No More Learning

There was an old aunt of mine, down
Agra way, and she left me a little at her death. About sixty rupees a
month secured. Sixty isn't much. I can recollect a time, seems hundreds
and hundreds of years ago, that I was getting my three hundred a month,
and pickings, when I was working on a big timber contract in Calcutta.

I didn't stick to that work for long. The Black Smoke does not allow of
much other business; and even though I am very little affected by it, as
men go, I couldn't do a day's work now to save my life. After all, sixty
rupees is what I want. When old Fung-Tching was alive he used to draw
the money for me, give me about half of it to live on (I eat very
little), and the rest he kept himself. I was free of the Gate at any
time of the day and night, and could smoke and sleep there when I liked,
so I didn't care. I know the old man made a good thing out of it; but
that's no matter. Nothing matters, much to me; and, besides, the money
always came fresh and fresh each month.

There was ten of us met at the Gate when the place was first opened. Me,
and two Baboos from a Government Office somewhere in Anarkulli, but they
got the sack and couldn't pay (no man who has to work in the daylight
can do the Black Smoke for any length of time straight on); a Chinaman
that was Fung-Tching's nephew; a bazar-woman that had got a lot of
money somehow; an English loafer--Mac-Somebody I think, but I have
forgotten--that smoked heaps, but never seemed to pay anything (they
said he had saved Fung-Tching's life at some trial in Calcutta when
he was a barrister): another Eurasian, like myself, from Madras; a
half-caste woman, and a couple of men who said they had come from the
North. I think they must have been Persians or Afghans or something.
There are not more than five of us living now, but we come regular.
I
don't know what happened to the Baboos; but the bazar-woman she died
after six months of the Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles
and nose-ring for himself. But I'm not certain. The Englishman, he drank
as well as smoked, and he dropped off. One of the Persians got killed in
a row at night by the big well near the mosque a long time ago, and the
Police shut up the well, because they said it was full of foul air.

They found him dead at the bottom of it. So, you see, there is only me,
the Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the Memsahib (she used
to live with Fung-Tching), the other Eurasian, and one of the Persians.
The Memsahib looks very old now. I think she was a young woman when the
Gate was opened; but we are all old for the matter of that. Hundreds
and hundreds of years old. It is very hard to keep count of time in the
Gate, and besides, time doesn't matter to me. I draw my sixty rupees
fresh and fresh every month.

A very, very long while ago, when I used to be getting three hundred
and fifty rupees a month, and pickings, on a big timber-contract at
Calcutta, I had a wife of sorts. But she's dead now. People said that I
killed her by taking to the Black Smoke. Perhaps I did, but it's so long
since it doesn't matter. Sometimes when I first came to the Gate, I used
to feel sorry for it; but that's all over and done with long ago, and
I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month, and am quite happy.