The Devil's Guard, page 4
He was a friend—a grand ally—an uncomplaining messmate in extremity— and an enigma. I can not explain him. If there is truth in what the Eastern sages teach, then one might guess that he was marking time between two lives, perhaps a great man in the last one and to be a great one in the next. I don't pretend to know; I am only hazarding an explanation of him that, while not explaining, may suggest a mental picture of him.
It is easier to describe him as he stood there beside Benjamin the Jew and waited for us to issue marching orders—tall, statuesque, with dark-brown eyes that never seemed to sleep, immensely dignified without a trace of cheap conceit, his black beard curled and his mustache turned rather fiercely upward. Sabered or not, he always stood as if there were a saber at his waist. When not in action his arms were usually folded on his breast and his eyes appeared to search horizons—or infinity.
I gave him Rait's letter to read and he went to where a beam of sunlight shone through the open doorway, to sit down on a bale of merchandise and pore over the difficult handwriting, his lips moving as he construed it word by word into his own tongue.
"Outfit!" asked Benjamin and beckoned an assistant pointing with a yardstick at the things we might require which the assistant dragged down from the shelves piled into a heap. But that was no more than an excuse for not talking to us; the old Jew kept muttering to himself, gesturing disgustedly, as if rejecting one thought, then another.
"Which way will you go? By way of Sikkim?" he asked suddenly.
Grim nudged me, and none of us answered. In the East it is invariably wiser to say nothing than to answer foolishly. A random answer, yes or no, shuts off negotiation.
"If you take my advice, you won't go at all," said Benjamin. "Winter! Winter before you can reach the passes! Do you know what that means?"
"It means no trouble with frontier guards," said Grim.
"Tschah! They will find your frozen bodies in the spring, and strip them!" Benjamin said, frowning.
He turned away from us, and Grim nudged me again. The old Jew's hands were moving as if he were tossing something—weighing it.
"Sure," said Grim, "we'll do your business for you!"
Benjamin faced about suddenly.
"What do you know?" he demanded. "You, Jimgrim, what do you know?"
He scowled at Chullunder Ghose and glanced once or twice at the Sikh, who was still studying the letter.
"One man is a risk. Four men are four times the risk! I tell you, Jimgrim—"
"Trust me, trust my friends," Grim interrupted.
Benjamin resumed his fossicking among the shelves, pulling out cooking pots, knives, leather caps, yak-hair blankets, yak-skin overcoats, heaping them all on the floor until there seemed enough for a young army. Narayan Singh came striding to where we sat and handed me Rait's letter.
"Yes," he said, "I come with you. But Rait is no good."
"Sikh!" exclaimed Benjamin, and came and stood close to him. "What if I don't trust you? What if I refuse? What then?"
Narayan Singh laughed tolerantly.
"I have lived these many years without your aid," he answered. "Jew, do you own Tibet!"
Benjamin displayed two rows of yellow teeth with gaps between them— more a grimace than a grin.
"You Sikh! You think, if I refuse, you can make trouble for me?"
Narayan Singh laughed again.
"Jew, you have trouble enough," he retorted. "Give help or withhold it. I will go to Tibet."
Benjamin nodded, relaxing exactly as if pain had left him.
"Where is Mordecai?" Chullunder Ghose asked suddenly. "Is Mordecai in Tibet?"
Benjamin stared at him, startled. Grim smiled—it was his question; he had prompted the babu in a whisper. Grim and I both knew Mordecai, although it was several years since we last says him—in Damascus, whither he had brought the goods of the Bokhara Jews by caravan while the war was raging. Mordecai had married Benjamin's fat daughter (he being a man whom nothing terrified); he was a sort of Marco Polo among bargain-hunters, looking for his merchandise where most men thought none existed, and selling it in New York— London—Paris—Moscow—anywhere where profits could be made; a daring wanderer with a vocabulary made up from a dozen languages and a line of impudence that he himself invented.
Benjamin beckoned Grim and me into a small, dark inner room, where he lighted a lamp that had a broken chimney.
