“I wonder how much better,” Wyatt whispered to Wendy.
In Muse, my twelve friends, flush with money, their pockets dangerously bulging with Burmese kyat notes, jumped off the bus and into the warm December sun. They walked toward the center of town and were soon engulfed in the everyday life of the marketplace: milling shoppers, open stalls of cloth, clothing, and plastic shoes, all in styles that suggested unwanted seconds from China. Around them moneychangers crouched on the ground, trying to catch their attention. Farther ahead, beckoning to them like the seventh heaven of bargains, was a gigantic tent that housed the food market.
As they made their way through the crowd, they remarked how different Burmese people seemed from Chinese. Here women smeared the yellow thanaka paste on their face as both sunscreen and beauty symbol. Atop their heads, they wore a length of cloth that had been swaddled into a turban. “It’s almost tribal-looking,” Roxanne said.
“That’s because they are a tribe,” Vera said. “It’s in the notes Bibi prepared.”
Wendy caught the eye of a Burmese woman who looked about her age. The woman was wearing a conical rattan hat with red piping. When she gazed downward, the hat obscured her face entirely. But when she looked up, her face conveyed desperation and anguish, or so Wendy thought. It was as if the woman wanted to say something to her, convey an urgent message. Sure enough, the woman started to step toward her, but then saw, on the shaded side of the street, two military policemen in their frog-green uniforms. The young woman blinked hard, turned, and scurried away. Was that sweat on her cheeks, or tears? What had the woman intended to say? Was it a warning? Wendy tugged on Wyatt’s shirt. “I want to follow that woman.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to tell me something. She needs help.” The woman was now receding into the crowd, slipping away, disappearing. “Come on,” Wendy said, and she maneuvered her way into the crowd, while the rest of the travelers pushed toward the food tent.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Harry said aloud to Marlena. “We’re just a few miles in and the national dress is completely different.” He gestured to a man riding by on a bicycle. “I can’t figure out how those chaps keep their skirts from falling off.”
“The Scots wear skirts,” Marlena said. “I also heard they wear no underwear.”
“Did I ever you tell I’m half Scot?”
Marlena gave him a half-frown, half-smile. Esmé was nearby.
At an open-air stall, two women squatted atop reams of cloth, beckoning to the tourist ladies. As soon as Roxanne and Heidi glanced their way, the older of the women began quickly to unwind a bolt of cloth, brushing her fingertips across the weave. Vera went over immediately and admired the purple and deep burgundy, the intricate patterns in gold and silver. The younger seller tossed down more bolts to the older seller, who unwound them. “Pretty, yes, so pretty,” Vera said, and nodded. “Pity-pity, so pity,” the Burmese woman tried to repeat.
More and more bolts of cloth tumbled open, and Roxanne, who stood beside Vera, fingered a hand-loomed cotton gingham, deep blue with an iridescent sheen. “One thousand?” she said, reading a scrap of paper on which the seller had scribbled. She turned around and said: “Dwight, honey, how much is a thousand kyats?”
“Less than three dollars.” He was standing five feet away, behind other women who were leaning in to inspect the wares.
“Wow. For one yard of cloth like this?” Roxanne said.
The woman tapped her hand and shook her head, then unfolded the cloth and extended it. “Two,” she said, and held up two fingers.
“Oh, two meters. Even better.” Roxanne draped the cloth over her legs. “I’d love to wear this as a sarong.” She looked up at the seller, who had covered her mouth to laugh, as did the other women around the stall. She pointed to the bolt of blue check and shook her head, then picked up a bolt of pink with gold highlights. She pointed to the pink, then to Roxanne.
“No.” Roxanne swept her hand to indicate the pink should be taken out of her sight. She patted the blue cloth and gave a satisfied smile.
The seller patted the same cloth, then pointed toward a man in a longyi passing by.
Heidi broke in: “She’s saying that this color and pattern are what a man wears.”
Hearing this, Dwight held up both hands. “No way.” He strolled after Moff and Rupert.
