In the House of Suddhoo

by Rudyard Kipling

　　The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two-storied, withfour carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof. You mayrecognize it by five red hand-prints arranged like the Five ofDiamonds on the whitewash 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 Janooand Azizun and a little black-and-tan terrier that was stolen froman Englishman's house and given to Janoo by a soldier. To-day,only Janoo lives in the upper rooms. Suddhoo sleeps on the roofgenerally, except when he sleeps in the street. He used to go toPeshawar in the cold weather to visit his son, who sellscuriosities near the Edwardes' Gate, and then he slept under a realmud roof. Suddhoo is a great friend of mine, because his cousin hada son who secured, thanks to my recommendation, the post of head-messenger to a big firm in the Station. Suddhoo says that God willmake me a Lieutenant-Governor one of these days. I daresay hisprophecy will come true. He is very, very old, with white hair andno teeth worth showing, and he has outlived his wits--outlivednearly everything except his fondness for his son at Peshawar.Janoo and Azizun are Kashmiris, Ladies of the City, and theirs wasan ancient and more or less honorable profession; but Azizun hassince married a medical student from the North-West and has settleddown to a most respectable life somewhere near Bareilly. BhagwanDass is an extortionate and an adulterator. He is very rich. Theman who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting pretends tobe very poor. This lets you know as much as is necessary of thefour principal tenants in the house of Suddhoo. Then there is Me,of course; but I am only the chorus that comes in at the end toexplain things. So I do not count.Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was thecleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--exceptJanoo. She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoowas troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety andmade capital out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got afriend 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 tosee me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and thatI should be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhooif I went to him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoowas then, that he might have sent something better than an ekka,which jolted fearfully, to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor tothe City on a muggy April evening. The ekka did not run quickly.It was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of RanjitSingh's Tomb near the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo andhe said that, by reason of my condescension, it was absolutelycertain that I should become a Lieutenant-Governor while my hairwas yet black. Then we talked about the weather and the state ofmy health, and the wheat crops, for fifteen minutes, in the HuzuriBagh, under the stars.Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told himthat there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it wasfeared that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. Ididn't know anything about the state of the law; but I fancied thatsomething interesting was going to happen. I said that so far frommagic being discouraged by the Government it was highly commended.The greatest officials of the State practiced it themselves. (Ifthe Financial Statement isn't magic, I don't know what is.) Then,to encourage him further, I said that, if there was any jadooafoot, I had not the least objection to giving it my countenanceand sanction, and to seeing that it was clean jadoo--white magic,as distinguished from the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It tooka long time before Suddhoo admitted that this was just what he hadasked me to come for. Then he told me, in jerks and quavers, thatthe 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 Peshawarmore quickly than the lightning could fly, and that this news wasalways corroborated by the letters. Further, that he had toldSuddhoo how a great danger was threatening his son, which could beremoved by clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment. I began tosee how the land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood alittle jadoo in the Western line, and would go to his house to seethat everything was done decently and in order. We set offtogether; and on the way Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and two hundred rupees already; and thejadoo of that night would cost two hundred more. Which was cheap,he said, considering the greatness of his son's danger; but I donot think he meant it.The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when wearrived. I could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter'sshop-front, as if some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhooshook all over, and while we groped our way upstairs told me thatthe 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 afreethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the jadoo was aninvention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutterwould go to a hot place when he died. Suddhoo was nearly cryingwith fear and old age. He kept walking up and down the room in thehalf light, repeating his son's name over and over again, andasking Azizun if the seal-cutter ought not to make a reduction inthe case of his own landlord. Janoo pulled me over to the shadow inthe recess of the carved bow- windows. The boards were up, and therooms were only lit by one tiny lamp. There was no chance of mybeing seen if I stayed still.Presently, the groans below ceased, and we heard steps on thestaircase. That was the seal-cutter. He stopped outside the dooras the terrier barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he toldSuddhoo to blow out the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness,except for the red glow from the two huqas that belonged to Janooand Azizun. The seal-cutter came in, and I heard Suddhoo throwhimself down on the floor and groan. Azizun caught her breath, andJanoo backed to one of the beds with a shudder. There was a clinkof something metallic, and then shot up a pale blue-green flamenear the ground. The light was just enough to show Azizun, pressedagainst one corner of the room with the terrier between her knees;Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on thebed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter.I hope I may never see another man like that seal-cutter. He wasstripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick asmy wrist round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round hismiddle, and a steel bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was the face of the man that turned me cold. It wasblue-gray in the first place. In the second, the eyes were rolledback 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 pleaseexcept of the sleek, oily old ruffian who sat in the day-time overhis turning-lathe downstairs. He was lying on his stomach, withhis arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been throwndown pinioned. His head and neck were the only parts of him offthe floor. They were nearly at right angles to the body, like thehead of a cobra at spring. It was ghastly. In the centre of theroom, on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin, witha pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light.Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times.How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple alonghis spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see any othermotion. The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except thatslow curl and uncurl of the laboring back-muscles. Janoo from thebed was breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her handsbefore her eyes; and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that hadgot into his white beard, was crying to himself. The horror of itwas that the creeping, crawly thing made no sound--only crawled!And, remember, this lasted for ten minutes, while the terrierwhined, and Azizun shuddered, and Janoo gasped, and Suddhoo cried.I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thumplike a thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal-cutter betrayedhimself by his most impressive trick and made me calm again. Afterhe had finished that unspeakable triple crawl, he stretched hishead away from the floor as high as he could, and sent out a jet offire from his nostrils. Now, I knew how fire-spouting is done--Ican do it myself--so I felt at ease. The business was a fraud. Ifhe had only kept to that crawl without trying to raise the effect,goodness knows what I might not have thought. Both the girlsshrieked at the jet of fire and the head dropped, chin down, on thefloor with a thud; the whole body lying then like a corpse with itsarms trussed. There was a pause of five full minutes after this,and the blue- green flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle oneof her anklets, while Azizun turned her face to the wall and tookthe terrier in her arms. Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically toJanoo's huqa, and she slid it across the floor with her foot.Directly above the body and on the wall, were a couple of flamingportraits, in stamped paper frames, of the Queen and the Prince ofWales. They looked down on the performance, and, to my thinking,seemed to heighten the grotesqueness of it all.Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned overand rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where itlay stomach up. There was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactlylike the noise a fish makes when it takes a fly--and the greenlight 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 andshaved scalp. It was worse, being so very sudden, than thecrawling exhibition. We had no time to say anything before itbegan to speak.Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dyingman, and you will realize less than one-half of the horror of thathead's voice.There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and asort of "ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like thetimbre of a bell. It pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, forseveral minutes before I got rid of my cold sweat. Then theblessed solution struck me. I looked at the body lying near thedoorway, and saw, just where the hollow of the throat joins on theshoulders, a muscle that had nothing to do with any man's regularbreathing, twitching away steadily. The whole thing was a carefulreproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that one read about sometimesand the voice was as clever and as appalling a piece ofventriloquism as one could wish to hear. All this time the headwas "lip-lip-lapping" against the side of the basin, and speaking.It told Suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son's illnessand of the state of the illness up to the evening of that verynight. I always shall respect the seal-cutter for keeping sofaithfully to the time of the Peshawar telegrams. It went on tosay that skilled doctors were night and day watching over the man'slife; and that he would eventually recover if the fee to the potentsorcerer, whose servant was the head in the basin, were doubled.Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To askfor twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might haveused when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really awoman of masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. Iheard her say "Asli nahin! Fareib!" scornfully under her breath;and just as she said so, the light in the basin died out, the headstopped 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 wringing his handsand explaining to any one who cared to listen, that, if his chancesof eternal salvation depended on it, he could not raise another twohundred rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the corner;while Janoo sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss theprobabilities 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 alwaysdemanding gifts is no true magic," said she. "My mother told methat the only potent love-spells are those which are told you forlove. This seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. I dare nottell, do anything, or get anything done, because I am in debt toBhagwan Dass the bunnia for two gold rings and a heavy anklet. Imust get my food from his shop. The seal-cutter is the friend ofBhagwan Dass, and he would poison my food. A fool's jadoo has beengoing on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo many rupees each night.The seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and mantras before. Henever showed us anything like this till to-night. Azizun is afool, and will be a pur dahnashin soon. Suddhoo has lost hisstrength and his wits. See now! I had hoped to get from Suddhoomany rupees while he lived, and many more after his death; andbehold, he is spending everything on that offspring of a devil anda she-ass, the seal- cutter!"Here I said:--"But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into thebusiness? Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shallrefund. The whole thing is child's talk--shame--and senseless.""Suddhoo IS an old child," said Janoo. "He has lived on the roofsthese seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. Hebrought you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any lawof the Sirkar, whose salt he ate many years ago. He worships thedust off the feet of the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer hasforbidden him to go and see his son. What does Suddhoo know ofyour laws or the lightning-post? I have to watch his money goingday 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, andAzizun was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.. . . . . . . . .Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open tothe charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtainingmoney under false pretences, which is forbidden by Section 420 ofthe Indian Penal Code. I am helpless in the matter for thesereasons, I cannot inform the Police. What witnesses would supportmy statements? Janoo refuses flatly, Azizun is a veiled womansomewhere near Bareilly--lost in this big India of ours. I cannotagain take the law into my own hands, and speak to the seal-cutter;for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, butthis step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound handand foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an old dotard; andwhenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar ratherpatronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; butSuddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, bywhose advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watchesdaily the money that she hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken bythe seal-cutter, and becomes daily more furious and sullen.She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless somethinghappens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal-cutter will dieof cholera--the white arsenic kind--about the middle of May. Andthus I shall have to be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.