"Who will do a favor for an old Jew?" he asked, the lamp trembling in his hand." It is 'Jew, do this for me! Jew, do that for me!' But if the Jew wants favors he must—"
"—say exactly what he does want," Grim suggested.
"Will you find Mordecai? Will you take a message to him? Nah-nah!"
"Why not? Tell us where he is," said Grim.
"God knows where he is!" said Benjamin. "He went to Tibet—but not by the route that you shall use—he traveled swiftly. Twenty years I have been known to the Tibetans, though I have never been to Lhassa. Mordecai has been three times. I am purchasing agent. Also I supply them information—but the Indian Government does not know that. Why do you wish to go to Tibet?"
Grim said as much about Rait as could be told within the compass of a hundred words.
"Do you know Rait!" he asked.
"No," said Benjamin. "Mordecai knows him. Mordecai met him in Simla—met him again in Darjiling. Rait asked Mordecai so many questions that my son-in-law put two and two together. There are questions such as fools ask—questions such as men ask who will write books—questions such as men ask who will go, look, see for themselves—you understand me? He is a rogue of an explorer, is that fellow Mordecai; there are no mysteries too far away for him; like a hound he goes after them all, and he loves to be the first one to discover things. Said Mordecai, ' I know what Rait is after.' So, because he makes a good profit wherever he goes, I gave him a report from Moscow for the Dalai Lama. Those Soviet people have been thinking about Tibet; I had news about it from my cousin, who is a commissar as they call them; so I warned the Dalai Lama. But there is no news now from Mordecai since seven months. I am thinking Rait has killed him."
I laughed at that, believing I knew Rait.
"Butter," I said, "would melt in Rait's mouth, but he isn't a high-binder."
"Nah-nah! You don't know!" Benjamin retorted.
"That Roof of the World makes men like animals! The search for sacred things makes devils of them! Did people flay and burn us Jews for the love of money? Nah-nah-nah! They did it for religion— for the things they thought are holy! There are older and holier books than the Quabalah, up there in Tibet. And there are worse things than crime! There is madness there! What if Rait kills Mordecai! Will you four bring him back to life! What if the black evil gets him! You Jimgrim—you Ramsden—maybe you are all right, you two. You two may be proof against the evil. But the Sikh? The Bengali? Who shall know their hearts? I have my daughter, and her daughters—little ones—no male heir except Mordecai. He has been better than a first-born."
"Yet you let him go to Tibet!" Grim suggested.
Benjamin snapped his fingers, cracking all the knuckle bones, and drew a long breath through his teeth.
"Can you tie up a Jew in a stable?" he asked. "Who was it went with Christopher Columbus? Jews! The sun stood still on Gideon and the moon in the valley of Avalon, but not the Jews—nah-nah! But a Jew can be caught by—the evil—the black evil! If I help you into Tibet, will you find my Mordecai and bring him back to me?"
The heat was stifling in that inner room. The lamp smoked as it trembled in the old Jew's hand, and he sweated in streams, but we had to use patience. Men like Benjamin know only too well, and too bitterly, what happens when the West joins hands with them: labor and risk fall to the Asian; the rewards go to the white man's country. Grim and I had proved to Benjamin a time or two that, though we might not have it in us to keep faith exactly as the East interprets it, we were men of our word and fair according to our lights. But he was nervous.
"If I show you a secret—a secret route into the heart of Tibet— how long will it be a secret after that!" he demanded. "You two— maybe I shall take a chance on you; but those two? Listen to me! Twenty long years I have kept the secret; and the English, they knew I know it—teasing, coaxing, threatening, spying on me, offering this and that—trade opportunities, contracts, anything I please if I will show that route to them. What was it to me, if I should lose the Lhassa business? Nothing! The English would have paid the profit back twice over. Why then! Why will a woman not yield to a man—though she love him—though he offer her a fortune? It is her honor, isn't it? They'll tell you Jews know nothing about honor. Eh-heh! They who have tried to buy my secret will say that to you! And if I tell you, am I better than a woman who has yielded?"
"Oh well, all four of us will probably get killed," said Grim.
