Speaker 1: Descending of Dana Day by Woundyard Kipling. When the devil
rides on your chest, remember the Chamar native proverb. Once
upon a time, some people in India made a new
heaven and a new Earth out of broken teacups, a
missing brooch or two, and a hair brush. These were
hidden under bushes or stuffed into holes in the hillside,
and an entire civil service of subordinate gods used to
find or mend them again. And every one said, there
are more things in heaven and Earth than are drained
in our philosophy. Several other things happened also, but the
religion never seemed to get much beyond its first manifestations.
Though it added an air line, postal duck, and orchestral
effects in order to keep abreast of the times and
stall off competent, this religion was too elastic for ordinary use.
It stretched itself and embraced pieces of everything that medicine
men of all ages have manufactured. It approved and stalled
from freemasonry, looted the latter de rosicrusions of half their
pet words, took any fragment of Egyptian philosophy that it
found in the Encyclopedia Britannica annexed as many of the
Vedas as had been translated into French or English, and
talked of all the rest built in. The German versions
of what is left of the Zanda Vesta encouraged white,
gray and black magic, including spiritualism, palmistry, fortune telling by cards,
hot chestnuts, double kerneled nuts, and tallow droppings would have
adopted voodoo and Obu had it known anything about them,
and showed itself in every way one of the most
accommodating arrangement that had ever been invented since the birth
of the sea. When it was in thorough working order,
with all the machinery down to the subscriptions complete, Dna
Day came from nowhere with nothing in his hands and
wrote the chapter in its history, which has hitherto been unpublished.
He said that his first name was Dana and his
second was They. Now sitting aside Dana of the New
York Sundna is a Pahel name and they fits no
native of India, unless you accept the bengalide as. The
original spelling they is lap or finish, and Dana Day
was neither finn Chin Pahil benga lap ne'er Gaunt, Romany,
mak Bocariot, Kurd, Armenian, Leventine, Jew, Persian, Panjab, Madrasi, Percy,
nor anything else known to ethnologists. He was simply Day
a day, and the kind to give further information. For
the sake of brevity, and as roughly indicating his origin,
he was called the Native. He might have been the
original old man of the mountains, who is said to
be the only authorized head of the Teacup Creed. Some
people said that he was, but Dyna Day used to
smile and deny any connection with the court, explaining that
he was an independent experimenter. As I have said, he
came from nowhere with his hands behind his back, and
studied the creed for three weeks, sitting at the feet
of those best competent to explain its mysteries. Then he
laughed aloud and went away. But the laugh might have
been either of devotion or derision. When he returned, he
was without money, but his pride was unabated. He declared
that he knew more about the things in heaven and
earth than those who taught him, and for this contumacy
was abandoned altogether. His next appearance in public life was
at a big cantonment in Upper India, and he was
then telling fortunes with the help of three laden dies, e,
very dirty old cloth, and a little tin box of
opium pills. He told better fortunes when he was allowed
half a bottle of whiskey, but the things which he
invented on the opium were quite worth the money. He
was in reduced circumstances. Among other peoples, he told the
fortune of an Englishman who had once been interested in
the similar creed, but who later on had married and
forgotten all his old knowledge in the study of babies
and exchange. The Englishman allowed Dya Day to tell a
fortune for charity's sake, and gave him five rupees, a
dinna and some old clothes. When he had eaten, Dyna
Day professed gratitude and asked if there were anything he
could do for his host. In the esoteric line, is
there any one that you love, said Dyna Day. The
Englishman loved his wife, but had no desire to drag
her name into the conversation. He therefore shook his head.
Is there any one that you hate, said deynah Day.
The Englishman said that there were several men whom he
hated deeply. Very good, said Dena Day, upon whom the
whiskey and the opium were beginning to tell. Only give
me their names, and I will despatch a sending to
them and kill them. Now. Ascending is a horrible arrangement,
first invented, they say in Iceland. It is a thing
sent by a wizard, and may take any form, but
most generally wanders about the land in the shape of
a little purple cloud till it finds Descendy, and him
it kills by changing into the form of a horse,
or a cat, or a man without a face. It
is not strictly a native patent, though Tamars can, if irritated,
despatch ascending, which sits on the breast of their enemy
by night and nearly kills him. Very few natives care
to irritate Chamars. For this reason. Let me despatch ascending,
said Dana Day. I am nearly dead now with want
and drink and opium, but I should like to kill
a man before I die. I can send ascending anywhere
you choose, and in any form, except in the shape
of a man. The Englishman had no friends that he
wished to kill, but partly to suit Dinna Day, whose
eyes were rolling and partly to see what would be done.
