I don't know what
happened to the Baboos; but the bazar-woman she died after six months of the
Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles and nose-ring for himself. But
I'm not certain. The Englishman, he drank as well as smoked, and he dropped
off. One of the Persians got killed in a row at night by the big well near the
mosque a long time ago, and the Police shut up the well, because they said it
was full of foul air.
They found him dead at the bottom of it. So, you see, there is only me, the
Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the Memsahib (she used to live with
Fung-Tching), the other Eurasian, and one of the Persians. The Memsahib looks
very old now. I think she was a young woman when the Gate was opened; but we
are all old for the matter of that. Hundreds and hundreds of years old. It is
very hard to keep count of time in the Gate, and besides, time doesn't matter
to me. I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month.
A very, very long while ago, when I used to be getting three hundred and fifty
rupees a month, and pickings, on a big timber-contract at Calcutta, I had a
wife of sorts. But she's dead now. People said that I killed her by taking to
the Black Smoke. Perhaps I did, but it's so long since it doesn't matter.
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