The Game - Laurie R. King [56]
It was, I thought, both like our wandering time in Palestine and yet very different. Most of the difference lay in the population density, I decided: In Palestine we might walk all day and see but a handful of other nomads, whereas here, we were rarely out of sight of farmers working their fields, holy men tending their roadside shrines, a caravan of camels wending their way from the hills, or women swaying back from the wells with heavy brass pots of water balanced on their heads. Every piece of flat ground was being planted or harvested, every stream was inhabited, if not by young boys and their bullocks, then by the local laundry service, the dhobis slapping their garments on the wet rock, draping the clothing on the bushes to dry, laughing and calling to us without inhibition.
We were well out of town when Bindra came trotting up, but instead of aubergines and oranges he carried an armful of small tin pots, which he arranged carefully inside the jolting cart. And then, instead of taking his place at the head of the donkey, he hopped inside to perch on the canvas-wrapped shapes. Taking out a small stiff-bristled object resembling a tooth-brush for an iron-gummed giant, he dangled over the side of the cart and started scrubbing away at the shabby wood. Bemused, Holmes and I exchanged glances, then moved forward to avoid the flying specks of old paint and dried muck. The boy had, over the past couple of days, succeeded in burnishing the donkey’s coat until it shone; now, it appeared, the cart was to be brought up to snuff as well.
It took him hours to scour the cart down to clean wood. But rather than stop there, he turned to his little tin pots, prised the top from the largest, and pulled another, softer brush from inside his clothing. Dangling over the front of the cart like a monkey from a branch, completely oblivious of his two companions who were all but walking backwards down the road to watch him, he dipped his brush into the pot, stuck out his tongue in concentration, and drew a line of deep, rich blue along the edge of the much-abused wood. This was so interesting, we resumed our position behind the cart in order to watch his progress. The donkey seemed happy to walk without guidance, its long ears swivelling from time to time as it listened to the boy’s encouragement and conversation.
The boy, too, looked healthier, I thought. Certainly he kept cleaner than he had in the livestock-seller’s pens. Holmes had bought him a change of raiment, child-sized pyjama-trousers and buffalo-hide sandals underneath the European-style shirt Bindra had chosen. He went bareheaded, either because of his age or his inclination, and generally bare-footed unless the track was particularly rough, but since he and Holmes had come out of the clothing shop, I had not once seen him without the colourful vest decorated with small chips of mirrored glass held in place with circles of embroidery floss. The shiny specks caught the sun as he dangled on the cart, his brush transforming the entire thing to the colour of the Indian sky an hour after the sun had set, and I had to smile.
“A curious child,” I commented to Holmes. (A distinct advantage of male dress here was that it permitted me to walk closer to Holmes than I could have as a woman, thus allowing us conversations we might not otherwise have had.)
“He has his pride,” my companion answered, and I saw what he meant: Bindra’s vision of our troupe’s dignity did not include a bashed-about wagon.
“What did Kipling call his Kim? ‘Little friend of all the world’?”
“Yes; being all the world’s friend, O’Hara ultimately belonged to no-one. In that respect, the phrase applies to young Bindra. Kim, however, formed his own family as