by David Dagley
The following morning Cale got up stiff and sore. It was just light when he wandered a few blocks into town through a coating of mountain mist. As the fog began to burn off with the rising of the sun, he found a corner restaurant and walked in for some sweet tea and roti. He sat quietly at a window table, taking in the sights inside and out when Burma crashed in on him. Haunting visions of the train ride, the Tatmandaw, the chicken-winged prisoner with his dead black pupils staring a message into Cale’s eyes. Cale’s mind blossomed with a vivid picture of the Asian man lying on the floor of the museum with a mouth full of red stones spilling out. The prisoner’s black eyes were an abyss.
“Excuse me. Where you come from?”
Cale awoke from his daydream and looked up to saw a Burmese man standing at the end of his table. The man was wearing imitation Ray Bans with gold-colored rims, a military jacket, and a black loungyi with thin white bands. He was holding a pen and a notepad.
“USA.”
“Oh, America. Welcome to Myanmar. Are you on a tourist or working visa?”
“I’m on a tourist visa. Are there many Americans working here?”
“Canadians and Americans, yes. Many survey for the road.”
“What road?”
“Oh, many road. Are you looking for the Shan prince house?”
“I don’t know. I just arrived.”
“Oh, I see. Where from?”
“Mandalay.”
“Oh no, not possible. Maybe somewhere closer. Mandalay too far. How did you get here?”
Ian and Sandra stuck there heads in the window at the opposite end of the table, “Are you ready to go?” Ian asked.
Cale got up immediately, “Yeah. Excuse me, but my friends are here, and I must go.” Cale bowed his head slightly and moved towards his waiter to pay.
Ian and Sandra met Cale at the front door of the restaurant, and they moved off quickly.
“Everywhere we’ve gone this morning the secret police are asking for our names, passports, when we got here, where we are going, all that. The guy talking to you was secret police,” stated Ian.
Cale responded slowly, “Yeah, I kind of figured that out. Thanks for rescuing me.”
Sandra changed the subject, “I read a book about a Shan prince and his Austrian wife called My Life as a Shan Princess by Inga Sergeant. Her princely husband’s father went to school in England and brought back with him the knowledge and ability to build a colonial-style house complete with electricity and running water, as I recall. It was the first or one of the first houses in Burma with all that. We should walk there and see what it’s all about.”
“The man at my table back there mentioned it and asked me if I was going there,” said Cale.
“What did you say?” asked Ian.
“I told him I just got here.”
Sandra shrugged her shoulders and offered, “Let’s go check it out.”
They found the house rather quickly and were welcomed in for a cup of Shan tea. The owner of the house was a gray-haired, clean-cut man of small, slim stature. His polite wife made a brief appearance, wearing a colorful summer dress with her black hair rounded up on top of her head. The couple showed much of their history through photographs and stories of Ne Win’s military government taking the prince’s father prisoner and putting him in a wooden cell in the jungle, and eventually, they think, he was shot. In any case, he was never heard from again. The military took most of their lands, leaving a small portion and the house with a tax. After the history lesson, they all went outside on the patio, and the man outlined their old property lines to compare them with what they now had.
Sandra and Ian felt compelled to share the events on the train with this man. Cale remained consumed by what he had witnessed and by hearing Ian and Sandra’s account of what had happened.
Sitting in a chair on the patio, the man gave a shocking, to-the-point response, “Like what you saw on the train, the prisoner, this man,” he said, pointing at Cale, “your money, the government here does not care. You are a drop of piss in a great ocean. It means nothing, and you mean nothing. Squish the prisoner into dust like the political leaders of yesterday and the nobles during our futile times. Kill the royal families or imprison them, or both. It’s all very Machiavellian.” The man drank some tea and added, “Historically, we get what we need from the forest; food, products for our homes, products to sell, even opium and precious and semiprecious stones, if they surface. We are also supposed to collect these things for the military when it marches through town. If you are too old, you pay a tax. If you are young and strong, you are forced to work. If you do not work or choose not to work, the army will write down your name, and the next time fighting breaks out, you will be forced to be a porter. The army will dress you up in a uniform and march behind you. The insurgents do not use many field glasses, binoculars you call them, so the hill tribe armies don’t know the difference, and you are blown up. That’s it. You work next time, if you live. If you don’t live, your family will work out of fear of your disappearance.”
Cale snapped out of his quiet phase and saw an opportunity to change the subject, “I heard something about a ruby that comes from Burma, the Moguk stone.”
“Oh, yes, the Moguk ruby is one of the finest in the world. The stones are found along the banks of the Irrawaddy River and some secret spots on the Salween, where locals go to do their washing. Sometimes they find the stones after a big storm or flood during the rainy season. When the military find out, and they always do, the area is closed off to the local people, and the military will go in and force the locals to search for the stones. Then the military will take all the stones and go away with their bounty. It is the same with opium these days. If a field of opium is discovered that has not somehow been taxed, registered, or already under military control via bribes or Khun Sa’s leftover army, the field will usually be watched until harvest time then cleaned out. And if it’s a big field, then there is sure to be a small hut nearby where the opium is changed into morphine. It is much easier to transport as morphine, rather than as a sticky blob, much smaller as well. The military take everything.”
