Okay, so it was a little graphic and provocative, but as the single most controversial thing The Beatles ever did (and the most expensive for an original), the cover of Yesterday and Today surely earns a place on a list of the greatest album covers.
Little Dragon-Machine Dreams full album zip
But it was Kim who had wakened the lama - Kim with one eyelaid against a knot-hole in the planking, who had seen the Delhiman's search through the boxes. This was no common thief thatturned over letters, bills, and saddles - no mere burglar who ran a little knife sideways into the soles of Mahbub's slippers,or picked the seams of the saddle-bags so deftly. At first Kimhad been minded to give the alarm - the long-drawn cho-or-choor! [thief! thief!] that sets the serai ablaze of nights; but he looked more carefully, and, hand on amulet, drew his own conclusions.
They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis withbaskets of lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their leandogs sniffing at their heels. These people kept their own side ofthe road', moving at a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all othercastes gave them ample room; for the Sansi is deep pollution. Behindthem, walking wide and stiffly across the strong shadows, the memoryof his leg-irons still on him, strode one newly released fromthe jail; his full stomach and shiny skin to prove that theGovernment fed its prisoners better than most honest men could feed themselves. Kim knew that walk well, and made broad jest of itas they passed. Then an Akali, a wild-eyed, wild-haired Sikhdevotee in the blue-checked clothes of his faith, withpolished-steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban,stalked past, returning from a visit to one of the independent SikhStates, where he had been singing the ancient glories of the Khalsato College-trained princelings in top-boots and white-cordbreeches. Kim was careful not to irritate that man; for the Akali's temperis short and his arm quick. Here and there they met or wereovertaken by the gaily dressed crowds of whole villages turning out tosome local fair; the women, with their babes on their hips,walking behind the men, the older boys prancing on sticks ofsugar-cane, dragging rude brass models of locomotives such as they sell fora halfpenny, or flashing the sun into the eyes of their bettersfrom cheap toy mirrors. One could see at a glance what each hadbought; and if there were any doubt it needed only to watch thewives comparing, brown arm against brown arm, the newly purchaseddull glass bracelets that come from the North-West. Thesemerry-makers stepped slowly, calling one to the other and stopping tohaggle with sweetmeat-sellers, or to make a prayer before one ofthe wayside shrines - sometimes Hindu, sometimes Mussalman - whichthe low-caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. Asolid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillarin haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot pastto a chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of changars - thewomen who have taken all the embankments of all the Northernrailways under their charge - a flat-footed, big-bosomed,strong-limbed, blue-petticoated clan of earth-carriers, hurrying north on newsof a job, and wasting no time by the road. They belong to thecaste whose men do not count, and they walked with squared elbows, swinging hips, and heads on high, as suits women who carryheavy weights. A little later a marriage procession would strike intothe Grand Trunk with music and shoutings, and a smell of marigoldand jasmine stronger even than the reek of the dust. One could seethe bride's litter, a blur of red and tinsel, staggering throughthe haze, while the bridegroom's bewreathed pony turned aside tosnatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim would jointhe Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing the couplea hundred sons and no daughters, as the saying is. Still more interesting and more to be shouted over it was when astrolling juggler with some half-trained monkeys, or a panting, feeblebear, or a woman who tied goats' horns to her feet, and with thesedanced on a slack-rope, set the horses to shying and the women toshrill, long-drawn quavers of amazement.
He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his earsto come too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few wordshe caught were in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some commonspeech of the mountains. The woman seemed to ask questions which thelama turned over in his mind before answering. Now and again heheard the singsong cadence of a Chinese quotation. It was astrange picture that Kim watched between drooped eyelids. The lama,very straight and erect, the deep folds of his yellow clothingslashed with black in the light of the parao fires precisely as aknotted tree-trunk is slashed with the shadows of the low sun, addresseda tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like a many-colouredjewel in the same uncertain light. The patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and down, melting and reforming as the foldsshook and quivered to the night wind; and when the talk grew moreearnest the jewelled forefinger snapped out little sparks of lightbetween the embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall of uncertaindarkness speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught formsand faces and shadows. The voices of early evening had settled downto one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping ofthe bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest wasthe tinkle of a Bengali dancing-girl's sitar. Most men had eatenand pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which infull blast sound like bull-frogs.