He asked whether a modified sending could not be arranged
for such a sending as should make a man's life
a burden to him and yet do him no harm.
If this were possible, he notified his willingness to give
Diyna Day ten rupees for the job. I am not
what I was, once, said Diyna Day, and I must
take the money because I am poor. To what Englishman
solids send it? Send a sending to Lone Saib, said
the Englishman, naming a man who had been most bitter
in rebuking him for his apostasy from the teacup creed.
Diyna Dy laughed and nodded. I could have chosen no
better man myself, said he. I will see that he
finds descending about his path and about his bed. He
lay down on the hearth rug, turned up the whites
of his eyes, shivered all over, and began to snort.
This was magic or opium, or descending or all three.
When he opened his eyes, he vowed that descending had
started upon the wall path and was at that moment
flying up to the town where Lone sahiblows give me
my ten rupees, said Dynaday wearily, and write a letter
to Lone Sahib, telling him and all who believe with him,
that you and a friend are using a power greater
than theirs. They will see that you are speaking the truth.
He departed unsteadily, with the promise of some more repeat
if anything came of this, The Englishman sent a letter
to Lone Sahib, couched in what he remembered of the
terminology of the creed. He wrote, I also in the
days of what you held to be my back sliding,
have obtained enlightenment, and with enlightenment has come power. Then
he grew so deeply mysterious that the recipient of the
letter could make neither head nor tail of it, and
was proportionately impressed, for he fancied that his friend had
become a fifth rounder. When a man is a fifth rounder,
he can do more than Slade and Hooden combined. Loneshibe
read the letter in five different fashions, and was beginning
a sixth interpretation when his bearer dashed in with the
news that there was a cat on his bed. Now,
if there was one thing that lonesoev hated more than another.
It was a cat. He rated the bearer for not
turning it out of the house. The bearer said that
he was afraid all the doors of the bedroom had
been shut throughout the morning, and no real cat could
possibly have entered the room. He would prefer not to
meddle with the creature. Lone Sahib entered the room gingerly,
and there on the pillow of his bed sprawled and whimpered.
A wee white kitten. Not a jump some frisky little beast,
but a slug like crawler, with its eyes barely open
and its pause lacking strength or direction, A kitten that
ought to have been in a basket with its mamma.
Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck,
handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned and
find the bearer for on us. That evening, as he
was reading in his room, he fancied that he saw
something moving about on the hearth's rug outside the circle
of light from his breathing lamp. When the thing began
to yell, he realized that it was a kitten, A
wee white kitten, nearly blind and very miserable. He was
seriously angry and spoke bitterly to his bearer, who said
that there was no kitten in the room when he
brought in the lamp, and real kittens of tender age
generally had mother cats in attendants. If the present will
go out into the verandah and listen, said the bearer,
he will hear no cats. How therefore can the kitten
on the bed and the kitten on the hearthwork be
real kittens? Lone Sahib went out to listen, and the
bearer followed him, but there was no sound of Rachel
mewing for her children. He returned to his room, having
hurled the kitten down the hillside, and wrote out the
incidents of the day for the benefit of his co religionists.
Those people were so absolutely free from superstition that they
ascribed anything a little out of the common to agencies,
as it was their business to know all about the agencies.
They were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with manifestations
of every kind. Their letters dropped from the ceiling unstamped,
and spirits used to squatter up and down their staircases
all night. But they had never come into contact with
kittens lond Sahib wrote out the facts, noting the hour
and the minute, as a resychical observer is bound to do,
and depending the Englishman's letter because it was the most
mysterious document and might have had a bearing upon anything
in this world or the next. An outsider would have
translated all the tangle does look out. You laughed at
me once, and now I am going to make you
set up. Lonzeib's co religionists found that meaning in it,
but their translation was refined and full of forcelable words.
