Hindoo Holiday (35 page)

“Does His Highness know?”

“Yes, Maharajah Sahib make him do this work. He take Sharma to Garha Palace and say him ‘Love her. I wish to see.'”

“Why doesn't the Maharajah Sahib do it himself?”

“He not like. He like boys. He like Sharma.”

“Does the Queen like it?”

“She like Sharma. He young and strong and beautiful. But she not like Sharma's brother. He fat and ugly.”

“And Sharma. Does he like it?”

“I think yes. He is a fool boy.”

“Well then they all seem suited,” I said, pleased to know that the Queen's life was not quite so lonely and monotonous as Miss Trend had led me to believe. “But how can you be sure that the children are Sharma's? May they not equally well be Sharma's brother's?”

“Sharma say me they his.”

“Ah, Sharma!” I said smiling. “And he gives pleasure also to His Highness himself?”

“Yes, many times.”

“Does he like that?”

“No, he does not like.”

“Then why does he do it?”

“I do not know. He is half-made.”

“You don't approve either, do you?”

“No, I do not like. It is bad, wrong. But what can I do?”

I closed my eyes drowsily.

“
You
get much love Sharma one time,” said Narayan, after a pause, smiling at me.

“What did he tell you?” I asked.

“He tell me ‘The Sahib try to kiss me.'”

“And what did you say?”

“I say he must kiss you if you want.”

“If I have a tent put in my Palace courtyard,” His Highness said to me, “will you leave your house and come and live there? I will give you servants just the same, and you will be quite comfortable.”

This was rather difficult.

“Should I be of more use to you there, Prince, than I am at present?”

“Yes, for if I think of any questions in the night I can come to see you.”

Poor little king. If the invitation had been issued earlier in my stay I would have accepted it eagerly, but now in this heat I was not at all sure that I wished to live in a tent and be wakened up throughout the night, like the late Poet Lockrit and Court Painter, to discuss Pragmatism and Marie Corelli; indeed I was pretty sure that I didn't. I already knew, from various sources, himself included, that he was a light and capricious sleeper, and roamed the Palace a good deal in the small hours as the fancy took him, and had sometimes been observed trying to make out the time on the recently installed sun-dial in the courtyard by the light of the moon. So I excused myself as well as I could. At any rate, it did not hurt his feelings, for: “I will not leave you, Mr. Ackerley,” he said; “I will not leave you now. How can I keep you with me? Will it be possible for you to come back every year for six months? I will pay your passage money and give you a thousand rupees a month. Will it be enough?”

In the evening I walked with Sharma down to the caravanserai outside the city gate, where Narayan had arranged to meet us, and there we came upon the largest bullock we had either of us ever seen, harnessed to a wagon. It came from Deogarh, we learnt, and was worth one hundred and sixty rupees as against the normal price of fifty or sixty; and yet it was not a perfect specimen, its owner said; it was over-fat and stood too high on its legs. But how magnificent it was!

I gazed in wonder and admiration at the huge white marble form and calm, majestic face. How peaceful were the long drooping ears! How beautiful the line of the heavy dewlap and the gentle jowls! Above the wide rounded forehead two short black incurving horns rose; and the large dark glowing eyes set far apart were finely marked with black as though their heavy lids were rimmed with soot. Over each a double wrinkle lent to the great white face a grave wisdom and benignity of expression. A cord ran through the dark nostrils. No wonder, I thought, these beasts are venerated, and the females thought to be the seat of the Generator. I glanced at Sharma. His attention also was absorbed in the brute, and I noticed the expression of awe in his great silly eyes, and beneath his vest and
dhoti
the fugitive lines of his animal body.

“Ah, my fine young bullocks!” I thought.

The poor frogs are in a parlous state this weather. Most of the lakes—or tanks, as they are called—have almost completely dried up, and one sees the heads of myriads of frogs protruding like pebbles from the black shallow water. The din they make is incessant, for they have frequent and unwelcome visits from the heron, which have only to stand in the water to gobble up as many frogs as they like without moving an inch. The mere drying up of the water does not cause the frogs to perish, for they are able, like the fish, to bury themselves in the mud and remain there until the rains bring them liberty again; but many of them are young and inexperienced, no doubt, and perceive their danger too late when they find their home unaccountably contracting. There was a heron among them as I watched, sprouting on his long thin legs from the center of the puddle, which is all that is now left of what was once a pretty little lake. He looked surfeited and bored, and seemed deaf to the hubbub of despairing croaks around him. But suddenly he plunged in his beak and brought out a frog by its hind leg. I clapped my hands, hoping to startle him into dropping it, but he only flew off, carrying the frog with him.

