ALPHA AND OMEGA
Am-ma was fishing. Breast deep in the water, which in the early dawn
stretched like a shining shield to meet the pale primrose vestments of
the coming day, his bodiless head and shoulders slid sedately over the
surface like some strange kind of wild-fowl; for his hands, clasped at
the back of his curly frizz of hair, held the apex of a conical,
reed-distended net, shaped like a pair of wings. His eyes were closed,
and, despite all lack of visible movement, the tenseness of every
muscle, the strained look of every curve, showed that he was on the
alert for something; that something, being the first hint of possible
prey sent by his hidden feet as they felt, like hands, over the bottom.
Felt lightly, buoyantly, with scarce more pressure than the water
itself, until, at the first suspicion of a fish lying half-buried in
the sand, they would fling themselves air-wards to change places with
his head; and that, with the net twirled dexterously above it, would go
down like an extinguisher over the suspicious ridge or furrow.
Sometimes--most often, of course,--they proved to be nothing else; but
sometimes, again, there would be a pause, during which the black legs
would remain uppermost, and then, once more, the black head would come
air-wards with a wriggling fish, held, if it happened to be a small
one, in its white teeth. For Am-ma had not been provided by nature with
a pouch, like the pelicans who were fishing hard by; and, being
absolutely destitute of clothing and pockets, had to sidle sedately to
the bank with each prize before seeking another, since both hands and
feet were needed for its capture. Otherwise, his method of fishing was
little removed from the birds,--the net being considered as his beak.
If anything, it was the more primitive of the two, since the pelicans
fished in companies, drawing a serried line round each likely shallow;
whereas Am-ma had all the distrust of his fellow which marks man in his
earliest development. For, even amongst his kind, Am-ma was held to be
barbarian; though, Heaven knows! the six or seven millions of wild
tribes and forest races in India which go to make up its two hundred
and eighty, are primitive enough. Those six or seven millions, frankly,
absolutely savage, who, as the census puts it, are 'not to be
specified'; remaining, as they do, untouched by either the
civilizations or religions with which they have come in contact. Six or
seven millions, whose very superstitions are their own monopoly!
Some there were among these fisher folk of Eshwara who, like Gu-gu,
were faintly leavened with latter-day learning, faintly amenable to
latter-day standards; but Am-ma's dull brain was satisfied with what it
had inherited; which included, amongst other things, sight, hearing,
touch, keen almost beyond belief. So he opened his eyes at a sound
which, to an ordinary person, would have been as inaudible as the swift
coming of sunlight in the sky; and his sight told him immediately what
it was in detail. A canoe was coming down the lagoon with two men in
it. Now there was only one canoe in Eshwara, and that belonged to
Pundit Ramanund. He had been over the black water, and learnt, amongst
a number of other strange new things which were of no use, how to
paddle a canoe--his own or another's! For what good was a canoe when
you did not know the sandbanks? And how could you know the sand-banks
unless you swam over them and dived down to them? Then, if you could do
that, what was the good of a canoe? An air-bag, or even an earthen pot
under the pit of your stomach, on which you could lie, was sufficient
for all practical purposes.
Therefore one of the men Am-ma knew must be Ramanund; the other, by his
turban, was a Mahomedan. Did _he_ know the sand-banks? Am-ma shaded his
eyes with one hand, and watched to see. Evidently not; the canoe stuck
here, there, everywhere, yet still came on slowly. But if the occupants
wanted--as everybody seemed to want nowadays--to cross over to the
other side--that other side where the red brick headworks of the canal
showed like a plinth--to those strange, new white tents where the Lord
was expected; then they would find the navigation more intricate.
Am-ma being conservative inevitably, smiled at the certainty, closed
his eyes, and went on fishing; till he opened them again at a shout.
"Which way?" he echoed, his voice sounding hollow from its nearness to
the water. "By the deep stream, always."
"And which is that, fool?" came Roshan's voice angrily.
"Where there is most water," returned Am-ma calmly. "Cease from
paddling, and the canoe will tell you without fail. Such things know of
themselves. They are wise."
"But we want to get over to the camp as quickly as we can," said
Ramanund, interrupting an impatient retort of Roshan Khan's, with an
aside to the effect that they had better not alienate their only hope.
The river was lower than he had expected, or he would never have
suggested crossing in the boat, as quicker than the bridge; yet there
was not time to go back.
Am-ma smiled cunningly. "None will get quicker than he can, my masters;
that much is certain." Being pleased with his own wit, he laughed, and
kicking up his heels, ducked his head, to come up again a few yards
nearer in shallower water, where he could stand and salaam.
"The noble people," he said gravely, "must surely follow the stream if
they go in company; but if they will quit comfort, and wade, carrying
their boat here and there, I, Am-ma, will show them. But it is
annoyance. Without going with the stream there is always annoyance."
"It is better than going back or sticking still, anyhow!" remarked
Roshan Khan to his companion; adding in Hindustani--"Then come
quick--there is room for thee and thy net, and we will pay thee."
Am-ma shook his head. "There is weight enough for difficulties without
me, my masters; and here or there is one to a fisher." So saying, he
closed his net with one dexterous twist, slipped his arms through it so
that it hung behind his back, and struck across the shallows.
"Yonder is our aim," he said briefly, pointing to a blue thread of
smoke rising from the water's edge a good way down stream. "They burn a
dead man there to-day; it is ever a good guide to the living."
