The Pointing Man. Marjorie Douie
Pah. A strange-looking effigy in tight breeches, with pointing yellow hands and a smiling yellow face, stood outside the shop, eternally asking people in wooden, dumb show, to go in and be robbed by the proprietor. He had stood there and pointed for so long that the green glaze of his coat was sun-blistered, but he invariably drew the attention of passing tourists, and acted as a sign-board. He pointed at a small door up a flight of steps, and behind the small door was a dark shop, smelling of sandal-wood and cassia, and strong with the burning fumes of joss-sticks. Innumerable cardboard boxes full of Japanese dolls, full of glass bracelets of all colours, full of ivory figures, and full of amber and jade ornaments, were piled in the shelves. Silver bands, embossed in relief with the history of the Gaudama—the Lord Buddha—stood under glass protection, and everything that the heart of the touring American or Britisher could desire was to be had, at a price, in the curio shop of Mhtoon Pah. Umbrellas of all colours from Bussan; silk from Shantung; carpets from Mirzapore; silver peacocks, Japanese embroideries, shell-trimmed bags from Shan and Cochin, all were there; and the wealth of Mhtoon Pah was great.
Everybody knew the curio dealer: he had beguiled and swindled each new arrival in Mangadone, and his personality helped to make him a very definite figure in the place. He was a large man, his size accentuated by his full silk petticoat; a man with large feet, large hands and a round bullet head, set on a thick neck. He had a few sleek black hairs at the corners of his mouth, and his long, narrow eyes, with thick yellow whites and inky-black pupils, never expressed any emotion. Clothed in strawberry-red silk and a white coat, with a crimson scarf knotted low over his forehead, he was very nearly as strange and wonderful a sight as his own shop of myriad wares, and his manner was at all times the manner of a Grand Duke. Mhtoon Pah was as well known as the pointing effigy outside, but, whereas the world in the street believed they knew what the wooden man pointed at, no one could ever tell what Mhtoon Pah saw, and no one knew except Mhtoon Pah himself.
All day long Mhtoon Pah sat inside his shop on a low divan and smoked cheroots, and only when a customer was of sufficient importance did he ever rise to conduct a sale himself. He was assisted by a thin, eager boy, a native Christian from Ootacamund, who had followed several trades before he became the shop assistant of Mhtoon Pah. He was useful because he could speak English, and he had been dressing-boy to a married Sahib who lived in a big house at the end of the Cantonment, therefore he knew something of the ways of Mem-Sahibs; and he had taken a prize at the Sunday school, therefore Absalom was a boy of good character, and was known very nearly as well as Mhtoon Pah himself.
It was a hot, stifling evening, the evening of July the 29th. The rains had lashed the country for days, and even the trees that grew in among the houses of Paradise Street were fresh and green, though one of the hot, burning breaks of blue sky and glaring sunlight had baked the road into Indian-red dust once more, and the interior of Mhtoon Pah's curio shop was heavy with stale scents and dark shadows that crept out as the gloom of evening settled in upon it. Mhtoon Pah moved about looking at his goods, and touching them with careful hands. He hovered over an ivory lady carrying an umbrella, and looked long at a white marble Buddha, who returned his look with an equally inscrutable regard. The Buddha sat cross-legged, thinking for ever and ever about eternity, and Mhtoon Pah moved round in red velvet toe-slippers, pattering lightly as he went, for in spite of his bulk Mhtoon Pah had an almost soundless walk. Having gone over everything and stood to count the silver bowls, he waited as though he was listening, and after a little the light creak of the staircase warned him that steps were coming towards the shop from the upper rooms.
"Absalom," he called, and the steps hurried, and after a moment's talk to which the boy listened carefully as though receiving directions, he told him to close the shop and place his chair at the top of the steps, as he desired to sit outside and look at the street.
