Harry took in a big breath of resolve. And then he sniffed. “Good God, what’s that smell? It’s hideous.”
Walter turned around again. “Some of the others have taken ill, I’m afraid. I suspect it’s a touch of traveler’s malady. We’ve done our best to make them comfortable.”
“Who?” Harry asked. “Who’s ill?”
“Mr. Moff and his boy. Mr. Bennie as well, and Miss Marlena. But her daughter is fine, not at all sick.”
Marlena! Poor girl, no wonder she snapped at him. She was feeling dreadful. Well, then! The explanation cheered him. The situation between them was not as bad as he thought. So, what could he do to make her feel better? All the usual methods—the florist, big cozy hydrangeas, bubble bath ingredients—were clearly unavailable. A cup of tea with honey, perhaps? Offers of a massage. Suddenly he knew. The endorphins still surging through his brain allowed the miraculous answer to come wafting over him.
Words. He knew the power of words. He merely had to select the right ones that she needed to hear precisely this instant. If it succeeded with a bunch of bloodthirsty soldiers, it would be easy as pie with Marlena.
“Marlena, darling,” he would say. “I’m back for you.” He pictured her face, slightly feverish, damp with sensuality. Should he act doctorly, knowledgeable and assuring? Or should he take the role of lover, pledging that love was the antidote to whatever ailed her? Harry could be truly awful at romance when he tried.
Luckily, he lost all thought of Marlena as he gawked at the hotel. “What’s a bloody menorah doing in a place like this?” Once shown to his room, he could hear through the thin walls that Marlena was in no condition whatsoever to have a visit from him, doctorly or amorous. Poor girl, she sounded wretched. So did the person in the room on the other side. It was like a symphony for the plague, all tubas, bassoons, and a repetitious refrain of squeaky flutes.
At midnight, Marlena finally ceased her visits to the bathroom. But then, one floor below, a rowdy group of Burmese men took over. They were smoking and shouting, stamping their feet and clanking bottles. The fumes of cheroots and cheap liquor rose to the rooms above. Marlena pounded the floor and shouted: “Shut up!” After a while, Harry spoke to her through the paper-thin wall. “Marlena, dearest, try to rest. I’ll take care of this.”
He went downstairs and knocked on the door of the offending group. A red-eyed man answered, his upper body weaving in circles as if he had just been punched. Fetid alcohol blasted from his slack mouth. Harry saw there were five men. They were gambling. Their blood alcohol must have been pure palm toddy, their brains saturated. What could he say that would possibly bring these men to reason?
A few minutes later, Harry was back in his room. He could hear the drunken men trying to be quiet as they exited downstairs. They tripped on a lamp cord, broke a windowpane, cleared their throats of mucus with motorcycle-throttle intensity, and lobbed spittle onto whatever stood in their way. In their hands were a total of fifty American dollars, their surprise winnings, courtesy of Harry Bailley.
They were not leaving as a favor to Harry. He had suggested only that they be quiet. On their own accord, they decided to sneak out before they had to pay their hotel and liquor bill. It was a very bad decision on their part. Theft in the military-run Myanmar is a serious matter. You would be extremely lucky to get away with it, foolish to try. And weaving down the road does not improve your chances of avoiding bad luck.
Ten miles down the road, they ran their car into a shallow ditch to avoid a Nat on a white horse. It sprang into the middle of the road from a clump of jacaranda trees.
Shortly after that, two military policemen, one tall, one stout, arrived with rifles aimed at the men’s heads. “It was a Nat,” the men kept saying. The police examined documents, confiscated fifty American dollars, two hotel blankets and five towels, and pushed the hotel thieves onto a truck bed. The truck sped away, taking them down a black ribbon of road that soon disappeared.
8
IT WAS NOT JUST A CARD TRICK
The waters of Inle Lake are blue and so shallow you can see the bottom on a cloudless day. This is where ladies bathe their newborn babies. This is where the dead float with their eyes toward the sky. This was where my friends came the morning of Christmas Eve.