"'Twill be the Brahmin lad the _Huzoors_ killed by mistake with their
_Dee-puk-rag_. Didst hear the tale?" asked Ramanund. Why, he would have
been puzzled to tell, since he had no definite desire to foster
ill-feeling or fear; but it had been the talk of the town till those
small hours which end gossip, even in India, and the talk had confirmed
the theory, which so many of his kind hold firmly, if vaguely, that the
mass of the people feel the English rule to be unjust.
But Am-ma was not of the people. He was of the six million and odd
barbarians. He turned, showing his broad white teeth in a grin. "Ay!
'Twas well done. Now, as in old days, folk will know who is true
leader." There was no doubt, no fear in his mind. Had not his tribe
always, of old, chosen as its chief and God the man who could hold a
torch in each hand at arms' length, one lighted, the other unlit, and
bid the flame pass from one to the other seven times? And as for a
man's life, was it not always expedient that one should die for the
people upon occasions?
Ramanund frowned; perhaps because Am-ma concluded by ordering the crew
out of the boat, and the water was cold. It could scarcely have been
anything else which brought annoyance, since he, like most of his kind,
prided himself on being truly a British subject.
So, paddling and pushing, wading, and even carrying, they crossed from
shallow to shallow, from sand-bank to sand-bank, led by Am-ma, swimming
and diving like a duck, or walking on ahead unconcernedly, his eyes
fixed in keen-sighted approval on that group close to the water's edge,
towards which he steered.
Yet it was a gruesome group, in truth, which circled round that
solitary and still more gruesome figure in the centre. A figure
squatting like the rest (since, when wood is dear, funeral piles must
be restricted) in full view, yet mercifully obscured for the most part
by the heavy column of smoke which rose straight to a level with the
leaping flames, then, tilting sideways before the intermittent breeze
of early dawn, drifted westward, to hide those white tents upon the
horizon.
"Above or below, fool!" called Ramanund, sharply, as they neared the
shore. "I am no _Dom_, like thou, to choose my way among dead men's
bones."
The allusion to the semi-aboriginal tribe who earn their livelihood by
streaking the dead, brought a frown this time to Am-ma's face.
"I am no _Dom_, either," he retorted, "and were I one, thou wouldst be
glad of my guidance to the fire some day, Pundit-_jee!_" Roshan Khan
listened with the wholehearted contempt of his race and creed. "Be
quick, either way," he said, scornfully. "We have bare time, as it is."
Yet he, also, swerved from that gruesome group, which, as the
two--dressed as Europeans, save for their turbans--stepped ashore and
hurried off in the direction of the camp, stood up in a linked
semi-circle to salaam, then squatted again with a clank of leg irons.
Am-ma, his task over, had paused in the deeper water, and was once more
sidling sedately. The sun had risen with the inconceivable swiftness
with which it rises from a dead-level, treeless plain, and shone
reddish-yellow, like a fire, on his wet skin. The shadow of that dense
column of smoke sidled sedately on the water also, shifting with the
shifting spirals of the reality.
"Had he spilt blood?" asked Am-ma, suddenly, as that something,
half-hidden in the smoke, seemed to dissolve, sending a great fountain
of sparks, bright even in the sunlight, up into the air.
One in the semicircle clucked denial.
"A _jogi_--they say of Gorakh-nath's monastery--had him for disciple.
And there was _dhatoora_ in the sweetmeats, for sure. Whether he was
strangler, God knows! Perhaps. Yet such travellers deserved poison; who
but a fool trusts a strange hand?"
A big man at the end of the semicircle, who had a sinister face despite
his good conduct badge, looked round hastily to where, a little
distance off, the two jail-warders in charge were dividing a smoke on
the sly with swift mysterious bubblings; then lowered his voice.
"Ay! none but fools; and _he_--" (a nod towards that thing in the
centre which was now dying down to red embers pointed his meaning) "is
the first; not the last. I, Gopi, _gosain_,[6] say so. Let fools wait
and see. Wise men will not."
There was a clank of leg irons as if some stirred uneasily. "Thou canst
talk," murmured a voice. "When thy 'tucket' (ticket of leave)--God
knows how got!--is so nigh."
Gopi smiled comfortably. "Ay! To-morrow, and the next day, and the
next. Then, once more, purification in the Pool of Immortality. Once
more, sanctification at the 'Cradle of the Gods.'" He cast his eyes
upwards unctuously, like an Eastern Chadband, so rehearsing the part of
piety he meant to play once more on his release.
Am-ma nodded his bodiless head cheerfully. "There will be no Pool of
Immortality for the pilgrims this year. So Gorakh-nath says. The canal
will drain the spring. But then, he is angry at being turned out of his
gun. The people will not give so much--that is it!"
The _gosain's_ face lowered at the news. "Turned out? Who hath done
it?"
Am-ma's eyes were closed, for his feet had found likely ground; he
paused a second, tensely alert--
"He who comes," he said, suddenly; "the Master."
As he spoke, the quick thud, followed by a lingering reverberation of
the first saluting gun, told that the Viceroy of India was entering his
camp.
"The Lord hath come!" said the circle of prisoners, in awed tones.
All save Gopi, the _gosain_. He sneered. "The Lord-_sahib_. Ay! he may
be that--but the Master--no!"
Am-ma gave a contented little chuckle.
"He killed _that_, anyhow," he said nodding again, "and he hath the
_Dee-puk-rag_. Is not that enough for poor folk?" Then his feet,
feeling something far out of sight in the still deep waters, came
air-wards, and his head went down.
When it came up again, the gang of prisoners were being filed back to
gaol, leaving the still glowing embers of what had been a man to send a
clear blue smoke into the clear blue sky.
"They have the _Dee-puk-rag_--that is enough," murmured the fisher to
himself as he slid with the stream.