The Pointing Man Page 19

  XIX

  IN WHICH LEH SHIN WHISPERS A STORY INTO THE EAR OF SHIRAZ, THE PUNJABI;THE BURDEN OF WHICH IS: "HAVE I FOUND THEE, O MINE ENEMY?"

  A man with a grievance, however silent he may be by nature, is,generally speaking, voluble upon the subject of his wrongs, real orimaginary; but a man with a grudge is intrinsically different. An oldgrudge or an old hate are silent things, because they have deep rootsand do not require attention, and it is only in flashes of suddenfeeling, or when the means to the end is in view, that the man with agrudge reveals details and tells his story. Shiraz paid several visitsto, and spent some time in the shop of, Leh Shin before he arrived atwhat he wanted to know.

  He went also to Mhtoon Pah's shop, but came away without discoveringanything. Into the ears of Hartley, Head of the Police, the Burman ragedand screamed his passionate hate, because he believed it promoted hisobject; but to the Punjabi he was smooth and complaisant, and refused tobe drawn into any admission. Leh Shin, the Chinaman, was Bazaar dust tohis dignity, and he knew naught of him, save only that the man had anevil name earned by evil deeds, and Shiraz, who was as crafty as MhtoonPah, saw that he had come to a "no thoroughfare" and turned his witstowards Leh Shin.

  Little by little, and without any apparent motive, he worked theChinaman up to the point where silence is agony, and at last, as a riverin flood crashes over the mud-banks, the whole tale of his wrongs camebursting through his closed mouth, and with the sweat pouring down hisyellow face he out it into words.

  The meanest story receives something vital in its constitution when itis told with all the force and conviction of years of hatred behind thesimple fact of expression, and the story that Leh Shin recounted toShiraz was a mean story. The Chinaman had the true Eastern capacity forremembering the least item in the long account that lay unsettledbetween himself and the Burman. His memory was a safe in which thesmallest fact connected with it was kept intact and his mind traversedan interminable road of detail.

  The two men had begun life as friends. The friendship between them datedback to the days when Leh Shin and Mhtoon Pah were small boys runningtogether in the streets of Mangadone, and no antipathy that is a firstinstinct has ever the depth of root given to the bitterness that canspring from a breach in long friendship, and Leh Shin and Mhtoon Pahhated as only old friends ever do hate.

  Leh Shin started in life with all the advantages that Mhtoon Pah lacked,and he appreciated the slavish friendship of the Burman, which grew withyears. Mhtoon Pah became a clerk on scanty pay in the employ of a ricefirm, and Leh Shin, at his father's death, became sole owner of thehouse in Paradise Street; no insignificant heritage, as it was stockedwith a store of things that increased in value with age, and in theguise of his greatest friend Mhtoon Pah was made welcome at the shopwhenever he had time to go there. From his clerkship in the firm of ricemerchants Mhtoon Pah, at the insistence of his friend, became partpartner in the increasing destiny of the curio shop. He travelled forLeh Shin, and brought back wares and stores in days when railways wereonly just beginning to be heard of, and it was difficult and evendangerous to bring goods across the Shan frontier. He had the control ofa credit trust, though not of actual money, and for a time thepartnership prospered. Mhtoon Pah was always conscious that he was asubordinate depending on the good will of his principal, and even as heate with cunning into the heart of the fruit, the outside skin showed notrace of his ravages. Leh Shin's belief in his friend's integrity madehim careless in the matter of looking into things for himself, andlulled into false security, he dreamed that he prospered; his dreambeing solidified by the accounts which he received from the Burman. Inthe zenith of his affluence he married the daughter of a Burman intowhose house Mhtoon Pah had introduced him, and it was only after thewedding festivities that he became aware that he had supplanted thefriend of his bosom in the affections of the smiling Burmese girl.Mhtoon Pah was away on a journey, and on his return rejoiced in thesubtle, flattering manner that he knew so well how to practise, and ifhe felt rancour, he hid it under a smile.

