“WHERE ARE WE?”
Each to his own heaven. Some men prefer golf. To Ommony, the seventh
heaven of delight—the apex of a heterodox career was reached that hour
in a curtained howdah, lurching into unknown night. And the best of it
was that he knew the future must hold even more thrilling mysteries.
There was going to be no anticlimax.
He was uncomfortable, sweating so that his dripping cotton garments
clung to him, breathing the smell of elephant and dog and Dawa Tsering
(which is no boudoir mixture), possibly in deadly danger. And he was
utterly contented, having no regret, no backward yearning.
The curtains that cut off the view could not limit imagination. He
enjoyed a mental picture of the string of camels leading and the
elephants mysteriously padding in the wake, beneath colored stars and a
blue-black sky, between broken walls and shadowy trees, toward an
obscure horizon. The dusty footfalls were as music. The mahout’s
occasional expletives were an open sesame to mystery beyond the reach of
ordinary men—and that, perhaps, explained nine-tenths of the delight.
It is doing what the other fellows can not do, that satisfies; and so,
through vanity, the gods make use of us. No millions, nor fame, nor
offers of a sterilized and safety-infested Heaven could have tempted
Ommony to forego that journey in the howdah, although there were not
wanting opportunities to steal away.
Now and then there were halts, when muffled voices of unseen men on
foot, who turned up out of the night, delivered terse commands that were
barely audible and quite incomprehensible through the howdah curtains.
Time and again he could have tumbled out of the howdah and lowered
himself to the earth by the elephant’s tail. But he preferred to act
Jonah in a whale’s belly, especially since the whale was willing.
He knew that with the dog’s help he could have tracked the caravan to
its destination and so have learned the details of the course it took.
But he also guessed that none who saw it pass would answer questions;
and at the other end there was the risk that he might find a blank wall,
silence, and perhaps a knife’s edge for inquisitive intruders. To play
for safety—to look for it—to expect it, would be ridiculous. He must
run all risks without a gesture of self-protection. He was glad he had
not even a revolver with him, for a hidden weapon might betray him into
rashness of the wrong kind. He made up his mind, if he were threatened,
to rely solely on whatever wits the gods of emergency might sharpen for
him at the moment.
Meanwhile, he felt reasonably sure of one thing: that the elephants were
a rajah’s property. The camels might possibly belong to some one else,
but it was more likely they were also the same rajah’s. There might be a
rajah who would not ask questions, but who was linked in some chain of
more or less esoteric brotherhood, akin perhaps to Masonry. If so, the
procession would arouse no comment on the countryside, for it is no
man’s business and to no man’s profit to inquire too closely into a
rajah’s private doings; he who does so may count with almost absolute
precision on what the jury will subsequently call an accident. “I don’t
know, I didn’t see” and “I forget” are difficult, exasperating pegs on
which to hang a chain of evidence.
At the end of two hours’ swaying Dawa Tsering’s stomach, void of
embarrassing content, began to recover. His sunny disposition followed
suit.
“Loose me, Gupta Rao. I am sorry I bawled out thy other name. I will
slay this fool who heard me. Then none will be the wiser, and thou and I
are friends again.”
“Do you hope ever to see Spiti?” Ommony inquired.
“By the wind that blows there, and the women who laugh there, surely! I
have a treasure tucked away in Spiti—earned on the te-rains. Loose me,
Gupta Rao, or I call thee by thy other name again! I can shout louder,
now my belly aches less.”
“Shout, and let us see what happens,” Ommony suggested.
The small boy’s mind that had its kingdom in the Hillman’s bulk
considered that a moment.
“Nay,” he said presently, “I think that an evil might happen. The luck
is not good lately. Who would have thought a camel would kick me? The
devils who live in the hills around Spiti owe me for many a good turn I
did them. The devils of these parts seem very mischievous. I had better
behave myself.”
“How about a promise?” Ommony suggested.
“You mean, a promise between me and you? But I would have to keep it.
That might be inconvenient.”
“I would promise for my part to assist you to return to Spiti at the
proper time.”
“Oh, very well. Only I shall judge the proper time by when the devils
have turned friendly. Loose me. I _will_ behave myself.”
Ommony undid the rope and the Tibetan, far from objecting, stuck a stump
of candle on the bare wood of the howdah frame, lighted it, produced a
pack of cards, and challenged Dawa Tsering to a game. They played
interminably, both men cheating, both appealing to Ommony to settle
constant arguments, although there was no money involved.
