by Unknown
‘Well, it is not really a guess. I did the feng shui for this hotel when it was refurbished about five years ago myself. That is why the kitchen is arranged perfectly. Remember I was telling you?’ He folded his arms, proudly.
‘Ah, inside information,’ said the fortune teller.
‘Prior knowledge. This is not fair,’ said the astrologer. ‘It is not truly making use of the mystic arts.’
Wong looked put out. ‘The sage Hsun Tzu said: “We should think about Heaven but also not reject what man alone can do.”’
‘I still think it was von Berger,’ said Madam Xu. ‘Young Wu has no motive. But von Berger has many dealings with the chief chef, and also would be likely to get the man’s job after he died.’
This appeared to be a direct attack on the geomancer’s theory, and all eyes turned to him. ‘Always a little mystery remains,’ said Wong. ‘We help Mr Tan. We give him ideas. But we do not do his job.’
Madam Xu leaned forwards. ‘But Wong, why did von Berger shout “murder” before he knew it was a murder? There was no weapon around, so how did he know? I think this throws suspicion on him. He was trying to throw people off the scent.’
‘That I cannot say,’ said Wong.
Sinha said: ‘Could it have been the victim who shouted “murder”?’
‘No. I think not. Watch,’ said Wong. He suddenly stood up and picked up the soup tureen and swung it as if he were about to strike his assistant with it.
‘Hey!’ shrieked Joyce, lifting her arms to protect her head. ‘What are you doing?’
Wong halted abruptly and put the dish down. Then he sat down. Joyce sat with her arms still in front of her head, blinking at him from behind her wrists.
‘Sorry. Just a demonstration,’ said the geomancer. ‘You see? When you are being attacked, you shout “hey” or “no” or “help” or “don’t” or you just scream. A man being attacked does not shout “murder”. He is not murdered yet.’
Joyce lowered her arms. ‘Hey, you know, I think I can answer that one. My sister went out with a French guy once.’
‘Do enlighten us, Miss,’ said Sinha.
‘The guy, Pascal, is Swiss, right? People say Swiss and you think he speaks Swiss-German, right? But he was from Lausanne. That’s the west bit, the Frenchy bit of Switzerland.’
‘And . . . ?’ said Madam Xu.
‘Pascal von Berger didn’t go: “Murder!” He sees the body and the blood and he’s like, “Merde”. It’s a bad word in French. French guys say it all the time, whenever they are angry or surprised or anything. It means “shit”, if you’ll pardon my French.’
‘Shit is also a French word?’ asked Wong.
‘No, shit is English. I just said “pardon my French” because, well, never mind. And “merde” is French for “murder”, I mean, for “shit”. To someone who doesn’t know any French, it maybe sounds like “Murder”. He goes in there and he goes, “Oh shit”, only, he says it in French: “Merde”.’
The Superintendent clapped. ‘Well done, Missy, very good.’
The police officer turned and looked at the others. ‘I knew I could count on you to push this little mystery along a bit. You have my head buzzing with ideas so well that I am not even going to wait for the Sichuan beef, but I am going to race back to the station. Oh, hang on.’
A sizzling dish of dark pieces of meat flecked with slivers of kumquat peel arrived and was placed in the centre of the table.
‘Perhaps I’ll just have a taste,’ said the Superintendent, his chopsticks already digging into the steaming platter.
Joyce, looking down, realised that she too had emptied her bowl and was ready for more.
The lion’s share
In the fourth century BC, there was a man named Chuang Tzu. He went to sleep. He had a dream. And in his dream he was a butterfly. He could fly. He fluttered over the bushes and the grass and the flowers. He was part of the wind. The wind was part of him. He forgot that he had ever been a man. He thought only of his life as a butterfly.
Then he woke up. He found he was a man. ‘I am a man and I was only a butterfly in my dream,’ he said. But a voice inside him said no. You are a butterfly. You are dreaming that you are a man.
The following night the man Chuang Tzu went to bed. He felt himself returning to life as the butterfly Chuang Tzu. But was he beginning to dream? Or was he beginning to wake up?
