Heinrich looked around as if to check that no one among his staff was listening. “Not exactly.” He rubbed his fingers, the sign for filthy lucre. “If you help others, you receive merit, a bit of good karma. Oh, come now, don’t act so surprised. It’s a tradition in other countries, yours as well.” He clapped Moff on the shoulder. “Isn’t it so, my friend? Ja?” He laughed uproariously at his own comments. Then he added, “Actually, yes, everyone has become quite friendly, quite, quite. When business is good, relations are good. The past is old business—fffttt!—forgotten, time to move ahead to the future.” He paused and reconsidered. “Well. Of course nothing is ever completely forgotten, unless you’re dead, but we can selectively ignore, can’t we? He cupped his hand near his mouth, then silently formed the syllables: “Be si-lent.”
As I said, he was a slippery man. Wait another minute and he would have changed his position another one hundred eighty degrees, then another, until you had gone in a circle, and all by his reporting differing, vague innuendoes. Even now, I felt I did not understand some essential aspects of this man. I couldn’t. He had thrown a barrier up. Or had I? In Buddhism it is said you must have complete compassion to have complete understanding. I, on the other hand, wished that the slick Mr. Glick would fall face-first into the water. I don’t suppose that would qualify me as compassionate. Suffice it to say, I did not know at the time all there was to know about Heinrich Glick.
AT ONE-FIFTEEN, my friends walked down to the dock, where the three boatmen were huddled and talking excitedly. When they saw their passengers, they quickly hopped into the longboats to assist them as they boarded. Heinrich waved to his guests. “Dinner is seven-ish. Ta-ta!”
“It’s annoying that he uses that British affectation so much,” Bennie said. “Ta-ta! Ta-ta! It’s such a colonial throwback.”
“It’s actually a Burmese expression,” Walter said. “The British conscripted it along with other things.”
“Really?” Bennie thought about this. Ta-ta. The sound of it now seemed more genteel, less arrogant. He sounded it out, feeling the tip of his tongue dance behind his upper teeth. Ta-ta. It was lovely, as a matter of fact.
“This afternoon,” Walter said, “we’re going to a village that is holding a fair for the hundredth anniversary of one of its stupas, those dome-shaped shrines you’ve seen. There will be a big food market, plenty of games and competitions, gambling as well, though I warn you, no one wins. And the children from the local school are going to perform onstage. Each class has practiced for months. A special arrangement—I believe you call them skits in the States. Not to worry, it is quite all right to take photos.”
The fact that Walter said not to worry made Wendy wonder whether she should. Each time she had seen the military police, she had become afraid, thinking that her secret mission was evident on her guilty-looking face, and they might spot her as an American insurgent. There was no way she would try to talk to anyone with those creeps around. Not that anyone could speak English, anyway.
She whispered to Wyatt that she was sleepy and that maybe they should stay behind and take a “nice long nap” together. “I have some Nō-Dōz,” he offered. Wendy felt rebuffed. This was his answer to her offering of love and wanton lust?
The two longboats motored into the lake, cut to the right, and soon wove in and out of clumps of hyacinth and floating vegetable gardens. A small river appeared and they took this tranquil route past a shrubby shoreline, where women drew buckets of water and poured them over their children.
I have long held the opinion that the Burmese are among the cleanest people in the world. While they may live in conditions that are impossible to keep spotless, they bathe themselves twice a day, often by the river or lake, for there are no private baths for most. The women wade in with their sarongs, the men in their longyis. The younger children are not fettered by clothes. Bathing is a beautiful necessity, a moment of peace, a cleansing of body and spirit. And afterward, the bather is able to remain cooled through the heat of the day and is dry by the time the cooking fires are lit.
Contrast this to the Tibetans. They bathe once a year and make a big ceremony about it. Then again, the weather there is not conducive to more frequent dousing. I admit to having let my usual habits slide when I was there, in places with inadequate heat and sometimes no running water.
