The Incident at Badamya

by Dorothy Gilman

  "I think six were in each jeep, maybe eight.., in the dark I could not count foreheads, only listen to them talk. They form a line, three or four men, then inside of shouting distance three or four other men, with five soldiers guarding the jeeps, which are on the road. Ame, they seem very confident, and why not? I heard, I listened, at dawn they move in."

  "Dawn," repeated Lady Waring.

  Ba Tu nodded. "So at first light—very soon," he said, "we will go. Before dawn, before they move, but we must have enough light—just enough—to see them, this I tell you, this I know."

  "More waiting," sighed Mr. Gunfer.

  "Until we can see the shapes of each other," said Ba Tu, "because this will be the most dangerous move of all."

  They returned to their established places and sat down again, but Ba Tu followed Gen to sit beside her. "Zen," he whispered, "I must speak with you."

  "Ba Tu, I am here."

  "Yes.. . Zen, I have thought much about this since seeing you again. Zen, if we get free—if your friends get through—come back with me to Theingyu!"

  "Back?" she said, puzzled.

  He nodded. "Already I have enough to buy twenty acres of land, I could go back tomorrow—even today—and not be a dacoit anymore, we could go together, Zen, you know Ma Nu would welcome you to our house. 1 will build a new compound for us all to share; you are already a daughter to her, Zen; if we marry it would make her glad. And me, too," he added simply.

  She was touched; she said with feeling, "Don't tempt me, Ba Tu, I would so love to say yes—to go back to Theingyu and to see everything that's familiar, and to be a part of your family, and feel protected again. But I can't." Tears rose in her eyes as she thought of the words she'd spoken, and of the safeness she would feel.

  "Then why, Zen, because your father told you to go to America?"

  "No," she said softly. "No, my father made his choice and it was not—to me—a good choice that he made. I see now that it separates me from him so I needn't obey his wishes, but he chose what looked easy and this I will not do. It would be too easy to go back, Ba Tu."

  "Zen, it will be very strange and different in America, and in Theingyu you have been loved."

  She shivered. "I know this and it frightens me. I know it will be hard; there will be many people in America, many automobiles, and girls in ruffles and curls, and the streets will be paved and the cities big, and there'll be no village well for gossip, no pongyis at dawn, no flaming sunsets, no pagodas." She sighed. "But I will carry it all with me, Ba Tu—always. And you as well, and Ma Nu . . ."

  "And Zawgwi," he said, feeling her pain and wanting to ease it.

  She smiled at him through her tears. "You're a good person, Ba Tu, it's just that I have to see for myself, have to rind out what it's like, and who I am in America and what I can be. If I go back to Theingyu I'll never learn this."

  "It's not because I'm a dacoit?"

  She touched his hand in response. "Oh no, Ba Tu, never."

  "Is it the Ingalei you walked with?"

  She shook her head. "Not that either, and in any case I'll never see him again. No it feels—very simply—my kan."

  "Then I won't make it harder for you, Zen, but—it was fun stealing rifles, wasn't it? Just as it used to be?"

  "It was, Ba Tu, it was," she told him gravely.

  He nodded. "And now I can see—just a little—your eyes and nose and mouth, which means it is time to go. Keep your slingshot ready, Zen." He rose and went from one to the other, whispering to them, and they, too, rose.

  The rope was merely carried now, wrapped snugly around Ba Tu's waist, for even though the moon was still in the sky and sunrise an hour distant the shapes of trees were slowly emerging out of the darkness. They moved slowly, almost on tiptoe, because each step took them nearer to the soldiers who encircled the forest and were poised to entrap them at dawn. Ba Tu led, with Baharian and his loaded rifle close behind him; the others followed, with Lady Waring placed in the center behind U Ba Sein and their third rifle in the hands of Mr. Gunfer, who brought up the rear. With the first light of day beginning to gray the sky, detail was added to their vague shapes and Gen saw what a tattered group they had become during the night, and how different they looked. Lady Waring's silk skirt was in shreds, her hair in wisps, and with a rifle slung across her shoulder she looked a brigand herself. Ahead of Gen a variety of palm leaves appeared to have dropped into Baharían's hair and taken root, while Miss Thorald's right cheek held a long smear of dirt. All of them were colored by dust, scratched by thorns, thirsty and cold and hungry.

