Kim | Page 8

Fountain of Wisdom, where fell the arrow?"
'Alas, my brother, I do not know,' said the Curator.
'Nay, if it please thee to forget - the one thing only that thou hast not told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I ask with my head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We know He drew the bow! We know the arrow fell! We know the stream gushed! Where, then, is the River? My dream told me to find it. So I came. I am here. But where is the River?'
'If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?'
'By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things,' the lama went on, unheeding. 'The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some little stream, maybe - dried in the heats? But the Holy One would never so cheat an old man.'
'I do not know. I do not know.'
The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a handsbreadth from the Englishman's. 'I see thou dost not know. Not being of the Law, the matter is hid from thee.'
'Ay - hidden - hidden.'
'We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I' - he rose with a sweep of the soft thick drapery - 'I go to cut myself free. Come also!'
'I am bound,' said the Curator. 'But whither goest thou?'
'First to Kashi [Benares]: where else? There I shall meet one of the pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker in secret, and from him haply I may learn. Maybe he will go with me to Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there will I seek for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go - for the place is not known where the arrow fell.'
'And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to Benares.'
'By road and the trains. From Pathankot, having left the Hills, I came hither in a te-rain. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed to see those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and snatching up their threads,' - he illustrated the stoop and whirl of a telegraph-pole flashing past the train. 'But later, I was cramped and desired to walk, as I am used.'
'And thou art sure of thy road?' said the Curator.
'Oh, for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the appointed persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much I knew in my lamassery from sure report,' said the lama proudly.
'And when dost thou go?' The Curator smiled at the mixture of old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of India today.
'As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come to the River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of the hours of the trains that go south.'
'And for food?' Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere about them, but the Curator wished to make sure.
'For the journey, I take up the Master's begging-bowl. Yes. Even as He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was with me when I left the hills a chela [disciple] who begged for me as the Rule demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took him and he died. I have now no chela, but I will take the alms- bowl and thus enable the charitable to acquire merit.' He nodded his head valiantly. Learned doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an enthusiast in this quest.
'Be it so,' said the Curator, smiling. 'Suffer me now to acquire merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three - thick and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles.'
The Curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but the power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid into the lama's hand, saying: 'Try these.'
'A feather! A very feather upon the face.' The old man turned his head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. 'How scarcely do I feel them! How clearly do I see!'
'They be bilaur - crystal - and will never scratch. May they help thee to thy River, for they are thine.'
'I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,' said the lama, 'as a sign of friendship between priest and priest - and now -' He fumbled at his belt, detached the open-work iron pincers, and laid it on the Curator's table. 'That is for a memory between thee and me - my pencase. It is something old - even as I am.'
It was a piece of ancient