“My honor is at stake,” Dawa Tsering grumbled after about a dozen
furious disputes. “This ignorant Tibetan says I am a liar.”
“So you are,” said Ommony.
“That may be. But he has no right to give himself airs. He is the
greater one. Look! He has five cards tucked under his knee, whereas I
had but two!”
He shoved the Tibetan so that his knee moved and uncovered the missing
cards, two of which slipped down between the howdah and the elephant’s
flank, thus putting an end to the game.
“But I have dice!” said Dawa Tsering; and from then until dawn they
murdered time and peace with those things, while Diana, her tongue
hanging out with the heat, panted and shifted restlessly, but Ommony
snatched scraps of sleep, dimly aware that Dawa Tsering was losing more
often than he won, growing more and more indignant with devils who
refused to bring him luck.
“I will obey thee, Gupta Rao, until the luck changes,” he said at last.
“My dice are loaded, yet even so I can not win! Luck is funny stuff.”
It was about ten minutes after dawn, the choicest hour in India, alive
with cock-crow and the color-drenched solemnity of waking day, when the
tired elephant came to a final halt in some sort of enclosure, and
shuffled a slow measure to call the mahout’s attention to sore feet. At
a sharp word of command the beast lay down, like a hillside falling.
Diana sprang out through the curtains and Ommony followed, yawning and
sitting down on the elephant’s forefoot to pretend to watch the mahout’s
ingenious ministrations to a corn, while he surveyed the scene from
under lowered eyelids.
The other elephants, already offloaded, had shuffled away to a roofed
enclosure at the far end of a compound, where great heaps of food
awaited them and equally huge vats of water. The camels, still burdened,
were lying down in picturesque confusion, carrying on a camel
conversation, which consists in snarling at the world in general. Along
one side of the compound was a row of mules, tied by the heel with their
rumps toward the wall, squealing for breakfast, which was being brought
by naked boys, and by a _bhisti_, who poured water into buckets from a
goatskin bag. The opposite side of the compound was formed by a low
two-storied building with a double-decked veranda supported on square
wooden posts running the entire length. There were flies, much litter
and a most amazing smell.
Over the roof of the building, where a long line of crows formed a
mischievously interested audience, there appeared a jumble of other
roofs that made no pretense to architecture. Small-town noises, such as
a smithy bellows and the hammer-ring on iron, the patter of goats’ feet
and the heavier tread of cattle being driven forth to graze, arose on
all sides. There was one minaret in sight, and one Hindu temple-roof
ornate with carvings of deific passion. The compound gate was locked and
there was a guard of two men standing by, not evidently armed, but
obviously sullen and alert. There was no sign of the Lama, nor of any
women.
After a minute or two Maitraya looked out from a door midway under the
long balcony and greeted Ommony with the familiarity of boon
companionship established by journeying together. It only needs one
night of shared discomfort on the road to produce that feeling, or else
its opposite. One either hates or likes one’s fellow traveler; there is
no middle ground on the dawn of the second day out.
“Do you know where we are?” Maitraya asked cheerfully.
Ommony did not know, but he was no such fool as to admit it. In his
capacity of wiseacre he gave the mahout good advice regarding elephants’
corns, about which he knew nothing; in his rôle of privileged
extortioner he demanded arrack from a man who seemed to be the master of
the stables, and established friendship with the elephant by giving the
grateful beast two-thirds of a bottle-full of the atrocious stuff.
Meanwhile, Diana was exploring on her own account, alarming many mules,
offending camels, and reducing elephants to a state of old-maidish
nervousness, at which their mahouts yelled in chorus, offering to throw
sticks, dung and missiles of all sorts, but daring no more than the
threat. Diana, solemnly indifferent to abuse, and contemptuous of
elephants since she had ridden on the back of one, snooted around in
corners until she reached the end door under the balcony; and finding
that open, she entered. There was an instant chorus of women’s voices.
Maitraya grinned.
“Gupta Rao,” he said, “I have seen a many curiosities in my day, but
those dancing girls surpass all! If they are Tibetans, Krishna! I will
risk my life and go to Tibet! _I_ saw them descend from the elephants,
and Vishnu! Vishnu! I assure you my heart thumps! Such beauty! Such
chastity redeemed by mirth! Such modesty of manner uncontaminated by
humility! I foresee adventures, Gupta Rao! That divinity of yours who
broke your pocketbook in Bikanir will have a dozen strong competitors!
Krishna! I am impassioned! I am enflamed with love! If I can find a
shrine of Hanuman, I will make gifts and a sacrifice this morning!”
