Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “What’s the big idea?”

  “Take no chances,” said the babu. “Sahib, it is paradoxically true in this world that the simplest way to get what you are after is not to try to get it. Say no, and resist temptation when you mean yes and already have fallen for it like an apple on to Newton’s nose.”

  “O.K., I get you. Very well, I promise.”

  “But I promise nothing,” said the babu. “It is contrary to my religion to make any promise that I don’t intend to break. I am a slave of my religion.”

  “You’re ‘a high-caste Hindu, aren’t you? How comes it that you eat with me, and eat meat?”

  Chullunder Ghose took up a bone in his fingers and gnawed it before he answered:

  “Sahib, why do you cut cataracts off eyeballs?”

  “For the practice. Hell, I’m learning!”

  “Same here! Self am also surgeon — of impossibilities! I amputate them. Why? For the experience. I like it. And one does not get experience by being holier than other people.”

  “But the Hindu religion, as I understand it—”

  “You don’t understand it, any more than I do, or the priests do,” said the babu. “I am a devotee of all religions and all politics. I am an autocratic democratic absolutist, communistically minded — a pro-Gandhian believer in machine-made products. Also am a Nietzschean-Tolstoian Platonist with animistic leanings, balancing a pole, like Blondin on a tightrope, with a Bryanite bimetallism on the one end and a sense of humor on the other. I believe that governments are necessary nonsense, and that the only deadly sin is sorrow, whether you inflict it or accept it.”

  “So you sign up with the C.I.D. and send men to the gallows?”

  “I? Their lack of humor hangs them! Clowns and other funny people never reach a gallows. It is people who take themselves seriously who slip up on their own solemnity, like politicians on a party platform. The secret of all the crimes there ever were, is self-importance. It is that — their self- importance, that eventually traps them.”

  “All right, go and prod their self-importance, but remember, I want some cataract cases — and a tiger. You can reach me at the Sikh’s dispensary. He wrote he has a bedroom for me, but I don’t know the address yet. I’ll have to wait here at the station until he shows up. Where will you be?”

  “Everywhere, sahib. I must splash around in this abominable monsoon, wishing I were Jonah in the belly of a whale. And I must go now. Thank you for the rotten dinner and the pleasant company. I wish you hecatombs of mutilated heads to study with your lancet.”

  “Thanks, I hope you hang your man,” said Copeland. “Bring him to me first, though, if his eyes need fixing.”

  “Good-by, sahib. Don’t come out into the rain.” But curiosity compelled, so Copeland buttoned up his overcoat and watched three elephants go swaying off into the darkness loaded with a Prince and all his retinue. The station lights, reflected in a kind of misty halo by the rain, revealed even a glimpse of royalty — a lean, dark-turbaned, youngish man, a trifle stooping at the shoulders, perched up in the nickel-plated howdah with a heavy shawl over his English raincoat. He was taking himself, or something, seriously. He looked sad. But he swayed away into the rain and was lost in darkness before Copeland could even memorize his features.

  Then an ekka drove up for the babu — a one-horse, two- wheeled, springless cart, already piled up with the babu’s baggage under a watertight tarpaulin. The babu’s dish-faced servant was already up beside the driver. The babu climbed in and the cart creaked. The driver screamed at his decrepit horse. The babu pulled an end of the tarpaulin over him and waved his black umbrella — and suddenly, out of the station shadow, the two yellow- robed pilgrims ran like ghosts and climbed into the cart too.

  “Charity to holy people is a way of going long of riches in the next world!” the babu shouted. “Good-by, sahib.”

  There was a frightful flash of lightning — seething rain — thunder — howling wind; lightning again, and a vivid glimpse of trees bent almost double — ruts through black mud — miles of muddy water. And then darkness.

  “It’s a hell of a night,” said Copeland to himself. He went back to the dismal dining-room and paid his bill. “Who was that man who had dinner with me?” he asked the waiter.

  “Some babu,” he answered. “I not knowing.”

  But he did know. He was too afraid of him to talk. The lamplight shone on too much of the bloodshot whites of his distended eyes.

