The Devil's Guard, page 19
The woman led us up over the gallery into a dark cavern in which empty barley bags and sheepskins had been piled for use as beds. She found an ordinary box of safety matches and lit half a dozen butter lamps in niches in the wall, which instantly brought great, carved, staring, seated figures out of the surrounding gloom—solemn, serene and majestic, like a conference of prehistoric gods. It was hard to believe that they did not move and were not breathing. She set her box of matches on the lap of one of them.
It looked as if the chamber were prepared for us. There were three cups, three earthen jars of drinking water, three pairs of heavy blankets thrown on three of the heaps of bedding.
"You should not talk. You should sleep," the woman told us and immediately sat down on a sheepskin by the entrance.
We wanted to ask questions but she shook her head until the gray mane blew out horizontally, then laid a gnarled old finger on her lips. Thereafter, gradually, as if she let her muscles find their proper relaxation one by one, she fell into the attitude in which those images were carved and stayed there motionless as if she herself were hewn out of the rock.
Chullunder Ghose sighed despondently and rolled himself on to a heap of sheepskins, pulling up the blankets over him and belching in the way that Hindus do before they sleep.
"So this is hope!" he grumbled. "Taste it—and it is snatched away at once! That is always my luck. Jim-grim goes forward alone, and we three will be sent back—take my word for it! I should say, let us go and join the dugpas, if I weren't afraid of them!"
"I go where Jimgrim goes!" announced Narayan Singh. "Whoever can turn me back will have to be a good one! Let us sleep while we may. In the morning Jimgrim will be tired—aye, as a young recruit is tired after his first week on the drill ground—only more! It may be he will need our strength. Let the hag keep watch."
He fell asleep, as his heavy breathing proved, within five minutes after he had spoken. Chullunder Ghose began to snore not many minutes afterward. I, too, had a feeling that the woman might be trusted to sit sentinel. Her eyes were open, fixed in meditative calm and she looked as if sleep were no part of her plan for the night. Nevertheless, I made up my mind to stay awake; I had a feeling which worried me, that something in the nature of a crack was opening in the intimacy I had long enjoyed with Grim. It was a vague, uncomfortable feeling. There was no explaining it.
So for a while I sat upright on a heap of sheepskins in between the knees of two of the great carved images and with my back against the wall. It was like sitting in a tomb. The little yellow flames of the butter lamps cast leaping shadows that made the great carved figures seem to move, and when a rat ran over the floor I learned that my nerves were in no respectable condition. It was a big rat, but it had no right to startle me in that way. The old woman took no notice of it.
Then the wall grew cold against my back, so I used the blankets; and I had no sooner draped them over my shoulders than I felt an irresistible weight over my eyelids. It was not unnatural; a long march on the first day after convalescence, followed by a hot bath and a full meal could hardly have helped but produce that effect, though I fought it, even forcing my eyelids open with my fingers.
It was not very long, I suppose, before sleep overcame me and I slipped into a dream, so realistic that every single detail of it stands out clear in memory. In the dream I was sitting on that heap of bedding, trying to force myself to stay awake and watching the old woman by the entrance, wondering how she had learned that trick of concentration with her eyes wide open, and what good it did her. I particularly remember I could hear the snoring of Chullunder Ghose.
All at once, silently, in came the man with the savagely masculine features and the womanly black hair, who had sent me reeling backward in Sidiki ben Mahommed's house. He took no notice of the woman, and she none of him. He came up straight toward where I was sitting and the smile with which he greeted me was of triumph and condescension.
"So you have lost your friend!" he said maliciously.
From first to last throughout the dream my part in it was passive, except insofar as I fought all the while with an intense sleepiness, which I recognized as dangerous. I seemed to be in the power of something that held me speechless and unable to do anything without that individual's permission, although I could hear, see, obey and understand.
"Do you know what they are doing to your friend Grim?" he asked me. "Come and see."
I got off the bed and followed him, still conscious of the old woman, who moved her head slowly to follow us with her gaze, but without once blinking. We went out to the gallery from which we had first entered the main cavern, and there we stood side by side looking down at the men who were torturing Grim.
The fire of rough tamarisk knots had been changed to a circle of flame that appeared to come out of the floor of the cavern and around that, in a wider circle, sat the chelas doing something, I could not see what, that increased the flame's fierceness whenever the old guru spoke to them. The guru was seated outside the circle of chelas on a mat that seemed to have no contact with the floor.
In the midst of the circle of flame stood Grim with his hands tied to a stake behind his back. His face was set like a red Indian's enduring agony, but I saw that he held the cord that tied his wrists in either hand and could release it if he chose.
"That," said the man beside me, "is the way they measure mercy. If he were an ordinary chela they would give him no cord and he would have to depend solely on his will. He will burn unless he stands exactly in the middle of the fire. They roast the weakness out of him. When they've finished with him he will have no human qualities at all and he might just as well be dead."
"Does he love?" asked the voice of the guru.
"He loves!" cried the chelas.
"Burn it out of him!"
They did something that made the wall of flame white-hot and I saw Grim nearly fainting in the midst of it. A cloud that looked like smoke went up and when it vanished he no longer resembled the Grim I had known but had the dried-up look of an ascetic. He looked up through the flame and saw me watching him. His face, it seemed to me, was scornful.
