The Pointing Man | Page 2

of the street, the
shops were more important, and business offices announced themselves
on large placards inscribed in English, and in curling Burmese
characters like small worms hooping and arching themselves, and again
in thick black letters which resembled tea leaves formed into the
picturesque design of Chinese writing, for Mangadone was one of the
most cosmopolitan ports of the East, and stood high in the commercial
world as a place for trade.
Along the street a motley of colour took itself like a sea of shades and
tints. Green, crimson, lemon yellow, lapis-lazuli, royal purple,
intermingled with the naked brown bodies of coolies clad only in
loin-cloths, for every race and class emerged just before sunset. Rich
Burmen clad in yards of stiff, rustling silk jostled the lean, spare
Chinamen and the Madrassis who came to Mangadone to make money
out of the indolence of the natives of a place who cared to do little but
smoke and laugh. Poor Burmen in red and yellow cottons, as content
with life as their wealthy brethren, loitered and smoked with the little
white-coated women with flower-decked heads, and they all flowed on
with the tide and filled the air with a perpetual babel of sound.
The great, high houses on either side of the street were dilapidated and
gaunt, let out for the most part in flats and tenements. Screaming
children swarmed naked and entirely unconcerned upon every landing,
and out on the verandas that gave publicity to the way of life in the
native quarter. Sometimes a rag of curtain covered the entrances to the
houses, but just as often it did not. Women washed the big brass and
earthenware pots, cooked the food, and played with the children in the
smoky darkness, or sat to watch the evening show of the street.

At one corner of the upper end of the street was a curio and china shop
owned by a stout and wealthy Burman, Mhtoon Pah. The shop was one
of the features of the place, and no globe-trotting tourist could pass
through Mangadone without buying a set of tea-cups, a dancing devil, a
carpet, or a Burmese gong, from Mhtoon Pah. A strange-looking effigy
in tight breeches, with pointing yellow hands and a smiling yellow face,
stood outside the shop, eternally asking people in wooden, dumb show,
to go in and be robbed by the proprietor. He had stood there and
pointed for so long that the green glaze of his coat was sun-blistered,
but he invariably drew the attention of passing tourists, and acted as a
sign-board. He pointed at a small door up a flight of steps, and behind
the small door was a dark shop, smelling of sandal-wood and cassia,
and strong with the burning fumes of joss-sticks. Innumerable
cardboard boxes full of Japanese dolls, full of glass bracelets of all
colours, full of ivory figures, and full of amber and jade ornaments,
were piled in the shelves. Silver bands, embossed in relief with the
history of the Gaudama--the Lord Buddha--stood under glass protection,
and everything that the heart of the touring American or Britisher could
desire was to be had, at a price, in the curio shop of Mhtoon Pah.
Umbrellas of all colours from Bussan; silk from Shantung; carpets from
Mirzapore; silver peacocks, Japanese embroideries, shell-trimmed bags
from Shan and Cochin, all were there; and the wealth of Mhtoon Pah
was great.
Everybody knew the curio dealer: he had beguiled and swindled each
new arrival in Mangadone, and his personality helped to make him a
very definite figure in the place. He was a large man, his size
accentuated by his full silk petticoat; a man with large feet, large hands
and a round bullet head, set on a thick neck. He had a few sleek black
hairs at the corners of his mouth, and his long, narrow eyes, with thick
yellow whites and inky-black pupils, never expressed any emotion.
Clothed in strawberry-red silk and a white coat, with a crimson scarf
knotted low over his forehead, he was very nearly as strange and
wonderful a sight as his own shop of myriad wares, and his manner was
at all times the manner of a Grand Duke. Mhtoon Pah was as well
known as the pointing effigy outside, but, whereas the world in the
street believed they knew what the wooden man pointed at, no one

could ever tell what Mhtoon Pah saw, and no one knew except Mhtoon
Pah himself.
All day long Mhtoon Pah sat inside his shop on a low divan and
smoked cheroots, and only when a customer was of sufficient
importance did he ever rise to conduct a sale himself. He was assisted
by a thin, eager boy, a native Christian from Ootacamund, who had
followed several trades before