Kim by Rudyard Kipling (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📕

They heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the shop, and even the kitchen, and every time the child won, till Kim marvelled.

“Bind my eyes⁠—let me feel once with my fingers, and even then I will leave thee opened-eyed behind,” he challenged.

Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good.

“If it were men⁠—or horses,” he said, “I could do better. This playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little.”

“Learn first⁠—teach later,” said Lurgan Sahib. “Is he thy master?”

“Truly. But how is it done?”

“By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly⁠—for it is worth doing.”

The Hindu boy, in highest feather, actually patted Kim on the back.

“Do not despair,” he said. “I myself will teach thee.”

“And I will see that thou art well taught,” said Lurgan Sahib, still speaking in the vernacular, “for except my boy here⁠—it was foolish of him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, I could have given it⁠—except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one better worth teaching. And there are ten days more ere thou canst return to Lucknao where they teach nothing⁠—at the long price. We shall, I think, be friends.”

They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself too much to reflect on their craziness. In the morning they played the Jewel Game⁠—sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of swords and daggers, sometimes with photographs of natives. Through the afternoons he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in the shop, sitting dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching Mr. Lurgan’s many and very curious visitors. There were small Rajahs, escorts coughing in the veranda, who came to buy curiosities⁠—such as phonographs and mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it seemed to Kim⁠—but his mind may have been vitiated by early training⁠—in search of the ladies; natives from independent and feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken necklaces⁠—rivers of light poured out upon the table⁠—but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young Rajahs. There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes. There were occasional gatherings of long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in English and Bengali, to Mr. Lurgan’s great edification. He was always interested in religions. At the end of the day, Kim and the Hindu boy⁠—whose name varied at Lurgan’s pleasure⁠—were expected to give a detailed account of all that they had seen and heard⁠—their view of each man’s character, as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions of his real errand. After dinner, Lurgan Sahib’s fancy turned more to what might be called dressing-up, in which game he took a most informing interest. He could paint faces to a marvel; with a brush-dab here and a line there changing them past recognition. The shop was full of all manner of dresses and turbans, and Kim was apparelled variously as a young Mohammedan of good family, an oilman, and once⁠—which was a joyous evening⁠—as the son of an Oudh landholder in the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk’s eye to detect the least flaw in the makeup; and lying on a worn teakwood couch, would explain by the half-hour together how such and such a caste talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since “hows” matter little in this world, the “why” of everything. The Hindu child played this game clumsily. That little mind, keen as an icicle where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to enter another’s soul; but a demon in Kim woke up and sang with joy as he put on the changing dresses, and changed speech and gesture therewith.

Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one evening how the disciples of a certain caste of fakir, old Lahore acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour⁠—cross-legged, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that time entered a hulking, obese Babu whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib⁠—this annoyed Kim⁠—watched the Babu and not the play.

“I think,” said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, “I am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance. Except that you had told me I should have opined that⁠—that⁠—that you were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him.”

“That is what he must learn at Lucknow.”

“Then order him to be jolly-dam’-quick. Good night, Lurgan.” The Babu swung out with the gait of a bogged cow.

When they were telling over the day’s list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib asked Kim who he thought the man might be.

“God knows!” said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls.

“That is true. God, He knows; but I wish to know what you think.”

Kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of compelling truth.

“I⁠—I think he will want me when I come from the school, but”⁠—confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded approval⁠—“I do not understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.”

“Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales for a certain Colonel. His honour is great only in Simla, and it is noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter⁠—that is a custom among us.”

“And is