by Ted Mark
So the real question to be faced by both liberals and racists is why the very idea of a difference in sizes should be threatening. After all, the difference is almost never so great as to interfere with the sex act, or to harm either of the participating parties. Size is just one more way in which peoples may be different. And true tolerance lies in accepting differences, not in trying to ignore them, nor in exploiting them by perverting them into signs of inferiority.
This is exactly what the Nepalese have done, and done successfully. The Gurkhas who came from India were rather small phallically. The Bhotias, the original Nepalese of Mongol origin, were much larger. But today, the intermingling of the two peoples has resulted in a national average far closer to the Mongols than to the Indian invaders. And the two peoples were so thoroughly mixed that it is impossible to find anyone of Nepal whose blood is "pure" Gurkha or "pure" Mongol. Indeed, all the soldiers of Nepal are called "Gurkhas" today, but most are quite satisfactorily Bhotian beneath their loincloths.
If I seem to be spending a lot of time on this size business, it's because it's important to what Singh was telling me and to the role he would play in my quest for Dr. Nyet. Specifically, he was laying the groundwork to tell me about a particular idol which for the past 150 years had graced an ancient and hallowed temple in the Valley of Kathmandu. This idol was considered by Nepalese artists to be the most inspiring example of a jeweled sculpture representing the combined concepts of Nepalese religion in the country.
The idol stood eight feet from base to crown. Six of the eight feet were taken up by a figure sitting cross-legged. The figure was male and naked, and to the Western eye it might have looked like another example of a seated Buddha. But it wasn't. It was a figure which combined pagan beliefs with the king-god concept and the symbolism of both Hinduism and Buddhism.
This statue was made of solid gold. It was encrusted with rubies, emeralds, pearls, and diamonds. The fine etching of the musculature and facial features had been done in silver. Teeth, fingernails, and toenails were represented in platinum. Among the precious stones set into the gold were some of the most perfect gems in the world. Apart from its artistic value, the value of the precious metals and jewels used in the creation of the statue ran into the millions of dollars.
As in most Nepalese erotic religious art, the sex organ of the figure had been sculpted to portray a state of excitation. And, of course, it was exaggerated; It extended some four feet straight out from the figure itself, angling upward from between the crossed legs. The scrotum sac was the size of a regulation football.
Singh showed me a picture of the idol. "That's what it used to look like," he told me. "That's what it should look like. But it doesn't look that way any more."
"Why not?"
"Because," he pointed, "this part of the statue has been broken off and stolen."
"You mean they took his -?"
"Precisely, Mr. Victor. It was a crime against the people of Nepal, all the people. And the God of Nepal is most unhappy with his genitals missing!"
"Well, who wouldn't be?" I mused.
"A man gets over it." He reminded me gently of his own unfortunate condition. "But not a god."
"Just how did you -?" I was prompted to ask. "I mean, what happened to you to -
?"
"You mean how did I become a eunuch, Mr. Victor? Oh, I don't mind talking about it. I didn't begin life this way, you know."
Singh went on to sketch in his background for me. Singh was born and raised in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal. His father was a nobleman and minister at the court of the Maharajadhiraj, the supreme ruler of Nepal. Thus Singh was a member from birth of one of the most upper of upper castes.
This meant that traditionally there were only two careers he might pursue when he reached manhood – which in Nepal is really midadolescence. He might join the priesthood or the army. Singh chose the latter course.
He became a Gurkha by choice and was automatically made an officer because he was high-born. The Gurkhas are the finest force of fighting men in the world – bar none, and let the U.S. Marines argue as they will. They have a standing army of 45,000 men and a reserve force of between 70,000 and 80,000. They are professionals – even the reserves – and they pride themselves on their professionalism.
Traditionally, Gurkha units have served the British Empire. During the British occupation of India, it was the Gurkhas who provided the main muscle. They fought alongside the Tommies in the trenches in World War One and played a large part in the African and Italian campaigns in World War Two. In both wars more Victoria Crosses and other medals of valor were won by Gurkhas than by any other group in the British army.
After the Second World War, the British landed Gurkhas in Greece to cope with the revolution there. This campaign provided Singh with his first and last foreign action. It was mostly an antiguerilla action, fought in the mountains, the kind of fighting for which Gurkhas are most admirably suited since they are natural and expert mountain fighters. It was the unorthodox sort of war in which the Gurkhas' skill with the kukri, the curved native knife which every Gurkha carries as standard equipment, played a paramount part. They became masters at staging fast, commando-style raids, slitting sentries' throats silently, spraying an encampment with a deadly crossfire, and vanishing back into the hills as suddenly as they'd come. It was on just such a raid that Singh's military career was brought to an abrupt end.
"It was ironic the way it happened," he said a bit ruefully. "It was all because I had acquired this taste for Greek olives."
Perhaps it was the three throats he silently slit in preparation for the raid which made Singh work up an appetite. In any case, the sight of Greek olives on the table in the mess tent during the massacre of the guerilla diners by the Gurkhas brought saliva to this mouth. So when his comrades made haste to disperse after the flash raid, Lieutenant Singh Huy-eva tarried to cross over to the table and fill his tunic pockets with the wrinkled fruit.
