The Chequer Board (25 page)

Morgan got up from his chair and collected the glasses. “I’ve got my roots deep in this country,” he said. “Wife and kids and work and friends. I’d never want to go back and live in England again, after this. When this country gets Dominion status, I’ll probably take out naturalisation papers. Make a job of it.”

They went into the house to dinner, a meal served by candlelight, with silver on the table; a meal of soup and casseroled chicken, and a savoury. Morgan and Ma Nay Htohn were genuinely glad to have a visitor from England. In the friendship of their interest Mr Turner expanded, and talked fairly lucidly to them about conditions in London. He talked so much that he became very tired, and was glad to sit quietly after the meal, with a cheroot, in a long chair. The white cat, Maung Payah, walked in as soon as he sat down and jumped up on his lap, kneaded a place for himself, and settled down to purr.

Nay Htohn looked at it in wonder, and spoke again to Morgan in a low tone, in Burmese.

He laughed. “My wife can’t make out about that cat,” he said. “He never does that with anyone. He won’t sit with her, or with me, either.”

Mr Turner was pleased, and rubbed the cat’s ear; it pressed its head against his hand in pleasure. “Took a fancy to me all right, he has,” he said. “What was that you said you call him?”

“Maung Payah,” said Nay Htohn. “In our language that means Mr Holiness, or ‘Your Reverence.’”

“Why d’you call him that?” Turner asked the question with sincerity.

The girl hesitated, and then laughed shyly. “My people have a superstition,” she said. “Just like in your country, if you spill salt you throw it over your shoulder to avert bad luck. You do not really believe it, but you do it. Well—like that, the country people here say that a white animal—any white animal—is a very beautiful soul on its path up the Ladder of Existence; so fine a soul that it will one day be the Buddha.” She smiled. “It is not part of our religion, that one—you will not find it in our holy books. It is just what the country people say. My nurse told me, when I was a little child.”

Mr Turner grinned. “That’s why you call him Mr Holiness?”

She laughed softly. “It is a kind of joke.”

He stroked the cat’s ear. “We think black cats are lucky in England,” he said. “Just the opposite.”

He was desperately tired. The strange scene and all the
talking he had done seemed to have exhausted him; he was confused by all the new impressions he had taken in, and the great wound in his head was throbbing painfully. A heavy weight seemed to be pressing on the nape of his neck. He made an excuse as soon as his cheroot was finished, and Morgan showed him to his bedroom, a pleasant, spacious room, with a fan and a mosquito net. Outside the rain was pouring down in sheets; Mr Turner threw off his few clothes and fell upon the bed in heavy sleep.

He woke next morning unrefreshed, and feeling slack and tired, and with a headache. He took an aspirin and lay for some time watching the glory of the dawn over the river; the air was fresh and cool after the rain, and the sky cloudless. He got up presently and went down to breakfast.

He found, rather to his surprise, that quite a heavy meal of curry and rice had been provided; his previous breakfasts in the country had been light affairs. He said, “I see you stick to the old English custom of eating hearty in the morning.”

Morgan said, “Me? I don’t usually have more than one cup of coffee and a little fruit.” And then he said, “Oh, I see what you mean. Nay Htohn—it’s her duty day. She always eats a big meal that morning.”

Mr Turner said, “What’s a duty day?”

The girl smiled at him. “One day in each week all good Buddhists keep a duty day; it is like your Sunday. On that day we must not eat after midday, so I eat plenty for breakfast.” She laughed.

Turner said, “Do you go to church?”

She said, “I go to the pagoda in the morning. It is just like the Christian Sunday, but I think our duty day is rather more strict than yours. I may not use any cosmetics on my face or fingernails.” He glanced at her and noticed that she had no make-up on. “We do not play the gramophone or have any music, and I must not touch gold or silver.” She raised her hand, and Mr Turner noticed that she was eating with a wooden spoon.

Morgan laughed mischievously. “She used to sleep on the floor, too, before we were married, but I struck at that.”

The girl laughed with him shyly. “If you keep the duty day properly you should sleep on the floor,” she said. “That is for humility. But I do not think that that is meant for married women who have husbands to look after.”

Mr Turner said to Morgan, “Are you a Buddhist?”