They were relieved to have left Lashio, where they had spent time recovering from illness. To their delight, Walter had found an opening at a resort on Inle Lake. There they could bide their time in luxury until they picked up on their original itinerary in Burma. A bus from Helo airport brought them to the busy dock in Nyaung Shwe Town. While waiting for their luggage to be unloaded, Rupert tucked his paperback under his arm, fetched out his newly acquired caneball, and shuttled it back and forth between his knees. When he tired of this, he bounced the basketball, leaping up and pretending he was aiming for a hoop. Next, restless as usual, he fished out from his backpack a deck of cards, which he shuffled in midair, creating a flapping-pigeon sound.
A circle of people formed and grew by the second. “Pick a card, any card,” Rupert told Dwight and Roxanne. The locals watched closely as Roxanne reached in and pulled out the king of clubs. “Show everyone your card,” Rupert said. “You know what it is? . . . Good, don’t forget it. We’re going to put it back in the deck. Now pick another card, any of them. . . . Good, the two of diamonds . . . Show it to everyone. . . . That one, put it behind your back. . . . You have it there, right? You’re sure? Okay, we’re going to shuffle the cards.” The cards flew with the beating of wings.
“Things are not always what they seem.” Rupert intoned. “And what you choose is not always what you get. Others may choose for you.” The timbre of his voice had changed completely. It was deeper, more resonant, that of a much older man. He had been reading a classic tome for magicians, The Expert at the Card Table, and he knew that with illusions, the skill is in the hands, the eye, and the showmanship.
Rupert held the deck facedown and with one sweep fanned the cards out in an arc.
“In magical lands, magic can happen. But only if we believe.” He looked at Roxanne with a face that was no longer that of a boy but that of someone many years older, a knowledgeable man of the ages. His eyes were fixed on hers, not breaking away for even a second. “And if we believe, the impossible can happen. What we wish to have will manifest. What we wish to hide turns invisible. . . .” The way he spoke gave her an eerie feeling, but she passed it off as too much sun.
“I believe,” Rupert said, like a boy again. “Do you?”
Roxanne laughed. “Sure,” she said, and rolled her eyes at Dwight standing next to her.
“Touch one,” Rupert said. She did so, a card near the middle. Rupert flipped it. “Is this your card?”
“No,” Dwight answered for Roxanne.
“Are you sure?” Rupert said.
“Wrong card,” Dwight said. “You’re busted.”
Roxanne was staring at the card and shaking her head. “I don’t believe it,” she said. Dwight looked. It was the two of diamonds. She whipped out the card that she had held behind her back. The king of clubs. People roared. Dwight grabbed the card and felt it.
Three boatmen had been in the crowd, watching. They saw the young man manifest the card. He could make things invisible and make them come back. And he had the Black Book. They knew that book, the Important Writings that the Older Brother had lost, and thereby caused their downfall. They had been waiting for a hundred years to get it back. And finally he had come, the young man with the cards. He was the Reincarnated One, the Younger White Brother, Lord of Nats.
The boatmen quietly discussed the matter. The Younger White Brother gave no indication he had seen them. They would approach him soon. And what about the others he was with? Were they his retinue? A few moments later, they approached Walter with a fare low enough to beat out other boatmen who had water taxis waiting to be filled with tourists.
At first, I was confused. So many thoughts and so much excitement was exchanged among these boatme
n. Reincarnated One? I have received many new minds since my change, but I don’t yet possess the Mind of Eternity. I sensed only this. They believed Rupert was a deity who could save them. He could manifest miracles. He could make troubles disappear. Soon, three longboats carrying my twelve colleagues, their guide, and excessive amounts of luggage sliced through the waters of Inle Lake. I was the invisible bowsprit on the lead boat. The ride would have been idyllic if not for the chill air and the rat-a-tat drone of the outboard motors. But my friends were happy, their teeth gritted against the wind.
