"Capital idea," he cried warmly, and patted her approvingly on the shoulder. "And I will choose the longest songs that I know, even if—" He smiled. "Even if stolen from another tale, which is most unprofessional!"
After this it was necessary to wait, and to listen to the pounding of their hearts while each of them, and Lady Waring in particular, worried about racing for their lives over unfilled earth in the darkness, worried as to how soon their absence might be discovered if they got away, and how organized a pursuit would be.
Lady Waring said, "The time will drag now and then suddenly it will move too quickly. I am a connoisseur of time, and it never behaves as one wishes."
"When actually time exists only in the mind," said Mr. Ba Sein with a smile.
"What's in your mind?" she asked, genuinely curious.
"The words I will sing for the prince tonight; I have not sung them for a long time."
"But don't you present marionette shows every week at your Jubaliho Theater?"
"A puppetmaster is always busy—here and there," he said vaguely, and turned away to adjust the rod on one of the puppets.
The sun moved across the sky and met the horizon, and the shafts of light high up near the temple ceiling grew dim. They lighted their usual evening fire for warmth, and when the rice was brought the guards carried with them the two lanterns they had promised for the performance, and a fresh supply of candles. They ate quickly, their hunger outweighing fear and suspense for that moment, and when the rice kettle was empty they carried it out and placed it inside the guard hut to hit and thump for sound effects. The sky in the east held a slash of crimson at the horizon but it was a brief twilight and faded swiftly.
Seven guards filtered in through the gate, grinning selfconsciously as they joined the two on duty; they seated themselves on the ground facing the guard hut, their backs to the temple and to the latrine while Mr. Gunfer, Lady Waring and Mrs. Caswell took places behind them.
Baharian lit the two lanterns... It was time to begin.
Walking to the front of the hut Gen smiled, bowed and announced in a very loud voice that before the performance began she would tell the story of The Boatman and the Boatmaster, and she would tell it in both English and Burmese.
Baharían, having seated himself in the rear, shouted "Bravo!" and led the others in applause, the guards laughing at Baharían's enthusiasm. In the hut behind her U Ba Sein pounded on the kettle with two sticks, producing a drum roll, and when he subsided, Gen began.
"This," she said, "is the story of a boatmaster who was so greedy that he would cheat his own workers of their wages, and because a journey up and down the Irrawaddy lasted for several months their wages came to quite a sum. This boatmaster gave his men food during the trip but for their time and work the payment came on the last day when the journey had been finished, and on this last day—every time—the boatmaster would play a trick or challenge his men to a bet, and the more innocent or trusting of his men would end up being cheated out of their entire two or three months' wages."
Here she stopped to translate her words into Burmese, and the soldiers, who already knew and loved the story, nodded and grinned.
"On this particular trip," she went on, "there was a new man called Chan. On the last day of their voyage they stopped at a village. It was January and the water was icy cold and the boatmaster said, 'I wonder if there is anyone among you hardy enough to stay in the water all night long, without clothes on, and without anything to warm him. If one of you boatmen can stay in the water all night I'll give him all my boats. But if he fails to stay in the water until dawn, he loses all his wages. How's that for a fair bet?"
"Speak louder," called Baharian from the rear, and Gen, who had been close to shouting, drew a deep breath and shouted louder, "Since all the boatmen were strong and hardy men they might have accepted the bet but they had already been warned about their master's tricks and so they said nothing. " She stopped, and with a grin at Mr. Baharían called, "Can you hear me now?"
" Yes, "' he shouted, grinning back at her.
With a nod she went on. "But Chan," she shouted, "was a new boatman and he was also stubborn and he thought he could outsmart this master and win the bet. So he stripped off his clothes and went into the water. . . His teeth chattered and his body shivered from the cold but—he stayed. He stayed in the icy water and the hours passed and now it was nearly dawn."
