As I came through the Desert.
The City of Dreadful Night.
Somewhere in the Other World, where there are books and pictures and plays and shop windows to look at, and thousands of men who spend their lives in building up all four, lives a gentleman who writes real stories about the real insides of people; and his name is Mr. Walter Besant. But he will insist upon treating his ghosts—he has published half a workshopful of them—with levity2. He makes his ghost-seers talk familiarly, and, in some cases, flirt3 outrageously4, with the phantoms6. You may treat anything, from a Viceroy to a Vernacular7 Paper, with levity; but you must behave reverently8 toward a ghost, and particularly an Indian one.
There are, in this land, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold, pobby corpses10, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveler passes. Then they drop upon his neck and remain. There are also terrible ghosts of women who have died in child-bed. These wander along the pathways at dusk, or hide in the crops near a village, and call seductively. But to answer their call is death in this world and the next. Their feet are turned backward that all sober men may recognize them. There are ghosts of little children who have been thrown into wells. These haunt well curbs11 and the fringes of jungles, and wail12 under the stars, or catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpse9 ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically13 reported to have frightened an Englishman; but many English ghosts have scared the life out of both white and black.
Nearly every other Station owns a ghost. There are said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows14 at Syree dak-bungalow15 on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of a very lively Thing; a White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera16, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are Officers' Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs; Peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something—not fever—wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad. The older Provinces simply bristle17 with haunted houses, and march phantom5 armies along their main thoroughfares.
Some of the dak-bungalows18 on the Grand Trunk Road have handy little cemeteries19 in their compound—witnesses to the "changes and chances of this mortal life" in the days when men drove from Calcutta to the Northwest. These bungalows are objectionable places to put up in. They are generally very old, always dirty, while the khansamah is as ancient as the bungalow. He either chatters20 senilely, or falls into the long trances of age. In both moods he is useless. If you get angry with him, he refers to some Sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and says that when he was in that Sahib's service not a khansamah in the Province could touch him. Then he jabbers21 and mows22 and trembles and fidgets among the dishes, and you repent23 of your irritation24.
In these dak-bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found, and when found, they should be made a note of. Not long ago it was my business to live in dak-bungalows. I never inhabited the same house for three nights running, and grew to be learned in the breed. I lived in Government-built ones with red brick walls and rail ceilings, an inventory25 of the furniture posted in every room, and an excited snake at the threshold to give welcome. I lived in "converted" ones—old houses officiating as dak-bungalows—where nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't even a fowl26 for dinner. I lived in second-hand27 palaces where the wind blew through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as through a broken pane28. I lived in dak-bungalows where the last entry in the visitors' book was fifteen months old, and where they slashed29 off the curry-kid's head with a sword. It was my good luck to meet all sorts of men, from sober traveling missionaries30 and deserters flying from British Regiments31, to drunken loafers who threw whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still greater good fortune just to escape a maternity32 case. Seeing that a fair proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in dak-bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would voluntarily hang about a dak-bungalow would be mad of course; but so many men have died mad in dak-bungalows that there must be a fair percentage of lunatic ghosts.
In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts rather, for there were two of them. Up till that hour I had sympathized with Mr. Besant's method of handling them, as shown in "The Strange Case of Mr. Lucraft and Other Stories." I am now in the Opposition33.
We will call the bungalow Katmal dak-bungalow. But that was the smallest part of the horror. A man with a sensitive hide has no right to sleep in dak-bungalows. He should marry. Katmal dak-bungalow was old and rotten and unrepaired. The floor was of worn brick, the walls were filthy34, and the windows were nearly black with grime. It stood on a bypath largely used by native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to Forests; but real Sahibs were rare. The khansamah, who was nearly bent35 double with old age, said so.
When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of the land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust36 made a noise like the rattling37 of dry bones in the stiff toddy palms outside. The khansamah completely lost his head on my arrival. He had served a Sahib once. Did I know that Sahib? He gave me the name of a well-known man who has been buried for more than a quarter of a century, and showed me an ancient daguerreotype38 of that man in his prehistoric39 youth. I had seen a steel engraving40 of him at the head of a double volume of Memoirs41 a month before, and I felt ancient beyond telling.
The day shut in and the khansamah went to get me food. He did not go through the, pretense42 of calling it "khana"—man's victuals43. He said "ratub," and that means, among other things, "grub"—dog's rations44. There was no insult in his choice of the term. He had forgotten the other word, I suppose.
While he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals, I settled myself down, after exploring the dak-bungalow. There were three rooms, beside my own, which was a corner kennel45, each giving into the other through dingy46 white doors fastened with long iron bars. The bungalow was a very solid one, but the partition walls of the rooms were almost jerry-built in their flimsiness. Every step or bang of a trunk echoed from my room down the other three, and every footfall came back tremulously from the far walls. For this reason I shut the door. There were no lamps—only candles in long glass shades. An oil wick was set in the bathroom.
