Part 44 (2/2)
”Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day. Let's think the thing over. The boy remembers his incarnations.”
”Does he know that?” said Grish Chunder, quietly, swinging his legs as he sat on my table. He was speaking in English now.
”He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did? Go on!”
”There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will say you are mad and put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you prosecute for libel.”
”Let's leave that out of the question entirely. Is there any chance of his being made to speak?”
”There is a chance. Oah, yess! But if he spoke it would mean that all this world would end now--instanto--fall down on your head. These things are not allowed, you know. As I said, the door is shut.”
”Not a ghost of a chance?”
”How can there be? You are a Christian, and it is forbidden to eat, in your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How shall you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that he knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because I know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to die. If you were not, by G.o.d! you English would be all over the shop in an hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. It would not be good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little less, and he will call it dreams. Then he will forget altogether. When I pa.s.sed my First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was all in the cram-book on Wordsworth. Trailing clouds of glory, you know.”
”This seems to be an exception to the rule.”
”There are no exceptions to rules. Some are not so hard-looking as others, but they are all the same when you touch. If this friend of yours said so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he remembered all his lost lives, or one piece of a lost life, he would not be in the bank another hour. He would be what you called sack because he was mad, and they would send him to an asylum for lunatics. You can see that, my friend.”
”Of course I can, but I wasn't thinking of him. His name need never appear in the story.”
”Ah! I see. That story will never be written. You can try.”
”I am going to.”
”For your own credit and for the sake of money, of course?”
”No. For the sake of writing the story. On my honor that will be all.”
”Even then there is no chance. You cannot play with the G.o.ds. It is a very pretty story now. As they say, Let it go on that--I mean at that.
Be quick; he will not last long.”
”How do you mean?”
”What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman.”
”Hasn't he though!” I remembered some of Charlie's confidences.
”I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes; bushogya--all up' I know. There are millions of women here. Housemaids, for instance.”
I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid.
And yet nothing was more probable.
Grish Chunder grinned.
”Yes--also pretty girls--cousins of his house, and perhaps not of his house. One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all this nonsense or else”--
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