But he doesn’t move. I stare out the window, my mind reeling. I’m so angry that I don’t know what to do. My jawbone could crack because my mouth is shut so hard; my throat is closing up.
What is this? A fantasy, fed on absence. A fleeting world created by two lonely bodies.
But it is also love. I love him. We do love each other.
What kind of love is it? A starving love stretched thin by political exigency. And bad manners. Whatever it is, it is not enough. It will never be enough.
Don’t be so melodramatic. What does “never” mean? The political situation will be different next year; Maung might not have to travel so much.
Don’t refer to the future. What about this moment?
I am frozen. My mind hisses away, back and forth, like a whip. I’m grinding my teeth. Will I be able to grate a few words out of my mouth? He hasn’t left yet. In fact, he has sat down on the bed. Scent rushes into my nose: tangy green soap on warm skin, clean-cotton-towel smell. His hair is slicked back like the pelt of an otter, thick and gleaming. I want him to embrace me, comfort me. I hate him.
He has used me for sex. I cannot speak. What is there to say? If he’d told me that he was going to leave after making love, I never would have undressed. He knew this. I want him to go. Then I will take my own goddamn hot shower.
He sits on the edge of the bed, his hands in his lap, his gaze soft, a fake penitent. But gradually I realize that’s not it. He isn’t asking forgiveness. He’s sitting there blocking my view of the trees because he has something else to say. I force myself to look at him. The obvious regret on his face makes me think that he’ll tell me something hopeful. Make it better. Or change his mind and stay with me.
“I am sorry. Truly sorry.”
Well, that’s something, an apology. Then I learn what else he is apologizing for.
“But I have to leave Chiang Mai in a few days. I’m going to meet with a military group in China. An important meeting. I wanted to tell you before, but you were so sick, and I knew the news would upset you. When you got out of the hospital and said you would come here, I thought it would be best to wait and tell you in person.”
I laugh—a violent spasm in the throat—and shake my head. Again he doesn’t know what to say. Am I really laughing, or barking out a dry sob? I’m not sure, but I will not shed a single tear in front of him. “It’s fine, Maung. I’ll see you later. You need to go, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he says, relieved to be able to answer a simple question.
I don’t watch him dress. I take a long shower. To my surprise, I don’t cry. Fuck crying, it just gives you wrinkles. I get ready to go out by myself. Fury has wakened something unexpected in me: an appetite. For the first time in more than a month, I’m ravenously hungry.
Over the next few days, Maung and I return to each other. We make love with concentrated tenderness, as though we’re holding our breath. I don’t bring up his speedy postcoital departure. Why bother, says the voice, it’s part of your job description, and his. We eat together. We are close again because we have to be; he will leave soon. Lying in bed, I ask the inevitable question: “How long will you be on the border?” The Chinese border, not the Thai or Indian one. I know the answer, but I want to hear him say it with that familiar tone of regret that has become, for me, an expression of affection.
“Almost a month.”
As I thought. He will be in China when I leave for Greece. These are the last days we’ll spend together until I return from Europe. By silent agreement, we will not discuss the date of my return. Also by silent agreement, we decide we mustn’t waste our last week together. We must love each other now. I make him use the condoms. A barrier method, yes. Little border. I regret it every time. While I crave and relish the lovemaking, I deny its greater purpose. I deny our deeper longing, which feels like a betrayal of us both. But I don’t want to leave Thailand attached to Maung by an unborn baby.
One evening, after making love, we lie in bed listening to the warring street dogs. After a particularly vicious brawl I ask, “Does it ever feel like you’re failing?”
I don’t need to explain the question. He looks at me with endearing condescension, and smiles. “You are so new to this. Failure has nothing to do with it. When you are on the losing side, the struggle is not about winning or losing. It’s about … continuing. The one who keeps going will triumph.”
“Perseverance. Endurance.”
“Yes.”
I don’t necessarily believe this, but I hold my tongue.
He pulls out of our embrace to look me in the eye. “It is not about my life. The struggle may be longer than my life. I hope not. But I don’t know when I will die. I might not see Burma become democratic. But it will happen. Maybe for the next generation. I do what I can. Of course, I have my ego, my selfish desires. But I understand they aren’t important, they are the normal imperfections. I am just a man. You cannot be a good leader if you don’t understand your weaknesses.”
I wait for him to say, “What about you, what are your weaknesses?” because I want to unburden myself, I want to confide in him, tell him that I love him but am not his match, not his equal. He has some steel alloy in him where I have none. I am made of nothing but flesh, and words.
But he doesn’t ask me, and I don’t offer. Never mind giving my heart—I can’t even bear to reveal its workings, because I don’t want to hurt him. I’m afraid of making my reservations irrevocable by giving voice to them.
In the middle of the night, he wakes me up, shouting incoherently, striking the air with his hands. “Maung, wake up!” Still half asleep, he pulls me close and nestles his head against my chest like a child. “What’s wrong?” I whisper.
“I dreamed I’d been stabbed five times. I was dying.”
I kiss the top of his head. “Go back to sleep. I love you.” I love you. Despite the failings of love, it is such a balm to say and to hear those words. He falls asleep again almost immediately, and in the morning barely remembers his nightmare.