  They had negotiated a mile when Ba Tu stopped; he stood very still, his face puzzled in the gray light. "Listen," he said.

  They heard it, too, now: a sound of firing ahead, a sudden volley of shots followed by silence and then a few sporadic exchanges and silence again.

  "What is it?" asked Lady Waring, her voice loud and startling after so many hours of whispering.

  "Fighting," said Ba Tu. "This may be our chance— let's go! Hurry!"

  They came out of the woods not far from the road, but the road was obscured by a rise in the ground and the shooting came from the road. Gen said, "We've got to know what's happening." Dropping to the ground she crept cautiously toward the top of the hillock and the others followed in a ragged line until they all lay flat on their stomachs peering over the crest at the scene below.

  It was a scene of confusion that needed time to sort out. The encircling Red Flag men had set up a roadblock with the two jeeps that had passed them in the night and they occupied the center of the dusty road, each identifiable by the shred of red cloth tied to its antenna. Three jeeps driving north had met the roadblock and had obviously been fired upon: from each of these jeeps—empty now—fluttered a Burmese flag.

  "Government jeeps," Gen said in astonishment. "Those are government jeeps!"

  "And captured," said Baharían grimly.

  The men who had occupied the three government jeeps stood in the middle of the road surrounded by half a dozen soldiers wearing red arm bands, and it became clear that the thought of appropriating three precious jeeps had completely distracted the Red Flag soldiers from their assignment to capture the foreigners again.

  It could be seen, too, that the government soldiers, a dozen in number, were weaponless; they held their hands high in surrender, and seeing this stirred anger in Gen, knowing now what capture meant.

  And then she saw the sweater. It so astonished her that she cried out, "But one of them wears my father's sweater— the black-and-white sweater my mother knitted for him! Look!" She pointed.

  Quickly Mr. Gunfer pushed down her pointing hand. "Careful!"

  But Gen was staring hard at the figure in her father's sweater. "It is," she whispered. "It is, I can't believe it but it is," and to the others she gasped, "It's U Hamlin— he's here, it's my friend U Hamlin!" The wonder of it filled her: that he was still in the country, not even in Rangoon but here, with government soldiers, and was it possible— she dared not think so but was it not possible that having seen her captured he had come back to help free her?

  The surge of warmth and pleasure at such a thought was followed by the horror of his predicament down on the road. She said to the others, "I think he's brought those government soldiers—guided them here—to rescue us, for why else would they be here in insurgent country?"

  "But who's Oohamlin?" asked Mr. Gunfer.

  Gen turned and looked into U Ba Sein's face. "We must help them."

  U Ba Sein nodded. "But of course."

  To Ba Tu she said, "You met him. He mustn't be abandoned—somehow we must help him .. , and we have rifles now."

  "And so have they," said U Ba Sein.

  "I don't see them," she told him in a worried voice.

  "On the ground, they've flung them to the earth."

  She gave U Ba Sein a quick glance because she could see no rifles but if he said they were there she believed him. "Then what can we do?"

  Ba Tu said s
lowly, "We have only three guns, it is not enough for so many. But if they could learn somehow we are here they could pick up their guns—if they truly have guns—and help. But I don't know how we could warn them we are here without Colonel Wang's men knowing we are here, too."

  A smile spread over Gen's face. "I know how," she said. "Are we near enough to them, Ba Tu? Are we close enough to run down the hill with our rifles?"

  Ba Tu nodded. "If there is a way to tell them, yes."

  "I certainly can't run," said Lady Waring.

  "Never mind, follow and cover us."

  "But what is it you can do?" asked Mrs. Caswell.

  Gen looked at U Ba Sein and smiled. "This," she said, and knowing that Hamlin would remember she opened her mouth wide and flinging back her head there came from her throat the wild, despairing, haunting and dirgelike cry of a ghost such as she had brought forth when she was with U Hamlin at the pagoda and with which she had frightened Chi Ti away from her money. Beside her Mrs. Caswell shuddered, and Ba Tu covered his ears. The piercing wail, coming as it did with the peacefulness of dawn hanging over them, brought confusion to the Red Flag soldiers and stirred even the birds, who took flight from the trees with a beating of wings. She saw U Hamlin whirl, look toward the hill and turn to speak to his companions. Rifles were snatched from the earth, and as Gen and Ba Tu led the way down the hill toward the road, Colonel Wang's men turned back to their prisoners to face a dozen rifles pointed at them. Now it was Red Flag rifles that were dropped to the ground, and six pairs of red-banded arms that were lifted in surrender.