"Tschah-h-h! Much good that would do me! Shall I ever look the lamas in the face again? But Mordecai"—he set the lamp down—"I have no other first-born. Will you bring me news of him?"
"Maybe."
"But will you look for him!"
"Judge that for yourself," Grim answered. "We could promise anything. As for your secret—if we buy it from you, we would have the right to sell it."
"Nothing for nothing!" Benjamin began.
"Rot!" said Grim. "You talk about a woman's virtue. Will you sell yours? We four—or whichever of us lives—will look for Mordecai and bring you word of him. Keep your virgin secret until you like some one well enough to sacrifice it! Let's get out of this hole; there's no air."
Benjamin stood with his left hand on the door-latch. Grim's face, filthy with the lamp smoke, smiled at him poker-wise; there was no reading it. I felt that we had lost the trick, but I tried to disguise the feeling and searched for a last argument to change the old fellow's mind.
"Look here, Benjamin," I began; but he shook his head at me and held his hand up. "Shuh-shuh-shuh-shuh—sheyh!" he interrupted. "Beat a dead horse, will you? Am I saying no? I shall give you a writing that will take you all the way to Tibet.—Jimgrim!" he said, clutching him by the arm, "you are a wise one! You know the trick of how to win! You should have been a Jew, you, Jimgrim!"
Chapter Four—The spies of the Devil's Guard.
Death pursues life. Is there anything without its opposite? Or any cause without its consequence? Or any light that casts no shadow? So, I tell you that your very inmost thoughts awaken hosts that otherwise had slept, as sound awakens echoes. Therefore it is neither miracle nor mystery that there is no escape from spies nor any safety other than an upright zeal that makes haste, leaving the spies forever a march behind. This is the so-called mystery of leadership.—From The Book Of Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup
Some men yearn to become bishops; probably that yearning makes them put their utmost into life, which is the only way to extract one's share of satisfaction. I have met, and known, and liked men who could not resist the lure of a stagedoor. One of my respected friends will cross the world to hunt for a rare butterfly in fever swamps. And I know a woman whose health, youth, popularity and family combined can not prevent her from sailing the ocean alone in a thirty-foot sloop for weeks at a time when certain impulses, as unexplainable as life itself, assert their recurring spell. I don't believe it matters which enthusiasm we adopt, provided we have one and drive it, or let it drive us, for all it and we are worth.
The same lure that had beckoned Rait and Mordecai, had stirred whatever it is that differentiates us men from mushrooms, in Chullunder Ghose, Narayan Singh, Grim and me. Not one of us—not even Benjamin, who unlocked a secret door for us even remotely guessed what lay ahead. We simply listened to an icy siren-song blown to us over the Roof of the World, and responded because there would have been no peace within us otherwise.
Out of that agglomeration of world combings that he calls his shop old Benjamin supplied equipment, even including an excellent compass, and maps copied (doubtless without permission) from the Survey Department files. Such few things as he did not have in stock he personally bought for us—forceps, for instance, for pulling teeth, a quantity of patent anesthetic, bandages, brandy, sugar, and beef extract; so that we did not need to be seen wandering about Delhi.
He sent a man far into Kashmir to buy ponies for us, with the result that we were supplied with the best, instead of incurring the usual fate of those who buy from strangers in a hurry. Night after night, when the store was closed and his fat daughter had spread food for us on a carpet beneath an old temple lamp, he told us all he knew about Tibetans and their country. It was he who stained my akin so admirably that the color still endures, although I have been half- boiled in natural hot-springs and half-frozen in the Tsang-po River.
There was no need to darken Grim's tough hide; it had been sun-baked so that he was actually darker than Narayan Singh, although one did not realize it until he disguised himself in the native costume. Benjamin seemed to have no fear whatever on Grim's account, although he was in agonies of apprehension about the rest of us—Chullunder Ghose particularly, delaying us for three days after our equipment was all ready because he did not believe his instructions had sufficiently soaked in.
