The Devil's Guard, page 15
A more important problem at the moment was for me to get in shape to travel. The knife wounds and the pounding that the giant gave me had left me stiff and weak, although the wounds were healing in the mountain air with the aid of the old monk's nursing and mysterious drugs. He came in every hour or two with his prayer wheel, and when he needed both hands to change the bandages he would give the wheel to Chullunder Ghose with orders to keep it spinning. It seemed to make no difference to him whose hand made the imprisoned paper charms revolve provided their motion did not cease all the while he was in the room.
Grim busied himself meanwhile with monastery manuscripts. The library was underneath the building in a cellar that was partly natural cave and partly hewn out of the rock. Some of the "books" were rolls, as much as fifty feet long; others were sheets of ancient paper tied between wooden blocks; there were enough of them to have kept a dozen translators busy for a lifetime, but there were not more than forty monks in the monastery, of whom not more than ten or twelve could read that ancient script. They not only did not object to Grim's exploring among their treasures, but actually carried up the books for him into the cell, and the abbot himself, who sometimes helped Grim to translate them, even gave him one of them from which Grim has quoted so often that I have a number of its paragraphs by heart.
That abbot was a gently smiling ancient of days, as genial toward us as he was stern with all the monastery household. He was a little man, wrinkled and stooped, with a beard like a Chinaman's, who wore black robes much too big for him, so that he could fold them over and over against the draughts that made him shiver. He was hugely amused with Chullunder Ghose, from whom he endured outrageous banter with emotions that suggested an old maid being flattered by Don Juan; but if one of his monks looked sidewise at him, or as much as smiled at any of the babu's jokes, he reproved him instantly and ordered draconic penances—such as ten thousand repetitions of a long prayer on the monastery roof, where the wind blew through a leather overcoat like water through a sieve. "You are a bad rascal—a bad rascal!" he assured the babu. "You will be reborn as a fish for having mocked the Lord Chenresi, whose outward shape you so resemble. There is no hair on a fish," he added, apropos apparently of nothing.
He called Grim his son (which gave Chullunder Ghose fresh opportunities for scandalous insinuations), and he spent hours trying to find in a ncient books some proof that Jimgrim was a word of Pali origin with roots that could be traced into the very womb of dawn. Neither Grim nor any one else could guess whether he was in earnest or merely amusing himself; he seemed to be a mixture of the rankest superstition, almost absolute unworldliness and variegated knowledge. But there was no doubt whatever about his liking for Grim, or about his dislike for Narayan Singh.
He vowed he could smell blood on the Sikh, and invariably held his nose and looked away from him when he entered the room, keeping the Sikh on his left-hand side whenever possible. He seemed to like to sit at Grim's feet, making him take the carved square stool, that was carried wherever he went for him to squat on, and himself sitting on the mat that was placed in front of it.
His mixture of frankness and reticence was not much different from that of any high dignitary of an established and historic church; he would discuss things one expected him to shy off from, and grow suddenly silent—even leave the room—when one of us asked him something, that, to us, seemed commonplace. He did not in the least mind talking about dugpas, although he spun his prayer wheel while he did it; but when I asked him by whose authority Benjamin had been given the key to the secret route into Tibet he looked at me as if I had slapped his face and went out, slamming the door and scolding the monk who waited on him. For two days after that he would not speak to me.
"Dugpas?" he said in answer to one of Grim's questions. "Spiritual criminals. Look out for them! Look out for them! I have some in this monastery. You say to a dugpa `Bless you,' and he tries to use the blessing for a stick to beat you with. You say to him `This is so,' and his mind begins to work at once to prove it isn't so. You say to him `Love your enemies,' and he goes to work to make some enemies, yourself first, in order to have some one to love. You show him money; he begins to think of how to imitate it out of baser metals. You make peace in your household; he proceeds to try to break it up. He thinks vice is virtue. He looks upon virtue as vice."
"Why not get rid of your dugpas?" Grim suggested.
