Bennie returned to my other friends. “Do you know what the boatman just told me?” he said in a shaky voice. They looked up. “Walter’s dead.”
For the next couple of hours, they mourned Walter. Heidi murmured, “He made one mistake but otherwise he was so dependable.” Marlena used the words “sweet and gallant.” Moff said that he was “articulate and damn smart.” Bennie observed that Walter was a hero, because he took the plunge for them.
Dwight and Wyatt did not know what to say about grief, so they returned to the chasm to picture exactly what had happened. This time they looked more carefully. They estimated the trajectory a body would take if it fell from the middle versus the end of the bridge. They scanned the ledges and the rocky funnel below. They applied Pythagorean geometry to their tragic calculations, and having seen evidence of blood, they pinpointed “the spot,” a sharp slab of rock with dark splotches of rust-colored lichen.
Wyatt concluded: “One bounce, and you wouldn’t know what after that.”
Dwight appended: “Let’s hope so.”
The men returned with their field report. Walter was one or two steps away from reaching the other side and—Dwight snapped his fingers—it must have been just like that. A fraction of a second later, it’s over. That’s how it happens. You barely have time to be surprised.
Bennie thought about the surprise. The more the group talked, the more his mind became a horror show of—not Walter—but himself, plummeting, screaming, grabbing on to eternity, and then feeling one great thud, and life sucked out by a giant vacuum cleaner. It made his muscles ache. All this talk was making him ill. He went to sit on a log by himself. Every now and then, he sighed heavily, scratched at his unshaven face, and slapped at mosquitoes. He berated himself. Their current troubles were his fault. To what degree, he could not assess. He was the tour leader, and that was the awful and unchangeable fact. How was he going to get them out of this disaster? He stared out, his eyes and mind blank with exhaustion. Without his CPAP machine, he had slept poorly. He was in worse trouble for not having his medications, the ones for depression, high blood pressure, anxiety, and most dire of all, seizures.
Until that moment, I had not known he had seizures. Then again, Bennie had not told anyone. And why should he, he thought to himself. The seizures were mostly under control. Besides, he reasoned, people had such uninformed notions about seizures, as if everyone who had them fell to the ground with convulsions. Most of his took the form of odd distortions—he’d smell the phantom odor of a putrefying mouse, or see lightning raining down in his room, or feel the room spinning on a turntable, and sense a spiritual elation. Those episodes were simple partial seizures, and they hardly counted, he often told himself, since they were so brief, lasting only a minute or two, and for the most part, they were rather enjoyable, like an acid trip without the acid.
But every now and then, he had another kind, a complex partial seizure. It started with a peculiar feeling that rose like waves pushing up his throat, and this filled him with morbid dread and nausea. Next, he flew like a roller coaster, propelled forward and tilted on his side, until he zoomed out of the reaches of his consciousness. Sometimes people told him later that he had taken on a zombie stare and had repeatedly fiddled with his shirt buttons, while murmuring, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Hearing these reports, Bennie would flush and say, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
More recently, the roller-coaster ride had become prelude to a grand mal. That usually happened when he was tired or had inadvertently missed a dose. Since the dosage had been increased, he had not had a really bad seizure in more than a year. He would be fine off his medications for a day or two. This thought took him back to his original dilemma. How would they get out? What if they were stuck for two more days? Don’t stress out, he reminded himself; that’s what always triggered his seizures. He wondered if this tribe—the Jalamees or Lajamees, whatever they were called—might possibly have coffee. Coffee beans grew in the mountains, didn’t they? If he did not have his daily ration, he would have an intractable headache by noon. Now, that would be stressful.
