Return to Mandalay

by Rosanna Ley

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Eva was surprised.

  ‘And email me – if there are any problems that is.’

  *

  She hadn’t asked Jacqui about Li’s. And Eva wasn’t quite sure why not. She took her time over coffee in the hotel bar but there were still three hours before Ramon was picking her up for dinner and she didn’t think she could stay here alone with her thoughts for all that time. She needed to go out somewhere, anywhere.

  Seeing that crate in the truck had shaken her up and she needed to make sense of it all. What should she do? What could she do? The Emporium weren’t doing business with Ramon’s company. Why would they? They dealt in antiques. She thought of the blue-and-gold peacock insignia that had not been entirely obliterated by the stamp of Handmade in Mandalay. Which meant that the Emporium must be doing business with Li’s.

  Eva didn’t want to think about that. She stepped outside the hotel lobby and was promptly accosted by a friendly trishaw driver.

  ‘You want to go on a trip, lady?’ he asked hopefully. ‘I take you to Mahamuni temple. A good place. I very strong.’ And he pounded his chest to demonstrate.

  Despite everything, Eva had to smile. He was slight in build, but these trishaw drivers were sinewy and physically powerful. She’d often seen quite small men carrying two hefty tourists on their trishaws, one facing forward, the other back, their pedal–power truly impressive. ‘I’ve been to the Mahamuni Temple,’ she said. ‘So, no, thank you.’ It had been the same day Ramon had taken her to Inwa and Sagaing. Something she didn’t want to dwell on. And yet he had pretended it was all so important, hadn’t he? That she experienced the spirituality and the history. That she allowed Myanmar to touch something deep inside of her. And she had. She really had.

  ‘The Royal Palace?’ he persevered. ‘You go there? It is close by.’

  Eva considered. She had said she’d go to the Royal Palace with Ramon, and it was so connected with his family, to his grandmother’s story … But now, everything had changed. Sooner or later, she’d have to confront him with what she’d seen. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her to approach the Li family. He must know, mustn’t he, exactly what they were? No wonder there was a back room in his factory that he hadn’t wanted her to go in. It was unlikely that she’d be going anywhere with him in the future.

  Eva glanced at the busy road. She couldn’t walk anywhere, and it might be fun. ‘Alright,’ she told the driver. ‘You’re on.’

  He frowned and shook his head. What now?

  ‘You must ask me how much,’ he told her.

  Eva shrugged. ‘OK. How much?’

  ‘Five thousand kyatts there and back,’ he said. ‘This is good price.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Another frown. ‘OK, lady, you drive a hard bargain. Four thousand it is.’ And he grinned, revealing gappy teeth stained blood red and black from betel.

  It was a ghastly sight, but Eva was getting used to it. Many of the Burmese didn’t drink because it was against their religion. But Buddha had never said anything about betel. She climbed on board. Thought of her grandfather as she so often did. Royal Palace, here we come.

  As Ramon had told her, the building was a replica since the original had been razed to the ground, and when they got there, after a nerve-jangling trishaw ride through the busy streets of Mandalay, Eva was disappointed. It was so different from what she’d imagined. Inside the city walls, it was a bit like being in the country, very green, with dirt roads and fields, which seemed bizarre after the griminess of the built up city outside. It felt peaceful but bare, with only the odd barrack-type building and a café shack breaking up the landscape and army personnel wandering around where once there must have been vibrancy, splendour, royalty and hangers-on. The palace was surrounded by lots of other tiered, red-roofed buildings. It was a maze. But what really dismayed Eva was that everything about the red pagoda palace looked so modern. It seemed to be such a cheap replica. And she’d seen more than enough of those at Li’s.

  Inside, however, there were old sepia photographs of Queen Supayalat and King Thibaw in their extravagant royal robes, jewels and crowns and Eva stared at these, letting her imagination run wild, thinking of how life had once been for them. Queen Supayalat looked as Suu Kyi had described, diminutive but strong-minded, her expression almost surly. King Thibaw looked meek and sweet as a lamb but terribly regal with his high cheekbones, arched eyebrows and drooping moustache. She supposed that it was impossible to reproduce that time of glory, though the copy of the throne, Sihasana, built on a high platform supported by sculptured lions was certainly golden and glorious enough.

