DIANA REHEARSES A PART.
The moment the last woman had vanished from the room the Lama let
Samding help him to his feet and clucked, snapping his fingers to Diana.
She glanced at Ommony, he nodded, immensely curious, and promptly she
trotted to the Lama’s side as matter-of-factly as if she had known him
all her life.
The Lama and the _chela_ went down to the room below, taking Diana with
them. The _chela_ spread out the mat, rearranged it in accordance with
the Lama’s instructions, and the two sat down on it facing the balcony,
conversing in low tones, evidently waiting for something preordained to
happen. Diana sniffed around the room, inspecting cushions curiously,
but they took no apparent notice of her. After a minute or two she sat
down and looked bored. Instantly the Lama called to Ommony:
“Can you cause the dog to open her mouth, from where you are, without
speaking?”
Ommony stood up, his head and shoulders visible above the rail, and
seeing him Diana pricked an ear. The trick was simple enough; ever since
she was a puppy she had always dropped her jaw when he held up a finger
at her; by education, for his own amusement, he had simply encouraged
and fixed a habit. Her mouth opened, closed and opened wide again.
Samding laughed delightedly, but the Lama very seriously beckoned to
Diana to come nearer and she obeyed at a nod from Ommony. She wanted to
sit on the mat, but the Lama would not allow that; he pushed her away
and she squatted down facing the balcony, watching Ommony, awaiting
orders.
“Now again!” said the Lama.
Ommony raised his finger. The ear went up, the mouth opened and stayed
open until the finger was lowered.
The Lama was as pleased as a child with a toy. Diana would have been
satisfied to go through all her tricks, but a Tibetan entered through
the door the women had used. The Lama froze into immobility and Samding
followed suit.
There entered a man whom Ommony knew from his photographs—Prabhu
Singh—the almost middle-aged but younger son of a reigning rajah. He
knew him well by reputation—had admired him in the abstract because he
was notorious for independence and for fair, intelligent, outspoken and
constructive criticism of foreign rule. He was said to be an intimate of
Gandhi and was, in consequence, about as much appreciated by the ruling
powers as a hornet at a tea-party.
He was tall, lean, lithe, big-eyed under a plain silk turban and
extremely simply dressed in tussore stuff that showed every line of his
athletic figure—not very dark-skinned—clean-shaven except for a black
mustache. He wore no jewelry, strode barefooted with manly dignity to a
point midway between the Lama and the door, bowed low, and stood still.
Diana went up and sniffed him. He showed surprise, but laid his hand on
the dog’s head and rubbed her ear.
“Peace be with you. Peace perfect you in all her ways,” the Lama boomed.
“And to you, my father, peace,” he answered. “Was it well done? Was
anything lacking for your comfort? Have my servants failed in anything?
Were there enough elephants?”
“It is all good,” said the Lama.
“And the mission succeeded?”
“The first part.”
The Lama’s hand went into his bosom and produced the piece of jade.
Prabhu Singh approached to the edge of the mat, received the jade into
his hands, and stepped back to examine it, holding it to the light from
a window. He did not appear to have any superstitious reverence for it,
but handled it as if it were a work of art, rare and valuable.
“I am glad,” he said simply after about two minutes, handing it back to
the Lama, who returned it to his bosom. The _chela’s_ eyes were missing
nothing.
“San-fun-ho!” said the Lama suddenly; and the _chela_ stood up on the
mat. Was the stage-name his real one? The mystery increased.
Prabhu Singh’s attitude underwent an instant change. He became
embarrassed. He bowed three times with much more reverence than he had
shown the Lama, and when the _chela_ smiled the lineal descendant of a
hundred kings was as nervous as a small boy being introduced to a
bishop. Samding said something to him that Ommony could not catch, and
the murmured answer seemed to be no more than a conventional formula of
politeness. The _chela_ was as perfectly at ease as if he had been
receiving the homage of princes all his life.
Prabhu Singh bowed again three times and retreated backward, stumbling
against Diana and recovering his balance awkwardly. He appeared almost
physically frightened; yet he was famous on polo fields from end to end
of India, and was notorious for speaking his mind bluntly to viceroys at
real risk of personal liberty. His back to the door at last, he made his
escape with better grace, recovering presence of mind and remembering to
salute the Lama.
The moment the door shut the Lama turned on Samding and rebuked him in
Tibetan; Ommony could only catch occasional sentences; but it seemed
that the Lama was angry because Samding had not put the visitor at ease.
“That is only vanity—self-approval. Worshipers are mockers . . . turned
your head . . . I would rather see you pelted with stones . . . better
for you and for them . . . break the shell of the egg before the chicken
hatches . . . _schlappkapp!_ (whatever that meant) . . . dirt under your
feet will some day cover your grave . . . all these years and yet you
know so little . . . if you are going to fail you had better not begin
. . . presumption . . .”
