Alice Perrin, "The Fakirs' Island" (1901) (Short Story)
Tags: Hindu religious practices, Kumbh Mela, Racism, Ascetics, Illness (smallpox), Curses
The Fakirs’ Island
On the ramparts of a red sandstone fort, built by Akbar, the great Moghul Emperor, in the days when Elizabeth was our Queen, stood a fair, fresh English girl. She was looking down on a scene that had been enacted year after year for some twenty centuries, with but little variation, save that comparative law and order now reigned where formerly riot, murder, theft and treachery were accepted as a mere matter of course.
Behind the dainty little figure in white towered the rugged red battlements, so indicative of the mighty character of the man who had raised them. Over her head blazed the electric blue of the Eastern sky, and below her surged nearly two millions of human beings, who had gathered from all quarters of India to bathe in the holy Ganges River and wash away their sins.
It was the time of the Khoom Mela [Kumbh Mela], or great religious Hindu fair, and the noise that rose on the dry air was deafening; everyone shouted, everyone expostulated, gongs were being banged, bells rung, hymns chanted, and trumpets and conches blown furiously by the priests as they marched in long, fantastic processions towards the river’s edge.
The clear blue of the Ganges’ water was dulled and soiled for nearly a mile in the direction of the huge iron bridge that crossed her, and over which special trains had been labouring for the last three days, bearing densely-packed crowds of enthusiastic pilgrims.
“What a sight!” said the girl, gazing down at the sea of humanity. “I believe one could walk on their heads with the greatest ease.”
The man who stood at her side was looking at her, and not at the seething throng below, and the beauty and perfection of her face and figure struck him with a thrill, as it had struck him again and again since she had arrived fresh from England, two months ago, to keep house for her bachelor uncle, who commanded the fort.
George Robertson had fallen deeply in love with Mona Selwyn the moment he had seen her, and he was a man of whose love a girl might have been very proud. A steadfast, honest, self-reliant soldier, older than his thirty years in mind and character, well-born, well-bred, and with a straight, resolute face.
“Aren’t they horrid?” continued the girl, pointing downwards with her white parasol. “They make such a noise, and kick up such a dust, and smell so nasty. I hate natives.”
“But they are a wonderfully interesting people,” said Robertson, dreamily, thinking of the great civilisation that had been firmly established when Britons were yet barbarians, and that had, nevertheless, practically stood still for hundreds of years.
“I can’t say I see anything the least bit interesting in them. Look at them down there like a disturbed ants” nest, making the most awful fuss about bathing in an ordinary river!”
“It’s anything but an ordinary river to them, and, after all, it is much the same theory as our baptism.”
“But we don’t make such a row about it.”
“No.”
“Why do you say “no” like that? Do you think we ought to shout and scream, and crowd and push, and go quite out of our minds over a religious ceremony?”
Captain Robertson laughed.
“Of course not. But, at the same time, I believe that this people’s religion is far more real to them than is ours to us. Some say that is what has kept them at a standstill; but, at any rate, it is extraordinary what they will voluntarily suffer in its cause. Look over the river at that island. That is where the fakirs, or priests, are quartered during the fair time. I went there this morning and saw a man hanging by his heels to a sort of gallows, swinging his head to and fro through a fire he had lit below him. Another was buried up to his chin in the ground, and had been there for four days. I saw other men lying on beds of long, sharp nails, and one old fellow arrived from Peshawar while I was there, having measured his length the whole way along the ground for hundreds of miles. It is mortification of the flesh with a vengeance. They all believe that such doings will ensure them bliss in after-life, and our own old saints had much the same ideas.”
“Oh! How I should like to go over to the island and see them all! Will you take me there, Captain Robertson, tomorrow morning?”
The man’s brown cheek flushed.
“I would rather not,” he said gently. “I shouldn’t like you to go there.”
“What rubbish!” she uttered pettishly. “Why did you excite my curiosity about things that would interest me, and then calmly say you won’t take me to see them? Why shouldn’t I go, pray?”
“You wouldn’t like it. You would probably see some very unpleasant sights, and it is dreadfully dirty and smells abominably.”
He thought of the fierce, fanatical faces, the hideous deformities, the lack of clothing on most of the holy men, and the evil attention that the presence of a young English girl would attract in such a crowd.
“You wouldn’t like it,” he repeated.
“Yes, I should. And I have set my heart on going. Besides, I know Mrs Calcraft went, so why shouldn’t I?”
“Mrs Calcraft is an elderly woman, and writes for the papers.”
“All right, if you won’t take me I shall ask someone else.”
“I certainly won’t take you,” he replied, with a touch of temper.