“I’m not anything,” Morgan said. “Just a heretic, or an agnostic, or what-have-you.” He paused, and then he said, “If I was to be anything, I guess I’d be a Buddhist.”

“I suppose so,” Mr Turner said. “Religion of the country and all that. Like what you were saying last night, about making your life in Burma.”

“In a way,” said Morgan. “But I wouldn’t bother about that angle to it. A good many English people out here turn Buddhist when they get to know the ins and outs of it. It’s a very pure form of religion.”

“Well, I dunno,” said Mr Turner. “The one I was brought up to ’s good enough for me.”

Nay Htohn said, “There is very little difference for ordinary people like ourselves.”

Mr Turner did not eat much at breakfast; the feeling of oppression was still heavy at the nape of his neck. Nay Htohn vanished into the back quarters, from which came the occasional sounds of children.

Morgan excused himself. “Do you mind looking after yourself till lunch time?” he said. “I’ve got my court sitting this morning. After lunch I’ve got to go out to a village in the country; you might like to come with me, in the jeep.”

“I’ll be all right,” said Mr Turner. “I’m feeling a bit washed out today. I’ll just sit here for a bit. Be all right if I take a walk down in the village later on?”

“Of course,” said Morgan. “They’ll be glad to see you. Take off your shoes if you go into the pagoda.”

“I know about that,” Mr Turner said. “I saw the Shwe Dagon last week.”

He sat for an hour in the long chair, smoking and looking at the sampan traffic on the river. A brown girl came out of the house and set up a play pen in the shade and then went back and fetched a yellow little boy in a short pair of pants and put him in it, and sat sewing by him on the grass. Mr Turner got up and walked over and spoke to them. The girl stood up and smiled, but as she could speak no English and Mr Turner could speak no Burmese and the little boy was too young to speak much of anything, they didn’t get very far.

Being on his feet, he went and fetched his sun hat and strolled out towards the village. It was only half a mile along the river bank; he took it slowly, and found the walk pleasant. He spent some time in the village, looking in the shops and smiling at the people. He found three
men building a sampan on the bank, which interested him very much. He was interested, too, in the samples of rice and millet in the shops.

He passed the pagoda, but did not go in. He paused at the gate and looked in. Before the calm statue of the Buddha there were many flowers arranged in vases. On the paving before the image there were two or three rows of women kneeling in prayer; he looked at them curiously, and saw Nay Htohn. She was kneeling devoutly, with a long spray of gladiola held between her hands; salmon pink it was, and fresh and beautiful. Her lips moved in prayer; she was utterly absorbed.

Mr Turner walked on, rather thoughtfully.

He found the walk back trying. The sun was higher, and it was very hot; the road along the river bank seemed very long before he reached the shade of the trees by the house, and the pressure on the nape of his neck grew unbearable. He reached the steps leading up to the verandah and walked halfway up them towards his chair; then everything went red before his eyes, and he staggered, and grasped at the balustrade beside him, missed it, and fell heavily, and rolled down the steps that he had mounted, onto the path in the sun. The nurse saw him fall, from where she sat beside the play pen on the lawn, and called the bearer, and came running.

They found Mr Turner quite unconscious, and with some difficulty, and with the cook helping them, they carried him upstairs and laid him on the bed. The bearer fetched cold water and began to bathe his face, and the nurse went running to call Nay Htohn from the pagoda.

Mr Turner remained unconscious for three hours,
lying on his back and breathing with a snoring sound. Morgan got back half an hour after Nay Htohn. Beyond loosening all his clothes and bathing his head with cold water, they did not know what to do. This illness was like nothing they had ever experienced. At that time there was a great shortage of visiting doctors in that part of Burma. There was a hospital at Henzada, thirty-seven miles away, but the jeep track to it was very bad, and it did not seem wise to attempt such a journey with the man in his condition. By river, in a sampan, it would take a day, but there was no motor vessel going up till the next day.

After an hour of vain effort to get him round, Nay Htohn said, “We must have help, Phillip; we are doing no good. I think we ought to ask the Sayah to come over.”

