The Incident at Badamya

by Dorothy Gilman

  "Oh dear," sighed Mrs. Caswell. "We were too friendly at the wrong time, then?"

  "Tashei—please—sit and rest, we know nothing until Chi Ti comes to tell us," Ba Tu told them. "Bo Gale has gone back to cover our trail, to mend broken branches and torn leaves. If there is no danger we move on, so rest. As for me—" He stepped apart from them, tilted his head, opened his mouth and produced the wild strident cry of a cuckoo.

  They waited.

  "Can we talk now?" asked Baharian in a low voice.

  "Yes."

  "You carry an Ml carbine," said Baharian. "If there's trouble have you ammunition for it?”

  "Some."

  "How many rounds?"

  Ba Tu shifted uneasily. "Two."

  Baharian stared at him in honor. "That's all? What about the others?"

  "It is Bo Gale who has the two rounds," said Ba Tu. "This rifle—mine—is empty."

  Mr. Gunfer groaned.

  "Empty!" gasped Miss Thorald.

  Ba Tu said with dignity, "I am not a sitia or a sipbou. 1 may be a damya—a dacoit—but I am also Buddhist and I do not take life. I promised this, to the Buddha and to ame, my mother, who Gen calls Ma Nu."

  "Well that's that, then," said Baharian, nodding. "What about your friend who has the two bullets in his magazine, does he feel the same way?"

  Ba Tu shrugged. "This you will have to ask him. There has never been any shooting, we have so far stolen"—he thought about this—"one jeep, two jeep motors, many rubber tires, shoes, a lorry full of bananas, a load of cloth and some gold. But never has there been a need for shooting."

  Baharian said dryly, "It's up to us bloodthirsty Westerners then."

  "But not before we thank Ba Tu for rescuing us," Lady Waring said warmly. "We thank you, Ba Tu."

  Mrs. Caswell nodded vigorously. "Much kutho for you!"

  Ba Tu showed his pleasure at this with a broad grin that quickly faded. Lifting a hand he said, "Sssh . . , someone is near."

  The others had heard nothing but they had not lived by their wits as dacoits did, thought Gen, knowing strange hiding places and trails in the forest. She herself had keener ears than her companions, having lived in a country village and she had already noticed the sudden stillness in the forest behind them: even the bazin yinkhwe had stopped their shrilling. Poised between the darkness behind them and the milky light beyond them they waited with some nervousness and then a twig snapped, there was a rustle of tall grass, and Chi Ti emerged.

  He arrived breathless, looking even younger to Gen than he had looked when he'd robbed her and U Hamlin in another forest on another night. He was in panic, his words tumbling out so quickly that Gen, who still thought in English, could not follow what he said.

  "What is it?" she cried at last, interrupting.

  Ba Tu translated in a sober, troubled voice. "We were seen crossing the road by a sentry far from where we crossed. It is too bad that Colonel Wang was in the village preparing a morning attack on the village south of us."

  "South!" said Gen. "that's where we go."

  "We hoped, yes," said Ba Tu grimly. "You foreign ones matter much more, it seems, for the colonel—ame, he is angry, Chi Ti lay in the grass and heard him—the colonel has sworn to have you back in the temple by dawn."

  "Oboy," said Mr. Gunfer.

  Gen said slowly, "But we will reach the boats long before dawn." Staring puzzled at Ba Tu she said, "We will, won't we?"

  Ba Tu turned to Chi Ti. "Tell them."

  Chi Ti, still breathless, said, "You are surrounded!" He pointed to the north, to the east, west and south. "They make a circle. In the morning, when light comes—" With his hands he drew a circle in the air and then brought his palms together with a loud slap. To Ba Tu he said in Burmese, "I'm going, Ba Tu—no gold watch is enough for this. I met Bo Gale and he will not return either. It will be bad, very bad, to be found with these Ingalei and Ameiyikan."

  The two of them moved away, arguing and gesturing. Gen looked at the others and said, "Chi Ti is too frightened to stay."

  "He's deserting us?"

  She nodded. "The other one, too."

  Miss Thorald said, "How can he think we're surrounded? Just see how clear the road looks."

  Lady Waring nodded. "We should go at once, quickly— tell him, Gen."