"How!" he asked and cackled with comical laughter, looking at Grim like an old grandparent amusing himself with a favorite grandson.
"Kick them out," Grim suggested.
"Kick out a bellyache! Why not? Cut off your nose because it bothers you to blow it—eh? As for me, I prefer to blow my nose. Did you ever try to sweep out darkness with a broom? It's easy. Only when you've finished, there's the darkness still there. There won't be any dugpas in the monastery when I've got rid of all the dugpas here." He touched himself over the heart.
"Do you mean you're a sorcerer yourself?" Grim asked.
The old eyes twinkled and the wrinkled lips moved as if he were chewing something while he thought out a reply.
"Teach a child arithmetic," he said at last, "and he can use it to cheat with, can't he? Teach a man the laws and forces of the universe, and he can turn them against his teacher, can't he? Give a child a box of matches, and there will always be some one to show him how to set fire to a house. Teach me spiritual knowledge, and for every one desire to use it rightly I shall have a thousand impulses to do the wrong thing. Persistence in thinking the wrong thing makes a man a fool if he is untaught and a dugpa if he knows too much. Do you think you know enough to be a dugpa?"
Grim denied having any ambition in that direction.
The old abbot chuckled at him.
"Neverthless, my son, you area mixture of good and bad like any other man. The good and bad is in your mind—or at any rate, that is where you think it is. So it is your mind that learns. And as the good learns, so the bad learns and there is war between the two. Your bad side—I am trying to use terms that you will understand— will seek to use your knowledge on the side of evil; and it is that side of you that the dugpas, who are vastly your superiors in evil, will continually cultivate. As long as there is any evil in you dugpas will discover it, as flies find rotten meat. It will be a long time before there is no evil in you," he added dryly.
"Is that how you account for criminality?" asked Grim.
"How do you account for virtue!" asked the abbot. "Do I not teach virtue, day in, and day out, to a number of ingrate monks? And am I not one inconsiderable teacher among thousands? All over the world are there not superiors and their subordinates, of all sorts and kinds of creeds, who all teach virtue or try to teach it? Well, I tell you there are just as many who teach non-virtue and with just as much enthusiasm, though they call it something else. As there are lamas, cardinals, archbishops and professors of virtue, so there are lamas, cardinals, arch-bishops and professors of non-virtue. At each step upward that a man takes, he must choose all over again on which side of the ladder he will climb. There is magic in good; there is sorcery in evil. Non-virtue, which is sorcery, has no existence until virtue, which is magic, finds expression first; but for every light there are at once a million shadows, and nobody has to tell the shadow where to find the light; it is created by the light, and by the very virtue of the light it procreates non-virtue. Moreover, it would smother virtue if it could, just as the water, in which only fish can live, would smother men. Therefore, beware of the dugpas, who are all they who say no to virtue, and who for every gleam of light invent its opposite. There are grades and grades of them—little, ignorant, unwise ones who are at the mercy of the others and commit crimes without knowing what or why—and wise, far-seeing ones who understand the laws of evil."
"Show me a dugpa," said Grim. "You say some of your monks are dugpas."
"Aye, show us one," Narayan Singh echoed. "I will show you a good way to deal with him."
The abbot rang the copper bell he carried at his waist. The cell door opened and the monk came in whose duty for the day it was to wait on him and to carry his stool and carpet. He was a very ordinary-looking, plain-faced man with dull uninterested eyes.
"There are degrees, and then degrees of them," the abbot said, and made a gesture. The monk picked up his stool and mat, and the abbot walked out of the room with his prayer wheel twirling, followed by the other rutching sandals in his wake.
"You have offended him," Chullunder Ghose remarked. "Such holy men as he don't like to be asked to betray even dugpas. "
But Narayan Singh took a long Tibetan sword out of a corner and tested its sharpness with his thumb, holding it then between feet and knees and beginning to file the edge.
"I think we shall see a dugpa," he said pleasantly.