Diana emerged, led out through the door by Samding, who held her collar;
seeing Ommony, the _chela_ signaled to him with a smile to call the dog.
“I hate that _chela_!” said Maitraya, grinning. “Did I not tell you I
had an intuition to be jealous of him! Is it possible those twice-born
creatures are the _chela’s_ wives?”
“Whom are you calling twice-born?” Ommony demanded, instantly assertive
of a Brahman’s rights.
“_Pranam!_” said Maitraya. “But wait until you have seen them!”
Impelled by a feeling that perhaps the luck might favor him, and partly
in order to live up to his Bhat reputation, Ommony strolled toward the
door whence Samding and the laughter had emerged. It was slightly ajar.
But he had scarcely reached it when the Tibetan who had been fellow
traveler during the night touched him on the shoulder, led him back to a
door at the extreme opposite end, and almost violently shoved him into a
room furnished with a clean wooden table and a bench. Food was on the
table—loads of it—fruit, milk, chupatties, honey, butter, boiled rice,
and flowers enough to have graced a wedding feast. The Tibetan slammed
the door, and Ommony heard him turn a key on the outside.
However, there were two doors to the room, and the window was not
fastened. He went first to the window and made sure that Diana was
within hail; she was watching Dawa Tsering gorge his breakfast from a
bowl in the shade of the compound wall not fifteen feet away. Having
satisfied himself on that score, he discovered that the inner door was
not locked, so he attacked the food, that being an important
consideration when you don’t know what the next five minutes may bring
forth. The locked outer door, and the guard on the compound gate were
not exactly reassuring.
The Lama came in through the inner door just as Ommony finished eating.
He was alone, no longer dressed in the warrior-like garb of the night
before, and looking old again—immensely old, because the morning light
streamed through the slats of the window and showed all his wrinkles.
The snuff-brown color of his robe was streaked with old-gold by the
sunlight. In that moment one could believe he was a rather world-weary,
very wise old saint; it was next to impossible not to believe it.
Yet there was humor in his eyes and a gaze
unconquerable—blue-gray—very wide awake. His frame for the moment
seemed shrunken, yet his height, though he stooped from shoulders that
seemed almost too weary to support his head, was considerably more than
Ommony’s.
“Peace perfect you in all her ways!”
The blessing was solemn but the voice rang with assurance, as if he knew
that his will to bless was infinitely overpowering.
“And to you, my father, peace,” said Ommony. He had stood up when the
Lama entered.
“And the food was enough? And good enough?” the Lama asked. “The journey
not distressing?”
“Where are we?” Ommony retorted bluntly. But the Lama merely smiled
until his wrinkles were all in movement, and the fearless old eyes shone
with kindly humor:
“My son, he who knows _where_ he is knows more than all the gods. He who
knows _what_ he is knows all things. Is it not enough that each moment
we are where we should be? Is not the whole universe a mystery? How
shall the part be more comprehensible than the whole, since it must
partake of the quality of the whole?”
But Ommony did not propose to be put off by wise conundrums. His jaw
came forward obstinately.
“I was locked in here,” he said. “I have a right to know why.”
“To keep out those whose ignorance might cause them to intrude,” the
Lama answered, exactly as if he were teaching school. “It is not good to
place temptation in the path of the inquisitive.”
Feeling as if stilts had been kicked from under him, Ommony tried again,
more bluntly:
“You _know_ who I am,” he began, speaking English; but the Lama
interrupted in Urdu:
“My son, if I knew that, I should be wiser than all those whose duty is
to rule the stars! You have answered to the name of Gupta Rao.”
“For God’s sake,” said Ommony, again in English, “why not tell me
outright what your business is? I’ll _begin_ by being frank. I’m spying
on you! I would like to believe you are above suspicion. I’m in doubt.”
“My son,” said the Lama, answering in Urdu, “no man is above suspicion.
The sun and the moon cast their shadows, and therein the destroyers
lurk. Doubt is the forerunner of decision. Shadows move. All revelation
comes to him who waits.”
That sounded like a promise. Ommony jumped at it.
“We have one interest in common—Tilgaun. Why treat me as an enemy? Why
not clear the air now by telling me the truth about yourself?”
“My son,” said the Lama, in Urdu again, “no man can ever be told the
truth, which either is in him, or it is not in him. If it is, he will
_see_ the truth. If it is not, he will see delusion and will confuse
himself with surmise. He who looks for negation beholds it. He who looks
for truth beholds negation also, but perceives the truth beyond. Wherein
have I shown you enmity?”
