by David Dagley
The other children gathered together, and talked amongst themselves briefly, then laughed out loud, and turned to Cale, yelling, “Hello, Mister. Where you go?”
The street was lined with small shops and massive pod-bearing trees most likely planted during the British rule.
“Do you come to Mandalay often?” asked the driver.
Cale thought it was a ridiculous question and smiled before saying, “No. It’s kind of out of my way.”
“I see.”
The palace wall approached, “Please take a right at the palace wall, and I will get out at the corner.”
“But the entrance is on the left.”
“I’m not going in the palace.”
“I see.” The driver seemed suspiciously confused.
“Will you be long? Would you like me to wait?”
“No. You don’t have to wait. I don’t know how long I will be,” responded Cale.
“After you are done, I can take you on a short tour of the city if you would like. I have many stories about Mandalay. I will be on the corner.”
“It’s not necessary.” Cale got out on the corner, pulled fifty kyat out of his front pocket, and handed it to the driver. “Thanks again. See ya later.”
“Of course, I will be waiting here on the corner.”
“No. You don’t have to wait. Go get another fare. I told you I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“I see.”
Cale turned, saw the elephant head, and walked down the street towards the shop entrance below. He turned into the front room of the jeweler’s shop. The room was cool and dark. The only light came through the front window overlooking the road and a partially open backdoor. The cabinets and display tables were all made of teak wood with carved figurines for legs and feet and inlays of simple stone designs. Once Cale’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized there was nothing in the room except empty cabinets and display cases. He could smell something burning out back and heard someone pounding, followed by a great hissing sound and then some more pounding. Cale began to walk quietly through the front room. He stopped briefly, remembering to remove his shoes and carry them through the remainder of the building. He pushed the backdoor open to see a silversmith break a mold with a hammer and drop the piece into a bucket of water. Four elderly men sat at a table with small work lights at each of their stations. Large round magnifying glasses were attached to their heads by leather straps. They mumbled amongst themselves, but Cale couldn’t hear anything due to the sputtering generator powering their lights and grinding wheels. Two boys filed jewelry pieces over wash-bin-sized buckets. A girl worked on moldings. A bamboo structure laced with red and light pink bougainvillea covered most of the backyard. Two foreigners sat at a table off to the right side with a pot of tea watching the masters perform their magic out of fire, rocks, water, and metal. Cale sat down on the back step of the shop and watched the jewelers work, but soon dozed off in the peaceful stillness of the afternoon.
Cale awoke to the prod of one of the young boys. The four men were staring at Cale with their magnifying glasses, each enlarging one eye.
One man remarked, “We were hoping you came here to die.”
Cale shook his head, smiling, and answered curiously, “Oh, why’s that?”
The jeweler looked to his partners and explained, “He says, no. That’s too bad because my brother here really likes your watch.” The two foreigners and the children all laughed softly and smiled at Cale as he sat upright. The jeweler asked, “Can we help you?”
“I hope so. My name is Cale Dixon. I arrived today by bus. Yongyot, in Bangkok, sent me to see you or someone you work for to help me with some questions about the Moguk stones.
The couple sitting to the side smirked at Cale knowingly, and the man with a Dutch accent related, “That’s what we said four months ago.”
The jeweler’s wife came out, smiling, from the shop behind Cale. The jeweler waved Cale off his stoop, “Here, come here. These two Dutch people found some beautiful Moguk stones at a great danger to their lives. They are two crazy Dutch people who I am very happy to see alive and with all their body parts still intact. Come see what they asked us to make for them.”
Cale got up, and so did the Dutch couple. Everyone converged around the four men working on the Dutch couple’s jewelry designs. Cale saw a set of earrings, a necklace, and a man’s ring. The stones were as big as Cale’s thumbnail. Two boys stopped filing their pieces, and a young girl cleaned up her moldings and put them away. The three children joined the circle.
The jeweler spoke as he picked up an earring mold, “The metal is imported platinum. I think you call it white gold where you come from,” he said, looking at Cale. The jeweler picked up a stone and rotated it under his work lamp so Cale and the Dutch couple could see the quality craftsmanship. “This stone will sit in the earring.” He put the stone down and picked up the earring again. “The stem of the earring is three inches long, exactly, and tapers to the post. On the back of the post is a platinum hook, which attaches to the stem so the earring will not fall out or be easily taken. The stone will float behind the jaw and away from the neck.” He held the earring up to the Dutch woman’s ear as she bent down. “The stone will be visible in front, in back, and from the side. A thin strand of metal around the waist of the stone will firmly hold it in place. It is better for the stone if it is exposed to lots of light.” The jeweler looked across the table at the two men.
The man across from the jeweler smiled and said nothing, keeping his hands in his lap. He shook his head slightly and nudged the man at his side. The next man picked up a stone with a pair of tweezers and began, “Each of the earring stones has the length of a traditionally long cut stone, similar lines to the Ashoka diamond cut of Goldberg’s, but the ends are more similar to a more rounded stone, like Schachter’s, Leo cut. The faces have forty-two facets at each end, then a centered transition to sharing twelve facets on each side of the waist band.”