And so it is with you, Blade of Grass. You think you are tangible. That which is intangible is a small part of your life. But from time to time you realise the truth. You are intangible. That which is tangible is only a small part of your life.
From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by C F Wong, part 110.
Winnie Lim held up the phone. ‘For you,’ she said to C F Wong. She blew on her nails, evidently worried that the action of picking up the handset may have disturbed the perfect surface of the two-tone emulsion on them.
Joyce McQuinnie laughed. ‘Don’t sound so surprised. He’s allowed to get a call himself in his own office once in a while.’
The geomancer took a few seconds to extricate himself from his thoughts, then lowered his pen, blew at the ink in his journal to dry it, and snapped the book shut. He exhaled slowly, as if he were expelling a long ghost from deep within his scrawny trunk. Then he reached for the handset.
‘Wai? Hello?’
‘Good morning, C F. So it is apparent that you have a secretary now. That’s a new departure, is it not? How can you afford it? They cost more than 3000 dollars these days, correct?’ said Dilip Sinha.
‘That is Winnie Lim. She has been working here many years.’
‘Oh, Ms Lim is still there, is she? I didn’t realise. How is it that you usually answer your own calls, then?’
‘She has many calls. More than me. She has many friends. Likes to talk-talk all day all night. My assistant the same. So her phone always engaged. When it is engaged the phone it transfers to me. So I am answering the calls usually.’
‘So in fact you are wrong to say that Winnie Lim is your secretary,’ said the astrologer. ‘The truth is that you are her secretary.’
Wong thought for a moment. ‘Yes. Maybe so. I take many messages for her.’
Sinha sighed. ‘I really, really must give you a few lessons in basic man-management skills one of these days. But let us turn our thoughts to brighter things. Like work. Like high-paying work, no less. My dear C F, how would you like an unusual and well-remunerated assignment? You’ve done gardens, parks and golf greens, haven’t you?’
‘Have.’
‘Well, here’s something you haven’t done before, I’ll bet: a jungle.’
Wong was slightly taken aback.
‘Hmm? Sifu? Did you hear that? You still there?’
‘Yes, yes, I hear you. A jungle, you say.’
‘Yes, you’ve never done a jungle before, have you, C F?’
‘You are right, but a jungle is a wild place, not a place for people. I do yang feng shui, which is only for places where people live.’
He noticed Joyce looking over, happy to eavesdrop on what might turn out to be an enjoyable jaunt. She gave him the benefit of her thoughts in a stage whisper. ‘A jungle? Go for it.’ She showed him her thumbs.
In his ear, he heard Sinha’s strange, staccato laugh.
‘Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. Wait till you hear the details. This will be fun, I think. It is a sort of park—I think they call it a theme park, you know, what they used to call a safari park a few years ago. It’s partly natural rainforest, partly man-made. Imported some lions at great expense. It’s quite new. It’s been going for about three months in Sarawak, near where my aunt lives. Someone told her about it and she called me. However, what it definitely needs, in my opinion, is a bit of help from you.’
‘Business is bad?’
‘Business has stopped. A lion ate the owners.’
‘Ah. I understand. This is not a good thing.’
‘It is, as you say, not a good thing
. Especially for the owners. Will you do it?’
‘I don’t know whether I can . . .’
‘You can,’ said Joyce. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she added, as if such an offer were a plus-factor.
‘Let me think about it,’ said Wong.
‘Let me put it this way,’ said the old astrologer. ‘It’s a rush job, so it’s all expenses plus your usual overseas rate plus fifty per cent.’
Two days later, after an exchange of faxes providing a basic contract and a deposit paid by bank transfer, Wong, Mc Quinnie and Sinha found themselves in a hired Proton Saga heading towards Tambi’s Trek, a tourist attraction set up on the outskirts of Miri. This ‘oil town’ was the staging post on the way to the more remote parts of East Malaysia, the astrologer explained. If you wanted to go to the interior, you took a boat up the Baram River. If you wanted to go to Lawas or Limbas, you would need good weather, a friendly pilot and a Twin Otter.
Joyce had initially been excited by the fact that the hired car had a high-quality built-in audio system, but her companions’ horrified complaints about her choice of music left her in self-imposed exile on the back seat with her portable player.
