Saving Fish From Drowning

  Moff is looking toward the mountains, the only sounds the soft plash of water on the boat’s sides. As sabers of light slice at the mountains’ purple silhouette and open the sky, everyone murmurs in unison. Cut.

  They’re amid the rhythmic clacking in a weaving mill. Cut.

  Noisy banter and bargaining in a cheroot factory. Moff and Dwight waggle cigars out of one side of their mouths and utter Groucho Marx witticisms. Cut.

  His friends are watching a man pour a gooey mixture onto an artisan’s screened frame. Harry realizes this must have been the papermaker’s place. All the things that these witnesses had reported were true! So what happened after? Harry can barely breathe. Cut.

  And here it is: A flash of green, a patch of sky, and bodies jostling about with shouts and groans. An engine grinds into gear, and someone—it sounds like Moff—yells: “Hang on!” The world is heaving from side to side, and Dwight lurches into view and then out. Roxanne shouts in a sarcastic voice: “As you can see, we’re on this ultra-deluxe bus, making our way to a Christmas surprise in the rainforest. . . .” “This better be good!” Wendy’s voice is heard to yell back. Cut.

  All is quiet, save for a bird calling and the creaking bend and snap of young ferns being stepped upon. The camera eye looks ahead and sees the travelers’ backs trudging upward in single file. A man is complaining: Bennie. A woman is, too: Vera. Cut.

  Some are sitting on a log, others leaning against it. The camera eye closes in on an oil-coated paper umbrella, and when Roxanne calls, “Hey, you,” it tips back, and underneath is Esmé, snuggling the white puppy. She wrinkles her nose at the camera. Cut.

  What’s this? A river? A gully? Definitely some sort of deep chasm, but even though the eye drops down and down and down, the bottom can’t be seen. It looks sickeningly deep. Cut.

  Long ropes run over the perilous rift—oh, it’s a suspended bridge. “Hell, no,” Bennie says off camera. A hiss of words follow: “Safe?” “Scared.” “Shit!” Are his friends actually going to cross it? Good God, there goes Moff! Now Rupert! Heidi! And Marlena—she makes it, too—good girl! There goes Esmé, Dwight, Vera, Wyatt, Wendy, Bennie . . . Roxanne calls for Dwight to take the camcorder from Black Spot, and the camera blurs and then is on fixed on her, and she, too, crosses with a wobble and a shout. Cheers and laughter. Cut.

  Dark faces, Burmese, perhaps tribal. Two old women in turbans are behind Dwight’s partially viewed head. They look up and wave to the camera. “These are the Karen tribe,” Roxanne says. “As you can see, it’s really primitive here, untouched by the twentieth century.” Cut.

  Dwight is inspecting a small hut made of tree roots. The camera’s eye looks up, then down. “This is the finest hotel in the region,” Roxanne says. The camera surveys a set of trees. Cut.

  A feast and smiling faces. His friends are eating. They wave: “Hi, Mom!” “Hi, Mom.” “Hi, Mom.” “Our new home . . .” “We’re going to learn how to make food just like this . . .” “Hi, Daddy, this tribe is the coolest. . . .” “Man, this is so great we never want to leave. . . .” They never want to leave? Harry is aghast. Did they actually stay on purpose? Are they sympathizers? Cut.

  Rupert is showing card tricks to two small cheroot-smoking children with reddish hair. “In magical lands, magic can happen, but only if we believe. Do you believe?” The little girl answers, “We belief in God.” Cut.

  The eye of the camera glides across in a blur and stops on an unknown object, a fallen tree branch . . . wait, what is that? Good Lord, it’s not a tree but the stump of a leg! The eye moves upward. And its owner also has a sewn-shut eye. And look at this poor girl, horrible, horrible, she’s missing her arm. This one, part of a leg. This one, a foot. The camera sweeps to the face of a somber-looking young man. He has smooth cheek planes, large, almost black eyes. He looks like an Asian god. And he can speak English, but his accent and soft voice make what he is saying hard to understand: “When the mine is exploding, the mine is no more danger, and the soldiers are very happy, because now path is safe for walking.”