The forth man, sitting next to the main jeweler and in front of Cale and the Dutch couple, picked up a raw stone and turned on a blinding penlight in a stand. He moved the stone slowly over the light and explained, “These stones look best during the day when they get excited. In the rich red color there is the slightest natural inclusion, giving these stones a unique, one-of-a-kind, luster, almost a fluorescent glow—like a soul.” He continued to move and turn the stone. Cale watched the stone’s deep red color come to life in the light. The woman next to Cale took a deep breath and purred. The man continued talking, “Each stone is different, depending on the inclusions; much like people, it depends on what’s inside. The Burma ruby has become very rare over the years due to hoarding collectors, national and personal stockpiles. The inclusions usually depend on the region where the stone was harvested. These are comparable to some of the highest quality Moguk stones in the world.”
Everyone watched silently as the man put the stone down, picked up one of the cut stones, and put it over the penlight. Cale felt a chill start at the base of his back and run the distance of his arms as the stone heated up, twinkling over the light. The woman next to Cale raised her arm to show her lover her goose bumps.
The jeweler noticed and showed his goose bumps to Cale, “I cannot fake these. These stones can drain the life out of you—unless you have hot tea or cold beer.” The jeweler smiled, got up to put some logs on the red hot coals in a melting pit, and spoke with his wife in Burmese.
The wife and daughter pulled out away from the table and went into the shop. In their absence the two boys pulled in closer and stared, mesmerized by the stone’s brilliance a bit longer.
The jeweler announced, “Come bring your benches to the fire, my friends, or the boys will find you some chairs. Please, sit. It’s getting too late for working, but it’s a good time for conversation and stories.”
The men removed their magnifying glasses and completely wrapped the lenses in silk cloth. They placed them in individual teak boxes, and one of
the men took the boxes inside the dark shop.
Cale looked at the Dutch couple and asked, “You found these stones?”
“Yes. But it was these men who told us when and where and how to get them. It was the most dangerous thing I have ever done in my life and would not recommend it to anyone,” said the Dutch man.
“Certainly not,” said the Dutch woman looking at her lover, “and the danger is not exactly over either.”
Cale responded, “I was under the impression that the mining had somewhat dried up in the early sixties.”
The jeweler explained as he handed out cheroots to anybody who wanted one, “The mining has not exactly dried up. That is a pour choice of words, Mr. Dixon. When the rains come, the river swells up and carves new riverbanks out of old ones. Some of the stones migrate downriver to the next bank, or eddy, or further downstream.” The Dutch woman and the two boys refused cheroots. One of the men brought out a box of iced Mandalay beers. The daughter arrived with glasses and handed them out. The wife came out of the shop with a bowl of small dried semisweet plantains sprinkled with raw cane sugar. One of the boys lit some mosquito coils and placed one under the first windward chair and another under the first windward bench. Cale watched as the flames in the fire grew in the melting pit. The glow exposed the men’s weathered faces and pronounced some otherwise hidden scars.
The jeweler drew on his cheroot and thanked his wife and daughter in Burmese for being so kind. The four men raised their glasses to the jeweler’s wife and daughter. Half a step behind, Cale and the Dutch couple did the same.
The jeweler looked at Cale, “Mr. Dixon, Yongyot sent word to me that you were headed in our direction. He also told me the nature of your business here, which, if you don’t mind, you and I will go into another day. But for now, I want to tell you three a story. What I am going to tell you must remain in your ears and minds and never reach your lips while you are in Burma.”
Cale nodded. Everyone was silent.
“When we were little boys, we went to school together, north of here in the Moguk region. Our fathers were jewelers and miners, as were their fathers. My grandfather was here when the British overran and ruled our country. Our family was hired by the British because of my grandfather’s skill and knowledge. He used to tell us stories about the funny ways of the foreigners. Many stories had to do with greed and the want of our natural resources. In the surrounding hills and mountains, there are teak, evergreen, and tropical evergreen trees. On the eastern mountainside of the Shan plateau, opium is grown and has been growing there for a long time. In the Irrawaddy valley, we can grow cotton, ground nuts, jute, rubber trees, coconut, tobacco, tea, citrus fruits, sugarcane, wheat, and dry rice. We used to grow wet rice in exportable amounts much greater than today. Below the surface of our country, we can mine for lead, zinc, tin, iron, nickel, copper, coal, oil, natural gas, and, my favorite, precious and semiprecious stones. We have tigers-eyes, zircons, sapphires, spinrels, tourmalines, and rubies, among others. From generation to generation we have been working the stones.”