"Does he hope?" asked the voice of the guru.
"He hopes!" cried the chelas. "Burn it out of him!"
Again the flame grew white-hot and I saw Grim writhe, while he clung with all his might to the cord that held his wrists fast to the stake. Then smoke, in a sudden great cloud as if something had burst; and when it disappeared there was nothing even likable about Grim; he was stern, contemptuous, emotionless, and when he looked toward me it was as if he wondered why he had ever called himself my friend.
"Does he hate?" asked the voice of the guru.
"Now he hates life!" cried the chelas.
"Burn it out of him! "
Again the white-hot ring of flame, and Grim became invisible. The chelas laughed. The man beside me touched me on the shoulder.
"You have lost your friend," he said. "When a man can't hate there is nothing left of him. Now come."
He led me along the gallery toward an opening that was not there when the old woman led us in that evening. We passed through gloom into a clear sharp light in which everything was finely etched, and Rait sat at a table with a board in front of him on which he was moving things that looked like checkers. Somewhere in the distance there was a maze of tangle-foot flypapers, and sometimes, when he moved a piece on the board a man got caught by the feet. At each move something happened. He appeared to be controlling forces that obliged men to act in this or that way, overwhelming them if they refused.
"This is what Grim missed," said the voice of my guide. "He took the wrong road—into nothingness."
Yet I could see that Rait's game was a losing one. The forces he controlled were taking hold of the men on whom he used them and he had to keep using more and more force to control his victims. I could see him sweating with the effort, his face white with fear; and he could not stop, because the moment he should relax the effort his victims were ready to turn the forces back on him. The thing was horrible. Being a dream, though vivid, the impending cataclysm was beyond the scope of ordinary thought. No words could describe what I saw was coming. My guide screamed, like a wildcat in a trap, and ran to Rait to try to help him with the pieces on the board, moving them swiftly, his eyes glaring; and at each move thousands were obliterated. Then Rait shouted and turned into a monster with fangs and claws, who tried to rend the man who had taken his place at the board. They fought, yelling at each other, as the forces rushed toward them like a returning tide—and I woke up.
Narayan Singh was sitting up and swearing Sikh oaths. Chullunder Ghose was screaming, his head under blankets.
"A bad dream," said Narayan Singh and threw a folded sheepskin at the babu.
Chullunder Ghose sat up and stared at us, and at the shadows playing on the great carved figures.
"Krishna!" he exclaimed. "I had a dream of dugpas: They were showing me how to grow great on stuff to eat that worked like yeast. I was bursting!"
"Indigestion!" said the Sikh. "If you had paid your reckoning by chopping wood, you would have slept like an honest man. I dreamed of war. It was a good game while it lasted but the dead men would not stay dead, and when they came back they had other weapons. Not good."
"What are you men making all that row about?"
It was Grim's voice. He had been sleeping quietly on some bedding heaped not far from mine, with the knees of an image between us. I went to look at him. There was no change that I could see. His face wore the same red Indian smile. There was the same quiet tolerance and resolution in his eyes.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Oh, we sat and talked for an hour or two." "Nothing else?"
"Why, yes, we smoked—imported cigarettes. We had a good time."
"No initiation?"
"Are you crazy?" he asked. "I yarned about our doings in the Near East and they told me some of the history of these caverns."
"Are you lying?" I asked him.
"No, you old bonehead," he retorted. "When there's anything I don't want to tell, I'll say so."
"Did the guru mention us three?"
"He said you might have an experience. I don't know whether he meant tonight, or when. He wasn't very definite. I vote we sleep; we're moving on at daylight."
"Did he tell you how to reach Rait?"
"No. He remarked you're an elephant, but elephants, he said, go through things rather than around them, and though they sometimes fall into traps in consequence, they have been known to smash the traps. He said an elephant's a foolish beast with streaks of wisdom. Why the devil don't you turn in?"
"What do you suppose he meant by `an experience'?"
"Darned if I know. Go to bed, and go on dreaming. He said dreams are sometimes tests of character. Go back and dream you're an elephant!"
I returned to the bed and sat there, having had enough of dreams for one night. Grim fell asleep at once. So did Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose, and they lay quietly; but Grim dreamed all night long, as I could tell by the way he twitched and muttered.
And until she arose, and lit a torch, and summoned us to breakfast, that old woman with the gray hair sat beside the entrance on her mat as motionless as if she had been carved of stone, her eyes fixed on infinity and an expression on her face as if she were listening to sounds none else could hear.
Chapter Seventeen—In which Narayan Singh decides an issue with the pistol instead of the sword.
You may be sure of this, my son: that no decision you may take, nor any course, will meet with universal favor. Though you turn to the right or to the left, or go ahead, or turn back, or attempt to stand still, there will come to you some critic to advise the contrary. For ten fail where the one succeeds; and some who failed are jealous, others vain, some full of malice. There are also honest men who, having failed, would warn you of the reef on which they wrecked their too unmanageable bark. I tell you, in the end you must decide all issues for yourself, and there is only one true guide, which is experience.—From The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup
We did not see the great pearl-coated cavern again.
