The Devil's Guard, page 18
There was so much wisdom symbolized on the central figure's face, and so much alert intelligence on the faces of the other two, that the impulse was to creep toward them silently and sit and listen. None of us spoke for I don't know how many minutes, although the men around the fire continued talking, their voices booming and rumbling.
"They can't be Buddhist carvings," Grim said at last. "It took a hundred thousand years to form this stuff."
He touched the stalagmitic covering of the gallery with his finger. It was as smooth as if hand polished. The woman laughed, perhaps at our amazement, and beckoned us to follow her down hewn steps, covered with the same smooth, ice-hard lacquer, to the cavern floor. They were slippery; and it was clear that once they had been worn in ruts by human feet. But by some unguessable alchemy the ruts had been refilled with the stalagmitic stuff, restoring the perfect squareness of the hewn blocks.
None took the slightest notice of us as the woman led the way across the floor toward those images. The men who sat around the fire continued talking. Nor did she appear to feel much reverence for the images. She approached them with an air of amusement, pointing at the one in the midst, then turning to laugh at Chullunder Ghose.
"Fat Chenresi!" she exclaimed.
Barring that our babu had a full week's growth of curling, coarse, black whiskers, the superficial likeness was amazing, even to the broad, strong shoulders and the well filled paunch. There was the same majestic forehead, the same contemplative calmness of the eyes, the full, well-rounded head and width between the ears. The babu had it all, except the costume and the dignity.
He laughed, uncomfortably conscious of the difference, and tried to hide confusion with a jest:
"Yes, I sat for the portrait. Does it do me justice?"
Grim touched the woman's arm. "But is that Chenresi?" he demanded. He had been examining the image. The surface of the stone had cracked with age, the way dry cheese does, and the stalagmitic substance had come later, filling the cracks and preserving the whole.
"Are you your grandfather?" she retorted. Then she pointed at the oldest man who sat a little apart from the others within the circle of the firelight. "Ask him," she suggested.
She led the way toward the fire, we following in a rather diffident group since we seemed to be interrupting earnest conversation that was no concern of ours. But that oldest man looked up and glanced at us as if he knew why we had come, and who we were.
"Have they washed! Have they eaten!" he asked in Pushtu. The woman made no answer but beckoned us to follow her to an opening under the gallery by which we had entered. It was a natural break in the wall of the cavern that had been trimmed into a keyhole arch shape and then subsequently covered with the pearly stalagmitic stuff. It led into a cave in which one lamp was burning above a deep trough through which about two feet of water flowed. The sides of the cave were moist from the warmth of the water, which was slightly more than body heat.
We got into that trough and wallowed. It was the first bath we had had for weeks. The feel of good clean water on my healing wounds was like a taste of paradise, and the water was faintly sulphurous, which may or may not be advised in the medical text books as a remedy for stabs and saddle sores, but which made me feel as if my injuries had never happened.
There was room for us all in the trough and to spare; there would have been room for another half-dozen of us; and we fooled and splashed like youngsters until the woman's voice drew our attention to the fact that somebody had mentioned food. It was then, but not until then, that we realized that she had stood and watched us all the time, leaning with one hand on the keyhole arch by which we entered.
Grim called her "mother," I suppose to restore his self-possession, and since we never learned her name the title stuck to her, she accepting it without comment, and adopting the role more or less. For instance, she came and examined my wounds, making me keep turning in the lamp-light, and then she had satisfied herself she went and brought washed gauzy stuff for bandages which she tore into strips and helped me to tie on. She also brought some fleeces to be used as towels, laughing because we had to put on filthy clothing over clean skins.
Then she led us to another cave, gloomy, and full of sound because the wind was whistling through a tunnel overhead. There was hot boiled barley ready for us in enameled iron bowls, with iron spoons that looked like shovels; and tea in the Tibetan style, containing salt, and butter made from yak milk, which is not so bad when you are used to it. The while we ate she watched us as if eating were a loathsome ritual indulged in only by the ignorant. Nevertheless, she brought us second helpings from some sort of pantry at the end of a dark passage, where a man's voice like an ogre's greeted her each time she entered.