It was a wonder of a discourse. Samding listened, standing for a while,
then sat down cross-legged—off the mat—facing the Lama—head bowed
humbly—not once moving until Diana came and sniffed his neck to find
out what the matter was.
That stopped the Lama’s flow of speech. He glanced up at the gallery and
called to Ommony in an absolutely normal tone of voice, as if he had
entirely forgotten the whole incident of Prabhu Singh’s visit and the
rebuke and all connected with it.
“Now again, my son. Make the dog do the acting again.”
Samding resumed his position on the mat at the Lama’s right hand; he,
too, seemed to dismiss the lecture as if it had never taken place; and
Ommony, directing from the gallery, made Diana open and shut her mouth.
The Lama insisted on her doing it again and again and at last he and
Samding chuckled together over it as if it were the greatest joke that
ever happened.
Still chuckling, they got up and left the room by the door leading to
the street, taking the mat with them and locking the door as they went
out. No explanation; not a word to Ommony as to what was expected of
him; not even a backward glance at the gallery to suggest that they had
him in mind. Ommony sat still for a while; then, whistling Diana, he
made his way to the gallery door, found that open, and proceeded to
explore; but he found all the other doors along the passage locked,
except the one at the end that opened into the room assigned to himself.
He looked through the window into the compound, where there were all
kinds of noise and confusion. Four men were trying to throw a mule and
several other mules had broken loose; an elephant was lying on its back
near a water-butt while two mahouts scrubbed its belly; and two bull
camels were fighting with everything except their tails while twenty
onlookers heaped humorous advice on rather bored-looking experts who
were watching for a chance to rope the brutes by the leg and separate
them.
And in the midst of all that riot, with the sun pouring down on them and
crows and sparrows hopping about among them, Maitraya and his troupe sat
on boxes, repeating their lines to one another.
It appeared that the devil’s part already had been written. Maitraya
held a small scroll in addition to his own, and was trying to teach the
lines to Dawa Tsering, who was disposed to believe he could play the
devil better if left to his own resources.
“I tell you, a devil is devilish!” he shouted. “A devil is like one of
those bull camels—you never know what he’ll do next! Or like a
mule—you have to look out for his teeth and heels! This devil of yours
is like a pretty gentleman. Here, let me show you how to act the devil!”
But Maitraya stuck to it, patiently correcting the Hillman’s
mispronunciation of the Urdu words. Catching sight of Ommony through the
window, he called to him to come out and take part in the rehearsal; but
the door was still locked, and though he could have climbed through the
window easily enough Ommony hardly liked to confess that he was locked
in, not knowing what effect that news might have on Maitraya. After a
moment’s hesitation he excused himself on religious grounds:
“I must recite the _mantras_.”
Even Maitraya, possessed by the almost absolute of religious cynicism,
respected that Brahman’s privilege, so Ommony was left to his own
meditations, which were mixed, amused and mystified in turn.
His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door behind him. The
_chela_ came in. He had changed his clothes again and was in the same
snuff-colored robe in which Ommony first saw him in Chutter Chand’s back
room. His face was an enigma—a mask with a marvelous smile on it; but
the eyes, to Ommony, suggested excitement; at any rate, some strong
emotion was shining through the self-controlled exterior. The remarkable
thing was, that the youngster’s calm did not suggest fanatical
asceticism or conceit. He seemed human, curious and not unfriendly.
Diana’s tail thumped on the floor. Flies buzzed in and out through the
window. There was nothing in the situation to cause nervousness, and yet
Ommony confessed to himself that he felt an inclination to shudder; the
sort of inclination that forewarns a man of something that his eyes can
not see. He spoke first, purposely in English, hoping to catch the
_chela_ off-guard:
“Maitraya has suggested that those young women who are with the party
are your wives. That seems improbable. Tell me the truth about it.”
If eyes mean anything, the _chela_ understood; he was laughing. No
muscle of his face moved. He pretended to assume that the words were
some form of greeting, and answered in kind, in Tibetan, then broke into
Urdu:
“Tsiang Samdup sends a blessing. He is unwilling that you should speak
of what occurred this morning.”
“You mean, of the performance of the dog?” asked Ommony.
But the _chela_ appeared to be an expert in dealing with stupidity. “Of
_anything_ that occurred.” Ommony chose another angle of assault:
“Whatever the holy Lama wishes. Kindly tell him so. _As long as I am his
guest_, I will be silent. Wait!”
The _chela_ had started to go, but Ommony stepped between him and the
door and stood with his back to it.
“Don’t be alarmed.”
But the _chela_ had only retreated a pace or two. Excepting that, he
seemed hardly more than curious to know what would happen next. It was
Ommony who felt uncomfortable. “I want you to tell me,” he said,
“whether it was Tsiang Samdup or some one else who educated you and
those young women.”
