The Jewel Trader of Pegu

by Jeffrey Hantover

  As dusk approached on our second day out of Pegu, we came to the edge of a small village. A short walk from the village gate, a stream made a gentle loop before heading north, away from the road. Two young girls, who looked only a few years younger than I, splashed and laughed in the shaded shallows. Their swinging arms sent water fanning into the air. The fires of Pegu and my simple village days seemed years away—ancient stories told by old women.

  We rose early with the sun, rested the oxen during the midday heat, and traveled on until dusk. The heat, the dust, and the uncertain future that hovered above us like a flock of crows kept us all silent on the road, even Uncle Win. A touch, a look, a few words—this was how your father spoke to me. Your father looked with fresh eyes at what I and others born in the village pass by without pause or comment. Sometimes a sight would so move him that he would just stop walking, rooted where he stood, as the carts rolled ahead.

  Three days from my village, we had spent the morning traveling a narrow road through a thick bamboo forest. Bits of sunlight struggled through the trees—it was as if we were walking under a large pale green umbrella. We came out of the forest onto a grassy plain with paddy fields at its edges and blue hills on the distant horizon. Your father and I were walking side by side. He stopped and threw his arms wide, as if he were trying to embrace the sky that surrounded us. In his city the sky is never so close, he said. The streets are narrow, not much bigger than a forest path; and the buildings, taller than palm trees, lean over the streets, and force you to walk like a hunchback, your eyes tethered to the gray stones at your feet. You can see the sky, but you have to choose to lift up your eyes, he said. You have to shake yourself out of the habit of looking down. Days pass without looking up, until you forget the sky is there.

  As we walked, he spoke again of the strange city that floats on water and his people who dress themselves dark as crows and live cooped up like songbirds in a cage. When he first opened his heart to me and spoke of his life before Pegu, I asked if his people were slaves. Did they lose their freedom in battle? He said no, and this confused me. I don’t understand the ways of these tall hairy men from across the sea with their dog teeth. They all look alike to me—no one marked a master, no one a slave.

  Looking out at the paddy fields stretching toward the horizon, he said that on the day he sailed away from his home he sat among his people in the house of prayer, speaking to his god who has no name and prayed to return safely to live as he had always lived. “Now,” he said, spreading his arms wide once more, “look at me—here I stand bareheaded under a blue sky thousands of miles from who I was.” Smiling, he shook his head and strode ahead in silence.

  At midday we rested the oxen, and we ate a few handfuls of cold rice from the night before and some small bananas we had picked on the journey. His meal was meager, but your father didn’t fail to thank his god before and after for the food he had received. Remember, your mother knows little of the world beyond the kingdom and the gods people there pray to. I asked your father how his god would judge me, since I didn’t know how to speak to him, what prayers to offer him. Your father took my right hand in his, my palm and fingers rough from years in the paddy field and vegetable garden. He traced gentle circles in my palm. “My God, blessed be He, will love you as I do.” Your father touched a small scar on my finger where I had carelessly cut myself harvesting rice when I was a young girl. “The first thing He did after making heaven and earth was to plant a garden.” That is a god, I thought, that would listen to my heart.

  Did I miss my home? your father asked. Was I happy to be going home? No one was close enough to hear, so I spoke the truth. “I am happy that I am with you, but part of me is sad. I’m not returning home, I’m leaving it. Pegu is my home. Pegu is where I found love. Pegu is where I found you.”

  The next night, we camped in a village of no more than a dozen houses a half hour’s walk off the main road. War and our troubled times had seemed to pass this village by. The children didn’t rub their stomachs and hold out their hands. They smiled and laughed and had color in their cheeks. Even a few young men had stayed, protected by the smallness of the village and its isolation.

