Round the Bend (47 page)

I asked if they were in money difficulties, if their travelling way of life could be made easier for Connie if they had more money. He said that money would make no difference. They were very seldom allowed to pay for anything; accommodation, taxis or gharries, and food were invariably provided for them free or paid for by the generosity of aircraft operators on the aerodromes. Landing fees were always remitted, wherever they went, except in Malaya which was British territory; apparently the British civil servants didn’t view religious travellers in quite the same way as Asiatics. He said that after nearly six months’ travelling they had spent no more than about four hundred rupees between them, and they had ample for their needs.

I asked him when it would be convenient for Connie to meet the Arabs, and he said that after dinner would be the best time; he said that Connie ate very little now, but that his evening meal was the best of the day, usually curry and rice and some fruit. After that he was alert and at his best, and Arjan suggested that the Arabs might come along at about eight o’clock or so to Connie’s room, and we could all talk there. In that way it would be possible for him to recline on the bed if he felt like it.

I went and told Wazir Hussein this proposal, and then I went to tell Nadezna, but she was in with Connie. I dined alone in the hotel dining room that night because the Arabs ate privately in their own rooms food prepared by their own cook. After dinner we all met in Connie’s room.

There weren’t enough chairs, so we sent the hotel boys to get some more, and presently we were all sitting in a row on hard, upright cane chairs in the bedroom, while Connie sat upon the bed, the mosquito net turned back over his head.

Wazir Hussein told the story to begin with. He said that his late master, the Sheikh Abd el Kadir, had been greatly troubled in
his mind in his last years about the disposal of his money. After much thought he had decided that one half of his cash savings should be given to God, and they were then puzzled as to how this was to be done. Baraka was a small town that had a very good mosque already, and his master felt that if great sums of money were spent in the district the people of the country would become debauched. They decided that the money must be spent outside Baraka, and at one time they had played with the idea of spending two or three million pounds upon the erection of a vast new mosque in Bahrein. Then Shak Lin had appeared, the new Teacher whose ideas were refreshing and bringing up to date the old tenets of Islam without in any way destroying their original purity. His master had become convinced that this new teaching would spread through the Asiatic world and bring men back to God, and that if the spiritual power of El Amin were supported by the more material power of a great legacy to be devoted to religious purposes, then the new Teaching would be placed upon a firm foundation to the greater glory of God. Before the full Majlis, with some other witnesses, he had therefore left one half of his cash savings to El Amin absolutely, and this cash amounted to about five hundred and twenty lakhs of rupees.

Fahad, the new sheikh, spoke then. He said that his father had made this decision after talking to him privately, and that he had agreed that this legacy was a fitting and a proper use for the money. He was entirely in agreement with his father’s wishes, and he awaited a lead as to the disposal of the money.

I said a very few words then. I said that the late Sheikh had invited me to be present at the Majlis, which was a most unusual honour for an Englishman. Captain Morrison had been there, too. The old man was undoubtedly in full possession of all his faculties, and I had no doubt that this legacy was the result of prolonged and careful thought upon his part. Captain Morrison had told me afterwards that in his view the legacy was valid and completely legal, and that if any question were raised, he would advise the British Foreign Office so.

Connie said then, “I am very conscious of the honour that my old friend, the Sheikh Abd el Kadir, has paid me. Let me think for a few minutes.”

He sat silent on the bed before us, his eyes on the floor. Then he got up and went to the door, and pushed aside the netted frame, and went out into the garden. There was a moon, and as we sat there in the bedroom we could see him through the netted door walking up and down upon the lawn in the moonlight. We sat there talking in low tones about unimportant things; I would have liked to smoke, but in that company of religious non-smokers that was hardly possible. There was a bowl of grapes upon the table, and we ate a few of these.

He must have been away for nearly an hour. At last he came in from the garden and sat down upon the bed again. He was calm and thoughtful when he spoke.

“My teaching has no need of temples,” he said. “My temples are the fitters’ shop, the tool room, and the hangar on the aerodrome. Nor do I need priests for what I teach, because each man who finds God in his daily work by working in a shop with other men, he is a priest for me.”

