Achmed Abdullah

“ You see, I had meanwhile turned up a narrow street; it was quite lonely there; not a soul, not a footstep, hardly a sound. They called the place then—mind you, I said then—Ibrahim Khan’s Gully. It was typical of its sort. Whitewashed walls without windows or doors, mysterious, useless-looking to right and to left; and straight in front of me, at the end of the gully, was another wall. It sat there at the end of that cul-de-sac like a seal of destiny, portentous threatening. The moon was pretty well behaved and bright just then, and so I looked at that wall. ”

“ I told myself that the Brahman would not break his oath. I stepped through the opening, the girl in my arms, while the priest stood to one side, bowing, smiling, like a deferential butler receiving an honored guest.
“I have kept my oath, sahib,” he repeated.
“Let the Divine Mother of the Elephant’s Trunk be witness to the fact that I have kept my oath!
You will find trees—you who do not fear trees, you who like trees—sit beneath them for a while and meditate on Life, on Death, on the Seven Great Virtues, and the Seven Black Sins! ”

“ What? Did they plant a phonograph inside of that mummy? (Stephen Denton laughed at my question.) No! No! Can you imagine such a Western abomination as a phonograph near a Hindu temple—in the mummified body of a Hindu saint?
Of course not! The explanation was a hanged sight easier. The tone waves—the whispers— came, not from the mummy’s mouth—but from the mummy’s feet! So I stretched myself full-length on the floor, at the feet of his holiness, pressed my ears against the cold stone flags, and listened intently. ”

“ I am a Brahman, a thrice-born indifferent to life and to death—for death is only a passing breath, only a forgotten wind sweeping over the grassy hills of eternity; indifferent to Satva, and Rajas, and Tamas—to pleasure, and pain, and darkness. You believe that man’s life is a bundle of qualities which die with death; and I—I know that man’s life is a thing without bondage or limit, perpetually active! ”

“ I picked her up and put her inside the pedestal, leaving the sliding-door slightly aslant to give her breathing space.
By ginger—Stephen Denton gave an embarrassed little smile—she looked pretty in there on that soft mass of pillows and shawls, and the dim light about her like a veil. You know those lines by Rabindranath Tagore, don’t you?
When ruddy lips blossom into smiles, black eyes pass stolen glances, Then it is the season, my poet, to make a bonfire of your verses.
And weave only heart with heart and hand with hand. ”

“ You know this town—this Calcutta—this melting pot of all India—and remember, that brick-faced reprobate of a Roos-Keppel had been telling me tales of it—grim, fantastic, true tales—and here they were at my feet, the witnesses and actors, the heroes and villains in his tales—hurrying along the street in a never-ending procession—a vast panorama of Asia’s uncounted races. There were men from Bengal, black, ungainly, slightly Hebraic shuffling along on their eternal, sissified patent leather pumps. ”

“ I realized it, even at that moment, with the two dead men at my feet, one with his features, oh, set in an astonished sort of smile, as if wondering at the dark blood which was running lazily from the split skull to the floor; the other dead man’s face like a grinning Tibetan devil mask, with the lips drawn back a little over the gleaming, white teeth in an eerie grin, like the fangs of a wolf who sees the victim, jumps, then finds himself in a trap, smells death in the trap in the moment of killing! ”

“ I wondered if on top of all the other sanitary iniquities the Hindu was the habit of keeping pens in the middle of their living-houses. But I wasn’t going to let a smell, any smell, swerve me from my course. Goats or no goats, I walked on, on for several minutes along the outside which twisted and turned, rose and dipped like some crazy stone snake, and all the time I felt the pat-pat-pat of the little girl’s heart-beats, softly beating, against my own heart, as if trying to blend, to mix with it. ”