Now Gurkhas are usually very neat and thorough killers. But this time someone had slipped up. This time one of the Gurkhas had been sloppy. And one of the guerillas at the table was not quite dead.
Unfortunately, it was this one who lay slumping half under the large wooden table as Singh reached over him for the bowl of olives. The half-dead Greek reached up, eased Singh's kukri from his sash, and slashed out with the deadly accuracy of a veterinarian gelding a stallion. Singh immediately clubbed him to death with his riflebutt, but by then it was too late. The damage was done. Singh was a eunuch forevermore.
It's a tributed to the Gurkha spirit that he didn't even faint. He tied a tourniquet himself and managed to drag himself back to his unit. Here an army doctor had no choice but to complete the amputation the Greek had started. A few weeks later Singh was given an honorable discharge and shipped back to Kathmandu.
"It was a difficult time for me," Singh remembered. "Again I was faced with a choice of futures. Only this one was more drastic. I would look at the women of the court, know I could never possess one, and consider the advisability of slitting my throat. I almost did, but in the end I found solace and tranquility through meditating in the temple, and decided to go on living. I wanted my life to have purpose, and so it was that I decided upon the priesthood."
Once made, this choice had carried him far. He was both bright and dedicated, and shortly after his novitiate he was given the honor of being appointed to serve in the temple of the Raj Guru himself. The Raj Guru is the high priest of Nepal and as all-powerful in the religious sphere as the Maharajadhiraj is in the government. Over the years Singh had moved up in the hierarchy of the temple until, a few years back, he'd achieved the status of being the Raj Guru's right-hand man.
It was just about this time that the thefts of temple art had started. As they grew more frequent, the Raj Guru complained more and more to the Maharajadhiraj that the government had to do something about it. Finally, when this last theft of the priceless jeweled phallus with the intrinsic d
esecration by castration of the jeweled idol had occurred, the Raj Guru had decided to act himself. He had assigned Singh to investigate the thefts, and above all to retrieve the four-foot phallus and restore it to its proper place on the body of the grieving god.
So Singh had investigated, and the more he'd investigated, the deeper he'd been drawn into the orbit – or was it a web? – of S.M.U.T. From the very first, his sleuthing had uncovered a geographical pattern indicating that the thievery was the work of a band of raiders operating across the Nepal border from the Gangtok passage of India. This Gangtok passage is a narrow strip of land separating Nepal from East Pakistan. Acting on this deduction, Singh took two courses of action. He prevailed upon the Maharajadhiraj to beef up the border guard facing the Gangtok passage, which effectively slowed the raids to a halt. And he disguised himself as a hill bandit and infiltrated the Gangtok area.
In this disguise, he had many adventures before he managed to trace down the gang responsible for the thefts. But once he had, the information he acquired only complicated the problem of retrieving the jeweled phallus. After stealing the temple art from Nepal, the gang had not only crossed back into India, but had kept going across the narrow Gangtok passage until they'd crossed the border of East Pakistan. It was here that they had a contact with an international fence who took the loot off their hands for a fragment of its actual value.
The complexities of tracing the idol further once Singh had established these facts stemmed from the delicate international relations between Nepal, India, and East Pakistan. Nepal is traditionally a country of determined isolationists. The mountains ringing it provide a natural geographic barrier to keep foreigners out. The attitude of the government is to maintain and strengthen this barrier. Thus the only part of Nepal which foreigners are allowed to visit is the Valley of Kathmandu. Officially, no outlander has ever set foot in any other part of Nepal. And, it's only since 1927 that even Kathmandu has been open to foreigners. At that time a narrow- gauge railway was built from the Indian border town of Raxaul to Kathmandu. Today special permission from the Maharajadhiraj himself is still required for the non-Nepalese to travel this railroad. And it is still the only means of transport into the country.
One of the reasons for this is that the Indians and the Nepalese still regard each other as natural enemies. This stems from the active role of the Gurkhas in maintaining British rule in India until the recent present. Another is the fact that Nepal still maintains cordial relations with Tibet, which it also borders, and the Indians consider Tibet a satellite of Red China and are fearful of Nepal being used as an invasion route by the Red Chinese.
Nor has Nepal particularly cordial relations with East Pakistan. There too the role of the Gurkhas in fighting for the British is still remembered bitterly. But East Pakistan is today far more concerned with its running quarrel with India to vent more than a historical dislike on Nepal. And the bitterness of this quarrel is such that there is no reciprocal extradition agreement between the two countries.
Thus Singh was faced with a gang of thieves which had shrewdly crossed two borders – the Nepal-India border, and the India-East Pakistan border – and involved three countries in their activities, three countries whose police refused to cooperate with each other. Realizing this, Singh gave up on the idea of trying to catch and prosecute the thieves. Instead, he decided to concentrate on the job of getting the priceless phallus back.