Heidi sat down next to Bennie on the log. “How’s it going?” For her, the night had passed without incident. She had loved the cocoon of her thatched shelter, the sounds of the jungle, the novel idea that she was experiencing an adventure rather than a catastrophe. She had slept soundly, coated in bug repellent and her Space blanket, proof that she had handled the newness of everything well. No one was more amazed than she. Here she was in the jungle, and there was no imagining danger, no fearing it would reveal its hideous self. Danger was a given in a place without locks, lights, hot water, or fire alarms, in a habitat teeming with poisonous creatures. And the others—look at them—their haggard faces, their eyes darting about. They now felt as she had these past ten years, always on guard, in anticipation of unknown danger, confused, and fearful of what might befall them, while she had been prepared. She felt—what was the sensation?—free. Yes, she was free, out of an invisible prison. It was like the days before the murder, when she could go anywhere and do anything without a thought to risks and consequences. It was exhilarating. But would it last? In any case, she reasoned, she should continue to be prudent. No use letting herself get so giddy that she turned stupid. She reached into her pack and took out a bottle of antibacterial hand lotion and doused both palms.
“What’s the plan?” she said as she saw Vera coming over.
“The plan is to make one,” Vera answered.
Within the hour, they group had discussed two courses of action. The first was to cut their way down the rainforest, staying along the crevasse as much as possible, until they reached another village. They would borrow a machete and take the boatmen, since they needed to get back down as much as anybody. Perhaps one of the Lajamees might also accompany them, since they were knowledgeable about the jungle. This sounded reasonable, until Roxanne brought up tales of people in the Galápagos who were lost and tried to make their way out in a similar manner, only to be found thirty or forty years later with scrawled notes tied to their shoes, the rest of them a scattering of bleached bones. Wyatt added that an adventure magazine had recently run a story about two guys who had gotten lost in Peru and survived. Of course, they were expert mountain climbers and had had pitons, and knew how to rappel with ropes.
The group settled on trying to signal for help as their first course of action. At least with that, they weren’t risking their lives. They simply had to use their intelligence. They emptied their rucksacks on a mat in the clearing. Heidi’s, of course, held the most possibilities. She had a headlamp with possibly ten to twenty hours of light left. Marlena had the other, and there were extra batteries as well. Amazing. They could aim the lamps up at night when planes flew overhead. The Space blanket would be excellent for creating a flash that people in rescue helicopters could see. But how would they spot aircraft overhead when they could barely see the sky? And why would the pilots think it was they who were signaling and not insurgents shooting? They settled on lighting fires day and night at the campsite and stoking them to create billows of smoke.
The group went to Black Spot to ask him to enlist the tribe’s help in finding more rocks and fuel, certain they would be grateful for American ingenuity. But instead of exuberance, Black Spot looked resigned. He had to tell them now. “They cannot be helping you. When the soldiers are finding you, they are finding the Karen people, too,” he said. “Then they killing us.”
Oh no, my friends assured them, no one would blame the tribe for the tourists’ getting lost. It was the bridge that fell down. That was plain to see. And when they were found, the group would be sure to say right away that the tribe had helped them and were wonderful hosts. Maybe they would even get a bonus from the tour operator. “Tell them that,” they urged Black Spot.
“They are not believing that,” Black Spot said. He again tried to explain to his guests that there was a reason these people lived in No Name Place. They had come here to hide. To the SL
ORC soldiers, they were like goats, animals to be hunted and slaughtered. They would keep hunting them until a SLORC leader’s dream had come true: that the only Karen you could see in Burma was stuffed and in the glass case of a museum.
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Roxanne agreed, while thinking that the tribe, like many other uneducated folks, had taken things so literally. “But it’s an empty threat. They couldn’t possibly do that.”
Black Spot put his hand over his chest. “This here empty,” he said. “We all empty.” Sweat poured down his face. “If the soldiers then finding us in No Name Place, we already dead people. We better be jumping into big hole in the earth.” He paused, and then decided to tell them why he had brought them there. “We cannot helping you leave No Name Place. We bringing you here to help us.”
“And we would,” Vera said, “if we could get out of here—”
“This boy,” Black Spot interrupted, and looked toward Rupert, “he can helping us. He can making us invisible. He can disappearing us. Then SLORC cannot finding us.” Black Spot added a version of what Rupert had been heard to say with his card tricks: “Now you seeing, now you not.”
