No More Learning

The great deer-hound was couched on her own bedstead,
on her own blanket, and in the next room the idle, empty ceiling-cloth
wagged light-heartedly as it flailed on the table.




MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER

ONCE upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear
some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the
trees and burned the underwood, the stumps still remained. Dynamite is
expensive and slow fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the
lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump
out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with
ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and
threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to
the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's
name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which
would never have been the case under native rule; for Moti Guj was a
creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being translated, meant
the Pearl Elephant. Because the British government was in the land,
Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated.
When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he
would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg
over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life
out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was
over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and
his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti
Guj was very fond of liquor--arrack for choice, though he would drink
palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep
between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of
the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and would not
permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa
saw fit to wake up.
There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the
wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and gave him
orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps--for he owned a magnificent
pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope--for he had a magnificent
pair of shoulders--while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he
was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his
three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and
Deesa would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it
was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river,
and Moti Gui lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa
went over him with a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the
pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him
to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his
feet and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in
case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection the two would come
up with a song from the sea, Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a
torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up
his own long wet hair.

It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the
desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgy. The little draughts that
led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.

He went to the planter, and "My mother's dead," said he, weeping.

"She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died once
before that when you were working for me last year," said the planter,
who knew something of the ways of nativedom.

"Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me," said
Deesa, weeping more than ever. "She has left eighteen small children
entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little
stomachs," said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.

"Who brought the news? " said the planter.