They held a ceederand and were filled with tremulous joy,
for in spite of their familiarity with all the other
worlds and cycles, they had a very human awe of
things sent from ghost land. They met in Lonese Haibe's
room in shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was
broken up by a clinking among the photo frames on
the mantel piece. A wee white kitten, nearly blind, was
looping and writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks.
That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the manifestation
in the flesh. It was so far as could be
seen devoid of purpose, but it was a manifestation of
undoubted authenticity. They drafted the round robin to the Englishman,
the backsider of old days, adjuring him in the interests
of the creed, to explain whether there was any connection
between the embodiment of some Egyptian god or other. I
have forgotten the name and his communication. They called the
kitten ra or Thoth or Shem or Noah or something.
And when lone Sahib confessed that the first one had,
at his most misguided instances, been drowned by the sweeper,
they said consolingly that in his next life he would
be a bounder, and not even a rounder of the
lowest grade. These words may not be quite correct, but
they expressed the sense of the house accurately. When the
Englishman received the round robin, it came by post, he
was startled and bewildered. He sent in to the bazaar
for day in and day who read the letter and laughed.
That is my sending, said he. I told you I
would work well. Now give me another ten rupees. But
what in the world is this gibberish about the Egyptian gods?
Asked the Englishman. Cats said dyn a Day with a hiccough,
for he had discovered the Englishman's whisky bottle. Cats and
cats and cats. Never was such a sending A hundred
of cats. Now give me ten more rupees and write
as I dictate. Then a Day's letter was a curiosity.
It bore the Englishman's signature and hinted at cats, at
ascending of cats. The mere words on paper were creepy
and on canny. To behold, what have you done, though,
said the Englishman? I am as much in the dark
as ever. Do you mean to say that you can
actually send this absurd sending? You talk about George for yourself,
said Dinna Day. What does not let him mean? In
a little time they will all be at my feet
and yours, and I O glory will be drugged or
drunk or lay long. Din a Day knew his people.
When a man who hates cats wakes up in the
morning and finds a little squirming kitten on his breast,
or puts his hand into his oldster pocket and finds
a little half that kitten where his gloves should be,
or opens his trunk and finds a vile kitten among
his dress shirts, or goes for a long ride with
macintosh strapped on his saddle bow, and shakes a little
sprawling kitten from its folds when he opens it, or
goes out to dinner and finds a little blind kitten
under his chair, or stays at home and finds a
rhything kitten under the coilt, or wriggling among his boots,
or hanging had downward in his tobacco jar, or being
mangled by his terrier in the verandah. When such a
man finds one kitten neither more nor less, once a day,
in a place where no kitten rightly could or should be,
he is naturally upset. When he dare not murder his
daily trove because he believes it to be a manifestation,
an emissary, an embodiment, and have a dozen other things,
all out of the regular cause of nature, he is
more than upset. He is actually distressed. Some of Lon
Sehib's co religionists thought that he was a highly favored individual,
but many said that if he had treated the first
kitten with proper respect, as suited as tautah to whomb
sinequiib embodiment, all his trouble would have been averted. They
compared him to the ancient mariner, but none the less
they were out of him and proud of the Englishman
who had sent the manifestation. They did not call it ascending,
because Icelandic magic was not in their program. After sixteen kittens,
that is to say, after a fortnight, for there were
three kittens on the first day. To impress the fact
of descending, the whole camp was uplifted by a letter.
It came flying through a window from the old Man
of the Mountains, the head of all the Creed, explaining
the manifestation in the most beautiful language, and soaking up
all the credit of it for himself. The Englishman said
the letter was not there at all. He was a
backslider without power or asceticism, who couldn't even raise a
table by force of volition, much less project an army
of kitten through space. The entire arrangement said the letter
was strictly authored, worked, and sanctioned by the highest authorities
within the pale of the Creed. There was great joy
at this for some of the weaker brethren, seeing that
an outsider who had been working on independent lines could
create kittens, whereas their own rulers had never gone beyond
crockery and broken at that were showing a desire to
break a line on their own trail. In fact, there
was the promise of his chism. A second round Robin
was drafted to the Englishman, beginning OUs Coffer and ending
with the selection of courses from the rights of Mizraim
and Memphis, and the combination of Drugana, who was a
fifth rounder, upon whose name an Upstad third rounder once
traded a papal excommunication, is a bier doux. Compared to
the combination of Drougana, the Englishman had been proved under
the hand and seal of the Old Man of the Mountains,
to we have appropriated virtue and pretended to have power,
which in reality belonged only to the Supreme Head. Naturally,
the round Robin did not spare him. He handed the
letter today a day to translate into decent English. The
effect on day the day was curious. At first he
was furiously angry, and then he laughed. For five minutes.
