The next day they went at daybreak to join the baggage-train of a regiment that was marching to Peshawar.
At noon Feroze Khan told a tale to the native followers: they were mostly very poor, so some of them put a handful of rice into the bowl when it came round, and others a chupatti or some millet; only a few had money to spare. One woman — a remarkably good-looking one, too — threw a scarlet flower into the bowl and smiled at Hussein.
In the evening they went round the encampment to the place where the English officers were digesting their dinners. Various servants had to be bribed, and a good deal of haggling went on in undertones, but at last the baskets were set down before the white men and Feroze Khan began his performances.
He blew into a globular sort of flute and produced a reedy monotonous melody: the lid of the basket, which Hussein had brought, shifted: then it fell off sideways, and a cobra’s head shot up. For some time it swayed to the time of the tune and then it slithered out on to the ground.
It was followed by two more, and together they moved intricately in a little space, tracing curious patterns in the dust.
Feroze Khan quickened the music, and the cobras moved more swiftly: their hoods swelled and they hissed. Their smoothly gliding coils had a strangely hypnotic effect, and Hussein had to make an effort to shift his eyes from them.
At first the dancing snakes seemed ordinary enough — the common performance of a thousand snake-charmers; but after a little there was something very unusual about it all; rather horrible and sinister. It was in the concentric dancing of the cobras that the strangeness lay: one lay coiled tightly, only moving its head; the second was coiled about the first, and it was writhed smoothly round and round in one direction, while the third revolved the other way.
Suddenly Feroze Khan stopped, seized the snakes by the necks, and dropped them one after another back into the basket.
‘Shabash!’ cried the audience.
From his voluminous robes Feroze Khan drew another snake: it was a white cobra; pure white, with no markings but its spectacles of Shiv on its hood. Its eyes were red; they shone.
The old man set it on his shoulder, where it lay quietly flicking its tongue in and out, while Feroze Khan smoothed out the dust where the other cobras had been dancing. Then from a bag he sprinkled red sand on the ground and set the white cobra upon it.
He began a slow tune on his pipe: the cobra looked up, but it did not move. Feroze Khan spoke gently to it, and went on with his tune. Slowly the snake poured its coils out over the sand, and then it began to move rhythmically in a set pattern. It moved swiftly and more swiftly, then it stopped, looking at Feroze Khan, who picked it up carefully.
He pointed to the sand: there was the lignam-yoni, the most sacred symbol in India, perfectly traced in the red sand.
When they had gone back to the place where they slept, having collected no less than seven rupees, Hussein asked Feroze Khan about the white cobra.
‘Yes. Vakrishna always stays coiled round my waist,’ replied the old man, ringing the coins against the brass bowl. ‘He loves me more than his food.’
‘May I see him again?’
‘By all means’ — the cobra slid out from the folds of his clothes. ‘Do not touch his head, he dislikes it. I will tell you how I got him. Pass me that rice. It was long ago, probably before you were born, for Vakrishna is older than I am, and I was but a youth then … long ago. I was in Peshawar, and I heard a tale among the sanyassis about a white cobra that was the god of a village in Gujarat. They said it was a pure white cobra, an incarnation of Krishna, one of the gods of the unbelievers. Strange tales were told of the luck it brought, and stranger tales of the sacrifices these ungodly people made to it. Hearing of it, I desired it, for I charmed snakes even then.
‘Now, it happened that I was in Gujarat some time later, and I remembered the tales of the sanyassis. The village itself lay in the path of my journey — mark the working of the Omnipotent! At nightfall I arrived there, and I told tales to the simple villagers until the rising of the moon. They would not speak of their god, although I professed their own belief, to the great danger of my soul. I stayed there three days before I even learnt where it was … Who is that outside?’
Hussein went to the door: it was the woman who had just given him a flower. She had a steaming dish of curry, very fragrant with spices.
‘My father hopes that your master will come and tell a tale to-night at his tent,’ she said, setting down the curry.
