Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “You mean, for the Maharajah to wait near the well and—” “Hell, no. He’s inside the temple. Can’t be kept out. He has the right to be there, and to be in the procession because, a million years ago — or maybe a thousand, it don’t make much difference — the one of his ancestors who happened to be staying in the temple to get cured o’ some disease or other weren’t a bad sort of a begum’s bastard and took sides with ’em against the King. That’s what they say. There’s generally some truth in legends. And they say, too, that if you drink the water in that well, or even wash in it, you’re dead — as dead as mutton before the nex’ day’s sun goes down.”

  “But I have drunk, and I have washed in it for fifty years,” said a voice beside them.

  It was the old Yogi-astrologer. The moonlight, that had already bathed his beehive hut, touched the crown of his head with silver and made his eyes shine, but the rest of him was no more than a shadow, only a little less invisible than Hawkes was. There was a coppery outline of him, that was all. He appeared to be leaning on a long staff, but the staff was within the shadow.

  “O man from Jupiter!” he said, and looked at Joe as if he could see clear through him.

  Joe bridled at what he thought was mockery behind words. “Riddles again?” he objected. “Why not say what you mean?”

  The old man ignored the protest. Dim moonlight, suffusing his entire face now, seemed to have filled his wrinkles. It made him ageless and magnificent. He stood astonishingly upright and his naked shoulders were those of an athlete.

  “You are at the threshold,” he said, “at the threshold,” he repeated. “Will you cross?” he demanded.

  A sort of excitement seized Joe. “Do you mean they will let me enter this door?”

  “He who passes pays the price.”

  “How much?”

  “How much have you?” asked the Yogi. He turned away and walked a dozen paces, out into the moonlight — stood there leaning on his staff, then stared for a moment in Joe’s direction and came back, as if he had forgotten something.

  “It is not too late to turn,” he said. “You may turn back if you wish to. But you will pay the price nevertheless, because it is an old debt and the time has come to pay it.”

  Hawkes took umbrage at the old man’s air of omniscience. He took a stride forward, squared up to him and spoke belligerently, raising his voice because the temple music was swelling in volume.

  “You,” he said, “why don’t you stop all this? You can. You’re the one man they’d all listen to. You spill the beans — and even that swab Poonch-Terai’d say ‘Please, teacher, mayn’t I leave the room?’ He’d eat out o’ your hand. You’re the only man he’s scared of; and you know it. What’s the use talking riddles, when God Almighty knows, you’ve only got to come on out with a word or two o’ straight talk and they’ll do what you tell ’em.”

  “Does not God Almighty also speak in riddles?”

  “Maybe. But you’re not God Almighty.”

  “That is true, my son. But it is also true that the fool who tries to stop the wheels of destiny fulfils his destiny by being crushed beneath them.”

  “Hell! See here,” said Hawkes, “that bloody scoundrel Poonch-Terai has got a gang of his dependents ambuscaded out there by the well-head letting on they’re innocent spectators o’ this here ceremony. What they’re there for is to snatch Amrita. And you know it. Damn your eyes, if you know anything, you know that. And a word from you’d stop it.”

  “You, my son, are you not here to stop it? Should I do your dharma? Should I rob you and your friends of merit for a deed done generously?”

  “Damn,” said Hawkes, “there’s less than twenty of us. Not enough to scare ’em. If there’s a fight, I warn you now, there’ll be some cracked heads — and you to blame, because you might have stopped it.”

  “Should it be my privilege to stop that, I will doubtless do so,” said the Yogi. “I will be there. Let us do our dharma without anger at one another. You, my son,” — he was speaking to Joe now; he dismissed Hawkes as if he brushed a fly away— “you man from Jupiter, remember this: though each of us must pay old karmic debts before he crosses each new threshold of another phase of his eternal life, a debt paid is a clean key in a washed hand; and a death or two — an agony or two — is nothing much; it is less than a speck of sand in all that ocean of eternity. Disaster is opportunity. Remember that.”

