Saving Fish From Drowning

  After the murder, she became secretive. She felt the murdered man had given her a sign that she would die soon, too. She forgot what the sign might have been. Nonetheless, she felt the dread. She was waiting for terror to manifest itself. She tried hard to control it. And in so doing, she began to prepare for all the terrible ways death might happen. She knew her precautions were useless. Death would come of its own accord, and she could not prevent it. Yet she still could not stop herself from trying, and she hated how she had become, conscious more of dying than of living.

  Taking this trip to China was part of her effort to overcome her problems. She was determined to throw herself into many unknowns, face situations she’d ordinarily avoid. She believed she would be able to handle them, in part because she would be in a completely different country. The unknowns would prove to be nothing, and having survived them, she would be stronger and could return home practiced at pushing aside her phobia. China would be good for her, really, really good, she told herself.

  THE MEAL HAD TURNED COLD. When the ever-popular American dessert of green-tea ice cream was brought out, the manager of the restaurant cued his wife and son, and they burst into singing “Merry Christmas,” to the tune of “Happy Birthday.”

  On the way to the hotel, my friends hummed this new holiday concoction. Christmas was only days away, and who knew what the Chinese Santa would bring. Should they buy gifts for one another? The bus drove past the same pink-light girls waiting for customers, the storefronts were still manned by hopeful sellers, the pregnant Pekingese was still sleeping on the green plastic chair. If they did not get a border permit soon, these would be the sights they would see the next night, perhaps the next, and then for who knows how long after that.

  Back at the hotel, Harry suggested to Marlena that they “take an evening stroll under the fair moonlight.” There was no moonlight, but she agreed. She assumed Esmé was already asleep with her puppy. And so she and Harry headed down the dark street. Something was about to happen, she knew this, and was nervous in a pleasant way. As they walked, he offered his arm so she might steady herself. “The sidewalks have all sorts of dangers in the dark,” he said. The way he said “dangers” made her shiver. She wanted to be swept away, drowned by incaution. And yet, before she went under, she wanted to grab on to a safety bar and pull herself up and out, before it was too late, before she fell and was beyond being saved.

  As they walked in silence, Harry gathered himself, mustering the right balance of confidence and caring. It was so damn easy when he was in front of the camera. He didn’t want to come across too forceful, too six-o’clock-news-ish. At last, he spoke in what he decided was just the right tone, one that was vaguely reminiscent of Cary Grant in those movies where he was baffled to find himself in love: “Marlena, dear?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I believe I’m becoming quite fond of you.”

  Marlena steadied her emotional equilibrium. Fond? What did he mean by “fond”? You can be fond of flowers, of fettuccine, of certain fashions. What did he mean by “fond”?

  “It would be lovely to kiss you,” he added. The debonair touch was becoming second nature to him now.

  Marlena wondered to herself: Lovely? A sunset is lovely. A sunrise—and before she could equivocate with her emotions any further, he leapt at her mouth, and they both felt, despite the initial nervousness, that the experience was quite agreeable, wonderful, as a matter of fact, so natural, so much longing instantly fulfilled. Although soon, another kind of longing grew. Fondness turned into fondling, then more fondness, followed by more fondling, escalating minute by fervid minute, and all this took place on a featureless street in Ruili. Alas, they could not make love here, they both concluded.

  “Let’s go back to the hotel,” Harry said.

  “A hotel, how convenient,” Marlena answered, and giggled. As they started to walk back, she had a sobering thought. “I should probably check on Esmé.” Another minute passed. “Oh God, what will I tell her?”

  “Why tell her anything?” Harry said, nibbling her neck.

  “I wouldn’t want her to worry if she doesn’t see me there in the middle of the night.”

  “Then tell her you are going downstairs to have a drink.” Marlena was slightly annoyed by that suggestion. “She knows I don’t drink. I’m hardly the type who goes to bars to pick up men.” She had noticed that Harry sometimes drank an awful lot. She hoped he was not an alcoholic.

  “You’re not going to pick up men,” Harry teased. “You’ve already picked me.”

  Marlena did not find this a romantic response. Did he think she was that easy? Was he suggesting this was merely casual sex, a one-night stand? “Listen, maybe we shouldn’t do this. Not tonight.”

  “Oh, but we should. We already are, or could be. . . .” They reached the hotel. “See, here we are.”

  “No, really, Harry. It’s late, and I need more time to prepare Esmé, you know, for the idea that you and I are more than just friends.”

  Idea? Harry sensed that their buoyant mood had rapidly deflated, as had certain body parts. He was disappointed, yes, but also irritated with himself for being overly eager, and yes, even a bit annoyed that Marlena so easily flip-flopped on having fun. It was late, and now that he was no longer charged with anticipation, he was tired. “All right. I’ll leave you here. And I shall go to the bar to have that drink.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Good night, my midnight pumpkin.” He turned and did not watch as she walked toward the elevator.

  He had just received his scotch and water when Marlena raced into the bar, her eyes wide with fright. “She’s not there! She’s gone! The puppy, too.” Her voice was weak and tight. “I told her not to leave, I warned her not to open the door. Oh, God. What are we going to do?”