“Well, I hope it is hot enough for you now, Prince,” I said to His Highness as we drove out yesterday afternoon.

“It is very hot,” he replied.

“Does it get much hotter?” I asked.

“My dear sir, it gets
very
much hotter.
Very
much! Soon I shall sleep in a house built of
khus
grass, and when in the early morning I have to go out to attend to natural needs”—there was an impressive pause—“I shall get quite
exhausted
!”

He was not at all pleased. His theatrical manager, he said, had reported to him yesterday that Napoleon the Third had leprosy. The boy had been playing with some gunpowder and had burnt his leg, and the theatrical manager, who examined the wound, was very concerned because (he said) water came out of it instead of blood or pus. This could only mean one thing: Napoleon the Third had leprosy.

Naturally this had upset His Highness very much and had caused him a sleepless night; but in the morning the doctor had said that it was all nonsense—there was no leprosy at all.

It was not the first time, muttered His Highness, that his theatrical manager had made this mistake; once before he had reported a case of leprosy among the Palace servants, but this had turned out to be a boil.

“He talks at random!” said His Highness peevishly.

He relapsed into silence after this, and then asked:

“What must I say to God when I meet Him? What shall I say to Him for my sins?”

“I shouldn't mention the word,” I said. “He'll be the best judge of your life. If you've got to say anything I should say, ‘You sent us forth into the world incomplete and therefore weak. With my own life, in these circumstances, and according to my own nature, I did what I could to secure happiness. But I did not even know what happiness was, or where to look for it, and it was whilst I was in search of it that I dare say I got a little muddled.'”

This seemed to encourage him considerably, and he made me repeat it to him twice, which I did, not without misgivings. Abdul called on me at two o'clock a few days ago whilst I was having a siesta. A slip of paper was brought bearing his name and the request that I should spare him a little of my “valuable time.” The word “valuable” had been written in above the line as an afterthought.

When one wants an excuse for anger anything will serve; I was feeling limp and disagreeable, and the addition of the word “valuable” filled me with annoyance. I told them to send him away, adding that he could return in the cool of the evening if he wanted to. I said it roughly. He didn't return that day; but this afternoon he called again and did not this time risk announcement. I was plowing, with the aid of a dictionary, through a French novel, when suddenly he appeared at my sitting-room door, for it was slightly cooler and I had dispensed for once with my grass screen.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Ackerley. May I come in?”

I was too surprised to protest, and pointed to a chair.

“I do not come to talk about my affairs,” he assured me. “I came the other day to visit you, but you sent me away, you refused me—but no matter—in a very bad way—but no matter. But—ahem—I do not wish to talk about myself.”

I did not wish to talk about him either, but needless to say, that was the subject we eventually arrived at—by a process of elimination of the rest of his family.

The main object of his visit, it appeared, was to make a small request—nothing to do with his own affairs—would I take a photo of his son? The little boy wished me to do so. He frequently spoke of “the Sahib.”

I said I was awfully sorry but the camera had only been lent to me and had now been returned to its owner in Rajgarh. But I could borrow it again, he said, just to take a photo of his little son. I said I couldn't; I had reason to believe that the owner would not lend it to me a second time.

“Ah, sorry, sorry,” murmured Abdul, and concentrating his attention on the carpet, reconstructed his plans after this un expected reverse.

“Mr. Ackerley, next week, in a few days' time, there is a great Mohammedan festival, and I carry an invitation from my
mother
to you to come to our house on that day, so that we may feast you.”

He looked at me with an engaging smile.

“Thank you,” I said. “Please give my compliments to your mother and ask her to excuse me.”

He was amazed! He was shocked!

“But my
mother
invites you, Mr. Ackerley! You cannot refuse. In India that is very bad. She will be much disappointed, for she has set her heart on it.”