  A narrow path ran west from the village well to a small pagoda, its back lined with mango trees. An ancient banyan tree stood at one side; its creepers hung down like braided ropes. On the other side, a thick grove of bamboo gently arched over the roof, like the fingers of hands held high to bless and protect the Buddha inside. It was a cool, quiet place whose beauty silenced us all. Not even the faint trill of birdsong broke the stillness, and the oxen went meekly to graze without a smack on their haunches. The villagers must have fed well the spirits who dwelled here. In this blessed place, our prayers for safe travel and health would surely be heard.

  The fire made and our rice cooking, a young boy and girl crept, hand in hand, near the pagoda, to where we sat eating. The boy stared at your father. He had never seen a white stranger before. The little girl would go no farther, but the boy came closer, step by halting step. Your father pretended not to see him so as not to frighten him away. Taking a deep breath and one long stride, the boy poked your father in the ribs to see if he was made of flesh and not smoke and air like a ghost. Surprised that his hand didn’t go straight through your father, the boy stood still, not sure what to do next. Your father turned and poked him gently in the stomach, and we all laughed. Our laughter melted away the boy’s fear. He stood his ground and poked your father’s chest, then his shoulder, even ran his fingers up and down the hair on his arm. Like a loyal puppy, the boy stayed at your father’s side until the fire turned to glowing embers, and we went into the pagoda to sleep under the Buddha’s gentle gaze.

  In the night I was wakened by the sound of bamboo crackling and moaning in the wind. Rain beat down on the roof and against the walls of the pagoda. I moved closer to your father, who slept soundly through the storm. He didn’t awake even when a cascade of thuds pounded the roof, as if a giant were beating on it like a drum. In the morning, he was surprised to find the ground strewn with mangoes shaken from the trees by the violent wind. It was a good sign, food from the heavens, he said. I wanted to believe that, but the sight of the now naked trees chilled my heart, and the fallen mangoes looked like golden teardrops shed by the Buddha for reasons I didn’t then understand.

  As the cart turned a remembered bend in the road, I told your father that we would soon be in my village. I hadn’t been gone so long that I would have forgotten where my own village was. But there, where no houses had stood, where no smoke had curled from home fires, where no well had been dug, a line of newly thatched houses was strung out between the road and the forest. A young boy stood by the side of the road as we approached. When he saw me, he waved and called out my name. I didn’t know this pockmarked boy. He waved again. I stared at him and saw in now familiar eyes and smile the smooth-cheeked child he had once been.

  My village was dead. The house where I was born was deserted, home to rats and crows. My father was gone, both my aunts were gone, my cousin a widow scarred and blind in one eye. The healthy ones, untouched by the pox, had left the old village and built this new one, as soon as their neighbors’ skin began to burn and blister.

  Old Min-Tun was alive, prince among the pocked and blinded. The pox must have found his twisted body not a fit meal to feast on. He said a vision came to him in the gray hour between night and dawn, the half-life between sleep and wakefulness. He awoke and scraped the scabs from the face of a child who had survived the pox’s curse. He ground the scabs into a fine powder and inhaled the powder while many of my neighbors looked on, too frightened to even call him crazy. A few, who he had cured of pains and fever and whose trust and desperation were greater than their fear, did as he said and breathed in the powder. One got the pox and died, but all the rest had a fever for only a day or two and lived. It was too late for my father and all whose blood I shared. I had come back, like dear Abraham your father, an orphan.

  Though
the pox had passed almost two months before, if the sun had been higher in the sky, Win and a weeping Myint San would have left that very hour. They had no choice but to wait until the morning. Though your father wanted me stay away from the old village, afraid that evil vapors clung to the earth, I had to go—I owed my father’s spirit my prayers.

  We walked quickly past the cemetery, where hungry ghosts scavenged the rotting mangoes and clumps of rice scattered amidst the dead. We didn’t slow down until we reached the paddy fields. Inside the gate, rain and crows had swept clean the last grain of rice from the village shrine. The village spirit had cursed the village and disappeared.