And just so you don’t think I am being prejudiced, let me be the first to say the Chinese are also less than fastidious, unless they are well-off and can afford modern conveniences. I am speaking, of course, of the rural Chinese in China, the China under Communism. Cleanliness among comrades has become less valued than saving water. I have observed the greasy hair, matted into whorls and cowlicks formed during sleep. And the clothes—heavens!—they are impregnated with months of fried cooking smells. Theirs is the smell of pragmatism, of getting things done, with cleanliness being a luxury.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not obsessive about cleanliness, not like the Japanese, who soak in a deep tub of near-boiling water. I never did care for that alternative, to be scaldingly clean, your skin sloughing off in your own soup, the rest of you bleached to the bone. Why, even their toilets are equipped to spray your bottom with warm water and then dry it with wafts of air, so that you might never have to touch that part of your anatomy again. This strikes me as abnormally antiseptic.
And while I’m on the topic, I can’t say that cleanliness is renowned among the British I have known. Since recorded time, the Chinese and Burmese have made unkind asides about them. Theirs is a spit-and-polish kind of clean, a shiny shoe, a scrubbed face, while parts unseen are left untended.
The French are so-so, in my estimation, though I don’t have a tremendous amount of experience here, since they are a people not known to willingly mingle with others who do not speak their language perfectly. But you do have to wonder why they invented so many perfumes.
Whereas many Germans, despite their tendency toward neatness, emit a mustiness that is overpoweringly strong, the men especially, and they don’t seem to notice. Take Heinrich, for example. He had a very strong odor, a mix of alcohol and calculated mistruths, I think. All his indiscretions rose from his pores.
As for Americans, they are a composite of all the smells, good and bad. And they, too, are inordinately fond of their various deodorants, aftershave lotions, perfumes, and room fresheners. Things that stink, they cover up. Even if they don’t stink, they cover up the smell and make it unnatural. But I don’t think it’s cultural as much as target marketing.
This is only my opinion.
A SHORELINE AND DOCK came into view. The longboats cut their motors and drifted in, and a dozen hands reached over to help pull the boats close to the pier so the passengers could disembark.
“You are about to encounter many interesting things to buy,” Walter said. “Bargaining is completely expected. But let me offer this rule of thumb: Set in your mind what you wish to pay, then name a price that is half that, and work up to it during the bargaining.”
As soon as their feet touched ground, peddlers ran up to them. “Lucky money, you give me lucky money,” they all shouted. In their palms were tiny jade animals.
“They believe the first sale of the day brings them lucky money,” Walter explained.
Bennie cast a doubtful look. “How could we be their first sale of the day? It’s nearly two in the afternoon.” No wonder he was hungry. He rummaged in his backpack for a Snickers bar.
“You very well may be,” Walter replied. “I don’t believe they are lying.”
“Why not?” Dwight said.
“That is not the nature of Burmese people. It would not serve them well.”
“It’s the karma thing,” Heidi said.
“Yes, exactly, karma. If you buy their goods, they receive luck and you receive merit.”
Vera considered this, and then gave in to the “lucky money” plea of a young woman. She bought a little jade frog. She held it up to the sun, then tucked it into the pocket of her
caftan. Was the frog symbolic of something? Was it an astrology sign, a virtue? What could it mean, an animal that was green and warty, that waited all day to eat a fly? She laughed. It would be a reminder, she told herself, to be more patient when things didn’t go the way she expected. Had she known what awaited her, she would have bought a dozen.
Moments later, we were among clusters of folks who were walking along the riverbank, making their way from other villages. We passed contests with girls skipping rope, boys in a three-legged race, and younger children running backward. A loudspeaker called encouragement and announced the winners. Three students, the top in their school, also went up to the stage to receive colorful certificates. To celebrate the contest winners, twenty boys and girls, all of them heavily made-up with eyeliner and bright red lipstick, lined up in neat rows and sang to a karaoke tape of the Supremes’ “Baby Love.”
Soon my friends had entered a bazaar crowded with stalls. Giant woks bubbled with oil, fried dough bobbing to the top. Baskets were heaped with vegetable-filled rolls. In one corner, a craps game was under way, observed by red-eyed men in dusty jackets and trousers. One man rolled a pair of gigantic foam dice. The men stood and stared, then sat down and pushed more money forward, fervently hoping that their luck would change with the next roll.
