At ten in the morning, they boarded the flight, and as they ascended, so did their moods. They had escaped their troubles with nothing more than a few mosquito bites and the pinch of several thousand kwai.
Their new guide, Miss Kong, was there to meet them at the gate in Mangshi. She was holding a sign: “Welcome Bibi Chen Group.” I was delighted to see this, but it certainly took my friends aback. Bennie quickly introduced himself as the tour leader taking my place.
“Oh, Miss Bibi is not able to come?” Miss Kong inquired.
“Not able,” Bennie confirmed, and hoped the others had not heard this exchange. If the tourism office here was unaware that the original organizer of this trip was dead, what else had they neglected to note?
The guide faced the group: “My name is Kong Xiang-lu. You may call me Xiao Kong or Miss Kong,” she said. “Or if you prefer, my American nickname is Lulu. Again, nickname is Lulu. Can you say this?” She paused to hear the correct answer.
“Lulu,” everyone mumbled.
“Sorry?” Lulu cupped her ear.
“Lulu!” they filled in with more enthusiasm.
“Very good. When you need something, you just shout Lulu.” She said it again, in a singing voice: “Luuu-lu!”
Privately, as they walked toward the bus, Lulu told Bennie, “I saw report of your difficulties at Stone Bell Temple.”
Bennie became flustered. “We didn’t mean—that is, we had no idea . . .”
She held up her hand like the Buddha asking for meditative silence. “No idea, no worries.” Bennie noted that everyone in China who spoke any English was saying that phrase, “No worries.” Some Aussies must have come through, all of them solicitously murmuring “No worries” at every turn. Lost your luggage? No worries! Your room’s crawling with fleas? No worries!
Bennie wanted to believe that Lulu’s declaration of “No worries” was genuine, that she had solved all their problems. He had been hoping for a sign that their luck had turned, and by the minute he felt she was presenting it. She offered a clear plan, knew all the routines, and could speak the same dialect as the driver.
I, too, thought she was an ideal guide. She had an aura of assurance matched by competence. This is the best combination, much better than nervousness and incompetence, as in the last guide. The worst, I think, is complete confidence matched by complete incompetence. I have experienced it all too often, not just in tour guides, but in marketing consultants and art experts at auction houses. And you find it in plenty of world leaders. Yes, and they all lead you to the same place, trouble.
For Bennie, Lulu’s no-worries and no-nonsense demeanor was as good as two prescription sedatives. Suddenly, devising a new schedule did not seem overwhelming. Her English was understandable, and that alone put her legions ahead of Miss Rong. Poor Miss Rong. He still felt guilty about that. Oh, well. In addition to being fluent in Mandarin, Lulu claimed to speak Jingpo, Dai, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese, and Burmese. “Meine Deutsche, ach,” she went on in a self-deprecating manner full of good humor and mistakes, “ist nicht sehr gute.” Her hair was cut into a short flip. Her glasses were modern, small cat’s-eye frames with a hip retro fifties look. She wore a tan corduroy jacket, drab olive slacks, and a black turtleneck. She certainly appeared to be competent. She could have been a tour guide in Maine or Munich.
“The Chinese border town has very excellent hotel,” Lulu went on. “That is where you stay tonight, in Ruili. But the town is quite small, just stopping-off place where tourists are eager to leave, so not too much for sightseeing. My suggestion is this, so listen: We stop at a Jingpo village along the way” Bennie nodded dumbly. “Later, we do a bicycle trip to a market, where selling the foods is very exciting to tourist who is seeing the first time. . . .” As Lulu ticked off various spur-of-the-moment activities, Bennie felt waves of relief. Lulu was doing an admirable job, God love her.
Lulu stood at the front of the bus, counting heads before she gave the takeoff signal to the bus driver, a man named Xiao Li. “You can call him Mr. Li,” Lulu said. Lesser employees, Bennie noted, were accorded more respectful status. As the bus roared into gear, Lulu grabbed a microphone. “Good afternoon, good morning, ladies, gentlemen,” her voice came out, loud and tinny. “You are awake? Eyes are open? Ready to learn more about Yunnan Province here in a beautiful southwest part of China? Okay?” She smiled, then beckoned her charges with a toss of her hand to answer.