Hussein picked it up. ‘It is possible,’ he said. ‘But we tellers of tales are very busy men.’ He sniffed the curry. ‘It is quite possible,’ he added.
‘These women …’ said Feroze Khan, ‘they would break in upon the inspiration of the Prophet himself. Set the dish between us. It is quite edible. Now where was I? Oh, yes — I found where the snake lived by making very active love to the wife of the priest. I was a lusty youth,’ the old man chuckled. ‘I remember her well; she is surely in her grave by now, but she was well-favoured — a little fat, but as jocund as a negress … ah, yes. The snake lived in a great tree whose roots were twisted strangely: it lived in a hole in the roots. There was a shrine before it.
‘Every evening the priest put a saucer of milk there, and the snake came out to drink it. I was staying with the priest, so it was easy for me to put a little opium in the milk one evening.
‘I had one of my own snakes with me, although I had said nothing about it, and this snake, a worthless young hamadryad without brain — I painted it white. It was extremely difficult, but I managed it.
‘Then, when I thought that the opium would have had its effect, I left the priest’s wife and crept to the shrine. With a hooked stick I drew forth the white cobra, and put my own in its place.
‘The painted snake was a poor imitation, but I hoped that it would not be suspected until I could get safely away.
‘The next day I said that I must be going on my way: the white cobra was in a bag beneath my clothes.
‘I gave out that I was going towards the next village towards the south, but secretly I told the priest’s wife that I was going north. I had my own idea of what would happen, so I went south.
‘A day’s journey away I heard that the villagers had lost their white cobra, and that they were pursuing the thief with all speed towards the north. Hai! but I knew the ways of women even then!’
They finished the curry, and went to the tent of Dhossibhoy the sutler, who had sent it to them.
His daughter, Parvathi, smiled repeatedly upon Hussein, but he missed it, as he was deep in a reverie that took him to the roof garden of a certain house in Haiderabad. At length she came and sat beside him — camp manners are free — and talked about this and that until his dream was shattered. He made some effort to please her, because he hoped for more curry, but his heart was not in it. Nevertheless he had his reward in the shape of kabobs on a skewer and a pomegranate that she put into his hand as they left.
Day after day the regiment marched: each succeeding day seemed exactly the same as the rest, for the routine was of an iron mould.
Parvathi smiled still more upon Hussein, for he was an extremely handsome youth. She was used to Bengalis, who run rather to flesh, and she admired the Mohammedan’s clean-cut face with its high-bridged nose and new-tufted chin.
Hussein took but little notice of her, except now and then to drop a little praise of her cooking; but she was amorous and sent him a message in flowers which he could not fail to understand. He did not come, though; she sent him another message, accompanied by a most savoury dish, into which she had put a love potion. He came on account of the tahkian, for he had a proper respect for his stomach.
‘But don’t you care for me at all?’ she asked at length. ‘Surely you have a little heart? Or aren’t you a man at all? Oh, don’t tell me — it’s another woman. I hate you — soor-ka-butcha-ka-soorneen!’
Hussein laughed — a most unwise thing to do — and she spat in his face.
/> The next day she sent a message with lambs’ tail stew to say that she was very, very sorry, and that she hoped he was not angry. Hussein accepted the stew, but said that he was angry.
That night he was seized with horrible cramps in the stomach: the stew was poisoned. The story-teller heard him moaning, and found him doubled up. He sent for the soldiers’ doctor, who used a stomach-pump with great effect. In the morning Hussein was out of danger, but for some days he was ill and weak. Parvathi came and wept by the wall of his tent in the night, for she was frightened of what she had done, and rather sorry when it was too late; but Hussein took no more notice of her.
In a few days a very ardent young soldier absorbed all her attention, and Hussein saw no more of her.
