Round the Bend (42 page)

He nodded gravely. “It shall be done. I shall bring it here tomorrow after sunrise, so that it can go with yours.”

Dr. Khaled said something, and the Wazir turned to me after a brief exchange. “It would be well that we should be certain that El Amin will come to Karachi,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better that the specialist should go direct to Bali.”

But Bali had no technical facilities such as Karachi hospital had. We talked about that for a time. “I tell you what I’ll do,” I said. “I’ll take the next trip down to Bali myself, as pilot. If his sister wants to come, I’ll take her, too. Then we’ll bring him back with us to Karachi and meet the specialist there.”

That settled that, and they went away, and I walked over to the hangar, not because I had anything to do there but because I wanted to get out of the office for a few minutes to think over how I was to tell this to Nadezna. I went back presently and called her in from the other office, and when she came, I said, “Bit of
bad news, Nadezna. They did a blood count at Karachi. It seems that Connie’s got a thing they call leukaemia.” And then I told her all about it.

She took it amazingly well. Asiatics do take these things well, of course; they never show their grief by any extravagant display of emotion. All she said was, “That’s fatal, isn’t it? He’s going to die?”

I was from the West, and perhaps we kid ourselves more than they do. “Oh, it’s not as bad as that,” I said. “He’ll have to go into hospital for some sort of treatment, possibly in Europe. He’ll be all right.”

She shook her head. “I think this is the end of it,” she said. “I’ve heard about this thing.”

“What have you heard?” I asked.

“There’s no cure for it at all,” she said quietly. “They may take you into hospital and mess you about, but once you’ve got it, you die just the same.”

“I can’t believe that’s true,” I said.

“I think it is.”

I turned the subject and told her about the letter I was going to write. She agreed that Connie ought to come up to Karachi and be properly examined, and she said that she would write as well. And then I said, “Look, Nadezna, I think I’ll go down to Bali myself again on the next trip, probably with Hosein as second pilot. I think it may take a bit of arguing to get him to come. Will you come with me this time?” I hesitated. “It’s not the holiday I wanted it to be, but I think it’ld help if you came. And then we can take him straight back to the hospital at Karachi.”

She said quietly, “You can’t go away again so soon, Tom. You’ve only just come back.”

“There’s nothing for me to do here,” I said. “The business runs all right without me.”

“Does it?” she asked. “I don’t believe it does.” And then she said, “I sometimes wonder who this business is supposed to benefit, you or Connie.”

“I make money out of it,” I said.

She smiled. “No, you don’t. I’ve never seen you spend a penny,
except on other people. You could live in a big house with plenty of servants and run a Bentley. But you don’t. You go on living in the chummery and the sergeants’ mess, and you drive a station wagon. You don’t make money at all, Tom. You make aeroplanes, that’s what you do. Every penny that you make goes back into the business.”

“What if it does?” I asked. “I like aeroplanes. I wouldn’t want a Bentley, anyway.”

“I suppose you’ll tell me next that you’re going down to Bali again because you like flying in the Tramp.”

I laughed. “Many a true word.” And then I said, “Will you come with me for the joyride?”

She said, “Dear Tom. You’ve never quite got used to having me around, have you?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t suppose I ever shall. It’s a fresh wonder every day I come into the office, to find you here.”

She smiled, and smiling she was very lovely. “All right, Tom. I’ll come to Bali with you, and we’ll do what we can for Connie.”

After that, our life at Bahrein went on smoothly for a few days. I saw Wazir Hussein again and heard of the energetic steps that he was taking to get a specialist out to Karachi. These efforts finally resulted in them getting a Frenchman called M. Serilaud who seemed to be the authority on leukaemia in Europe; Dr. Khaled said that he had worked in New York and in London and spoke English fluently, which was a help. The earliest that we could get him to Karachi was the 27th, which gave us a good margin of time to get Connie there to meet him.

