LITMIR.BIZ

      the end of the search

      Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons smoke, came the lama and Mahbub Ali, both afoot, walking cautiously, for the house had told them where he had gone.

      ‘Allah! What a fool’s trick to play in open country,’ muttered the horse-dealer. ‘He could be shot a hundred times—but this is not the Border.’

      ‘And,’ said the lama, repeating a many-times-told tale, ‘never was such a chela. Temperate, kindly, wise, of ungrudging disposition, a merry heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful, courteous. Great is his reward!’

      ‘I know the boy—as I have said.’

      ‘And he was all those things?’

      ‘Some of them—but I have not yet found a Red Hat’s charm for making him overly truthful. He has certainly been well nursed.’

      ‘The Sahiba is a heart of gold,’ said the lama earnestly. ‘She looks upon him as her son.’

      ‘Hmph! Half Hind seems that-way disposed. I only wished to see that the boy had come to no harm and was a free agent. As thou knowest, he and I were old friends in the first days of your pilgrimage together.’

      ‘That is a bond between us.’ The lama sat down. ‘We are at the end of the pilgrimage.’

      ‘No thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week back. I heard what the Sahiba said to thee when we bore thee up on the cot.’ Mahbub laughed, and tugged his new-dyed beard.

      ‘I was meditating upon other matters that tide. It was the hakim from Dacca broke my meditations.’

      ‘Otherwise’—this was in Pashtu for decency’s sake—‘thou wouldst have ended thy meditations upon the sultry side of Hell—being an unbeliever and an idolator for all thy child’s simplicity. But now, Red Hat, what is to be done?’

      ‘This very night,’—the words came slowly, vibrating with triumph,—‘this very night he will be as free as I am from all taint of sin—assured as I am when he quits this body of Freedom from the Wheel of Things. I have a sign,’ he laid his hand above the torn chart in his bosom, ‘that my time is short; but I shall have safe-guarded him throughout the years. Remember, I have reached Knowledge, as I told thee only three nights back.’

      ‘It must be true, as the Tirah priest said when I stole his cousin’s wife, that I am a sufi (a freethinker); for here I sit,’ said Mahbub to himself, drinking in blasphemy unthinkable. ‘… I remember the tale. On that, then, he goes to Jannatu l’Adn (the Gardens of Eden). But how? Wilt thou slay him or drown him in that wonderful river from which the Babu dragged thee?’

      ‘I was dragged from no river,’ said the lama simply. ‘Thou hast forgotten what befell. I found it by Knowledge.’

      ‘Oh, aye. True,’ stammered Mahbub, divided between high indignation and enormous mirth. ‘I had forgotten the exact run of what happened. Thou didst find it knowingly.’

      ‘And to say that I would take life is—not a sin, but a madness simple. My chela aided me to the River. It is his right to be cleansed from sin—with me.’

      ‘Ay, he needs cleansing. But afterwards, old man—afterwards?’

      ‘What matter under all the heavens? He is sure of Nibban—enlightened—as I am.’

      ‘Well said. I had a fear he might mount Mohammed’s Horse and fly away.’

      ‘Nay—he must go forth as a teacher.’

      ‘Aha! Now I see! That is the right gait for the colt. Certainly he must go forth as a teacher. He is somewhat urgently needed as a scribe by the State, for instance.’

      ‘To that end he was prepared. I acquired merit in that I gave alms for his sake. A good deed does not die. He aided me in my Search. I aided him in his. Just is the Wheel, O horse-seller from the North. Let him be a teacher; let him be a scribe—what matter? He will have attained Freedom at the end. The rest is illusion.’

      ‘What matter? When I must have him with me beyond Balkh in six months! I come up with ten lame horses and three strong-backed men—thanks to that chicken of a Babu—to break a sick boy by force out of an old trot’s house. It seems that I stand by while a young Sahib is hoisted into Allah knows what of an idolater’s heaven by means of old Red Hat. And I am reckoned something of a player of the Game myself! But the madman is fond of the boy; and I must be very reasonably mad too.’

      ‘What is the prayer?’ said the lama, as the rough Pashtu rumbled into the red beard.

      ‘No matter at all; but now I understand that the boy, sure of Paradise, can yet enter Government service, my mind is easier. I must get to my horses. It grows dark. Do not wake him. I have no wish to hear him call thee master.’

      ‘But he is my disciple. What else?’

      ‘He has told me.’ Mahbub choked down his touch of spleen and rose laughing. ‘I am not altogether of thy faith, Red Hat—if so small a matter concern thee.’

      ‘It is nothing,’ said the lama.

      ‘I thought not. Therefore it will not move thee sinless, new-washed and three parts drowned to boot, when I call thee a good man—a very good man. We have talked together some four or five evenings now, and for all I am a horse-coper I can still, as the saying is, see holiness beyond the legs of a horse. Yea, can see, too, how our Friend of all the World put his hand in thine at the first. Use him well, and suffer him to return to the world as a teacher, when thou hast—bathed his legs, if that be the proper medicine for the colt.’

      ‘Why not follow the Way thyself, and so accompany the boy?’

      Mahbub stared stupefied at the magnificent insolence of the demand, which across the Border he would have paid with more than a blow. Then the humour of it touched his worldly soul.

      ‘Softly—softly—one foot at a time, as the lame gelding went over the Umballa jumps. I may come to Paradise later—I have workings that way—great motions—and I owe them to thy simplicity. Thou hast never lied?’

      ‘What need?’

      ‘O Allah, hear him! “What need” in this Thy world! Nor ever harmed a man?’

      ‘Once—with a pencase—before I was wise.’

      ‘So? I think the better of thee. Thy teachings are good. Thou hast turned one man that I know from the path of strife.’ He laughed immensely. ‘He came here open-minded to commit a dacoity (a house-robbery with violence). Yes, to cut, rob, kill, and carry off what he desired.’

      ‘A great foolishness!’

      ‘Oh! black shame too. So he thought after he had seen thee—and a few others, male and female. So he abandoned it; and now he goes to beat a big fat Babu man.’

      ‘I do not understand.’

      ‘Allah forbid it! Some men are strong in knowledge, Red Hat. Thy strength is stronger still. Keep it—I think thou wilt. If the boy be not a good servant, pull his ears off.’

      With a hitch of his broad Bokhariot belt the Pathan swaggered off into the gloaming, and the lama came down from his clouds so far as to look at the broad back.

      ‘That person lacks courtesy, and is deceived by the shadow of appearances. But he spoke well of my chela, who now enters upon his reward. Let me make the prayer! … Wake, O fortunate above all born of women.

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