  Marriage took the Chinaman's attention from the shop, and Mhtoon Pah,still a subordinate in the presence of his master, was arrogant andfilled with assurance in his dealings with others. Interested friendswarned the Chinaman, but he would not listen to them. He believed inMhtoon Pah and he had covered him with gifts.

  "Was he not my friend, this monster of infamy?" he wailed, rockinghimself on his bed. "O that I had seen his false heart, and torn it,smoking, from his ribs!"

  Leh Shin was secure in his summer of prosperity, and when his son wasborn he felt that there was no good thing left out of the pleasant waysof life. In the curio shop in Paradise Street Mhtoon Pah waxed fat andstudied the table of returns, and in the garden of the house where LehShin lived in his fool's paradise, the Chinaman loosed his hold upon thereins of authority.

  The first sign of the altered and averted faces of the gods was madeknown to Leh Shin when his wife dwindled and pined and died.

  "But that, O friend, was not the work of thine enemy," said Shiraz,pulling at his beard reflectively. "Even in thine anger, seek to followthe ways of justice."

  "How do I know it?" replied Leh Shin. "He ever held an evil wish towardsme. Her death was slow, like unto the approach of disaster. I know notwhence it came, but my heart informs me that Mhtoon Pah designed it."

  Quickly upon the death of his wife came the disappearance of his son.The boy had been playing in the garden, and the garden had been searchedin vain for him. No trace of the child could be found, though Mangadonewas searched from end to end.

  "Searched," cried the Chinaman, "as the pocket of a coat. No corner leftthat was not peered into, no house that was not ransacked." TheChinaman's voice quivered with passion, and his whole body shook andtrembled.

  Life flowed back into its accustomed current, and nearly a year passedbefore the next trouble came upon Leh Shin. Mhtoon Pah came back from aprolonged journey that had necessitated his going to Hong-Kong, and hecame back with dismay in his face and a story of loss upon loss. He hadcompromised his master's credit to a heavy extent, and not only thegains he had made but the principal was swept away into an awful chasmwhere the grasping hands of creditors grabbed the whole of Leh Shin'spatrimony, claiming it under papers signed by his hand.

  "It was then that light flowed in upon my darkness, and I saw the longprepared evil that was the work of one man's hand." Leh Shin rose uponhis string bed and his voice was thin with rabid anger. "I caught him bythe throat and would have stabbed him with my knife, but he, being ayounger man than I, threw me off from him, and, when he made me answer,I saw my foe of many years stand to render his account to me. '_Thou_,to call me thief,' said he, 'who robbed me of my wife and cheated me ofmy son.'"

  After that, poverty and ruin drove him slowly from his house outsideMangadone to the shelter of the shop in Paradise Street, and from there,at length, to the burrow in the Colonnade. The bitterness of his ownfall was great enough in itself to harden the heart of any man, but itwas doubled by the story of the years that followed. Slowly, and withoutcalling too evident attention to himself, Mhtoon Pah began to prosper.He opened a booth first, where he sat and cursed Leh Shin whenever hepassed, saying loudly that he had ruined him and swindled him out of allhis little store, that by hard work and attention to business he hadcollected.

  From the booth, just as Leh Shin left Paradise Street, Mhtoon Pahprogressed to a small unpretentious shop, and a year later he movedagain, as though inspired by a spirit of malice, into the very premiseswhere Leh Shin had first employed him as a clerk. That day Leh Shin wentto his Joss and swore vengeance, though how his vengeance could beworked into fact was more than his opium-muddled brain could conceive.Vengeance was his dream by night, his one concentrated thought by day,and he came no nearer to any hope of fulfilling it. Mhtoon Pah, wealthyand respected; Mhtoon Pah, the builder of shrines; Mhtoon Pah, who spokewith high Sahibs and had the ear of the Head of the Police himself, andLeh Shin clad in ragged clothes, and only able to ke
ep his hungry soulin his body by means of his opium traffic, how could he strike at hisfoe's prosperity? His hate glared out of his eyes as he panted, stoppingto draw breath at the end of his account.