I had thought, he said, that they would have come
to me in another week. I would have shown that
I sent descending, and they would have discrowned the Old
Man of the mountains, who has sent descending of mine?
Do you do nothing? The time has come for me
to act. Write as I dictate, and I will put
them into shame. But give me ten more rupees. At
Dinna Day's dictation, the Englishman wrote nothing less than for
challenge to the Old Man of the mountains. It wound up,
and if this manifestation be from your hand, then let
it go forward. But if it be from my hand,
I will that the standing shall seize in two days time.
On that day there shall be twelve kittens, and thenceforward
none at all. The people shall judge between us. This
was signed by Dayna Day, who added pentacles and pentagrams,
and the crooks and satta and half a dozen swastikas
and a triple Tao to his name, just to show
that he was all he laid claim to be. The
challenge was read out to the gentlemen and ladies, and
they remembered then that Diyna Day had laughed at them
some years ago. It was officially announced that the Old
Man of the Mountains would treat the matter with contempt.
They a Day, being an independent investigator without a sayled
round at the back of him. But this did not
soothe his people. They wanted to see a fight. They
were very human for all their spirituality. Lone Sahib, who
was really being worn out with kittens, submitted meekly to
his fate. He felt that he was being kittened to
prove the power of day to day as the poets.
When the stated day dawned, the shower of kittens began.
Some were white and some were tabby, and all were
about the same Loathsome age three were on his hearth rug,
three in his bathroom, and the other six turned up
at intervals. Among the visitors who came to see the
prophecy break down, never was a more satisfactory sending. On
the next day there were no kittens, And the next
day and all the other days were kittenless and quiet.
The people murmured and looked to the old man of
the mountains for an explanation. A letter written on a
palm leaf dropped from the ceiling, but every one except
Lone Sahib, felt that letters were not what the occasion demanded.
There should have been cats. There should have been cats
full ground. Once the letter proved conclusively that there had
been a hitch in the psychic current, which colliding with
a dual identity, had interfered with the precipient activity. All
along the main line, the kittens were still going on,
but owing to some failure in the developing fluid, they
were not materialized. The air was thick with letters for
a few days afterwards, unseen hands played Gluk and Beethoven
on finger bowls and clock shades. But all men felt
that psychic life was a mockery without materialized kittens. Even
lone tahebe shouted with the majority on this head. These
letters were very insulting, and if he had then offered
to lay the new departure, there is no knowing what
might not have happened. But dinn a Day was dying
of whisky and opium in the Englishman's go down, and
had small heart for new creeds. They have been put
to shame, said he never was such as sending it
has killed me. Nonsense, said the Englishman. You are going
to die diyn a day, and that sort of stuff
must be left behind. I'll admit that you have made
some queer things come about. Tell me honestly, now, how
was it done? Give me ten more rupees, said Dinna
Day faintly, and if I die before I spend them,
bury them with me. The silver was counted out, while
dinn a day was fighting with death. His hand closed
upon the money, and he smiled, a grim smile, bent low,
he whispered, the Englishman bent Boronnia mission school, expelled, Bokswallah peddler,
Ceylon pearl merchant, all mine, English education outcasted and made
up named Dinna day, England with American thought reading man.
And you gave me ten rupees several times I gave
the Sahib's bearer to eight a month for cats, little
a little cats, I wrote, and he put them about,
very clever man, Very few kittens now in the bazaar,
ask lone sahib sweeper's wife, So, saying dinner day gasped
and passed away into a land where, if all be true,
there are no materializations, and the making of new creeds
is discouraged. But consider the gorgeous simplicity of it all.