“Okay,” a few said.
Lulu shook her head ruefully. “Okay?” Lulu leaned forward, her hand cupping her ear, a now familiar cue.
“Okay!” the travelers shouted back.
“Very good. So enthusiastic. Today, you travel to Ruili, pronounce it ‘Ray-LEE.’ Can you say this?”
“RAY-lee!”
“Hey, your Chinese is pretty good. Okay. Ruili is Chinese border town, next to Muse in Myanmar. Pronounce it ‘MOO-say.’” The hand flip.
“Moo-SAY!”
“Not so bad. In a next forty-five minutes, we are going to see a Jingpo village. For seeing the ordinary life, the ways of preparing food, or growing some vegetables. Is okay? What you think?” This was met with applause. “Agree, very good.” She beamed at her attentive charges.
Lulu continued: “Does anyone know who are Jingpo people, what tribe Jingpo people are related? What tribe, what country? No? No one knows? Then today you will learn somethings new you never hear before, yes, somethings new. Jingpo is a same as Kachin in Burma, the Kachin people in Burma. Burma is a same as Myanmar, Myanmar is new name since 1989. Yes, Kachin people you may have hearing this or not, is very fierce tribe, yes, fierce tribe. You may know, reading this in a newspaper. Who is reading this? No one?”
My friends looked at one another. There were fierce tribes in Myanmar? Dwight seemed oddly interested in this fact. Roxanne had a headache. She wondered if her period was coming, hailing the dismal news, once again, that she was not pregnant. “I can’t stand that microphone,” she muttered. “Can someone tell her to turn it down, or even give us some silence instead of blabbing on and on?”
Lulu went on: “The story is this. The Kachin often make insurrection against the government, the military government. Other tribes in Myanmar do the same, not all, just some do. Karen people, I think they do. So if it is happening, the Myanmar government must stop this insurrection. Small civil war, until everything is quiet. But not here, no such problem. Here our government is not military. China is socialist, very peace-loving, all peoples, minorities, they are welcome and can do their own lifestyles, but also live as one people in one country. So here the Jingpo people are peaceful, no worries that you visit their village. They welcome you, really, they sincerely welcoming you. Okay?” She cupped her ear.
“Okay!” half the travelers shouted in unison.
“Okay, everyone agree. So now you learn somethings new. Here we have a tribe called Jingpo. Over there, Kachin. Language, the same. Business, the same. They do farming, living very simple life, have strong family relations all under one roof, from grandmother to little babies, yes, all under same roof. Soon you shall see. Very soon.” She smiled confidently, clicked off the microphone, and began to pass out bottles of water.
“Finally!” Roxanne whispered loudly.
What a treasure, Bennie thought. Lulu was like a kindergarten teacher who could keep unruly children in order, clapping happily, and on their toes. He leaned his head against the window. If he could get a few winks, his mind would be able to function better. . . . So many details to attend to . . . He had to get them checked into the hotel ... put together a to-do list before they entered Burma. Sleep beckoned. Mindlessness, senselessness. No worries, no worries, he heard the repeating voice of Lulu with her hypnotic calmness. . . .
“Mr. Bennie. Mr. Bennie?”
Lulu tapped his arm and Bennie’s eyes flew open. She was looking at him brightly. “For your update, I have some F-Y-I to report. So far I have not secure necessary arrangements into Myanmar. We have no answer, not yet.
. . .”
Bennie’s heart began pounding like that of a mother who hears her baby’s cry in the middle of the night.
“Of course, I am working very hard for getting it,” she added.
“I don’t understand,” Bennie stammered. “We already have visas for Myanmar. Can’t we just go in?”
“Visa is for coming in five days later. How you got this, I don’t know. It is very unusual, to my knowledge. Also, this way into Myanmar is not so easy, with visa or not with visa. You are Americans. Usually Americans fly airplanes, go first to Yangon or Mandalay. Here at Ruili border, only Chinese and Burmese come in and out, no third-country national peoples.”