I rang up Captain Morrison, and he came to see me one evening, and I told him everything that was going on. He was friendly and helpful, and said that if I wanted to bring Connie back to Bahrein there would be no difficulty from their end at all. He indicated that he, personally, would welcome his return as a gesture that would help to heal the breach that had arisen with the Sheikh of Khulal.

Inevitably, the news got round in the souk that Shak Lin was ill, and was coming to Karachi for examination. I don’t know how these things get out in Asiatic places; I didn’t tell anyone, and I don’t suppose the Arabs in the Sheikh’s retinue did much talking,
though they may have done. In any case, it was all known in the town within a day, and Nadezna told me that wherever she went, in the streets, in the market, in her house, there were continuous enquiries. After a day of this she had to give up going out into the streets, and I sent the station wagon down to pick her up each morning and drive her home in the evening.

On the ninth of the month the Tramp arrived back from Bali, dead on schedule. It came in and landed about three o’clock in the afternoon. I walked out on to the tarmac to meet it when it came in. The five passengers got out and were met by a young man from the oil company, and then Arjan came out and walked across to me. He said that they had had a good trip, with no special incidents; there had been bad weather over Sumatra which had delayed them half a day on the outward journey, but on the homeward trip they had got through the inter-tropical front without much trouble. And then he said, “I have letters for you, from the Governor and from Shak Lin. I will fetch them and bring them to the office.”

“Okay,” I said, and I went back to the office myself, because it was hot out on the tarmac. Arjan Singh appeared in the office in a few minutes and laid them on my desk, and then he went through into the other room, perhaps to speak to Nadezna or Dunu. I opened the first letter.

It was from the Dutch Governor in Bali. It ran:

I bit my lip, and read it through again. Then I opened the one from Connie. He said that by that time I should have received a letter from the Governor ordering him out of Bali. He was sorry
that this had happened, and that it was not due to any action on his part, but due to circumstances out of his control that Arjan Singh could tell me about. He thought that it would be better now that he should leave my service, and he suggested that I should send down another engineer to work with Phinit by the next machine. He himself would leave on the same aircraft, and he proposed to make his way to Bangkok.

At the time he wrote that letter, of course, he hadn’t received our air mail letters to him about leukaemia.

I got up heavily and went into the other office. Arjan Singh was there talking to Nadezna; she had an open letter in her hand. From her face I guessed that she had had the same news. I did not want to talk about it in front of Dunu; I told Arjan and Nadezna to come into my office, and when the door was shut and they were sitting down, I asked,

“What’s all this about, Arjan? This trouble down at Bali?”

He said, “Two Dakota loads of pilgrims.”

“What?”

He said, “Three days after you left Bali, a Dakota came to Bali from Bangkok. It was chartered from the Thai-Cambodia airline by a party of about thirty ground engineers from Don Muang. Most of them were engineers, but some I think were from the Siamese Air Force. They came to visit Shak Lin and to pray with him. They went away after one day. Then another Dakota came, with Indians from Allahabad and Calcutta. The Dutch administrators were angry, and they say that you should not have sent a man with a religious following to Bali. They do not encourage missionaries in Bali; they prefer that the people should continue in their own religion. The Governor gave me that letter to give to you.” He paused. “That is all I know.”

I was silent for a time. Then I said, “Did you hear of any other machines going to Bali with pilgrims?”

He replied, “I heard talk at Karachi airport that a Dakota was leaving very soon, with pilgrims. I told them that it was forbidden, but they said that Shak Lin was ill. I think they mean to go.”

“They mustn’t go,” I said. “When did you hear this?”

“Last night—and this morning.”

In favourable conditions, usually late at night, we could get
Karachi from Bahrein on the radio telephone. In a case such as this, Alec Scott would probably let me speak to Karachi myself. I might be able to stop that machine from leaving.

“Who pays for all this?” I asked. “It must cost somebody a packet.”