‘Then of course there is the ultimate adventure entertainment—a trip into Mulu,’ Sinha said. ‘But only for the Indiana Joneses among us. Uh-uh-uh-uh.’
‘What’s so great about Mulu? Any good CD shops there? The ones I’ve been to in Singapore suck.’
‘Suck what?’ asked Sinha.
‘Don’t ask,’ said Wong.
‘There are, I think I can rightly say, no CD shops whatsoever in Mulu.’
Joyce was speechless.
Ignoring her horrified eyes, Sinha continued: ‘Mulu is the location of a famous cave. It is difficult to get to. You need a long journey by river boat, and then by narrow longboat when the river becomes too small. Or you can fly, but only if the bats are not leaving the cave. The bats have right of way, you see.’
‘Oh. What’s so great about a cave?’
‘This is not just a cave. This is more like an underground world. The largest room in the cave is the Sarawak Chamber. It is very, very large. You can fit forty jumbo jets within it. The longest passage, Clearwater Cave, is 36 miles long. For the sake of comparison, the whole of Orchard Road is a mere 1.5 miles long, although this may come as a surprise to those who walk the length of it, as I regularly do, knowing the importance of—’
‘Forty jumbo jets?’ The young woman was astonished. ‘Have they tried it?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so,’ said the astrologer.
‘Cool. Are we going there?’
‘No. Tambi’s Trek is a little diversion arranged for travellers on the way to these natural wonders, or those with young children who perhaps don’t wish to go all the way into the virgin jungle. It is also perfect for lazy travellers, who want to say that they have been to a real jungle and seen real jungle animals, but want to be back the same night for a hamburger and a glass of Coca-Cola at their hotel. You know the sort. As such, I think it is an excellent idea and will be a great financial success. As long as they can stop the lions eating the staff.’
This time, Wong did all the driving. His seemingly erratic driving style, learned as a teenage truck driver in Guangdong, was frightening in Singapore, but seemed to fit well with the noticeably more chaotic roads of East Malaysia. He drove largely in the middle of the road, sometimes overtaking on one side, and sometimes the other. The deep potholes which caused all of them to occasionally bounce off their seats did not seem to bother him at all. He nosed through herds of sheep without fear of injury to vehicle or livestock. He read the map stretched out on the steering wheel as he drove, preferring to navigate himself than risk being led astray by miscommunication.
The sun glared in at the windows, as did staring locals and heavy-eyed bullocks. The car’s air-conditioner, cranked up to full blast, fought a losing battle to keep the interior comfortable.
After half an hour’s driving without incident, his passengers started to relax. Not being a conversationalist, Wong liked having a definite task to occupy himself with, and refused all offers of relief at the wheel.
Sinha was quite the opposite. His tall frame draped languidly back over the front passenger seat (which seemed to wilt under his weight), he talked endlessly about people he had met, and seemed to be able to continue indefinitely with minimal reaction from his listeners.
He told his half-listening audience several stories, starting with one about the time he went in search of a levitator who was rumoured to live in the hill country near Simla in northern India. He said he had made copious inquiries before setting out, to make sure the man was a genuine defyer of gravity, and not one of those yogic flyers who bounce cross-legged on mattresses, while disciples take carefully timed photographs.
‘I was repeatedly assured that he was the real thing, a genuine floating man, so eventually I set out, and took a sixteen-hour bus ride to the foothills of the mountain where he lived. From there, it was a case of questioning the locals until I found someone who knew the man I wanted. But he refused to guide me up the mountain until I gave him a large sum of money. This I did. I would have given him money afterwards anyway, because I believe in the distributing of my largesse to the poor back in the country of my forebears. What a strange word that is, forebears. Does it have anything to do with bears? I suppose not. Anyway, the man wanted it up-front, so I gave it to him. He scurried away to put it in the bank, which means, I suspect, he dropped it in a hole in the earth under his bed—the poor are very predictable, I’m sorry to say, and predictability is one of the great shortcomings of the human race. In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the reasons the poor are poor and remain poor is because they behave entirely predictably. It is only the man who breaks free of the rut who has a chance of improving his circumstances. Otherwise one is like a bullock, pulling a plough along the same furrow, year in, year out. Indeed, you would think that the poor in northern India would realise this, because they have an example of bullocks trapped in identical ruts right in front of their very eyes, all year—’
‘The levitating man?’ This was Joyce. ‘Can you go back to him, please?’