For bleak47, unadulterated misery48 that dak-bungalow was the worst of the many that I had ever set foot in. There was no fireplace, and the windows would not open; so a brazier of charcoal49 would have been useless. The rain and the wind splashed and gurgled and moaned round the house, and the toddy palms rattled50 and roared. Half a dozen jackals went through the compound singing, and a hyena51 stood afar off and mocked them. A hyena would convince a Sadducee of the Resurrection of the Dead—the worst sort of Dead. Then came the ratub—a curious meal, half native and half English in composition—with the old khansamah babbling52 behind my chair about dead and gone English people, and the wind-blown candles playing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains. It was just the sort of dinner and evening to make a man think of every single one of his past sins, and of all the others that he intended to commit if he lived.
Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not easy. The lamp in the bathroom threw the most absurd shadows into the room, and the wind was beginning to talk nonsense.
Just when the reasons were drowsy53 with blood-sucking I heard the regular—"Let-us-take-and-heave-him-over" grunt54 of doolie-bearers in the compound. First one doolie came in, then a second, and then a third. I heard the doolies dumped on the ground, and the shutter55 in front of my door shook. "That's some one trying to come in," I said. But no one spoke56, and I persuaded myself that it was the gusty57 wind. The shutter of the room next to mine was attacked, flung back, and the inner door opened. "That's some Sub-Deputy Assistant," I said, "and he has brought his friends with him. Now they'll talk and spit and smoke for an hour."
But there were no voices and no footsteps. No one was putting his luggage into the next room. The door shut, and I thanked Providence58 that I was to be left in peace. But I was curious to know where the doolies had gone. I got out of bed and looked into the darkness. There was never a sign of a doolie. Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room, the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake—the whir of a billiard ball down the length of the slates60 when the striker is stringing for break. No other sound is like it. A minute afterwards there was another whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened—indeed I was not. I was very curious to know what had become of the doolies. I jumped into bed for that reason.
Next minute I heard the double click of a cannon61 and my hair sat up. It is a mistake to say that hair stands up. The skin of the head tightens62 and you can feel a faint, prickly, bristling63 all over the scalp. That is the hair sitting up.
There was a whir and a click, and both sounds could only have been made by one thing—a billiard ball. I argued the matter out at great length with myself; and the more I argued the less probable it seemed that one bed, one table, and two chairs—all the furniture of the room next to mine—could so exactly duplicate the sounds of a game of billiards64. After another cannon, a three-cushion one to judge by the whir, I argued no more. I had found my ghost and would have given worlds to have escaped from that dak-bungalow. I listened, and with each listen the game grew clearer. There was whir on whir and click on click. Sometimes there was a double click and a whir and another click. Beyond any sort of doubt, people were playing billiards in the next room. And the next room was not big enough to hold a billiard table!
Between the pauses of the wind I heard the game go forward—stroke after stroke. I tried to believe that I could not hear voices; but that attempt was a failure.
Do you know what fear is? Not ordinary fear of insult, injury or death, but abject65, quivering dread1 of something that you cannot see—fear that dries the inside of the mouth and half of the throat—fear that makes you sweat on the palms of the hands, and gulp66 in order to keep the uvula at work? This is a fine Fear—a great cowardice67, and must be felt to be appreciated. The very improbability of billiards in a dak-bungalow proved the reality of the thing. No man—drunk or sober—could imagine a game at billiards, or invent the spitting crack of a "screw-cannon."
A severe course of dak-bungalows has this disadvantage—it breeds infinite credulity. If a man said to a confirmed dak-bungalow-haunter:—"There is a corpse in the next room, and there's a mad girl in the next but one, and the woman and man on that camel have just eloped from a place sixty miles away," the hearer would not disbelieve because he would know that nothing is too wild, grotesque68, or horrible to happen in a dak-bungalow.
This credulity, unfortunately, extends to ghosts. A rational person fresh from his own house would have turned on his side and slept. I did not. So surely as I was given up as a bad carcass by the scores of things in the bed because the bulk of my blood was in my heart, so surely did I hear every stroke of a long game at billiards played in the echoing room behind the iron-barred door. My dominant69 fear was that the players might want a marker. It was an absurd fear; because creatures who could play in the dark would be above such superfluities. I only know that that was my terror; and it was real.
After a long, long while the game stopped, and the door banged. I slept because I was dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred to have kept awake. Not for everything in Asia would I have dropped the door-bar and peered into the dark of the next room.
When the morning came, I considered that I had done well and wisely, and inquired for the means of departure.
"By the way, khansamah," I said, "what were those three doolies doing in my compound in the night?"
"There were no doolies," said the khansamah.
I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the open door. I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have played Black Pool with the owner of the big Black Pool down below.
"Has this place always been a dak-bungalow?" I asked.
"No," said the khansamah. "Ten or twenty years ago, I have forgotten how long, it was a billiard room."
"A how much?"
"A billiard room for the Sahibs who built the Railway. I was khansamah then in the big house where all the Railway-Sahibs lived, and I used to come across with brandy-shrab. These three rooms were all one, and they held a big table on which the Sahibs played every evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now, and the Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul."
"Do you remember anything about the Sahibs?"