The pilot in the lead boat was a handsome young man in a checked longyi the colors of assorted mushrooms. He was the one who had led the discussion on the dock, insisting what they must do. He was called Black Spot by his friends and family, a nickname given for the birthmark on his hand. As in China, such nicknames were meant to be unflattering, a ruse to discourage the gods from snatching babies away. But in Burma one could get stuck with a new nickname to reflect a change in circumstances or reputation. Black Spot’s two companions, Fishbones, who was rather skinny, and Salt, who had a salty tongue for being a gossip, piloted the other two longboats.
Black Spot sat at the rear, one hand on the rudder. He squinted, thinking of the sick child he had left at home. Only three years old, and already she could see the goodness in people. He pictured her dark eyes, bright and darting as they had been before the sudden, frightening change. Her body had begun to shake, as if to get rid of the intruder ghost. Then she stared upward as the dead do, seeing nothing. And her mouth, out of that came the babble of someone tortured.
He had to leave her while she was still sick. The twin gods had told him to return to the town. Salt and Fishbones assured him many times: She will get better, of course she will. The twin gods’ grandmother had thrown the chicken bones, examined the feathers, and spilled the rice. She had told Black Spot that it was his own mother, confused by her green death, who had wandered in the night and come to the little girl’s bed mat by mistake. She had lain in her soul and gone to sleep. She meant no harm. She loved Black Spot’s daughter like nothing else in the world. Don’t worry, Salt and Fishbones said, the shaman has tied your daughter’s wrists and bound her to earth. He has done a ceremony to remove your mother’s green ghost. And your wife has been giving your daughter the leaf tincture, putting it under her tongue and on the moist parts of her inner cheeks. Every hour she does this. So you see, everything has been done.
Black Spot’s little daughter was at home with his wife in the forested high hills, in A Place with No Name. In the winter months, he visited only when the rains fell or when trouble brought the military and closed off the area to tourists. Then no planes came to Helo airport bearing visitors to Inle Lake. There were no customers to fill the water taxis and take to the far side. At times like this, Black Spot and his fellow boatmen went to see his cousin Grease, who worked in a shop repairing tourist buses.
“Hey, brother, can you take me up the hill?” Black Spot would ask, and Grease never denied him, for he knew Black Spot would bring supplies for his family as well—fermented shrimp paste, noodles, peanuts, a hundred spices, the foodstuffs that a jungle did not yield. Black Spot would also bring whatever equipment he and his fellow boatmen and their secret supporters had managed to obtain through cooperative theft. Grease would choose a vehicle that had been repaired, and they would drive east, away from the lake, down a scarce-used road that took them to a secret opening in what seemed to be impenetrable thickets. Here they wound their way up into an area with the taller trees of the rainforest, until the canopy above allowed only meager slices of sunlight. At the edge of a sinkhole, they stopped. The depression ran up and down a cleft in the mountain, created by the collapse of karst roofs covering an ancient river deep in the earth. Grease would stop the vehicle, and Black Spot would jump out, ready to cross the chasm to No Name Place.
None of the people of Nyaung Shwe Town knew that this was the true home of the three boatmen and the mechanic. The people in the lowlands referred to anyone who lived up there as “people of the jungle.” They might have been isolated tribes, bandits, or the pitiful remnants of insurgents, about whom it was difficult to speak, except with a quiet sigh of relief that you were not among them.
Tomorrow, Black Spot and his tribal brothers would return home, perhaps for good, because today the course of life had changed. The Younger White Brother was here, and as he had promised during his last visit on earth, he would save them. He could manifest weapons. He could make the tribe invisible. They would then leave No Name Place, walk openly without being shot, until they reached a patch of land, the promised land, just big enough to grow the food they needed. There they would live in peace, and no outsiders would cause them trouble, and they would cause no troubles to them. Their only desire was to live peaceably among themselves, in harmony with the land, the water, and the Nats, who would be pleased by how much the tribe respected them. It could all happen, thanks to the return of the Younger White Brother.
