[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

own small bath-room, the bath s square-footage more than compensated for by
the ornateness of its walls: It had enough mirror and gilt to send Bindra into
a thousand ecstasies. I, on the other hand, was overjoyed to find that it had
running water, both hot and cold. Someone in Khanpur s past had been
remarkably progressive when it came to the comfort of guests; I couldn t
imagine what it must have cost to install nineteenth-century plumbing in a
sixteenth-century building.
When I had been shown the glories of the water closet and had illustrated for
me the geyser controls over my bath and the resultant spouts of furiously hot
water, the two men who had accompanied me to my rooms left me in peace, one of
them pausing only to adjust, with ostentatious ceremony, the ornately worked
album resting on the writing table beneath the window. When they had left, I
went to see what the album s significance might be, and found it to contain a
magnificently calligraphed document with the day s date at the top.
5 February 1924
Welcome, friend, to Khanpur.
While the riches of Khanpur are many, the demands on its guests should be
few. For however long you may grace us with your presence, please feel
completely at home here, free to participate in our many activities, or free
to remain in your quarters in quiet meditation, or with a book from our
library. Bells will be rung at the following times, but if you wish not to
join us at table, please, merely turn your name-plate outside your door to
face inwards, and we shall know not to make a setting for you.
And again, if there is anything we might do to serve you, you need only ask.
There followed a list of times, most of them for meals tea, I saw, was being
served now on the upper terrace, wherever that might be; the next bell that
came would indicate drinks, followed an hour later by dinner, which was
followed by the notation  Dress: Casual. I turned the page and found a
description of the palace, with the interesting sights in the vicinity and
suggestions of places to go in the town, all written in an ornate English that
had me smiling.
There was even a map.
It was an odd document, I thought, one more suited to an hotel than to a
private estate, and it said a great deal about the mind of the man behind it.
Clearly, the maharaja was accustomed to entertaining large numbers of guests
with highly disparate interests, and found it more convenient to present each
with this cool, almost commercial document rather than convey the information
in some more personal manner.
Well, it suited me nicely. I left my name-tag facing outwards, and took
myself to the marble-and-gold bath to explore the intricacies of the Victorian
hot water system.
Page 109
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The bell that rangthe summons for the programme s drinks-before-dinner event
was no gong, but a small, silvery voice that approached, paused outside of my
door, and continued on to the next guest. I finished arranging my hair, thrust
my revolver into hiding beneath the feather bed, and checked the palace plan
in the album. Map-reading proved unnecessary, for a uniformedchuprassiwas
squatting patiently in the hallway outside; he stood instantly to guide me to
the room where the guests were gathering.
I stopped dead, brought up short as much by the intense beauty of the room as
by the crowd it held; there had to be thirty people in the room already,
drinks and cigarettes in their hands, the inevitable empty talk of the
cocktail party on their tongues. Three flighty German girls nearby chattered
madly about the lake-birds they had seen, two American men debated the
relative merits of two makes of shotgun, a mixed trio of Italians seemed to be
trying to sell a race-horse to another American and that was the mixture
within earshot. Only a handful of the guests appeared Indian, and none of
those wore traditional dress. I was glad I hadn t put on the lovely garment
the Simladurzihad made for me I d have been as out of place as a caparisoned
camel.
Sunny stood across the room, her face flushed with excitement and, I thought, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]