  The eye of the camera sweeps to the mutilated body parts and comes in close so that fused vermilion flesh fills the screen. Roxanne speaks in a shaky voice. “It’s heartbreaking. . . . They forced them! The fucking military took away their land, burned their villages, enslaved them. God, this is so sickening. . . . It really makes you appreciate . . .” Her voice drops to a fierce whisper, and it is obvious she is crying. “Oh God, it makes you appreciate not ever knowing such things. . . . We have to help them. . . . We can’t just give them sympathy or a token bit of help. We want to help in a bigger way, a substantial way that can make a difference.” Cut.

  The chasm again. Voices are grumbling, arguing, nay-saying, insisting. “This is the shits,” Roxanne says. The eye of the camera veers toward a ladder of ropes running straight down the other side of the crevasse. The bridge has collapsed! They’re looking down? Has someone fallen in? Who? How many? Marlena? Esmé, Moff? No? No! Thank God. They’re fine. There they are. All there? Yes, they must be, since no one is acting crazed with grief, just pissed. So that’s it. They can’t get out. The bridge is down. They meant to come back all along. And they’re alive. They’re simply stuck. They must be okay. They had food. Thank God! Cut.

  It’s night. Why has so much time gone by without any video? The date stamp says December 30th, so it is the 31st, New Year’s Eve. Rupert is lying on the ground, his eyes looking upward, perhaps at stars. Whoever is holding the camera is shaking it. It makes Rupert look jittery. Rupert is mumbling, but it’s impossible to hear what he is saying. Every now and then, he lets out a shout. A night moth flutters by, dancing with the light of the smoke.

  Vera is speaking. “You shouldn’t do that.” She isn’t scolding. She sounds very gentle. She must be telling Rupert to not be so noisy, because others are sleeping.

  Rupert doesn’t answer. The camera continues shaking. No, wait, it’s Rupert who’s shaking. He’s shivering, shivering violently. He must be sick, terribly sick. It is now Moff who is speaking, although he is not seen. “His mother,” he says in uneven breaths, and the camera heaves with him. “She’ll want to feel she was next to him . . . taking care of him, too. . . .” Oh God, he’s crying. Moff is crying! Harry has never known his friend to do that. What does this mean? Rupert lets out a shout again.

  “Honey, please,” Vera is saying, so tenderly. “His mother is going to hug him in person. Nothing bad is going to happen. We won’t let it. Come on, turn off the camera. Sit down, get some rest. We still need you to help with the others. . . .” Others? What’s happened to them? Are they sick, too? Is it too late? Does she mean graves must be dug to bury them? Was it poison, malaria, no food? Or did someone hurt them? Did they try to run away and someone stopped them? What happened? What could cause this kind of sadness? Would knowing be even worse than wondering?

  Vera comes into the eye of the camera, her hand is reaching, and then the eye of the camera is a blur, and Moff is weeping like a baby, and when the eye can see clearly again, the world is askew, full of smoke and ashes rising. She must have put the camcorder on top of something, so that now it is looking up. Red words are flashing: “Battery low,” pulsating like a heart. Its eye does not flinch, never looks farther ahead into the dark or to the sides. It stares straight up, observing flecks of ash rising in golden smoke and the red flashing words. Its ear listens without favoring any particular sound, it is simply acting as witness to the babble and shouts, the shuffles and sobs, the occasional crackle of wood as it is consumed. It is calmly tucking these final moments into itself for safekeeping, into memory that winds back in time and will one day move forward.

  That is what Harry is watching. He has entered that world and has become the eye blurred by smoke, brushed by the haphazard flight of moths, stuck in a mise en scène, the entire world, his only existence. He cannot blink and lose even a millisecond. He is memorizing all there is, this moment to the next, to another and another . . . until all at once the scre
en goes back, and there is nothing more to memorize.

  He was so dazed he did not hear Belinda. “Are you okay?”

  Zilpha leaned toward him. “Do you want to watch it again?”

  Harry shook his head. He was emotionally exhausted. He took the tape from the camcorder and gently wrapped it in the white cloth, then slipped it into his shirt pocket. Walter and Heinrich never mentioned a Christmas surprise in the jungle. But what did Walter remember? He was probably brain-damaged from that brick that hit his head. And Heinrich was perpetually soused, that Teutonic drunkard.

