“Yes.”
He looked me over as if he already had a description of me in his mind.
“Yes,” said he, satisfied at last. “Well, I’ll tell you what you ought to do. You ought to run along to the bank in B Street. You see, Crowther was a close-fisted sort of fellow and bought little bits of land in Mandalay when it was a good deal cheaper than it is now. I know, for I’ve realised all of it for him — —”
“All of it?” I interrupted.
“Yes.”
“And lately?”
“Within the last few months.”
“And yet you don’t know where he is?”
“I haven’t one idea. But I’ll tell you what,” said Mr. Styles comfortably. “I think that when you do find him, you’ll find he’s barmy. Brain all gone to greengage jam, you know. Yes, the sooner you do find him, Mr. Legatt, the better. For an ex-captain of a steamer he’s a pretty warm man, you know.”
I went on to B Street, wondering why the announcement of my name should have so startled Mr. Styles, and discovered that it produced just the same effect upon the manager of the bank. He came hurriedly from his private room.
“Mr. Martin Legatt?”
“The same,” said I.
He took me into his office, seated me in a chair.
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Legatt,” he said genially. “Upon my word, I am very glad to see you.”
All this excitement and cordiality was very mysterious to me. The manager was a fair-haired, youngish man, who could hardly have reached his position without ability. Why, then, the hysteria?
“It’s very nice of you to welcome me like this,” I said. “But I really only came to ask you where I could find Michael Crowther.”
The bank manager — as far as I remember, his name was Halfin — Mr. Halfin, stared at me.
“You mean to say that you don’t know where he is?” he gasped incredulously.
“I do not,” I answered.
“Well, that’s very disappointing,” said Mr. Halfin. “For I don’t, either. You see, we hold a good deal of money of his on deposit. I think he realised everything, and it had been growing in value for some time.”
“But didn’t he spend a good deal in England?” I asked.
Mr. Halfin shook his head.
“I think he cut things pretty fine there. Might have done better very likely if he hadn’t.”
I got up from my chair.
“Well, thank you, Mr. Halfin,” I said.
“But you’ll leave me an address, won’t you, Mr. Legatt?” he pleaded rather than asked. “I might want it in a hurry, for all I know.”
I gave Mr. Halfin my address in London and the address of our office at Rangoon. But I do not like mysteries. So when he had neatly blotted his book, I asked:
“Will you tell me why you all go up in the air when you hear my name?”
I see no reason why I should be taken for a lunatic more often than other people, but I do seem to find myself continually suffering from that misconception. Mr. Halfin gaped at me, and then reassured himself.
“You are joking, Mr. Legatt. Ha! ha!” and he joined in the joke.
“I’m not joking at all, Mr. Halfin.”
“You mean to say that you don’t know?”
“I definitely don’t know.”
Mr. Halfin at last accepted my statement.
“Very well, then,” said he. He became precise, formal, a creature of limitations and prohibitions.
“Yes?” said I, encouragingly.
“I can’t tell you, Mr. Legatt. Good morning!”
By the merest chance, just outside the door of the bank, I ran into the Captain of the Moulmein.
“Here! Stop!” I cried, catching hold of his arm. “Why does everybody go off the deep end when I ask them about Crowther?”
“Don’t you know — —” began the Captain, goggle-eyed in a second, like the rest of them.
“No! No! No!” I exclaimed. “I don’t know, and though I’m not off my head, I shall be unless you answer me.”
At last the answer came.
“Crowther’s left you all his money in his will. I know, because I was one of the witnesses, and Styles, the agent, was the other. The bank manager has got it with, I believe, a letter of instructions to be delivered to you after Crowther’s death.”
So that was the secret. I am bound to say that I was a little staggered myself.
“When did he make his will?” I asked.
“After that trip up to Bhamo.”
“And where is he now?”
The Captain of the Moulmein pushed back his helmet and reflected.