I hovered about, watching my friends meander into the market, pursuing their own idiosyncrasies. Rupert soon took off in his own direction and may not have heard his father call out that he should meet at the pier in an hour. Marlena set about buying little snacks that she thought Esmé and Harry would enjoy. Esmé carried Pup-pup in her pouch and fed her bits of roasted meat. Harry watched a hustler break a brick over a worthless piece of blue glass; he then gladly forked over the equivalent of fifty dollars so he might surprise Marlena later that night with this proclaimed “genuine sapphire.” Vera, whose kindhearted face and bejeweled fingers had become legend in the market, continued to attract sellers with trinkets calling to her to give them “lucky money.” Heidi looked at herbal remedies for bites of all kinds. “Bzzzzz,” she said to a merchant who did not understand her request for an insecticide. She made a loopy dive with one finger toward her arm. “Bzzzzz,” she repeated. Ah, yes, yes, the merchant understood at last. Next she made a two-pronged head with her fingers, which she demonstrated as leaping at her leg, “Hssssss.” Snakebite remedy, she inquired. Ah, yes, yes.
Bennie stood as inconspicuously as a foreigner could, which is to say not at all, while he sketched the cooks and their kettles. A dozen people crowded around to see what he was drawing, murmuring admiration. Dwight had on headphones and was deaf to the natural din of the bazaar, preferring instead to listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan on his CD player as he followed Roxanne, who aimed her camcorder at thirty-second segments of life. She held out a digital microphone in one hand so that she might also capture the musically inflected voices, the obligato of commerce.
Off in the distance, Wendy and Wyatt saw a shady path leading into a forest of bamboo, and strolled hand in hand. Wendy had not yet recovered from her perceived rejection by Wyatt, but she pretended that all was fine. She chatted and flirted, yet she had a sick pang of fear in her chest. She was looking for proof that he felt equally warm toward her, which was—well, it was hard to say, exactly, except that she knew he felt none of the uncertainty that she did. He was perfectly at ease with their being together, as he had been, she imagined, with every woman. Why was he not concerned whether he felt more for her than she for him? Why didn’t he worry over whether he had given more than she had? Did he feel no risk of emotion? When her eyes began to sting with tears, she pretended a lash had caught under the lid, and she rubbed at her eye. He, in turn, raised her face to his, to see if he could help extract the offender. To see such concern from him filled her with even more desperation, and she wrapped her arms around him. He instinctively did what she craved. He kissed her, clutching her buttocks. And in joy, she blurted the forbidden words: “I love you.”
To his credit, Wyatt continued to kiss Wendy, covering her mouth so that she did not utter anything more along these lines. He had been expecting her to say this, afraid she would. He liked Wendy a lot. She was fun most of the time, except when she was analyzing everything he said with those searching eyes. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Also, they had another two weeks to go on this trip. Keep it steady. Keep it fun.
Wyatt and Wendy did not realize that a troop of young boy monks was watching them. Look at those two foreigners, they whispered, and giggled. The man and lady were leaning against a tree and pushing up against each other. He was clutching her big bottom and putting their clothes into unholy disarray. The boys imitated the couple by sticking out their tongues and wriggling them like snakes. The others shook their hips, then jerked them back and forth. Loud laughter shot out.
Wendy and Wyatt broke apart and looked at the shrieking children up the path. The boys ran off like squirrels, and then slowly, one by one, came out from behind the bamboo, eyes alert should they chance upon a disapproving elder monk. Wendy liked risky sex out in the open, but not in front of little boys.
“Let’s give them the pens,” Wyatt said. That had been his idea back in San Francisco, to give pens and not candy or money to children who begged. Walter had approved of his plan, but suggested that he give the pens to teachers, who would then distribute them to students. But Wyatt forgot that detail, for in front of him was a cool bunch of boys in cinnabar-colored robes. “Look at those faces,” he said to Wendy. “They’re amazing.”
Wendy would have described them as unwashed. The boys had dirt on their cheeks, goo in their noses, and greenish chunks in the corners of their eyes. Quite a few of them had sores on their lips. Wyatt turned on his digital camera and took a young monk’s photo. He showed the boys the still frame on the back. The boys pointed to one another, laughed, and exclaimed in their own language, “Look how ugly you look!” “No, look how ugly you look!”