My friends looked at one another. Moff broke the news: “It was a magic trick. He can’t really make anything disappear.”
“How you know?” Black Spot said.
“He’s my son,” Moff said.
Black replied: “He also Younger White Brother to Karen people.”
My friends decided it was no use arguing with the boatman. They would have to find their own way out.
T H AT EVENING, Rupert was the first to shiver. Moff felt his son’s forehead and whispered in a hoarse voice verging on panic: “Malaria.” Others would follow over the next few days—Wendy, Wyatt, Dwight, Roxanne, Bennie, and Esmé—knocked down one by one with bone-racking chills and delirium-inducing fever. Those who had not yet taken sick were occupied with tending their compatriots and frantically warding off buzzing mosquitoes they now viewed as mortal enemies.
But it was not these female mosquitoes that infected them with the Plasmodium parasites. It takes at least a week for the parasites to incubate before bursting from the liver. Seven days earlier, they were in China. Seven days earlier, they were being cursed by the Bai minority chief at Stone Bell Mountain. As Miss Rong had told them before she left, the chief had promised that from here on out, trouble would follow them wherever they went and for the rest of their days. And even before she informed them, he had already made good on his word, for at the very next rest stop after visiting the grottoes, the moment my friends stepped off the bus, a cloud of mosquitoes followed and feasted on promised flesh.
Throughout the night, the tribe walked past Rupert and listened to his nonsense pleas for help. They were doubly concerned. How could the Younger White Brother be so sick? How could he make them invulnerable to death when he was now slipping from the edges of life? Before they could carry on with more of this talk, the grandmother of Loot and Bootie scolded the doubters and disbelievers. Don’t you remember what happened to us, when Loot and Bootie and I swam the River of Death? Through trial with death, you discover your power. Through trial, you shed your mortal flesh, layer after layer, until you become who you are supposed to be. If you die, you were mortal all along. But if you survive, you are a god. So don’t go speaking your doubts so loudly. This god might waken and arise, and if he hears your fickle and fomenting talk, he’ll put you in a place with no pretty maidens, just barren rice fields. When all of us are ready to leave, he’ll make you stay right here in No Name Place.
Two women brought jugs of cool water and soaked cloths in them. They placed these on the crown of Younger White Brother’s head and under his neck where the hot pulse runs. And then the twins’ grandmother tried to feed him a tonic, but Vera ordered her to stop. She examined the bowl and sniffed the strong odor of bitter herbs and alcohol.
The twins’ grandmother made everything perfectly clear. It is very good, all pure, I cooked and fermented it myself. This tea comes from the leaves of a bush that grows in the forest. The first time we ate those leaves it was only because we had no food. And do you know what? Those who were sick grew well. And those who were well never got sick.
Of course, Vera understood not a word. She shook her head and put the bowl out of reach. The women tried to persuade her, but she stood firm. “No voodoo medicine.” And so the ladies of the jungle sighed and took back the bowl with the special tea that could save a life. Never mind, the twins’ grandmother said. They would wait until the black lady fell asleep. And if she continues to interfere, put some of that other kind of leaf in her food, and then each night she will sleep a little more.
It must be done. If they die here, their green ghosts will be stuck in these trees. And then we’ll be stuck trying to get them out.
13
OF PARTICULAR CONCERN
Harry, who was decisive by nature, now wavered. He wanted to leave Floating Island Resort to look for Marlena, yet he did not dare leave for fear he would miss her return. He did not know whether to trust Heinrich, and yet there was no one else to turn to—no one else who spoke English, for that matter. He pictured Marlena lying, like Walter, unconscious in a crumbling temple, then saw her at a much classier resort throwing back her head with a laugh, as she told a horde of handsome men: “Harry’s an ass. Serves him right that we left him marooned at that horrid place.”