“I did hear that he had been seen at Prome, down towards Rangoon — you know — the place with the Shwe Tsan-Dau Pagoda, but I haven’t run across him for months and months.”
And ask questions as I might, I could learn no more of Crowther than that. A total eclipse had hidden that shattered man, and I, a little annoyed that I should be so pestered by troublesome recollections of him, followed his example and vanished out of Burma.
I remained for the next eighteen months in England, dividing my time between the office in London and a house which I had bought near Woodbridge, in Suffolk. At the end of that time we were negotiating for a new lease with the Government of Burma, and it was necessary that a representative of the Company should go out and come to terms on the spot. I claimed the right to go. Internal questions of administration delayed the settlement of my business, and finding that I had a couple of months with nothing to do, I decided to spend them in the forest country which had never ceased to appeal to me. Thus once more I found myself with a brace of rifles and a shotgun, heading for the upper reaches of the Irrawaddy. I was twenty-nine years of age, heart-free and foolishly proud of my freedom. I could and did say to myself, adapting Crowther’s derisive phrase; “I am one of the Untouchables.” This was to be the last holiday of the kind which I should have for many years and I determined to make the most of it before settling down to the humdrum life which apparently awaited me.
I travelled on the old Moulmein. She had a lighter alongside and we stopped at many villages; and I noticed that at each stopping-place now one, now two monks in their yellow robes, came on board with their sleeping-mats, their beggar bowls and their acolytes, and squatted upon the lighter’s deck. I was astonished at this unusual traffic and the Captain explained it to me.
“There’s to be a great pongyi byan up at Schwegu. An old gaingok died there last year, and since he was a very holy abbot, they have kept him in honey — by the way, you don’t eat honey whilst you are in Burma, do you? — until they could collect enough money to give him a proper send-off. They’ve got it now and there’ll be three days’ gaming and play-acting and dancing, and the big fireworks at the end when the body’s burnt.”
A new idea occurred to the Captain. He looked at me curiously and smiled.
“Yes, you travelled with me nearly two years ago, didn’t you?”
“As far as Katha.”
“Yes, and I met you afterwards in Mandalay.”
“Outside the bank.”
“That’s right, Mr. Legatt, isn’t it? Take a walk!”
He led me forward and pointed to a monk on the lighter who sat a little apart with his boy servant in front of him. His back was towards us and he was as immobile as a coloured figure in stone. His Talapot fan and his rosary of Indian shot seeds lay on the edge of his mat at his side. His eyes were fixed upon a great palm-leaf book which he held upon his knees, but whether he was reading it or lost in contemplation I could not tell. Certainly he never turned a page whilst we watched him. In a word he was as orthodox as a monk could be.
“There’s a friend of yours,” said the Captain.
I had an acquaintanceship, by now, with a good many Buddhist monks up and down the country, but I could not remember any one of them whom I had the right to call a friend. I shook my head.
“I’m right, Mr. Legatt,” the Captain repeated with a
laugh.
I moved to one side so that I might catch a glimpse of my friend’s face. It was square and rather fleshless and in a vague way familiar. But even so I didn’t recognise him until I began to ask how did the Captain of the Moulmein know that the monk was my friend. I had only once travelled on the Moulmein and there had only been one man on board of her whom its Captain could call my friend. I ran down to the lower deck and crossed on to the lighter. I ran up the companion to its upper deck, and there, wrapped in the yellow robe, reading his great book, sat Michael Crowther.
I leaned against the rail by the side of him.
“Good morning, Michael,” I said.
“Good morning, Mr. Legatt,” he returned, lifting his eyes from his book and laying a finger on the passage at which his reading broke off. But he looked ahead of him and not at me. “I saw you come on board yesterday.”
“You might have given me a sign.”
“My name is U Wisaya now,” he said, explaining in this simple way that with his new world I had nothing whatever to do.