  Li’s … As Eva began to look around the impressive Audience Hall where important visitors of a certain rank would have been received, she couldn’t help thinking about them. They were sending a crate to the Emporium. But why? What was in it? And if it were anything like what she had seen in their showroom, then why on earth would the Emporium be interested?

  She wandered through past the Sihasana and the array of golden caskets, lamps, even royal sandals and shoes made of solid gold, silver and decorated with rubies. Eva was getting a good idea of just how rich in gems Burma’s Royal Family had been. Along with wood, gemstones had been Myanmar’s chief source of wealth for centuries. And she supposed the Royal Family would ensure that they kept the best for themselves.

  Unless it wasn’t Li’s fake statuettes in the crate. It could be something else. The crate could be full of the kind of artefacts Khan Li had said he could obtain for Eva. But if so, wouldn’t Jacqui have wanted her to authenticate those pieces while she was here?

  There were few other tourists and Eva was grateful for the information boards written in English which gave her all the guidance she required. She had no need, she told herself, of Ramon. And where did he fit in? If the goods being sent by Li were above board – and, privately, Eva found this hard to believe – then why not send them direct from their own premises? She’d seen the cargo boat on the river. Why send them via another company? Why send them via Ramon? But there was only one answer to this that she could think of. They would send them that way to provide a front. And you only needed to provide a front when you wanted to hide something.

  Pushing these thoughts away once more, Eva meandered through to the Hall of Victory, with the Hamsa Throne, complete with a model of King Mindon seated on it, and found herself replaying the scene of the British rout of 1885, the people of Mandalay plundering the riches of the palace while the British were stashing their first haul, and Queen Supayalat, Suu Kyi, Nanda Li and the two young princesses watched from their chamber with horror.

  But she couldn’t get Ramon out of her head. Did he know what was going on? Did Jacqui? Was Ramon’s business, with his father’s good name and ethics, a front for something illegal? Something criminal? Could it be possible that this man who – admit it, Eva – she had begun to have feelings for, was, for all his fine talk about business ethics, working with the Lis and involved in something decidedly shady? Klaus had been right. Fakes and forgery. That was the impression she’d had when she visited Li’s. But Ramon … Could she have read him so wrong? Had he simply pretended to be passionate about his family business, about the superior quality of the furniture they produced, about their use of the hand-crafted traditions so intrinsic to Myanmar? While all the time …

  Eva was now in the Glass Palace. Its walls tiled entirely with mirrors, it was the shimmering hub of the Palace complex, situated exactly in the centre. The Glass Palace … How mind-spinning it must have been just to stand here …

  Why would he do it? Was it for the money? Was it part of his scheme, his dream, to spend time in the Britain of his father? Or was all that a pretence, too? And what about her own company? Jacqui had seemed very keen to get her out of the country when all these shipments were supposed to be arriving and Myint Maw had been more than a little edgy. Eva remembered how surprised he’d been when she questioned his sources, and how he’d back-tracked about all the othe
r stuff that he’d apparently sent them. How she’d been convinced that she was being told only part of the story. So what was going on?

  At the end of the rabbit warren of adjoining rooms that made up the Palace, Eva came to the Cultural Museum. Inside, were more photographs, of ambassadors who had visited the Burmese court and of the Royal Family. There was King Mindon who had apparently ordered the building of the monastery from which her latest acquisition for the Emporium had come, the King who had also founded the City of Mandalay and had it built at the foot of the sacred mound of Mandalay Hill, in accordance with the prophesies of Buddha. And there was another representation that Eva loved, a colour drawing of King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat sitting high on the Lion Throne in the Audience Hall, with hundreds of subjects bending and shiko-ing before them. No wonder the Queen had a superiority complex, thought Eva.

