by Unknown
‘Monks are not wearing underpants, I believe.’
‘I really wouldn’t know, and don’t expect to find out on this trip.’
Wong drew large and indecipherable maps showing the objects he considered key, immovable elements: the well, the bo tree, the outer walls and main buildings of the vihara.
Then he sketched in signs and symbols using his lo pan. He knew Joyce was frustrated that he wrote in Chinese characters, but was darkly aware his written English might contain embarrassing mistakes. The animal signs for each direction were then drawn in, with each given 30 degrees of the compass, starting from dragon in the north to snake in the northwest.
After consulting his old books, all of which were in Chinese, and drawing several lo shu diagrams, Wong started to formulate a plan. He explained it to Joyce, who wrote it out in carefully correct English, for delivery to the guardians of the temple tomorrow morning.
At four o’clock, Joyce revealed she was bursting to go on a serious shopping trip. By this time, she had made firm friends with Porntip’s nephew. Bin was clearly awestruck by her presence, and she shamelessly exploited this, using him as a personal tour guide.
‘Bin’s taking me shopping. I’ll be back in a few hours. Where am I sleeping tonight?’
‘You sleep here in Porntip’s house,’ said Wong. ‘I go back to temple now. Check our maps. I need to talk to Brother Wasuran. I sleep there. In case Master Tran returns. I will come here tomorrow. Meet you for breakfast.’
‘What time?’
‘Seven o’clock; okay or not?’
‘Seven! Way too early. Can’t we make it eight or nine?’
‘Monks will be awake at five o’clock already. Our flight at 10.50. Must leave to go to the airport at nine or 9.30.’
‘Okay, okay, seven it is. Jeez.’ She turned her full attention to Bin. She gave him a bewitching smile and draped one arm carelessly over his shoulder. ‘I need like a basketweave CD case. For my Discman, you know? There’s one that holds six CDs but my friend Melissa says you can also get one that holds twelve CDs and it has a headphone pocket.’
The love-struck Bin nodded and led her to the car.
By eight o’clock, darkness was falling, and the Vihara of St Sanctus was silent, except for odd scuttling noises, which Wong knew must be the rats. He tried to settle in his room, which was as bare and unappealing as a prison cell. His physical discomfort was partly compensated for by his feeling of emotional satisfaction. By making some relatively small physical changes, and altering the uses of several blocks, he was sure he could bring about major improvements to the feng shui of the monkey-house. He was convinced this would be quickly detectable, and gain him goodwill in the next world if not hard cash.
He placed his oil lamp on the small table and pushed the bed to a different angle, so the top of his head would be pointing towards the north.
As he settled down for the evening, he mused on his love-hate relationship with holy places. How could a feng shui master not be intrigued by places which had been devoted to unseen influences for centuries? Yet implementing changes in religious centres had always been difficult in the past. He would give the man in charge a list of changes which needed to be made, and they would make some of them on the spot, and make pledges to change the rest after he had gone. But he would probably not be invited back for an inspection and a salting, or closing ceremony. He would generally be left to hope that they did what he had suggested, and did not overrule his instructions. There was a lot of jealousy in mysticism, he decided. Once one gets some talent for sorting out the unseen influences on life, others who claim some ability in the same field quickly start to exhibit the worst sort of professional jealousy. Still, Master Tran had invited him to visit. What could be done? And he felt at peace. He had done his job well. He was in a house of spirituality. And it was good for him to be with monks, away from negative influences such as business-people, women and so on.
Wong had guessed there would have been no supper for the monks, so had spent much of his afternoon packing himself full of snacks, and had not complained when he had been sent to bed with neither food nor drink. He had also sneaked in a packet of a British delicacy to which he had become acquainted in Hong Kong—chocolate-covered Hobnob biscuits.
For some time, he lay awake in the pitch darkness, unable to sleep. At first, he was not aware that his mind was not drifting off to sleep in the normal way. It was only after an hour of re-arranging his limbs on the hard bed that he realised that he was failing to nod off.