  And Gen, beaming as she crossed the road to Hamlin, extended one hand and said shyly, "U Hamlin, 1 am surprised and happy to see you again."

  He laughed, and ignoring such formality he grasped her by the waist and swept her into the air; returning her to earth he said, "Thank God you're safe—and by George, there's Mr. Like-his-Father, too!" And Hamlin, who had crept and crawled and stolen rides on ox carts to get help, who had been hidden by farmers and conveyed at last to Magwe in a truck driven by a chap who sang "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" all the way, now knew a little more of Gen's country, enough to say to Ba Tu, "Htamin sa pibila?"

  Ba Tu shook his head, grinning, while Hamlin said, "I don't know who the rest of you are—"

  "Save it," said Baharían. "Look at the sky."

  "What about the sky?"

  "It's nearly dawn, there'll be more soldiers coming at any minute," Gen told him, and while she described Colonel Wang's plans to him Ba Tu explained the danger in his own language to the AFPFL soldiers.

  "Then we certainly can't allow these Red Flag chaps to go free and warn the others," Ham lin said. "That's a damn fine rope around your waist, Ba Tu, what about it?"

  The rope was unwound, their sullen captives prodded into a group and roped together, and while they worked, the approaching dawn bleached the sky mother-of-pearl and in the east the first intimations of sun could be seen in a glow of saffron. By the time Colonel Wang's men lay ignominiously tied together at the side of the road a sliver of sun had already appeared in a burst of flame and gold.

  With satisfaction Hamlin said, "And now we've five jeeps, not three. Time to go—hop in!"

  But Ba Tu shook his head. "Not me," he said. "For me it is time to say goodbye to Zen and return to my friends. I go no further." From his pocket he brought out his red band of cloth and began to tie it around his arm.

  Gen looked at him, knowing this had been inevitable, but still it was a wrenching moment for her and there were tears in her eyes at this final severing with Theingyu and her past. "I will miss you, Ba Tu," she told him solemnly, "and you have saved all our lives, which has to bring you much merit." She would have said more but a rifle was fired from the hill behind them, striking one of the jeeps with a metallic ping "Here!" she cried, and fumbling in her shoulder bag she brought out her father's gold watch and thrust it into his hand.

  "Hurry!" shouted Hamlin, and Gen and BaTu flew apart, he to take cover in a plunge among the trees, and Gen to leap into the jeep.

  "Kaunde Kan, Mr. Like-his-Father," shouted Hamlin, and to his passengers, "Hold on now, we're going to drive like hell out of here and get you to the airport at Magwe!" When Gen looked back Ba Tu had already vanished into the deeper woods, and a dozen Red Flag soldiers were racing down the hill to the road.

  16

  It was early afternoon of the same day when they flew triumphantly into Rangoon, arriving in a patched-up troop transport that had been sent to Magwe to pick up government soldiers returning from the fighting around Mandalay. It was not a smooth flight, and for Gen it was her first, but crouched on the creaking floor of the plane she had reminded herself that a man from hell is not afraid of hot ashes, and she had invoked the Three Gems only once.

  At Mangaladon Airport three men waited for them in the cavernous terminal building filled with dusty benches: Jordan from the American Embassy, Feathergale of the British Consulate and a representative of the Burmese government named Maung Yo. Feathergale, directing an I-told-you-so look at Lady Waring, spoke of how many people the insurgents had murdered lately, and Mr. Maung Yo made a brief speech congratulating them on having escaped execution. While it was being explained to Mrs. Caswell that the steamboat bearing her husband, Lady Waring's secretary and Culpepper would not reach Rangoon until Saturday, Jordan drew Hamlin aside.

  Placing a hand on Gen's shoulder Hamlin propelled her out of the group with him.

  Jordan said, "If you're Hamlin, you look younger than you sounded on the phone in Mag we."