  In the central aisle was a line of royal wooden carriages with old photographs so faded and indistinct, she could barely make out the royal figures in their glamorous jewelled carriage, harnessed to and pulled by bullocks. Some of the costumes were displayed in glass cabinets though: a sequinned and beaded tapestry robe studded with rubies worn by Queen Supayalat; the gold-threaded brocade of a Royal Maid-in-Waiting – maybe even Suu Kyi’s, Eva realised with a jolt – embroidered silk and hemp, sashes and shawls. And there was the famous four-poster bed made entirely of glass. No replica, this was the real thing.

  The real thing … Eva paused as she left the building and wandered back to the entrance on the outside of the Palace this time. In the distance, she could see the glint of a golden pagoda on Mandalay Hill. Visiting the Royal Palace had given her an insight into the story of the chinthes and Suu Kyi. But what about the Emporium and her own position there? And what about Ramon? She had trusted him and now it looked as if he was no better than all the rest.

  And for the first time since she’d been in Myanmar, Eva felt very alone.

  CHAPTER 38

  When Lawrence woke up, he was sweating, really sweating, just like he had in those days and nights in that interminable heat, oppressive and heavy. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Could he be back in Burma? In that dark green uniform, those boots and puttees? No, he was old and he had never been back, though for so many years he had longed to. But perhaps part of him was still there, in the jungle in 1943, weary and footsore, marching up to twenty miles a day with a seventy-pound rucksack on his back, leading his mule over hilly and jungle terrain, down almost impenetrable muddy paths in monsoon, exhausted from the searing heat, sweating from the humidity, hot and wet enough to rot your boots, waking up every morning to a jungle growth of light green mould even on his own skin. Jungle warfare.

  Lawrence shivered despite the warmth of his bed. How had they kept going? People talked of morale and courage. But really you just kept going because you had to. You were as dependent on your comrades in arms as they were on you. You couldn’t let them down. He found out later they’d been called the forgotten army, thanks to some war correspondent, he’d heard. But at the time … Yes, there was a sense of isolation, a sense of marching to God alone knew where in a bloody evil terrain where typhoid or malaria might finish you off if the Japs didn’t. They hadn’t been forgotten by those who mattered, of course they hadn’t. But their war wasn’t the war in everyone else’s minds and voices. Their war was more like a sideshow to what was going on in Europe.

  How his shoulders had ached from carrying that pack. The puttees kept out the worst of the leeches. But his feet had suffered as much as everyone else’s, blistered from the boots, thick, un-feeling, white-soled from the wet. His pack had held three grenades, meagre bedding, a mess tin and spoon, steriliser, salt tablets, rubber shoes and the little chinthe Maya had given him. It had so much history bound up in it, you see. He had said that recently, to someone.

  He never considered leaving it behind though they all thought he was crazy. Others had pictures of their loved ones, well, he didn’t need those; he could close his eyes and see Maya every night, clear as anything. And the chinthe would protect him, she’d said. Didn’t that make it the most important thing of all? He’d carried a jack knife too, along with his gun, a length of rope and a water bottle. You tried not to drink it though. Not because it tasted brackish and of chlorine, though it did, but because you were rationed. Best to wait until you were desperate, with a throat parched and rough as sandpaper.

  Lawrence remembered the food too, not so bad when the mules were carrying stocks or when the drops came through. Cans of stewed beef and carrots, bully and hard crackers, tinned fruit and condensed milk, rice pudding. But most of all he remembered the chilling sounds, stealthy footsteps that might belong to Japs in the pitch-black of night-time watch in the jungle, the whirr of a grenade, the crack of gunfire.

  Lawrence thought of Eva. How long had she been in Burma? He wasn’t sure of the days and nights like he used to be. When she first left, he had started counting. But then he lost track. What did she think of the place? And what did she think of Maya, his Maya? He had wanted to ask her when she telephoned, but he had been bowled over, utterly bowled over by the fact that his granddaughter had found her.

