Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  He hove me to my feet, half-smothered me in blankets and helped me to a place beside the fire near Grim, where he heaped loads for me to lean against. Grim merely glanced at me; his whole attention was fixed on the two who sat facing him, of whom one surely was the owner of the cave, — a hermit, at the first glance.

  He was muscular, hairy, unwashed, clad in goat-skins and rags, with a beard that came down to his navel and a yard of bronze hair matted up with grease. Lice crawled through the dense hair on his arms. His feet were bare, and he had lost three toes, apparently from frost-bite. He appeared to like the lice; he did not scratch himself. His eyes were insolently daring — red-rimmed from the bitter wood smoke; age, anything from fifty or sixty onward. He appeared well fed and active, but was sitting stock still, scarcely seeming to breathe and not moving so much as an eyelash.

  The other seemed quite out of place in the cave. He was tall and dressed handsomely in an embroidered smock, a turban of dark-purple silk and an almost gorgeous quilted coat whose color was indeterminable, though it looked rich in the gloom. His feet were bare, but there were long boots on the floor of the cave beside him, and he had laid aside a heavy yak-skin overcoat that appeared to have jeweled clasps (at any rate, the firelight shone on what looked like jewels where the fastenings should be).

  He resembled no Tibetan I had ever seen, looking more like a Rajput, though his beard was neither curled nor parted in the middle. He had almost classically perfect features, with a broad, smooth forehead and eyes of a dark sky-blue color that would have attracted attention anywhere instantly and held it as long as he pleased.

  There were other noticeable things about him: on the middle finger of his right hand was a gold ring that covered the whole joint; it was carved with symbols and resembled the one that Lhaten wore. He had a necklace of small gold beads that descended inside his smock. Around his waist there was a tasseled cord of several colors interwoven.

  Apart from his eyes and his dress the most remarkable thing about him was his cleanliness, which was all the more apparent since he sat so close to the abominably dirty hermit. He sat bolt upright on a clean mat, which he presumably had brought with him, but gave the impression, none the less, of being comfortable and entirely at his ease; and he appeared to have the gift peculiar to men of wide experience and seasoned character, of making strangers feel at ease as well. He smiled as his eyes met mine. It was a smile remarkably like Grim’s, in that it had no faintest trace of sneer, and made you like him, though you felt that he was seeing through you.

  “If you had been less muscular,” he said, “you might have been less difficult to drag back from that long sleep you were contemplating. However, I won the tug-of-war. Do you forgive me?”

  “No,” I said.

  His eyes laughed but Chullunder Ghose, in panic, hurled rebuke at me.

  “Such graceless speech! Oh Rammy sahib, this babu eats shame!’Blow, blow, thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude’!”

  I felt too weak to argue but my mind was clear. When a man asks my forgiveness I suspect him of intentions on my peace or pocketbook. Forgiveness is stark impertinence. No man has any right to insult another with impudent suggestions of superiority. None with any manhood in him wants to die before his time, and if it were true that this man had pulled me back to life, why should he apologize?

  “I see we think alike on that point,” said the stranger. “I am glad I came.”

  “Who are you!” I asked, wondering how he had read my thoughts.

  “If you wish, you may call me Rao Singh.”

  Grim leaned toward me and whispered, his lips hardly moving:

  “Lhaten’s guru!”

  As I spoke a man’s shape seemed to condense out of the darkness. Lhaten, seated on a mat behind Rao Singh, moved and the shadows re-swallowed him.

  “You will be well enough in a few days to continue your journey,” said Rao Singh. “What is your purpose?”

  “To rescue Rait,” I answered.

  “Rait made his own bed. Shall he not lie in it?” he asked.

  “Did you help me,” I retorted, “or didn’t you?”

  “I have helped you in a very little matter,” he said calmly. “You were merely permitting yourself to die of wounds before your time. If you had done what Rait did, I could no more have helped you than I could delay the coming of the night.”

  When a man is just beginning to recover from the jaws of death his horizon, in the concrete sense, may be extremely limited; but what he does see, he sees definitely. I had made up my mind to rescue Rait, so it was no use arguing the point.

