock the following night, in Srinagar, as we four sat around a lantern in a corner, with our backs against the wall of the warehouse behind Benjamin’s agents’ store, discussing what might have become of the son-in-law Mordecai, there entered a Kashmiri clerk who announced that a sahib wished to see us.

  We fell into a panic, naturally. The word sahib is not applied exclusively to Europeans but we jumped to the conclusion that the British authorities had learned of our movements and had sent someone to investigate. We had had to wait a day in Srinagar because of news that a police patrol was coming in along the Ladakh road, and to have met the police would have been inconvenient, to say the least of it, if only because we had unregistered firearms hidden in our packs.

  After a hurried consultation we decided to receive this sahib, whoever he might be, where we sat in the semi-darkness, giving as our excuse that we were travel-tired and that one of us was ill. I wrapped my head in the shawl again and leaned back in the corner.

  A Tibetan entered, dressed in ready-made European khaki. He announced his name as Tsang-yang. After staring at us for a moment he sat down on our carpet uninvited, which was no good sign; and he began at once to speak to us in English, which was worse.

  He was an ugly man, enormous as to height although awkwardly proportioned, with extremely bright, alert Mongolian eyes. The suit he wore hung badly on his Oriental frame, having worked up at the sleeves and knees; but he spoke English very well indeed and possessed an air of confidence that betokened long association with Europeans. We learned later that he came originally from the Province of Kam in Tibet, where nearly all the men are giants in stature.

  Though he had been sufficiently ill-mannered to sit down without waiting for an invitation, and though his grin was impudent, he addressed us as “learned sirs” — a phrase implying deep respect, because Tibetans regard learning as the only royal road to virtue. The combination of insolence and politeness seemed to give the clue to his intentions. Grim whispered the word “blackmail.”

  Narayan Singh stared angrily, doing his best to create an inhospitable atmosphere — an art in which the Sikhs excel when so disposed (as they can do the opposite with equal grace). It was Chullunder Ghose who bore the burden of the conversation.

  “Son of impertinence, what do you want?” he demanded. “Only death has the right to interrupt four worthy men at prayer.”

  “Pray on,” said the Tibetan. “I shall wait.”

  Chullunder Ghose snorted. “Sit on a dung-hill and smell roses! The Lords of Life to whom we offer meditation prefer thought unpolluted by diabolism! Make your interruption and go swiftly!’

  “I was recently in jail,” said the Tibetan, as if he thought the boast should recommend him.

  “I could have guessed it,” said Chullunder Ghose.

  “In jail I met Tsang-Mondrong,” said our visitor. “Seven days after he entered the jail, I left it, and with him I made a bargain that I should find you as soon as might be and should follow you with all speed. I learned you were at Benjamin the Jew’s in Delhi. Thence I traced you to Rawalpindi, where a letter from Benjamin overtook you, warning you against me. But I read the letter before you received it. At Rawalpindi I lost sight of you, because you were rather clever in spreading rumors that you were turning south again. But we have a saying:’When in doubt, turn northward,’ so I took the road to Srinagar, though I despaired of finding you.”

  “Despair was not mutual. You give us bellyache,” Chullunder Ghose assured him.

  “But at the flak, where I sat in shadow close to the veranda, I overheard men speaking of a very strong Kashmiri, suffering from an affliction of the mouth that interfered with speech. One of Benjamin’s assistants having spoken to me of the strength of him whose skin was stained — how he lifted the bales in the store and took his amusement wrestling with the Sikh, whom he always defeated easily — I hoped again. I knew that one who spoke Kashmiri badly might pretend he could not speak at all. I followed. I am here.”

  “And where do you go from here? You have permission to go swiftly,” said Chullunder Ghose.

  “I go where you go,” the Tibetan answered.

  He spoke naively. Nine times out of ten when a Tibetan tells you frankly he will go with you it is safe to presume he is friendly and dependable. The tenth time it would be wiser to trust a snake.