  He turned away and left Joe with a creepy feeling up his spine, though that was no doubt partly due to the chant within the temple precincts. It had drawn near. It was ominous. There was a pulsing under-beat of tom-toms that accentuated dread, although with a hint again, behind that, of an exaltation that should conquer dread and change it. It was weird. It had a rhythm that made Joe’s breath keep time to it while the goose-flesh tingled on his skin. Hawkes stuffed his pipe into his pocket.

  “Now they’re coming, sir. Stand back, please — back into the shadow. Do me a favor — please stand right here and don’t move until I come for you.”

  There was a sudden clash of cymbals. The music and the chanting changed to a rhythm of triumph. The narrow door opened slowly. One by one, from almost utter darkness, came forth hooded celebrants whose long robes masked even their sex. There were no signs of rank. Voices, and a subtler grace of movement, distinguished women from the men, but they were robed alike and they walked alike, with a stride that was part of a ritual and as much an element of the hymn they sang as the moonlight was that streamed over the temple wall like amber liquid and squandered itself amid shoals of gray and violet shadow. They were shadows walking amid hues of mauve and honey — shadows that sang like angels. And though Joe strained his eyes he could not guess which one of them was Rita, though he thought he spotted Poonch-Terai — the one tall figure walking with less grace than the others. He was walking behind about a dozen women, any one of whom might be Rita. Doubtless he was ready to give the signal and to indicate her to his ambushed men. Joe cursed him fervently and wondered what to do.

  The old Yogi led them all, magnificently naked, with his staff held high, the moonlight gleaming on his long white hair and beard. He was tall; Joe hadn’t suspected how tall he was. His voice — a bell-like baritone — was as clear and strong as the youngest man’s in all that company. He was incredible — something almost more than human.

  To the right and left, nine men on either flank, at a respectful distance, walked the Indian troopers who had come to guard the procession. They stole out from the darkness one by one at intervals of twenty paces, and Joe noticed the man who he thought was Poonch-Terai stare at them as if disconcerted. Fifty or sixty paces away on the right flank, like a dog in command of a flock of sheep, Hawkes strode alone — no part of it.

  “Hello — Joe from Jupiter!”

  He turned slowly. He was too excited not to govern himself with a rein like iron. He had doubted his ears. He believed his eyes. She — Rita — stood there in the doorway, luminous because she had thrown back a monkish hood and cloak and some trickery of reflected moonlight made her white dress glisten and her face and hands look humorous — mischievous — vital. Then he knew he loved her; and because he knew it and burned with the knowledge he forced forth ordinary phrases that might give her no inkling.

  “You startled me. Thought you were in the procession.”

  “No, I was warned.”

  “Who warned you?”

  “The old astrologer. He warned me about you also — talked of Caesar and the Ides of March — of Mars in your house in the heaven in trine to Saturn—”

  Suddenly she screamed. Joe felt a flash like fire between his shoulder-blades — spun on his heel with all the stars of heaven whirling before his eyes through a veil of lurid crimson — saw through the same veil Amal, the ayah — teeth — eyes — then the rest of her, all black and blood-red — white-hot eggs of eyes with crimson pupils, at the end of streaks of angry-crimson flame that seemed to flash forth from the ayah’s skull. Then darkness and a dreadful
roaring in his ears. Then silence — nothing — and not even consciousness of nothing.

  CHAPTER XVII. “A fool is a person who lives in his senses and likes it.”