THE AIR AT THE DOCK had been warm, but as the three boats sped over the cool lake, the passengers began to feel chilled. At the front of my boat, where the prow narrowed, Moff’s ponytail whipped wildly and smacked Dwight’s face. Harry and Marlena snuggled against each other, Harry’s jacket draped over their chests and bent knees. Rupert sat toward the rear with Walter, and although he was cold, he resisted putting on the windbreaker his dad had handed him. He faced the wind like a god, not knowing that was what he would soon become. On the other passenger boat, Esmé and Bennie huddled together, with Pup-pup bundled between them. Wyatt and Wendy held the conical hat in front of themselves like a shield.
At times, the three boats appeared to be racing against one another. “Ahoy!” Vera shouted as her boat accelerated, and when her friends turned to look from their boat, she snapped a photo. What a good idea. Others reached into bags to pull out cameras. Beyond them, on the banks of the river, children waved next to their hunched-over mothers, who were washing clothes in the shallows.
Walter leaned toward the boatman to give directions in Burmese: “Take the detour through the market.” Unbeknownst to Walter and the others, Black Spot actually spoke a fair amount of English, but he always found it to his advantage to pretend he knew none and to eavesdrop on conversations. Never show a weapon before you need to use it. His father had taught him that. Bitter words to recall, for his father had had no weapons when he needed them. Neither had Walter’s. . . .
BLACK SPOT HAD GROWN UP a sharp and curious child, and he learned his English by absorbing it from the tourists who said and did the same things every day. The same questions and requests, disappointments and complaints, photos and bargains, appetites and illnesses, thank-yous and good-byes. They spoke only to the guide. No one ever expected a child to understand.
He had grown up among tourists. Unlike the Karen tribes who stayed in the hills, his family was Pwo Karen; he had spent his early life on the plains. His family lived in a town about seventy miles from Nyaung Shwe, and they were comfortably situated although not well-to-do. His father and uncles did not farm, as most Karen people did. They were in the transportation business: the transportation of tourists in longboats and the repair of tourist buses. Their women sold shawls and shoulder bags woven with their special knot. They found it easier to take their chances with the whims of tourists rather than those of monsoons.
Life was good until the purges came. After that, there was nothing to do except flee into the jungle, high up, where it was so thick only wild things grew. When the purges stopped, Black Spot and his friends and cousin went quietly to the town of Nyaung Shwe, where they were not known. They procured black-market identity cards of dead people with good reputations. After that they lived two ways: in the open life of the dead, and in the hidden life of the living.
THE NOSES of the longboats pointed left, toward a canal leading to a clump of teak buildings on stilts above the water, their roofs steep-pitched with rusty corrugated tin.
&n
bsp; “We are headed toward a small settlement, one of two hundred along Inle Lake,” Walter explained. “We won’t be stopping here, but I wanted you to have a quick look-see at what you might find in this area, these hamlets tucked away in small channels. Unless you’ve lived here all your life like our boatmen, it’s rather easy to become confused and lost. The lake is shallow, and the hyacinth grows by the acre each week and shifts around like landmasses. It’s been quite a problem for these farmers and fishermen. As their livelihoods are choked off, they depend more and more on tourism, an industry that is, I’m afraid, not very dependable, subject to changes of weather, politics, and such.”
Bennie took this comment as a personal challenge not to disappoint the natives. “We’ll buy lots,” he promised.
When the boats drew closer to the settlement, the pilots eased up on the outboards until the noise fell to a soft clicking. Side by side, the two passenger boats edged water gardens bright with tomatoes and glided under wooden walkways, and were soon upon a floating market, where dozens of canoes laden with food and trinkets sped toward the tourist boats like hockey players after the puck. The canoes, ten to twelve feet long, had shallow hulls of hand-carved lightweight wood. The vendors crouched at one end, overseeing their stocks of woven bags, low-quality jade necklaces, bolts of cloth, and crudely rendered wooden Buddhas. Each vendor beseeched my friends to look his way. Onshore were the vendors who sold more practical goods to the local people: yellow melons, long-stalked greens, tomatoes, golden and red spices, clay pots of pickles and shrimp paste. The colors of the women’s sarongs were those of a happy people—pink, turquoise, orange. The men squatted in their dark-colored longyis, the ever-present cheroots clenched between their teeth.