  “I would hope nothing,” Harry replied. And before Marlena could lash into him for such a callous remark, he aimed his finger toward the other side of the lobby. There was Esmé, showing off the puppy to the room service staff, two of whom had come by her room earlier to deliver a thermos of hot water. As Marlena made her way over, Esmé saw her and came bounding toward her.

  “Hey, Mom. Hi, Harry. Look what they made for Pup-pup. Rice and chicken! Just like Harry said she needed. And it’s in this darling little teacup. Aren’t they the greatest? They love her, Mom. We’ve been having the best time.”

  FROM DEEP SLEEP, Bennie picked up the phone.

  “Miss Chen, please,” the man’s voice said.

  “She’s not here.” Bennie looked at his watch. Shit. It was six in the morning. What idiot was calling at this hour?

  “Have you any idea when she might return?” The voice sounded faintly British, though it definitely was not Harry Bailley.

  “I don’t know,” Bennie mumbled. He did not have his wits about him. “Who’s calling?” he finally thought to ask.

  “This is Walter from Mandalay, Golden Land Tour . . .”

  Bennie sat bolt upright. Mandalay!

  “. . . I have an appointment to meet Miss Bibi and her group this morning at the border crossing. I’m afraid the hotel is confused as to which room she has been assigned to. They directed me to your room. I apologize if there is a mistake, but are you Mr. Chen?”

  Bennie was now wide-eyed, thinking in ten directions. Who was this guy? He grabbed his notes, the letter from the travel agency. Maung Wa Sao—that was their tour guide, not Walter. Walter must be an expediter, a contact. Did he play by the rules, or if not, could he be bribed? “Walter, I’m Bennie Trueba y Cela, the new tour leader. You must not have received the message in time. And evidently I did not receive a message from your end. I’m sorry. But yes! We’re ready to meet you at the border. What time would you like us there?”

  The line remained silent.

  “Hello? Are you still there? Is this about our border permits?”

  Finally Walter spoke. “I don’t understand. Where is Miss Chen?”

  “She was unable to come.”

  “D
id she take ill last night?”

  Bennie contemplated his choices, then decided honesty was the best route. “Actually, she died suddenly.”

  “Oh dear! She died yesterday?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I know. We were completely shocked ourselves. She was a dear friend.”

  “What I mean is, that’s not possible because I spoke to her just yesterday.”

  It was now Bennie’s turn to be thoroughly confused. “You spoke—”

  “On the phone. She called and asked that I should change the date of your entry into Myanmar and meet her here today.”

  “She called about the border permits?”

  “Yes. She gave specific instructions. Everything is approved. But we need to make sure your papers match. Oh, and now I will have to make a slight change and remove her name. For that, I’ll need to make a phone call. . . .”

  Bennie’s confusion transformed into unquestioned joy. Obviously this Walter fellow had spoken to Lulu, or possibly someone in San Francisco. Bennie had sent a fax to the travel agent. Since everything had been referred to as the Bibi Chen group, Walter must have believed he was talking to the original tour leader. Well, it didn’t matter now, did it? They had the permits! This was fantastic. Whoever did this was a genius! (I was pleased to hear such flattery.)

  “Do you need anything else so you can add my name?” Bennie asked.

  “No, it’s all settled. We added your name when we received the fax. I had assumed you were an addition and not a substitution. So everything there is quite all right.” Walter stopped and sighed. When he began again, he sounded quite distressed. “Mr. Bennie, I apologize for asking, this is most inappropriate, but did Miss Chen give you the Christmas present she brought for me?”

  Flummoxed. Bennie thought fast. This was obviously some kind of under-the-table payment. How much money did the man want? He hoped the man didn’t require it to be in Chinese money. “Miss Chen did mention the present,” he ventured, trying to be tactful. “But tell me again specifically what she said she would give you. Was it in dollars?”

  The man laughed slightly. “Oh no, not dollars. CD.”

  Certificate of deposit? Bennie was surprised at how sophisticated the bribes had to be in this wayward part of Asia. Don’t panic, he told himself. You’ll figure it out. He could call his broker back home. Then again, maybe this Walter guy would take more money instead of certificates. “And how much in CDs was it again?” Bennie squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for hearing the answer.

  “Oh, this is most embarrassing to even mention,” Walter said. “It’s just that Miss Chen told me yesterday she would be bringing me a CD, and I was quite excited to hear that it would be the musical Phantom of the Opera.”

  Bennie nearly wept. Compact disc.

  “And I have brought her one with Burmese dance music, which I hope she will like, that is, that she would have liked, if indeed she has died.”

  “Ten CDs,” Bennie suggested. “How does that sound?”

  “Oh no, no! Really, that is far too many. The Phantom is quite enough, I think. That is what Miss Chen said she was bringing. Ten is, well, it is awfully considerate of you to even suggest it. Western music is terribly hard to come by.”

  “Ten it is,” Bennie said firmly. “I insist. It is, after all, Christmas.”