That night while we slept in our separate corners, with the shutter fastened and the embers dying dull-red on the hearth, a sound like a footfall awoke me suddenly. For a while I lay still. The cell door had been left unfastened to admit the old monk who visited me at intervals to dose me and change my bandages and I supposed the intruder was he. But nobody came to my bedside, so I stared toward the hearth. There was some one sitting there, his face toward me and his back toward Narayan Singh; he appeared to be fanning the embers, and I still thought it was the old physician.
But suddenly the embers flared and a red blaze shone on the man's face. I felt the hair rise all over my body. He was the same long-haired and classically handsome man who had visited us in Sidiki's house and offered to protect us from Lhaten, that night our Tibetans were murdered.
He was sitting in exactly the same posture as he had then, with the same immobility, the same half-contemptuous expression on his face. He seemed to be waiting for us to speak to him, but none spoke— though I could hear Chullunder Ghose's teeth chattering. There was no sound from Narayan Singh or Grim. I did not know whether they were awake.
The man sat without moving until the blaze died down again and his face receded into shadow. Then a voice, that was his, but that hardly seemed to come from him, spoke very clearly, in an accent of command:
"You are in danger. You must leave this place. You may wait for the dawn, but no longer."
"Whose orders?" I asked.
I sat up on the bed. Chullunder Ghose was clutching at his blankets and his teeth were going like castanets, but there was still no sound from Narayan Singh or Grim. The embers were dying, but I could see the man's eyes.
"The orders of them who will guide you to where you shall go," he replied.
He spoke English, but that did not strike me as peculiar at the time.
"What is the danger?" I asked him.
In the dim glow from the embers he had become hardly visible, but he stood up. I could see that. His anger was almost tangible.
"Disobedience is death!" he answered.
Suddenly there came the swish of steel in air, and a thwack as a sword struck home into the man's neck from behind. He fell forward with a groan on to the embers. Some one pulled him off them, struck a match, lighted our lantern, and I saw Grim leaning over him. Behind the hearth Narayan Singh stood with the sharp sword in his hand.
"So I deal with dugpas!" said Narayan Singh, and Grim looked up.
"Take a dekko at him," he exclaimed.
He held the lantern so that all of us might see the man who lay there with his neck three-quarters severed. He was clean shaven. He did not bear the least resemblance to the bearded man who had come and spoken with us in Sidiki's house. He was the monk who had attended on the abbott that day, carrying his stool and mat— snub-nosed, dull-eyed and unintelligent!
Chapter Fourteen—Lhaten's guru.
There be many gurus, and some good ones whom it is no great task to differentiate, seeing that those who make the loudest claim are least entitled to respect. They who are the true guides into Knowledge know that nothing can be taught, although the learner easily can be assisted to discover what is in himself. Other than which there is no knowledge of importance, except this: that what is in himself is everywhere.—From The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup
It was something below zero in the room. Grim pulled on his overcoat and went to the door to summon a monk to tell the abbot what had happened; but as he opened the door the abbot entered, hurrying, with a monk behind him. Chullunder Ghose threw himself face downward on his mattress and pulled up the blankets trying to pretend he was still asleep.
Grim held the lantern in midroom, its light on the old abbot's wrinkled face, the corpse in shadow.
"What brought you?" he asked.
"Who slew?" asked the abbot, in the harsh voice that he used to discipline his monks.
Narayan Singh, wiping the sword on the dead man's clothing, grunted:
"I slew a dugpa. Did I not say I should show you how to deal with one!"
"Man of blood! Man of blood!" said the abbot. "You befoul my monastery. Go now! All of you must go.
He glanced toward me.
"Can you travel?" he asked.
I would have died outside in the snow rather than remain there after being asked to leave the place. I made him such answer, as politely as I could. Grim started to ask questions; the old fellow silenced him with an angry exclamation and a gesture.
"Maniac!" he spluttered at Narayan Singh. The Sikh stood erect like a man on parade, his eyes glowing in the lamplight. "You know well I slew a dugpa," he retorted.
