KARI'S ADVENTURE IN BENARES
As the sun went down in the gathering silence of the evening, we
entered the city of Benares, the oldest city in India. For three
thousand years stone has been laid on stone to keep this city
with its haughty towers and sombre domes above the rushing and
destroying currents of the sacred river. The river like a liquid
ax is continually cutting away the foundations of the city. At
night you can hear the whispering Ganges gnawing at the stone
embankments. And that is why all the tall towers of Benares lean
slightly over the water's edge. Their roots are being cut as
beavers cut the roots of trees. And any Hindu who comes into
Benares feels the age of India; she has lived very long--indeed
too long, and it seems time no more clings to her than the
morning dew clings to the lion's mane.
We went through Benares in a long, narrow file. The camels went
first, and the monkey, who had jumped off my shoulder, was
leaping from roof to roof following the tide of the caravan.
Sometimes he would run ahead and chatter; and then suddenly
disappear among roofs and walls. Then he would rush back to talk
to me. I fastened two silver bells dangling from silver chains to
the elephant's sides, and the cool sound of the bells sank into
the cooler serenity of the Indian evening. People were walking
about in purple and gold togas; on the house-tops were pigeons
whose throats shone like iridescent beads. Through latticed
balconies you could see the faces of women with eyes warm and
tranquil as the midnight.
We had not gone very far when Kari put out his trunk and took a
peacock fan out of a lady's hand as she leant against the railing
of a balcony. He then proceeded to give it to me. I made him
stop and give it back to its owner. The lady, however, would not
take it. "Oh, little dreamer of the evening," she said, "cool
thyself with my peacock fan. Thy elephant is very wise, but I am
afraid he is no worse a scamp than thou art."
I took the fan, made my bow to the lady and went on. Hardly had
we gone two more blocks when the screaming and jabbering monkey
fell upon us. Behind him on the roof of one of the houses we saw
a man with a long cudgel which he shook at the monkey. I stopped
the elephant again and said to the man, "Why art thou irate when
the evening is so cool, little man of the city?"
"That monkey! Ten thousand curses upon him!" he said. "He has
been teasing my parrot in its cage, and has plucked so many of
its feathers that it now looks like a beaked rat."
"I shall indeed punish this wayward monkey," I answered. "But
thou knowest that monkeys are no less wayward than thou and I."
At this the man on the roof got very angry and began to hurl all
kinds of abuses at me, but I prodded the elephant with my foot
and he walked on, while the swearing and cursing of the little
man of the city resounded in the stillness of the night. Nothing
befell us that night as we took shelter in the open grounds
outside of the city.
The following morning long before day-break, I heard nothing but
the beat, beat, beat of unknown feet on the dusky pavement of
Benares. It seemed as though the stillness of the night were
hurrying away. I left my animals where they were and went in
quest of these beating feet. There is something sinister in this
walk of the Hindu. The Hindu walks with a great deal of poise, in
fact, very much like an elephant, but he also has the agility of
the panther. I did not realize it until that early morning when I
heard the moving feet, as one hears dogs on the hurrying heels of
a stag.
Soon I reached the river bank where I saw thousands and
thousands of pilgrims crowding the steps of the Ghaut, the
staircase leading to the river, bathing and waiting to greet the
dawn. As I followed their example and took my bath, there arose
over the swaying crowd and the beating feet, a murmur like the
spray of foam on the seashore after the breakers have dashed
against the beach. Then the day broke like two horses of livid
light rushing through the air. In the tropics the day-break is
very sudden. Hardly had those streaks of light spent themselves
through the sky and over the waters, when a golden glow fell upon
the faces of the people and they raised their hands in a gesture
of benediction, greeting the morning sun which rose like a
mountain of crimson under a tide of gold. All of us said our
morning prayer, thousands of voices intoning together.
I could not stay at the Ghaut very long, however. I knew my
animals would be looking for me, so I hastened back. Lo and
behold, this sight greeted me! The monkey was sitting on the
neck of the elephant, and Kari, who had never been accustomed to
that sort of thing was running all around, raising his trunk and
bending it backwards to reach the monkey in frantic efforts to
shake him off. The one spot that an elephant cannot shake,
however, is his neck, so the monkey stayed there perfectly calm,
looking into space, secure in his seat.
I shouted to Kari to stop, and seeing me, he came rushing towards
me, trembling. He made an effort to shake Kopee off, but the
monkey was glued to his neck. I swore at Kopee and told him to
get off. He looked down at me as if nothing had happened. I, too,
was very irritated, for even I had never seen a monkey on an
elephant's neck. That is considered very improper. I threw a
stone at the monkey and he jumped from the elephant's neck, went
straight up a tree and stayed there. I patted Kari's back and
tried to soothe him. Then I took him by the ear and we walked
into town.
