Chapter 1
O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when âthe heathenâ pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!
Buddha at Kamakura.
HE SAT, IN DEFIANCE of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gherâthe Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that âfire-breathing dragonâ, hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conquerorâs loot.
There was some justification for Kimâhe had kicked Lala Dinanathâs boy off the trunnionsâsince the English held the Punjab and Kim was English. Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was whiteâa 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 Kimâs motherâs sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a Colonelâs family and had married Kimball OâHara, a young colour-sergeant 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 OâHara 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 OâHara 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 papersâone he called his âne varieturâ because those words were written below his signature thereon, and another his âclearance-certificateâ. The third was Kimâs birth-certificate. Those things, he was used to say, in his glorious opium-hours, would yet make little Kimball a man. On no account was Kim to part with them, for they belonged to a great piece of magicâsuch magic as men practised over yonder behind the Museum, in the big blue-and-white Jadoo-Gherâthe Magic House, as we name the Masonic Lodge. It would, he said, all come right some day, and Kimâs horn would be exalted between pillarsâmonstrous pillarsâof beauty and strength. The Colonel himself, riding on a horse, at the head of the finest Regiment in the world, would attend to Kimâlittle 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 Kim, if they had not forgotten OâHaraâpoor OâHara that was gang-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 amulet-case which she strung round Kimâs neck.
âAnd some day,â she said, confusedly remembering OâHaraâs prophecies, âthere will come for you a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and,â dropping into Englishâânine hundred devils.â
âAh,â said Kim, âI shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men making ready the ground for these matters. That is how my father said they always did; and it is always so when men work magic.â
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 magic 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 Kim did nothing with an immense success. True, he knew the wonderful walled city of Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was hand in glove with men who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al Raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild as that of the Arabian Nights, but missionaries and secretaries of charitable societies could not see the beauty of it. His nickname through the wards was âLittle Friend of all the Worldâ; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigueâof course he knew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speakâbut what he loved was the game for its own sakeâthe stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe, the sights and sounds of the womenâs world on the flat roofs, and the headlong flight 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, with whom he was quite familiarâgreeting them as they returned from begging-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 clothesâtrousers, a shirt and a battered hat. Kim found it easier to slip into Hindu or Mohammedan garb when engaged on certain businesses. One of the young men of fashionâhe who was found dead at the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquakeâhad once given him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume of a lowcaste street boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place under some baulks in Nila Ramâs timber-yard, beyond the Punjab High Court, where the fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after they have driven down the Ravi. When there was business or frolic afoot, Kim would use his properties, returning at dawn to the veranda, all tired out from shouting at the heels of a marriage procession, or yelling at a Hindu festival. Sometimes there was food in the house, more often there was not, and then Kim went out again to eat with his native friends.
As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and again from his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal and Abdullah the sweetmeat-sellerâs son, to make a rude remark to the native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door. The big Punjabi grinned tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. So did the water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goat-skin bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the Museum carpenter, bent over new packing-cases. So did everybody in sight except the peasants from the country, hurrying up to the Wonder House to view the things that men made in their own province and elsewhere. The Museum was given up to Indian arts and manufactures, and anybody who sought wisdom could ask the Curator to explain.
âOff! Off! Let me up!â cried Abdullah, climbing up Zam-Zammahâs wheel.
âThy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi,â sang Kim. âAll Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!â
âLet me up!â shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered cap. His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but India is the only democratic land in the world.
âThe Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them off. Thy father was a pastry-cookââ
He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring Motee Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought 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 Kim refer to any known trade or profession. At his belt hung a long open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On his head was a gigantic sort of tam-oâ-shanter. His face was yellow and wrinkled, like that of Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the bazar. His eyes turned up at the corners and looked like little slits of onyx.
âWho is that?â said Kim to his companions.
âPerhaps it is a man,â said Abdullah, finger in mouth, staring.
âWithout doubt,â returned Kim; âbut he is no man of India that I have ever seen.â
âA priest, perhaps,â said Chota Lal, spying the rosary. âSee! He goes into the Wonder House!â
âNay, nay,â said the policeman, shaking his head. âI do not understand your talk.â The constable spoke Punjabi. âO Friend of all the World, what does he say?â
âSend him hither,â said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah, flourishing his bare heels. âHe is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo.â
The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. He was old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking artemisia of the mountain passes.
âO Children, what is that big house?â he said in very fair Urdu.
âThe Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!â Kim gave him no titleâsuch as Lala or Mian. He could not divine the manâs creed.
âAh! The Wonder House! Can any enter?â
âIt is written above the doorâall can enter.â
âWithout payment?â
âI go in and out. I am no banker,â laughed Kim.
âAlas! I am an old man. I did not know.â Then, fingering his rosary, he half turned to the Museum.
âWhat is your caste? Where i...