Nury Vittachi: The Feng Shui Detective

Wong carefully described the inside of the temple grounds to his assistant. He drew diagrams to explain each block’s relation to the other, and tried to describe the condition of the buildings. ‘It not too beautiful, but it is very span and spic,’ he said.

‘Spic and span,’ said Joyce.

‘Spic and span, span and spic, what difference?’ Wong complained.

‘Good question. Never mind. What else?’

Joyce was particularly intrigued by the stories of the video recorder, cigarettes and a magazine being smuggled into the building. ‘It has no windows that you can like reach from the ground, so the guys must have hidden them under their robes. The magazine I can understand, but a video-that must be tough to tuck into your underpants.’

‘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.