There was something that he feared more than any physical danger, and I think Grim knew what it was, although Benjamin would only hint at it, shuddering and throwing up his hands in pious horror. But in all other respects he was minutely definite. He warned us against smoking, which is a crime in Tibet; never to pass on our left-hand side any religious monument or any individual entitled to respect; not to shoot wild game, and not to be seen eating chicken or drinking milk.
But above all, he advised me to be silent. Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose could get by as Kashmiri merchants, who are allowed in Tibet. Grim, if extremely careful, might even pass as a Tibetan. As for me, my accent being amateurish and vocabulary limited, speech with any stranger would be out of the question, once over the border.
"Be you deaf and dumb!" he insisted. "These are your friends, who are taking you to the Medical College on the Chakpo Hill outside Lhassa, hoping you may be cured by a miracle. Yeh-tschah-tschah! And a miracle it is, when they cure anybody! Anatomy they know— a little—since they cut up corpses; and they have nine poisons that are unknown to the European chemists, but they are the worst doctors in the world! Be you a doctor, Ramsden. Toothache is their commonest complaint. Pull teeth for nothing, and so win their gratitude—because the monks charge too much. If they are grateful they may not be so suspicious. But you mustn't talk—nah-nah—not one word—niemals! You have had a curse put on you by a Hindu hakim; the babu can tell that story, he being a very good one at inventing lies. The Tibetans know all about curses. They know too much about them! If you cure their toothaches they will not ask many questions. But, though you say you are going to Chakpo, don't you let their doctors touch you! They are devils—bad, ignorant devils, yet they know altogether too much! If they suspect you they will simply poison your body! But better that than fall into the power of certain others! There are sons of evil up there!"
The road is free and open into Kashmir, which is a tourists' Mecca nowadays, with shops for the sale of imported souvenirs and a better system for fleecing Americans than even Deauville and the Riviera boast. We went by train to Rawalpindi—third class, trying out our new disguises—and I did so well that I was actually struck by an Eurasian conductor, who mistook my silence for fear of himself and his official buttons.
Because he overlooks no chance to turn a profit, and also, perhaps, to make our own peculiarly packed loads less conspicuous, Benjamin entrusted us with nearly two tons of merchandise consigned to his agents in Srinagar. So we hired an auto-truck in Rawalpindi, along with a driver and two helpers; but we had to wait three days for Benjamin's freight to overtake us, and a letter from Benjamin reached us by special messenger (not one of his own clerks, however) three or four hours before the freight train dawdled in.
The letter was alarming. We had left Tsang-Mondrong, we imagined, snugly incommunicado in the jail, the expected thirty-day sentence having been promptly passed on him by the Mahommedan magistrate. Nevertheless, Benjamin wrote that a Tibetan had been hanging around the store and asking questions.
"As for me, I told him nothing, but he may have learned much from one of my assistants, who is a Klapper-storch. Nor do I dare to send one of my own men with this letter, lest the Tibetan should follow him. This messenger has been paid, but you will do well to pay him again, so that he may go away and get drunk and perhaps get himself into a trouble before he makes a greater one for you."
So we paid the man twice what the service was worth, and Grim took him off to a reeking hole where an Eurasian sold arrack, nor left him until he had drunk the best part of a bottle of the stuff and was in no fit state to tell an intelligible story, to Tibetans or any one else. Meanwhile, Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose spread talk through the bazaar that might lead people to believe we were heading southward again. Then, hoping at any rate that we had thrown spies off the scent, we stacked our loads on to the truck and started for Murree and the Kashmir Pass.
We had a letter from Benjamin, containing hardly fifty words, in a language that only Grim could read, which the old Jew guaranteed should open for us a route along which pursuit would be impossible; but before we could use that key we must put all of Kashmir behind us. Beyond the Kashmir Valley, between us and Ladakh where the secret route began, was the Zogi-la Pass, eleven thousand feet above sea-level. The road across the Zogi-la is open all winter long, except for a dozen miles or so, but those dozen miles might as well be fifty, once the winter storms begin; so our first task was to cross the Zogi-la before the snow fell, after which the sooner the nor'westers should blow the drifts deep into the narrow gorge and shut off all pursuit, the better.