The _chela_, still standing erect, did not answer.
“Come on, tell me. There must be some one else besides the Lama.”
“Is that why you stand between me and the door?” the _chela_ asked. The
voice was ironic—amused. Ommony tried emphasis:
“I won’t let you go until you answer a few questions. Tell me—”
But the _chela_ had already gone. He had crossed the room in three
strides, laid a hand on the window-ledge, and vaulted through, tucking
his legs up neatly under his chin and landing almost noiselessly on the
veranda. He contrived the whole swift maneuver without a moment’s loss
of dignity, and walked away unruffled, not glancing behind him.
Ommony strode to the window feeling cheap, wishing he had gone about
things differently; he supposed it would take an interminable time now
to establish himself in the _chela’s_ confidence; he had possibly
totally ruined his chance of doing that. The _chela_ was sure to go
straight to the Lama and tell him.
But there stood the Lama, in the midst of the group of actors, with
Samding already beside him; and apparently Samding was talking about the
play to Maitraya; the Lama seemed to be encouraging Dawa Tsering to
rehearse his lines. They did not glance in Ommony’s direction. But a
minute or two later a Tibetan came and unlocked the door, and when
Ommony stepped out under the veranda the Lama turned and beckoned to
him.
However, the Lama had nothing to say. He led the entire troupe at once
toward the elephant stalls, down a gangway between two of the big
beasts, whom he saluted in passing as if they were human beings, and
through a gate at the rear into an alley fifty yards long. The alley
seemed to have been used as a sheep-corral the preceding night; there
were some loose boards that probably served to enclose it. Across its
end ran a street, in which a dozen or more nondescript humans lounged in
front of back doors. It was a back street; all the houses faced the
other way, their rears were an irregular jumble of yards and walls, with
empty kerosene cans, rubbish heaps and faded cotton _purdahs_[33] much
in evidence.
The Lama led straight across the street into a doorway, and down a long
passage that admitted to the wings of a fair-sized theater, almost
modern in some of its details.
Some one had been busy, for the stage was set. A hideous back-drop had
been almost concealed by branches up-ended, that gave a very good
suggestion of a clump of trees; and in front of those, in mid-stage, was
a wicker-work affair covered with cotton cloth that had been painted to
look like the stone-work of an old well; a beam with a rope thrown over
it, supported on two uprights completed the illusion well enough. The
flies had been very simply painted to resemble house corners at the end
of a street, and the whole scene suggested the extreme fringe of a
village, with the audience looking out through it toward the open
country.
For a wonder, there was electric light, although none too much, and the
switchboard was a mystery, painted red and labeled in English “Keep
away!”
At the rear of the theater and along both sides was a balcony for women,
screened off with narrow wooden slats that left openings about four
inches square. The orchestra “pit” was a platform, three feet lower than
the stage, in full view of the audience. The musicians were already
squatting there—Tibetans to a man; four were armed with _radongs_[34];
four more had tomtoms; the remaining dozen were provided with stringed
instruments. The _radongs_ blew a fog-horn blare to greet the Lama as he
stepped on to the stage.
In the opposite wing, no longer in white or in stockings, protected by
three stalwart Tibetans, who lounged in the flies, were the women of
mystery. They were in costume, which so orientalized them that Ommony
almost doubted recognition. Memory plays strange tricks; his took him
back to the day when he and Benjamin had played a part at Chota Pegu and
the nautch-girls had been wild with inquisitive mischief—ready to
betray the chief-priest at a nod. These girls now, in gauzy draperies,
less naked, but as subtle in their motions, so resembled those
nautch-girls at first glance that he was not sure they were the same he
had seen in the room among the Hindu ladies until he noticed that they
laughed and chattered on a comparatively low note instead of a
high-pitched dissonance.
The Lama clapped his hands and sat down inside the well, where he could
see out through holes in the painted cloth. Then he told Ommony to make
Diana sit down almost exactly in front of the well, and the rehearsal
began at once, as if preordained from the beginning of time, the girls
in their Indian costume mingling with the stage crowd, and so well
versed in their part that they pushed the other actors into place,
needing no direction by the Lama.
Ommony had plenty of chance to observe some of them closely, for three
had been told to engage the _saddhu_ in mock-conversation during parts
of the first act. One—the Gretchen-girl—put an offering into his
begging-bowl. But though he missed his cue twice through trying to
engage her in real whispered conversation, he failed; she was as evasive
as abstract thought—as apparently engaging and as actually distant as a
day-dream. She turned every advance he made into an excuse of by-play
for the imaginary audience’s benefit, and all Ommony accomplished was to
draw the Lama’s irony from behind the well:
“Some _saddhus_ hide lascivious hearts under robes of sanctity, but you
are _supposed_ to be one who has truly forsaken the pursuit of women,
Gupta Rao!”