I shook my head. But how could he carry back such a message, he demanded. He could not do so. He could not bring himself to disappoint his mother. I
must
come—just for a little, for ten minutes, any time of the day. I need not eat much—only a sweetmeat or two. He would bring for me a horse, a carriage, at his own expense; indeed he had intended to do so. I must not refuse. And not only his mother, but his wife and his little son also. They all expected me. The little boy asked often after “the Sahib,” and looked lovingly at “the Sahib's” photo. I could not disappoint them all. . . .

I continued to shake my head.

“Do not ask. Do not ask.” I repeated. “Never make your requests twice.”

“But, Mr. Ackerley, why will you never honor us or grant my feasts? You are bad to me. You do not love me. But you must love me, for I love you and keep you always in my heart.”

“It's no use, Abdul,” I said. “You never did love me.”

“By God I did and I do.”

“It isn't true.”

“Ah,” he said, “you are English and do not know about love.”

After this he took up my French novel and began to read it aloud with an unintelligible pronunciation, and to examine me on my knowledge.

“Now go, Abdul,” I said.

He almost dropped the book.

“Go? Mr. Ackerley, what does this mean? You are very bad to me. You cannot speak in this way, ‘Go!' In India it is thought very bad. You say I may come to visit you, and I have not stayed for ten minutes when you tell me to go!”

“How much longer did you intend to stay?” I asked.

“As long as I wish,” he replied, with an insolent smile. “It is for me.”

“You have said all you had to say.”

“But I have not. I wish to ask you if you will recommend me to the Political Agent—or any other man—trouble yourself—great benefit to me, and God will reward you, and I will remember you all my lifetime. . . .”

“Go! Go!” I cried angrily.

He moved hurriedly to the door, and from that strategic position, with his way of escape open behind him, inquired:

“Why must I go?”

“Because I say so.”

“But I may come again? You said I may visit you from time to time—every three or four days. . . .”

“Have yourself announced and I will send word.”

“Very well, Mr. Ackerley. And thank you—
very
much.” He stiffened, and raising a hand to his tarbush jerked a little bow.

I swatted a persistent fly during breakfast this morning, and it fell with a broken wing, and some internal rupture no doubt, and lay on the ground on its back, desperately moving its little black legs. I gazed down at it with something of an Indian conscience, or at any rate with that fearful fellow feeling with which we are likely to regard even our worst enemy at the approach of the common foe.

Nearby, a colony of ants had its home, and there was a great coming and going round the entrance, where the colonists were taking in stores of the crumbs that had fallen from my table. Running hither and thither in their spasmodic spurting way, sometimes quite erratically it seemed, as though they relied upon some other sense than sight, they hurried off with their burdens into their mysterious underworld, the entrance to which was a narrow cleft between the flagstones of my verandah pavement, or emerged, often as many as a dozen at a time, suddenly, like a puff of dark smoke, or as though shot up in a lift.

The fall of the wounded fly, almost into their midst, with a pretty deafening thud one would have thought, did not seem to discompose them in the least, and one or two of them, unburdened, passed and repassed quite close to it on their indefatigable journeyings without appearing even to notice it, though above their own small noises, scuffle and patter of ant feet, shrill of ant voices, it must surely have been kicking up the most infernal rumpus.

At length, however, a solitary ant approached the fallen giant, and was at once repelled by a convulsive movement of the struggling legs. But he was not deterred. With remarkable courage, I thought, he returned and, single-handed so to speak, leapt boldly upon the fly. A fearful battle ensued, the details of which I could not clearly see, but the ant seemed to fasten himself upon the fly's head, perhaps with the object of putting out its eyes. He was again repulsed and again returned to the assault, making for the same part of the fly's anatomy, and was then flung off so far—a distance of quite two inches—that he apparently came to the conclusion that this was not a one-ant job and went off in search of help. Soon he returned (though I confess I could not swear the identification) with some comrades, and in a business-like manner they divided their small force, some climbing nimbly on to the fly, whose struggles, weakened no doubt by its recent exertions, were growing feebler and feebler, others crawling beneath it to loosen it from the paving stone to which its own blood was causing it to adhere. This done, a single member of the band began to drag the fly off by one wing—a notable feat of strength—while its legs continued to wave and twitch.