To do this, Singh went to East Pakistan and himself picked up the trail of the fence who had received the stolen works of art. The Raj Guru provided Singh with some minor sculptures to peddle to the fence. Passing himself off as a Gangtok hill bandit, Singh did this and then arranged to have the fence followed day and night. He led Singh back to India, clear across the country to New Delhi. Here an organization relieved the fence of his stolen goods. That organization was S.M.U.T.
Another year's work was involved before Singh was able to piece together the fantastic details of the S.M.U.T. operation. What it came to was this: the New Delhi chapter of S.M.U.T. was on the surface an organization pursuing two legitimate aims. One of these was a strong propaganda campaign against the birth-control program then being put into effect by the Indian government. No country in the world was suffering from the population explosion so much as India, but that didn't stop S.M.U.T. from actively opposing it on the grounds that it was a diabolical plan for the U.N. to take over India for the purpose of turning it into a colony of the U.S. which was supplying the bulk of the funds for the birth-control program as part of its imperialist plot to dominate India.
S.M.U.T.'s second public function in New Delhi was similar to its activities in the U.S. and other parts of the world. It was engaged in a crusade against pornography and pushing a drive to have all such objects, books, etc., confiscated and taken out of circulation. In India, where religion itself is interwoven with sex, there was much for S.M.U.T. to crusade against.
But Singh learned that these surface activities were also a smokescreen to obscure another activity of S.M.U.T. It was this activity which enabled S.M.U.T. to acquire the large sums of money needed to finance its operations around the world. It was this activity which lay behind the thefts of the jeweled phallus.
S.M.U.T. was the receiver of many priceless relics from temples all over Asia. All of these objects had one things in common. They were all erotic in one way or another.
Having acquired them at a fraction of their real value from bands of thieves dealing with fences in many parts of Asia, S.M.U.T.'s real profit lay in disposing of them. This was done under the table in cities all over the world. But the really nefarious thing was that after it was done, S.M.U.T. would blow the whistle on the buyers for possessing pornographic items, have the local police confiscate them, and then have a front man step in claiming to be the real owner. Since the buyer had come into illegal possession, he would be hard put to prove his claim. Usually the police were anxious to dispose of the case, and "proof of ownership" took them off the hook and saved them the trouble of prosecuting. The S.M.U.T. front man would promise to take the offending object out of the country, and this was usually enough to smooth things out all around. And he would take it out of the country – to some other part of the world where the whole process would be repeated.
Singh learned that this was what had been done with the jeweled phallus. At the time that he learned it, the object had just been sold to a wealthy Texan, and the process of recovering it with the cooperation of an extremely crooked local sheriff had been about to begin. So Singh had wangled an assignment from S.M.U.T. to go to New York and dispose of some other items to undercover buyers. His thought had been that once in New York he might continue on to Texas and somehow recover the jeweled phallus.
But he was too late. The phallus had been reconfiscated and shipped out of the country by the time he arrived in New York. Learning this, he had no choice but to continue his role as a S.M.U.T. representative and try to find out where the object had been sent. In line with this, he had contacted the New York S.M.U.T. office and accepted the invitation to go along on the brothel raid. It was his thought that by ingratiating himself in this way, he would be able to milk some information regarding the fate of the four-foot phallus.
It was quite a story, and it fit in with what I knew about S.M.U.T. as far as it went. But it didn't tell me how such Singh knew about me and my assignment. More important, it didn't explain how he knew, and so left open the question of how far I could trust him. I decided to bring my doubts out in the open.
"You said before that you know who I am and what my mission is," I told him. "What did you mean by that?"
"When I discovered the scope of S.M.U.T.'s activities, I became concerned as to what their real objective was. So, back in New Delhi, I made contact with an agent from Nepal and he relayed my concern back to the Maharajadhiraj. He took it up with the British envoy who is permanently attached to the court. As you know, Mr. Victor, our relations with the British are extremely close and ext
remely friendly. They go back for more than a century and are of mutual benefit. We supply Gurkha troops to the British and today they guarantee our borders against Indian aggression. Well, it seems that the British were already concerned about S.M.U.T. themselves. The word brought back to me from the Maharajadhiraj was to make contact with their secret agents and co-operate with them in every way possible. When I arranged to come to New York, the British consulted with the Americans and decided to fill me in on your involvement on the chance that our paths might cross and I might be of some help to you."
"Just what did they tell you about me?" I asked cautiously.
"That you are the man from O.R.G.Y. acting in the interests of your government. And that your purpose in infiltrating S.M.U.T. is to locate a Russian woman known as Dr. Nyet who defected from the Soviet to S.M.U.T. They did not tell me, however, just why this woman is so important."
"Well, we all have to keep some little secrets," I pointed out to Singh.
"Then you won't tell me, either. Very well. Despite your suspicions, I have some information which may be useful to you. You have been much closer to the lady you seek than you would ever dream."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you have met her. Tonight. She was one of the three girls from S.M.U.T. whom you helped to escape from the brothel."
"I don't believe it! Why would they take the risk of sending her there?"
"To hide her. What better place? You see, they know you are a secret agent. They knew you were coming, and they suspected what you might be after."
"How could they know?"
"The Russians gave you away."
"The Russians? But that's crazy! I haven't had anything to do with the Russians."