  Had Shiraz known the legend of the wise wolf who changed from man tobeast, he might have supposed that some such change was taking place inLeh Shin. His trembling lips dribbled, his head jerked as thoughsupported by wires, and his eyebrows twitched violently as though he hadno control over their movements. He had forgotten Shiraz and wasthinking only of the tribulation he had suffered and of the man whosegross form inhabited his whole mental world. Shaking like a leaf, he gotoff his bed and stood on the earth floor.

  "May he be eaten by mud-sores," he said savagely. "May he die by his ownhand, and so, as is the Teaching, be shut out of peace, and return toearth as a scorpion, to be crushed again into lesser life by a stone."

  "By the will of Allah, who alone is great, there will be an end of thytroubles," said Shiraz non-committally as he got up. "Thou hast sufferedmuch. Be it requited to thee as thou wouldst have it fall in the hourthat is already written; for no man may escape his destiny, though he befleet of foot as the antlered stag."

  "Son of a Prophet, thy words are full of wisdom."

  "Let it comfort thine affliction," said Shiraz, with the air of a manmaking a gift.

  "Yet I would hasten the end." He gave a strange, soundless laugh thatstartled Shiraz, who looked at him sideways. "And mark this, O wise one,mine enemy hath already felt the first lash of the whip fall, even thewhip that scourged my own body. He hath lost the boy whom he everpraised in the streets, and suffered much grief thereby. May his griefthrive and may it be added to until the weight is greater than he canbear." He swung up his hand with a stabbing movement. "I would rip himlike a cushion of fine down. I would strike his face with my shoe as the_Nats_ that he dreads caught his screaming soul."

  "Peace, peace," said Shiraz. "Such words are ill for him who speaks, andill alike for him who listens. In such a day as already the end isscored like a comet's tail across the sky, the end shall be, and notbefore that day. Cease from thy clamour lest the street hear thee, andrun to know the cause."

  He took leave of his friend and went slowly away to his own house,having achieved his master's mission, and feeling well satisfied withhis afternoon's work.

  Motive, the hidden spring of action, was made clear, and Shiraz knewenough of his master's methods to realize that he had come upon a verydefinite piece of evidence against Leh Shin, the Chinaman. From thepoint of view of Shiraz the man was quite justified in killing Absalom,since "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," appeared fair andreasonable to his mind. The Burman had overreached Leh Shin, and now LehShin had begun the cycle again, and had smitten at the curio dealerthrough the curio dealer's boy, for whom he appeared to have afanatical affection. According to Shiraz, the house in Paradise Streetstood a good chance of being burned to the ground. If this "accident"happened, Shiraz would know exactly whose hand it was that lighted thematch. It was all part of an organized scheme, and though he did notknow how Coryndon would bring the facts home, fitting each man with hisshare, like a second skin to his body, he felt satisfied that he hadprovided the lump of clay for the skilled potter to mould into shape.

  He took off his turban, and lay down on his carpet. The day was stillhot, and the drowsy afternoon outside his closed windows blinked andstared through the hours, the glare intensifying the shadows under thetrees and along the Colonnade. The soda-water and lemonade sellers intheir small booths drove a roaring trade as they packed theaquamarine-green bottles in blocks of dirty ice to keep the frizzlingdrink cool; and the cawing of marauding crows and the cackle of fowlblended with the shouting of drivers and sellers of wares, who heedednot the staring heat of the sun.

  After the emotion of telling his tale, Leh Shin slept in his own smallbox of darkness, and, in the rich curio shop in Paradise Street, MhtoonPah leaned on an embroidered pillow with closed eyes. The stream of lifeflowed slowly and softly through the hours when only the poor have needto work; soft as the current of a full tide that slides between widebanks, and soft as sleep, or fate, or the destiny which no man can hopeto escape.