The Chequer Board

by Nevil Shute

  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?”

  “Sure,” said Turner heavily. “What does he want to know?”

  Morgan exchanged a few words in Burmese with the old man. “He wants to know when you were born, what day and at what time, if you know that.”

  “June the 16th, 1908,” said Mr Turner. “Must have been about seven or eight in the evening. I know Ma was took bad at tea.”

  “And the place?”

  “No. 17 Victoria Grove, Willesden Green.”

  Morgan transmitted this information to the Sayah, who gathered his robe about him to depart.

  “That all he wants to know?” Mr Turner asked in surprise.

  “That’s all.”

  “Bloody funny kind of doctor.”

  Morgan took the Sayah back to his kyaung in the jeep, and returned to the house. He found that Nay Htohn had ordered the patient to stay in bed; they kept him there for the remainder of that day. He told them a little about his attack, sufficient to make them understand that it was connected with the great wound on his forehead. But he was reticent about it and told them no more than he need. When Morgan went up in the evening he found the white cat sitting on his bed. Mr Turner got real pleasure from the presence of the cat, and from the feeling that he was specially favoured.

  Dawn came at about six o’clock in the morning. When Morgan came down shortly after that, in the cool of the day, he found the Sayah squatting on the verandah waiting for him. The old man produced a large sheet of paper from the folds of his garment, written all over with numerals arranged in columns under the days of the week and months of the year, the whole being roughly rectangular in form. He said, “I have drawn the zadah of the Englishman.”

  Morgan knew a Burmese horoscope when he saw it. Nay Htohn had one somewhat similar to this but more carefully made out, which she affected to think little of and treasured very carefully under lock and key. He said, “Will you interpret it for me, Payah?”

  The old man squatted down on the verandah and spread the paper out on the ground before him. Morgan drew up a chair beside him and leaned down to see the figures that his finger indicated. A faint rustle from the room behind them told him that Nay Htohn had crept up within hearing.

  The Sayah said, “I will not trouble you with that which is not important.” He laid his finger on the chart. “When he was twenty-six years old he passed into the House of Saturn, to abide there for the ten years that all must abide. That is a bad age at which to enter the house of danger, and he did many foolish things. In the eighth year he offended against the laws of his country. In the ninth year he received the wound that you now see on his forehead.” The old man laid his finger on a numeral. “Beside that wound, this symbol shows yourself. I do not know what that may mean; perhaps you do.”

  Morgan said quietly, “I think I do. What year was that in, Payah?”

  The old man studied the chart. “1943,” he said. “In the following year, the last year of his sojourn in the House of Saturn, the man went to prison.”

  Morgan said, quietly, “I wondered about that.”

  “Passing from the evil influence,” the old man said, “he entered the House of Jupiter and lived there for three years, doing little good and little evil. From there, and early in this very year, he fell into Yahu under the Tuskless Elephant, here, where he received foreknowledge of his death.”

  Morgan glanced at the old man, “He knows when he will die?”

  “He will die next year in April,” the Sayah said. “He knows that, almost to the very month. This symbol is for knowledge, this one is for death, and this one is for April. It is very certain he knows about his death.”

  Morgan was silent for a minute. A crow flew into the verandah, picked up a crumb, and flew away. “I know very little about him, Payah,” he said at last. “What kind of man is
he?”

  The old man studied the chart and said. “He is a good man, and will climb up to the Six Blissful Seats. He has known sin and trouble and it has not made him bitter; he has known sorrow and it has not made him sad. In these last months that have been granted to him he is trying to do good, not to avoid damnation, for he has no such beliefs, but for sheer love of good. Such a man will go on up the Ladder of Existence; he will not fall back.”

  The Sayah laid his finger on the last numerals of the chart. “Here is the symbol for a generous impulse, and here a great journey, and here beside it is again the symbol for yourself. I do not know what that means. Here is this illness under the gyoh of the North, which means a swift recovery.” He laid the paper down. “I cannot tell you any more.”

  He got to his feet, offered to leave the horoscope with Morgan, and was evidently pleased when he was told to take it back to the monastery. In careful, polite Burmese Morgan thanked him at some length, and the old man shambled away down the road to his own place.

  Morgan stood thoughtful, looking after him; Nay Htohn came out and stood beside him. “You heard all that about Turner?” he asked her in Burmese.

  “I heard,” she said. “We are honoured to have such a good man with us.”

  They stood for a minute in silence watching the retreating figure in the yellow robe. “We must send something,” Morgan said at last. “What had we better send?”

  The girl said, “Give them a bell. They can always use another bell.” They turned and went into the house.

  They went up together to see Turner, and found him awake. They persuaded him to stay in bed for breakfast; he stayed in bed until he wearied of it in the heat of the forenoon, and came down about eleven o’clock to sit on the verandah in his long chair. Morgan was out. Nay Htohn was watching for him, and made him comfortable in his chair, with a cheroot and a long drink of iced lime squash. He sat there at ease, watching the traffic on the river.