  CHAPTER 2. “I am sent by Soonya”

  Wind rolled away the steam of two weeks’ rain and gave a glimpse of tumbled mountains beyond lush green jungle. Out of the jungle poured a roaring river; coffee-brown, loaded with trash; it stank of dead things. Where, two weeks ago, the shallow ford had been, and village cattle came to drink, it boiled and eddied ten feet deep — impassable. A dozen mat-and-cotton, toe- rag camps were clustered on the side towards the city; there the traveling native merchants waited for the yearly race to be first in the field, to sell goods on credit while the peasants’ rain-fed optimism rose like sap in green stuff.

  On the far side of the river, on a hillock, in a thatched shed built for him by villagers, Chullunder Ghose sat camped in luxury. He had crossed, before the river rose too high, on a log-raft that had been carried away by the next night’s flood and left him stranded. He had exactly what he needed, and he needed extremely little. In an English Norfolk jacket, a Hindu loin-cloth and a plain black cotton turban, he looked rich enough to be important and yet not so rich that the villagers might feel afraid of him. He sat on a mat in the door of the shed; cross-legged, like a fat god, smiling. And since he paid his way, and certainly was not a tax-collector or policemen, the villagers came and talked to him between the storms of rain. Their talk was chiefly about taxes, and the priests, and the iniquitous forced labor when the Rajah needed porters for his hunting expeditions. They talked about the Prince who had come across the ford with three elephants, and who had actually paid them for firewood and elephant feed.

  “A good Prince. But he came near drowning. There was with him a Madrasi, with a red stone on his finger. When the Prince fell off the elephant in mid- stream that Madrasi pretended to try to rescue him. But we saw. And it was one of us who swam into the stream and saved him. He received for that a gift of two rupees from the Prince. But from the Madrasi he received a cursing. The Madrasi said a low-caste person should not touch the Prince’s person. And that is true. But what would you?”

  They talked also of Gandhi. Gandhi, they had heard, was in London teaching the English how to use the hand-loom. Was it true, as some of Kali’s priests said, that Gandhi intended to kick the English out and give the government to Moslems?

  Chullunder Ghose was patient. He declared he had to wait until the ford was passable. He asked no questions about tigers, none whatever about Kali’s priests, or about the ruined temple in the jungle near by. If he had asked, he might have heard nothing. But, as usually happens to a good-tempered man who listens but is not inquisitive, what he wished to learn began to reach his ears in driblets. He was told, among many other things, the reason why, for instance, nobody came near him after four in the afternoon, and why the cattle were driven home so early.

  “He has slain six women, four men, five children, six-and-fifty goats and nineteen head of cattle. He is a male tiger. He is harder on us than the takkus [tax]. Our shikari should have set a trap or shot him, but he dared not, though he talked loud; and when we mocked him he ran away, we know not whither. It is not wise that your honor camps in this place, and if we had known how good your honor is we would have spoken. Come now and dwell in the village.” Chullunder Ghose might have accepted the invitation, but the rain came down that minute, so a dozen villagers were forced to share the shed with him, and half a dozen more came running along the track at the edge of the jungle to take shelter. Five of them reached it, and the sixth was hardly fifty yards away when he suddenly screamed. A tiger leaped out from the undergrowth and struck him, seized h
im by the shoulder, worried him a moment and then dragged him out of sight. It was all over in ten seconds. But they heard the man scream in the jungle — once. After that, silence. It had happened phantom-fashion. Even the rain seemed silent and unreal.

  All the villagers took sticks and ran to beat the jungle. But it was useless, and they knew it. One by one they came back to squat and shudder in the babu’s camp-fire smoke and ask advice.

  “Another widow to feed. That is the fifth man, making sixteen humans. Shall we abandon the village? But where then? There is no place for us.”

  “Tell the Rajah,” said the babu. “Is it not his business and privilege to deal with tigers?”

  “Sahib, we have sent and told him. Long ago we told him, when the tiger slew the first man.”

  “What else have you done?”

  “We have paid much money to the priests of Kali’s temple. But the priests also do nothing.”

  “What else?”