  Narayan Singh spoke suddenly. “What were you in jail for?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” the man answered. “A policeman lied about me, saying I was fighting in the street, whereas I merely looked on. Why should I fight in the street, and with whom? I have never fought in the street in all my life.”

  Chullunder Ghose leaned toward him, pointing with two fingers at his eyes.

  “I, too, am liar when it suits me!” he remarked. “Where did you learn English!”

  “At Mission School, Darjeeling.”

  “Where did you get that scar on cheek-bone? Also from missionary? What were you formerly? Monk?”

  The Tibetan nodded. Regretting the admission, he began, too late, to shake his head. Chullunder Ghose mocked him

  “Being monk, you never fought in streets of Lhasa? Not at festival of New Year, when monks have charge of city and all shop-keepers shut doors and windows for fear of them? You were expelled from Lhasa! You ran away to escape flogging or execution!”

  “No,” said the Tibetan. “I left the Drepung Monastery of my own accord. I wished to learn foreign knowledge. My superior in the monastery had put me to a great shame — I, who did nothing to deserve it. I was beaten. This mark on my cheek is from the whip they used.”

  “Save and except that it is the mark of a knife wound that is a very probable story!” said Chullunder Ghose. “You left that monastery in disgrace, running away without kissing the abbot goodbye or taking anything except the monastery money! Nevertheless, when Tsang-Mondrong, who is paid agent in confidence of Tibetan authorities, finds you in jail, he trusts you! You are not paid agent of Tibetan Government? I bet you are! I think you learned English in Peking, China. I think that you were formerly Tibetan spy of Chinese Government, until the Chinese were defeated and no longer paid you stipulated sum per month. I think now you would like to return to Tibet, because you are homesick for your gruesome wilderness — and you think we are on our way to Tibet — and you hope to reestablish yourself by betraying us after you shall have stolen from us all you can lay your hands on. Is it not so?”

  “I am sure you will not go to Tibet until the spring, because the snow is in the passes,” the man answered. “But I think you will go then, because a man named Rait is there already, and he wrote a letter to that one” (he pointed at me) “which y
ou yourself delivered.”

  “So you would like to come with us, in the hope of finding Rait sahib? Is that it?”

  “If you go to Tibet, I go with you!” Tsang-Yang answered.

  I abandoned my role of sick man then and took a hand in the discussion, not exactly figuratively; took him by the neck, flung him into the corner behind me and sat on him. Narayan Singh took one of his arms and twisted it, but there was no need; his head had hit the wall. Grim stuffed a piece of sacking in his mouth and Chullunder Ghose bound the gag in place with long strips of calico.

  It was a simple swift solution of the difficulty for the moment, but we did not accomplish it without a certain amount of noise and for several minutes we waited to see whether the disturbance had attracted attention from the front part of the store.

  No one came, but that was no proof, we were not being quietly observed through some crack in the partition; and though it was likely we could trust Benjamin’s Kashmiri agents up to a certain point, it would be foolish as well as unfair to expect them to run grave risks with the authorities on our account.

  Chullunder Ghose, with a fat man’s sense of humor, did his best to make our flesh creep.

  “What now to do with dead Tibetan!” he remarked.

  But he was not dead; I could feel him breathing.

  “The brute must come with us,” said Grim. “If we turn him loose the very least he’ll do will be to betray Benjamin.”

  “And up yonder in high mountains there are many slippery places!” said Chullunder Ghose.

  “Let us go,” said Narayan Singh, getting up and beginning to remove the sacks that we had heaped on the prisoner, who lay still.

  “Search him first!” Chullunder Ghose advised. “First aid to restoring consciousness is to turn all pockets inside out and feel for money between skin and undershirt!”

  It was Grim’s quick fingers that removed a leather wallet from a bandage over the man’s ribs. We covered up our prisoner with sacks again and sat down in a circle to examine the find by the light of our smoky lantern.