From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange;
Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
Shall bear us company to-night,
For we have reached the Oldest Land
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.
From the Dusk to the Dawn.
The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two-storied, with four carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof. You may recognize it by five red hand-prints arranged like the Five of Diamonds on the whitewash1 between the upper windows. Bhagwan Dass, the bunnia, and a man who says he gets his living by seal-cutting, live in the lower story with a troop of wives, servants, friends, and retainers. The two upper rooms used to be occupied by Janoo and Azizun and a little black-and-tan terrier that was stolen from an Englishman's house and given to Janoo by a soldier. To-day, only Janoo lives in the upper rooms. Suddhoo sleeps on the roof generally, except when he sleeps in the street. He used to go to Peshawar in the cold weather to visit his son, who sells curiosities near the Edwardes' Gate, and then he slept under a real mud roof. Suddhoo is a great friend of mine, because his cousin had a son who secured, thanks to my recommendation, the post of head-messenger to a big firm in the Station. Suddhoo says that God will make me a Lieutenant-Governor one of these days. I daresay his prophecy will come true. He is very, very old, with white hair and no teeth worth showing, and he has outlived his wits—outlived nearly everything except his fondness for his son at Peshawar. Janoo and Azizun are Kashmiris, Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable profession; but Azizun has since married a medical student from the North-West and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere near Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. He is very rich. The man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting pretends to be very poor. This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants2 in the house of Suddhoo. Then there is Me, of course; but I am only the chorus that comes in at the end to explain things. So I do not count.
Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the cleverest of them all—Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie—except Janoo. She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.
Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo was troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made capital out of it. He was abreast3 of the times. He got a friend in Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health. And here the story begins.
Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should be conferring an everlasting4 honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo was then, that he might have sent something better than an ekka, which jolted5 fearfully, to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a muggy6 April evening. The ekka did not run quickly. It was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh's Tomb near the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo and he said that, by reason of my condescension7, it was absolutely certain that I should become a Lieutenant-Governor while my hair was yet black. Then we talked about the weather and the state of my health, and the wheat crops, for fifteen minutes, in the Huzuri Bagh, under the stars.
Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told him that there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it was feared that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. I didn't know anything about the state of the law; but I fancied that something interesting was going to happen. I said that so far from magic being discouraged by the Government it was highly commended. The greatest officials of the State practiced it themselves. (If the Financial Statement isn't magic, I don't know what is.) Then, to encourage him further, I said that, if there was any jadoo afoot, I had not the least objection to giving it my countenance8 and sanction, and to seeing that it was clean jadoo—white magic, as distinguished9 from the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It took a long time before Suddhoo admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for. Then he told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he cut seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he gave Suddhoo news of the sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly, and that this news was always corroborated10 by the letters. Further, that he had told Suddhoo how a great danger was threatening his son, which could be removed by clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment. I began to see how the land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood a little jadoo in the Western line, and would go to his house to see that everything was done decently and in order. We set off together; and on the way Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo of that night would cost two hundred more. Which was cheap, he said, considering the greatness of his son's danger; but I do not think he meant it.
The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived. I could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's shop-front, as if some one were groaning12 his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while we groped our way upstairs told me that the jadoo had begun. Janoo and Azizun met us at the stair-head, and told us that the jadoo-work was coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is a lady of a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the jadoo was an invention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would go to a hot place when he died. Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear and old age. He kept walking up and down the room in the half light, repeating his son's name over and over again, and asking Azizun if the seal-cutter ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own landlord. Janoo pulled me over to the shadow in the recess13 of the carved bow-windows. The boards were up, and the rooms were only lit by one tiny lamp. There was no chance of my being seen if I stayed still.
Presently, the groans14 below ceased, and we heard steps on the staircase. That was the seal-cutter. He stopped outside the door as the terrier barked and Azizun fumbled15 at the chain, and he told Suddhoo to blow out the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo and Azizun. The seal-cutter came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw himself down on the floor and groan11. Azizun caught her breath, and Janoo backed to one of the beds with a shudder16. There was a clink of something metallic17, and then shot up a pale blue-green flame near the ground. The light was just enough to show Azizun, pressed against one corner of the room with the terrier between her knees; Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on the bed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter.
I hope I may never see another man like that seal-cutter. He was stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my wrist round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round his middle, and a steel bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was the face of the man that turned me cold. It was blue-gray in the first place. In the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of a demon—a ghoul—anything you please except of the sleek18, oily old ruffian who sat in the day-time over his turning-lathe downstairs. He was lying on his stomach, with his arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been thrown down pinioned19. His head and neck were the only parts of him off the floor. They were nearly at right angles to the body, like the head of a cobra at spring. It was ghastly. In the centre of the room, on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass20 basin, with a pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled21 himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple22 along his spine23 and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion. The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring24 back-muscles. Janoo from the bed was breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her hands before her eyes; and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that had got into his white beard, was crying to himself. The horror of it was that the creeping, crawly thing made no sound—only crawled! And, remember, this lasted for ten minutes, while the terrier whined25, and Azizun shuddered26, and Janoo gasped27, and Suddhoo cried.
I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump28 like a thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal-cutter betrayed himself by his most impressive trick and made me calm again. After he had finished that unspeakable triple crawl, he stretched his head away from the floor as high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils29. Now, I knew how fire-spouting is done—I can do it myself—so I felt at ease. The business was a fraud. If he had only kept to that crawl without trying to raise the effect, goodness knows what I might not have thought. Both the girls shrieked30 at the jet of fire and the head dropped, chin down, on the floor with a thud; the whole body lying then like a corpse31 with its arms trussed. There was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the blue-green flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle one of her anklets, while Azizun turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her arms. Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to Janoo's huqa, and she slid it across the floor with her foot. Directly above the body and on the wall, were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped paper frames, of the Queen and the Prince of Wales. They looked down on the performance, and, to my thinking, seemed to heighten the grotesqueness32 of it all.
Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned over and rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay stomach up. There was a faint “plop” from the basin—exactly like the noise a fish makes when it takes a fly—and the green light in the centre revived.
I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried, shrivelled, black head of a native baby—open eyes, open mouth and shaved scalp. It was worse, being so very sudden, than the crawling exhibition. We had no time to say anything before it began to speak.
Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized33 dying man, and you will realize less than one-half of the horror of that head's voice.
There was an interval34 of a second or two between each word, and a sort of “ring, ring, ring,” in the note of the voice, like the timbre35 of a bell. It pealed36 slowly, as if talking to itself, for several minutes before I got rid of my cold sweat. Then the blessed solution struck me. I looked at the body lying near the doorway37, and saw, just where the hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders, a muscle that had nothing to do with any man's regular breathing, twitching38 away steadily39. The whole thing was a careful reproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that one read about sometimes and the voice was as clever and as appalling40 a piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear. All this time the head was “lip-lip-lapping” against the side of the basin, and speaking. It told Suddhoo, on his face again whining41, of his son's illness and of the state of the illness up to the evening of that very night. I always shall respect the seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time of the Peshawar telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were night and day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually recover if the fee to the potent42 sorcerer, whose servant was the head in the basin, were doubled.
Here the mistake from the artistic43 point of view came in. To ask for twice your stipulated44 fee in a voice that Lazarus might have used when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a woman of masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard her say “Asli nahin! Fareib!” scornfully under her breath; and just as she said so, the light in the basin died out, the head stopped talking, and we heard the room door creak on its hinges. Then Janoo struck a match, lit the lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-cutter were gone. Suddhoo was wringing45 his hands and explaining to any one who cared to listen, that, if his chances of eternal salvation46 depended on it, he could not raise another two hundred rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the corner; while Janoo sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss the probabilities of the whole thing being a bunao, or “make-up.”
I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter's way of jadoo; but her argument was much more simple:—“The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic,” said she. “My mother told me that the only potent love-spells are those which are told you for love. This seal-cutter man is a liar47 and a devil. I dare not tell, do anything, or get anything done, because I am in debt to Bhagwan Dass the bunnia for two gold rings and a heavy anklet. I must get my food from his shop. The seal-cutter is the friend of Bhagwan Dass, and he would poison my food. A fool's jadoo has been going on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo many rupees each night. The seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and mantras before. He never showed us anything like this till to-night. Azizun is a fool, and will be a pur dahnashin soon. Suddhoo has lost his strength and his wits. See now! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many rupees while he lived, and many more after his death; and behold48, he is spending everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the seal-cutter!”
Here I said:—“But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the business? Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall refund49. The whole thing is child's talk—shame—and senseless.”
“Suddhoo IS an old child,” said Janoo. “He has lived on the roofs these seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. He brought you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the Sirkar, whose salt he ate many years ago. He worships the dust off the feet of the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden him to go and see his son. What does Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning-post? I have to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below.”
Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation; while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and Azizun was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.
. . . . . . . . .
Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the charge of aiding and abetting50 the seal-cutter in obtaining money under false pretences51, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal52 Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I cannot inform the Police. What witnesses would support my statements? Janoo refuses flatly, Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly—lost in this big India of ours. I cannot again take the law into my own hands, and speak to the seal-cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an old dotard; and whenever we meet mumbles53 my idiotic54 joke that the Sirkar rather patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the money that she hoped to wheedle55 out of Suddhoo taken by the seal-cutter, and becomes daily more furious and sullen56.
She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal-cutter will die of cholera—the white arsenic57 kind—about the middle of May. And thus I shall have to be privy58 to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.
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1
whitewash
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| v.粉刷，掩饰；n.石灰水，粉刷，掩饰 | |
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2
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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3
abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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4
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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5
jolted
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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6
muggy
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| adj.闷热的；adv.（天气）闷热而潮湿地；n.（天气）闷热而潮湿 | |
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7
condescension
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| n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人) | |
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8
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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9
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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10
corroborated
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| v.证实，支持（某种说法、信仰、理论等）( corroborate的过去式 ) | |
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11
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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12
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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13
recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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14
groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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15
fumbled
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| （笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下 | |
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16
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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17
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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18
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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19
pinioned
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| v.抓住[捆住]（双臂）( pinion的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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20
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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21
wriggled
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的过去式和过去分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等） | |
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22
ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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23
spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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24
laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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25
whined
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| v.哀号( whine的过去式和过去分词 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
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26
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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27
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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28
thump
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| v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声 | |
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29
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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30
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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32
grotesqueness
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33
mesmerized
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| v.使入迷( mesmerize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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35
timbre
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| n.音色，音质 | |
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36
pealed
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| v.（使）（钟等）鸣响，（雷等）发出隆隆声( peal的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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37
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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38
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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39
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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40
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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41
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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42
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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43
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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44
stipulated
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| vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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45
wringing
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| 淋湿的，湿透的 | |
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46
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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47
liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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48
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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49
refund
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| v.退还，偿还；n.归还，偿还额，退款 | |
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50
abetting
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| v.教唆（犯罪）( abet的现在分词 )；煽动；怂恿；支持 | |
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51
pretences
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| n.假装( pretence的名词复数 )；作假；自命；自称 | |
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52
penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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53
mumbles
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| 含糊的话或声音，咕哝( mumble的名词复数 ) | |
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54
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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55
wheedle
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| v.劝诱，哄骗 | |
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56
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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57
arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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58
privy
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| adj.私用的；隐密的 | |
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