  “We’ve burned our bridges,” Grim remarked.

  “That is true,” said Rao Singh; “But how do you know it! Does it not appear to you that others burned them for you?”

  Chullunder Ghose piped up, in the tone of voice that a shop clerk uses to a rich American, suggesting all the implications of envy, cupidity, artfulness and will to have the better of a bargain.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed. “And now Sri Rao Singh Bahadur will unfold to us a mystery!”

  “I will not,” Rao Singh retorted.

  For a while we sat still, and I remember I studied our visitor’s eyes, whose blue was like nothing I had ever seen before, except perhaps lake water in the hills in spring. They were incongruous. If he had been a Scandinavian they would still have excited comment.

  “You are something like young birds who peck at the shell of the ego from within,” he remarked after several minutes’ silence. “For you to say what you will do when you emerge is to talk of what you don’t know and can’t possibly understand. Remember this: there is a time, after birds have emerged from the egg, when they have to be cared for and fed and protected. Later they are taught to fly. Then they neither return to the nest nor do they act any longer as fledglings.”

  He looked frankly and long at Narayan Singh, our Sikh returning the stare, lips parted, as if he were having his fortune told.

  “Eggs opened with the knife don’t hatch,” he said at last.

  The Sikh did not wince. His answering voice rang manfully

  “Can I undo what I have done?”

  “Not in this life.”

  “Shall an old horse learn new paces?”

  “He who takes the sword — and weakens — might as well slay himself and have done with it,” said Rao Singh. “There is no merit in sheathing the sword from fear of consequences, nor any victory worth winning by that means. The thing is to be whole-hearted. There is virtue in whole-heartedness. A sword is a merciful thing as compared to a slandering tongue.”

  “And me?” Chullunder Ghose asked — meekly, but with excitement that made his brown eyes glitter.

  Rao Singh looked at him for at least a minute without blinking, until the babu had to let his breath out with a noisy gasp.

  “A stream,” said Rao Singh, “that seems to have no goal but trickles here and there will reach the ocean finally.”

  “Sri Rao Singh Bahadur, think again!” said the babu hoarsely. “Truly I have wandered here and there. What am I but a babu — failed B.A.? Should I have sat down and have said ‘yes, sahib, yes, sahib’ to every alien Jack-in-office who could order me, because he had a white skin, without knowing the thousandth part of what I know? Should I have said ‘yes, sahib’ to the hypocrites and ‘yes, sahib’ to the fools and ‘yes, sahib’ to the men who grow rich while I am supposed to be grateful to them for the right to swallow the dust they make? Do you do that? Do you say ‘yes, indeed, brother’ to the hypocrites who cry that all’s well because their pockets are well filled? Would you have me fool myself into stagnation until I rot like all the rest of them?

  “I have brains, have I not? A belly, haven’t I? Eyes? Ears? Wife and children? Do I feel less — do I deceive myself more — than the men who expect me to blink at their stupidities and say ‘salaam’ to them? Sri Rao Singh Bahadur, have I ever had one chance until I seized this one and tricked these two sahibs into taking m
e along with them? Tricked them — but was it a trick? And how much of a trick? Did I deceive them? They who know me for an honest scoundrel, who have never cheated any man, who treated me as they have treated me. That Sikh — he would die for anyone he loves. Me — I would live, that I may enjoy my friends! Death, sahib, comes to us all too frequently! And is it my fault that the world is no oyster for a failed B.A. with a brown skin and no capacity to be a hypocrite?”

  “It is the fault of your karma,” said Rao Singh. “You have merit.”

  “What is merit to me, if I have no hope?” the babu answered. “Sri Rao Singh Bahadur, I despise a merit that is useless!”

  “Put it to use then.”

  “Will you help us?” Grim asked suddenly.

  There was another pause while Rao Singh looked steadily at Grim’s eyes.