What was keeping him awake? The room was dark, as there were no artificial lights on anywhere in the Vihara, and few street lights in the roads nearby. Also, there was virtually no sound. He was dimly aware of a cricket buzzing in a tree somewhere outside his tiny window, and twice he heard an owl hooting. Earlier in the evening, he had heard faint scratching noises in his room, which he assumed was the sound of the rats of which Brother Wasuran had complained. But even they seemed to have gone to sleep now. As he concentrated on the near-silence, he became faintly aware of the sound of recorded music, but it seemed very far away—certainly outside the boundaries of the temple, and probably somewhere in the nearby town. He opened his eyes wider, and noticed a slight gleam of moonlight shining through his window shutters, reflecting on the edges of the few items of furniture in the room. His stomach rumbled, and he wondered if he should get up and eat a biscuit. But it would be difficult to find the packet. He wondered absently whether he had zipped up his bag, and whether the snacks would be safe from the rats. This thought in his mind, he drifted into an uneasy sleep.
He was suddenly awoken by a loud scraping sound in the ceiling. Another rat. But this one sounded huge! There was silence for a moment, and then there was another scratching sound. He heard the wooden boards creak. He looked up and watched with horror as the planks bulged downwards with the weight of the creature or creatures in the ceiling. Suddenly, a plank was moved aside and a shadowy face appeared in the blackness.
Wong gasped and recoiled.
‘Surprise,’ said Joyce’s voice. Moments later, the young woman lowered her face into the light. ‘Don’t just stand there. Like, get me something to climb down on. That chair! No, the table. Can you move that table?’
‘What you are doing here?’ he snapped.
‘Get me down and I’ll tell you,’ she said.
He moved the oil lamp onto the chair and, with a grunt, lifted the table so that its legs would not scrape along the floor. He placed it as quietly as he could under the opening. ‘Here. Okay or not?’ He spoke in a nervous whisper.
‘Yeah, that’s right. Ow! Sorry. Just got a huge splinter. Look, move it to the right a bit. Yeah. Okay.’
With remarkable agility she dropped through the small hole on to the table—which promptly collapsed, sending her crashing to the floor.
‘Shoot,’ she said. ‘Right on my bottom. Oww. Jeez.’
‘Hurt or not?’
She winced, rubbed her lower back and rose slowly. ‘No no, I’m fine, only my pride et cetera.’
Wong’s eyes darted nervously to the small window. It would be disastrous if any of the brothers thought he had deliberately smuggled this young woman into the premises. Her femaleness would taint the atmosphere. They may all have to flee. Worse still, she was in his bedroom and night had fallen. He would be assumed to have improper motives. If this got out, he may not receive his annual bonus from East Trade. Thankfully the curtain was drawn, and the night seemed to be as quiet as before.
Then there was sharp knock on the door. He took in his breath sharply.
‘Ye-es?’ Wong asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Are you all right?’ It was the gruff voice of Brother Wasuran. ‘I heard a noise. Did you fall?’
Wong gestured frantically at Joyce to hide under the bed. But she leapt onto the chair. The geomancer’s eyes popped. What was she doing? Was she going to climb back up? Then he realised that she was carefully sliding the plank back into p
lace. This achieved, she hopped off the chair, placed it to one side, and rolled under the bed.
‘Fine, fine. Everything okay. Only table broken. No problem please.’
‘Oh, let me fix. I am coming in, please.’
The door had no lock, so Wong had no choice. Checking that his assistant was not visible, he opened the door and Brother Wasuran pushed his way in.
‘Oh, the table has broken, very sorry,’ the monk grated.
‘No, I am sorry,’ said Wong. ‘My arms are heavy. Maybe I am pressing on it too hard.’
Brother Wasuran looked with puzzlement at the geomancer’s skeletal limbs. ‘No matter. I’ll bring you a new one. Very sorry. Very bad.’
Wong held his breath until the fat man had left the room. A full five minutes passed before the monk returned with a new table. During this time, Joyce slid her head out to get some air, disappearing again when Brother Wasuran was heard waddling down the wooden aisles of the sleeping block. Then the monk stayed and chatted for another three or four minutes before bidding goodnight. When the door was shut, Wong enjoyed half a minute’s perfect peace, and then heard Joyce extricating herself from her hiding place.