  “To the priestess we have given money. Her name is Soonya. It is her tiger. She lives in the ruined temple yonder in the jungle. The tiger lives there also.”

  “Liars! Can she keep a tiger like a tame cat? If it eats you, would it not eat her?”

  “Nay, not so. Is she not a priestess? She is not like other people, sahib. Furthermore, she says the tiger will continue killing us and our cattle until the Rajah keeps a promise to rebuild the temple. Nevertheless, if he should do that he would first increase the takkus; and how can we pay it, since the tiger eats us and our cattle? Will your honor not speak to the Rajah?”

  “I would like to speak first to that priestess,” said the babu. “Which of you will lead me to her?”

  There were no volunteers. There were fifty excuses, chief of which was that the hour was growing late; it would be dark in the jungle. Some of them even admitted they were too scared.

  “Sahib, in a few months, when the sun has dried it, we will burn the jungle. There is nothing to do until that time comes.”

  “Except to get me an elephant. Get one. Go and do it!”

  But the nearest elephant was fifteen miles away. It belonged to a zamindar notorious for meanness; he would demand too much money. The elephant would eat the food of thirty people. The mahout and two or three alleged grass- cutters would also demand rations and money. Probably the elephant would go sick. He might even die; and who would’ be blamed for it?

  “Tell me then about this Soonya whom you call a priestess,” said the babu.

  So they told him an endless story, that being the least they could do after refusing his other requests; and he believed some portions of it. None knew whence she first came. She was married, some said, at the age of ten years to a man so handsome that the gods were jealous of him. Therefore the gods slew him with a sickness. She wanted to die on his funeral pyre, as widows used to, and, it is rumored, that some do even to this day. But that was forbidden by the Sircar, that is obstinate about such matters.

  So she tried to starve herself to death, which also was forbidden. Sahibs took her to a hospital and fed her by force with a tube until she gave in and agreed to live. She was then sent to a Christian mission, and the padres taught her to deny caste. But she did not agree to the rest of the teaching, so she ran away. She became a sanyassin — wandering, wandering with staff and begging bowl, and rumor had it that she went mad. But some say that the padres had already made her so.

  “We are all mad,” said the babu. “If we were not, nobody would love us. How did she come to this place? Did she bring the tiger with her?”

  Opinions varied. Some said she had come before the tiger; some said afterwards. They all agreed, however, that at Kutchdullub she had adopted the terrible creed of Kali, which serves death, not life. It worships death and sings the praises of calamity. “Our fathers told us about Thuggee, sahib. Has your honor heard of that? The Thugs slew people as a sacrifice to Kali, the Destroyer. But the Sircar also made an end of Thuggee — some say.”

  “I will cross the river,” said the babu.

  “Nay, nay, sahib! Not yet for a week, or for more than a week. It drowns men. Who can cross it?”

  “I will cross now.”

  “Nay, nay! Tell us more about the dok-i-tar who skins eyes so that blind men see.”

  “Lead me to the priestess, or I go now.”

  “But we dare not. Is that killer not loose in the jungle? He is worse than she is.”

  “Then I go at once. These” — he pointed to his odds and ends of baggage— “are in your keeping. Make me a raft of goatskins — tight ones — well sewn. Bring a long rope and a pole. And if I drown I hope the tiger eats you all.”

  They pleaded — argued; but his mildness had vanished. He even beat them. So the goatskins that an Indian village never lacks were blown up tight and lashed together. Standing on that, the babu poled and paddled himself across, assisted by the rope that held the raft against the stream. It took him two hours. It was after nightfall, and he was almost fainting from exhaustion, when he crawled out on the far bank in a storm of wind and rain. He staggered to the nearest trader’s bivouac, where a kerosene lantern made a warm glow in the darkness.

  “Horses!” he commanded. “Harness up and drive me to the city!”

  Mocking voices answered. “Swim, thou mudfish! Sit in the mud thou fool, and pray for miracles! Thy belly holds more food than we have here — go and fill it with frogs!”

  “I am sent by Soonya,” he answered.

  There was instant silence. Presently a man crawled out into the rain and thrust a lantern near the babu’s face.

  “Who do you say sent you?”