Morgan thought for a moment. He knew the Sayah fairly well, the Father Superior of the local Buddhist monastery. He knew him for an honest old man, but privately he considered him to be a bit simple. Still, there was something in what his wife had said. The Sayah was the nearest approach to a doctor that Mandinaung could provide; moreover, if Turner were to die on their hands it would make matters easier all round if someone else with a position in the community had seen him. He said, “All right. I’ll go and see if he can come along, if that’s what you’d like.”

She said, “I think he ought to come. Will you go for me?”

She could not go herself. When the monk arrived, she would have to keep hidden out of his sight, and ensure that he saw no female servants. When a man has taken to
a life of continence and placed the world behind him, it is both rude and unkind to flaunt young women in his sight.

Morgan got into the jeep and went to the monastery. He knew the polite routine, and was shown in to the old man, sitting on a mat, in quiet contemplation. He explained his business and asked for help. In a few minutes he was in the jeep with the Sayah beside him, holding his coarse yellow robe about him in the wind of their passage.

The bearer met them at the door and made obeisance; there were no women in sight. Morgan took the Sayah upstairs to the bedroom. Turner was lying as the women had left him a moment before. A bowl of water by his side and a wet cloth on his head showed their most recent ministrations.

The old man went up to the bed and laid two fingers on his temples. Then he turned to Morgan, speaking in Burmese, “He will recover very soon,” he said. “He will be normal before sunset. I do not think he has very long to go.”

“Is he dying, then?”

“Not now. I do not think that he has very many months to come.” The old man glanced at Morgan. “I will draw his horoscope.”

“All right. What will you want to know, Payah?”

“The date and hour of his birth, and in what part of the world. He will recover before long. I will wait till he can tell me.” He retired to a corner of the room and squatted down in meditation.

Morgan sat bathing Mr Turners face and head. He had not expected any more from the Sayah, but his presence
was a comfort and an assurance against any trouble. From the door there came a whisper from his wife, and he went out to her. She had been listening from the next room.

She whispered to him, “Maung Payah. Tell him about Maung Payah.”

He smiled at her tenderly. He knew her very well. He knew that with her intellect she derided the divinity of the cat; he knew that with that which was still childlike in her, which he loved, she believed in it. It had not been wholly as a joke that she had called the cat Maung Payah. He said, “Would you like me to do that?”

She said, “Please do.”

He touched her hand and she smiled up at him, and he went back into the room.

“We have a cat,” he said simply, to the old man, “a white cat that my wife calls Maung Payah.” The old man nodded his shaven head in understanding, and Morgan went on to tell him of the liking that the cat had shown for Mr Turner.

The old man sat in meditation for a time. At last he asked, “Is he a Christian?”

“As much as he is anything,” Morgan replied in Burmese. “In the country that he was born in, as I was, there is not much religion in the life of ordinary men. He would have been christened as a child, and confirmed when he was a boy, I suppose.”

There was another long silence. The Sayah said at last, “Virtue is measured from the knowledge that is given to the soul in the beginning. Even if a man has kept no one of the Five Precepts for the reason that he did not know about them, he may still attain the dwellings of
the Dewahs if his progress in this life has been sufficient.”

He relapsed into silence, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner of the room, dressed in his coarse yellow robe, his bald, shaven head bowed in meditation. Morgan turned and went on bathing Turner’s face. In the house there was silence but for his slight movements.

Gradually, the heavy breathing of the man upon the bed grew easier, and presently he stirred, as if in sleep, and rolled over a little.

At last he woke, and stirred, and sat up on the charpoy. He saw Morgan standing with a sponge and basin by his side, and a queer old Burmese monk beside him. He said, “I fell down.”

“That’s right,” said Morgan. “You’ve been unconscious for three hours.”

“Christ!” said Mr Turner. “That’s a bloody sight longer than what it was before.” He relapsed into a depressed silence.

“Better lie down a bit and take it easy,” Morgan said. “I couldn’t get a doctor. Is there anything you ought to have done?”

“I’ll be all right,” Mr Turner said heavily. “I got one of these turns before.” He paused, and then he said, “I didn’t want to make myself a bloody nuisance.”

“Don’t bother about that,” said Morgan. “I got the Sayah here to come and have a look at you; he knows more doctoring than I do. Like to tell him one or two things?”