‘Phew. Dusty under there. I was worried I was gonna sneeze. That would have dropped you in it. Teenage bimbo under bed. In a monkey-house too. What a laff!’
‘Not funny,’ said Wong in a stern whisper. ‘Please to keep voice quiet. Why you here? You should go. Should not be here. No women allowed. Is a rule.’
‘Hey, cool it, boss man. You should be thanking me. I just solved the mystery. Don’t you wanna know how I got here?’
There was only one chair, so Joyce steered her boss into it and stood next to him, pointing out her discoveries on his map.
‘Look. See this part here? I spent hours looking for an opening in the wall. It’s plaster at the front, but just fencing on this side and at the back. I prodded every plank, every fence post, all the brick bits, and there wasn’t any section that like, opened up. But then I noticed that some of the bricks were sort of depressed into the wall, round the back, do you know what I mean? Just enough room for someone’s toes. So I tried climbing up. There were more little holes in the bricks above—designed just right for someone climbing up.’
‘This is dangerous. Anyone see you?’
‘Naah, I was really careful. Bin was look-out. He turned out to be a real okay kid. Anyway, this was at the back, where there isn’t much traffic. It was getting dark. So I nipped up. About 10 feet up, the brick wall becomes a wooden fence. I just pressed the fence and it swung open. It was a secret opening. Totally cool. And I’d found it by myself just like that.’
‘Please to keep your voice quiet.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll be quiet, sorry. Anyway, listen. This is interesting. The fence bit opens up on top of the inner building here in the courtyard. What is this, some sort of garage?’
Wong looked at the shaded area on the map. ‘That is eastern altar. Smaller gold Buddha in there.’
‘Yeah, right. Anyway, I stayed quietly on the roof for a while. The building doesn’t connect with any other building, so I didn’t know what to do. It was kind of fun being on the inside of the temple without anyone knowing, so I just stayed where I was, lay down on my tummy and watched you all. Some of the younger ones are real hunks. I don’t suppose you can introduce me to the tall one . . . ? No, okay, okay. I watched you going into your room. It was really funny.’
‘You could get us into big trouble. You should not do this.’
‘Oh, stop being so cross. This is a big discovery, I’m telling you. You see, I realised how people broke in and out and smuggled things. Several of the branches from the big tree come across to the roof of the place where I was. When it got a bit darker I climbed into the tree—now that was tricky. It’s probably been like, donkey’s years since I climbed a tree. Anyway, I shuffled along the branch—what are you looking so shocked about?’
‘This is not just a tree. This is the bo tree, grown from the bo tree where the Buddha got, er, got, er.’
‘Enlightenment.’
‘Yes, got enlightenment. You should not climb on it.’
‘Whatever. My skills as Catwoman are not being appreciated here. Just listen, can’t you? I didn’t hurt the tree. I’m a nature lover. I weigh 54 kilos. Anyway, the branches led to the roof section of this bit. The roof here is sloped, but you can get into a sort of atticky section and then slide along. Since I saw you were in the first room, it wasn’t difficult to crawl through the roof space and find you. The last bit of the journey was pretty scary—real Indiana Jones stuff—since most of it was in like, semi-darkness. But then, all the way along, I had this feeling that it was well-organised. You know, someone had taken this route many times, so I knew that there would always be a way forwards and I wouldn’t get stuck. I was just worried that someone from one of the other rooms would hear me. Also I lost my earring somewhere. My Buddha hologram thing. Cost ten pounds. I hope I can find it in the morning.’
‘I heard you. I thought you were a rat.’
‘Yeucch. There are rats here?’
‘Yes, the buildings have many rats. Brother Wasuran told me.’
‘Jeez, I’m glad I didn’t know that when I was up there.’
Silence fell. It wasn’t difficult to detect a scampering noise, as what sounded like a whole family of rats stampeded through the roof space above their heads in the direction of the room next to them.
‘Better you go now.’