  “Ask again, thou dog, and she herself shall answer! Harness up! She orders. I pay — twenty rupees.”

  That was a mistake.

  “So? She? A priestess offers money for a service?”

  But the babu snapped back: “Atcha! I will keep my money. Ask her anything you wish to know. I will go and bring her.”

  He turned away into the dark rain. The lantern followed.

  “Sahib! Sahib!”

  Fifteen minutes later he was splashing into darkness toward Kutchdullub City in a hooded cart, behind two strong horses, munching at chapatis spread with hot spice. The driver asked no more questions.

  It appeared that Soonya was someone.

  CHAPTER 3. “Isn’t that brute dead yet?”

  Divinely authorized and autocratic sounds good, but it seems that liabilities invariably balance assets, somehow, even in the Rajah business. To begin with, it was monsoon weather. The marble and limestone palace, with its terraces, courtyards, gardens, summer-houses and lotus-ponds was one desolate splash made drearier by hurrying dark-gray clouds. There were creditors out on the palace steps, bemartyring themselves beneath umbrellas. The walls dripped clammy moisture. There was mildew on the hangings. The canaries in gilded cages were molting miserably and refused to sing. The Rajah had the bellyache, a headache, and a letter from a banker — a swine of a banker — a dirty, contemptible son of a low-caste shroff, who demanded his interest and “found it inconvenient” to lend another rupee. Nor was that all.

  The zenana hummed with malice, like a wasps’ nest being smoked out. The most recent recruit to the Rajah’s private ménage was a lady with a genius for spending money and a magnetism that exploded all the stores of jealousy and discontent that she could anywhere discover.

  There is plenty of both in a Rajah’s zenana, always. And today it is not nearly as safe as in the good old days of twenty years ago to use the whip; because even in Indian Native States there are women who know about modern notions. They inform the others. And any woman understands that one does not have to believe things in order to try to get away with them.

  So the Rajah was in his library, where the books were all soggy with moisture; and even the brandy and soda did not taste good, because he had drunk too much of it the night before. His servant had left the lid of the cigar-box open, so the cigars were ruined; they tasted like hay and blotting-p
aper — two rupees each. The cat looked happy, sleeping on a cushion near the smelly oil-stove. So he kicked it, and that settled the cat for a while. Then he got up and looked in the mirror — a full-length one, behind which was a closet of books such as even a Rajah does not let the servants see.

  There was a damp film on the mirror, but he could see himself. He had never had any faith in religion except as an important form of politics; but the sight of himself in the glass nearly, if not quite, convinced him that a diabolical intelligence does actually govern things. How otherwise could such a handsome fellow, so endowed by nature with a figure, a brain, and a taste for smart clothes and expensive entertainment, find himself in such a damned predicament? No answer. He made a grimace at himself in the glass.

  Then he pressed an electric bell; but rain had discovered the places where a rascally contractor had saved money on the insulation, so the bell was silent. After waiting a few minutes he seized a revolver and fired it five times at the bell-push. He was a good shot, even with all that brandy in him, so he hit the mark three times, but it annoyed him that he missed twice; and the noise made the cat act like a lunatic, so he put the sixth shot through the cat’s head. Then the servant came. He might possibly have shot the servant — it would have cost less than to whip a woman — only that the cartridges were all used up.

  “Take away that cat and tell Syed-Suraj I want him.”

  The servant left the cat’s blood on the carpet and ran like a marauding jackal with the carcass. Syed-Suraj was the only one to run for when the Rajah was in that mood. Discreetly vicious sycophant and rapacious grafter though he was, Syed-Suraj could be depended on to calm the Rajah’s humor even when the last new female favorite was afraid to go near him. A relation, distant, on the distaff side; an educated sybarite, whose estates had all been squandered in Madrid, Heidelberg, Paris, London, and Monte Carlo, Syed-Suraj had equipped himself with cynicism and a charming manner that the Rajah and Syed-Suraj, too, mistook for statesmanship. But Syed-Suraj was a lot too shrewdly cautious to accept an official position. It suited him better, and so did the pickings, to be the Rajah’s confidant, pander, parasite, and go-between.