  Moments of dim lucidity, shot through with something that was either color — or frozen light — or white-hot pain. Eternities of darkness, haunted by twilight just beyond reach. Consciousness of concrete nothing, in which the ayah’s face leered at some one who was not Joe but the Joe whom Joe knew — mixed up with the New York office, the Chicago office and the San Francisco office, picked up with all their clerks on a vellum trust deed and poured into India down rays of amber moonlight — only the amber was yellow-green and blood-red, and not amber at all, except that the Yogi called it amber. Cymbal-sounds within a skull that was where his head should be; but he knew where his head was, it was in his hands, so that was some one else’s skull and the pain was some one else’s pain. Darkness again, in which no light could be, or ever was. He recognized it; it was the darkness of his mother’s black skirt. It rustled. He was a small boy, hiding from her. And the Maharajah said it was a good pig; but the pig was Rita; and his mother went after the pig with a knife that stabbed between the shoulder-blades, so that Joe felt white-hot fire go through him. He knew it was Joe who felt that, and he was sorry for Joe in a way, although he knew he should not be.

  There was a man from Jupiter who looked on, and who was Rita’s friend, or so the Yogi said. He was jealous and took the knife to ride him down on horseback; but he could not see him when he tried to kill him. Muldoon threw a whisky bottle at him, so the horse fell and the spear went in between his shoulders with an agonizing stab that made somebody scream; he knew it was some one else who screamed, because he heard it. Silence, blood-red; but the red was really black and mauve, and he was lying in an oven being burned to death. He and the pig were being burned together, and the pig was thirsty.

  Hawkes’ face then, and he had to pay Hawkes all the money in the world because the Yogi said so, and if not the man from Jupiter would run away with Rita. Out of Hawkes’ face grew his mother’s; and out of hers Cummings’; and out of both of them the Maharajah’s — until all three turned into the ayah, who had a snake’s body that came out of Chandri Lal’s basket and was cut in pieces by a long knife but grew together again. Voices — fifty million miles away, inside his head; and some one’s caressing fingers in his hair, that stroked and stroked and would not let him lie down and be rolled on by Cummings’ brand-new rickshaw with the nickel-plated lamps that were really the ayah’s eyes.

  Pain, at last, vivid and comprehensible, that came as almost a relief and stung him until his eyes saw daylight and he felt his lips and nostrils being moistened with a wet cloth. He appeared to be in prison. He could see a bare wall with what looked like iron slots that let the light through. When he dared to move his eyes a little he could see a door that had slots in it too. Looking upward he saw a vaulted ceiling and he knew where that was; it was the room you waited in at college while some fool took your name in to the president. Only it was too damned hot. Was he back home? Well then, how did he get there? He felt dreadfully weak, and when he tried to call out to inquire where he was a stab of pain shot through him that turned everything electric-blue and muddy green and indigo and saffron. Some one said “S-s-ssh!” but simply wasted breath. Joe fainted.

  After a while he knew he was the man from Jupiter. He sat — or was he standing? It didn’t matter — and watched Joe being tortured by two humans. He couldn’t see them very well but he thought they were women. He could see Joe perfectly and rather liked him, though the man didn’t deserve much sympathy. He looked as if he wanted to die, but the women worked hard and wouldn’t let him. Why not? As a man from Jupiter he felt undignified and foolish waiting for that damned fool Joe to get through with breathing; yet he couldn’t get away until he left off breathing, and there was nothing he could do to stop him — not while those women kept on pulling at him.

  He could feel them pulling. It annoyed him. They were pulling him back into Joe and he dreaded it — hated it. Some mistake. He wasn’t Joe at all and he tried to make them realize it, but they couldn’t hear or else didn’t understand. The funny thing was that he felt it every time they wetted Joe’s lips with a cloth and sponged him down from head to foot. He didn’t wish to feel it; he wished to be done with it all and go away, but when he wondered where he would go to he had no idea. And anyhow, he couldn’t go because they kept on pulling. He suddenly lost consciousness.

  When he recovered it he knew he was Joe, and in great pain. The man from Jupiter was some one he bad dreamed about and he was glad that the dream was over. He felt something drip on his face, so he opened his eyes and looked straight into the face of Annie Weems, but it was upside down and she was crying. It was some time before he realized that she was standing at the head of the cot and leaning over him. Then, when he tried to speak, she touched her fingers to his lips and he heard what she said so distinctly that it was almost a shock:

  “You mustn’t try to speak. You must lie still. Rita, come and see him. I believe we win.”

