The Chequer Board (18 page)

“I suppose you get missionaries out here,” he said.

“Oh, we get a lot of those. Some of them are very kind
and good, especially when they start hospitals and schools, and do not try to teach us their religion.”

He said hesitantly, “You aren’t Christians, then?”

She smiled tolerantly. “No. In Burma we are Buddhists. Surely you knew that?”

“I know that most of the people are Buddhists,” he replied. “I thought that educated people like you and your brother might be Christians.”

She nodded. “Some of my friends are Christian, but not very many. I studied your religion very carefully when I was at school, but I didn’t like it nearly so well as ours. I don’t think it is a very good one.”

He asked curiously, “What’s wrong with it?”

She smiled. “I’m not going to start a religious controversy with you, Mr. Morgan. When I was at school they told us that some Englishman once said that it does not matter much what one believes so long as one believes in something. I think that’s very true. For ordinary people who are not concerned with dogma there’s not much difference between Buddhism and Christianity in the way that we are taught to live, only our way is much stricter than yours.”

He was a little intrigued. “In what way?” he asked.

She said, “Well, for one thing, you are allowed to drink wine and to kill animals. I don’t like that much. We have five elementary commandments; if you break them you will be reborn into a lower scale of life. You must not kill any living creature at all, you must not lie, you must not steal, you must not commit adultery, you must not touch any intoxicating drink. Those are the minimum
commandments, the ones that everybody must observe if he wants to avoid being reborn as an animal. If you want to go forward you must do much more than that.”

“You really think that you can become an animal in your next life?” the pilot asked. “You mean, like a pig?”

“You make your own destiny,” she said. “Everyone does that. If you choose to live like a tiger or a pig, if that’s the sort of life you like, you will attain your desire in your next incarnation. If you strive earnestly for wider mental powers and a better life, then next time you will be reborn higher upon the Ladder of Existence. That is what we believe.”

“I see.” He thought for a moment, and then asked, “What happens when you get to the top of the ladder? What happens when you are as good as you can be?”

She said, “You can only reach that point after countless thousands of lives. But ultimately, if you receive the Final Enlightenment, so that you are wholly good and completely wise, so that everything you say or do is the perfection of truth and wisdom, you are then the Buddha.”

“That’s the statue in the pagodas, isn’t it?” he asked.

“The statue that you see in the pagodas is the last Buddha,” she replied, “Prince Shin Gautama. Twenty-eight souls have attained this perfection in the history of the Universe, and only four in this world; you see, it is not very easy. Prince Shin Gautama was the last, the twenty-eighth, and it is his example that we try to follow in our daily life.”

“Rather like our Christ,” he said thoughtfully.

“Exactly like your Christ,” she said. “But you believe
that your Christ was a God, the son of a God who lives somewhere in the outer realms of space and who created you for this one life. I don’t quite understand that part of your religion. We have the same idea of a supremely perfect Being, but we believe that any one of us can reach that same perfection if we try hard enough to live a holy life, in age after age. We have the statue of Prince Shin Gautama in our prayer houses as an example, to remind us of what any one of us can attain to. Frankly, Mr Morgan, I like our idea better than yours, though for practical purposes there’s not much in it.”

She paused, and then she said, “I think our religion is rather less debased than yours in some ways, too.”

He did not feel able to embark on that one. He asked, “Is everybody in Burma a Buddhist?”

She said, “Not everyone. Nine people out of ten are Buddhists, I should think, but the Karens are sometimes Christian, and the uneducated country people still believe in Nats, the spirits of the woods and trees, and they build little houses for them. I will show you on our way, tomorrow. But when men get educated and begin to think more deeply, then they come to the pagoda.”

Utt Nee passed them, going up the steps into the house. The girl said, “I have been telling the Englishman about our savage religion.”

The young man laughed. “My sister is very religious,” he said to Morgan. “Women think more deeply about these matters than most men. You must not let her offend you.”

The pilot said, “She’s been very kind in telling me about it. I didn’t know a thing about all this before.”

