As a poet in verse and in prose Klarkash-Ton (as H.P.L. playfully dubbed him) ranks as a great and unique artist, particularly in view of all the profound changes that have happened just in the art or science of verse technique, that is, of prosody, in the English language. Smith remained true to the poetic tradition to which he was born, and which he learned, painstakingly, with genius and originality, to use from the time of his early adolescence until his death. Such a poet does not change his practice to suit the latest fad or fashion of the passing moment—a poetic tradition, moreover, inherited from hundreds of years of experimentation as well as of genuine achievement. At this late date in time one is constrained to admire such rare integrity, no less than the solid belief that he maintained in the poetic tradition that he received and that he mastered. As he was in life, so is Smith in death: sui generis.
Tsathoggua Press rendered a real service by republishing this essay in January of 1997 as a separate booklet, thirty-three years after its first appearance, just as Silver Key Press, the English-language imprint of the French nonprofit small press La Clef d’Argent, renders a no less valuable service by republishing it again today. On behalf of Klarkash-Ton I personally give the successive publishers of this essay—Mirage Press, Tsathoggua Press, and Silver Key Press, and now Night Shade Books—all possible credit and gratitude.
Donald Sidney-Fryer
Westchester, Los Angeles, February 2007.
THE ANIMATED SWORD
he blade is not for sale, sahib, nay, not for ten times a hundred rupees.”
Of Benares workmanship, sharply curved, razor-edged, with a jewel-studded hilt, and grooves down the blade containing those little pearls which are known as “the tears of the enemy,” the sword was one that a king might have been proud to own. But the price I had offered Pir Mohammed, a hundred rupees, was a high one even for such and I was greatly surprised when he refused to sell it. It was in his stock, with a number of other blades, of all kinds, from Hussaini scimitars to khitars and Malay krises and I had naturally assumed that it was for sale. I am an inveterate collector of curios, and certainly the sword would have been a valuable addition to my collection.
“Why?” I queried.
The old sword-dealer did not answer at once. A faraway look had come over his face at my question, as though something past and far distant had suddenly been called to mind. At last he spoke.
“The tale is a strange one, sahib, and haply thou wilt not believe it. But if it is thy wish, then will I unfold it and thou shalt know why I will not sell the blade.”
I begged him to tell it, and in his thin, quavering voice, with his hands caressing the hilt of the sword, he spoke:
“Long ago, sahib, long ere the great earthquake in Kashmir, even before the Sepoy Mutiny, I dwelt in a large city of the Deccan, under the rule of one of its most powerful chieftains. I was but twenty at the time, but my father was dead and I had succeeded to a considerable fortune. I was a merchant, a dealer in rugs, as was my father before me and his father before him. I had no family and but one man whom I might call friend. This was a young Moslem of about my own age, a native of the same town. We had played together, learned the Koran under the same moolah, and, in short, had grown up together.
His name was Ahmed Ali. His father, Shere Ali, was a horse-trader, and as he was, so was the son after him. When Shere Ali died we concluded to live together, and though we conducted our respective trades apart, we broke bread on the same table. No two men were ever truer to each other, sharing each other’s secrets and allowing no woman to come between us.
One evening when Ahmed came home he brought with him a sword, the very same that you see before you. He said he had bought it of a Hindu in the bazaar, paying him much money for it.
“He asked more,” said Ahmed, “but I refused to pay it and he gave in readily enough when he saw that I was in earnest. Indeed, he seemed very eager to get rid of the sword. After I had laid down the money he told me that it had been stolen from a great Rajah, a man engaged in a war with the Feringhees.
“And beware,” he went on, “for the cursed thing is possessed of a devil. Thinkest thou I should have sold it thee for but a tithe of its real worth had it not been for that?”
“With that he went away, nor would he tell me more when I followed him to ask further about the sword.”
“What did he mean by saying that it was possessed of a devil?” I asked.
“I know not,” replied my friend gaily. “I have not yet seen it. Doubtless it is only a Hindu devil, anyway, and not a true son of Iblees. Such can only harm infidels, like the man of whom I bought it. But it is a good blade and the possession of a devil or two can but increase its effectiveness.”
“Beware,” said I, “lest the fiend leave it for thee.”
Ahmed laughed and went to his room. He wore the sword when he went out the next morning, and for several days thereafter.
One morning, as I was arranging the folds of my turban, I heard a crash in his room, as of something falling to the floor, and a moment later Ahmed rushed in half-clothed, pale with terror and shivering all over. There was a wild stare in his eyes, as though he had just looked upon some awful and unaccountable thing.
With chattering teeth he managed to pour out something incoherent, in which all I could distinguish was:
“The sword! The sword!”
“Meanest thou the Hindu blade?” I asked.
His agitation had now subsided somewhat, and he was able to speak more clearly.
“Truly, the Hindu uttered no falsehood. I swear that the sword is haunted not only by one but by many devils—so many that the doubly-cursed weapon of shame leaped from the rack and fell in the centre of the room.”