  “Better to be a dupe,” he said at last, “than to put to a test him on whose help you rely. If I should say I shall help you, then you might say afterward that I have not helped, because you know nothing about the methods I would use. The surgeon’s knife helps, but the victim cries out bitterly. And if I should say I would help you, would you not try to take advantage of the promise? That is human nature. You would certainly rely on me instead of using all your own ability — whereas it is only when you have put forth absolutely all your own ability that I can help you in the least.”

  Grim seemed to have at least an inkling who this extraordinary individual was, but I only knew he was Lhaten’s guru, which was shallow information. India is full of gurus who amount to nothing — teachers of penny philosophy based on superstition and tradition learned at second-hand from mistranslated text books. True, he spoke English perfectly, and without any of the phrases that the ordinary gurus use to veil their ignorance. He did not show off. He was neither arrogant nor too persuasive. Still...

  “Will you help us to rescue Rait?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, and that blunt answer did more to convince me he was somebody than if he had spent hours explaining to me who he was and why I should show him respect.

  “Do you know where Rait is?” I demanded, but he did not answer that question.

  “Listen,” I said. “Rait writes he is in a dungeon undergoing torture. If it is true you came to keep me from dying of knife wounds, why can’t you at least help me to rescue that poor fellow from much worse than physical torture?”

  “Are you sure Rait wrote?” he asked.

  “I have his letter.”

  I was wrong. Grim had both Rait’s letters. He produced them, holding them toward the firelight.

  “Why not burn them?” Rao Singh suggested.

  Again there was at least a minute’s silence. The old hermit, who seemed to read silence as other men understand speech, leaned forward and put fuel on the fire. Grim folded the letters, in doubt what to do with them.

  “Why burn them?” I asked.

  Rao Singh, without moving his head, contrived in some way to summon Lhaten from the gloom behind him.

  “Tell why,” he ordered.

  “Because he has suggested that you should,” said Lhaten. “Also because evil communications are a link that dugpas use too easily. As disease seeks dirt, malevolence—”

  “You have already told too much,” said Rao Singh, and Lhaten retired to the gloom where he became invisible.

  “If I burn them—” Grim began.

  “You will do so on your own responsibility. I make no bargains,” Rao Singh interrupted.

  Chullunder Ghose began to plead with Grim to burn them, throwing a handkerchief from hand to hand — a way he had when he was more than usually nervous.

  “Sahib, you don’t know what great things hinge on little ones sometimes! A little flea from a rat’s tail carries plague. The color of—”

  He ceased because he saw Grim was not listening. In his own mind, in his own way, Grim was working out the problem for himself. He glanced at me at last. I nodded, always choosing to agree with him and back him to the finish when he works his eyebrows that way. I have known him to decide wrongly — possibly more times than I could count offhand; but half the fun of life, to my mind, lies in going the whole distance when you give a man your confidence. Mistakes don’t matter; it is arguing about them that rots friendship.

  Grim burned the letters, poking them into the fire with a stick.

  “Why did you do it?” Rao Singh asked.

  “They were of no use, and I want to see what will happen next,” Grim answered. “Ramsden and I are determined to rescue Rait. Those two letters can’t make any difference.”

  “No?”

  Rao Singh stood up, and Lhaten held his cloak for him to find his way into the sleeves. Then he turned his back to us and Lhaten buttoned it, but that may have been a move to mask an exchange of whispers.

  Grim and the others, the hermit included, all rose to their feet, but I had to sit still, being too weak to rise without help. Rao Singh came and looked at me, smiling, and I noticed that his clothing smelled of sandalwood. His hands and face were as clean as if he had come that minute from the bath.

  “You all but escaped out of that prison of yours,” he said. “Obstinate? I never knew a man so obstinate! Until I learned how strong your friendship is for Jimgrim I was at a loss how to challenge your will.”

  “Why did you go to the trouble?” I asked.

  “Lhaten summoned me — accepting the responsibility,” he added, glancing at his chela.

  “If there is anything I can do,” I said, “at any time to—”

  He interrupted with a gesture of fierce distaste. Then suddenly he laughed, as if remembering I could not understand his point of view.

