The Sikh began singing a sort of hymn set to minor music; and though singing in the Jat-Punjabi dialect is one of those accomplishments that were omitted when my kit was tossed out of the Great Quartermaster’s store, I’ve always found a curious satisfaction, akin to inspiration, in listening to songs in the vernacular of other lands. Indian lyrics always seem to lose the note of plaintiveness when you translate them, just as Homer’s verses lose their roll done into English, and the Odes of Horace forced into another tongue come through without their humor.
In the hot night my mother bore me,
Knowing not who I am!
Into the dawn I came, a man-child
Knowing not the life before me,
Stranger to the folk about me.
None knew who I am!
Out of the book of signs and wonders,
Knowing not who I am,
Soothsayers read this and that thing.
There is lightning when it thunders;
Do they know the lightning’s karma?
None knew who I am!
Out of her heart my mother taught me
(Stranger, nevertheless!)
Fear and faith and law and legend,
Weeping when my karma caught me
Willing yet unwilling tore me
Loose from her caress.
Smiled the Powers then at the stripling
Facing first duress,
Making boast of all that might be,
Choosing pleasant ways and crippling
Choice for sake of this or that one
(Strangers nevertheless!)
Thrice and again my karma took me
(None knew who I am!)
Rolling me in red disaster
Till the light o’ loves forsook me
And I cried to careless heavens,
Asking who I am!
Long were the nights I spent in anguish,
Thinking gods would care,
Vowing I myself would hardly
Leave a thing I made to languish.
If I perished who would profit,
How, and when, and where?
Then I struck a rock demanding
Why it towered there,
And, as if the rock made answer,
Dawned upon my understanding
“That is His affair!”
Then I looked from rock and river
To horizon far
Eyeing with a new contentment,
Seeing gifts but not the Giver,
Sun and moon and star,
Stream and forest, time and season,
Fish and bird and beast and man;
None could look into their reason,
None knew what they are!
So there burst illumination
Dissipating fears,
And I sang a song of manhood,
And I laughed at the negation
That is affluent of tears,
Is the sun too long aborning?
Are the planets in arrears?
Who am I?
Whoever knows me
Is the Monarch of the Morning,
Is the Lord of love and laughter,
Is the Owner of the years!
You hardly expect a sporadically dissolute enlisted Sikh to sing that kind of song. But, as the missionaries say, the Sikhs are heathen, and on their way to hell, so we, who don’t believe that laughter and religion and the morning are all one, and who think we know exactly who we are, mustn’t judge them too harshly. Personally I’m not much of a dogmatist. Having pitched my tent in hell a lot of times, I’m not so scared as I used to be. And if there’s a worse hell than I’ve camped in yet, as long as there are Sikhs there like Narayan Singh I don’t believe I’m going to worry much. They’ll sing songs, and we’ll find a way out somehow.
I have only told part of Narayan Singh’s song, that he trolled that morning in a rather nasal baritone, because the censor would object to about two-thirds of it. The East is peculiarly frank in some matters that the West prefers to keep behind a veil of mystery, and there were details concerning light o’ loves that were interesting, whatever else they might be. I got to thinking about India, and the fact, admitting of no dispute, that during all the uncontrollable devilry of the Indian Mutiny of ‘57 there wasn’t a single instance of mistreatment of an Englishwoman by the sepoys. So I asked him about Ayisha, wondering just how far he proposed to go with his mock love-making.
“Would she make a good wife for a soldier?” I suggested.
To my surprise, instead of laughing, he meditated for several minutes before answering. Then:
“The world has this marriage business upside-down,” he said at last. “A woman is either ambitious, and drives a man as Jael drives the Lion of Petra; or else she is a parasite, who halves his joys and multiplies his sorrows. Single, she is sometimes a delight; married, she is torment. As for men: well, sahib, our Jimgrim and you and I are single men. I have not heard him or you complain of it. Nor you me. I have nine piastres and my freedom; show me the woman that can rob me of either!”
But I was still curious. He had not told me yet what I wanted to know.
“She’s in an awkward position,” I said. “What do you suppose is in store for her?”
“Awkward? How so?” he answered. “At the mercy of our seventeen thieves, she would be a baggage to be bought and sold. But there are three of us who would not see her brought to a bad end. Ayisha is like all women: she thinks she has me at her feet, and so despises me, to my no small comfort. She despairs of Jimgrim, and therefore idolizes him, to his discomfort. And she has a woman’s luck; for if I know anything, it is that Jimgrim will contrive good fortune for her.”
“You think he’s the executive of destiny?”
“All men are weapons in the hand of destiny! I am a sepoy—a number on a muster-roll; yet, counting all, I have slain in my day seven and thirty men with cold steel. Was that not destiny? I was born on the bank of the Jumna. I have killed men near the Ganges, near the Kabul River, near the Irrawaddy, near the Seine, near the Marne, near the Rhine— Pathans, Afghans, Hindus, Burmese, Prussians, Saxons, Austrians— having no personal quarrel with any one of them. And here, near the Jordan, I have slain two Syrians and an Egyptian—all with cold steel. Was that not destiny? And am I alone the tool of destiny? Each of us is like a pebble, sahib, dropped into a pool, causing rings of ripples that we cannot check. I am not in the secret of destiny, but I know this: that our Jimgrim is causing a ripple that will set Ayisha on her feet.”
“So you don’t plan to make a ripple in her life?” I asked him.
“There is no need,” he answered. “Besides, I am a man of few plans. My trade is obedience to orders; and as for amusement: I ask no better than a day like