Part 1 (1/2)

Ki

Chapter I

O ye who tread the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to judgentle when 'the heathen' pray To Buddha at Kamakura!

Buddha at Kamakura

He sat, in defiance of un Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher - the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museuon', hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot

There was some justification for Kim - he had kicked Lala Dinanath's boy off the trunnions - since the English held the Punjab and Kih he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his h he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim hite - a poor white of the very poorest The half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium, and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she was Kim's mother's sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a Colonel's faeant of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment He afterwards took a post on the Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway, and his Regiment went home without him The wife died of cholera in Ferozepore, and O'Hara fell to drink and loafing up and down the line with the keen-eyed three-year-old baby Societies and chaplains, anxious for the child, tried to catch him, but O'Hara drifted away, till he came across the woman who took opium and learned the taste from her, and died as poor whites die in India His estate at death consisted of three papers - one he called his 'ne varietur' because those words ritten below his signature thereon, and another his 'clearance-certificate' The third was Kis, he was used to say, in his glorious opium-hours, would yet make little Kimball a ed to a great piece of ic asblue-and-white Jadoo-Gher - the Magic House, as we naht some day, and Kim's horn would be exalted between pillars - th The Colonel hiiment in the world, would attend to Kim - little Kim that should have been better off than his father Nine hundred first-class devils, whose God was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kiang- foreman on the Ferozepore line Then he would weep bitterly in the broken rush chair on the veranda So it came about after his death that the woman sewed parchment, paper, and birth- certificate into a leather a round Kim's neck

'And so O'Hara's prophecies, 'there will coreen field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and' dropping into English - 'nine hundred devils'

'Ah,' said Kim, 'I shall remember A Red Bull and a Colonel on a horse will co ready the ground for these matters That is how my father said they always did; and it is always so when ic'

If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gher with those papers, he would, of course, have been taken over by the Provincial Lodge, and sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills; but what she had heard of ic she distrusted Kim, too, held views of his own As he reached the years of indiscretion, he learned to avoid missionaries and white men of serious aspect who asked who he was, and what he did For Ki with an immense success True, he knew the wonderful walled city of Lahore frolove withHaroun al Raschid dreahts, but missionaries and secretaries of charitable societies could not see the beauty of it His nicknah the wards was 'Little Friend of all the World'; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed coht on the crowded housetops for sleek and shi+ny young ue, - of course he knew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speak, - but what he loved was the gaullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe, the sights and sounds of the woht from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark Then there were holy men, ash-smeared fakirs by their brick shrines under the trees at the riverside, ho the-tours, and, when no one was by, eating from the same dish The woman who looked after him insisted with tears that he should wear European clothes - trousers, a shi+rt and a battered hat Kiarb when engaged on certain businesses One of the young men of fashi+on - he as found dead at the bottoiven him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume of a lowcaste street boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place under soh Court, where the fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after they have driven down the Ravi When there was business or frolic afoot, Ki at dawn to the veranda, all tired out fro at a Hindu festival Sometimes there was food in the house, ain to eat with his native friends

As he druain froame with little Chota Lal and Abdullah the sweetmeat-seller's son, to uard over rows of shoes at the Museurinned tolerantly: he knew Ki water on the dry road froh, the Museu-cases So did everybody in sight except the peasants fro up to the Wonder House to view the things that iven up to Indian arts and ht wisdom could ask the Curator to explain

'Off! Off! Letup Zam-Zammah's wheel

'Thy father was a pastry-cook, ThyKio!'

'Let ilt-embroidered cap His father orth perhaps half a , but India is the only democratic land in the world

'The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too The Mussalmans pushed them off Thy father was a pastry-cook -'

He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, froht he knew all castes, had never seen He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could Ki a long open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy antic sort of tam-o'-shanter His face was yellow and wrinkled, like that of fook shi+ng, the Chinese bootmaker in the bazar His eyes turned up at the corners and looked like little slits of onyx

'Who is that?' said Kim to his coer in

'Without doubt' returned Kim; 'but he is no man of India that I have ever seen'

'A priest, perhaps,' said Chota Lal, spying the rosary 'See! He goes into the Wonder House!'

'Nay, nay,' said the police his head 'I do not understand your talk' The constable spoke Punjabi 'O Friend of all the World, what does he say?'

'Send hi his bare heels 'He is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo'

The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys He was old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking artemisia of thehouse?' he said in very fair Urdu

'The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!' Kiave him no title - such as Lala or Mian He could not divine the man's creed

'Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?'

'It is written above the door - all can enter'

'Without payhed Kiering his rosary, he half turned to the Museum

'What is your caste? Where is your house? Have you come far?' Kim asked

'I came by Kulu - from beyond the Kailas - but what know you? Frohed - 'the air and water are fresh and cool'

'Aha! Khitai [a China had once chased hi at the joss above the boots

'Pahari [a hillman],' said little Chota Lal

'Aye, child - a hillman from hills thou'lt never see Didst hear of Bhotiyal [Tibet]? I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya [Tibetan], since you ue'

'A guru from Tibet,' said Kim 'I have not seen such a man They be Hindus in Tibet, then?'

'We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our lao to see the Four Holy Places before I die Now do you, who are children, know as nantly on the boys

'Hast thou eaten?'

He fu- bowl The boys nodded All priests of their acquaintance begged

'I do not wish to eat yet' He turned his head like an old tortoise in the sunlight 'Is it true that there are es in the Wonder House of Lahore?' He repeated the last words as onesure of an address

'That is true,' said Abdullah 'It is full of heathen busts Thou also art an idolater'

'Never mind him,' said Kim 'That is the Government's house and there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard Coe priests eat boys,' whispered Chota Lal

'And he is a stranger and a but-parast [idolater],' said Abdullah, the Mohahed 'He is new Run to your mothers' laps, and be safe Co turnstile; the old man followed and halted aures of the Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants kno long since, by forgotten work, and not unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch There were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief, fragures that had encrusted the brick walls of the Buddhist stupas and viharas of the North Country and now, dug up and labelled, made the pride of the Museum In open-mouthed wonder the lama turned to this and that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a large alto- relief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the Lord Buddha The Master was represented seated on a lotus the petals of which were so deeply undercut as to show als, elders, and old-time Buddhas Beloere lotus-covered waters with fishes and water- birds Two butterfly-winged devas held a wreath over His head; above them another pair supported an umbrella surmounted by the jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat

'The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni hian the wonderful Buddhist invocation: To Him the Way, the Law, apart, Whom Maya held beneath her heart, Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat

'And He is here! The Most Excellent Law is here also My pilgriun And ork! What work!'

'Yonder is the Sahib' said Ki the cases of the arts andat the la drew forth a note-book and a scrap of paper