  I stood before an empty house full of death and summoned life one last time. I saw my mother pounding rice, heard her voice singing a soft lullaby, felt her hand in mine. I saw my father on the Buddha’s birthday—his hair oiled and wearing a new, brightly colored sarong. I stood at his side, a small child barely up to his waist, proud to help carry offerings of fruit and sticky rice to the pagoda. He smiled at me. I remember—he smiled at me.

  I asked the Buddha to see the man he was and not the man he had become. I asked the Buddha to watch over you on your journey to life and to protect your father, who was for us both the giver of new life.

  We had just hurried past the cemetery, on our way back, when a high-pierced shriek tore apart the late-afternoon stillness. I grabbed your father’s hand, and he squeezed mine. Our fear bound us together. He was about to run back to the camp, certain that robbers had attacked and were strangling Myint San. Wait, I said, for I remembered that sound. Another shrill shriek and a low, trembling, moaning hoot—it was the Devil Owl. Just a bird, I said. Your father loosened his grip, but I continued to hold his hand tightly. I closed my ears to the tales of old women and their dark omens of death.

  When we returned to the others, Auntie Myint San was too upset to eat. She was afraid of the night, sleeping so close to death. She was afraid of the coming day, once more traveling past forests where she was sure brigands lay waiting to rob and kill her. She couldn’t stop her trembling and her tears. “Where will we go? Where will we find refuge?” she wailed. “We must take refuge in the Buddha,” Win said. The truth didn’t comfort her.

  We set out early the next morning for the village of Win’s cousins. We backtracked for a day before heading north again. The road branched in three directions. The driver of the first cart asked Win which way we were to go. I think Win had been polishing the answer, hoping for the question. “The Buddha says to take the middle way,” said Win. Even your father, new to the Buddha’s teachings, couldn’t help smiling.

  The road Win knew all along to take ran between the forest on one side and a stream on the other. The road curved left to cross the river an hour or so into the morning. Timbers from a burned bridge lay in a jumble in the shallow water. It was not a broad stream, but I got out of the cart, afraid of another jolting ride across a stream’s rocky bottom. I pulled up my sarong with one hand, and held your father’s hand with the other. We entered the stream hand in hand. The cool water barely came up to my knees. Nearing the far shore, your father slipped and stumbled, but he caught himself on the shallow bottom with his free hand, before he could fall all the way in the water. He laughed at his clumsiness. I never let go of his hand.

  By midday, the sun had dried his damp clothes. By dusk, his shirt was damp again from hours of walking under the sun in the clear sky. Your father was quieter than usual that evening. We lay side by side under the stars. He brushed his hand across a tuft of grass that poked up between a narrow space where the edges of our mats didn’t meet. He raised his hand and pointed with his finger at the stars. “Every living thing, every blade of grass, has a guardian star that watches over it and whispers, ‘Grow.’” He placed his hand on my belly. Before I could speak, he had fallen asleep. I could feel his hand warm through my sarong.

  The next morning, even after a bowl of rice, he didn’t look well. His face was pale, and his cheeks were cool to my touch. He started the morning walking behind the cart to keep Uncle Win company. Your father was a tall man, and walked with long strides when he was in a hurry. Now his steps were short and slow. He said he was fine, just a bit tired, and the walking would get his blood flowing. But his body told a story different from his words. I played the pregnant wife, and it didn’t take much convincing for him to keep me company in the cart. He ate little during the day, complaining that his stomach bubbled and churned. At night I made him eat a bowl of plain rice, telling him that when you came, you would need a strong father.

  I was awakened late that night by his body next to mine shaking and burning with fever. His forehead was hot as a hearthstone. I tore a strip of cloth from an old sarong, dipped it in water, and held the cool cloth against his forehead. Your father kept saying that the fever would soon pass. The heat of his fevered body quickly turned the cloth dry. I applied more wet rags to his forehead and cheeks all through the night. When he slept, I dozed off. When he awoke fevered, I awoke, as if our bodies were one.