“ So, there I was, holding that little Hindu girl in my arms—and—why, man, I loved her—unless the repetition of that detail bores you—my arms touched the soft curves of her young shoulders.
It was quite dark, as I told you. But there, resting on my left arm, was her little face, like an opening flower. Only a slip of a girl, her youthful incompleteness just a lovely sketch for something larger, finer, more splendid—just a mass of happy, seductive hints, with the high-lights yet missing. ”

“ Perhaps my eyes were deceiving me—an optical illusion—just my imagination, I told myself, growing, bloating, expanding like a balloon of evil anticipations, my mad imagination whispering to my saner Self, my real thinking Self; until, steadily growing in volume and effect, jumping from cord to cord in that intricate spider-web which is the nervous system, it had persuaded the thinking, recording cells in my brain, that—Stephen Denton half-rose in his chair—that the ceiling was slowly coming down—slowly, slowly—and with it the trees—the metal trees—with the sharp crushing metal branches! ”

“ The room, complete from the ceiling to the floor and from window to door, was furnished in the native style; not in the nasty, showy, ornate native style of the bazaars which cater to tourists—and it is in Indian’s favor that the “Oriental wares” sold there are mostly made in Birmingham, Berlin and Newark, N. J.—but in that solid, heavy, rather somber native style of the well-to-do high-caste Hindu to whom every piece—each chair and table and screen—is somehow fraught with eternal, racial tradition. It was a real home, in other words and a native home ”

“ By putting them in the wrong place? Why, no! By putting them in the right place! That’s how he loses them! Well, I didn’t. I wasn’t a psychologist, nor any other sort of intellectual, self-analytical jackass. Perhaps I was too stupid—and it turned out to be lucky for me that night, on the flat roof-top in the heart of Colootallah, with every wickedness and crime and cruelty and superstition in India floating and breathing and bunching somewhere about me in the purple, choking darkness, with my love in my arms! ”

“ Of course, my first inclination was to assault the Hindu who had remained behind—I could hear him breathe, near me, in the gloom—in fact, to kill him. Yes, to kill him! Remember, I told you I was beginning to feel myself part of the Colootallah scenery, including the—ah!— primeval emotions of that charming neighborhood. But, if I was a caveman in emotions, I was also a caveman in instinctive, safety-first cunning. I said to myself that I could not kill without making a noise—and there was my Hindu’s sidekick prowling about in the Gully. ”

“ Roughly, I forced the Brahman to swing himself out of the den and into the temple. I followed.
“Look!” I said, pointing at the idol of Shiva Natarajah, straddling the door; and the Brahman turned as pale as a sheet. “You are not afraid of death,” I went on, “and that’s the truth. But you are afraid of losing caste; you are afraid of losing your priestly influence, aren’t you?” He did not reply, just stood there, staring dumbly, despairingly at the statue, and I continued: “You see, I discovered how you work your little miracles, and I worked them myself—every last one of them. ”

“ Again I watched the ceiling, the trees. They were still coming down, steadily, slowly, the branches drooped lower and lower; one of them, a specially stout branch, was already within a foot of the top of the low door; another touched my head, the sharp metal cut my scalp—I ducked.
There was just one thing I could do for Padmavati. I could protect her with my own body.
She, too, would be crushed to death, but at least the sharp metal branches would not tear her flimsy robe to ribbons, dishonoring her in the hour of death, nor would they cut her soft, golden skin. ”

“ The temple of Shiva, god of high castes, here, in the heart of the low-caste Colootallah—the rattle and crackle of naked steel on the roof-top; and remember that the law against carrying and possessing weapons is as strictly enforced in Calcutta as the Sullivan Law in New York; and, then, as a final proof, it seemed to me, the dazzling, extravagant splendor of this corridor, this long, tall hall! ”

“ So he led us through halls and rooms, up and down stairs worn hollow and slippery with the tread of naked feet, along corridors, on and on, with here and there a stop, a whispered word from the Brahman to keep perfectly quiet, a silken rustling of garments in some nearby room where people were still awake, with once in a while a hushed, distant voice, and twice the steely impact of a scabbard-tip bumping the stone flags as some unseen, prowling watchman of the night passed somewhere on his rounds; on and on we passed, and we never met a single human being. ”