How will I leave for Europe without promising the date of my return? He reads the Bangkok Post out loud and we laugh about some ridiculous news items. He walks into the apartment and guesses what I am thinking in five seconds. After we drink a good bottle of wine, he announces that he has an important question. I raise one eyebrow, half curious, half cringing. He asks, “Why does every bottle of wine have such a complicated name?” We go swimming at a swank hotel pool and we are like young lovers—we are young lovers—playing in the water just as we did those first days at the lake. I must try to be patient. To see what happens.
By a daily act of will, I calm my anger. More accurately, I dismantle it and put it away, as a soldier might take apart his gun and place it in a case, each chunk snug in its separate compartment. The tool I use to accomplish this tidy sorting-out is meditation, for I am true to my aim and walk up the hill almost every morning to the dusty, ant-tracked pagoda, where I sit and breathe out fury like a dragon. Meditation proves instructive, in that it allows me to realize just how furious I am, about how many things.
Being inveigled into sex by a revolutionary has made me think about all the ways in which women are used. The revolution uses men, certainly, but it uses women in ways that rarely allow them to be celebrated as heroines. What have I been doing here? Why have I spoken to so many men? Why are my notebooks full of the words of men?
I think of the stoic faces of the women from the jungle and the refugee camps. Some of them I spoke to, through men. Why didn’t I have a woman translator? I remember how many of their husbands were away, busy fighting battles in a war they will not win. The women raise children alone, without proper health care, without resources. When the men return on leave from their fruitless war, they impregnate their wives again.
Why is Khaing Lin in a jungle camp carrying stones uphill on her head? Why has it taken so much longer for a few of the women to get out of the camps? This is the good revolution. These are the good men. But many o
f them scoffed openly when they found out that a large sum of NGO money from abroad was earmarked for women’s projects: sewing and weaving workshops, ventures in education, family planning—the most basic networks of communication for women to share their common concerns and to help one another. From women I have learned that domestic abuse is a serious problem in the refugee camps, but not one in more than a hundred men I’ve interviewed ever brought this subject up—even when we talked specifically about camp life. Maung says it’s all a matter of education, but he always says that.
At Dr. Cynthia’s clinic in the town of Mae Sot, I saw a strange exhibit of small twigs and bits of metal. Some were straight, some jagged or fashioned into hooks. They formed a display that might have come from an ancient culture, a collection of mysterious tools whose uses were lost in time. Except that the young assistant who showed me around the clinic explained that they were all objects found embedded in the cervixes and uteruses of poor Burmese women desperate to have abortions. Performed by “herb women,” the abortions are sometimes successful, sometimes not. It depends on one’s definition of success. The abortion usually works. But many women suffer from life-threatening bacterial infections and too many of them die.
These and other thoughts arise when I meditate on the hill in the disused pagoda. I join them, as the sages recommend, to my practice, releasing one image after another on the out breath. But when I breathe in they come back, the curved bits of wood and metal, the faces and bodies of women. I have missed too many of their voices. And I’m leaving soon. Just as I learn that their breath is also my breath, I realize that it’s too late to know them.
CHAPTER 50
THE SHINING SEPARATION
Maung leaves Chiang Mai today. He’s coming to pick me up; we’ll say goodbye at the airport—a first for us. An airport farewell promises a heady combination of formality and romance. I will be graceful and movie-star-like. Sad movie-star-like. But strong. Glistening eyes, no spillage. Ingrid Bergmanesque. Though she was the one who got on the plane in Casablanca and flew away.
I won’t see him for at least two months, more likely three or four. Like most significant departures, the impending one feels unreal, a shape with no substance, which may be why I keep thinking of Hollywood. His cell phone will not work in China, and he’s not sure what kind of land-line access there will be. In Greece, I won’t have a telephone, either.
Whom is he meeting with on the Chinese border? The Kachin Independence Army? No. The KIA signed a cease-fire with the Burmese junta a couple of years ago. Underground agents? Doubtful. Old school buddies? I have no idea.
The phone jangles, makes me jump. Maung is here, waiting down in the atrium.
I am careful not to trip on the last flight of stairs. My beloved stands there in a suit jacket and pressed trousers. I’m surprised he’s so dressed up. He could pass as a businessman. I suppose that’s the idea. Or maybe he’s meeting someone from the Chinese government? I wish I’d worn a skirt.
We smile and walk out into the afternoon sunlight. I’ve forgotten my sunglasses, but there’s no time to fetch them. Maung steers me by the elbow toward a large black truck parked in the road. None of the dissidents I’ve met own a black truck. None of the foreign NGO workers, either. The passenger’s and driver’s doors open at the same time; two men step out and turn toward us. Just as I wonder where the perfunctory smiles are, they appear. They’re in their late forties, early fifties, a charming couple—one slight and gentle-looking, the other, according to the international cliché of pairing the good with the bad, meaty and brutish, his big head bristly with crew cut.