There was a blizzard blowing but the woman took no more account of it than if it were a mild spring zephyr. She gave us two sacks of barley for the ponies and led the way into the wind with a short, spiked staff in her hand and her hair blown backward in a gray stream.
We had hard work to keep up with her. Dry driving snow reduced our vision to a few yards and it was almost impossible to stare ahead into the stinging blast that froze the moisture on our eyelashes. Faces, hands, thighs and feet were numb. Teeth and ears ached. There were places where the narrow track was smooth ice under an inch or two of loose snow, and we had bewildering glimpses of crags upreared from bottomless ravines that howled, reechoing their own din, as the blizzard volleyed through them.
One pony, loaded with our canned provisions, slipped where the sheet ice sloped outward from the rock-wall on our right and for a second hung on with his fore foot toed into the cracked ice. Then the ice gave way. He vanished backward into a maelstrom of snow that whirled in the throat of an abyss and with him went the greater part of our provisions.
Soon after that we lost the way and Grim, who was leading, reined up short at the end of a ledge that hung sheer over a precipice. There was hardly room to turn the ponies and we nearly lost two more in the confusion as they crowded one another. By and by I found a cave—a miserable, draughty place that, nevertheless, afforded room and some protection from the storm. I drove the ponies into it and, yelling into Grim's ear, urged him we should stay there until the storm was over. He agreed, but said he was still feeling fit, so would take careful bearings and go out and hunt for our guide. I objected to his going alone, and Narayan Singh volunteered to go with him.
Chullunder Ghose and I off-loaded the ponies and piled up the loads as a windbreak. We had no fuel and there was thick frost on the cave wall, but by sitting with our backs against the loads we found it more tolerable in there than outside. However, conversation was impossible because of the incessant shrieking of the wind between the boulders that littered the ledge; we sat close together to conserve our body heat and each pursued his own thoughts.
But Grim and Narayan Singh were gone a long time, and the storm grew worse if anything. Whenever the wind reached a certain pitch of violence it brought a booming sound out of the rear of the cave that threw the ponies into panic, so that we had to tie them all together by the head. Then I went to the rear of the cave and found a long low passage, through which it looked just possible to crawl, and out of which the hollow booming came at intervals.
It seemed worth while to explore in hope of finding a warmer place in which to wait for Grim, so I climbed up on the ledge on which the passage opened and crawled in. I meant to go alone, but as soon as Chullunder Ghose discovered I had left him he grew frightened and came after me.
Until he wedged his great bulk into the passage there was light enough to see by, but the dim light that had found its way past me was now completely cut of. However, by blocking the passage he also obstructed the wind, so I reached in my pocket for some matches.
Before I could strike one Chullunder Ghose called out to me:
"For God's sake, Rammy sahib, I believe this roof is falling in!"
I crawled backward and tried to shove him free with my feet against his shoulders, but could not get sufficient purchase on the rock although I shoved hard enough to make him yell. He said he was quite sure the roof was squeezing down on him, but I ascribed that to panic and told him to lie still until Grim and Narayan Singh returned when they could pull him out backward by the feet.
I went forward again. The air continued fresh, although Chullunder Ghose had cut off the supply behind me; and in places it felt as if some one had enlarged the tunnel with a pick. I crawled a prodigious distance and struck matches until I had only half a dozen left, discovering no more than that the tunnel kept on curving toward the right, until at last the curve reversed itself and I saw a pin spot of yellowish light a long way off. It was certainly not daylight. I crawled closer to it and lay still.
For a long time I could only hear my heart beats. Then a noise from behind announced that Chullunder Ghose was growing weary of confinement, but that was only like a hollow murmur from the bottom of a well. It may have sounded like the far-away voice of the gale to those whose forms I now began to perceive, like dim ghosts, seated in a cave in front of where I lay.
Grim's back was toward me. He had pulled off his Yak-skin cap and the shape of his head was unmistakable. Besides, presently I heard his voice and there was no doubt it was Grim. Sitting facing him was the gray-haired woman, the light from two small butter lamps reflected on her face, making it and her hair look almost lemon- colored. Narayan Singh was not there. The third member of the party was a man I had not seen before, although he vaguely resembled one of the older chelas who had sat by the fire in the stalagmite cavern.
I would have called to Grim, but there was something in his attitude and in the low-pitched voices that suggested secrecy. It occurred to me he might be getting information which he might not get if I disturbed him.
The first words that I heard distinctly were the woman's.
"They will treat you as they treated me."
"He said," Grim answered, "you have been well treated and are grateful."
The woman sneered. "He told you that? Look at me!"
Then the other man spoke: "Look at her! Longer and harder than any she has striven. She has been obedient. She has destroyed her own desires. Day-long, night-long she was watched—worked— ministered. Not even she can count the tale of years. Can she go? Then whither? She has thrown the world away, and her return for it is this that you have seen—servitude without thanks. Not even may she listen to the teaching. As for approaching nearer to the Mysteries she has abandoned hope of it. And they will treat you in the same way, letting you advance until retreat is out of the question, then nothing more!"
