The Incident at Badamya

by Dorothy Gilman

  A temple stood on the treeless hilltop, and she guessed a very ancient one from the gaps in its crumbling, faded bricks. It was a small temple with a single broad arched doorway black with shadow under the blazing sun. There were soldiers idling here, half a dozen of them: one sat on the step to the temple, rifle across his lap, while the others stood over a pile of thatch and bricks, scratching their heads and laughing. The laughter broke off when they saw the Man with Two Eggs; they stood at attention and saluted. He nodded to them and pushed Gen toward the temple's doorway and when she hesitated on the threshold he firmly thrust her inside. When she turned around to call him a luzou again he had gone, replaced by the guard with his rifle.

  Blinded by darkness after the brilliance outside she stood very still, aware of quarrelsome voices from the interior but she could see only vague shapes. The temple held one large square room, cool and dim, each of its walls bearing three high and narrow window-slits through which the brightness of the day outside could be glimpsed without any of its light entering. In the center of the room there rose a massive column of stone into which deep niches had been carved to hold the Buddha images that had long ago been stolen and carried away. The floor was of cool flat paving stones. On the lower interior walls she could see dim, indecipherable scribbles of color that had once been murals before time and vandals had done their work. As her eyes adjusted to the difference in light she began to see more clearly the people standing or sitting against the long wall on her left and she could begin to connect the voices with the people who spoke.

  A thin, sour-faced man with a goatee was shouting, "I can't and I won't!"

  "I don't think shouting helps."

  "Go to hell, I tell you it wasn't my idea to go for a walk."

  "Oh dear," murmured a woman's voice.

  A large man with untidy hair spoke. "Come now, let us reconcile," and suddenly spying Gen standing in the archway, "Well now, what have we here?"

  But Gen was staring at the woman in gray silk who stood against the wall leaning on a cane, the same woman Gen had seen when she had stood on the shore at Theingyu and looked for European faces on the passing steamer.

  He would be here too, then, and her glance moved quickly from face to face until she found him in the corner, as she had known that she would: the plump little brown man who had looked at her with recognition from the deck of the boat.

  How strange, thought Gen, I have walked into my dream.

  5

  The figures unfroze, moved, hurled questions at her.

  "Where did you come from?"

  "Did they free the steamer, are they looking for us?"

  "Does anyone know we're here?"

  "Did these men tell you who they are? Did they tell you why they captured us?"

  "Has the boat left without us?"

  "Will there be food soon?"

  "Who are you?"

  The fierce-looking woman in gray silk stamped her cane. "Stop, all of you!"

  But Gen, having listened attentively, said in her clear, precise voice, "Two men brought me here, my name is Gen Ferris, I come from the village of Theingyu, I've been looking for the steamer but I hadn't found it yet, and the man who brought me here had two eggs."

  The woman in gray said sharply, "What do you mean, you come from a village here?”

  "I live in this country," she said. "In Maymyo and then in Rangoon and lately in Theingyu." She felt no ease in this woman, and she wondered if she was frightened to be so harsh.

  "You must speak their language, then! You can find out what these—these bandits—want of us, and tell them we need blankets."

  Gen looked at her in surprise. "You wish blankets? Surely he speaks Burmese," she said, pointing toward the plump brownfaced man in the corner.

  "No doubt, but scarcely English," the woman said dismissingly.

  "But I think he does speak English," Gen said with a knowledge that surprised her. "You do, don't you?"

  He bowed slightly, looking amused, and in accentless English said, "I speak English, yes."

  An awkward and embarrassed silence followed this, during which the woman in gray glared at Gen before reluctantly turning to the Burmese. "How do you happen to be with us?" she inquired coldly.

  He shrugged. "I too felt that a walk would be most beneficial while waiting for the steamer to be freed."

  "You were on the steamer, then?" Her voice was sharp.

  "You don't suppose he led us into that trap, do you?" said the goateed man nastily.

  "Oh he couldn't have," burst out a shy, plain-looking woman. "I mean, he walked behind us, he walked behind me, so he couldn't have led us into anything." Immediately she looked chagrined at her boldness.