  He recognized Rita’s voice instantly: “Of course we win. I never doubted that. But does he win, too?”

  “Rita, come and see him.”

  “Annie, I have been seeing him whole and well so long and so persistently that I’ll crack if I see him any other way just now. I do wish I’d been born a savage.”

  “Why, child?”

  “Savages hate and despise their enemies without being afraid to do it. I want to hate like Hawkesey’s hell for an hour or two.”

  “Why, Rita!”

  “And then go to sleep and not wake up again.”

  “I don’t wonder you’re tired. However, before you sleep you’d better talk to the Yogi, or—” “I did, two or three hours ago. I told him his teaching makes me sick.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Of course it does.’ He quoted your Bible about honey that made the belly bitter. So I told him it didn’t even taste good. And he said, ‘Of course it doesn’t.’ So I told him about Joe’s mother and what a hypocrite I am not to spit at her.”

  “Didn’t he scold you?”

  “No, he laughed. He said,’spit if you wish; it is better to spit than to stew in it.’ I could see I wasn’t even scratching the face of his calmness. And I had to scratch something or die. So I told him God and all the gods are liars and cruel devils; and I wished all the lies and cruelty might turn back on God who invented them and bore like worms into his big fat belly and turn his heaven into hell.”

  “Rita!”

  “He said he wondered I hadn’t thought of that before. So I told him I’d thought of it plenty of times.”

  Long silence. Annie Weems again: “Well, I suppose that was better than stabbing yourself with doubts. But I confess, you shock me, Rita. Didn’t you shock him?”

  “No. I knew it wasn’t any use just asking him to help me; he would only tell me to do my own work. So I told him everything I’d ever heard from his lips was a lie. That gave him work to do.”

  “Rita!”

  “He agreed with me. That’s the best of Ram-Chittra Gunga. He has humor. He agreed that everything I ever heard with my ears, saw with my eyes, smelled with my nose, tasted with my tongue or felt with my senses was a scandalous lie and no good. He said: ‘If you should listen to me with your ears and tell me afterward with your lips that I am truthful, I would turn you away and never again try to teach you anything. He said, I would let you go to the mission-school and learn that God is in heaven and all’s well with the world; because that would be good enough for such a fool as you at any rate.”

  “So he called you a fool after teaching you all these years. That doesn’t say much for his teaching, does it?”

  “He said a fool is a person who lives in his senses and likes it. He knows I don’t do that some of the time. He said, ‘Now let us talk with our souls and listen to each other with our inward ears.’ And while he talked,
and I listened, I felt lots better. But I’m so tired, Annie, I can’t hang on to what I know and I can only resent what I feel. You’re tired, too. Between us, if we don’t look out we’ll let Joe slip.”

  “You go to sleep, child. I can hang on.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Yes. But my trust isn’t worth two annas — not just now it isn’t. I’m going to ask Ram-Chittra Gunga to stand watch for a while and let both of us sleep.”

  “He won’t come.”

  “Do you think not?”

  “I am here,” said a voice. Joe heard it very plainly, and understood it; but when he thought about it afterward he never could be quite sure whether the voice had spoken English or some other tongue. The next words that he heard were Rita’s:

  “Most reverend and holy teacher, I kiss feet.”

  He was sure those words were English because Annie Weems objected to them:

  “Rita, I can’t help wishing you wouldn’t use those forms of speech. They are all right, I don’t doubt, in their inner meaning, but in English they sound degenerate. Perhaps I don’t mean that exactly. The Magdalene bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears, and Jesus washed the feet of his apostles; but there’s something not quite dignified and womanly in ignoring racial distinctions as entirely as you do. I may think I understand it, but I resent it, and I feel sure other people always will.”