  Chi Ti had slipped away in the darkness; Ba Tu turned back to them and Gen said softly, "He has gone?" When he nodded she asked, "And you, Ba Tu, will you go, too?"

  He shook his head. "I have good fate—kuthokan kaunde," he said with a faint smile. "You know if the gale of kan blows, a mountain of rock will be blown away. You know also our proverb, When circumstances are favorable water will flow uphill. It does not feel my time to die but we must make water flow uphill, Gen!"

  "Yes," she said.

  "How far away are they?" asked Lady Waring. "1 don't understand how they could have surrounded us so soon."

  "Look," said Ba Tu, pointing.

  Far away to the south, where the woods curved in to meet the road, and the road vanished from sight behind them, the rooks that had nested in the trees at sunset were suddenly rising in a noisy flock to circle and fly away.

  "There are men there," said Ba Tu quietly. "It is men who disturb them."

  "Men from the jeeps?"

  "I think," said Mrs. Caswell in a clear low voice, "that we must sit and be quiet for a minute, very quiet, while we think what to do. This is upsetting and confusing, and panic so often leads to rashness."

  A faint breeze stirred the leaves above them and a bright disk of light fell on Ba Tu's face; he looked surprised. "Yes," he said, and obligingly joined them on the ground in the space they occupied between forest and field, darkness and moonlight.

  And that is true, thought Gen, responding to such practicality, I can learn much from this Mrs. Caswell who for so long concealed her true self. "Now tell us, Ba Tu," she said. "If the jeeps carried soldiers to wait ahead of us, what else did Chi Ti tell you?"

  He nodded. "The colonel guessed you would head south, he piled men into jeeps to get ahead of us very fast. Chi Ti said also men camp behind in the woods now, with spaces between them. A circle is being made."

  They were silent until Baharían said softly, "To be tightened at some appointed hour. You know the area, Ba Tu, and you have experience, being a—a dacoit—is there hope for us?"

  Gen did not wait for a reply. She said flatly, "We need guns."

  Baharian said dryly, "Preferably loaded."

  "But guns," repeated Gen firmly.

  "They would certainly help," said Baharian, "but we have no guns."

  "You can shoot?" asked Ba Tu.

  Baharian nodded.

  "Actually I can too," said Mr. Gunfer, and when they looked at him in surprise he said indignantly, "Did you think me 4-F in the war? I never saw action but I can assure you I went through basic training and have a sharpshooter's medal to prove it."

  "I am not unacquainted with rifles myself," added Lady Waring, "having shot partridge frequently in more fashionable, bloodthirsty eras."

  Eagerly Gen said, "Ba Tu, you remember the game of Enemy Spies we used to play when we were young, before you went away? Do you? Let's try for guns, the two of us! Remember how we hid and hunted each other like in war, and took turns being Bama and Japan?"

  "Sade yanou, yes I remember, and you were best of all, we never found you. But this is no game, Zen."

  "True," she said hotly, "but it is no game the colonel plays, they will begin coming and not miss a rock or a tree. Now is the time to be bold and make water run uphill, Ba Tu, while the soldiers are careless."

  "How many soldiers does the colonel have?" asked U Ba Sein.

  BaTu shrugged. "Chi Ti said maybe forty-five, Ko Thein said forty."

  U Ba Sein said softly, "That surely leaves many spaces— many gaps—in a circle ... A dozen men in the jeeps, perhaps, the rest divided .., not so many, after all."

  Gen gave him an interested glance; she was sure that he was tellin
g them something in his gentle way. How she knew this she couldn't explain but it had become apparent to her that at certain moments he guided their talk in directions that surprised them all. "See?" she said to Ba Tu. "We must try. You remember the tricks we used?"

  "You have your slingshot?" he asked, and when she nodded he grinned, remembering. "Okay, let's try .., we go!"

  Lady Waring said sharply, "Don't take any chances!"

  Baharían said, "I feel I should go, too, and help..."

  "Bull in a tea shop," snorted Mr. Gunfer.

  Mrs. Caswell whispered, "I'll pray for you, oh how I will pray for you!"

  Ba Tu handed his empty rifle to Mr. Gunfer, saying, "It speaks even without bullets." Gen brought out her slingshot and checked her pocket for the stones she'd gathered when she was still with U Hamlin, and found that she much preferred action to waiting to be caged again, which brought to her the discovery of still another genevieve. Grasping Ba Tu's hand she crept with him back into the opaque darkness of the bamboo grove.

