Kim

At one of the train stops, E23 manages to make covert contact with another agent and pass on vital information to him. With the agent and his business attended to, Kim leaves him and returns to the train. Eventually, Kim and the lama leave the train behind and resume traveling on foot. The lama expostulates upon the Wheel and Life as they go. They take up an invitation to return to the Kulu woman with whom they had traveled before and enjoy her hospitality. While there, Kim learns to his great delight that the lama had bent his principles and given her a requested charm (which the lama had advised Kim to avoid) during their earlier encounter. They debate the merits of charms, and the woman informs them of the presence of a Hindu hakim, who can represent the argument for charms. When the hakim appears, it turns out to be none other than Hurree Babu, who has come to congratulate Kim on his good work in E23’s case.

The Babu conveys to Kim that there is a new situation brewing to the north, a continuation of the intrigue that led to Kim’s first assignment from Mahbub Ali when he delivered a secret message to Creighton in Umballa. The unrest among the kings of the north, which precipitated the mobilization of the British army there, has now arisen again, this time with word that Russian agents were seeking to make inroads into the territory. The Babu urges Kim to convince the lama to take their journey in that direction, with the Babu himself accompanying so that they can tend to this matter along the way. The prospect excites Kim: “Well is the Game called great! […] [The lama] is right—a great and wonderful world—and I am Kim—Kim—Kim—alone—one person—in the middle of it all” (188).

Upon Kim’s request, he and the lama travel north with the Babu into the hills, and Kim marvels at the changes wrought in his master by the terrain. The lama, who comes from the mountains, appears to have boundless energy for walking the slopes, while Kim struggles to keep up. Being more familiar with Buddhist lamas than their counterparts to the south, the local people in this area hold the lama in great reverence. Eventually, they come upon the camp of two foreign agents, a Frenchman and a Russian, who are trying to make their way toward India with the help of some local servants, but the latter have recently abandoned the foreigners’ camp. The Babu takes on the posture of the servant of a Rajah and offers his services. They gratefully accept, and the Babu manages to persuade the local servants to return to their posts.

Having ingratiated himself into the foreign agents’ service, the Babu leads them along their way. The Frenchman and Russian take an interest in the lama—more as an exotic curiosity regarded from their sense of cultural superiority than with a genuine interest to learn from him—and pause to listen to him expound on one of his hand-drawn images of the Wheel of Life. The Russian asks to buy the picture from the lama, but the latter declines. Not understanding the sanctity of the object, the Russian tosses down some coins and grabs at it, only to have it tear in his hand. The local servants are horrified, and the lama rises in anger: “Chela! He has defiled the Written Word!” (202). Then the Russian strikes the lama, and chaos breaks out: the local servants run away in terror, carrying the baggage with them, and Kim launches himself into an assault on the foreigners. Amid the melee, however, the Babu sees an opportunity. He tells Kim to run back up to the servants and take the chance to steal the foreigners’ documents while he intervenes with the foreigners. So they split up—Kim goes up to the servants, who have saved the lama, and the Babu goes to the foreigners, explaining to them that they are now in peril of their lives from the servants’ anger at what they have done. Thus, Kim can make off with the lama and the foreigners’ servants while the Babu leads the foiled foreign agents away.

Together with the foreigners’ local servants, Kim and the lama continue their journey. The lama is troubled about what had happened, especially his anger in the heat of the moment. They take refuge in the hospitality of a local woman, who calls herself the Woman of Shamlegh. She delivers the foreigners’ documents, which had been carried by the servants, over to Kim. While at her house, the lama meditates and concludes that the violence of the episode of the foreigners was due to his straying from the proper way. He lists a litany of what he considers to be his moral failings—taking pride in people’s praise, delighting in his strength in the hills, and anger at being struck: “Ignorance and Lust met Ignorance and Lust upon the road, and they begat Anger. The blow was a sign to me, who am no better than a strayed yak, that my place is not here” (217). The Woman of Shamlegh implores them to stay, even sharing her backstory as the abandoned fiancée of an Englishman who never returned, but Kim insists that they have to go. The lama is convinced that the Arrow River had to have been in the plains of India, and thus their adventure in the northern hills was a mistake.

Chapter 15 is unique in Kim in that it opens with a scene in the present tense, offering descriptive glimpses of the Babu and the lama’s respective journeys back toward the plains of India. The subsequent scene shifts back to the past tense, focusing on Kim’s wearied physical and emotional state at this point in their quest. He holds himself responsible for not taking better care of the lama and points the blame back to his confused questions about himself: “Holy One, my heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee. […] But I love thee…and it is all too late…I was a child…Oh, why was I not a man?” (225).

Kim and the lama return to the hospitality of the Kulu woman, and while there, Kim’s condition reveals itself not only as weariness from the road but as a grave sickness. The Babu visits him upon his awakening, at which point Kim delivers the documents obtained from the foreigner’s baggage. Kim’s success in this matter seals a permanent spot for him with the British survey (secret service). The Babu tells Kim that while he has lain ill, the lama nearly drowned himself in a brook after meditating, from which the Babu had to pull him out. However, the lama himself soon appears and tells a rather different tale: the brook had been revealed to him as the Arrow River itself. After plunging in, he decided to come back out to bring Kim there. The final scene shows a tension over Kim’s future, expressed in a conversation between the lama and Mahbub Ali—will he go to the river with the lama and achieve enlightenment, or go into the service of the state as a spy? Although the lama suggests that the two options are not mutually exclusive, the question is left unanswered. The book closes with the lama’s enthusiastic announcement to Kim that their quest for the River is at an end: “So thus our search is ended. For the merit that I have acquired, the River of the Arrow is here. […] Certain is our deliverance! Come!” (240). As for what Kim does or says in response to this revelation, the readers are left to guess for themselves.