  "No doubt it was all that static," Hamlin said pleasantly. "You've been in touch with Washington?"

  "Yes of course, I alerted them to your news at once. They'd about given you up for dead months ago, you know, so they want to see you as soon as possible. At the moment, getting out of here is on a strictly catch-as-catch-can basis but I've pulled strings and we've gotten you a seat on a plane for Bangkok tomorrow afternoon. . . Bangkok, Tokyo, San Francisco, et cetera..."

  Hamlin considered this and shook his head. "Two seats."

  Gen, only half listening, looked up startled.

  "What do you mean 'two'?" said Jordan.

  Hamlin smiled down at Gen. "This urchin here was giving me a great deal of help in my escape when she was captured. She goes with me."

  Jordan looked at Gen with disapproval and at once she became aware of her ragged sneakers, outgrown dress and battered hat; her chin went up and she straightened her shoulders, which made Hamlin smile. "She's the one you went back for?"

  Hamlin nodded. "Name of Perris, Zen Perris."

  Gen said politely, "Actually it's Geneviève Ferris."

  Jordan glanced down at the sheet of paper in his hand. "She's not on our list."

  "No, the two of us were trying to reach the steamer when she was captured, we met over her father's—uh—burial, which makes her an orphan, Distressed Citizen and all that, and now she's on her way to an aunt in America."

  Jordan said curtly, "Well, she'll have to wait her turn, Hamlin, we've only the one seat booked for you and that was damnably hard to get."

  Hamlin smiled at him cheerfully. "Sorry."

  "What do you mean 'sorry'?"

  "Two seats."

  "Why?"

  "Because I've a fair knowledge of bureaucracy, and the girl could be here for weeks . . , months. Two seats. They've waited in Washington all this time, they can wait a little longer."

  "Washington wants you now."

  Hamlin only smiled. "Two seats."

  "My God, you're a stubborn man." He looked broodingly at Gen. "Has she a passport?"

  Gen dug into her shoulder bag and produced her precious passport and birth certificate.

  Jordan, glancing over these, looked appalled. "My God, this passport expired years ago, it was issued in 1934. Do you realize the time it will take to apply for a new one?"

  "There are such things as provisional passports, aren't there?" asked Hamlin. "Emergency passports, temporary p
assports?"

  Jordan scowled at him. "Plus a seat on the plane? You drive a hard bargain, Hamlin. All I can promise is to take her papers along with me and see what can be done."

  Gen, seeing him pocket her documents, reached out a hand to stop him. “Oh please—not without a receipt, they're all I have!"

  Jordan looked at her, really seeing her now, and said with some surprise, "I suppose that's true." Backing up to a bench he sat down, brought out pen and paper, copied data from both papers and handed her a receipt.

  "Thank you," Gen said with dignity.

  "Thank your friend instead," Jordan told her. "You'll have to come along with me now, Hamlin, there's a car waiting and we intend to keep you rather busy until plane time. Let's go."

  "See you later," Hamlin told Gen, and lifted two fingers in a V sign.

  Watching the two men walk out into the sunshine Gen realized in amazement that she might very well be on her way to America in only twenty-four hours and this produced a convulsion of emotions: the thought of still another venture into the unknown brought a wave of anxiety that bumped up hard against a thrill of excitement and anticipation. What she needed just now was the comforting presence of U Ba Sein, and she turned to find him.

  "But where's U Ba Sein?" she asked, looking around the room, and when the others, talking, did not hear her she raised her voice in panic. "Where's U Ba Sein?"

  Each of them, surprised, turned to look around the cavernous room.

  Miss Thorald said, "He was here a minute ago."

  Mrs. Caswell nodded vigorously. "He was standing between Mr. Gunfer and Lady Waring."

  "But then he suddenly wasn't," said Lady Waring, puzzled. "Mr. Baharian, could you look in the lavatory?"

  "But of course," said Baharian.

  "What is it?" asked Lady Waring of Gen. "Is something wrong?"

  "I may be leaving tomorrow, U Hamlin is trying to arrange it so I leave with him."

  "Good heavens, so soon?" said Lady Waring. "Obviously sleep will have to be postponed, we must find you some decent clothes at once, well, Mr. Baharian?"

  Baharian shook his head. "He's not there."