  “You have established claim on me enough,” he said. “A gift might increase it altogether too much. You will not need me again, I think. Stay here until your strength returns.”

  Then he went with a wave of his hand to the hermit, who behaved like some old janitor in attendance on a gods’ ambassador, dividing his emotions equally between scorn for us and pride at having sheltered such a visitor.

  With his back toward the entrance, the hermit spoke:

  “What has any of you done that you should have this honor?”

  CHAPTER XV. In which Jimgrim makes no bolder claim than that he and his friends are savages.

  How many tongues are spoken in the world! And how many secret orders have their signs of recognition? None the less, I have observed that when two of a kind meet they invariably recognize each other, even though they have no spoken word in common. As a horseman knows a good horse and a true dog knows a huntsman, so a guru recognizes him in whom the seeds of Wisdom are awake.

  — from The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup

  I DON’T pretend to know what method had been used to snatch me out of death’s gate. Grim’s version of it was that Lhaten came unexpectedly and after he had pulled all my bandages off and examined the wounds, Rao Singh came unannounced.

  Rao Singh, after hardly a glance at me, had asked to have the loads piled so as to make a sort of inner chamber; and behind that barrier he and Lhaten worked over me for half-an-hour; but in what way they had worked, none knew.

  I do know that from that hour my recovery began, and it was rapid. There was a new sensation of vitality — the sort of feeling that a man has on an early summer morning after a good night’s sleep. Nothing — not even pain and stiffness — could convince me I was in the slightest danger of relapse and my friends had hard work to keep me from taking too much exercise, until Narayan Singh at last pronounced an ultimatum.

  “Sahib,” he said, “when we wrestled at Benjamin’s you had the best of it. By the five vows of a Sikh and on my honor, I shall take my vengeance now unless you lie still!”

  And now it appeared that the secret route into Tibet was not entirely free from toll, although the lousy old hermit refused even to look at money or to help himself from our provisions. Day after day I was left alone with him while my friends, armed with hatchets,
took the ponies down into a near-by valley to cut tamarisk for firewood, which they brought into a cave nearby for the hermit’s future use. That seemed to be the customary task imposed on all rare visitors who used the secret trail, and in return we were entitled to be guided as far as the next, else undiscoverable, halting place. There was no fixed minimum of fuel to be cut, nor any limit to the quantity, so my companions filled the storage cave, the hermit neither thanking them nor appearing to take the slightest interest.

  He himself lived on infinitesimal rations of barley which he roasted on an old iron shovel and ate cold, counting it grain by grain. He appeared disgusted at our appetites, and at his rate of consumption he had enough barley stored in two sacks to last him an immeasurable time. But he had none to spare for our ponies, nor would he tell us where we might obtain any. In fact, he would tell us nothing, except that he was ready to act guide whenever we should choose to move on, his conversation being limited to that and to assertions that Tibetan lamas were a lot of frauds. He appeared to believe we were going to Lhasa, and to regard us as a pack of fools for that sufficient reason.

  During the ten days that we occupied his cave I never saw him pray or do anything that suggested a religious exercise. He would sit by the hour on a rock, well sheltered from the wind outside the entrance of the cave, his red- rimmed eyes fixed on the sky-line and an expression on his face as if he were listening to sounds that none of us could hear. He appeared to have no regular hours for “listening in” (if that is what he did). Sometimes he got up from his litter of dry moss and branches in the middle of the night when a gale was raging, and sat on his rock until dawn. At other times, when he was cooking barley or carrying firewood from the storage cave, he would suddenly drop what he was doing, as if he had heard a signal, and would hurry to the rock and sit there motionless, perhaps for a few minutes, or for hours.

  Yet his hearing was not particularly keen. If anything, he seemed inclined to deafness, due to the terrific pressure of the wind and perhaps, too, to accumulations in his ears of wax and extraneous filth. And it did not seem to make the slightest difference to him how much noise we made when he was concentrating on his strange task. We could sit around the rock, laughing and talking within two yards, without disturbing him in the least.