‘Aren’t you going to thank me for making a great discovery, solving this mystery for you?’
‘Thank you. We will tell Master Tran in the morning. Now you go.’
Another rat passed over their heads.
The young woman shivered. ‘Eeee. I’m not going back up there if it’s full of rats. Besides, it’s seriously dark now. All the lights are off and stuff. I’m staying.’
‘But where you sleep?’
‘I’m an innocent young maiden. I need my beauty sleep. I’m going to sleep in that bed. I think the question is, where are you going to sleep?’
The night was passed in a state of great discomfort. At first, Wong was too furious to sleep. After a couple of hours, he became drowsy and tossed and turned on a blanket on the floor. He was reminded of his teenage years, sleeping on the floorboards of his uncle’s spice shop in Guangzhou. As the night wore on, his hips became increasingly sore and bruised. Joyce, relatively comfortable on top of his bed, had had several beers with Bin, and snored happily. The rats spent the night thundering from one end of the block to the other, apparently having an organised race meet. Wong eventually fell into a troubled sleep, full of strange images from his life.
He re-lived the time he had been fast asleep in the spice shop and had rolled under the rice sack, which had tipped over, hitting him with the force of a boulder, and bursting to bury him in an avalanche of hard white grains.
In his dream, he was a boy and ran to find his uncle. But when he opened the door, instead of a Guangzhou night scene, he found bright daylight. He was at the top of the OUB Centre in Singapore and had climbed out onto a roof ledge, sixty-four storeys above the ground.
Now he saw himself as an adult doing a feng shui reading. Mr Pun, director of East Trade Industries, was shouting at him from a window of a neighbouring building. ‘Hurry up, C F, you have to finish before we open to the public in five minutes.’
‘Cannot find my lo pan,’ Wong had replied, balancing precariously on the window ledge and searching frantically in a briefcase. ‘My bag full of rats.’
Then he slipped into the building through another window and found himself in Hong Kong, in an office containing a hanging string of coins, right in the malicious death position of the five yellow curses.
There were four doors to the room, but which one to take? He chose the first one, but it was locked. The second one opened onto a deafening rock concert, and the lead screamer on the stage was Joyce McQuinnie.
He slammed
the door shut and opened the third door. It contained a large silver statue of a dragon with a red piece of paper in its mouth. It was dripping red liquid from its mouth into a tien-yuer benefactor den made of pink pottery. What did it mean?
Again he started looking for his lo pan. How could he tell what it meant without knowing what direction it was in? Was it east, in the direction of plum blossom?
Winnie Lim appeared behind him, doing her nails, and she started to laugh. ‘Madam Fu on the phone. She want you to come now-lah,’ she said. Then Mr Pun entered the room, looking impatiently at his watch. He started speaking to Winnie. The geomancer could not hear what they were talking about.
‘No. I can do it. I can do it,’ Wong had said.
The talking grew louder and louder.
He woke up. Blinking at the pale dawn light, he wondered where he was. He didn’t recognise the room. He didn’t know why he was on the ground, or why there was a bed next to him. Had he rolled off? Why were there a dozen faces at the open door? Was this part of his dream?
When he saw the men’s grey robes, his memory returned. His head fell back onto the rolled-up garment he had been using as a pillow. Oh no. He was in the temple. It must be five o’clock in the morning. Time to get up. But why were the brothers looking shocked? He suddenly recalled the presence of his assistant, and raised himself on his elbows. There she was, fast asleep, her dishevelled dress indecently revealing her knees.
‘No, no,’ he said to the men. ‘I can explain you. Truly.’
Master Tran arrived back at the vihara at seven, by which time Wong and McQuinnie had fled to Porntip’s house for a shower and breakfast.
The geomancer, stunned into silence by the humiliating events of the morning, sipped his green tea and cast sidelong glances at his assistant. They were having breakfast on the verandah. He was too angry to speak to her, and thought with pleasure that her term in his office was coming to an end. They would arrive back in Singapore today, a Wednesday, and she would be dismissed from C F Wong & Associates. After that, he would probably never see her again.