Arjan said, “I asked that, also. The machine from Bangkok was provided by the Thai-Cambodia for a nominal charge only—one hundred rupees, somebody said. The engineers at Bangkok had agreed that each would work ten hours on the machine without pay in the next month, so that the servicing and life of the aircraft should not suffer. The pilots flew without pay, of course, being pilgrims themselves. The engineers serviced the machine upon the flight without pay. All the expenses to be met were petrol and oil, and insurance, and landing fees. They say that each man had to pay two hundred and fifty rupees. Some of them had not got the money, and their companies advanced wages to them so that they could join the flight, and they would work the time off later, so much in each week, to repay the loan.”

Two hundred and fifty rupees is about twenty pounds. It was a big sum for an Asiatic engineer, but it was by no means prohibitory, and if the airline companies were prepared to help their men to go off on a trip like this by allowing them to work the advanced pay off over several months, it might be that many such journeys would take place. I already had abundant evidence that Shak Lin’s teachings had spread widely through the East and had resulted in a marked up-grading in the quality of aircraft maintenance. If the employees of an airline wanted to go off on such a pilgrimage, a worth-while manager would encourage the project and make it easy for them to go, knowing that such a religious experience would encourage the men and lower his maintenance costs. If my own people had come up with such a proposition I should probably have taken that line myself. There was no telling now where this thing would end.

“What started this, Arjan?” I asked at last. “What put the idea into their heads? We’ve never had anything like this happen before.”

He said, “It was the Sheikh of Khulal’s pilgrimage.”

“I see.… They saw that trip go through, and thought they’d do the same?”

“Also,” he said, “the word got around by radio that Shak Lin is dying.” By my side Nadezna stirred, and then was quiet again. “I do not know if that report is true or not,” Arjan went on. “But it is all over the East now, that Shak Lin is a dying man. And so, on all the aerodromes, engineers who work according to his teaching but have never seen him—such men desire more than any earthly thing that they should see Shak Lin before he dies, and hear his voice, and hear his blessing on their work. This is a thing that many men want more than anything else in the world.”

“So we’re likely to get a good many more Dakotas going to Bali,” I said thoughtfully.

“I do not think that they will be able to go now,” he said. “I think the Dutch will stop them. It is too far for a Dakota to fly from Singapore to Bali without landing for fuel, and when they land, at Palembang or at Batavia or Sourabaya, I think the Dutch will stop them. I do not think that such machines will get clearance from Singapore now, any more, to fly to Indonesia.”

That seemed likely enough, though whether the authorities at Singapore would have the power or the will to raise a hornet’s nest by standing between Dakota-loads of resolute pilgrims and their religious goal seemed to me to be doubtful. Arjan Singh was obviously tired with his eight days’ flying, and I let him go soon after that, telling him that I was going to take the next trip down myself with Hosein as co-pilot. He was pleased to hear that I was going down myself again. “I think that is very good,” he said. “I think it will be good that you should be with the Teacher at this time, for a few days.”

“How is he taking it all, Arjan?” I asked. “Is he very much upset?”

He said a little pityingly, “Was he upset when he left here, Mr. Cutter? He is not like ordinary men. Nothing that is written for him can cause him to grieve. Only the errors of mankind do that.” He paused, and then he said more practically, “There is a woman there who serves him, Madé Jasmi. She sees that he lacks nothing, does not grow too tired. I think she will attain a great advancement in the life to come.”

He went away to eat and rest, and I was left alone in the office with Nadezna.

She said, “Poor old Connie—to be kicked out of a second place, for his religion! And when we’ve just written to him about leaving, and telling him about the blood count. It’s too bad, Tom.”

“I know,” I said. “He doesn’t have much luck.” And then I said, “He’s going through a bad patch now, of course, but he’ll get through all right. I suppose it was a mistake sending him to Bali, though it didn’t seem like it at the time. After he’s got rid of this leukaemia thing we’ll see if we can find a place for him where they’ll like his religion. Somewhere in Burma or Siam would suit him best, I think. A Buddhist country.”

She smiled faintly. “But, Tom, he’s not in your employment any more. He’s resigned.”

I said quickly, “He can’t do that to me, after being with me all this time. I’m going to send him a cable now to say I won’t accept his resignation.”