For a moment there was silence. Ommony tried to think of another way of
getting past the Lama’s guard, but the old man’s impersonal dignity was
like armor.
“There are things you may see, but you must put your own interpretation
on them,” said the Lama. “One by one we attain to understanding. The
wise ponder in silence, but the fools are noisy, and the noise precedes
them to their doom.”
That sounded like a threat, but his face was as kindly as ever, rippled
again with quivering wrinkles, as a smile broke and vanished into the
recesses of brown-ivory skin.
“Come!” he said; but instead of opening the door behind him he strode
first to the window, threw the shutters back, glanced out and made a
clucking noise. Diana jumped in, and Ommony wondered; she was trained to
be wary of strangers, and was not given to obeying even her master’s
friends unless carefully charged with that duty by Ommony himself. She
thrust her nose into the Lama’s hand before she came and fussed over
Ommony.
The Lama led the way into a narrow passage on to which many doors opened
to right and left; it extended from end to end of the long building, its
walls forming a double support for the heavy beams of the floor above.
Two-thirds of the way along it he opened a door on the right and a
chorus of women’s voices burst through the opening. But there were no
women to be seen yet, because the door opened on to a gallery; there was
a lower story on that side of the building, and the gallery ran around
two sides of a large room, screened from it by a breast-high balustrade.
The Lama led the way to the farther end, where the gallery was twenty
feet wide and Samding waited, standing beside a spread Tibetan prayer
mat, marvelously dressed in ivory white and looking like a young god.
However, god or no god, he had to alter the position of the mat by an
inch or two before the Lama would sit down, after which he motioned to
Ommony to be seated on the floor in the farther corner, where he could
see through a slit in the wooden panel and look down on the floor below.
It was a surprising room to discover close to mule- and
elephant-stables, but not so surprising as its occupants. The walls were
hung with painted curtains, and the floor was strewn with cushions on
which Indian women, many of them high-caste ladies, sat chattering with
girls who resembled no caste or tribe that Ommony had ever seen
anywhere. They were lively, full of laughter, young, but no more
beautiful, as far as actual features went, than any gathering of
normally good-looking women anywhere. Six or seven of them, if not
Tibetans, were at any rate of part-Mongolian origin; but Ommony counted
fourteen who fitted into no mental pigeon-hole of races he had seen and
studied.
In more than one way those fourteen and the Tibetans were all alike.
They were dressed in the same loose, almost Greek, white cotton robes;
they all wore stockings, which the native Indian women in the room did
not wear; and they used more or less the same gestures, were alert with
the same vivacity. But there the resemblance ended.
The fourteen were fair-complexioned; one had golden hair that hung in
long plaits—she would have looked like a German Gretchen, if it had not
been for the dress and something else—something quite indefinable.
The whole proceedings, the whole scene was like a weird figment of
imagination. There was nothing natural about it, simply because it was
too natural. It was not India. There were Moslem as well as Hindu ladies
in the room, betraying no self-consciousness and no objection to one
another’s presence; and there were actually low-caste
women—_sudras_[32]—chatting with the rest apparently on equal footing.
True, there was no food being passed around, but every other caste rule
seemed to be forgotten or deliberately flouted; yet there was no sign of
self-consciousness or strain.
They were talking Urdu, a few of them with difficulty, but it was next
to impossible to catch the conversation from the gallery because there
was so much of it—so many chattering and laughing all at once.
The fourteen girls in white kept glancing up at the gallery apparently
expecting some sort of signal, so Ommony had plenty of opportunity to
scan their features. He did not doubt they were the smuggled children
Benjamin had spoken of, only there were fourteen instead of seven. There
were therefore other agents besides Benjamin. But the fact in no way
simplified the mystery; rather it increased it. Their ages ranged at a
guess from seventeen to twenty-three or twenty-four which, allowing for
the years elapsed, tallied with Benjamin’s description near enough; and
they had grown to wholesome-looking womanhood. Not a trace of shyness.
No awkwardness. No vulgarity. Not one symptom of forced manners or
repression. The whole thing was incredible; yet there they were. And who
had educated them? The Lama? That seemed more impossible than for a
river to flow up-hill; he might have made priggish nuns of them, or
downright Tibetans, but not that. It began to be evident that there was
something worth investigating in the Ahbor country, or wherever else the
Lama kept his secrets!