'Why, it's a boy!' he said, as he drew his prize under thelight of the tent-pole lantern, then shaking him severely cried: 'Whatwere you doing? You're a thief. Choor? Mallum?' His Hindustani wasvery limited, and the ruffled and disgusted Kim intended to keep tothe character laid down for him. As he recovered his breath hewas inventing a beautifully plausible tale of his relations tosome scullion, and at the same time keeping a keen eye on and alittle under the Chaplain's left arm-pit. The chance came; he duckedfor the doorway, but a long arm shot out and clutched at hisneck, snapping the amulet-string and closing on the amulet.
'That which I saw,' said Kim, 'the night that my lama and Ilay next thy place in the Kashmir Seral. The door was leftunlocked, which I think is not thy custom, Mahbub. He came in as oneassured that thou wouldst not soon return. My eye was against aknot-hole in the plank. He searched as it were for something - not a rug,not stirrups, nor a bridle, nor brass pots- something little andmost carefully hid. Else why did he prick with an iron between thesoles of thy slippers?'
'He is come,' said the boy, in a voice little louder than asigh, and vanished. Kim felt sure that the boy had been posted toguide him from the first, but, putting a bold face on it, partedthe curtain. A black-bearded man, with a green shade over his eyes,sat at a table, and, one by one, with short, white hands, pickedup globules of light from a tray before him, threaded them on a glancing silken string, and hummed to himself the while. Kimwas conscious that beyond the circle of light the room was fullof things that smelt like all the temples of all the East. A whiffof musk, a puff of sandal-wood, and a breath of sicklyjessamine-oil caught his opened nostrils.
The back veranda of the shop was built out over the sheerhillside, and they looked down into their neighbours' chimney-pots, as isthe custom of Simla. But even more than the purely Persian mealcooked by Lurgan Sahib with his own hands, the shop fascinated Kim.The Lahore Museum was larger, but here were more wonders -ghost- daggers and prayer-wheels from Tibet; turquoise and rawamber necklaces; green jade bangles; curiously packed incense-sticksin jars crusted over with raw garnets; the devil-masks ofovernight and a wall full of peacock-blue draperies; gilt figures ofBuddha, and little portable lacquer altars; Russian samovars with turquoises on the lid; egg-shell china sets in quaintoctagonal cane boxes; yellow ivory crucifixes - from Japan of all placesin the world, so Lurgan Sahib said; carpets in dusty bales,smelling atrociously, pushed back behind torn and rotten screens of geometrical work; Persian water-jugs for the hands aftermeals; dull copper incense-burners neither Chinese nor Persian,with friezes of fantastic devils running round them; tarnishedsilver belts that knotted like raw hide; hairpins of jade, ivory,and plasma; arms of all sorts and kinds, and a thousand otheroddments were cased, or piled, or merely thrown into the room, leavinga clear space only round the rickety deal table, where LurganSahib worked.
They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself toomuch to reflect on their craziness. In the morning they played theJewel Game - sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with pilesof swords and daggers, sometimes with photo-graphs of natives.Through the afternoons he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in theshop, sitting dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watchingMr Lurgan's many and very curious visitors. There were smallRajahs, escorts coughing in the veranda, who came to buy curiosities -such as phonographs and mechanical toys. There were ladies in searchof necklaces, and men, it seemed to Kim - but his mind may havebeen vitiated by early training - in search of the ladies; nativesfrom independent and feudatory Courts whose ostensible business wasthe repair of broken necklaces - rivers of light poured out uponthe table - but whose true end seemed to be to raise money forangry Maharanees or young Rajahs. There were Babus to whom LurganSahib talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currencynotes. There were occasional gatherings of long-coated theatricalnatives who discussed metaphysics in English and Bengali, to MrLurgan's great edification. He was always interested in religions. Atthe end of the day, Kim and the Hindu boy - whose name varied at Lurgan's pleasure - were expected to give a detailed account ofall that they had seen and heard - their view of each man'scharacter, as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions ofhis real errand. After dinner, Lurgan Sahib's fancy turned more towhat might be called dressing-up, in which game he took a mostinforming interest. He could paint faces to a marvel; with a brush-dabhere and a line there changing them past recognition. The shop wasfull of all manner of dresses and turbans, and Kim was apparelled variously as a young Mohammedan of good family, an oilman, andonce - which was a joyous evening - as the son of an Oudh landholderin the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk's eye todetect the least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-woodcouch, would explain by the half-hour together how such and such acaste talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and,since 'hows' matter little in this world, the 'why' of everything.The Hindu child played this game clumsily. That little mind, keen asan icicle where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temperitself to enter another's soul; but a demon in Kim woke up and sangwith joy as he put on the changing dresses, and changed speechand gesture therewith. 2ff7e9595c
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