  When they emerged from it they could see shapes and shades again but this meant they could be seen more clearly, too: much care had to be taken, and because Ba Tu knew these woods she surrendered the lead to him, and followed. Tense as she might be at this moment she could feel the child in her responding and remembering: she adopted the same noiseless glide that Ba Tu used as he moved from one tree to the next and stopped to listen. They moved so slowly and so softly that no birds took flight, and had ventured perhaps half a mile when Ba Tu held up a hand.

  Softly into her ear he breathed the words, "Ahead—mi. "

  Peering over his shoulder she saw the glow of a fire between the trees ahead of them. "Campfire?" she whispered back.

  He nodded. "Shinde."

  They dropped to the ground, flat on their stomachs, and to reconnoiter slithered through the grass and over the earth like snakes, like swimmers. Reaching a sturdy oak they stood and peered around it at what lay beyond.

  Ba Tu whispered, "I see three men."

  "I see three rifles," she whispered back. "Ba Tu, you remember Chan Tu and the toddy palms?"

  He chuckled. "I remember, Zen. You or me?"

  In the dusky light she held up her slingshot. "I'll climb the tree, you wait below in case I miss. Be careful!"

  Returning to hands and knees they crept closer, parting company in a dense growth of bamboo. Gen chose her tree carefully. Gripping the slingshot between her teeth she grasped the column of bamboo and shinnied upward, wincing when her bare knees drew blood from a sharp culm. Near the top she curled one leg around the neighboring bamboo and one arm around the column she occupied, and studied the situation below.

  The three soldiers sat at their small fire warming themselves, two of them smoking cheroots, the other hugging his knees and grinning. They sat companionably, talking and laughing softly, their rifles on the ground beside them. Gen thought sternly, Colonel Wang is not going to win his war with soldiers like these, obviously they cannot even wait an hour or two without building a fire and taking it easy. Colonel Wang's loss, however, was her gain, and checking the stability of her position, which was precarious, she reached for her slingshot and three of her largest pebbles. Two stones went into her mouth, one was inserted into her slingshot. Again testing her foothold—it would not do to slip even an inch at such an important moment—she took aim at one of the heads below and fired off her stone. As the first left her slingshot and flew through the night a second was already on its way, and then a third. She lingered only long enough to see the first man fall flat, the second one reel and collapse, and then she began her drop to the ground sixteen feet below.

  Ba Tu was struggling with the third man, whose temple had only been grazed. Gen, snatching up a fallen stick of bamboo, ran to help and this third man collapsed with an astonished look on his face. Turning to Ba Tu she grinned. "Oh Ba Tu, this has been good. Akhu?"

  "Akhu," he said, and snatching up the three rifles they fled, crashing through the underbrush in the opposite direction from which they'd come, then dropping to the ground and creeping back to the south, covering their tracks as they went.

  15

  Uh thank Heaven," gasped Mrs. Caswell as they came out of the forest.

  "Rifles?" gasped Baharian, seeing them. "Dear God I begin to hope we may yet survive this wild and suicidal flight into the night." Handed one by Gen he examined it and said, "And loaded, too? Good God! Where—how on earth—did you get these?"

  Ba Tu said, "We found three soldiers in the wood and Zen knocked them out with her slingshot."

  "With a slingshot?"

  Gen said briskly, "Oh yes, for during the war it was the only way to kill food—rats and lizards and snakes, you know. One learns to aim very well when hungry enough, we go now, BaTu?"

  "And we never knew," said Mrs. Caswell admiringly.

  "We go."

  Baharian received a rifle, Mr. Gunfer and Lady Waring were given theirs and in return Ba Tu retrieved his empty one. In a low voice he said, "We hurry along the edge of the woods now—quickly, please, and very softly—for one of the soldiers saw us, and when he opens his eyes again—”

  "Say no more," said Mr. Gunfer, helping Lady Waring to her feet. "This suspense, this suspense—! Let's go."

