Where the Pavement Ends Part 16

He sprang up.

"Karaki! Me one big fella friend 'long you: savee? You one big fella friend 'long me: savee? We two dam big fella friend, my word!... What?"

"Yes," said Karaki. No other response. He looked at Pellett and he looked away toward Bougainville. "Yes," he said, "my word," and went on cleaning his gun--the black islander, inscrutable, incomprehensible, an enigma always, and to the end.

The end came two days later at Bougainville.

Under a gorgeous dawn they came into a bay that opened before their prow as with jeweled arms of welcome. The land lay lapped in bright garments like a sleeper half awakened, all flushed and smiling, sensuous intimate, thrilling with life, breathing warm scents--

These were some of the foolish phrases Pellett babbled to himself as he leaped ash.o.r.e and ran up on a rocky point to see and to feel and to draw all the charm of the place to himself.

Meanwhile Karaki, that simple and efficient little man, was proceeding methodically about his own affairs. He landed his bolts of cloth, his tobacco, his knives, and the other loot. He landed his box of cartridges and his rifle and his fine tomahawk. The goods were somewhat damaged by sea water, but the weapons had been carefully cleaned and polished....

Pellett was declaiming poetry aloud to the alluring solitude when he was aware of a gentle footfall and turned, surprised to find Karaki standing just behind him with the rifle at his hip and the ax in his hand.

"Well," said Pellett cheerfully, "what d'you want, old chappie?"

"Me like," said Karaki, while there gleamed in his eyes the strange light that Moy Jack had glimpsed there, like the flicker of a turning shark; "me like'm too much one fella head b'long you!"

"What? Head! Whose--my head?"

"Yes," said Karaki simply.

That was the way of it. That was all the mystery. The savage had fallen enamored of the head of the beachcomber, and Christopher Alexander Pellett had been betrayed by his fatal red whiskers. In Karaki's country a white man's head, well smoked, is a thing to be desired above wealth, above lands and chiefs.h.i.+ps, fame, and the love of women. In all Karaki's country was no head like the head of Pellett. Therefore Karaki had served to win it with the patience and single faith of a Jacob. For this he had schemed and waited, committed theft and murder, expended sweat and cunning, starved and denied himself, nursed, watched, tended, fed, and saved his man that he might bring the head alive and on the hoof--so to speak--to the spot where he could remove it at leisure and enjoy the fruits of his labor in safety.

Pellett saw all this at a flash, understood it so far as any white could understand: the whole elemental and stupendous simplicity of it. And standing there in his new strength and sanity under the fair promise of the morning, he gave a laugh that pealed across the waters and started the sea birds from their cliffs, the deep-throated laugh of a man who fathoms and accepts the last great jest....

For finally, by corrected list, the possessions of Christopher Alexander Pellett were these: his name, still intact; the ruins of some rusty ducks; his precious red whiskers--and a soul which had been neatly recovered, renewed, refurbished, reanimated, and restored to him by his good friend Karaki.

_"Thou shouldst die as he dies, For whom none sheddeth tears; Filling thine eyes And fulfilling thine ears With the brilliance ... the bloom and the beauty...."_

Thus chanted Christopher Alexander Pellett over the waters of the bay, and then whirled, throwing wide his arms:

"Shoot, d.a.m.n you! It's cheap at the price!"

THE SLANTED BEAM

All the world meets beneath the towering spire of Shway Dagohn, which pins back the clouds and throws a shadow between India and the China Sea. All paths in the East tend toward that great paG.o.da with its mighty shaft of gold. Around the sweep of its pedestal, among its terraced mazes, is one of the common crossroads where men as various as their skins and their faiths come to mingle; to wors.h.i.+p or to wonder: seeking each in his own fas.h.i.+on whatever clue to the meaning of things he can take from that vast finger which carries the eye and the soul up and up and points forever to the heart of mystery.

So it was natural enough, as it was also inevitable and ordained since the beginning of time, that Cloots should have met the headman of Apyodaw at last in one of the tiny shrines cl.u.s.tering under the Temple of the Slanted Beam on Thehngoottara Hill....

The shrine in no way differed from the many lesser chapels and _zaydees_ that lined the ramp and the inner and outer platforms. Together they might have seemed a jumble of booths thrown up there to attract the unhurrying, sweet-voiced, hip-swinging natives who drifted and gossiped like holiday makers at a fair.