Bennie began to sputter. “I still don’t understand.”
“No Americans enter overland, not in very long time. Maybe is not convenient for Myanmar customs to making the border pass to English-speaking tourists. The paperwork is already very difficult because so many peoples in China and Myanmar speaking different dialects. . . .”
Bennie had a hard time following this line of thought. What did different dialects have to do with their getting a border pass?
“. . . That why I am thinking this is very unusual, you coming in this way.”
“Then why are we trying?”
“I thinking Miss Bibi want start entry here on China side, drive overland into Muse on Myanmar side. That way, your journey can follow the history of Burma Road.”
“Follow the history! But if we can’t get in, we won’t be following anything but our asses back to America!”
“Yes,” Lulu said agreeably. “I thinking same things.”
“Then why don’t we just fly to Mandalay and start the trip there?” She nodded slowly, her mouth pulling downward. It was apparent she had strong reservations there. “This morning, before you come, I change everything for you arrive early. Same cities, same hotels, just early date. No worries. But if we fly to Mandalay, skip other places, then I must be changing every city, every hotel. We are needing airplane and canceling the bus. Everything start over. I think is possible. We can ask a Golden Land Tour Company in Myanmar. But starting over means everything is slow.”
Bennie could already see this was a bad idea. Too many opportunities for problems at every step. “Has anyone at least tried recently to come in overland?”
“Oh, yes. This morning, six backpackers were trying, both American and Canadian.”
“And?”
“All turn back. But you be patient. I am trying somethings. No worries.”
The blood vessels in Bennie’s scalp rapidly constricted, then dilated, causing his heart to accelerate and boom. What the hell did this mean? Where was his Xanax? How was it that Lulu could wear a cheerful face when she had just presented him with such awful news? His tired mind was racing, crashing into dead ends. And would she please stop with the stupid “No worries” bit?
I must interject here. It’s true that no Americans had come into Burma via Ruili in a quite a long time, in fact, many, many years. But I had arranged to be among the first. It was to be one of my proudest achievements on the trip. During my last reconnaissance trip, I had had an excellent tour guide, a young man who was with the Myanmar tourism office. He was very smart, and if I had a problem or needed to change anything, the first thing he said was not, “That can’t be done,” which is the knee-jerk attitude of so many, and not just in Myanmar. This young man would say, “Let me think how we might do that.”
So when I said I wanted to bring a group and travel on the Burma Road from the Chinese border in Ruili and into Burma, he said that this would require special arrangements, because it might be the first time in a long time that this had been done. A few months before we were to start our tour, he wrote and said all the arrangements had been made. They had been complicated, but he had made contacts at the checkpoint, at the central tourism office in Yangon, with the tour company, with customs. The date, he said, was difficult to attain. But it was all confirmed for Christmas Day. Once in China, he would contact me at the hotel in Ruili, and he would be there to guide us through personally. I was so happy, I offered to give him a very special gift on Christmas Day, and he was excited and grateful to hear this.
But of course, neither Bennie nor Lulu knew of this. It was up to me to contact the tour guide again and make sure he could make new arrangements. How I would do that in my present state, well, it was very difficult to imagine.
HARRY HAD RESUMED SITTING next to Marlena, but the momentum between them was rapidly rolling backward. In front of them, Wendy and Wyatt snuggled and nuzzled each other happily. How sad, Harry thought, that he and Marlena were not similarly engaged. It was awkward for him to watch the young couple, see this contrast to him. It almost seemed they were flaunting their sexual intimacy. Marlena, meanwhile, resented their prolonged sessions of French kissing. A little smooching was fine, but this was exhibitionism. Who wanted to see their tongues damp-mopping each other’s gums? The tongue-thrusting looked like a puppet show of a penile-vaginal encounter. Since these slurping antics were right in front of her, she had to work hard to ignore them. It was so embarrassing. She thought about asking them to stop, but then Harry might think she was a prude. Harry, in fact, was thinking of what he could say to begin a conversation with Marlena and reestablish their flirtation.