The two lovers continued their walk into the forest. It was dark and cool in here. They passed blackened circles on the ground. What is that, they wondered aloud, before seeing a group of men farther ahead. One was stirring the coals of an improvised barbecue, the hairy leg of a pig roasting, hoof and all. As they drew closer, they saw two men standing, one wearing a wooden yoke from which a pair of car batteries dangled on a rope. What in the world were those for? The man looked as if he were pretending to be an electrified ox. Wendy and Wyatt smiled as they passed them; the men seemed embarrassed and looked away.
Wendy and Wyatt did not recognize them, the pilots of the longboats, Black Spot and Salt, who had taken them across the shallow waters of Inle Lake. To most tourists, the people of Burma were indistinguishable beyond male and female, young and old, attractive and not. I am not being critical. It is just an observation. I am the same way with most people, regardless of nationality. But after tomorrow, my friends would come to recognize these men all too well.
9
NO TRACE
It was Christmas Eve. At nine-thirty, Marlena listened to her daughter’s sonorous rhythms and then tiptoed into the bathroom. She quickly ran a razor over her legs and massaged an ambergris-scented lotion on them. She removed her sturdy underwear, hoping the humidity would erase the panty line on her skin, then donned a long gauzy cotton sheath the color of tangerine sherbet. With pounding heart, as if she were the daughter and not the mother, she eased past Esmé’s bed and out the door, and slipped down the plankway toward Harry’s bungalow.
Now here they were together at last, Harry and Marlena, lying beneath the mosquito netting, their naked bodies lit by the golden glow of a citronella candle. Marlena’s eyes were pressed shut, and her mind and body were in an unequal battle between maintaining control and losing it utterly and completely. Harry was tracing small circles on her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, kissing each spot, then feeding on her mouth before continuing the trail downward. Warmth spread over Marlena’s face. It surprised her. Such passion, such heat, such .
. . smoke?
Suddenly Harry yelped, flung himself off the bed and yanked Marlena to the floor with him. The conical mosquito netting, having floated onto the burning candle, was now like a snowy Christmas tree aflame, the fine white mesh turning into a blackened web of dancing tendrils and lattices. Marlena scrambled to her feet and flung open the door, shouting, “Fire! Fire!” She was about to run out, when she remembered she was naked, and stood paralyzed in the doorway looking back at the brightly burning room.
“We have to get out!” she cried. But Harry had transformed into heroic mode: he grabbed a piece of cloth on the floor, doused it with a bottle of water from the nightstand, and flogged at the flames licking the ceiling. Seconds later, after an eternity had passed, Harry put down the wet rag. “It’s out,” he announced wearily. Marlena turned on the light. The charred wisps of netting floated like a scorched ghost.
Under the fluorescent blueness and amid blackened debris, Harry and Marlena had to confront the various concave and convex slopes of their nakedness. This time it was without the forgiving glow of lust and candlelight, and soon, without privacy as well. What was this? Shouts of men, footsteps pounding the plankway! Harry and Marlena frantically sought their clothes, so recently abandoned on the floor with happy tosses. Harry managed to locate his trousers and was struggling to get one leg in, while Marlena found only a soggy wad of blackened orange gauze, and realized all at once that this was the pathetic remnant of her sheath, which had been used to put out the fire in more ways than one. She moaned, and at that moment four Burmese men with fire extinguishers rushed in, and Marlena sprang into the bathroom with a shriek exactly one second too late.
Though the fire was out, the men doused the smoldering ceiling and charred netting for good measure, each one taking a turn, discharging streams of white powder that exploded against the ash in clouds of gray fallout. Soon Rupert loped in, followed by Moff, Dwight, Roxanne, and Vera. Only Bennie, his CPAP mask affixed to his face, heard nothing. Across the water, the others called out, “What’s happening?” “Is everything all right?” Marlena donned one of Harry’s shirts and a pair of boxer shorts. As she walked back into the bedroom, she saw a mournful face: Esmé was standing in the doorway.