“ Why, man, in Sing Sing they would have electrocuted them on sight! And I thought of what Roos-Keppel had told me about the close, sinister, underground connection between the Hindu secret political societies and the criminal castes—thieves, assassins, and thugs; high-castes and low-castes—praying to the same, bloodgorged god.
It was the dawning ceremony of the Shiva worship, the ceremony which celebrates the victory of day over night.
At the end of the procession stalked a tall, magnificent specimen of Oriental humanity, swinging a flat incense-burner on silver chains. ”

“ I understood everything—the walls and floor and ceiling of solid metal, the trees, the Brahman’s question if I feared tree, and the Brahman’s oath!
The Brahman had given a solemn oath, nor would he break it. He had lured me into this room, me and the girl, and he had set some machinery into motion which would kill us, slowly, mercilessly—crushing us, doubtless as sacrifices, human sacrifices, to his bestial, blood-stained gods. Yes, he had kept his oath, for to him death spelled peace and safety and final release from earthly worries ”

“ Everybody who believes in himself wins out—in what he wants to win out. You, Denton,” he went on after a short pause, “are a nice lad, clean and well-bred and no end proper. But you are too damned smug—no offense meant—you are like a respectable spinster owl with respectable astigmatism. Cut away from it. See life. Make life. Take life by the tail and swing it about your head and force it to disgorge. Take a chance—say to yourself that nothing can happen to you!” ”

“ I touched her face, her shoulders—only for a fleeting second—for, don’t you see, to me she was holy, and somehow she was to me part of that temple—of the sacredness of that temple—yes— sacredness—and I mean it. A mad, bombastic, fantastic, cruel faith—that Hindu faith! I know it!
But faith, religion, just the same somehow trying to make the world better. I guess there isn’t a single religion which really tries to do harm. ”

“ It came from a flickering, insincere oil-lamp held in the hands of an elderly Hindu, evidently the possessor of the soft and bulky body which I had struck when I had let myself drop.
He looked at me, and I looked at him, silently. I am quite sure we didn’t like each other. We didn’t have to say a single word to convince each other of the fact. He was an old man, but old without the slightest trace of dignity, he wore no turban, and that gave his shiny, shaven head a horribly naked look. On his forehead was a crimson caste mark—nasty-looking thing it was. ”

“ I am a Rathor of Kanauj, claiming kinship with the flame, and my mother is a Tomara of Delhi, claiming kinship with the sun! I am a descendant of the gods!” She drew up her, little figure in a passion of pride. “My people have lived here—they have ruled this great land of Hindustan for over three thousand years! Never have we mixed our blood with the blood of foreigners! And yet—”
“And yet—what?” anxiously asked the priest, and she continued with a low, silvery laugh: “And yet there is love, wise priest!” ”

“ I wouldn’t leave without her—without her I wouldn’t leave that roof-top, the Colootallah, nor Calcutta, nor India.
I loved her. I wanted her. I would die for her. The source of that rash courage will ever be to me an inexplicable mystery. For, don’t you see, I had always lived a perfectly sheltered life back in Boston, with the antimacassars and the walnut furniture and the volumes of Emerson and Thoreau. But I had resolved to take that girl with me. No more, nor less! ”

“ Where is she?” came the sibilant whisper; and then, with a splendid flow of Oriental imagery, “he—the Sahib—the this-andthat”— more epithets—”has stolen her—the apple of my eyes, the well of my love, the stone of my contentment! Ah!”—and distinctly, through the hollow tiles, I could hear something like a forced, hypocritical sob—“she is a. pearl among pearls— with lips like the crimson asoka flower, with teeth as virgin-white as the perfumed madhavi, with a voice like the mating-song of the kokila bird, with a waist as the waist of a she-lion, and with the walk of a king-goose! ”