"It is long ago, but I remember that one Sahib, a fat man and always angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me:—'Mangal Khan, brandy-pani do,' and I filled the glass, and he bent over the table to strike, and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the table, and his spectacles came off, and when we—the Sahibs and I myself—ran to lift him he was dead. I helped to carry him out. Aha, he was a strong Sahib! But he is dead and I, old Mangal Khan, am still living, by your favor."
That was more than enough! I had my ghost—a first-hand, authenticated70 article. I would write to the Society for Psychical71 Research—I would paralyze the Empire with the news! But I would, first of all, put eighty miles of assessed crop land between myself and that dak-bungalow before nightfall. The Society might send their regular agent to investigate later on.
I went into my own room and prepared to pack after noting down the facts of the case. As I smoked I heard the game begin again,—with a miss in balk72 this time, for the whir was a short one.
The door was open and I could see into the room. Click—click! That was a cannon. I entered the room without fear, for there was sunlight within and a fresh breeze without. The unseen game was going on at a tremendous rate. And well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in the breeze!
Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls! Impossible to mistake the whir of a ball over the slate59! But I was to be excused. Even when I shut my enlightened eyes the sound was marvelously like that of a fast game.
Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows, Kadir Baksh.
"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste! No wonder the Presence was disturbed and is speckled. Three sets of doolie-bearers came to the bungalow late last night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it was their custom to rest in the rooms set apart for the English people! What honor has the khansamah? They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No wonder, if these Oorias have been here, that the Presence is sorely spotted73. It is shame, and the work of a dirty man!"
Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two annas for rent in advance, and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten them with the big green umbrella whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh has no notions of morality.
There was an interview with the khansamah, but as he promptly74 lost his head, wrath75 gave place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation, in the course of which he put the fat Engineer-Sahib's tragic76 death in three separate stations—two of them fifty miles away. The third shift was to Calcutta, and there the Sahib died while driving a dog-cart.
If I had encouraged him the khansamah would have wandered all through Bengal with his corpse.
I did not go away as soon as I intended. I stayed for the night, while the wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt played a ding-dong "hundred and fifty up." Then the wind ran out and the billiards stopped, and I felt that I had ruined my one genuine, hall-marked ghost story.
Had I only stopped at the proper time, I could have made anything out of it.
That was the bitterest thought of all!
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1
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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flirt
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| v.调情，挑逗，调戏；n.调情者，卖俏者 | |
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4
outrageously
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| 凶残地； 肆无忌惮地； 令人不能容忍地； 不寻常地 | |
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phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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7
vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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8
reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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9
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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11
curbs
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| v.限制，克制，抑制( curb的第三人称单数 ) | |
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12
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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13
authentically
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| ad.sincerely真诚地 | |
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14
bellows
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| n.风箱；发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的名词复数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的第三人称单数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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15
bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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17
bristle
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| v.（毛发）直立，气势汹汹，发怒；n.硬毛发 | |
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bungalows
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| n.平房( bungalow的名词复数 )；单层小屋，多于一层的小屋 | |
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cemeteries
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| n.（非教堂的）墓地，公墓( cemetery的名词复数 ) | |
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chatters
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的第三人称单数 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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21
jabbers
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| v.急切而含混不清地说( jabber的第三人称单数 )；急促兴奋地说话 | |
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22
mows
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| v.刈，割( mow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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24
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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25
inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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26
fowl
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| n.家禽，鸡，禽肉 | |
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27
second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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28
pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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30
missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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maternity
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| n.母性，母道，妇产科病房；adj.孕妇的，母性的 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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38
daguerreotype
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| n.银板照相 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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engraving
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| n.版画；雕刻（作品）；雕刻艺术；镌版术v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的现在分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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41
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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42
pretense
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| n.矫饰，做作，借口 | |
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43
victuals
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| n.食物；食品 | |
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44
rations
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| 定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量 | |
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45
kennel
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| n.狗舍，狗窝 | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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49
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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50
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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51
hyena
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| n.土狼，鬣狗 | |
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52
babbling
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| n.胡说，婴儿发出的咿哑声adj.胡说的v.喋喋不休( babble的现在分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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53
drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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54
grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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55
shutter
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| n.百叶窗；(照相机)快门；关闭装置 | |
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56
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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57
gusty
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| adj.起大风的 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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60
slates
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| （旧时学生用以写字的）石板( slate的名词复数 )； 板岩； 石板瓦； 石板色 | |
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61
cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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62
tightens
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| 收紧( tighten的第三人称单数 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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63
bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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billiards
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| n.台球 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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66
gulp
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| vt.吞咽，大口地吸（气）；vi.哽住；n.吞咽 | |
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67
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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authenticated
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| v.证明是真实的、可靠的或有效的( authenticate的过去式和过去分词 )；鉴定，使生效 | |
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71
psychical
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| adj.有关特异功能现象的；有关特异功能官能的；灵魂的；心灵的 | |
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72
balk
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| n.大方木料；v.妨碍；不愿前进或从事某事 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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