Selected Stories Read Free

than a walking-stick stem, and smoked sweet, very sweet. The bamboo seemed to suck up the smoke. Silver doesn’t, and I’ve got to clean it out now and then, that’s a great deal of trouble, but I smoke it for the old man’s sake. He must have made a good thing out of me, but he always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best stuff you could get anywhere.
    When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, and he called it the ‘Temple of the Three Possessions’; but we old ones speak of it as the ‘Hundred Sorrows’, all the same. The nephew does things very shabbily, and I think the
Memsahib
must help him. She lives with him; same as she used to do with the old man. The two let in all sorts of low people, niggers and all, and the Black Smoke isn’t as good as it used to be. I’ve found burnt bran in my pipe over and over again. The old man would have died if that had happened in his time. Besides, the room is never cleaned, and all the mats are torn and cut at the edges. The coffin is gone – gone to China again – with the old man and two ounces of Smoke inside it, in case he should want ’em on the way.
    The Joss doesn’t get so many sticks burnt under his nose as he used to; that’s a sign of ill-luck, as sure as Death. He’s all brown, too, and no one ever attends to him. That’s the
Memsahib’s
work, I know; because, when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she said it was a waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning very slowly, the Joss wouldn’t know the difference. So now we’ve got the sticks mixed with a lot of glue, and they take half an hour longer to burn, and smell stinky. Let alone the smell of the room by itself. No business can get on if they try that sort of thing. The Joss doesn’t like it. I can see that. Late at night, sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colours – blue and green and red – just as he used to do when old Fung-Tching was alive; and he rolls his eyes and stamps his feet like a devil.
    I don’t know why I don’t leave the place and smoke quietly in a littleroom of my own in the bazar. Most like, Tsin-ling would kill me if I went away – he draws my sixty rupees now – and besides, it’s so much trouble, and I’ve grown to be very fond of the Gate. It’s not much to look at. Not what it was in the old man’s time, but I couldn’t leave it. I’ve seen so many come in and out. And I’ve seen so many die here on the mats that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. I’ve seen some things that people would call strange enough; but nothing is strange when you’re on the Black Smoke, except the Black Smoke. And if it was, it wouldn’t matter. Fung-Tching used to be very particular about his people, and never got in anyone who’d give trouble by dying messy and such. But the nephew isn’t half so careful. He tells everywhere that he keeps a ‘first chop’ 8 house. Never tries to get men in quietly, and make them comfortable like Fung-Tching did. That’s why the Gate is getting a little bit more known than it used to be. Among the niggers of course. The nephew daren’t get a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin into the place. He has to keep us three of course – me and the
Memsahib
and the other Eurasian. We’re fixtures. But he wouldn’t give us credit for a pipeful – not for anything.
    One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the Gate. The Persian and the Madras man are terribly shaky now. They’ve got a boy to light their pipes for them. I always do that myself. Most like, I shall see them carried out before me. I don’t think I shall ever outlive the
Memsahib
or Tsin-ling. Women last longer than men at the Black Smoke, and Tsin-ling has a deal of the old man’s blood in him, though he does smoke cheap stuff. The bazar-woman knew when she was going two days