When we had eaten our fill at last she led us back to the main cavern, where the group was still in conversation around the blazing fire. She gestured at the fire and grinned at us.
"Wood—wood—we shall need wood in the morning!" she remarked. "Snow —snow—snow—you will have to dig for it!"
The oldest man, whose mat was a little apart from the others, rebuked her for the speech and motioned to us to be seated in a group together on his right hand where there was a wide gap in the circle. So we sat down on the polished floor, which was neither warm nor comfortable— "like a missionary's heaven," as Grim whispered through the corner of his mouth. But the woman fetched the fleeces on which we had dried ourselves, so we squatted on those and felt less like paupers at a rich man's entertainment.
"You are welcome," said he who had rebuked the woman, and the softly voweled Hindi that he used suggested even more than friendliness. He was another who had the gift of putting strangers instantly at ease.
I have called him the oldest man in that strange gathering, and so undoubtedly he was. But under scrutiny his face had the appearance of undying youth. There were no wrinkles; his short neat beard was black and so was as much of his hair as we could see under the edge of his brown turban. His teeth were regular, well kept and white. He sat bolt-upright, bearing his weight from the loins with the grace of an athlete. His hands were strong, firm, young looking and, though obviously used to exercise, well kept, with clean, unbroken nails.
He wore a gold bead necklace tucked into the bosom of a brown smock, and a ring on his middle finger like those that Rao Singh and Lhaten wore. His cloak was of dark-brown homespun, unembroidered. He had noticeably brown eyes, large and well spaced. It was only they, on scrutiny, that hinted at his age; they looked so much too wise to be a young man's.
Yet—if one looked away from him, and looked back suddenly, one wondered that a man so old as he could sit up straight and talk— or even live! There was age, not skin-deep, on his surface, like an eggshell only more transparent; and within was not exactly youth but a maturity that had refused to grow old.
"You like this place?" he asked. "You wonder at it?" And we all made affirmations of amazement—asinine remarks, attempting to find adjectives that should describe the indescribable, like four fool tourists looking at the Taj Mahal. Grim was the first to begin to talk sense:
"When I asked just now whether that is an image of Chenresi, I was asked in return whether I am my own grandfather. Would you care to explain?"
The man smiled. "They call you Jimgrim, I am told. Men give you a good reputation. I am not surprised at that. Chenresi, as known nowadays, is a Lamaistic legend—to all intents and purposes a god who is worshiped by ignorant monks. What you see over there is the symbol that men carved, quite a number of thousands of years before Gautama taught certain spiritual truths. From that original men took the pattern for Chenresi's image, continually multiplying copies of it, each more imperfect than the last, and finally forgetting the very existence of the original."
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him how he knew Grim's name, but before I could speak he himself asked a question, which I answered before Grim could get a word in.
"Why are you here!" he demanded.
"We are on our way to rescue a man named Rait, who is in the hands of people who have been described to us as dugpas," I said, "but we don't know where he is nor how to get to him."
Some of the younger men who sat within the zone of firelight laughed at that, in the way that schoolboys snicker in class when a newcomer makes a mistake. He looked at them one by one and they grew immediately silent.
"If he were on the moon would you try to rescue him?"
"But he isn't on the moon," I objected.
"And moreover, I am good at killing dugpas," said Narayan Singh.
"My son, that is the dugpa fallacy," he answered, giving the Sikh a friendly look. "Dugpas seek to smother thought by killing those who dare to think. Do you think you can cause crime to cease by killing dugpas?"
"I can reduce the number of those who practice black arts," the Sikh retorted.
"As, for instance, you would lengthen day by killing those who stay awake at night?"
Chullunder Ghose began to scratch his stomach—the invariable prelude to a poser.