  "How did it happen?" Gen asked of this softer woman.

  "Oh, we saw the village in the distance and decided to visit it," she said eagerly, "except suddenly these men surrounded us. They came out of the woods before we even reached the village."

  "Ruffians," snorted the woman in gray silk.

  "No no, not ruffians," said the Burmese politely. "Soldiers—members of the Red Flag Army."

  "Army? Nonsense, how do you know this?"

  "You did not notice the red arm bands?"

  Gen, puzzled, told him, "I feel as if I know you but I don't know your name."

  His brown eyes twinkled at her. "I am Mr. Ba Sein, address number 16, Jubaliho Street, Rangoon."

  "And I'm Mrs. Harry Cas well," said the shy woman eagerly. "Or Helen," she added with an air of surprise.

  "Enough!" cried the woman with the cane. "If you know who our captors are then perhaps," she said icily, "you also know what they plan for us; you must surely have heard something?"

  Gen was now sure that this woman was a balu, an ogre.

  "From what I overheard," responded U Ba Sein calmly, "they have teletyped a message to Rangoon, to the Prime Minister U Nu, telling him they hold five Europeans here and offering to negotiate for release."

  "Why didn't you tell us this before?" she demanded.

  He bowed ever so slightly. "1 felt it would have been most forward of me to intrude without invitation."

  "You British with your subject people," muttered the large man with wildly untidy hair.

  "Come now," said the thin man with the goatee, "perhaps Lady Waring did not realize, did not notice, did not see—"

  "Lady?" repeated Gen, puzzled. "Oh but ladies—surely ladies aren't so rude?"

  "I beg your pardon!" said Lady Waring, taken aback.

  "Well, yes," said Gen. "Like a balu." But these people and their conversation had ceased to interest her and she turned away, determined to escape as quickly as possible and return to U Hamlin.

  Her remark had been followed by a stricken silence, interrupted now by a chuckle from the large man with untidy hair. "Permit me to introduce us all," he said. "I myself am Terence Baharían, a wild Armenian now a citizen of the United States. The senior member of our little party— a strange word for this unhappy gathering—is, as you have heard, Lady Waring. The gentleman next to her is Mr. Gunfer, who tells us that he is a writer of travel books and had planned to make known this exotic country to his readers. Mrs. Caswell has already introduced herself. There is one more of us but she is asleep behind this—this chimney or whatever it is."

  "It's not a chimney, it's for the Buddha images," Gen said, and removing her shoulder bag she placed it against the wall and walked to the arched doorway to look outside. She was worried about U Hamlin, worried that he might have been found by the soldiers and shot; she hoped ardently that he was still free and yet half hoped, too, that he might be found and brought here so that she could see him again, for certainly he was much pleasanter than the noisy Europeans inside the temple who were strange to her.

  There were four soldiers outside now, three of them laying thatch over a guard house they'd built of bamboo and the bricks that had fallen from the temple. The fourth, watching her, lifted his rifle.

  She sat down on the step in the sun a
nd called to him, "Zaga takhun hnakhun pyojinde—I'd like to have a word with you!"

  He strolled closer, rifle cradled under his arm, and she told him the people inside needed blankets for the night. "Can you find blankets? If they are important people," she reminded him, "you don't want them to get sick."

  "Watch out or I'll steal your hat," he teased.

  "If you steal my hat I will tell the balu who is inside to put a spell on you," she said sternly. "And she is a real balu."

  "This I can believe, I have seen and heard her," he said, grinning. "And she needs a saun?'

  "Six are needed—hcau. Can you find blankets?"

  There would be blankets in the village below, he said but when she asked where the people of the village had gone he only shook his head and walked away, calling over his shoulder that some blankets would be brought with their thamin, cooked rice.

  Gen lingered, examining this clumsy arrangement to guard them, thinking how when night came she could easily slip out of the temple and disappear into the darkness. The eight hundred kyat, rescued after all, were in her shoulder bag; if she found the steamer she might find U Hamlin again, for surely if he'd not been captured he would continue north looking for it rather than face walking the long miles south to Rangoon.