When the laugh that followed that rebuke had died down Ommony was still
not sure of the Gretchen-girl’s real nationality. He had tried her with
English, French, German and two or three Indian languages, watching her
face, but detecting no expression that suggested she had understood him.
As for the others, one might be a Jewess; but there are many well-bred
women, for instance in Rajputana, and in Persia, who are fair-skinned
and who resemble Jewesses in profile. Even fair hair was no proof of
their origin; most eastern women, but by no means all, have dark hair.
The only really convincing evidence that they were Europeans was their
behavior, and even that was offset by the fact that some of them were
certainly Tibetans, whose manner was equally unembarrassed in the
presence of men, yet equally free from familiarity. The difference from
their behavior and that of Maitraya’s actresses grew more and more
noticeable as the professionals became aware of an atmosphere to which
they were utter strangers. They tried at first to imitate it; then grew
resentful and sneered; resorting at last to low jests in loud whispers
and attempts to scandalize by bold advances to the men—until at last
the Lama stood up in the well like a priest in a pulpit and beckoned
those three women to come and stand in front of him.
“I could show you your secret hearts,” he said, in a kind voice that was
much more withering than scorn, “and ye would die in horror at the
sight. It is not good to slay, not even with the rays of truth. So I
show you instead what ye _may_ become.” Mildly, patiently, a little
wearily, as if he had done the same thing very often, he included all
his own mysterious family in a gesture that conveyed diffidence and
hesitation. “Life after life ye shall struggle with yourselves before ye
shall come as these. And these are nothing—nothing to what ye _may_
become. The road is long, and there are difficulties; but ye _must_ face
it. Take advantage of the moment, for it is easier to imitate than to
find the way alone. Ye can not undo the past, nor can all the gods, nor
He who rules the gods, undo it. But now, this moment, and the next one,
and the next, for ever, ye yourselves by thought and act create the very
hair’s-breadths of your destiny.—Now let us begin again, from the
beginning.”
They began again so meekened and subdued that for a while the first act
suffered. But that was overcome by Diana, who produced such peals of
laughter that the Lama had difficulty in restoring order and had to
reprimand the musicians for thrusting their heads above the level of the
stage to watch. At a signal from Ommony standing near the wings, Diana’s
mouth opened and the Lama from inside the well croaked words that
sounded, even on the stage, as if the dog were speaking them.
When the shoemaker said “Ah, if I were king!” Diana’s mouth opened wide
and the retort came from behind her:
“It _might_ be better to be a dog like me and not worry so much!”
The illusion was perfect because everybody on the stage looked at the
dog as if expecting her to speak; and the best of it was that Diana
cocked an ear, put her head to one side, and was immensely interested.
In answer to the _saddhu’s_, “How long will ye store up wrath against
the day of reckoning?” there was put into Diana’s mouth:
“For myself I bury bones, but jackals come in the night and make away
with them!”
When the king asked, “Is this your gratitude?” and the _saddhu_ replied,
“To whom? For what?” Diana’s retort was:
“The _saddhu_ is like the vermin on my back; he helps himself but isn’t
grateful. And when he is scratched he just goes to another place!”
Diana was easy to manage, and Ommony’s signals, made with his right
hand, were invisible from the front of the theater on his left. But Dawa
Tsering was a hard problem; he was supposed to be one of those wandering
clown-fakirs who amuse and terrify village gatherings by alternately
acting like idiots and pretending they are in communication with the
underworld of demons and lost souls. He could neither remember his lines
nor keep his head, but blundered in at the wrong cues and then laughed
self-consciously. Ommony advised the Lama to dispense with him
altogether.
“Nay,” said the Lama. “All things are good in the proper place. There is
a part he _can_ play.”
Whereat he ordered the stage set for the second act, which was a simple
business. The flies reversed suggested a palace interior. Curtains at
the rear concealed the greenery. The well was replaced by a carpeted
dais with a large throne on top of it, inside which the Lama could
conceal himself quite easily. A few heaps of cushions and settees were
carried on the stage and while the change was being made the orchestra
rehearsed amazing music.
Tomtoms, _radongs_ and stringed instruments thundered, howled and
jingled like a storm in the Himalayas with the voices of a thousand
disembodied spirits carrying on an argument in the teeth of wind and
rain. It was stunning—weird—a sort of cataclysmic din foreboding
marvelous events, but music, nevertheless, in every quarter-note of its
disturbing harmonies.
-----
[33] Curtain, veil; any kind of screen. Women who keep out of sight of
men are known as _purdah-nashin_.
[34] A sort of trumpet, very long, with the bell-shaped end set at an
angle to the tube.
He who would reform the world must first reform himself; and
that, if he do it honestly, will keep him so employed that he
will have no time to criticize his neighbor. Nevertheless, his
neighbor will be benefited—even as a man without a candle, who
at last discerns another’s light.
From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.