“When the British came, we mined for them. The British came in three waves, taking our lands and changing our way of life. My grandfather was a very smart man and learned English very quickly. But he did not let the officers and the businessmen know how much English. He also understood their greed, for he shared in their desire for the stones. While working and cutting stones for the British, he would take a few rough stones every day. For twenty years he took stones from the British businessmen. And what would you expect; he was a jeweler. With his humble treasure, he insured our futures, at least as far as he could see. My father learned from my grandfather and became one of the finest freehand stonecutters in Burma. The queen of England has some of his works, as have the king of Thailand and many other royal families around the world. These are the stones with pigeon-blood color. To our family, it is not pigeon blood. It is our blood and our country’s blood and sweat that helped make the stones come to life. My father went to the University of Rangoon for a short time. He met with Thakin Aung San, a hero of his time. He also met Thakin Nu, who later became our prime minister. Many of the Thakin party leaders were in university at that time, some older, all with eyes wide open. My father wanted to join with them and fight for our country’s independence. My grandfather wouldn’t have it. For fear of his son’s life, my grandfather took him out of university and brought him home, back to the jewelry shop, where he remained and started a family. This is my younger brother, and these two are my adopted cousins. Their father died of malaria, and my father and mother brought them and their mother into our house to stay forever.”
“All four of us went to university as well. But the political situation had gotten worse after our independence in 1948. Some insurgent groups in the hills didn’t want to live under the same constitution or religion. Some wanted their own independent state. Fighting was everywhere. In July 1947 General Aung San and seven of his ministers were killed by U Saw and his gunmen. Many believe Thakin Shu Maung was the mastermind. You may know him as Ne Win. He ran the military and our prime minister, U Nu, from puppet strings when he was alive, very powerful. The fight against what he put in political motion goes on today through Aung San’s daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi. Our father did as his father did and brought us home.”
“When U Nu became the prime minister, he ran the country until 1962, when Ne Win organized a coup of the government for a second time and quickly replaced most of the civil leaders with devoted military officers. The military dug into every aspect of our lives. Many innocent people were killed. Many people went to prison; many died there, and some were put in jail back then and are still in there today. All communications were cut off to those in prison. Ne Win began rounding up the princes of our country, plus the educated people of the country as a whole; all people who wore glasses were considered educated. It was ridiculous. Anyway, this severed our country and shattered our dreams of a unified, true democracy. Some of the hill tribes remained autonomous and outside the circle of influence of the Tatmandaw and the military in Rangoon. But the military pursued villagers into the jungles, killing, raping, and destroying our ways of life with every step they took. This has not stopped today.”
“Foreign powers turn a blind eye because we have nothing they want. The military are using civilians to build roads through our pristine jungles, disrupting all life in their path. If we had lots of oil in the ground, democracy would have been supported by the outside world, and we would not have had to live in what seems an eternal life of slavery and terror. The only countries that pay any attention to us today are those that utilize and profit from our bountiful black market. Through our black market you can get anything; women, children, opium, marijuana, stones, and much, much more. Products that are supposedly boycotted by your country, I can go down the street and get right now. The boycotts only change the direction of the smuggling and, of course, the price, but it’s still available. If you want it, you can get it.”
The jeweler took a drag from his cheroot, which was smoldering between his fingers, then continued, “As the roundups continued, my father was told that his name and his sons’ were on one of the military lists to be picked up. And so he tried to secure passage to Thailand for all of us. It was a total disaster. We went to the airport in two cars. Our father drove with our mothers in the first car. We four young men were in the trunk of the second car, stuffed behind our belongings. There were some cars between our parents’ car and ours. Our father and mothers were stopped, dragged out of their car, and arrested. We never saw or heard from them again. Our driver, a neighbor friend in the military, turned off the main street. We were stopped at a roadblock, but our driver was in military uniform and talked his way out of the situation. He drove for many hours with us suffocating in the boot of the car. He drove us to the edge of the jungle where he found a mass grave of people not yet buried because the military was not done killing. We pulled four young men’s bodies out of the pile that wer
e our size and one other man’s body. We put them on top of the car and drove to a ravine, where we changed clothes with the dead. We put all our papers, our glasses, our watches, everything we had on them. Everything we owned we gave to the dead and prayed with tears we never knew we had. Our driver lit the car on fire and pushed it over the edge of the cliff. We watched it burn and explode at the bottom of the ravine. We covered our tracks and ran with the ghosts of the dead into the darkness of the jungle, never to be heard from again. The only thing we kept from our past was the stones.”
“After some years of hiding and running, we arranged for new identities through the black market in Thailand. We went to Thailand and worked hard but continued to look over our shoulders. Eventually we thought it would be safe to come back, and we did. We bought our grandfather’s shop from a family of Chinese and quietly went back to work. My silent brother here was in Rangoon, picking up a shipment of tools and equipment we had ordered when the military began shooting on the far side of town. The year was 1988. The streets again ran red with the blood of my countrymen, and women, and children. And the ghosts swarmed in my brother’s head. He doesn’t talk too much anymore, and he’s very shy of loud noises, but he loves his stones. On that subject, it’s hard to keep him quiet sometimes.”
Cale smiled politely as the old scars on their faces began to shade with new meaning. The silent brother looked at Cale. Cale reached into his pocket and handed the silent brother his remaining Moguk stone, “Yongyot has a stone just like this one. Maybe you all could tell me about this stone,” Cale looked at each of the brothers and added politely, “another day perhaps.”
The silent brother took the stone, looked at it over the firelight, and nodded to the jeweler.
“Another day. When you return. We will need some time, a few days at least. Do you have plans for your stay in Burma?” asked the jeweler.