"Incorrigible butcher! You shall be reborn into a boar! Men and the dogs and the other boars shall hunt you! Slew a dugpa? You have cracked a jar and let the water out!"
"He changed himself into a man with a beard," said the Sikh. "These eyes beheld him."
"Fool!" exclaimed the abbot. "Can a tree not cast a shadow on a wall? Can even you not see your image in a pool! Shall not an arch dugpa then use this poor weakling to reflect his image?" [9]
The old man's anger made him stutter. He raised his staff and struck Chullunder Ghose to force him to get up from the mattress.
"Go!" he ordered. "You shall have my blessing, save the one who slew. If that one should stay here he would make a shambles of the place—he lets in death—he is in league with death—he—"
"Nay, nay, holy one, no curses!" said Narayan Singh. "If I have done wrong I am already cursed enough."
"Slayer, if I bless you, you will slay more!" said the abbot.
"If you curse me, will I slay less?" asked the Sikh.
"Die then by the sword," the abbot answered, "for I see you are an honest man. You will serve some though you injure others. You shall eat your own sin and be done with it."
Narayan Singh bowed proudly to him, suggesting rather tolerance than too much faith in the old abbot's vision.
"Jimgrim, my son," said the abbot, "I could have taught you much— but not these. You are a better one than any of my monks, yet you come with a crew of brawlers and my monastery is in danger through them. This one" (he pointed at me) "shall have medicines lest he die by the way. Such virtue as he has is in his friendship. He may win through on that account. I doubt it. That one" (he made a gesture with his staff in the direction of Chullunder Ghose) "is a coward whose curiosity is greater than his cowardice; whose honesty is stronger than his zeal. His cunning shall protect him, though his flesh shall be a weariness." He pointed at Narayan Singh. "Death is no answer to riddles," he said, "as you shall know when you are slain, you who have slain so many."
He turned to go, giving his staff to the monk who attended him and beginning to spin his prayer wheel, but I broke the silence by asking him what was to be done about Sidiki ben Mahommed and his young wife. He turned in the doorway, answering impatiently:
"What are they to you?"
"I owe the man money," I told him.
"Then pay it," he retorted irritably. "So much talk about such unimportant things!"
Presently monks came into our cell to carry out the dead one. Others waited for us to pack up our belongings. Nothing was left undone to make it obvious that our welcome had expired although no actual discourtesy was offered. Evidently some one told Sidiki we were leaving, for he came in a great state of excitement carrying paper, pen and ink-horn.
"You go, sahibs? You go? And at this hour? You were not-you were not forgetting—?"
I wrote him his order on Benjamin, attaching no conditions to it, knowing that if there were any peculiar wording about the order or anything that might arouse Benjamin's suspicions the old Jew would refuse to honor it. Grim, Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose all added their signatures as witnesses, and before we left the place I persuaded the old abbot to attach his seal.
Sidiki wept at our departure. He pretended he would like to come with us and swore he would have done so but for having a young wife on his hands.
"Nor can I leave her, sahibs. You don't know this country. They would make a cuckold of me before my back was turned! There is something in me of Lord Roberts—I should oh, so dearly love this campaign into the unknown—yes, yes, I should love it. But my honor—a man's honor is his first consideration. I must wait here until spring, when these monks will kindly escort me as far as Leh, where I shall appeal for government protection and proceed to Delhi. Is your honor sure this money will be paid to me by Benjamin?"
In darkness, for it lacked two hours of dawn, we watched our loads, and then Narayan Singh and the babu, being lowered in a great basket between natural rock bastions, and heard the basket—wind blown— crash against the rock wall in fathomless darkness. My turn and Grim's came at last, and, knowing something about pithead gears, I sat near the rickety wooden winch manipulated by two monks, and examined the rope made of leather and various odds and ends. It occurred to me to ask whether there was no other way of leaving the place.