  Walter said he would make the necessary phone call right away. He would meet Bennie at the border.

  After they hung up, Bennie thrust his hands deep into his luggage to drag out the CDs he had brought. He flipped through a stack encased in vinyl sleeves: There it was: The Phantom of the Opera. What luck that he happened to have that exact one. And how about these? Diana Krall. Sarah Vaughan. Gladys Knight. He would cull a larger variety from the others, Dwight, Harry, Moff. They should contribute something. They got themselves into this fix. In fact, if Walter was delighted with ten, what would he do for twenty? He’d have the red carpet rolled out for them. A couple of CDs apiece, that’s what Bennie would ask of his fellow travelers. Two each, or he’d present them with the choice of staying in unruly Ruili for another four days.

  It was a lovely collection, I thought: from Bono to Albinoni, Nirvana to Willie Nelson, the disparate musical tastes of twelve Americans who cheerfully gave their best.

  Let it now be known that I, too, had given my best. The night before, I had visited Walter late in the night when he was in the farthest shores of his sleep, for that was where I realized I could be found, in dreams, memory, and imagination. The sensory was no longer of any use to my existence. But I could exist in a free-floating consciousness not anchored to any reality. My consciousness could overlap his, now that it was so permeable. There I gave to him osmotically the memory that I had called with an urgent request. “Walter,” I said, “you forgot to change the entry date to four days earlier, from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-first of December. We discussed this, remember?” He became upset, for he is a meticulous person who never neglects details. When he promised to attend to this change of dates, I sang to him “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from Phantom of the Opera. He was immediately seized with longing for his father, who was imprisoned more than ten years ago by the military regime and never heard from again. Such beautiful music, the most touching words. Thereafter Walter would long to hear those same words over and over, the ones I borrowed from the CD that I found in Bennie’s suitcase.

  This dream did not fade as dreams naturally do. I swam with it back to the deepest part of his memory, to the subconscious recesses where anxious people become more anxious. And so, when Walter awakened the next morning, he had a sense of urgency. He hopped on his bicycle and went to the tourism office, then dashed to the government office to have the paperwork recorded and stamped. He then collected the driver so that they might make their way to Ruili posthaste.

  THE ROAD TO MYANMAR is lined with Beheading Trees, so called because the more you cut them down, the faster and thicker they grow back. So it’s been with rebels from various periods of China’s history. Once they take root, you can’t eradicate them completely.

  Between the Beheading Trees were Eight Treasure Trees, whose pendulous leaves were large enough to cover the body of a child. And there were plenty of reckless children along the road who might soon need a death shroud. Three boys who appeared to be five or six danced atop the ten-foot-high loads of hay on the backs of mini- tractor trailers, their parents seated up front, seemingly unconcerned. To my friends in the bus, however, the children looked as if they were about to suffer brain damage. Mercifully, the boys appeared to have remarkable reflexes. They tumbled onto their bottoms, laughing gleefully, then stood back up on their stubby legs to prepare for the next tumble.

  “Oh my God!” Wendy cried while continuing to snap pictures of each near disaster.

  “I can’t look,” Bennie moaned.

  “There should be a law,” Marlena said.

  Heidi stared ahead at the road for large ruts that would jostle the children to their deaths. Finally, the tractor trailer turned down a small lane and continued, the carefree children receding from my friends’ view. The closer the bus drew to the border, the more colorful the world became. Burmese women walked about in flowery-colored skirts, their heads with turbanlike wrappings on top of which they balanced baskets of goods destined for the open market. On their cheeks, they had painted yellow patterns with a paste made from the bark of the thanaka tree. As with Shanghainese people, Burmese women prize pale skin. The paste supposedly affords sun-blocking properties. But I tried it on past tours and can tell you that the effect is quite drying. While it may shield the skin, it parches it to the appearance of cracked adobe. I cannot say it was flattering to my face. I looked like a dried-up clown doll.

  Bennie had the CDs for Walter in a sack. Everything was falling into place. He would hand over the bribe and they would get the paperwork and be approved to enter. He hadn’t told Lulu, for fear that what Walter
was doing was on the side of illegality. Let her think that they got in on their own good luck. This morning she had said simply, “We must try. And if we are success, your Myanmar tour guide, Mr. Maung Wa Sao, will meet you at the crossing place.”

  At the Chinese border station, Lulu presented passports and documents to the uniformed police. Armed guards stood nearby. After ten minutes of inspecting and stamping and huffing with authority, the border police waved us on, and my friends waved back cheerfully, but no one returned their smiles. After a half a kilometer, the bus stopped in front of a large white gate.

  “Soon you and I must say good-bye,” Lulu said. “In a few minutes, your Burmese tour guide will meet you and take you over the border into Muse.”

  “I thought we already crossed,” Moff said.

  “You have left China,” Lulu said. “But to leave one place is not the same as entering another. You are in Burma, but you have not crossed the official border. So you are in between.”

  It suddenly struck me that what Lulu had said described exactly how I felt. In between.