  She sighed, for the day that had begun so well had lost all its promise. She stared unseeingly at the sunbaked golden earth and then her gaze lengthened to include the wide sweep of river below. Immediately in front of her its passage was obscured by the hill on which the temple was built and by a screen of palms and bamboo groves, but the river appeared again to the north and for a moment she forgot entrapment, imagining the river flowing steadily toward the steamer, upriver. She sighed again, impatient for the darkness that would free her, and reluctantly went back inside.

  "Ah here she is," cried the jovial Baharian as she reappeared. "Did I not tell you, Miss Thorald, we have been joined by another while you slept?"

  "I was tired," Miss Thorald said vaguely, and turned an intense gaze on Gen that belied any tiredness, and at once plunged Gen's spirits deeper. At this moment Gen was passionately and ardently glad that U Hamlin was not with her because she thought Miss Thorald more beautiful than anyone she had seen, more beautiful than any of the movie stars she had pinned to her wall in Theingyu. Her hair was the color of ripe apricots, and in spite of being severely pulled into a knot, all kinds of curls and waves and ringlets escaped. And the face—Gen was humbled: it was small and perfectly oval with high cheekbones and sloe eyes heavily fringed with lashes. Lady Waring might have thought Miss Thorald pretty but it was Gen who recognized the passion in that face, not understanding that it reflected the passion inside of herself, as yet unmined.

  Gen said formally, "How do you do," and to Lady Waring, "They will bring blankets with the rice."

  "The little one is efficient as well!" boomed Baharian.

  Miss Thorald said to Gen softly, "I'm told that you've lived in Burma all your life and I hope you'll tell me what it's like.. , perhaps you can also teach me a few words of Burmese."

  "You?" said Gen, surprised. "Where are you going?"

  She said simply, "To live with my brother who's a missionary up near a place called Lashio."

  Her voice had been soft but it was heard and it produced a reaction.

  "Oh my dear, why?" said Helen Caswell in a shocked voice. "You're much too young and pretty to hide yourself away like that, surely?"

  Miss Thorald's smile was ironic. "Indeed?"

  Baharían stared at her with open curiosity. "But this is extraordinary waste that breaks the heart! Are you religiously inclined, then?"

  Gen, watching her, said, "My father was a missionary."

  "Then perhaps," said Miss Thorald lightly, "you can tell me about that, too." Seating herself on the floor, her back to the wall, she opened a small petit point bag, brought out wool and needles and began to knit, very firmly ending the conversation but leaving everyone regarding her with curiosity.

  "Well now," said Baharian, hands in pocket and surveying them all with interest, "the Miss Thorald goes to a brother—and you, Mrs. Caswell? It will pass the time, I am thinking, to learn why we are all here. In this land."

  "Oh, I'm with my husband," Helen Caswell said quickly. "He's an archaeologist, you see, and we've been given permission by the Director of Archaeological Survey to investigate rumors of cave paintings in the north. He's a very well-known archaeologist," she added firmly.

  "We know that Mr. Gunfer is a travel writer—he has said so often enough," went on Baharian, "but dare we ask, Lady Waring, why you venture into these wilds?"

  "1 find you impertinent, Mr. Baharian," said Lady Waring.

  "But of course! I agree most heartily. Perhaps no one has been impertinent before?"

  "That child is impertinent," she said stiffly. "I may perhaps ask what a balu is?"

  "Oh, an ogre," said Gen.

  Lady Waring's lips tightened. Baharian laughed. Miss Thorald glanced quickly from him to Lady Waring and returned to her knitting. Both Gunfer and Mrs. Caswell looked shocked.

  "My business here," said Lady Waring gruffly, "is my own business. And you, Mr. Baharian? Is your business your own, too? I would guess you to be an adventurer of the very worst sort."

  "An adventurer, yes," he assured her gravely, "but not of the worst sort, please! I am here to hunt for treasure in the most respectable manner."

  "Treasure!" echoed Mr. Gunfer. "You're pulling our legs, surely!"