When the regiment they were following reached its destination, which was Lahore, Feroze Khan said that they must go at once to Peshawar. He gave no reason, and Hussein knew his ways too well to ask for any. They stayed in Peshawar for three weeks: throughout the whole time the old man did not stir from the house where they stayed, to tell any stories. Only in the evening did he sally forth, and then by himself. One evening Hussein, who was naturally curious, followed him at a distance. Feroze Khan went to the bazaar of the goldsmiths: he wandered down it, and looked sideways at one of the men, who glanced from his little furnace to give a shake of his head.
Feroze Khan wandered on, giving no sign, and saying no word. He went back to the house, where Hussein, coming in later, found him looking very worried. The old man seemed always to have enough money — Hussein had no idea where it came from.
Hussein was left very much to himself, and as he had quite a lot of money he used to go to one of those curious little houses that hang like swallows’ nests on the ancient walls of the city. He only went to talk, and to smoke a scented huqa, for he was not interested in the charmingly frail inhabitants.
Nevertheless, he did not mention the House of Huneifa to Sashiya in his letters.
He also spent a good deal of his time in getting accustomed to the snakes, and in learning how to play the flute, so that they would dance for him. Sometimes Feroze Khan would lend him Vakrishna, and the more he saw of the white cobra the more he admired it. The snake seemed endowed with more than usual intelligence and Hussein soon began to feel a certain affection for it; for indeed it was an extremely beautiful creature, with its glowing eyes and its jade-like white body. In addition to drawing the lignam-yoni in the sand, Vakrishna could also trace the names of Allah.
One evening, as Hussein sat in the open lattice window of the House of Huneifa, pulling gently at the water-pipe and talking politics with a smooth babu, he saw a man come whom he knew that he had seen before.
The newcomer sat cross-legged on the cushions of a divan, and talked in undertones to Azzun, one of the dancing-girls.
For some time Hussein could not remember where he had seen the man, and then suddenly it came to him: it was in Agra; the man had come in the night to see Feroze Khan. They were talking quietly in Hindi: Hussein paid scant attention to them until he caught the name of Feroze Khan, then he listened with all his ears.
He could hear very little of what they said, but more than once the girl mentioned the goldsmiths’ bazaar.
Soon the man went out, and after a while Hussein left too. He was strangely intrigued by the mystery that surrounded Feroze Khan, and now he felt quite certain that the old man was something more than a story-teller.
He found Feroze Khan piping to the cobras, and he told him that there was a man looking for him. The old man’s face looked drawn and grey. He pressed Hussein for every detail.
‘What was he like?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Oh, quite unnoteworthy: he folded his turban like a Maratha, but from his speech he seemed to come from the south. I would know him again … shall I ask Azzun who he is?’
‘By no means — these women … oh, Allah! Tell no one that you know me, and if the man comes again to that house, enter into conversation with him. Say that you are a snake-charmer — maybe he will ask if you know me. If he does, say that you met me here two days ago, but that I am gone to Umballa now; but in the name of Allah do not appear at all eager — it is horribly important. Go now, and stay at Huneifa’s until late; here is some money, so that they shall not find you unwelcome.’
Hussein went back, and resumed his long, involved conversation with the babu. He stayed until all had gone except those who were not going at all, but the man did not come in.
Feroze Khan did not go out that night; he sent Hussein instead, telling him to look sideways at the seventh goldsmith on the left as he went down the bazaar, and to make a certain gesture with his hand: he was to mark closely whether the man nodded or shook his head.
Hussein did all these things, and he saw that the man shook his head. He went back to Feroze Khan, who was waiting impatiently.
‘What did he do?’ cried the old man.
‘Before I tell you, you must tell me what the whole matter is about: I know more than you think, but I want to know everything.’
‘Is this any way in which to speak to your master? Regard my white beard, and restrain your curiosity — tell me at once, or it will be the worse for you.’
Hussein said not a word, but began to write a letter. Feroze Khan watched him for a little while, and then said:
‘It is a matter that cannot concern you; you will be far happier if you know nothing about it. Tell me, and I will give you a rupee.’