The girl said, a little wistfully, “Don’t they teach anything about our country in your schools?”

Morgan said, “We learn a little, I suppose, but only facts. The names of rivers, and about rice coming from Rangoon, and things like that.”

Utt Nee said, “Rice will be coming here in a few minutes. You will eat with us.”

Turner watched Morgan get up from his long chair. Three men in longyis had appeared, and they squatted down on their haunches on the path at the foot of the steps. He left Turner in his chair, and went and spoke to them in Burmese. A slow conversation developed, evidently punctuated with jokes and repartee. Aften ten minutes there was a final sally, and the three got up and went away. Morgan came back to Turner in his chair. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Have a drink?”

Mr Turner hesitated. “Got any beer?”

The other shook his head. “It doesn’t keep out here. Whiskey?”

“No thanks—I got to be careful. Got a lemon squash, or anything o’ that?”

“Fresh lime squash, with a bit of ice in it?”

“That’ll do fine.”

Morgan called an order in Burmese back into the house, and came and sat down. “What did them chaps want?” asked Mr Turner.

“Those? Oh, that was the headman from one of the villages and two of his pals, sort of shop stewards. I want some coolies to make up the road out to the rice mill. He came to fix the rate for the job.”

The glasses came, borne by the barefooted Burman servant. Morgan sat, glass in hand, looking out over the river.

“I was telling you about that evening before we started for Bassein,” he said. He sat in silence for a minute. “It’s a damn funny thing,” he said at last, “but you can usually tell when there’s something wrong. I couldn’t speak a word of Burmese at that time, but I was pretty sure that some of those chaps were against me. Utt Nee was for me all right, and Ma Nay Htohn. Thet Shay, I think, was very doubtful if it was a good idea to turn me over to this Major Williams; some of the rest of them I’m pretty sure were hostile to the whole thing.”

He paused, “I got an idea into my head that Utt Nee sent his sister with the party, not so much to interpret as to see that I got there all right and wasn’t murdered on the way. I’m pretty sure that was behind it in his mind. I asked him that straight out once, but the old devil wouldn’t tell me. Anyway, we pushed off before dawn the next day for Bassein.”

They went in single file along field paths between the squares of paddy—eight men, Morgan, and Nay Htohn. The arms the party carried were not very impressive. Thet Shay and one other man carried Japanese rifles, and Thet Shay wore Morgan’s revolver in its holster. One of the other men had an old muzzle-loading rifle with a very long barrel, and one had a very modern twelve-bore sporting shotgun; the other four were armed only with their dahs. None of them wore brassards or any sort of uniform.
Morgan hoped that they knew sufficient of the movements of the Japanese about the countryside to keep out of their way.

They marched all morning until nearly noon. They were then in a teak forest following a barely noticeable track; they halted and lay down, and boiled rice on a little fire of leaves and twigs, extinguishing the fire immediately it was done with. Morgan was very tired, although he was marching light, with only his blanket to carry; he was unused to marching in the tropics and was drenched with sweat. Utt Nee had given him a conical straw hat to wear and this had been a comfort in the sun; but he was very, very tired. Nay Htohn and the Burmans seemed as fresh as daisies.

They ate their rice, and curled up for a sleep, leaving one man on watch. At about three o’clock they moved off up the path again, and marched till dusk.

They camped for the night in a bamboo jungle, in a small clearing by a little stream. Again they made a little fire and extinguished it immediately their simple meal was cooked; then there was nothing to do but lie down, wrapped up in blankets, and wait for sleep. Nay Htohn directed the positions of their sleeping; it did not escape Morgan’s notice that the girl arranged matters so that he slept between Thet Shay and herself.

Lying upon the grass, wondering what bugs would bite him in the night, watching the fine tracery of the bamboos against the starlit sky above him, Morgan heard the girl say, “What will happen when you get back to your Army? Will they send you back to England?”

He replied, “I shouldn’t think so. I’ll probably get leave up in the hills, or something, for a week or two. But I’m not back yet.”