"Yes," he said, "but do we let men who have dangerous diseases walk at large? How shall we protect ourselves?"
"You avoid disease by living in accordance with the laws of health, which are beginning to be slightly understood. And if you live otherwise you are at the mercy of those agencies that spread disease, whether you are aware of them or not. In the same way, you are at the mercy of dugpas unless you live in such a way that dugpas can not possibly manipulate your thought."
"Father of Conundrums! How shall one learn to do that?" wondered Grim.
There was a chuckle all round the circle, and then silence. He whom Grim addressed as Father of Conundrums stared into the fire and seemed to search for phrases that might mean something to men unused to his philosophy, until the woman threw fuel on the embers with a crash that startled us and summoned him from reverie.
"You of the West are mechanical," he said. "You think in terms of engines. Very well. Let us say one of you wishes to solve a transportation problem. You desire to invent a machine that shall lessen distances. Yet you are ignorant. How long then would you think it reasonable first to study the mechanics of your problem— all the laws of friction, electricity, contraction and expansion, dynamics, metallurgy—and so on? Would you attempt to invent, let us say, an airplane without first studying those laws? And could you learn enough for a beginning, say, in half a lifetime? Nevertheless, you seem to expect me to explain in fifteen minutes how to avoid the malevolence of dugpas, concerning which you are almost entirely ignorant, and how to—" He paused. "What else is it you wish to do?"
"To reach Sham-bha-la," said Grim, "after rescuing Rait."
"After doing the impossible, to reach a place whose very existence you can't prove, and concerning the nature of which you know nothing! All this you wish me to tell you in fifteen minutes." Grim smiled. "We have until morning," he suggested amiably.
He whom Grim had called the Father of Conundrums bowed ironically. Then he indicated with a gesture all those seated in a circle around the fire.
"These, too, seek what you seek," he remarked. "Observe them. Are they young!? Observe her." (He signified the woman with a nod and a dry glance at her.) "She was a married woman, mother of three children whom she raised to manhood. Then her husband died and she went forth as a sanyassin,[12] wandering all over India, seeking the way, for I forget how many years. Thereafter for what some would think a lifetime she endured austerities in a nunnery of which you have never heard. And now she has come this far, but no farther." His eyes swept the circle again as he paused. "Not one of these," he went on, "but has sought at least for twenty years what you are seeking. Thus far only, they have come. And I tell you, they will have to go forth and do what they know, before they can go one step farther. You believe I can instruct you fully before morning?"
"You can try," said Grim. "I think you can do more than you would like me to believe."
Chullunder Ghose, rocking himself with excitement, leaped at the breach that he thought Grim had made in the wall of obscurity.
"Surely you can do more! Let me see one evidence of power—great, wise Guru that I know you are—and I shall submit myself, performing all that is required!"
"You would reward me for an exhibition? Is that it? Do you think I wish to buy your submission?"
"Set me a test then! What shall I do to persuade you to accept me as your chela?" asked Chullunder Ghose. A sort of revivalist fervor had seized him.
"Serve those well in whose service you are!" was the answer, prompt and unequivocal.
The babu bowed his head and sighed like a punctured rubber tire. Grim, twitching his eyebrows, picked up the thread of his argument. He knew, as I confess I did not, something of what was required of him before he might expect plain answers to his questions.
"We are men who have no claims on us," he said, "and we are bent on a definite goal."
"Is it definite? How definite?" the other asked.