Still Hussein said nothing. For a long while he wrote his letter, and the teller of tales walked up and down plucking at his beard.
‘Well,’ said the old man at last, ‘I suppose you would have found out in the end, so you may as well know now. Before I tell you anything you must swear by the Ninety-Nine Names that you will not betray anything that I say.’
Hussein swore, and Feroze Khan told him that he was in the employ of the Dewan of Waziristan, and that he was used to convey secret messages to the ministers of other native princes.
Hussein did not believe him, but it gave him more than an inkling of what the story-teller was really doing, so he feigned to believe it, and went to the house on the wall to watch for the man who had spoken to Azzun.
He had nothing much to do, so while one of the girls was singing and playing her guitar, he picked up an opium pipe, and looked round for someone to fill it for him.
Azzun came with a tray loaded with all the little instruments: she began filling the tiny bowl of the pipe, and then she exclaimed, ‘But this is Ram Narain’s special pipe — he will be very angry — here is another one for you, you don’t mind?’ And she smiled sweetly at him. Hussein grinned back, and said:
‘Who is Ram Narain?’
‘I don’t know, but he always comes here when he is in Peshawar — he was here yesterday talking to me when you were here with that greasy old Chunderswami; he is—’
‘Oh yes; I remember — a Maratha, isn’t he?’
‘I think so … but here he is: ohé, Ram Narain — here is a wretched man trying to steal your pipe.’
The Maratha and Hussein began talking about the recent falling-off in the quality of opium.
‘Even my snakes have noticed it,’ remarked Hussein. ‘I give them a little, you know, before a long journey, so as to keep them quiet.’
‘Indeed? Then you are a snake-charmer?’
‘Just so.’
‘Perhaps you may have met a friend of mine, one Feroze Khan, an old man?’
‘Feroze Khan? He who has a white cobra?’
‘The same.’
‘Then I have met him: it was only a few days ago. I remember he told me that he was going to Umballa that evening.’
‘A pity — I have some news for him: but it will wait, being quite unimportant.’
The talk drifted vaguely after that, and presently Hussein went back to Feroze Khan, to whom he recounted all that had happened. The old man rubbed his hands with glee.
‘We will go back to Lahore now
,’ he said, and he began to tie up bundles at once.
They had a very long wait at the station, and after about an hour a man beckoned to the story-teller: it was the goldsmith from the bazaar.
Feroze Khan told Hussein that he would not be long and bade him wait with the baggage. After ten minutes had passed there was a great hubbub outside the station. At first Hussein took but little notice of it, but as the uproar increased he stood on top of the baskets to see, if peradventure he could, what was happening.
There was a milling crowd outside, and many of the people who were waiting left their bundles to go and gape. Hussein joined them. On the outskirts of the crowd, which was pushing its way into a narrow alley between the houses, he heard that someone had been murdered.
He shoved energetically and wormed his way into the heart of the crowd: in a little clear circle there was Feroze Khan lying on his face. A knife protruded from his back.
Hussein thrust his way forward and knelt by the body: at that moment the police came, clearing a way with their lathis.
There was a storm of explanation from the crowd, and as the policemen turned the body over, Vakrishna glided out. Everyone pushed backwards, and a great outcry went up that someone was getting trampled underfoot. In the confusion Hussein caught up Vakrishna and slid him under his dhoti: then he wriggled back through the crowd. The few who had seen him could not pursue him because of the press of the people, so he got safely back to the station, where he unobtrusively slipped the white cobra into a basket.
For a long while he sat chewing pan and thinking hard. He had no wish to get mixed up with the police, for he was not certain what Feroze Khan had been doing; but he was fairly sure that it was nefarious, and he thought that he would find it difficult to prove that he was not an accomplice himself. Moreover he had no wish to be questioned on the cause of his presence in Peshawar as a snake-charmer.
The tickets for Lahore were already bought, and as the train came in he made up his mind and got into it.