I take in their nice clothes, their relaxed yet faintly demanding demeanor, that massive black machine still purring exhaust behind them: they are Thai. They have power. Resisting Maung’s hand on my elbow, I slow our pace and whisper, “Who are they?” Why aren’t we going to the airport in a hired car, or even a songtow? Why are we going to the airport with two Thai men? We stop walking. To the Thai men, we might be having a tender moment. Maung does his best, looking with round, liquid eyes into my narrowed slits. “They will help me if I need help.” I frown harder. “So that I can pass security.” I tilt my head. “Because I’m traveling with a fake passport.”
They are Thai military intelligence agents. I’ve met other Thai MI before, in Mae Sot.
“Why didn’t you tell me they were coming with us? Or, more accurately, that we are going with them?” I swear under my breath. I don’t mind, I just wish he would tell me. A few details. Occasionally.
“Because I wasn’t sure they would be available.” The relief in his voice makes it sound as though he’s smiling. He is happy to have them with us. For their airport-security powers as well as for the monster truck. What man doesn’t want to be sent to the airport in a gleaming black machine with tinted windows? If it makes his passage safer and easier, then I am glad they are here. So much for our romantic goodbye.
After brief introductions, I step up on the running board and duck down. Spacious back seats, tan leather. Maung follows me. Alone, we turn to each other in the freezing air. I’m covered in goosebumps. Maung runs his hand over my forearm and whispers, in Burmese, “It’s very cold, isn’t it?” Neither of us is used to air-conditioning.
The skinny man throws his cigarette down in the parking lot; the bigger one takes Maung’s bag to the back of the truck. Then we’re on our way through the lively streets of Chiang Mai and the sunstruck landscape that will lead us to the airport. Through the smoky glass, everything is tinged a shade of gray or purple. It’s such a realistic way to see the world, perpetually bruised.
When will I meet Maung again? That is the question I ask myself as our odd little company goes through the motions of his departure. We approach the flight desk, smile at the Thai service attendant, take in her dazzling gold jewelery and purple eyeshadow. Maung’s hand, I see as he passes over his ticket, is shaking slightly. Probably just too many cigarettes. Nicotine and coffee overdose.
We have said goodbye already, standing in the diesely air of a loading zone as people hurried past. Farther out, bougainvillea burned in the flower beds, vivid in the stark light of midafternoon. The Thai agents had gone to talk on their separate phones. I realized this would be it, my last moment alone with him, standing in the public blur and clamor. His face was close to mine, though we did not think of kissing. He was talking. I breathed in words with the scent of tobacco from his mouth.
“You know, there is a place I hold people,” he said. “A place inside where the ones I love stay with me. They never go away. There are my parents, and a few others. I need to care for many people, but that isn’t the same as this feeling, this place inside. You are there. I will hold you in my heart forever.”
His declaration left me speechless. I wished he had made it earlier, so that I would have had more time to respond. We are not in the habit of making declarations. I gripped his hand and closed my eyes, unprepared for the onslaught of my own tears. No Kleenex, as usual. He gave me a handkerchief. “I knew I had to bring two,” he said, laughing, his fingers on the small of my back as we reentered the terminal building, where the Thai agents stood waiting for us.
What a demanding job they have! Watching over Burma’s busy political population in Thailand, dissidents, activists, revolutionaries of various ethnicities, NGO workers. Keeping their Burmese MI-agent counterparts happy. Managing their own finicky relationship with the Thai democratic government. Playing to every side, trying to amass as much information about everyone as they can, keeping tabs, doing damage control, being everyone’s friend. They are the ultimate diplomats, really. The Burmese acronyms alone must drive them crazy, as well as the fact that almost everyone has at least two different names, a real name and an activist name.
The big guy is respectful to Maung and solicitous with me, politely running through the beloved questions that all Thais must ask foreigners: Where do you come from? Do you like Thailand? Can you eat hot food?
In turn, I wo
uld like to ask him, How far do your earthly powers extend? To China? Will you make sure he gets on the return plane? Will you protect him even when you cannot see him?
Suddenly I am afraid something will happen to Maung: an accident, a violent incident in the rough border town where he will stay. Though he forgot his own nightmare of being stabbed, it has remained with me like a bad omen.
But this is not the time to worry about portents and dreams. He’s leaving. We stand outside the security gates for a few minutes, but he’s anxious to go through, in case the false passport holds him up. That’s when our influential escorts will become involved. Maung and I talked about his papers last night, while he sat drinking a beer and smoking and I lay on the bed examining the signature binding of his passport. I held the coveted little book up to the light and flipped its pages. “An excellent job,” he said of the forgery.
It’s increasingly difficult to travel on these documents. Airport security is getting wiser; there is talk of installing cameras at ticket counters. Soon there won’t be any anonymous travelers. The very best forged passports that cost thousands of dollars will be identifiable and traceable. “But I prefer not to think about that right now,” Maung told me. “One trip at a time.”
The Thais stand a few feet away to let us say goodbye. We kiss each other quickly, lightly. A hug. Remember this: his body fits so easily into my own, the hollows to curves, bones nestled into flesh. Underneath the light suit jacket, I feel his shirt damp with sweat. The airport, too, is air-conditioned. He’s sweating because he’s nervous, though it doesn’t show on his calm face.
Burmese Lessons Page 34