  In the morning, his body still burned, and he lay exhausted from the night’s battle. Uncle Win and his servants tended him while Auntie Myint San and I went into the forest in search of a remedy for his fever. I looked with Min-Tun’s eyes as best I could remember, and we returned with three handfuls of roots, leaves, and pieces of rough bark. Over the fire, we brewed a special tea. I let it cool a bit and raised your father’s head and made him sip as much as he could through his parched lips. He was weak and spoke little and then only in a whisper and most times in the special language he used to talk to his god.

  Uncle Win wouldn’t let us travel the next day or the day after. Your poor father grew weaker. I offered rice and prayers to the Buddha that I’d brought with us. I offered rice and wild bananas found in the forest to spirits we might have unknowingly offended on our journey. I prayed for him and for you and for all those he held dear in his distant city.

  His fever didn’t break. Throughout the fourth day your father fell in and out of sleep. I dipped my fingers into the warm tea and wet his lips. At dusk, exhausted, I dozed off. I woke under the first evening stars to the sounds of your father gulping for air, like a drowning man.

  Oh, how I wish I could delay with words the course of fate.

  I crouched by his side, leaned over, my cheek next to his and my hand on his heart. He grew calm, and in a voice soft as the evening wind through the palms, he spoke to his god. Your father’s gentle eyes looked into mine. “Thank you, Mya,” he said. His eyes wandered beyond me, into the darkening evening sky. He seemed to be searching for one star among the many. He raised his hand and his fingers weakly brushed against my belly. “Grow,” he whispered.

  I spoke his name three times. My dear Abraham didn’t answer.

  We did what must be done. We wrapped his body in clean cotton and lay it in a cart. We set out to find a village pagoda. We met a young boy on the road who said in a half hour we would come to a path that would lead to a village near the river. Uncle Win said that your father had come by water and should leave by water. We found the path, but it was too narrow for the cart, so Win and the servants carried your father. We made our way single file to the bank of the river. We gathered up branches and dried palms and made a bed for your father at the river’s edge. We all chanted prayers over your father’s body. They were our prayers, not his, but I am sure his god understood our hearts.

  Before Uncle Win and his servants lifted your father onto the pyre, I thought of you. I unwrapped the cotton that covered your father’s neck and shoulders. I took off the chain from around his neck and slipped it over my head. I bent down and kissed your father’s lips one last time. When his body was put on the pyre, I placed on his chest the two books that began and ended his day. Rubbing two pieces of bamboo against each other, one of the servants started a fire and lit a small torch of twigs. I tried to light the pyre, but the branches wouldn’t catch. I think they had gotten damp from the splashing water. Win t
old me to be patient: not all wood, he said, takes flame in a sudden burst.

  We waited in silence. I could hear the sound of the birds and insects in the forest. The twigs crackled, and the cotton caught fire. White smoke billowed from the pyre, and the wind blew the smoke toward the bank. The pyre hugged the river’s edge in the still water for several minutes. On the far bank, two egrets sat high atop an overhanging branch, their heads bowed in mourning. Win and I gave your father a gentle push to send him on his way. The others moved away from the smoke that swirled over the bank. I walked along the bank, following the blazing body as it drifted downstream.

  I put my hand over my belly, and told you then as I tell you now that someday you will meet your father reborn in the body of another good man, and both of you will know each other. I prayed then as I do now that you do not think ill of your mother, poor worldling that she is. I am unenlightened—I love this man, I cling to him. My love is a fetter that I cannot sever. The path of suffering awaits me.

  I watched your father’s flaming, impermanent body float toward a slight bend in the river. Billowing clouds of white smoke rose from the water, and my dear Abraham was gone.

  …the wretched inhabitants being slain, the former seats of great and powerful lords became the abodes of tigers and other wild beasts, without any more trace being left at all, but the horrid cinders, and a greater silence on earth than human thought can imagine.