Kim (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) - Rudyard Kipling [97]
Said Kim to Mahbub in Lucknow railway station that evening, above the luggage-scales: ‘I feared lest, at the last, the roof would fall upon me and cheat me. Is it indeed all finished, 0 my father?’
Mahbub snapped his fingers to show the utterness of that end, and his eyes blazed like red coals.
‘Then where is the pistol that I may wear it?’
‘Softly! A half-year, to run without heel-ropes. I begged that much from Colonel Creighton Sahib. At twenty rupees a month. Old Red Hat knows that thou art coming.’
‘I will pay thee dustoorie (commission) on my pay for three months,’ said Kim gravely. ‘Yea, two rupees a month. But first we must get rid of these.’ He plucked his thin linen trousers and dragged at his collar. ’I have brought with me all that I need on the Road. My trunk has gone up to Lurgan Sahib’s.’
‘Who sends his salaams to thee—Sahib.’
‘Lurgan Sahib is a very clever man. But what dost thou do?’
‘I go North again, upon the Great Game. What else? Is thy mind still set on following old Red Hat?’
‘Do not forget he made me that I am—though he did not know it. Year by year, he sent the money that taught me.’
‘I would have done as much—had it struck my thick head,’ Mahbub growled. ‘Come away. The lamps are lit now, and none will mark thee in the bazar. We go to Huneefa’s house.’
On the way thither, Mahbub gave him much the same sort of advice as his mother gave to Lemuel, and curiously enough, Mahbub was exact to point out how Huneefa and her likes destroyed kings.
‘And I remember,’ he quoted maliciously, ‘one who said, “Trust a snake before an harlot, and an harlot before a Pathan, Mahbub Ali.” Now, excepting as to Pathans, of whom I am one, all that is true. Most true is it in the Great Game, for it is by means of women that all plans come to ruin 256 and we lie out in the dawning with our throats cut. So it happened to such a one.’ He gave the reddest particulars.
‘Then why——?’ Kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to the warm darkness of an upper chamber, in the ward that is behind Azim Ullah’s tobacco-shop. Those who know it call it The Bird-cage—it is so full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings.
The room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck, wrist, arm, waist, and ankle, with heavy native jewellery. When she turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. A lean cat in the balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. Kim checked, bewildered, at the door-curtain.
‘Is that the new stuff, Mahbub?’ said Huneefa lazily, scarce troubling to remove the mouthpiece from her lips. ‘0 Buktanoos!‘257—like most of her kind, she swore by the Djinns258—‘O Buktanoos! He is very good to look upon.’
‘That is part of the selling of the horse,’ Mahbub explained to Kim, who laughed.
‘I have heard that talk since my Sixth Day,’ he replied, squatting by the light. ‘Whither does it lead?’
‘To protection. To-night we change thy colour. This sleeping under roofs has blanched thee like an almond. But Huneefa has the secret of a colour that catches. No painting of a day or two. Also, we fortify thee against the chances of the Road. That is my gift to thee, my son. Take out all metals on thee and lay them here. Make ready, Huneefa.’
Kim dragged forth his compass, Survey paint-box, and the new-filled medicine-box. They had all accompanied his travels, and boylike he valued them immensely.
The woman rose slowly and moved with her hands a little spread before her. Then Kim saw that she was blind. ‘No, no,’ she muttered, ‘the Pathan speaks truth—my colour does not go in a week or a month, and those whom I protect are under strong guard.