The Charmed Life | Page 8

a common bough or a drink
of the same river is alike ordained from ages
prior to our birth.
--From the letter of a Japanese Daimio to his wife before committing
hara-kari
RAPIDLY my eyes got used to the light. It came from a flickering,
insincere oil-lamp held in the hands of an elderly Hindu, evidently the
possessor of the soft and bulky body which I had struck when I had let
myself drop.
He looked at me, and I looked at him, silently. I am quite sure we didn't
like each other. We didn't have to say a single word to convince each
other of the fact. He was an old man, but old without the slightest trace
of dignity, he wore no turban, and that gave his shiny, shaven head a
horribly naked look. On his forehead was a crimson caste
mark--nasty-looking thing it was. His eyes were hopelessly bleared, his

teeth were blackened with betel juice, his rough, gray beard was quite a
stranger to comb or oil. He was a fat, ridiculous old man, with a
ridiculous, squeaky little cough.
I burst out laughing, and I laughed louder when I saw the expression
which crept into his red-rimmed eyes. Not that the expression was
really funny. Rather this opposite. For it was one of beastly hatred, of
savage joy, of sinister triumph. But, don't you see, I wasn't the Stephen
Denton of half a year, why, of half an hour before. Right then I had
forgotten all about America and Boston and regulation respectability.
There seemed to be no home tradition to analyze and criticize and I
belonged right there--to that flat rooftop, to the purple, choking night
down below in Ibrahim Khan's Gully, to India, to Calcutta. One blow
of my fist, I said to myself, and that fat, ridiculous old savage would
take an involuntary, headlong tumble from the balustrade to the blue,
sticky mire of the gully. So I laughed.
But hold on. Don't get the story wrong. I didn't stand there, on that
roof-top in the Colootallah, exactly thinking out all these impressions,
detail for detail. They passed over me in a solid wave and in the
fraction of a second, and, even as they swept through me, the lamp in
the hands of the old man trembled a little and shot its haggard,
dirty-white rays a little to the left, toward a short, squat, carved stone
pillar quite close to the balustrade.
And there, breathing hard, clutching the pillar with two tiny, narrow
hands, I saw a native woman--a young girl rather--doubtless she whom
I had heard sing, then scream in pain. Red, cruel finger-marks were still
visible on her delicate, pale-golden cheek.
Stephen Denton lit a cigar and blew out a series of rings, attempting to
hang them on the chandelier, one by one.
You know (he said this with a certain, ringing, challenging seriousness)
I fell in love right then and there. Sounds silly, of course. But it's the
truth. I looked at that Hindu girl, and I loved her. Such a--a--why, such
a strange, inexpressible sensation came over me. It seemed suddenly
that we were alone--she and I--on the roof-top in Calcutta--alone in all

the world--
But never mind that I guess you know what love is.
She was hardly more than sixteen years old, and she dressed in the
conventional dress of a Hindu dancer, in a sari--you know, the scarf
which the Hindu woman drapes about her with a deft art not dreamed
of by Fifth Avenue--of pale rose colored silk, shot with orange and
violet and bordered with tiny seed-pearls. An edge of the sari hung over
one round shoulder and the robe itself came just below the knee. Her
face was small and round and exquisitely chiseled. Her hair was parted
in the middle. It was of a glossy bluishblack, mingled with flowers and
jewels and the braids came down to her ankles. A perfume, sweet,
pungent, mysterious, so faint as to be little more than a suggestion,
hovered about her.
Well--I stared at her. Then I remembered my manners and lifted my
hand to raise my hat. It wasn't there. I must have dropped it when I
negotiated the wall and the girl, seeing my action, understanding it,
forgot her pain and laughed. Such a jolly silvery, exquisite little laugh.
Ever think of the psychology of laughter? To me it has always seemed
the final proof of sympathy, of humanity, even. And so that laugh, from
the crimson lips of this Hindu girl, finally did the trick. I forgot all
about the fat old party with the caste mark and the bleary eyes, I walked
up to the girl and offend her my hand, American fashion.
"Glad to meet you," I said in English. It