But I was not to be put off so easily. I sat down on the deck by the side of him. I found that I was not so astonished by this new evolution of his character as I had expected to be. Michael Crowther was naturally violent. He swung between the extremes, but never hung between them. He would be at one or the other before you could wink. He was all England one day, and all Burma the next, and for anything I could be sure about, in a month’s time he might have enlisted in the Foreign Legion and already have deserted from it.
“You may call yourself whatever you like, Michael. Uncle Sunday is a very good name too,” I said comfortably. “But you’ll excuse me if I talk the lingo you used to like. I’m from Missouri and you’ve got to show me.”
Crowther, still keeping his finger on the paragraph of his book, explained.
“There was an American a good many years ago. Just a tourist. He came out sightseeing. The River, Mandalay, the Shwe Dagon and pagodas generally — that sort of thing. But he didn’t go away. The country took him, the sun, the good humour, the pleasant lazy life. He came up the Irrawaddy several times with me on the old Dagonet. He was always going back, but he never did. He shot for a season or two and then gave it up. He travelled out to the Shan States, then up the Chindwin to the jade mines. Just seeing the place — before he went away for good. But after the country, the religion took him — see, Mr. Legatt? I knew that he was in a monastery down at Prome or Pagan; and after you got off at Katha I began to wonder about him — yes, and about me. I had come to the end of things — see?”
So Crowther, on his return to Mandalay, had liquidated his belongings and set off for Prome and from Prome again to Pagan, that dead city of pagodas. There his search had ended.
“The American was a full-blown pongyi and learned! I was ashamed after all my years on the Irrawaddy to realise how little I knew,” Crowther stated. “He talked to me. I was very unhappy. To be nothing at all — not even a separate conscious soul. That sounded pretty good, and worth a thousand existences if so many were needed to fit one. All life was misery. All passions dragged you further and further from the Great Peace. To feel compassion for all living creatures, but to know no closer ties. He lent me some books. He preached to me the great Allegory. Do you know it?”
“No,” said I.
“You should,” and a gleam of humour shone about his mouth. “There’s a forest in it. A forest of glades and flickering lights and white, big, heavily-scented flowers, and golden-coloured fruits, and one rock path out of it, and a Keeper with a whip, Time. He lets no one rest in those glades. Lie down and the lash falls. All must run and run nowhere but where they ran before. The fruits have thorns which wound and the scent of the flowers cloys and the lights flickering between the trees dazzle, and fatigue comes and there’s no end to it but to follow the rock path and the steady star, as at the last all men must.”
I felt a little bewildered and no doubt my face showed it. For he turned to me with a real smile.
“You’re thinking, Mr. Legatt, that you might hear just the same kind of allegory at a Revivalist meeting in the East End of London, aren’t you, now?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“But you’re wrong. All men must at the last take the rock path and see the steady star and escape the lashes of the whip. There’s the difference. It may be after ages in hell, a thousand lives as animal or woman, but in the end all — do you follow that? — all — all without exception will make the great Renunciation and enter into the Great Peace.”
Crowther was speaking with so quiet a simplicity and a sincerity so obvious that I began to wonder whether my easy judgement of him as a man who must rush from pole to pole and back again was correct.
“But who am I to expound the law?” he continued. “I, a mere upazin and novice who has not yet mastered the two hundred and twenty-seven precepts of the Book of Enfranchisement.”
He tapped the big palm-leaf volume upon his knees and at that moment a girl with a silk scarf about her shoulders and her lustrous hair secured with a jewelled pin passed him on her way to the bows of the ship. She was powdered with thanakah, she wore gold tubes in the lobes of her ears, she smoked a big green cheroot, and as she passed she gave that odd little kick of the heel which knocks upon the heart of so many Burmese gallants. But Michael Crowther did not see it. At the first glimpse of her up went his palm-leaf fan before his face in the orthodox way, so that no fleeting desire might disturb his meditations and set him back a mile or so on his rock path.
“She has gone, Michael,” I said, and some imp nipped me till I asked:
“And what of the sapphire, Uncle?”
