Akbar gave a crackling, contemptuous laugh. "Not palace birds! they have to be wound up; and Bun-avatâr-sahib sent for this across the black water. So he kept favour with the Nawab. Birds that sing, and flowers that smell, and boxes that make music, and dolls that dance when you wind them. Lo! these, Gu-gu, are the pleasures of palaces; but how canst thou know, who hast not lived in them even, as I--"
The sense of his own superiority soothed him still more; he squatted down again, and hubble-bubbled for a space at the hookah which was an integral part of all his impersonations.
"Yea! those were times," he mumbled half to himself. "Even Pidar Narâyan--may Heaven protect him--could not say 'please God' to every mouthful, as he does now--as we all do now, and rightly, seeing that we have grown old." Once more the piety smacked of pity, and the old man, finding a listener, went on with a certain gusto. "Look you! he had to walk like the tongue among thirty-two teeth in those days, with Bun-avatâr-sahib, my master, like two peas in one pod with the Nawah. Except for women. Pidar Narâyan took his way there--mostly!"
The interrupting gurgle of the hookah gave time for an elaborate wink of a wicked old eye. Possibly this was due to the smoke, for the old voice went on as before almost dolorously.
"He had the money-bags, you see, and looked after the rents. But my master, Bun-avatâr--lo! thou shouldst have seen him when he came first--the picture of a man!--they say he was a prince in his own country, but fell into trouble; so came to make his fortune here with Pidar Narâyan--was called Wazeer. And let me tell thee, Gu-gu, it means something to be body-servant to a Wazeer! Lo! to think I might have been it still but for that jade, Anâri Begum!"
Despite the epithet, he smiled, and his pipe this time gave out quite a chuckling sound.
"As ill to keep within walls as a butterfly!" he muttered. "Up and down the garden, in and out the balconies, and the Nawab in two minds to use force, or put her in a sack. For she flouted him. The prettiest ones play that game for power always, and she was Walidâd, her brother's, last hope of favour. Walidâd, Kanjara, who had been king's caterer for years before my master, Bun-avatâr-sahib, came to make all the court cry sour buttermilk! Walidâd, who had once stood so high, that, in a drunken bout, the Nawab promised him his half-sister to wife. And he got her too! She wept on her wedding day, but we in the lower storey heeded not tears in the upper. For, see you, mine uncle was chief eunuch--we kept the honour thus in the family from generation to generation--so I was in and out, seeing what went on. Until somehow (mine uncle with the bowstring round his neck--as was right, honest man--swore he knew not how) Bun-avatâr-sahib caught a sight of her! Some say it was a plot, from beginning to end, of Walidâd's; others that his enemies feared lest Anâri should succeed. There be balls within balls, even in a plaything, if the workmen are cunning! Anyhow, he saw her.
"And I, his body-servant, was able to come and go where Pidar Narâyan hath made his church nowadays. But there! what matters it? 'Tis all one. Love and the Faith are in and out of men's minds like a shelldrake in weedy water; a body cannot tell which way its head may be and which its tail! Nevertheless I felt a choke at my throat, Gu-gu, many a time, as I waited for him in the boat below the balcony; yet in the end, it was not my throat, but mine uncle's. He died in the faith, Gu-gu, cursing women. His head was that way at the last!--'Tis mostly so--he--he--"
The chuckle of his pipe was fiendish, yet his wizened face was wistful. "Still, God knows, one could scarce look on at such a wooing, and not beat the drum in time, as musicians to a dancer. And it runs in our blood, see you, to watch, and beat the drum. That is our profession; and, by mine ancestors! I deemed it enough for mortal man. But Bun-avatâr-sahib, see you, was not of our race. He was of Italy wilayat and a prince. So, one day, my liver dissolved hearing that the butterfly was over the walls! But, as I said, it was mine uncle's neck, not mine. Yet the game ended for me when Bun-avatâr-sahib died."
"They poisoned him, folk say; is't true?" asked Gu-gu. It was a point in the oft-told tale which was still discussed by Eshwara gossips.