  He had sensed that she was still alive. But … You should have found out for sure. Lawrence had always known this. He’d often wanted to tell Eva the whole story – she was the only person he could tell. A man didn’t have conversations like that with other men. And then there was Rosemary … Once, she would have thrown a blue fit if she’d known her father had harboured longings for a woman other than her mother. And he couldn’t blame her. But now? Things seemed different now. Eva, though, had the imagination and emotional intelligence to see how it could have been. They had always been close. And she would love Burma just like she loved wood, the feel of it: the rough and the smooth; the sweet and enticing forest-fragrance of it; the way it told its own age, its own story.

  He shifted in his bed, avoiding looking at that ceiling. Something was telling him he’d been in this bed too long. The truth was that he had wanted to find out what had happened to Maya before now, had wanted to relive the memories and perhaps even meet again the woman who had stolen his heart. But he couldn’t. He had committed himself to Helen and then he had fulfilled that commitment by marrying her. He had done it for his mother, for his dead father and because it was the right thing to do. Especially given what he had done. It was his duty. And that commitment, no matter how much he regretted it, meant he couldn’t even take one step backwards to the past. That way would lead to something much darker than Lawrence could deal with. If he stepped back towards the past … He’d be done for. He knew it.

  He closed his eyes. He was tired. Already, he was tired. After Helen’s death, perhaps he could still have gone to find her. But something told him that it would be too late, that it would be wrong to intrude in her life now, so long after he had walked away from it. And then there were the politics of the matter …

  Lawrence had told Eva many stories about his time in Burma. About the life on the streets where people crouched over open fires to cook their food, the spices smoking, rising and perfuming the air, the colourful bustling markets, the teak camps high in the hills built on stilts overlooking the River Irrawaddy and the elephants he had grown so fond of during his time there. He had talked about the wood, about the work, about the teak Buddhas and the golden pagodas of Mandalay, exotic fragments, he supposed, of what he thought of as his other life. His real life.

  But he had never told Eva about his war. The war, he didn’t wish to remember. He’d seen men die from malaria and dengue fever and he’d seen comrades fall – too many of them. He’d killed men before they had the chance to kill him; you didn’t think about it, you just made sure it was the enemy and then you fired. You ducked and you ran like blazes and you were glad that you were living another day. Some didn’t, that was war. He’d seen blood and dismembered limbs and he’d walked away from it if there was nothing that could be done. He’d seen dysentery and d
isease and heard men going quite mad. He’d met women who had been tortured and raped, prisoners who had lived with only a handful of rice pushed through the bars of their prison cell to keep them going all day. He’d seen fear like he’d never imagined and he’d stared death in the face. Why would he want to remember such things?

  But sometimes … The mind was a curious power. The mind and the memories could pick you up and toss you back there. Sometimes it was disconnected fragments, images that fast-forwarded through your brain. Sometimes you remembered every last detail. Back you went to the thick, cloying heat and damp of the jungle, back to the trenches, back to the stench of war. And you wondered how you’d got through it, just like Lawrence was wondering now.

  Lawrence’s emergency commission had taken him, on a train with no windows, to an officer training school in Mhow, India. Like Burma, this was a land of poverty. In the daytime there was plenty of action, even in training school. And more men were being trained as officers as the Japanese drew closer. As he’d known it would be, it was a valuable asset to speak the language, to know the country and its people, even if one lacked military experience.

  They woke at 4.30 a.m. Some of the lads were shaved in their beds by a barber and brought tea and biscuits by their personal bearer. It was laughable really, when you considered that they were preparing themselves for war. Lawrence always got himself up and ready for the 5.30 a.m. drill and weapon training that began the day. Especially after Maya, he couldn’t bring himself to think of the natives the way a lot of the men did. Was it their right to be served? What gave them that right? There were many things he hadn’t questioned when he first came to Burma. But since then, he had listened to Maya’s father and others railing against colonialism and British rule. The Burmese wanted to be independent. Who could blame them? And was it for the British to decide whether they could control the in-fighting that made independence so fraught with difficulties? Lawrence didn’t know. But he had come to think about these issues more deeply, had seen the other side of the coin. And it had left him feeling strangely disturbed.