Michael Crowther’s body stiffened, and he remained silent, looking on the ground six feet ahead of him according to the rules. Oh, that American monk at Pagan had grounded his neophyte very well! I began to feel remorseful at awakening old memories, but so far from taking my question amiss, he answered gently:
“I am glad that you asked that question, Mr. Legatt. The sapphire and all the other ornaments hang round the spire of a pagoda in the monastery grounds at Pagan, high up, and just under the swelling diamond-bud at the very top.”
I felt ashamed of my question now. It is not, as the world knows, uncommon for the devout to give such votive offerings for the decoration of their temples. But I was still a little under the persuasion that I was merely a witness of one of Michael Crowther’s more violent agitations; and was not prepared for his consecration of these ornaments.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“There is no need for regret,” he continued. “I shall tell you the plan in my mind. I live a mendicant with my begging bowl and pledged never to handle gold and silver for any of my needs, I, U Wisaya. But meanwhile there is money in the bank at Mandalay standing in the name of Michael Crowther. There it will stand and grow.”
“For what purpose?” I asked.
“In ten years’ time when I am admitted into the class of pongyis I shall take all that money and build at Tagaung a white pagoda decorated with gold — —”
“To the glory of Ma Shwe At,” I suggested with a smile.
“To the glory of our Lord Buddha,” he answered seriously. “And when that is done I shall ask permission to remove the sapphire and the ornaments and I shall hang them high on the spire of my pagoda at Tagaung amongst the little silver bells. I shall rest in its shadow, hearing those bells ring with every breath of wind, until I pass on into another life if I needs must.”
I understood now why Michael had bequeathed to me his little fortune. The tenor of his letter of instructions was as clear to me as if I had broken the seal and read the words. If Michael died before he was a fully-fledged monk, I was to build his pagoda for him at Tagaung. To tell the truth I was a little moved by his trust in me. I had not covered myself with dignity during this conversation, and conscious of it, I was trying to fix the blame on Michael. But I had not discovered a pretext when the Moulmein swept in sight of
the island of Schwegu with its golden spires gleaming against a background of dark trees like a city in a fairy tale.
But as we drew near to it, it became gaudy as a fair. On a wide, open space between the river and the town, booths with sides of matting and thatched roofs and projecting eaves had been built. There would be gaming and feasting and a play which would take the three days at the last to perform. At one side of the space stood a new pagoda of pasteboard and gilt-paper, on the upper floor of which the abbot and his coffin would finally be burnt. Close by the side of this glistening outrage was a tiny temple in the same appalling taste which would carry the coffin on guy ropes up to the place of burning. A little apart stood a painted truck with a great rope of jungle grass at each end, on which the coffin in its tiny temple would first be placed for the tug-of-war — the great attraction of the festival. Anybody might join in and on either side, and anybody might leave off at any moment and take a rest. It would be very much like the race in Alice in Wonderland. At one end there would be cries of “We must bury our dead!”; at the other “You shall not take our friend from us!” The tug-of-war might last for three hours or for the whole three days, with an armistice at each nightfall. In the end, of course, the burial party would win, and those who had the luck or the foresight to be hanging on to the grass rope at that end of the truck would achieve great merit and shorten the number of the lives which stood between them and Nirvana. Around this open space rockets were planted ready to be touched off on the evening of the third day. They were aimed more or less at the gilt-paper pagoda and one of them no doubt would start the cremation; though to be sure several people might be killed first. There the whole construction stood in the blazing sun, as complete an affair of gimcrack and gingerbread as a primitive imagination could devise.
I glanced at Michael as he picked up his rosary and handed his mat to his acolyte. How in the world could he reconcile this showman’s stuff with the simple faith he had been explaining? I was careful this time not to ask my question, but Michael answered it without so much as a look at me.
“All religions collect tinsel,” he said, “just as all ships collect molluscs. The ships and the religions are not hurt. They just want cleaning from time to time.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 642