She paused a moment for effect, experiencing the heady effect of an audience hanging on her every word. "And then," she continued in her loudest voice, "just as the boatmaster had known would happen—because it happened every single day at this village—some fishermen on the other side of the river got up out of their beds and made a fire in front of their hut to warm themselves before going out fishing. When their fire was burning brightly on the opposite bank the boatmaster cried out, 'Boatman, you are cheating. You are taking advantage of the fire across the river on the opposite bank and so you've lost the bet by default.” But the fire is on the other side of the river,' protested Chan. 'It's surely half a mile away, how can it give me any warmth?'
"To this the boatmaster said, 'A fire is a fire and as long as it's visible it gives you warmth. You have lost the bet and you have lost all your wages.'
"Very cheerfully Chan shrugged, said 'All right' and climbed out of the water." And here she translated what she had just spoken into Burmese for any of the soldiers who had not been taught English.
"So," she continued, her voice cracking a little at being lifted to such volume, "so the boatman Chan left the water and after dressing he went to sit with his fellow boatmen. He said, 'You probably think me a fool because I have lost my wages but if I'm a fool in other matters I can tell you that at least in pig roasting I have no equal. Even our clever boatmaster doesn't know how to roast pig's trotters the right way.'
"Now the boatmaster was feeling pleased with himself, and he didn't like hearing that he wasn't clever enough to roast pig's trotters. 'Just see how I won your wages from you,' he said, 'and yet you say I don't know how to roast pig's trotters. Of course I know how!'
"Chan shook his head. 'Not pig's trotters, no. Maybe other meat but not pig's trotters.'
" 'Of course I know how,' shouted the boatmaster, growing angry, 'and I'll accept any bet about this to show you!'
" 'All right—I have some pig's trotters with me right now,' replied Chan, 'which I bought from a market boat yesterday, and I will give them to you to roast now. If you can roast them—why, I will serve you as a slave for seven years. If you fail, you must give me all your boats. That is a fair bet, and if you really think you can roast pig's trotters you ought to accept it.'
" i accept the bet,' said the boatmaster.
"Chan went and fetched the pig's trotters and said, 'Here they are. Now roast them.'
" 'But where is the fire?' asked the boatmaster.
"Chan said very sweetly, "There is a fire on the shore across the river. '
" 'But that's half a mile away,' protested the boatmaster angrily.
"Chan shrugged. 'A fire is a fire—as you explained to me—and if it was hot enough to warm me in the water it is surely hot enough for you to roast pig's trotters. Now I see that you don't know how to roast them at all, so I've won the bet.'
"The boatmaster was so furious that when they reached the end of their journey he took this to a court of law but the judge ruled in Chan's favor, and so Chan became a boatmaster and the boatmaster was left with none."
The story ended, U Ba Sein pounded the kettle, the soldiers clapped, Gen bowed and shouted, "And now we start our yokthe pwe ... !"
And so it began, with art sacrificed to noise, and accuracy to melodrama. The head of the first puppet appeared in the window—it was the prince—and U Ba Sein's obviously melodic voice turned into a loud roar as he sang the prince's song:
Ah, cruel spite, Ah, cursed night, That tore my love away More comfort here In jungle drear Than in the golden day.
The ogre's hea
d appeared, bringing cries of delight from the soldiers and a fanfare of kettle thumping. His head was wrapped in dark blue silk that gleamed in the light of the lanterns, and having contributed a portion of his shirt for the ogre, Mr. Gunfer had also contributed the idea of inserting thorns from a thorn tree into the fabric so that the ogre bristled with hair and had a fearsome aura. Adopting the dirgelike wails of her earlier adventure with U Hamlin, Gen uttered sinister moanings:
The fog's death-cloud,
Hangs like a shroud,
Upon the shagg'd hillside;
The tall trees mope,
The wild beasts grope
Now know what may betide . . .
The prince vanished, leaving the ogre alone in the window, and Lady Waring, seated at a distance, thought, This is incredible and extremely hard to believe . . . 1 am sitting here in the dust next to an ancient temple located on the Irrawaddy River thousands of miles from home, it's night and I am watching this crazy, wild, lovable, absolutely insane and very noisy performance while behind the latrine two men—dacoits, no less!—are digging a hole to free us— or so we hope!—before we are all killed by insurgents in another day's time, and—here she paused to loudly shout with the others as the ogre departed and the princess appeared—and why, she thought, do I feel like laughing my head off?