“Surely this is madness,” said I. “Did man ever see before a sword imbued with power to move of itself?”
“I have told thee the truth. There is a devil in the blade—and a most lively imp it is—an orthodox, well educated son of Iblees.”
“Not even Dulhan, who dwells in the slippers of the Faithful, is so mischievous. And as a sword is to a slipper so is this most lively and accomplished devil to Dulhan.
“Come thou and see for thyself!”
We went into his apartment, and surely enough, there lay the glittering blade, full on a Punjaub rug in the centre. A shield of rhinoceros hide, behind which it had hung, lay on the divan and the scabbard was some distance from it on the floor.
Ahmed picked up the sword gingerly, lest the devil that he supposed to be in it should scorch his fingers. He handed it to me and I examined it closely, but could see nothing unusual about it. I told him that he must have been dreaming.
“But how came the sword here? Nay, it was a devil that made it jump from the wall.”
Naught that I might say could shake his faith. However, I persuaded him to hang the blade up again and see if its strange actions were repeated. So he put it back on the rack with the scabbard and the shield.
The afternoon of the next day we were seated on the divan opposite, talking over our affairs. Both of us had been engaged in important business transactions that morning, and we had temporarily forgotten the sword and its strange actions.
Suddenly I heard a slight sound, and glancing up saw the rhinoceros hide shield begin to move and then spring from the rack and crash on the floor. The scabbard followed, and then the sword, with a flash and a hiss, flew vengefully down, and striking the floor point-first, stuck there glittering in the sunshine that streamed through the open window, while we stared with eyes starting from our heads with astonishment.
“Art thou satisfied now, Pir Mohammed?” asked Ahmed.
“Truly, “ I answered, “the weapon’s behaviour is strange.”
“I shall fling the blade into the deepest part of the Nerbudda river.” said my friend.
“Nay, give it to me. It is too fine a sword to throw away, and I warrant thee that I can brave a dozen devils such as the one thou believest possesses it.”
“Tak
e it then. But if thou dost not like the gift, do with it as I would have done. And remember the evil spirit thou hast seen spring to life in it, so that if evil befall thee, thou mayst not say that thou wast not warned in time. Surely no good can come from association with the malignant son of Iblees who hath taken it into his head to animate the accursed Kafir blade.”
I took the weapon to my room and hung it on a rack with my other arms. For two weeks the strange performance was not repeated, and I began to think that the evil spirit, or whatever it was, had departed, and would trouble the blade no more. But Ahmed was not so sanguine, and seemed to be possessed of a fixed idea that harm would yet come of it. He was wrapped in gloom, and although he made repeated efforts to rid himself of his forebodings, could never entirely do so. Several times he implored me to throw the sword away, but I was obstinate, and ridiculed his premonitions of evil, telling him that they were but vapours of the mind. The devil, if such it were, was a Hindu one and should not daunt a true believer.
Early one evening we were seated in my room. The date, the fifteenth of Saphar, is fixed indelibly in my mind. Ahmed, strangely enough, had for once succeeded in shaking off his forebodings. He had made a very good sale that day, and was in high feather.
Suddenly, by a common impulse, we glanced up at the sword. It was quivering, and the lamplight ran and danced along its polished surface. In a moment, throwing the other weapons to the floor by the movement, it sprang point-first from the rack. It flashed hissing toward Ahmed. He had no time to step aside. The blade struck him full in the breast, and he threw up his arms with a wild cry. I saw his face as he half-turned in falling; it was a frozen mask of fear, horror and amazement.
Leaving him there with the sword in his body, six inches of the blade sticking out at the back to testify to the force with which it had been driven, I went out into the streets. I wandered about half the night, scarcely knowing where I went, and almost in a state of collapse. It was long after midnight when I returned and summoned courage to re-enter and face the thing that had been my friend.
I laid down and went to sleep from sheer mental and physical exhaustion. When I awoke I found myself in the town prison; certain busybodies of the neighbourhood who had entered and found Ahmed dead and myself in a stupour, having taken it upon themselves to have me arrested for murder. I was tried, and told my story. Some believed me and others deemed me a dreamer or a madman. But as my close friendship with Ahmed was well-known, few suspected me of his murder, and I was speedily acquitted.
I immediately sold all my possessions, and bringing only the money and the sword with me, I came to Delhi and took service under the Feringhees. My obstinacy persisted, even in the face of the fate that had befallen my friend, and I would not part with the blade. Or was it that I could not? Perhaps there was some fateful spell about it. Who knows?
There was a certain young Moslem from Lahore in my regiment with whom I became great friends. One day I told him the story of the sword. He was very thoughtful for awhile before he spoke.