  Ba Tu had uncoiled the rope and they fell in behind him, grasping the rope only loosely now, walking closer together as they left behind the moonlight and the view of fields. These were deep woods they entered, not the densely packed stems of the bamboo groves but scrub, flame trees and palms. Occasionally they stopped while Ba Tu listened carefully to the sounds of the forest, the cries of birds, the rustling of leaves; it began to seem possible that while soldiers waited behind them for a signal to move in, and soldiers were encamped a mile or two ahead, none of them were advancing as yet to corner them.

  They had not slept for thirty hours, and the scarcity of food for eight days had depleted them. Nor had any of them, with the exception of Baharian, done much walking since captivity, so that each could admit to weariness, but not openly, since it was unaffordable with their lives in danger and survival uncertain. Nevertheless Lady Waring stumbled several times and against her protests Baharian walked beside her and supported her with his arm.

  Sometimes the trees thinned as they turned briefly to the west and they caught glimpses of the fields they'd looked upon earlier, and saw the half-moon riding high in the dark sky. For the most part they trudged in a sober line, eyes on the ground lest they trip, stumble into a hole or run into a tree.

  Ba Tu stopped at last. Gathering them into a circle he said, "Now we must choose, we are very near to a good place to hide for a few hours, or we can go on and risk running into the jeep soldiers. It is true we have guns now and ammunition but it is very dark."

  "What sort of hiding place?"

  "A piece of earth in the deep woods with low walls around it, once a pagoda maybe." He shrugged. "Only walls are left—knee-high—but one can lie behind them and see and listen."

  Gen said, "I choose to stop. To run into soldiers in the dark—"

  Mr. Gunfer said, "But in the dark, if we're lucky, we could slip past them. If, as U Ba Sein pointed out, the soldiers are split up, how many can there be ahead?"

  "Yes," said Miss Thorald, "and surely to try and pass them in daylight will be worse."

  "On the other hand," said Lady Waring coldly, "I have not the slightest interest in being captured again and shot. If we run into soldiers in this stygian darkness we'd not have a chance in the world."

  Baharían said, "If we can see them better in the daylight, they would see us better, too."

  Mrs. Caswell pointed to Ba Tu. "You decide," she said.

  "Ssh, not so loud," he counseled. "Okay, I decide. I take you to this hiding place and you wait while I am— what is word, spy? scout? and go ahead to see if I can learn just where they wait, and how many."

  "Me too?" asked Gen eagerly.

  He shook his head. "No, Zen. They would not captur
e me if I'm seen, for I carry with me a red arm band to wear, this is how I got through to you yesterday. If they stop me no harm will be done, but you are Ameiyikan."

  "Compromise," said Baharían, nodding. "All right, let's try your hiding place while you reconnoiter. "

  "You will return?" Gen asked somewhat anxiously.

  "I will return," Ba Tu said gravely.

  Five minutes of walking took them into and through another thick grove of bamboo and then the bamboo thinned, brought to a stop by the ruin of a wall that kept the jungle of trees at bay. As Ba Tu had pointed out, the remaining walls were sufficient to hide behind, and if he did not add the words and to shoot from behind, this was implicit. Reminding them that soldiers were not far away now he went off to reconnoiter, leaving Baharían sprawled on the earth, his rifle resting on the south wall and his hand on the trigger while Mr. Gunfer guarded the north wall and Lady Waring chose to sit on a pile of fallen bricks in the center, her rifle across her lap. Mrs. Caswell and Miss Thorald had slumped with their backs against a wall. Gen busied herself in the rubble, feeling for stones of the right size to fit her slingshot, and then she sat down next to U Ba Sein to wait.

  No one spoke. The minutes passed and then an hour. When Baharían shifted his position small pieces of rubble rearranged themselves, making sound. It was dark, and Gen could see only the shapes of them all but in her mind's eye she could see the details of each one and she thought, we have become almost a family; eight days ago these people were strangers to me, I liked none of them, how did this happen? And she said a little prayer to an uncertain God that Ba Tu would not be caught but would return to them safely, and that none of them would be captured again and shot.

  It was after three o'clock in the morning when a cuckoo raucously shouted nearby; there was a stirring of branches and Gen called to Baharían in a low voice, "Don't shoot, it's Ba Tu."

  He slipped noiselessly in among them and they surrounded him. "It is khette—difficult—the soldiers built no fires, they were hard to find."

  "How many are there?" whispered Baharian.