  "I would not dare," said Baharian gravely. "No, it is a most interesting story but only to me. Half of my family emigrated to America, half to England. My uncle chose England and then Burma, where he bought land and had a farm of many acres and lived a most pleasant life until the war. When the Japanese came he fled to India, carrying with him no more than a few gold coins for survival. The rest of his riches he left buried in the earth—but I will not tell you where—and he has commissioned me, his nephew, Terence P. Baharian, to recover his treasure."

  Lady Waring said dryly, "And if your story is true, then just how do you expect to get this treasure out of the country? Rangoon appears to be extremely suspicious of Europeans. “

  Baharian beamed at her happily. "Ah but there will be a way, Lady Waring, and then—voilà!—I may yet become the adventurer you think me."

  "I don't believe you," sniffed Lady Waring. "I don't believe any uncle would entrust you with such matters."

  Baharian made a sweeping bow. "A little mystery suits me well, then, if that's what you prefer. And you, small one?" he asked, turning to Gen.

  She said, "My father—" She stopped; she would not be among them for long and she saw no reason to confide in them. "I'm being sent to Rangoon," she said, "but the steamer didn't stop at our village and so I set out to find it."

  "Sent to Rangoon alone? gasped Mrs. Caswell.

  Gen hesitated and then smiled. "No, I was accompanied but now we've been separated. By this," she added.

  Baharian nodded; her fabrication was accepted. "And you, Mr.—is it Ba Sein?"

  U Ba Sein considered a moment. "I have come this way to meet someone," he said.

  "And what do you do at number 16 Jubaliho Street in Rangoon?"

  Mr. Ba Sein smiled faintly. "I am a puppetmaster. My theater, called the Jubaliho, also lives at number 16 Jubaliho in Rangoon."

  Gen turned white with excitement. "Truly? A puppet-master?" She rushed to her shoulder bag and carried it to him. "Look," she said, eagerly extracting her marionette. "Htun Schwae carved and made this for me, he traveled many years ago with a troupe."

  Ba Sein took it reverently. "Zawgwi," he murmured, his eyes running over it with satisfaction.

  "What a darling puppet," said Miss Thorald.

  "Magnificent," breathed Mrs. Caswell.

  Mr. Gunfer left Lady Waring's side to look at it. "Who is it? You called it by name?"

  "The alchemist with powers of magic and necromancy, Zawgwi," murmured U Ba Sein. "A demigod who c
an fly through the air or tunnel through the earth with his magic powers." Holding it up he examined its eight strings and rose to his feet, fingers holding the bar. Moving the strings the puppet suddenly took a few steps, bowed, turned his head, pointed a hand at Gen, opened his mouth and closed it.

  "Oh, could you show me how to do that?" cried Gen. "You made him as alive as any of us!"

  "Puppets are alive," he told her. "Your Zawgwi is small, with only eight strings, but he was carved with love, and beautifully."

  "Yes," agreed Gen. "But still, with only eight strings— there should be more?"

  "The marionettes of my theater have as many as twenty, twenty-six," he told her, gently returning the marionette to her. "Yes, I can show you how to make him live, even with eight strings. If you wish."

  "I do wish," she told him fervently. "Oh 1 do wish, yes." She looked with new eyes at Zawgwi, did not return him to the shoulder bag but began exploring the strings and the movements as she had often done before but without the art of Mr. Ba Sein. A glow of excitement had taken her unaware; like the puppet in the hands of U Ba Sein she felt stirred by aliveness. "When can we start?" she asked, forgetting the open doorway and the coming night.

  But Lady Waring interrupted. "We begin to need water to drink, Mr.—er—"

  Mrs. Caswell nodded eagerly. "Yes indeed, the air is certainly dry in Burma, isn't it. But surely we won't be here long?"

  U Ba Sein looked at her in surprise. "Why will we not?"

  "You said a message had been sent—"

  He padded to the doorway without reply. "I will ask what arrangements they make for drinking water." His plump body was momentarily silhouetted against the brilliant sun outside, he called "Hei'" and disappeared.

  Baharian said, "1 think he's trying to tell us that government troops may not be in the neighborhood."

  "Nonsense," said Lady Waring, "if they're fighting in Mandalay that's not far!"