“Pir Mohammed,” said he, “this blade once belonged to the Rajah of Johore, a large Central Indian state. Two years ago, as the Hindu of whom thy friend bought it, said, it was stolen from him. He made great searches for the thief, but without success. He valued the sword greatly, for it was one that had long been in the hands of the Rajahs of Johore, and there was a tradition among them that it made the owner invulnerable and insured him against defeat. It was welded many centuries ago in Benares by the famous Hindu swordsmith, Amaru Cheynab, to the chanting of mantras, or spells, by the priests of Siva. Thus the superstition. There was also another belief to the effect that the Rajah, could, in time of need, if the sword were not then at hand, call it to him.
“Shortly after the theft the Rajah became engaged in a war with the Feringhees. I was in one of the regiments that were sent against him. It was a lengthy campaign, for the Rajah had a large and well-disciplined army, and he put up a desperate fight. He won several skirmishes, but when our forces met him in a more decisive battle, he was worsted, though not after a severe struggle. Several more battles had to be fought though, before he could be vanquished, and in these the Rajah and his men, Kshatriyas of the purest blood, fought with a valour worthy of Khoumbou and Qudey Singh. But he lost every battle, and slowly but surely, we drove him back toward his capital, the great walled city of Johore.
“Finally his army, or the shattered remnant of it, stood at bay on the plains before the city. It was said that the Rajah would retreat no further, but would stay on the field with his remaining force and fight to the last man, disdaining to take shelter behind the walls.
“We advanced a little before noon, expecting to terminate the battle with one short, decisive struggle, but the Rajputs fought like the lions after which so many of them are named and surpassed all their previous records of bravery. Man to man we really outnumbered them, but victory was only to be purchased at a fearful price. Hour after hour they stood firm against our charges, though their ranks thinned momentarily, and their dead lay piled in heaps. Night drew on, but still a number of them, the Rajah at the head, held the field.
“The fight continued well into the evening, and might have held out longer had not the Rajah fallen by the sword of a Feringhee officer. Then his few remaining followers surrendered, we afterwards learned, by the Rajah’s instructions.
He paused a little and went on: “This last battle was fought on the fifteenth of Saphar, the same day on which thy friend was killed by the sword.”
Now light broke upon me and I saw the explanation of the sword’s actions. Each time when it had leaped from the rack it had been at the Rajah’s call, commanding it to return to him in his need. But he had not possessed the requisite will-power to compel it to the full obedience of the command, or perhaps the distance was too great. On the fifteenth of Saphar, in the extremity of his need, his call had been more vehement than previously, and so the blade had sprung with tremendous force, but only to sheath itself in Ahmed’s body.
THE RED TURBAN
ir Abdul Ali, chief of the Delhi police, was the narrator of the following story:
A wealthy merchant, one Lejut Puri, came to me telling of a theft which had recently occurred. A large and valuable sapphire, which had been in his possession for many years, was missing. It had been kept, he told me, in a small casket, to which he alone possessed a key. This had been broken open, apparently with some heavy object, and the stone taken out. He had no reason to suspect any of his household of the theft.
I went to Lejut Puri’s house, accompanied by two officers, and we made a thorough examination of the room in which the sapphire had been kept. The casket, which was of some dark, heavy wood, was shattered into splinters. At first sight I did not perceive anything of importance—any clue that might point to the thief. Finally I perceived a red turban lying on a divan. I asked Lejut Puri if it belonged to him or to any of his family. Lejut, seeing it for the first time, gave a cry of surprise. “Sirdar,” said he, “The turban is not mine, nor has it been worn by any of the household. Therefore it must have belonged to the thief, who dropped it in his haste.”
Though somewhat perplexed that anyone should be so incautious as to leave his turban behind him, I took the merchant’s view of the case.
I picked up the turban and examined it closely. It was a bright red, of the finest silk, and of a texture such as is worn only in Benares.
“This is a valuable clue.” I remarked to Lejut Puri. “The thief, whoever he was, had very good taste in turbans, and the money wherewith to gratify it. Such as this are worn only by the wealthy.”
I continued my examination of the room, but found nothing further of interest. I then called the merchant’s servants together and subjected them to a rigid cross-examination. They were a badly frightened lot, and even had they known anything regarding the theft, I doubt if I could have elicited it from them, so great was their apprehension. They had neither seen nor heard the thief nor knew anyth
ing of the matter until their master had told them of it that morning.
Concluding that I could learn nothing more of value, I left taking the turban with me. I afterwards handed it over to one of my officers, with orders to take it to all the clothing shops in Delhi, and learn, if possible, from which it had been sold, and to whom.
I then dismissed the matter from my mind, having several important cases on hand.
My subordinate, Lal Singh, a Sikh, reported the following morning. “Sirdar,” he said, “I have obeyed your orders. The turban was sold by one Ibrahim Marrash, a clothing dealer whose place of business is in the Chandui Chowk. He promptly identified it, and told me that it had been sold two weeks ago to one Indra Singh. Indra Singh is a wealthy and well-known Punjaubi, and is of high caste.”
Indra Singh was a personal friend of mine, and therefore you may judge of my surprise upon hearing this. To verify it, I paid a visit in person to Ibrahim Marrash’s shop, and received substantially the same story, with some added information, even to the price of the article.
The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith Page 8