‘Oh yes, sorry, I was digressing. I’ll get back to the point. You’ll have to forgive me, but I have always tended to wander off on a tangent. Not that I’m the worst digressor I know. I had an uncle, a politician in Uttar Pradesh, who was once asked to give a ten-minute vote of thanks before a meal. What with his digressions, his speech lasted almost an hour and the meal was ruined. The first bits cooked had gone cold and congealed, and the bits still on the heat had burned. Yes, yes, the levitator.’
Sinha rearranged his long legs and draped one arm behind his chair. ‘I went into the deep, dark candle-lit cave where the man was supposed to live—my guide refused to come with me—apparently you were not supposed to approach the levitator unless you were an acolyte who had done years of training with him. I found a perfectly normal man sitting at a table. It was a high, Western-style table and he sat there as if he was about to eat a Sunday roast beef lunch. Which of course he wasn’t, because you don’t eat roast beef in India. Not unless you want to get into big trouble. Which I did once, and there’s a tale worth telling. It was when I was about twenty, and had just left college. But I’ll tell you that one afterwards, shall I? The levitator. He was sitting at a table, as I say, upon which there were candles and a shrine with several gods in it. Saying his prayers, no doubt. We had to try several dialects before we found one we both shared, and soon we were chatting like we had been friends since the egg. I stood there, bowing respectfully, and he sat there with his hands together. We talked about all sorts of things, about mysticism, about religious leaders we both respected, about our favourite foods.
‘Eventually, I had had enough of polite chit-chat and asked him directly about the levitation, and he said, yes, he could do it. But when I asked him to demonstrate, he just changed the subject. I brought the subject b
ack again. He changed it again. I could not persuade him to agree to lift himself even an inch off the ground for my benefit. He just sat there smiling at me. When I asked again, rather more forcefully, he gave an interesting reply, which I will always remember. He said: “Such skills are not given to us for demonstrations, but for high purposes.” So I replied, “Showing a traveller your skill so that he can spread the word to thousands outside is a high purpose, is it not?” And he said, “Your idea of a high purpose in not my idea of a high purpose. A high purpose can be to rise in the air to glorify the gods, even if there is no one watching except the gods themselves. Indeed, that is the highest purpose, because the glory is for the gods alone.”’
Sinha bit at his thumbnail and shifted slightly in his seat, causing it to creak alarmingly. After a brief pause, he continued. ‘I took this as a cop-out, although I did not say this to him, of course. It seemed to me that he was saying that he would only levitate when no one could see him do so, which meant that there would never be any proof. Anyway, there was still something tangibly holy about the man, so I remained polite to him, and thanked him. “My visit is over,” I said, then I bowed and took my leave. I was just walking away, when I thought of something. He said a high purpose can be to glorify the gods. He was glorifying the gods even then, worshipping the shrine on his table. I suddenly thought . . . I was about 20 or 30 yards away. I spun around and then stooped slightly, to look under the table. There was no stool. There was no chair. The man was sitting on nothing, his crossed-legs and bottom floating about 2 feet off the ground. He had been levitating all along! I started to walk forwards again, but he spoke again. “Your visit is over,” he said. Then he blew out the candles, and the cave was plunged into darkness. I could not see 1 inch in front of my face. So I stopped and called out for him to light a flame. But there was silence. I walked back out towards the light. I never saw the man again.’
For a moment Sinha paused, his eyes fixed on a place far distant. ‘Getting back from there was another adventure. I imagined, that I, too, could levitate. So I decided to try it, while I was on the holy mountain, close to the influences of the levitator. Mountains, for some reason, always seem holy. Even in the Christian Bible, you will note how Moses and Jesus went up mountains to see their god. It is something to do with the idea of vastness and stillness, of course, something that can best be appreciated by a visit to the Himalayas, which I first visited as a boy of nine . . .’