Hussein: An Entertainment

by Patrick O'Brian

  HUSSEIN

  An Entertainment

  PATRICK O’BRIAN

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Foreword

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  About the Author

  The Works of Patrick O’Brian

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Foreword

  I cannot remember the genesis of Hussein with great clarity, but I rather think that it derived from a tale I wrote for one of the Oxford annuals, to which I contributed fairly often: Mr Kaberry, an amiable man who ran the annual, said that it would be a pity to publish no more than the abbreviated form I showed him, and suggested that I should expand it to a book.

  This I did: I was living in Dublin at the time, in a boarding-house in Leeson Street kept by two very kind sisters from Tipperary and inhabited mostly by young men studying at the national university with a few from Trinity. What fun we had in the evenings: the Miss Spains from Tipperary danced countless Irish dances with wonderful grace, big-boned Séan from Derry sawing away at his fiddle and the others joining in as well as they could. On Sundays we would go to a church where, without impropriety, the priest could say his Mass in eighteen minutes; then we would ride to Blackrock to swim; and all this time the book was flowing well, rarely less than a thousand words a day and sometimes much more. I finished it on a bench in Stephen’s Green with a mixture of triumph and regret.

  Although I had known some Indians, Muslim and Hindu, at that time I had never been to India, so the book is largely derivative, based on reading and on the recollections, anecdotes and letters of friends of relations who were well acquainted with that vast country; and it has no pretension to being anything more than what it is called, an Entertainment. But it did have a distinction that pleased my vanity: it was the first work of contemporary fiction that the Oxford University Press had published in all the centuries of its existence.

  It was fairly well received, and in the writing of the book I learnt the rudiments of my calling: but infinitely more than that, it opened a well of joy that has not yet run dry.

  PATRICK O’BRIAN

  Trinity College, Dublin 1999

  One

  In the Public Works Department of the Government of India there are a great number of elephants. It is the custom for one mahout to stay with the same elephant throughout the years of his service. One of these elephants was called Muhammed Akbar; his first mahout was Wali Dad. When Wali Dad grew old, and was pensioned off, his son Ahmed became Muhammed Akbar’s mahout, for he had grown up with the elephant.

  Time went on, and as Muhammed Akbar was reaching the prime of his life, Ahmed took a wife, who presently died, giving birth to a son.

  The child was brought up by his grandfather and Ahmed. Ahmed had loved his wife very wholeheartedly, and he felt that he could not take another woman, although his food was much the worse for the want of a wife. She had been a small, delicately-formed girl of fifteen when Ahmed had married her — a grown woman by the standards of her people. But before the first year of their marriage was gone, she was dead, so Ahmed, who had not had time for disillusionment, carried a sweet memory with him always.

  From his babyhood the boy, called Hussein after the father of his grandfather, who had been a great mahout in his day, was brought up among the elephants. His grandfather was very fond of Hussein, and he taught him to walk by looping an elephant’s picket-rope about him, and trailing him very gently to and fro.

  The very first thing that Hussein could remember was his grandfather trailing him round in the shade of a pipal tree, while an elephant — probably Muhammed Akbar — rubbed himself with a grating noise against the bark of the thick trunk. What fixed the incident in his memory was a brilliantly blue butterfly that hovered quite near, but which he could not catch; while he was trying to, he suddenly discovered that he could run by himself.

  At first an aunt looked after Hussein, but while he was still quite a baby the elephants were moved to Agra and she was left behind, so Hussein grew up without any women. As soon as Hussein was old enough to learn, Wali Dad taught him the Mohammedan confession of faith — La illah il Allah, Mohammed raisul Allah — there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah — that, with a few vague remarks about Paradise, which was only to be reached by those who did not make a noise when their elders were talking, and a good deal of rather bitter comment on the undesirability of bût-parasti like the Hindus, completed his religious training: after that his education was confined to the elephant lore accumulated by countless generations of mahouts, and passed down by word of mouth.

  Both Wali Dad and Ahmed told him all that they had been taught about elephants, and all that they had found out; they also taught him the hathi-tongue, in which the mahouts speak to their elephants. It is a strange language, quite unlike any other; only the mahouts know it, and they keep the knowledge carefully among themselves. The elephants understand it, and there is a tale that when the moon is eclipsed they speak it to one another.

  Hussein absorbed the knowledge easily, for he was a born mahout; his ancestors had been mahouts as far as history went back and beyond: it was in his blood.

  He grew up to be a strong boy, tall and slim. Muhammed Akbar was very fond of the boy, and taught him, in his own way, more about elephants than he could ever have learnt from men.

  Now in the year when the great pestilence went up and down India, killing by thousands, and by hundreds of thousands, they were at the great city of Agra, which was crowded at the time for a certain festival. The monsoon had delayed in its breaking, so that the people were crying out for rain to all their gods. But it did not come. The weather grew hotter and still hotter, so that everything withered, and men died from the heat alone.

  Then the cholera came. People died in the streets, and in the temples: there was a famine all through the land, so that men were distraught, and died like flies from cholera, starvation, and fear of both.