He paused. “The Sheikh of Khulal was my friend,” he said. “In the last years it has been one of the great pleasures of my life to visit him and talk to him about the ways of God with man, because he was kind and thoughtful, and compassionate to humble men, and wise beyond all belief. I knew that he intended this legacy; he told me when I visited him four months ago for the last time. I did not worry him in his last days by refusing his great kindness, even though I knew that it must be refused. If I did wrong in that, I ask your pardon.”

Fahad cleared his throat. “It was not for temples or for priests alone that my father intended this money,” he said. “I think he meant it for a pension fund in part, that men who turn to God in daily work and yet fall into ill health or distress should be assisted by this money to regain their powers, or to die in peace. Also, he thought that men who followed your way of teaching should be helped to travel to far countries, where by their lives and work they would draw other men to God by their example.”

Connie smiled a little. “Men who follow my teaching become good workmen,” he said, “because good work and right thinking are as one. Such men need no money to help them travel, for if such a one should wish to leave his country and work, say, in Hong
Kong to teach my ways, he will find there is a manager who will agree to pay his fare because he wants him in the shop. As for the old and the sick, you have provision for them in the Koran of the blessed Prophet. If this money is for them, it would be better that the Imam should dispose of it, not me.”

There was silence in the bedroom. Presently he spoke again. “I have no possessions,” he said. “Only the clothes I wear, my kit of fine tools and micrometers, and three or four hundred rupees. These things should go to my sister after I am dead. Because I have nothing of value, nothing of responsibility, nothing but the memory of my words will remain. That is the way I want it.”

Gujar Singh spoke up. “Teacher,” he said, “I know that what you say is true. Yet all the older creeds have found a use for money, and in some cases a good use. In Penang and many other places the Christians, the Roman Catholics and other Christian sects, maintain large buildings as schools and as homes for orphan children. Such deeds are good deeds, but the buildings have to be paid for. In that case the power of money has been used to do good things in the name of Jesus. May not the power of this money be used to do good things in your name, too?”

Connie said drily, “I hope you’re not comparing me with Jesus?”

Gujar said defiantly, “I know that it is not the same. He was a woodworker.”

Connie smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Have it your own way. But Jesus didn’t need five hundred lakhs to spread His word.”

He was silent again, but presently he said, “This money is power. Great money is great power. But power has no place in what I teach; I do not teach men to be managers. I teach them to do good work and so serve God. Whether they sit at the manager’s desk or whether they sweep the floor of the hangar is one to me. I shall die very soon. If I should receive this money, someone must administer it after me. And power corrupts.

“Many evils spring from power,” he said. “Even from the power to do good.
All
power corrupts, and the intention to do good has little influence on the corruption. Either my words will last after me and be believed by men, or else they won’t. Yet if one thing were required to kill them certainly, it is that my words should be
spread after my death by the power of money. No teaching could survive a campaign of paid advertising.”

There was a long silence. “I cannot take this money,” he said at last. “Let there be schools and orphanages, and let my name be on the schools and orphanages if you wish, as one who loved Sheikh Abd el Kadir, but let these schools and orphanages be in Baraka. Let Baraka be a centre for learning and security in the Persian Gulf, so that no child, from Abadan to Muscat, shall need a home and not find one. And let there be a school for engineers, and an airstrip with hangars where men can learn my calling and my way of life, and find their way to God by doing first-class work. But let all these things be in Baraka and Khulal, to the honour of Sheikh Abd el Kadir and his friend.”

He got up from the bed and said, “God go with you,” in dismissal, and we all went out into the arcade, leaving Nadezna alone with him. The Arabs did not seem disconcerted at the refusal of the legacy; perhaps they had expected something of the sort. They did not discuss the matter then, but said good night with friendliness and courtesy, and went to their rooms. I think Fahad had some cause for satisfaction from the doings of the evening. Money meant nothing to him, as I have said; it would be years before he could spend even the income of the oil royalties. But an explicit direction from El Amin such as he had now received, to set up schools and orphanages for the whole of the Persian Gulf in Khulal was a help to him in dealing with the prejudice and reaction that was hindering the reforms he wished to make. A start was made on buildings for the orphanage and for the elementary school within three months of his return to Baraka.