In a very unprincesslike voice Gen was shouting:
The wind breathes chill Across the rill
That cuts the forest track
The haze to mist
And I am lost, alack.
But the princess' charcoal eyebrows had disappeared, giving her an alarming leer, and Lady Waring's shoulders began to shake: she could no longer repress her feelings. Mercifully covered by the unholy bellowing from the stage, Lady Waring's laughter exploded at last, filling her, consuming her, radiating through her and—how strange, she thought, I've not felt so alive since Matthew . . .
Now the princess was cowering before the ogre, there was grave danger and a new song, and then—miraculously—Zawgwi appeared in the window of the hut, flying down from above to confront the ogre. There was talk, and a boisterous song; Zawgwi's wand was lifted and a spell was cast; the balu cried out, groaned and vanished below the sill. At this the prince reappeared and bellowed a rapturous song at finding his princess, and presently their two heads came together in what had to be assumed was an embrace. When they had disappeared, Zawgwi remained to sing of their love and of the story's conclusion; to walk, bow, shrug and gesture with all of U Ba Sein's skill and artistry—their one true puppet—and then he, too, vanished.
"And now," cried Gen, walking out of the hut, "our story ends!" And she bowed.
Baharian, checking his watch in the light of a lantern, nodded to her: forty-five minutes had passed. As he led the applause, with added shouts of Bravo, Mr. Ba Sein emerged from the hut and tactfully extinguished the two lanterns to discourage their guests from lingering. Slowly the soldiers rose, smiled at Gen and filed out of the gate, leaving behind only their two guards.
Gen gathered up Zawgwi and her shoulder bag, looked at U Ba Sein and said, "Well?"
"Yes," he said with a warm smile and a nod, and this was all the praise that Gen needed.
And now another show begins, she thought, and she turned to look at the temple, its bulk silhouetted against the starry night sky, its archway faintly defined by the glow of the charcoal fire burning inside. It was by plan that she and U Ba Sein lingered a moment with the pair of guards, engaging their attention so that it would not be noticed that five people veered off into the shadows at the side of the temple instead of passing through its dimly lighted doorway. U Ba Sein spoke with them for a moment, bid them a good night, and he and Gen headed for the temple, which they would enter and promptly leave again on hands and knees.
Lady Waring was the first to step over the latrine, drop to the ground and discover that yes, there really was a hole dug under the fence. As she squeezed through and came out into high grass that tickled her nose a low voice said, "Go—Go!" Guided by an unseen hand she stumbled away from the fence toward a nearby copse of trees. Miss Thorald was the second to burrow under the fence, followed by Mrs. Caswell and Mr. Gunfer. "Myan! Myan! Faster!" whispered Ba Tu.
On the other side Baharían whispered back, "I wait for Gen, the small one, and—ah, they come, they are here!" and Gen and U Ba Sein were hurried through the opening. Last of all came Baharían, but because his proportions had not been described to Ba Tu the hole was Burmese size and it became necessary to drag him through on his stomach, with U Ba Sein and Ba Tu each pulling one arm.
Quickly Ba Tu tossed handfuls of earth back into the hole, jumped up and rushed them toward the trees where Bo Gale waited, holding out a rope to which they must cling. Grasping this they were led in single file through the darkness down the hill toward the road. The moon rising in the east was as yet only a brush stroke of silver in the sky; an owl hooted mournfully at their passage, answered by a my nan bird, and then the forest stilled. Reaching the side of the road they stopped and waited, listening. From here, looking south, Gen could see the hillock from which an eternity ago she and U Hamlin had looked over a village that she had naively believed to be safe . . . How long ago that was, she thought.
Abruptly Ba Tu signaled them to go, and they were rushed like a herd of small animals across the road into the healing shadows of a forest.