  The mahouts in the Government elephant lines did not fare so badly, for they were fed and made to keep clean.

  All through the hot days and stifling nights the Hindus prayed in the temples of their bloody-handed goddess, Kali, but she would not hear them, although the conches screamed and blared without ceasing.

  The dead were thrown into great pits, for there were so many. The Government did all that it could, and trains came from the south with food and doctors. It is said that men of the IMS died from overwork and exhaustion and nothing else.

  One day Ahmed was sent out with Muhammed Akbar to take an official through some rough country for a day’s journey. Ahmed did not want his son to be out of his sight at a time like this, so he asked if Hussein might go with him. The official, a kindly Englishman, agreed, and they set out at daybreak. It was a depressing journey, for men lay dead in the roads, with none to bury them. They passed through villages that had been busy with people a month ago, and that were now quite empty, the people having died, or run away to find a place where the cholera was not. All that should have been green was brown or grey: the air was heavy and still, and the heat seemed to beat up from the iron-hard ground as well as from out of the sky.

  When they got back, Wali Dad was dead. He had sickened and died before nigh
tfall, and he was already buried. Mahmud Khan, an old friend of his, had stayed with him to the last, in spite of the danger. He had given Wali Dad enough opium to ensure that his passing should be clean and painless, which was a very good thing; Mahmud had also given him an honourable burial. In that great heat a man had to be buried almost as soon as the breath was out of his body.

  Ahmed tore his clothes, and cast off his turban, pouring ash and dust upon his head. Hussein did the same, and they mourned for a long time. For days Ahmed took no food, and only a little water; but Hussein fed more heartily, although his grief was sincere. Six more mahouts died in the next week, and new ones were sent from other parts to replace them. Among them came Mustapha, the husband of Ahmed’s sister. Ahmed went to him and said, ‘Peace upon your house!’

  ‘And upon yours,’ replied Mustapha; ‘may you never grow tired.’ For some time they talked about indifferent subjects before Ahmed came to the question that had brought him.

  ‘If anything were to happen to either of us,’ he said, ‘what would become of your wife and children, and of my Hussein?’

  ‘Allah is merciful,’ said Mustapha, who was a mild, dreamy man, and something of a scholar.

  ‘Without doubt,’ replied Ahmed, ‘but perhaps it would be as well if, in the event of certain things coming upon either of us — (he would not mention cholera, for it was so near, and naming calls) — we were to agree that the other should take care of those who would be left.’

  ‘This is an excellent suggestion, and on my honour, and by the Beard of the Prophet, if such a thing should come about — which Allah forbid — I and my wife will look after Hussein.’

  ‘And for my part, by my father’s head, I will do the same for your wife, my sister, and for your children.’

  And so it was agreed; after that the talk drifted to unimportant things. The same night Mahmud Khan was struck by the cholera; Ahmed stayed with him all night, doing all that could be done, which was not much. Towards the end Mahmud asked for opium; Ahmed gave it to him, and he died a little before daybreak.

  Ahmed was worn out with grief and with nursing his friend. As he was very weak from taking almost no food since his father died, he stood no chance when the cholera struck him at noon; he was buried before sunset. Hussein, when they told him, was dazed: he had never thought it possible that his father should die — he had seemed so strong, and so essentially permanent. Even when he was buried, Hussein could not believe that he was gone for ever. It all seemed like a bad dream, from which he would presently awake to find everything as it used to be. Within an hour of his father’s burial, Hussein was unconscious in the high fever of black cholera. Mustapha kept his word to Ahmed, and carried him to his own house, where his aunt nursed the boy. He lay on a string bed, his body distorted with the furious pain; it wracked him so that he could scarcely breathe the heavy air that seemed to weigh down on him like a stifling blanket.

  Zeinab, Mustapha’s wife, sat by Hussein all night, sponging him now and then with lukewarm water. He was still living at dawn, but as the day wore on he lapsed into a coma.

  ‘It is all over now,’ said Zeinab.

  ‘El mektub, mektub,’ replied Mustapha with a sigh, ‘what is written, is written — his fate was on his forehead, and there is no escaping it.’

  At dawn, however, a little breeze had sprung up, and by noon it had risen to a strong wind, and the people on the housetops could see the great banks of cloud driving down from the north. All day thunder roared, and a little after noon the monsoon broke at last. The rain fell out of the sky in great solid sheets, and the scorched earth drank it with a hissing sound. The mud splashed up waist-high, and the rivers swelled as one watched them. Ceaselessly the rain roared down, making a great noise like the thunder of traffic in a great city magnified tenfold. The air freshened within a few minutes of the coming of the rain, and Hussein stirred from his coma. The clean air revived him a little, and before nightfall Zeinab was able to feed a little soup to him from a spoon. By the time a week had passed the cholera had left the city — it was washed away.

