Kim came up from those deep wells, and the lama attended his yawning pleasure; duly snapping fingers to head off evil spirits.
“I have slept a hundred years. Where—? Holy One, hast thou been here long? I went out to look for thee, but”—he laughed drowsily—“I slept by the way. I am all well now. Hast thou eaten? Let us go to the house. It is many days since I tended thee. And the Sahiba fed thee well? Who shampooed thy legs? What of the weaknesses—the belly and the neck, and the beating in the ears?”
“Gone—all gone. Dost thou not know?”
“I know nothing, but that I have not seen thee in a monkey’s age. Know what?”
“Strange the knowledge did not reach out to thee, when all my thoughts were theeward.”
“I cannot see the face, but the voice is like a gong. Has the Sahiba made a young man of thee by her cookery?”
He peered at the cross-legged figure, outlined jet-black against the lemon-coloured drift of light. So does the stone Bodhisat sit who looks down upon the patent self-registering turnstiles of the Lahore Museum.
The lama held his peace. Except for the click of the rosary and a faint clop-clop of Mahbub’s retreating feet, the soft, smoky silence of evening in India wrapped them close.
“Hear me! I bring news.”
“But let us—”