She was charmed to have made him angry; now she would make him jealous. It gave her an exquisite pleasure to know that she had the power to rouse this man’s feelings. It was worth more to her than all the adoring demonstrations of her other slaves. She beckoned to a young man with a fair moustache, who made one of the group near them, and he instantly flew to her side.
“Mr Kerr, will you take me to see the Fakirs” Island tomorrow morning? It would be an object for a ride.”
“Of course I will! What a lark to see all those old Johnnies burning themselves alive and chopping off each other’s heads! Isn’t that what they do, Robertson?”
But Captain Robertson had moved off with a sore heart and a set jaw, and though Miss Selwyn laughed and joked with the fair-haired subaltern, there was a little cloud in her blue eyes, and a droop at the corner of her red mouth for the rest of the afternoon.
However, the following morning, when the sun was drawing the mist from “Mother Ganga’s” silver bosom, she rode with young Kerr over the bridge of boats leading to the Fakirs’ Island in the gayest of spirits. The long rows of temporary sheds were astir with life; prayers were being chanted, and praises sung to every god and goddess in the Hindu mythology. Holy water was being freely sprinkled over shrines erected for the time being, already gay with offerings of flowers and tinsel decorations. Morning ablutions were being performed, hair clipped, heads shaved, and sacred facemarks applied. Mona Selwyn and young Kerr got off their horses and walked down the little street, looking about them with lively curiosity.
“There’s a man on a nail bed!” she cried, pointing with her whip. “How hard his back must be. I should have expected him to be an early riser at any rate!”
“By Jove!” said her companion, putting up his eyeglass. “I never believed it was true before. He must have a hide like a rhinoceros.”
“Captain Robertson told me he saw a man roasting his head over a fire.”
The delicate colour in her cheeks deepened as she mentioned George’s name, and the next moment, with a guilty feeling of shame, she recognised the reasonableness of his objection to her expedition, for a group of almost nude priests passed close by, on their way to the river to bathe, staring boldly at the girl with fierce, blood-shot eyes. One of them whose body was smeared with ashes, and whose hair, matted with tow, hung down to his feet, walked backwards as he gazed at Mona, muttering to himself. She turned away frightened and impatient, and vexed with herself for having come at all.
“He was quite right,” she thought; “he is always right. I ought to have listened to him.”
“Oh! Look! Look!” cried Kerr, pulling her sleeve and pointing excitedly.
Coming towards them was an ancient fakir, with one arm held high in the air, withered to a stick, and fixed in that position. As he approached, it became apparent that the nails had grown through the palm of the hand, and were protruding at the back. Following him like a dog came a small, humped cow; from its shoulder grew an extra leg, and from its forehead dangled another tail, both having been grafted into the little creature’s flesh soon after its birth—a very sacred animal, rendered still more holy by the cruel deformities that had been practised on it. The old man himself was a loathsome sight. His arm rigid, his long white hair caked with mud, his wrinkled body grey with ashes and hung with filthy rags. Chains clanked on his bony ankles, and he moaned dismally for alms as he proffered his copper begging-bowl to every passer-by. Behind him crawled a crowd of squalid, diseased, half-naked people—professional beggars. Some huge with elephantiasis; others literally dropping to pieces with leprosy, a few sightless from small-pox, and all covered with sores, and clamouring for alms. The old fakir thrust his begging-bowl in front of Mona and gibbered.
“Oh! What does he want?” she said, shrinking back in horror.
“He wants the stick!” said Kerr angrily. “And he shall have it if he doesn’t clear off. Git! You old brute,” he added menacingly to the old man, who only raised his voice and wailed a still more discordant demand for money.
The crowd of beggars gathered round, whining, cringing, crawling, stretching out claw-like hands and finger-less stumps towards the English people, while the little cow stood on the outskirts of the group and lowed plaintively. One woman, her face a mass of corruption, caught Mona’s skirt, and dragged herself blindly towards the girl, who shrieked aloud in fear and disgust. Kerr raised his cane and struck the begging bowl from the fakir’s hand. It clattered to the ground, and the pressing, whining crowd of beggars shrank back. The old priest’s tawny eyes blazed with rage. He raised his living arm aloft until it matched the dead one, standing in a weird, grotesque figure before the angry man and frightened girl. Then he cursed them loudly and venomously—“and thou,” he concluded, glaring at Mona’s white face, “before ten suns have set thy beauty will be gone—thou wilt be as those—” pointing to the mumbling mass of maimed, halt and blind that had withdrawn to a safe distance from the Englishman’s cane.
“Oh! come away quickly!” cried Mona, gathering up her habit skirt and seizing her companion’s arm. “I wish I had never come. Why did you bring me? Make haste—” and they half ran up the path between the two rows of huts, from which horrible faces seemed to peer at them on every side.