  Hussein lived, and after some time he was on his feet again. At first he kept forgetting that Wali Dad and Ahmed were both dead, and each time that it came suddenly to him, his grief broke out afresh. At such times he would go to Muhammed Akbar, and lie between his fore-feet, with his head in the dust; but while Hussein tended to become used to it, the elephant did not. Indeed, Muhammed Akbar grieved so bitterly and so deeply that since Ahmed died he would hardly eat anything at all. Only Hussein could persuade him to take a few plantains now and then. The great beast wasted away, and his skin hung in folds on his flanks.

  All the mahouts understood, and they did not trouble him. In a little while Muhammed Akbar became so weak that he could hardly support his own weight. One day Hussein found him leaning against the pipal tree in the compound. The boy was carrying some plantains for the elephant: he sat between the great round forefeet, and began talking gently. Suddenly he stopped, for the elephant was not making those little throaty gurgles of response by which he always used to show that he was attending. Hussein slapped the hanging trunk to wake the elephant, but there was no response; he started to his feet, and looked up; then he understood, for Muhammed Akbar was dead.

  Two

  Mustapha, Hussein’s uncle, was a quiet, dreamy man, and although he was by birth and breeding a mahout, he was also a considerable scholar in the old Islamic tradition. He knew the greater part of the Q’ran by heart, and he had even begun a commentary on Al Beidâwi, the great commentator of the Q’ran. One of the first things he did when Hussein was convalescent was to teach him to read. His own sons — he had three — had reverted to type, and they were simple mahouts, blood and bone, so that he had long ceased trying to hammer any learning into their thick heads. But Hussein was more quick, and he wished to please Mustapha.

  Mustapha had all the scholar’s enthusiasm for imparting his knowledge, and after a few months Hussein could struggle through most of the Q’ran. Among those people it was no little distinction to be able to read, for not two in a hundred of the common people could understand the written word. Mustapha’s three sons were all considerably older than Hussein, and they thought him too young to quarrel with at all seriously, so they got on very well together.

  Zeinab was particularly good to Hussein, for she was a good-natured motherly woman, and she felt the need of someone to look after now that her own children were almost grown up.

  The elephants were soon moved away from Agra, and after a little time they were stationed at Amritsar. In this town Hussein began to lead a new life. To begin with, the people spoke a different tongue, for they were mostly Sikhs, speaking Punjabi. Hussein could generally make himself understood in Urdu, which is spoken all over the land, but very quickly he learnt Punjabi so well that he thought in it. His grief, which had died down to a dull ache, seemed to leave him with all these new things coming into his life, and although it returned sometimes when he was unhappy or alone, yet as time went on it faded out of his conscious mind.

  They all lived in a hut in the elephant lines, which consisted of a long row of flat-roofed buildings with little gardens. There was a broad maiden that sloped down to the river, which was dammed in order to make a pool for the elephants. The town was some little distance from the elephant lines. In the evening the mahouts used to give their elephants over to their sons, and they were taken down to the pool. Hussein often used to take his uncle’s elephant, who was called Jehangir Bahadur.

  When they came to the pool the elephants would walk slowly in and squirt themselves all over with the cool water. They all had different habits, and it was Jehangir’s custom to go out into the deepest part, where he could go right under, only leaving his trunk out to breathe. Then he would come out to the shallow part where Hussein was; he would suck up a trunkful of water, and squirt it all over himself, while Hussein scrubbed him with a coir brush. When they were back on the bank, Hussein would search Jehangir’
s broad feet for thorns, and also his ears, which were rather tender, becoming inflamed very easily.

  The water at the dam made a perfect swimming pool, as no crocodiles ever came there for fear of the elephants.

  In the garden outside Mustapha’s house there was an old piece of wall that stood by itself; for no particular reason it had never been pulled down, so Mustapha made a sloping bed against it for melons. Hussein was very fond of melons, and he had made these his special care, for being rather far-sighted he reasoned that the more they were looked after as plants, the better they would be as melons.

  He was squatting idly on the top of the wall when the heat of the day had passed, gazing at the ripening melons. In the elephant lines he heard a tumult, but he paid little attention, for the mahouts often quarrelled, making a great noise without ever coming to blows; therefore, thought Hussein, it was not worth while running to see two men shouting at one another, with other people joining in to make more noise. Actually the hubbub was caused by Jehangir, who had gone mûsth, and had knocked another elephant over. It was a mild attack of that form of madness that is peculiar to elephants: it is often caused by an elephant being given too much bamboo in its fodder, for this makes its blood so hot that a very little will upset it and drive it mûsth.

  All the mahouts were trying to separate the elephants but they could do nothing. As the noise increased Hussein climbed on to the flat roof of the hut to see what it was all about; he hoped that it would be Imam Din pulling Daoud Shah’s beard, as he had often threatened to do. The mahouts got out two of the biggest elephants to force Jehangir away.

  Hussein was in two minds about going to find out what it was all about: the sun was still too hot for it to be worth while running to hear two of the mahouts’ wives abusing one another, but, of course, it might with luck be Imam Din carrying out his threat. From the roof he could not see anything but a confused crowd, because of the dust and the heat-haze.