14
They were entering the world of the dacoit now and they moved without sound, guided by the rope and by the shadows of the two men with rifles who led them in and out of groves of bamboo and stands of palm and teak. Gen walked just behind Ba Tu and with every step her spirits rose to a new level of exhilaration. She was not only freed at last but she was with Ba Tu, who represented home to her and Ma Nu and Htun Schwae and U San Ya and—this, too—her father, so that she felt sheltered by the embrace of familiar trees and by Ba Tu's loyalty. Nor was she unacquainted with forest and jungle for when she was new to Theingyu, a mere eleven years of age, she and Ba Tu and Mi-Mi, Aung Maung and Chan Tu had made frequent forays into the woods to pick acacia leaves for betal, or thanaka bark to grind into paste for the girls' complexions. Even now she could vividly remember the evening she'd returned home with circles of creamy-white daubed on her cheeks; she could recall the sharpness of her father's voice when he ordered her to scrub it off at once. "You're not Burmese," he'd told her. "Thanaka's for natives, remove it." "But I'm a native—I live here," she'd protested. He had stared at her and then turned away with a curiously helpless gesture, as if understanding for the first time that she'd never experienced any culture but this one that to him was so alien. Nevertheless she'd quickly scrubbed away the thanka, not wanting to ever see him look that way again.
Now she would have liked to ask Ba Tu why they were heading east toward the hills when he had said the boats waited for them ten miles to the south, on the river, but there was no way to confront him and ask; silence was imperative and so she gripped Zawgwi and her shoulder bag and obeyed the silence that was broken only by the keening of the cicadas or the raucous cries of a bird. The moon had risen high enough to drop small coins of silver light across the forest floor; Ba Tu had set a fast pace and behind her Gen could hear Lady Waring breathing heavily. After fifteen minutes of flight they stopped and stood waiting for another tug of the rope to signal advance.
"What is it?" whispered Mr. Gunfer.
In the distance a mynah bird chattered peevishly and subsided; a cuckoo laughed insanely. They had paused in the deep gloom of a bamboo grove but Gen could see diamonds of light beyond it that suggested an end to the forest and a savannah or cleared space ahead. The rope jerked again and they continued threading their way among the bamboo culms until they emerged into moonlight at the very edge of the forest.
The woods through which they had fled stood on higher ground than what lay below them, and they looked out over a broad expanse of flat and checkered fields. The moon hung low in the purple sky, shedding a milky illumination. An
owl hooted dolorously behind them, a mynah gave a solitary cry but the drone of cicadas had muted. A mile away Gen could see the thread of dusty road that randomly followed the course of the Irrawaddy on its way north to Mandalay, or south to Pagan and Magwe. As her eyes lingered on the road she saw sudden movement and a small black shape catapulted into view followed by clouds of dust, followed by a second identical shape, and Gen said, "Look," and pointed.
"Jeeps," whispered Ba Tu.
"Government jeeps?" said Mr. Gunfer.
"Here? I do not think so."
"Why?"
Ba Tu said simply, "Because Ko Thein told me the Red Flags had captured three jeeps last week, with petrol enough to fill two."
Baharían said uneasily, "We shouldn't be stopping, should we? We've been walking only"—he held his wrist-watch to the light—"a scant twenty minutes."
"We stop," said Ba Tu.
"But why?" asked Mrs. Caswell.
"Because there is danger, we think they are somewhere behind us."
" 'They'?" echoed Lady Waring sharply. "Who's behind us?"
"So soon?" gasped Mrs. Caswell.
"You mean already they know we're gone?"
"Ba Tu, how do you know this?" asked Gen.
He said evenly, "From the mynah bird and the cuckoo.
Chi Ti stayed behind to watch and to warn if we were seen or followed; he walks behind us now, twice he has sent a danger signal—those were his calls—and now a signal to stop."
This was depressing news and Lady Waring slumped to the ground, followed by Mrs. Caswell. Gen's exhilaration at their freedom faltered but she was not yet afraid. "How could they know we've gone?" she protested. "They've never entered the temple at night. Could the guards have heard us leave, or seen us?"
"And we were so quiet!" put in Mr. Gunfer.
"Perhaps," suggested U Ba Sein in his tranquil voice, "perhaps it is because of the performance that we gave. There may have been something we left behind and they decided to return it and found us gone."
The Incident at Badamya Page 14