It was the Lama who at last cut short the flow of talk. Sitting still on
the mat, where his head was not visible from below, he boomed a word in
Tibetan, as commanding as the gong that brings sea-engines to a halt,
and there was instant silence as in an aviary when the chattering birds
are frightened. Whatever he might be, the old man knew what drama
meant—and discipline. He whispered to Samding, and the _chela_, opening
a swinging door in the front of the gallery, walked down a carpeted
flight of steps to the floor below.
He was received in silence. He took from his breast the broken piece of
jade that Ommony had lost and that the Lama had recovered from the
courtesan, and holding it in both, hands on a level with his shoulders
passed among them, pausing to let each woman in turn devour it with her
eyes. Some of them appeared to fall into a state of superstitious
rapture; others were curious; all were respectful almost to the point of
worship. And the Lama watched them through a slit in the swinging gate
as if all destiny depended on the outcome, every tendon in him rigid;
the neck tendon stood out like a bow-string. Then suddenly, as if to
calm himself, he took snuff and rubbed his nose violently with his
thumb.
The _chela_, said nothing, but the women were allowed to touch him and
appeared to think the touch conferred a priceless boon. They laid a
finger of the right hand on his shoulder as he passed, and one woman, a
Moslem, who laid both hands on him and clung almost passionately, was
quietly reproved for it by two of the girls in white.
“The game begins to look political,” thought Ommony, watching the Lama
clean a snuff-filled nostril with a meditative forefinger.
“Vasantasena—umm! Now these women—I’ve always wondered why some genius
didn’t try to conquer India by winning the women first! They rule the
country anyhow.”
The Lama just then looked as calculating as a medieval cardinal, but
despite that air of playing a deep game for tremendous stakes, there was
now something almost Puck-like in his attitude. Ommony noticed for the
first time that his ears did not lie close to his head, were large and
slightly pointed at the top. Seen sidewise in the rather dim light there
was a faint suggestion about him of one of those gargoyles that survey
the street from a cathedral roof. He was even more interesting to watch
than the proceedings on the floor below.
Suddenly the Lama spoke again. When he did that his leathery throat
moved like a pelican’s swallowing a big fish, and the noise that came
out was hardly human—startling—so abrupt that it completely broke the
sequence of all other sounds. It monopolized attention. In the ensuing
silence he sat back, took snuff again, and seemed to lose all interest
in the proceedings.
But to Ommony the interest increased. The girls in white threw black
cloaks over their shoulders. The Hindu and Moslem women smothered
themselves in the impenetrable veils without which it is pollution to
face men-folk out-of-doors; and all of them, in groups of three or four,
each little group in charge of one of the Lama’s female family, who
shielded their faces in masked hoods that formed part of the black
cloaks, departed toward the street.
There was no doubt that they did go to the street; a door opened on to a
vestibule, and sunlight shone through a street door at its farther end.
Samding returned up the steps and gave the piece of jade to the Lama,
who stowed it somewhere in his bosom without glancing at it. Ommony
watched the _chela_ narrowly. Was he a European boy? There was something
in the clean strong outline of his face and in the lithe athletic figure
that might suggest that. But he was too abstract-looking—altogether too
impersonal and (the word was as vague as the impression Ommony was
trying to fix in his mind) too fascinating. No European youngster could
have looked as he did without stirring resentment in whoever watched.
Samding aroused in the beholder only admiration and an itching
curiosity.
-----
[32] Sudra: the lowest of the four great Hindu castes, which in fact,
although not always in theory, includes many of the merchants and
artizen classes, and some agriculturists.
THE LAMA’S LAW
_O ye who look to enter in through Discipline to Bliss,_
_Ye shall not stray from out the way, if ye remember this:_
_Ye shall not waste a weary hour, nor hope for Hope in vain,_
_If ye persist with will until self-righteousness is slain._
_If through the mist of mortal eyes, deluded, ye discern_
_That ye are holier than these, ye have the whole to learn!_
_If ye are tied with tangled pride because ye learn the Law,_
_Know then, your purest thoughts deny the Truth ye never saw!_
_If ye resent in discontent the searchlight of reproof,_
_Preferring praise, ye waste your days at sin’s not Soul’s behoof!_
_Each gain for self denies the Self that knows the self is vain._
_Who crowns accomplishment with pride must build the whole again!_
_But if, at each ascending step, more clearly ye perceive_
_That he must kill the lower will, who would the world relieve_
_And they are last who would be first, their effort thrown away;_
_Be patient then and persevere. Ye tread the Middle Way!_