  “Are you still going to Rangoon?”

  “Yes, of course . . . No . . . I don’t know.”

  “You think they’re still in the jungle?”

  Harry’s mind was racing. The witnesses had said they were in Rangoon. But on the tape, they were stuck because the bridge had collapsed. The tribe wasn’t able to lead them around Bagan, Mandalay, Rangoon. . . . The next minute the truth sprang forward. The lousy bastards had set him up! All those tour sites and witnesses, rubbish. What a bloody blinkered fool he had been. And then he remembered that his reports had kept the focus on his friends. Belinda said that the story was splashed all over the news in the United States. That had been part of his plan—in fact, he rationalized, that was the main one. So now what? Was Marlena still in the jungle? Anything could have happened in the days since the tape ended.

  Belinda and Zilpha remained silent, waiting patiently for Harry to announce his decision. Even before meeting him, the two had discussed the possibility that the TV Myanmar search was a sham, and that Harry had been their sucker. He was like many people who were desperate, needing to hang on to any kind of hope. Several networks besides GNN suspected a public relations ruse, but they had decided not to raise doubt yet about the possibility of concocted eye-witnesses, since there was nothing solid to counter either Harry’s belief or popular opinion.

  He turned to the women. “I have to get back to the lake, to that damn resort. They’re somewhere near there, that’s clear.”

  Belinda and Zilpha looked at him quizzically. It was a reporter technique to elicit more information.

  “Look,” he said, now fully under control again, “the group was never in any of those cities where the witnesses reported them to be. I had a feeling that was the case, but I went along with it so we’d continue to get coverage. I didn’t want my friends to be forgotten. The media can make things happen, you see. I know, because I work in television.”

  Belinda and Zilpha nodded. “Listen, this might be a stupid question,” Belinda said, “but how are you going to search for them? Who’s going to take you? If it’s true what they said on camera about the minesweeping and all, the military isn’t going to rescue them. They might do something that isn’t what you have in mind, especially if your friends are linked up with Karen rebels.”

  “Wait a minute,” Harry yelped. “Who said they were rebels?”

  “The military thinks all Karen tribes hiding in the jungle are rebels.”

  Harry frowned. “How do you know that?”

  Belinda kept a straight face. “They’ve been doing special reports on the military regime on Global News Network.”

  Harry thought fast. “I’ll get the American Embassy to intervene.”

  “They can’t do anything at the lake,” Zilpha said. “They aren’t allowed to leave Rangoon without permission.”

  Harry recalled someone else’s saying that—the expatriate at that other resort on the lake. Damn. “l still have to speak to someone at the Embassy. They can put the pressure on and make sure we find my friends without anyone being harmed.”

  “Maybe you should go to Rangoon as planned,” Belinda said. “That way you can meet with the Embassy people personally.”

  Brilliant, Harry said to himself. Why hadn’t he thought of that? “Yes,” he said, “. had been considering that. And I’ll give them the tape. They’ll see that it gets aired, and that way, the whole world will be watching.”

  Belinda looked at Zilpha out of the corner of her eye. They’d have to work fast to return to the bureau in Bangkok. The disc they’d recorded had to reach Global News Network before Harry gave his tape to the Embassy; otherwise, bye-bye, exclusive.

  Belinda asked if Harry was still going to do the update in Rangoon with TV Myanmar. He snapped a brisk no. He’d play along with them and let them fly him to Rangoon and pay for his hotel, and then he’d feign food poisoning before the shoot. Let them get a dose of their own medicine, he said to himself.

  Before leaving Zilpha’s room, Harry said, “I can’t thank you enough for letting me use your camcorder and computer. You’re a godsend. Say, what is it you two do?”

  “We’re teachers,” Belinda said immediately. “Zilpha teaches kindergarten, and I’ve got first grade.”

  Harry broke into a smile. “I thought it might have been something like that.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, in Rangoon, Harry arose at five and went over his plan. He would wait for the reporter to call him at seven. He’d make his voice hoarse to sound deathly ill and to ensure that it was impossible for him to speak on camera. A couple of retches might be good, too. He’d play the part thoroughly. No shaving today, and no shower. He mussed his hair, put on rumpled clothes. At eighty forty-five, he would take a taxi to the American Embassy. If anyone from TV Myanmar saw him leave the hotel, he would say he was trying to find a Western doctor. Had he covered all the bases? Brilliant. He was about to order breakfast, but thought better of it. So he took out his notes and the rough draft of Come. Sit. Stay.