I was left in the arcade with Gujar and Arjan; for a time we walked up and down upon the stone flags in the moonlight. “Everything has now been renounced,” Gujar said at last. “No more temptations can be left. This was the final one, the temptation of Power to do Good.”

Neither Arjan or I had anything to say to that, and we walked for a time in silence, the two Sikhs and I, each busy with our own thoughts.

At last I said, “What comes next, Arjan? He can’t go on like
this for very much longer. Do you know what he wants to do when the end gets near?”

He said, “I know that. He wants to go back to where it all began, to a place called Damrey Phong. I have never been there, but he says that you and Gujar know it. Is it in Cambodia?”

“That’s right,” I said. “It’s a very rural little village with one tarmac strip, about twelve hundred yards, I should think. It’s about two hundred and fifty miles southeast from Bangkok, ten or twelve miles in from the coast, on a river. That’s where he wants to go to, is it?”

“That is where he wants to go to live until he dies,” he said. “He has told me that if he should become ill suddenly, wherever we may be, I am to put him in the Proctor and fly quickly to Damrey Phong.”

“I see …” I thought for a minute. “It’s not on the map,” I said. “I think the village may be shown, but there was no airstrip marked on my map. I can pencil it in for you in the morning. It’s not difficult to find, though. When you’re two hundred miles out from Bangkok, start looking for a peninsula like a hammer, with a little island off the south head of the hammer. Go on about fifteen miles and you’ll find the mouth of the river. The strip is about ten or twelve miles up the river, on the west side, between the river and a ruddy great mountain about two thousand feet high. You want to watch it when you’re on the circuit; it’s a place rather like Penang.”

“Is there a good house there?” he asked. “A house where I can care for him until he dies?”

I bit my lip. “I shouldn’t think there is. There were two European houses by the strip, but that’s three years ago. I shouldn’t think they’d be much good by now, and the hangar had already fallen down. He definitely wants to go there, does he?”

Arjan Singh nodded. “That is where he wants to go to die.”

We walked a few paces in silence. “I’ll see if I can get something organized there, then,” I said. “With five hundred and twenty lakhs going spare, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t die in comfort.”

I put the matter to Fahad in the morning. “There’s so little we can do for him, Sheikh,” I said. “He will take nothing for himself.
But if he goes to this place Damrey Phong for his last few months, he ought to have a house suitable for a sick man and a friend or two, and perhaps a doctor. And I think there should be a hangar for his aeroplane; in such a place he ought to have an aeroplane to keep in contact with Bangkok. Moreover, aeroplanes are his life’s work. I can provide the aeroplane and a spare engine for it, and Arjan Singh wishes to stay with El Amin till he dies, so there will be a pilot. Will you provide the house and the hangar? I do not think that it can cost so much as one lakh.”

He said, “I will do that gladly.” We talked about it for a little time. “Surely,” he said, “something should be done at once, because the matter is now urgent. Within a month he will be wanting to go there to die.”

“I know,” I said.

“Where is this place, Damrey Phong?” he said. “Is it possible for us to fly there now, and engage men to start the buildings?”

“We could do that,” I said. “It would take us about two days to get there, by way of Calcutta and Bangkok.”

“Let us ask El Amin if he will allow us to do that.”

We went to see Connie, with the Wazir. Arjan and Nadezna were in his room, so we were all together. He was resting on the bed. “Look, Connie,” I said, “we’ve been talking about what happens next.” And then I told him what we proposed.

He was pleased at the idea. “I want to go back there,” he said. “If you’re going to do any building, keep it small and simple, so that simple people will come and see me. I’d like a bedroom with a verandah facing on the strip, and the hangar at right angles to the house, so that if I’m in bed on the verandah I can see into the hangar, and the aircraft landing and taking off on the strip, and everything that’s going on.”