But those booths were built of enduring stone with a serene and flawless symmetry. And the wares they offered were the philosophies of an old, old religion. And the folk themselves in their thighbound silks of softened maroon and olive and citrine and cutch, with the pink fillets about their brows and their open and twinkling brown faces, were a very ancient folk indeed, who knew what they knew and did as they did a small matter of thirty centuries ago.

Cloots stepped into the chapel for no purpose, in mere idle discernment of color and contrast.

The paG.o.da and its whole base, dominating the city, swam in a level flood of late sunset. Every surface had taken an almost intolerable richness and warmth, from the far, jeweled spike of the _htee_ four hundred feet above, down through fire-gilt and smoldering saffron to the pigeon-blood ruby of the monastery roofs below. Even the shadows gave off a purplish haze. But here, inside this plain, windowless cell of white-washed wall and gray pavement, the visitor pa.s.sed with the swift relief of a diver's plunge to cool and quiet, and the pervading peace of the Excellent Law.

At the end facing the doorway was the sole furnis.h.i.+ng--a deep niche and altar where sat the Buddha in perpetual contemplation.

Some forgotten devotee, toiling wearily like the rest of us up the ladder of existence, had once earned the right to skip a step or two by the gift of this life-size image. Some forgotten artist had acquired merit by faithfully carving and lacquering it on teak, with the left hand lying palm upward in the lap and the right hanging over the knee--with the calm and pa.s.sionless regard which somehow, no matter what the medium, no matter what conventions interpose, is always so surely portrayed. But that had been long and long ago. Decay had eaten through those painted and gilded robes. The soot of many years had tanned those sacred lineaments to an obscure and homely human tint.

Along the near edge of the altar lay a shallow trough for the better disposal of such offerings as the shrine might receive: fresh flowers and flakes of popped and colored rice, incense sticks of which the vapor rose in a slow, unwavering veil, and a row of paper flags to record the prayers of the pious.

Midway there burned a single taper, a point of light that dimly illumined the holy spot and revealed to Cloots, as he entered, its only other occupant.

On a bamboo mat knelt a young girl, fairly on her knees, as the Rule allows for such frail creatures. Her black hair was drawn sleek as a bird's wing. At her breast she held a new lotus blossom, no softer nor more delicate than the fingers that offered it. Her little feet were carefully tucked within the silken _tamehn_. Her head was bowed. And the gleaming curve of her body, all her lithe vigor, was subdued, was humbled, to the act of ecstatic supplication before the Excellent One.

Cloots arrived as a confident and more or less truly appreciative observer of all these details. They were familiar to him. He understood them, so far as any perceptive, far-wandering white is likely to understand. They ministered to him.

He approved the flaring sunset and he approved this discreet retreat--the hushed and perfumed air of wors.h.i.+p no less than the stir and brilliance outside. He could interpret the sigh of imploring lips and the trouble of a fluttered little breast before the altar as keenly as the murmur and laughter of the barefoot crowds and the distant music of numberless paG.o.da chimes. He enjoyed the more intimate delights of exotic life as well as its bright outward cheek. Particularly, having just renewed his contact with an engaging and responsive native people, he enjoyed this opportunity with a native girl--decidedly engaging and responsive probably.

No mere brutal, casual sensualist was Cloots. He found it good to be alive. He found it very good to be back in a country where he was master of the idiom and the customs. He found it exceeding good to be contemplating the skillful conquest of such a pilgrim, so earnest, so adorable, and so appropriately concerned. The lady, he gathered, was praying for a husband....

He smiled, and when he turned his glance it encountered the eyes of the headman of Apyodaw, who had entered noiselessly at his side and who now stood between him and the entrance.

"I knew I should find thee, Shway Cloots."

It said something for Cloots that he did not cease smiling all at once, that he gave no outward sign, and that he was able to answer quite soon and quite steadily in the same dialect.

"Hast been looking for me, Moung Poh Sin?"

"I did not have to look, Shway. It was written."

"Hast been waiting for me, then?"

"It was written I would have to wait."

"Was it also written that I had become any safe or easy game to track into a corner?" demanded Cloots.

"I did not track thee."

"Half an hour ago I left the docks, newly landed from Moulmein. No man could have given thee word of my return. No man knew if ever I should return."

"I knew."

"By that I mark thee a liar and a fool, Moung Poh Sin, for I knew it not myself. I see now thou hast been watching and spying for me. By the harbor, or by the paG.o.da here, belike. A long vigil.... But it can profit nothing. What could it profit thee? I am not the kind to be followed and hunted down."