Kipling

Many years ago, in a discussion on radio, I heard a group of intellectuals discussing what they thought was the greatest short story ever written. Some years before a similar discussion had taken place (if memory serves me well, this was on "The Brains Trust") and the general consensus of opinion was that Edgar Alan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" was the tops; now it was Rudyard Kipling's "The Man who would be King". I don't think there could be so great a gap of style, plot, theme or setting than between these two stories than any other two: the first is set in America, the second in India; the first is a sort of horror story, the second a bit of history; the first has two characters who know each other but one of whom hates the other, the second has two English rogues out to deceive a tribe of Afghans into believing they are of royal blood; the first is a study of  hatred (though no reason is given for it), the second is knockabout humour with tragic consequences.
I never have been able to get past the first few pages of the Kipling story until this week when I put "The Stories of Kipling" on Google and started reading it again. I find it's very good; so good, in fact, that I find myself hesitating in rushing the pleasure of reading it - like good wine you want to take it slowly, savouring every tiny drop.
Apparently John Huston wanted to make a film of this story and for twenty years tried to put it together; eventually, when he was ready production-wise to do so, he approached Paul Newman having in mind Newman and Robert Redford for the part of the two rogues, after their success in "Butch Cassidy and the Sun-Dance Kid". Paul Newman tossed the script back to Huston and said "you want Sean Connery and Michael Caine for the parts". So Huston made the film with those two but it wasn't a great success. I can't say I liked what little I saw of it but that was during the period that the short story itself hadn't appealed to me. I shall now try it again.
This week I was approached by a young man who was working on the guttering of a neighbour's roof. He asked me if I'd like the same for my roof. It certainly needed doing but I had just had two new windows for over a thousand pounds fitted and felt I didn't want more expense. But the young man was insistent and dropped his price by two hundred pounds from £600 odd to £400 odd. I still said no. The next day he saw me again, said he had some material left over from the other job and I could have the job done for £270. He was a brilliant salesman. As Raymond Chandler put it about a rogue in one of his novels "he looked at me with the innocent eyes of used car salesman". This guy did too. It was like being in the power of the ancient mariner. No, not the ancient mariner but one of the rogues in "The Man who would be King". The young fellow could hardly write my name or address - I had to spell every word out for him and he wrote each letter carefully and with difficulty. But he had a certain roguish charm that they don't teach in schools. He also diddled me out of a tenner. I had to smile.