Roxanne did not look up. “I know it’s for a man, but I don’t care. This is what I like.” She smiled at the seller, pointed to several men in the marketplace to show that she understood. “Yes, I know, for a man.” That done, the seller expertly measured off the standard length of cloth for a man’s longyi. She asked Roxanne something in Burmese, and pantomimed clipping motions with two fingers, then placed her thumb on the cloth, as pinched fingers of her other hand hammered up and down. Yes, Roxanne indicated, using the same gestures: Cut it and sew it up. The bolt was tossed back to the younger seller, who disappeared behind the stall for a moment, then returned with the cloth properly prepared. The older seller called to a thin young man passing by. He ran over and at her behest was only too pleased to demonstrate the correct way that a man got dressed in the morning. He stepped into the voluminous tube of cloth, and with a pinch of the material in each hand, he pulled the excess taut at the sides and, in one rapid smooth movement, clapped his hands at dead center and instantly tied the ends into a knot so that the excess cloth protruded like a tongue. “Wow, it’s like a magic trick,” Roxanne said. She gestured for the man to do it again but more slowly. He repeated the movements, pausing only slightly between each step. Finished, he untied the cloth and slipped out of it, folded it precisely, and handed it to her.
Heidi thanked him with smiles and clasped hands. But as Roxanne started to step into the cloth, the seller tried to stop her, laughing and protesting.
“I know, I know,” Roxanne told her. “I’m cross-dressing, lady, it’s okay.”
The seller shook her head and took another piece of cloth, this one a vivid yellow with an intricate pattern. She stepped into it and pulled the excess taut to one side, showing how the process for a woman was entirely different from what the man had just demonstrated. She then created with the bunching movements of one hand a series of folds, and tucked the top into the skirt waist.
“Hmm,” Roxanne said, “I don’t think I like that effect nearly as much as the knot in the middle. It doesn’t look secure.”
Heidi smiled at the seller. “Thank you. We see now. Different. Man’s. Woman’s. Very good.” Through gritted teeth, she said to her sister: “You can try it on after we leave here.”
The seller was pleased. She had prevented a valuable customer from making a social disgrace of herself. Roxanne and Heidi, along with Vera, continued to pore over the bolts of cloth, mining for gold. There were so many colors and patterns, each better than the last. But after a while, it was all too much. They were oversated and unsatisfied. It was like eating an excess of ice cream. Their senses were blunted, and all of the different bolts, at first so unusual, like exotic butterflies, had been rendered quite ordinary by their overloaded brains. In the end, Roxanne bought only the blue-checked cloth, feeling by then that she should have waited to see if she could find something nicer, and at a better price, elsewhere.
Wendy and Wyatt had gone looking for the mysterious woman and wound up in another corner of the market. Wyatt decided to take pictures. A group of boys with freshly shaved heads walked by, wearing the garb of acolyte monks, a single piece of cloth the color of deeply saturated orange-red chilies, which had been draped, tucked, and wound around their thin brown bodies. Their feet were bare, and they walked about as new beggars. One of them shyly held out a palm cupped into a begging bowl. Another boy slapped down his hand. The boys giggled. The monks were allowed to beg for their food, but only early in the morning. They went to the market before dawn with bowls and baskets, and shopkeepers and customers loaded them with rice, vegetables, pickled goods, peanuts, and noodles, all the while thanking them for a
llowing them this opportunity to increase their merit, merit being the good-deed bank account by which Buddhists improved their chances in future lives. These food supplies were taken back to the monastery, where the novices, ordained monks, and abbots lived, and a breakfast was made of the haul, a meal that had to last them the entire day.
But boys will be boys, and they were as curious as any to see what the foreigners would give if asked. Only a week before, they had been ordinary nine-year-olds, playing chinlon with their caneballs, swimming in the river, and taking care of their younger siblings. But the day had come when their parents consigned them to the local monastery to serve a voluntary course of time, from two weeks to several years, as all boys of Buddhist families did. Their heads were shaved during a family ceremony, their locks caught on a piece of white silk, and upon promising that they would obey the rules of Theravada Buddhism, they took off their clothes, donned the simple cloth of the monks, and became sons of the Buddha. This was their initiation into becoming human. A Burmese family once invited me to see this ceremony, and I found it quite moving, rather like the emotions I had when I watched a bris.