Kari loved human beings; the more he saw them, the happier he
felt. He glided by them like a human child. I was very proud of
him and his behavior. As we went on our way, a mouse ran out of a
hole in the foundations of a house in front of us. Kari turned
around, curled up his trunk, put it in his mouth and ran. You see
elephants are not afraid of anything except mice, for a mouse can
crawl into an elephant's trunk and disappear in his head. I was
humiliated beyond measure at Kari's behavior. He did not stop
till he reached the open ground which we had left half an hour
before. The monkey was still sitting in the tree. Seeing us, he
shook a purse at me. He had stolen somebody's purse and was
holding it in his hands waiting for it to be ransomed.
Monkeys are very much like bandits. Once, I remember, my little
sister who was two months old, was lying in a basket on the
veranda. Suddenly we heard her crying, and going out on the
veranda found that she was not there. Basket and all had
disappeared. Then we looked up at a tree and there was an
enormous baboon looking down at us, while with one hand he held
the basket, which was resting on a branch. My father, however,
knew what to do. He sent a servant at once to the bazaar, and in
the meantime brought all of the fruit in the house and spread it
on the floor of the veranda. The monkey shook his head, meaning
that was not ransom enough for him. Very soon the servant
returned with an enormous quantity of bananas. The baboon
immediately came down, and it was remarkable how he brought down
the basket without upsetting it.
My mother, all this while, was weeping silently, leaning against
the door. But now her grief was turned to gladness, for lo, and
behold, there was the baby asleep in the basket on the veranda,
while the baboon sat on a pile of bananas giving a strange monkey
call to other monkeys.
Scarcely had we taken the baby into the house and shut the glass
doors of the veranda, when we heard monkeys hooting and calling
from all directions, leaping from tree to tree and falling with a
great thud on our roof. In ten minutes the veranda became a
regular parliament of monkeys chattering over their dinners.
After this we were very careful about the baby. Every time she
was put out, a man or woman with a stick always watched over her.
Remembering now what had happened to my sister years ago, I
called to the men of the caravan who had not yet started and told
them the monkey had the purse. True enough, one of them was
accusing his servant of having stolen his purse. I told them to
buy some bananas and leave them under the tree, and in the course
of the day the monkey would come down, leave the purse and take
the bananas. I had been humiliated by my elephant, and now being
disgusted with my monkey, I took Kari into town again. This time
I had my _ankus_ with me, so that in case he should run away
again I could prick his neck and make him behave.
We went by jewelers' shops where they were cutting diamonds, and
stopped in front of the goldsmith's door. Seeing us wait there,
the smith came out. "What do you want, do you want gold rings for
your elephant's tusks?" You know they put rings on elephant's
tusks as human beings put gold in their teeth.
"His tusks have just begun to sprout; they're too beautiful to
spoil with rings yet," I answered.
"But my rings always make tusks more beautiful," was his retort.
I answered, "All the city folk think that what they do makes
everything beautiful. Why don't they make their dirty city
beautiful?"
The smith was angry. "If thou be not a buyer of gold, nor a
vendor of silver, tarry not at my door; I have no time for
beggars."
As we trotted off, I called back, "I do not sell silver, nor do I
buy gold, but when my elephant grows up, he will have such tusks
that you will cast eyes of envy on them. But this elephant will
live more than one hundred and twenty-five years and thou shalt
be dead by then, and so there will be no chance of soiling his
ivory by buying thy gold."
We walked on very silently through the city, and then of a sudden
a pack of dogs were upon us. We knew not whence they had come.
Kari was as dignified as a mountain; he never noticed them, but
the less attention he paid to them, the more audacious the dogs
grew. They came after us and I did not know what to do, as I did
not even have a stone to throw at them. In a few moments, we were
hemmed in by packs of dogs. Quickly now, Kari turned round and in
an instant lifted a dog into the air with his trunk. As the dog
would have been dashed into bits, I yelled into his ear,
"Brother, brother, do not kill him, but let him down gently, he
will not bite you."
At this moment the dog gave such a terrible cry of pain as the
trunk was coming down that Kari stopped and slowly brought him to
the ground. The dog, however, was already dead; the pressure of
the trunk had killed him, and the other dogs, seeing his fate,
had already run away.
Kari walked rapidly out of the city and I was heart-sick. He went
straight to the river bank and with great difficulty walked down
the steps of the Ghaut and buried all except his trunk in the
water. He stood there knowing that I knew that he had done
something wrong and he was trying to cleanse himself of it. I,
too, took my bath.
Late in the afternoon, we went back and found Kopee still sitting
on the same tree and looking for us, as the caravan had left long
ago. Judging by the banana peels under the trees, we realized he
had had his dinner. Kari and I, however, were very hungry and we
were both sick of the city. We did not want to see it again, so I
called to the monkey to follow and urged the elephant to go on to
the nearest forest. Kopee, with one leap, jumped on my neck as I
sat on the elephant's back.
This ended Kari's expedition to the city. It is better for
animals to be where the jungle is, for the jungle is sweeter and
kinder than that wilderness of stones--the city.