"This much," said Grim, "that we're willing to die if we fail. We're going forward. We intend to rescue Rait, and we intend to find Sham-bha-la. You—I don't know who you are—convince me— though I don't know how—that you can help us if you wish. You knew my name without my telling you. Therefore, I'm sure you've had word from Lhaten in some way, and that Lhaten told you all about us before we got here. It's also clear enough that you wished to see us, or you wouldn't have been here when we came. Furthermore, there was no need to admit us into this wonderful place. We should never have known of its existence unless the woman had brought us down here, and I don't doubt that she did it by your orders. That convinces me that either Lhaten, or else the more mysterious Rao Singh who came to the cave and cured my friend Ramsden, has told you we're fit to be trusted. It's as plain as this hand before my face that you can read me as I have often had to read the savages I've dealt with in the way of duty, only I don't doubt you do it better; probably incomparably better. Savages have often come to me and told me to do my duty and help them because I knew more than they did. I never refused, although I always helped them in my own way, which was frequently successful and occasionally not. I may seem like a savage to you, but you appear to me to know a great deal and it doesn't make any difference to me how long this circle of chelas has been seeking what I only recently began to seek. I have been busy in my own way. So has Ramsden. So have Chullunder Ghose and Narayan Singh. They're friends of mine, and I don't pick friends at random. I can guarantee them. You may say we're just four savages who have reached this place together. And speaking as a savage, I say to you, Do your duty! You know what it is."
That was the longest speech I ever heard Grim make. Its effect was magical. The Father of Conundrums (to this day I have not learned his name) stood up and bowed to Grim.
"I recognize you," he said simply.
All the chelas in the circle rose and looked at Grim with studied curiosity. Some of them smiled, but the majority received the news in silence. The old woman came and, thrusting herself between me and Grim, put over his shoulders her own necklace made of dried red berries. Then she threw more fuel on the fire until the sparks rose in a shower to the roof and the whole cavern glistened and shimmered like mother o' pearl, in the dew of a mid-summer morning.
Chapter Sixteen—Jeff Ramsden's dream.
Consider this, my son: this earth-life is a little time, of which a third is spent asleep. What went before it, and what cometh after, are a long time—verily a time too long for measurement. Shall we be of the herd who say that dreams are a delusion because waking we can not interpret them in terms of common speech? Or shall we, rather than pretend to have more knowledge than the gods, admit that possibly some dreams may link us with that universe from which we came into a temporary world, and into which we must inevitably yield ourselves again? Some dreams are memories, it may be, of experience gained in the infinity of time before the world was. And the wisest—aye, the very wisest of us—is he altogether sure that all earth-life is not a dream.—From The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup
Emotions are not easy to explain in writing. Here, in this draughty cave, where the paper flutters and the ink is freezing, even memory does not function properly. I have to keep warming my fingers by flapping my arms in the way old London cabmen used to do on frosty mornings, and in the intervals it is not easy to recall sensations that occurred a month ago. So much has happened since.
I remember Grim's face. I remember that once, in Jerusalem, when a high commissioner had sent for him to thank him privately for secret public service that undoubtedly had saved the Near East from a holy war of Moslem against Jew and Christian, he had come out smiling in exactly the same way. Some one had touched the concealed, inner core of his manhood.
Now he stood still, looking straight into the eyes of the old guru, whom he had called Father of Conundrums. Guru is a desecrated word; I use it for lack of another to describe the man whose slowly spoken phrase "I recognize you" opened a door, as it were, through which Grim stepped, and closed the same door in the faces of Narayan Singh, Chullunder Ghose and me.
We were the same men, standing on the same pearl-colored floor of stalagmite. No word, not a gesture of Grim's so much as hinted at a change in our relationship. The only way I can suggest the feeling I experienced is to say that it may be a woman who sees a better-looking woman speaking to her husband, feels as I did then. I don't know. But it may be. Chullunder Ghose was jealous and gave tongue:
"Is it not enough that white men should have stolen India? Shall they rob us also of our heritage in spiritual things? Why am I unrecognized?"
"You are better fitted to cheat pilgrims at Benares!" growled Narayan Singh.
"You—you will die with a sword in your back!" said the babu.
I expected anything to happen, except what actually did. The chelas formed a circle around Grim and the old guru, excluding us three and the woman, who took me by the arm and fairly drove Chullunder Ghose along in front of her, he arguing like a pot-bellied bunnia who has lost a lawsuit. Narayan Singh strode gloomily behind us, muttering to himself.