For poorer families, this was the only way in which their sons could receive an education. The well-to-do families collected their sons after two weeks, but the poorer boys stayed on longer, if they could. Through the monasteries, the boys learned to read the Pali scriptures, reciting them en masse under the watchful eyes of their elders, those who had chosen to remain in the monastery as ordained monks and abbots. And thus, they became both literate and devout, schooled in the piety of poverty. Being devout, as far as I could see, didn’t rid the young monks of their love of mischief.
Wendy did not know any of this about the acolyte monks. She had not read the materials I had suggested in a reading list. “It’s incredible that these poor kids are forced to become monks,” she said to Wyatt. “I mean, what if they decide they want to have a sex life one day?”
“Check out those smiles,” Wyatt said. He showed her the back of his digital camera. The monk boys crowded around to see as well. They pointed and hooted at their images.
Wyatt had not answered her question, she noticed. He did that a lot lately, giving non sequiturs in lieu of answers. Was he falling out of love? Or had he never been in love? Lately, what she felt when she was around him were twinges, pangs, aches, cracks, rips, and sudden hollows. His every response, or lack of one, hurt her. Maybe she was feeling this way just because she was hot, sticky, and cranky. She had left her sunscreen on the bus, and her freckled arms were growing pink. The sun burned hotter in this part of the world, and she worried what her face would look like in the half-hour before they could return to the bus. Her freckles would be the size of clown polka dots. What would Wyatt think of her when her face was sherbet pink and her nose was peeling like a bulb of garlic? He didn’t have that problem. He may have been fair-headed, but his skin turned a delicious toasty brown from his frequent outdoor adventures. God, why did he have to be so gorgeous? She wanted to eat him up right this minute. Perhaps they could return to the bus early.
Just then, Wendy saw the woman in the hat who had caught her eye earlier. The woman spotted Wendy as well. She motioned discreetly for Wendy to come toward her. Wendy looked about. “Come on,” she told Wyatt. “It’s that woman who wanted to tell me something.” She was certain she was on to important findings for Free to Speak International. Perhaps the woman knew the whereabouts of some people who had gone “missing.” Wendy and Wyatt turned a corner and saw the woman up ahead, ducking into a doorway. They followed, and they, too, went into the doorway and at last saw the women squatting in the shadows.
“Mona Chen?” the woman said. She held up a big wad of Burmese kyats.
Wendy whispered back: “I’m not Mona, but I can still help you.”
“She wants to change money,” Wyatt said.
“What?”
“Mona Chen. Money change. See? She has money to exchange.” Wyatt turned to the woman. “How much?”
“What are you doing?” Wendy exclaimed. “You could be jailed!”
“I’m just curious, that’s all—”
By now two military policemen had walked by, backed up, and were staring at them.
“That,” Wendy said, and pointed to the woman’s conical hat. “How much for the hat?” She randomly pulled out a kyat note from her own wad. It was a hundred.
The woman nodded and took the note, then removed her hat and handed it to Wendy. The police moved on.
“They’re gone,” Wyatt said. “You can give back the hat.”
“I want it. I need it, I really do. I’m getting burned out there. So how much did I pay for it? Too much?”
“About a quarter,” Wyatt said. “A steal.”
Wendy positioned the hat’s rattan ring over her head, then tied the red ribbons under her chin. They walked out into the full sun, she now restored and refreshed. To Wendy, the hat was a shopping coup. She had saved them from being arrested by the police. And for twenty-five cents, she had a fashion accessory that bestowed on her an air that was cool and chic, like Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly in one of those movies from the fifties. Meanwhile, the locals were snickering among themselves. How funny to see the foreigner in a farmer’s work hat, like a fish that has put on clothes.