As Wendy and Wyatt worked themselves into a more fervent session, Harry unintentionally interrupted it by saying to Marlena, “Look at those huge birds! Those wings, how glorious!” He pointed out the window to circling birds. Heads turned, as did Wendy’s and Wyatt’s.
“Vultures,” Wyatt said.
“Mm,” Marlena said. “That’s what they are, all right. We’ve certainly seen a lot of them. Must be there’s a carcass in the field.” She was grateful that Harry thought to point out something that quickly snuffed out thoughts of sensual pleasure. “Chocolate or peanuts, anyone?” She began tossing out Halloween-sized bags of M&M’s and trail mix. She had brought a huge duffel bag worth of snacks. Wyatt started popping chocolates, and Marlena hoped that his mouth, thus occupied, would not continue the lingual gymnastics.
Harry was mentally kicking himself. Vultures! What a sod he was. It was obvious Marlena thought so. Of all the stupid things to point out Of course they were vultures. He should have put on his bifocals. What happened to their spark, their frisson? Like an old married couple, they munched on their candies and stared wordlessly at the scenery with feigned interest and glazed eyes. The flat patches with different hues of green, a few low hills with clusters of trees. It all looked the same.
What they were actually seeing were fields of sugarcane with feathery tassels, thickets of tall bamboo, and twenty-foot-high small-needled pine trees. On the right was a hillside of tea bushes, a plot of carrots with white flowery heads. On the left were golden fields of rapeseed, and next to those, groves of rubber trees with leaves turned orange, red, and brown. Running alongside the road were the most vibrant bursts of life: fiery balls of lantana and scarlet hibiscus with their trumpet flowers open to hail a perfect afternoon. A perfect afternoon wasted on Harry and Marlena.
The bus turned up a bumpy dirt road, and all the nappers were jounced awake. Lulu conferred with the driver, and they came to an immediate agreement. It was time to disembark and walk the rest of the way to the village. The driver turned off the engine. “Bring your hat, sunglass, and water,” Lulu ordered. “Also insect cream if you have. Many mosquitoes.”
“Is there a restroom nearby?” Roxanne called out. Her camcorder was looped around her neck.
“Yes, yes, this way.” Lulu gestured to the side of the road, to the tall vegetation. As people gathered their necessary belongings, tiny whimpers came from the back of the bus. Eyes turned toward Esmé, who appeared to be doubled over in pain.
“Wawa!” Marlena cried out. “Are you sick? What’s the matter?” Light-headed with fear, Marlena ran toward the back of the bus, and the closer she drew, the more miserable Esmé appeared to be. Marlena leaned down to try to h
elp her daughter sit up. A moment later, Marlena gasped: “Oh my God!”
The puppy whimpered again.
Harry ran toward them. Esmé began to howl, “I’m not leaving it! If you do, I’m staying here, too.” Since the night before, Esmé knew the inevitable would happen. They would find out what she had done, and having kept her secret for so long, she had grown more anxious, and now she could not help but bawl. Surges of adolescent hormones contributed to a sense of doom.
Harry lifted a scarf that Esmé had fashioned by cutting up a T-shirt. There in the crook of the hysterical girl’s arm was a very lethargic-looking puppy. “Let me have a look-see,” he said quietly.
“You can’t have it!” Esmé blurted and blubbered. “If you try taking it I’ll kill you, I swear I will—”
“Stop that!” Marlena scolded. In the past year, Esmé had said this a few times to both her and her ex-husband’s new wife. Though Marlena knew it was just histrionics and empty threats, it pained her to hear her daughter use the word “kill” when there were teenagers who had acted upon such enraged thoughts.
Harry put his hand on Esmé’s shoulder to calm her.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “You can put your grimy hands on my mom but not on me. I’m underage, you know!”
Marlena flushed, and Harry did, too, with embarrassment and indignation. He looked up to see the others in the bus staring at him.
“Esmé, stop this right now,” Marlena said.
Harry, remembering his training as an animal behaviorist, recovered his equanimity. With frightened dogs, shouting never helped matters. He made himself a symbol of calmness. “Of course no one is going to take away your puppy,” he said in a soft voice. “I’m a veterinarian, and I can see what’s the matter with him.”