The Pointing Man: A Burmese Mystery

by Marjorie Douie

When Leh Shin set out towards the Joss House, he was repeating a procedure that had become constant with him of late. He knew that a Joss was revengeful and terrible in matters of hate, therefore his prayer would be understood in the strange region of power where the Great Ones dwelt. His religion was a mixture of the teachings of Buddha, Confucius, and Shinto, for long absence from his own country and constant association with the Burmese and Japanese had blended and confused the original belief that he had learnt in far-away Canton. To this basis was added the grossest form of superstition, and the wildest fancies of a brain muddled with the fumes of opium, but the one thing clear to him was, that a Joss, though an immortal being, was able to comprehend hatred.

The gods punished terribly, slaying with plague and pestilence, destroying life by flood and years of famine, and so Leh Shin knew that they were very like men, taking full advantage of their fearful power and punishing the smallest neglect with the utmost rigour. He could appeal to a great invisible cruel brain and demand assistance for his own limited desire for revenge, knowing that it was an attribute of those whose help he sought, but he went in fear, with pricking nerves, because his belief was strong in the power of the monsters he worshipped.

The Joss House stood in a wide street near the river; a stone courtyard separated it from the thoroughfare, and the building itself was raised on a terrace, led up to by two shallow flights of steps. The roof was a marvel of sea-green mosaic, coiled over by dragons with flaming red tongues and staring glass eyes, each dragon a wonder of fretted fins and ivory teeth and claws. Upon each of the three roofs was set relief mosaic, of beautiful workmanship, representing houses and ships and bridges, with tiny men and women, and little trees, all as small as a child's plaything, but complete, proportioned and entire. Huge stone pillars covered with devils and crawling lizards supported the long portico that ran the full length of the building, and between each pillar an immense paper lantern gleamed like a dim moon.

Leh Shin stood outside for a few moments and then plunged in, like a man who is not sure of his nerve and cannot afford to wait too long lest his determination to face what lay inside should fail him. On feast days the Joss House was a gay place, full of lights and people crowding in and out, and there was no room for fear, for even a Joss is not alarming in company with many men, but when Leh Shin went in, the place was deserted, and it seemed to him that the unseen power was terribly near in the darkness.

It was a vast, lofty building inside, supported by gold pillars and black pillars, and in the centre near the door was a tank-shaped well where pots of flowering plants and palms were set with no particular eye to regularity or effect. As they shivered and rustled in the dark, they were full of a suggestion of the fear that made Leh Shin's heart as cold as a stone in a deep pool. Raised on a jade plinth, a low round pillar stood directly in front of the rose-red curtains that were drawn across the sanctuary space, and on the top of the pillar a bronze jar held one scented stick, that burned slowly, like a winking, drowsy eye, its slow spiral of incense creeping up into the air and losing itself in the high arches of the pointed roof. Between the pillar and the sanctuary itself, was a small table covered with an embroidered shawl, worked in spangles that glittered and shone, and beneath the table were a number of smooth stones.

Leh Shin locked his hands together and passed up the aisle, close to where the palm trees rustled and stirred, and fear was upon him like that of a hungry dog. He crossed a line of light cast by some candles, and it seemed to him that the curtains moved as he approached. The Joss House was apparently empty, and yet it did not seem empty. Invisible eyes watched behind the carved screens that shut out the priests' houses on either side, invisible ears might easily catch the lowest whisper of his prayer. Soundless impressions of moving things that had no shape haunted his consciousness, and he started in panic as his own shadow fell before him when he stepped across the burning candles and slid into the close alley between the table and the shrine.

He bent down suddenly and, feeling on the cold marble of the floor, took up two of the stones and beat them together with the loud clapping noise which proclaimed a suppliant. Bowed in the close space, he repeated his prayer the requisite number of times, and it seemed to Leh Shin that the Joss heard and accepted: the Joss who took visible shape in his mind, with a face half-human and half-bestial, and who capered with a drawn sword in his hand.

Over his head the heavy curtains swayed again, and the tittering noise from a nest of bats sounded like ghostly laughter. His prayer had drawn power to his aid, out of the unknown place where the gods live, and loosed it in response to his cry. He was only Leh Shin, a poor Chinaman who kept a miserable shop in the native quarter and an opium den down where the river water choked and gurgled at night, but he felt that he had touched something in the terrible shadows, and once more he beat the stones together, his face pouring with sweat. As the noise echoed up again, the last candle fell dying into a yellow pool of melted wax, and went out with an expiring flicker; and Leh Shin beat his hands against the darkness that shut upon him like a wall. He sprang to his feet and ran, and as he went wings seemed to bear down behind him. There was terror alive in the Joss House, and before that terror he fled panting and trembling, fearful that hands would close upon his black garments and drag him back, holding him until he went mad. As he made for the door he fancied he saw a shadowy form move in the gloom and clear his path, and it added the last touch of panic to his mind.

He leaned against an outer pillar for support, and gradually the noise of the street drew him back again to reality and to the solid facts of life once more. He had been badly scared, for in some cases when nothing that can be expressed in words takes place, an infinitely greater thing, that no words can express, has occurred mentally. To Leh Shin's bewildered mind it was clear that he had actually felt a Joss breathe upon him, and that he had heard its footsteps follow him across the marble floor; the Joss who had shaken the curtains and extinguished the candles.

Still bewildered, Leh Shin crossed the courtyard and sat down on the kerb; his head swam and he felt along his legs with shaking hands. A belated fruit seller went by, and he bought a handful of dates, stuck on a small rod and looking like immense beetles, and as he ate his confidence in life gradually returned. The Joss was at a safe distance in his house and there was the street to give courage to his heart; the street where men walked safe and secure, and where a worse fear than the fear of death did not prowl secretly.