They rode back to the fort in silence. Kerr with his mind misgiving him for having taken the girl to such a place, Mona with a white, troubled face, haunted by the voice and manner of the old fakir, for she had understood that he was threatening her, though his actual words had been unintelligible. They were a depressed couple as they dismounted in front of the officers’ quarters, and Mona did not recover her spirits all day, in spite of the prospect of a ball in the evening. The said ball was also a failure as far as her enjoyment was concerned, for when she arrived at it she was greeted with the unwelcome information, imparted by a casual acquaintance, that Captain Robertson had gone away on a month’s leave.
“Very sudden, isn’t it?” she asked, with a sinking heart.
“Oh, Robertson often goes off like that. He had a letter from a pal in the Dhoon, asking him to go up there at once for some ‘para’ shooting, so he got his leave and started. He never can resist the chance of a shoot.”
Mona felt hopeless. She wondered if she had been the cause in any way of his departure,—or was it that he was quite indifferent and preferred shooting to herself? She contemplated the coming month with a sensation of utter dismay, as she realised what a blank it would be to her. She wished she had been nicer to him, that she had taken his advice about the Fakirs’ Island, that she could do something to show her penitence. Perhaps if she rigidly abstained from accepting the attentions of any of her other admirers from this time forward, he might, on his return, notice the change, and understand. But, probably, if he thought about her at all, he was thoroughly disgusted with her. Oh! Why had she been such an utterly silly, vain, frivolous little fool? Mona cried herself to sleep that night, and the next day, instead of going to a picnic, she stayed at home and studied Emerson’s essays, because George Robertson had once told her she ought to read them.
* * *
Captain Robertson’s leave extended itself to two months before he returned to the station. Work was slack, camps of exercise were over, the hot weather was coming on, and he had been easily spared. Therefore, as his shooting instincts had led him into regions where letters could not follow him, he arrived in blissful unconsciousness that during his absence Mona Selwyn had been at death’s door. He heard it while breakfasting at mess on the morning of his return.
“Awful hard luck on the girl,” remarked a subaltern, helping himself to fried bacon, and addressing Robertson. “Small-pox, you know, and they say she’s badly marked. Supposed to have caught it at that beastly fair.”
“How is she now?” faltered Robertson, with a dry tongue and a queer feeling in his throat. He had been making heroic efforts to stifle his love for Mona Selwyn during these two months, but he knew very well he had not succeeded.
“She’s practically all right again, and, I believe, out of quarantine; but she won’t go anywhere, she’s so cut up about the havoc played with her looks. She goes out on the fort walls in the evening, and the Colonel said he hoped fellows would keep out of her way a bit, as she hates to be seen. Beastly hard lines—and such a pretty girl as she was!”
Robertson rose abruptly, letting his knife and fork fall into his plate. He could stand the other’s chatter no longer—he must go to his room and be alone to think.
The outcome of his cogitations was that in the cool of the afternoon, when the water-carts were laying the dust on the broad, white roads, and the scent of reviving flowers was stealing on to the freshened air, he drove rapidly down to the fort, and, leaving his dogcart outside, made his way to the ramparts.
In the back verandah of the Colonel’s quarters he could see a long couch, with a figure reclining on it. He stood still for a few moments, gazing at the figure, and shading his eyes with his hand, for the evening sun was powerful. Then he walked quickly forward, down a flight of stone steps, across a yard, up more steps, and finally into the verandah. The girl started, and turned her face towards him. She was greatly disfigured, but the marks were yet fresh, and would lessen with time. The fair, curly hair had been cropped short, and the blue eyes were full of a sadness that cut Robertson to the heart. His love and pity went out to her. Thank God, she was alive, and if she would take his life’s devotion it was hers. She gave a distressed little cry, and covered her face with her hands. Robertson knelt down by the couch and drew her hands gently away.
“Mona,” he said.
Tears of weakness, disappointment, misery, ran from her eyes, and she sobbed helplessly.
“Darling, I never knew till this morning, and now I have come to ask you if you will forgive me for going away, and love me a little? I have loved you ever since I first saw you; but I thought I had no chance. Will you let me comfort you, and take care of you, always—for ever?”
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I am so ugly. Look at me!” She shut her eyes, and resolutely turned her face towards him. He kissed her mouth.
“It is you I want, dear,” he said gently and reverently, and then he took her, unresisting, into his arms.
There was a hushed silence in the air, broken only by the monotonous cry of a plover and the splash of oars in the river below. Their thoughts flew back to the day when they had last stood on the fort walls together, and looked down on the restless, seething, excited multitude below and the stained, turbid waters. Now the Ganges flowed softly, blue, clear, still. Nothing marked the banks but a few fishermen and the green patches of watermelon. The sky was flushed crimson with the setting sun, and peace reigned where but a short time before all had been confusion, clamour, dust and strife.