Harry walked around in circles, trying to use logic and common sense. On the second day after his friends had disappeared, the twenty-seventh, he had managed to get a boat ride to Golden Princess Resort so that he might find someone who knew how to make a telephone call to the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon. He finally located an American expatriate, but the man was not encouraging. “Tricky business,” he said. He explained that anyone from the Embassy had to have permission from the junta to travel outside Rangoon. So if an American fell into trouble, the Embassy staff would be stymied for God knows how long. Christmas week was also a bad time to get anything done promptly. The Embassy might not even be open. That was probably why they didn’t answer when he called. “Tough luck,” the man said. “The U.S. calls Burma ‘a country of particular concern. ’ That’s overly diplomatic, in my opinion.”
In the afternoon, another group of pleasure-seekers arrived at Floating Island. They were Germans from a middle-class suburb of Frankfurt, and Heinrich spoke to them in their common language. Harry was soused, sitting on a stool at the tiki bar on the verandah, eyeing the newcomers with a glum expression. When Heinrich brought them over for the obligatory toast with “bubbles,” he introduced Harry as “a TV star in America and now in our midst.” “Weltberühmt,” he concluded—yes, so world-famous that the Germans had not the slightest idea who Harry was except an example of another American infatuated with his fünfzehn Minuten of fame. Heinrich explained that the others in Harry’s group had pressed on to do a few daylong tours, while he had remained behind because of illness. “Nicht ansteckend,” Heinrich assured them, then leaned over and mouthed to Harry, “I explained you were ill but not contagious.” This was Heinrich’s subtle way of letting Harry know he had been discreet about his hangover.
Harry nodded at the Germans and smiled, then said in English: “That’s correct. Food poisoning is not contagious. Not to worry.”
“Dear God!” Heinrich sputtered. “Whatever are you saying? It was not food poisoning. The idea! We have never had such problems.”
“It was food poisoning,” Harry repeated. He was drunk and being horribly naughty. “But don’t worry. I’ve nearly recovered.” This exchange caught the ear of a few of the English-speaking Germans, and they translated for the others.
“Perhaps you had a tummyache,” Heinrich grumbled, “because you have been so nervous.”
Harry agreed: “Having my cottage nearly burn down the other night did not help matters.”
Heinrich laughed with hearty falseness, and then said a few jolly words to the new guests, “Ein berauschter un
d abgeschmackter Witz,” to inform them that Harry was just a drunken fool. By now half of the new guests had folded their own brows into frowns, and the others were asking for more details. Even if the American was only joking, what kind of drunken madman had they been saddled with at what was supposed to be a first-class resort? Heinrich excused himself and departed to sort out passports and dinner arrangements.
Harry went up to the German who had done most of the translating. “Where in Burma are you coming from, may I ask?”
“From Mandalay,” the man said evenly. “Very interesting city. Beautiful and very many histories.”
“Did you happen to see a group of Americans, eleven of them, by any chance?” And here Harry paused to think how best to describe them, by their most distinguishing characteristics. “A very pretty Chinese lady and her daughter, twelve years old. And a black lady, quite tall, who wears long stripey caftans and walks like an African queen. Also there was a teenage boy, looking rather Asian, which he is by half, and the others, well, sort of what typical Americans look like . . . tall, wearing baseball caps. Have you seen them? Yes?”
The man translated briskly for his group. “He is asking if we have seen Chinese tourists, women and children, American in style.” And they all returned the same answer: No.
“Thought not,” Harry said. He was quiet for a moment, then said to the designated interpreter, “Would you be so kind as to ask your friends to be on the lookout for my friends? If you happen to run into them while you’re sightseeing today or tomorrow . . . Well, you see, they’ve been missing since Christmas morning. All eleven of them.”
“Eleven?” the man repeated. “What do you mean, this ‘missing’?”
“The fact is, no one’s seen them, haven’t heard from them either. Anyway, you’re on holiday, and I didn’t meant to trouble you. But if you could be good enough to spread the word, I’d be most obliged.”