“No. How do you live in England? Are you married?”

He said, “Yes, I’m married.”

“Is your wife very beautiful?”

He said, “She’s the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”

“Have you got children?”

“No.” He did not expand on that point.

“What will you do in England when the war is over? What did you do before you became an airman?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I joined the R.A.F. straight from school, when I was eighteen. I don’t know what I shall do. I was going to be an architect before, but I’d only just started. I don’t know.”

“Will you do that in England?”

“I don’t know—I suppose I shall. I hadn’t thought about it much.” He turned his head towards her. “What will you do?”

She said, “I might go back and be a shorthand typist in a Rangoon office, as I was before. I don’t know, either.”

“Have you lived in the country for long?”

“My father moved up to Henzada when the Japanese came in, and I went there with him. That is a fairly large place. For the last year or so I have been mostly with my brother in the country districts. One cannot sit still and do nothing.”

“You must find it pretty slow, after Rangoon,” he said.

She laughed. “I miss the pictures dreadfully. Apart from that,” she said, “I rather like the country. Rangoon is
quite dead now, and not pleasant if you do not want to go about and dine with Japanese officers.”

Presently their voices died down, and they slept uneasily on the hard ground.

At dawn they got up, cooked another meal, and marched on. That day took them to within five miles of Bassein; they camped for the night in a small spinney. They made no fire, eating the cold porridge-like remains of rice that they had cooked at lunch. Thet Shay and one other man went out along the path they were following to find a near-by village, to enquire how the land lay regarding Japanese, and to find the man who knew where they could make a contact with Major Williams.

They came back an hour later in a state of agitation. The Burmans and the girl clustered round Thet Shay; he had urgent and important news for them, and it was not good news. So much was obvious to Morgan. They squatted down together in an earnest conference; from time to time the men threw anxious glances in his direction. He waited for enlightenment with all the patience he could command. Something had happened to upset their plans; so much was evident. He took the surmise fatalistically; it had been too good to be true, that he would get away from Burma easily.

Presently the girl left the group, and came and squatted down beside him. “It is bad news,” she said quietly. “A Japanese patrol has caught this Major Williams. They surrounded the village and took him while he was asleep. Now he is dead.”

The pilot nodded; he had been prepared for some news
of the sort. “That’s a bad one,” he said quietly. “What is Thet Shay going to do now?”

She said, “He has sent out scouts.” Morgan glanced at the group and noticed that three men had melted away into the darkness. “It is very dangerous here. There are Japanese patrols everywhere in these villages.” She hesitated. “They are on the lookout for parties such as ours, who may be trying to make contact with the Englishman.”

“Do they know anything about us?” the pilot asked.

“I do not think they do. The Englishman said nothing, according to the village people, although the Japanese soldiers were very cruel to him. He took fifteen hours to die.”

Morgan bit his lip. No man is immune to fear, though he may be able to control himself. “Nice story,” he said quietly.

She stared at him, and then laughed shortly. “I suppose that is an English joke.”

He grinned at her, “Well, one’s got to make a joke of something.”

She said, “You must stay very quiet. We are going to wait here until the scouts come back and tell us which way we must go.”

She went back to the group of men. Morgan sat a short distance from them, his back against a tree, watching them and thinking. It seemed to him that they were in a most colossal jam. The Japanese had tortured this Major Williams to make him reveal his connection with the Independence Army. If they caught any members of the Independence Army they would certainly be tortured, too—men or women—to make them reveal the extent of the
conspiracy. Thet Shay would be tortured without doubt. Nay Htohn would be tortured.

If the party were taken with himself amongst them, it would be clear evidence that they were members of the Burma Independence Army. That meant torture and death for the lot of them. Nay Htohn, also, would take fifteen hours to die.

“Well, that’s the way it was,” Morgan said. He set down his glass and called the bearer for another couple of drinks. “The only one who might have got away with it if the Japs had caught us as a party was me. I could always plead I was an enemy in uniform doing what I could to get home—they couldn’t have much against me for that.”