  At seven, the reporter called, but before Harry could launch into his excuse, the man said tersely, “Today we are not filming. Everything has been canceled.”

  “Oh,” Harry said, forgetting to sound sick. “Why is that?” The reporter was elliptical in his answers. The more Harry asked, the more opaque his comments became. The reporter would say no more.

  Harry was baffled. Had there been a national crisis? He turned on the television. Nothing. Whatever the reason, at least it had nothing to do with him.

  17

  THE APPEARANCE OF MIRACLES

  For the past few days, my friends in the jungle had taken turns pedaling the bicycle to keep the car batteries charged. Night and day, they watched the news on the various satellite channels: the BBC, CNN, Star out of Hong Kong, TV Myanmar International, and what they believed to be the most informative, Global News Network.

  For some reason, tonight TV Myanmar was no longer showing Harry’s reports from Bagan and Mandalay, which used to repeat every other hour. My friends had enjoyed tuning in to those segments when there was nothing new on the other international channels, and having watched them so many times, they could recite the words before they came out of Harry’s mouth: “The aching splendor . . .” When Harry turned to the camera and said those words, my friends always burst into laughter. Their antics had annoyed Marlena. Why were they making fun of him? It was his show that had gotten them on the international news. Tonight she was worried to find no reruns. According to Harry’s report, he was supposed to be in Rangoon today. He was moving farther away, and yet watching him every other hour had made her feel that they were emotionally close.

  My other friends had turned their attention to a Global News Network special. They were watching interviews about themselves, padded with comments from family and friends. For the next hour, they learned there were heroes and heroines among them. Who knew that Heidi had discovered the body of her murdered boyfriend? No wonder she was so cautious yet, they now understood with appreciation, skillfully prepared. He was a housemate not a boyfriend, she tried to explain, and they praised her even more for downplaying her trauma.

  They also had not known—not even Roxanne—that Dwight had served for three years as a Big Brother to a kid who had been bullied in grade school and had become a truant to escape the torment. The former kid was now a young man on a track scholarship at Stanford and, inspired by Dwight’s example, also a
volunteer at an after-school program for troubled teens. (The kid had not seen Dwight for ten years or so. He had told Dwight he was the biggest bully of them all, which had left Dwight embittered about the whole experience.)

  Vera, they discovered, had two grown children, who recalled the time she gave money to the disadvantaged in lieu of buying Christmas presents. (Vera had actually bought them bicycles but not the boom boxes they wanted.) They’d been angry at the time, they admitted, but later they realized, as one of them said, that “she was as much a saint then as she is today.”

  Whatever portion of truth those televised comments held, hearing them moved my friends to tears and increased their affection for one another. They hugged the recipient of each tribute. From now on, they promised, they would celebrate every Thanksgiving together, no matter where they might be. Within that vow, they voiced their belief they would get out of the jungle alive and well.

  THE PEOPLE of the Lord’s Army were also listening to tributes, not on television but told to one another as they crouched in a circle. Their mood was somber, and they had reason to believe that their days were numbered.

  Black Spot had taken the tape down to Nyaung Shwe Town days earlier. He had given it to their trusted source, the same man who took the “Second Life” plants they found. But the tape had not appeared on either of the Harry Bailley shows. And today, TV Myanmar had removed the program, and all the reruns as well. The tribe knew the reason. The generals in charge were angry. They now knew the faces of the Lord’s Army. They would hunt them down and kill them as rebels. They would go to Nyaung Shwe Town and post photographs of tribe members, and the longboat pilots whom they once beat out of fares would say, “Hey, that’s Black Spot! He took those people to Floating Island.” Arms would be twisted, twisted off, if necessary, until someone blurted out where the Lord’s Army was hiding. And at least one person had a fairly good idea where that was. The tape had not helped them after all. They would not be TV stars on Harry’s show. The show had been canceled, and that meant they would soon be canceled, too.