Around the corner and down an alley, Moff and Rupert had found a shop that sold Western basketballs and badminton sets. As soon as they paid for one of each, Rupert began dribbling the basketball and Moff attempted to take it away. Shopkeepers and customers watched with grins on their faces. “Michael Jordan!” someone called out. Moff looked back. Michael Jordan? Even in this part of the world, they knew about him? Some boys with their longyis tucked up like short pants waved a hand, and when Rupert threw the ball their way, one of them caught it palm open. The boy expertly dribbled it down the lane before returning it to Rupert with a single bounce.
Another ball appeared, this one smaller, an airy globe of rattan. A boy in a brown longyi tossed it lightly and with an upturned heel kicked it to another boy. That boy let the ball bounce on his head and lobbed it toward Rupert, who instantly caught it on his knee and kept it bouncing there until he tossed it toward his father. Moff aimed his foot at the approaching missile, and it ricocheted in the wrong direction and fell to the ground. Rupert picked up the woven ball. “Cool,” he said to Moff. “Like Hacky Sack but bouncier.” He handed the caneball to its owner, the boy in the brown longyi. Moff held up a couple hundred kyat notes and pointed to the ball. The boy handed him the ball and solemnly took the two hundred kyats. “Cool,” Rupert said again, and bounced the ball between his knees, moving forward in this manner as his father headed toward the peaked canopies of the produce market, the agreed-upon meeting point.
The tent was an emporium of colors: the golds and browns of turmeric, marigold, curry, and cumin; the reds of mangoes, chilies, and tomatoes; the greens of celery, long beans, coriander, and cucumbers. Young children fondly eyed trays of seaweed jelly artificially colored a vivid yellow. Their mothers watched as the vendors weighed their staples of rice, palm sugar, and dried rice noodles. The smells were both earthy and fermented. Moff saw Walter and Bennie standing at the entrance, both of them looking relaxed and pleased with themselves. The other travelers were already there waiting, too.
“Well?” Moff said to Bennie.
“Piece o’ cake,” he answered blithely, and snapped his fingers, as if it had never occurred to him that there might be a problem with the border crossing. He handed back passports. In truth, Bennie had worried so much that he had returned to the bus and stood next to Walter as papers were being examined and copied. Through the entire ordeal, his eyes were darting, his ears alert, and his sphincter muscles clenched in preparation for fight or flight.
“What I can’t get over,” Bennie now said, “is how Walter here can switch back and forth between perfect Burmese and excellent English. Have you noticed his English is better than mine? He’s more American than I am.”
Bennie meant that Walter had a British accent, which in his mind sounded more high-class than his American midwestern one.
Walter was pleased by the flattery. “Oh, but being American has less to do with one’s proficiency in English and more with the assumptions you hold dear and true—your inalienable rights, your pursuit of happiness. I, sad to say, don’t possess those assumptions. I cannot undertake the pursuit.”
“Well, you understand us,” Bennie said. “So that makes you at least an honorary American.”
“Why is it such an honor?” Wendy said peevishly. “Not everyone wants to be an American.”
Although Bennie was annoyed, he laughed. Walter, ever the diplomat, said to Bennie, “Well, I’m flattered that you consider me to be one of your own.”
On their way out, they passed a pile of shiny carp, the mouths of the fish still moving. “I thought this was a Buddhist country,” Heidi said. “I thought they didn’t kill animals.” A few yards to the right was the bloody carnage of a dead pig. Heidi had glimpsed it and now would not look that way.
“The butchers and fishermen are usually not Buddhist,” Walter said. “But even if they are, they approach their fishing with reverence. They scoop up the fish and bring them to shore. They say they are saving fish from drowning. Unfortunately ...” He looked downward, like a penitent. “. . . the fish do not recover.”
Saving fish from drowning? Dwight and Harry looked at each other and guffawed. Was he joking?
Heidi was unable to speak. Did these people actually believe they were doing a good deed? Why, they had no intention of saving anything! Look at those fish. They were gasping for oxygen, and the sellers who squatted nearby, smoking their cheroots, hardly possessed the caring demeanor of emergency doctors or hospice workers. “It’s horrible,” she said at last. “It’s worse than if they just killed them outright rather than justifying it as an act of kindness.”