When the chair was placed, Mhtoon Pah took up his elevated position and smoked silently. The toil of the day was over, and he leaned his arm along the back of his chair and crossed one leg over his knee. He could hear Absalom closing the shop behind him, and he turned his curious, expressionless eyes upon the boy as he passed down the steps and mingled with the crowd in the street. Just opposite, a story-teller squatted on the ground in the centre of a group of men who laughed and clapped their hands, his flashing teeth and quick gesticulations adding to each point he made; it was still clear enough to see his alternating expression of assumed anger or amusement. It was clear enough to notice the coloured scarves and smiling faces of a bullock cart full of girls going slowly homewards, and it was clear enough to see and recognize the Rev. Francis Heath, hurrying at speed between the crowd; clear enough to see the Rev. Francis stop for a moment to wish his old pupil Absalom good evening, and then vanish quickly like a figure flashed on a screen by a cinematograph.
Lights came out in high windows and sounds of bagpipes and beating tom-toms began inside the open doors of a nautch house. An evil-looking house where green dragons curled up the fretted entrance, and where, overhead, faces peered from a balcony into the street. There was noise enough there to attract any amount of attention. Smart carriages, with white-uniformed syces, hurried up, bearing stout, plethoric men from the wharf offices, and Mhtoon Pah saluted several of the sahibs, who reclined in comfort behind fine pairs of trotting horses.
Their time for passing having gone, and the street relieved of the disturbance, lamps were carried out and set upon tables and booths, but a few red streaks of evening tinted the sky, and faces that passed were still recognizable. A bay pony ridden by a lady almost at a gallop came so fast that she was up the street and round the corner in a twinkling. If Mrs. Wilder was dining out on the night of July 29th she was running things close; equally so if she was receiving guests.
A flare of light from a window opposite fell across the face of the dancing man, who pointed at Mhtoon Pah, and appeared to make him offer his principal for sale, or introduce him to the street with an indicating finger. The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength, but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and the long, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with a wail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined in with the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hatted sailors from the Royal Indian Marine ships mingled with them.
All up and down the Mangadone River lights came out. Clear lights along the land, and wavering torch-lights in the water. Ships' port-holes cleared themselves in the darkness, ships' lights gleamed green and red in high stars up in the crows'-nests, or at the shapeless bulk of dark bows, and white sheets of strong electric clearness lay over one or two landing-stages where craft was moored alongside and overtime work still continued. Little sampans glided in and out like whispers, and small boats with crossed oars, rowed by one man, ferried to and fro, but it was late, and, gradually, all commercial traffic ceased.
It was quite late now, an hour when European life had withdrawn to the Cantonment. It was not an hour for Sahibs on foot to be about, and yet it seemed that there was one who found the night air of July 29th hot and close, and desired to go towards the river for the sake of the breeze and the fresh air. He, too, like all the others, passed along Paradise Street, passing quickly, as the others had passed, his head bent and his eyes averted from the faces that looked up at him from easy chairs, from crowded doorsteps, or that leaned over balconies. He, also, whoever he was, had not Mhtoon Pah's leisure to regard the street, and he went on with a steady, quick walk which took him out on to the wharf, and from the wharf along a waste place where the tram lines ceased, and away from there towards a cluster of lights in a house close over the dark river itself.
The stars came out overhead, and the Southern Cross leaned down; seen from the river over the twin towers of the cathedral, seen from the cathedral brooding over the native quarter, seen in Paradise Street not at all, and not in any way missed by the inhabitants, whose eyes were not upon the stars; seen again in the Cantonment, over the massed trees of the park, and seen remarkably well from the wide veranda of Mrs. Wilder's bungalow, where the guests sat after a long dinner, remarking upon the heat and oppressiveness of the tropic night. The fire-flies danced over the trees like iridescent sparks hung on invisible gauze, and even came into the lighted drawing-room, to sparkle with less radiance against the plain white walls. Fans whirred round and round like large tee-totums set near the ceiling, and even the electric light appeared to give out heat; no breeze stirred from the far-away river, no coolness came with the