Ian asked, “I didn’t know they made morphine in Burma.”
“Yes, of course. It is a very simple process. For example; build a fire, set a clean oil drum over it, or maybe not so clean, and fill it with water. Heat it up. Put in the raw opium to dissolve. Once it reaches a certain temperature, it is poured through various fabric filters to get rid of the impurities, leftover wood fibers, and such. Then pour it back into another drum, heat it again, and add lyme fertilizer. Morphine is extracted and makes a layer close to the surface. Add concentrated ammonia, and morphine crystals form and fall to the bottom. Filter again and what’s left is white chalky morphine. Easy. It is formed into bricks, and good-bye morphine, hello money. Easy. If there is an established opium field and heroine is made out of the morphine here, it travels the old way, by beast, through northern Thailand and on to Laos, or Vietnam, or China, or some other country nearby. The United States has publicly been making it very difficult, but secretly not impossible. If the heroin was made in the golden triangle, it will be packaged in just under a kilo packages with a tiger and a globe picture label on it. It may change pictures, but the quality is still the same. What label goes on the heroin depends on where it was grown, plus purity differences. There is Double Uoglobe, with two lions on each side of a beach-ball size–globe, boasting one hundred percent pure. One hundred percent pure is almost impossible; ninety-seven percent, okay. Another label might be the curved dragon, a dragon circling back to its tail. This one is low quality, three to eight percent pure—street stuff, any street. Most of the labeled heroine means it’s for export to the West, mainly Europe and the United States. Europe traditionally received much of its supply from Turkey or the neighboring countries in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and so on. The story is an old one.” The man looked for a moment at Ian, then Sandra, and finally stared at Cale. He closed his afternoon conve
rsation with what he took for common knowledge, “Your Central Intelligence Agency has been involved directly or indirectly for years over here, since the Vietnam War at least. You know that—right?”
Cale, Ian, and Sandra thanked the man and his wife and left very unsettled. Cale felt that the story was the same for everyone everywhere in Burma. The three didn’t talk much as they walked out the driveway and down the dirt road away from the house. Before they got to the edge of town, Cale watched Sandra poke Ian in the ribs. She was wearing that devilish smile again.
Ian nodded to her and asked, “Hey Cale, we’re gonna take off down this side road for a bit and have a smoke. Do you want to join us?”
Cale looked at them. Sandra’s smile was exploding with excitement. “What? Weed?”
“No, something stronger. We’ve got a small amount of opium that we thought we would share with you, if you’re interested?”
“I’m interested, but I have to decline. My head is so full of thoughts and mixed emotions that I think it would be a bad idea. I just want to get them straight first.”
“Well, smoke this, and they’ll go away altogether,” said Sandra.
“That sounds like bliss.”
“It is bliss. You should come.” Sandra was going to pop out of her skin; she was so anxious.
“Another time perhaps. I think it would make me feel uncomfortable right now. But thanks. I appreciate the offer. I’ll see you back at the guest house.”
“Suit yourself. See ya.”
Cale walked on in the late afternoon sun. Ian and Sandra walked hand in hand away from everything.
When Cale arrived at the guest house, he opened the front door and was confronted with nine men sitting in the front room, all wearing sunglasses and smoking. Cale left the front door open to let out the smoke, stepped in, and turned towards his room. Some of the men looked at their watches and began writing in small booklets. When they finished writing, they got up and walked out the front door. Cale pretended to fumble for his key. No one spoke. Cale opened his door, slipped inside, and closed the door with a quick glance around the common room. He sat quietly on his bench, listening to the Burmese whispers outside his door. He didn’t understand a word, but he didn’t have to. He knew that the men who had just left were now searching for the two Canadians. Cale packed his things and lay down with his pack as a pillow. He watched mosquitoes land on the net surrounding him, sticking their needle mouths through the mesh to chase his heat and breath.
Just before dark, Ian and Sandra walked in the front door. Cale sat up, straining to hear. Some more not-so-secret police left the building and closed the door behind them.
Ian came to Cale’s door and knocked, “Hey Cale. We brought some beers and some food back with us. Do you want to eat something and hang out for awhile?”
Cale opened the door and said hello to Ian. His eyes drifted over Ian’s shoulder and saw four men still sitting in the front room with overflowing ashtrays, reluctant to remove their sunglasses even though the room was dim and the sun was going down. Cale looked back at Ian and answered, “Yeah, sure. I’m just going to go outside for a minute, then I’ll be over.”
“Have you been in here since we left you?” asked Ian.
“Yeah, I took a nap.”
“Did these guys ask you any questions?”
“No. But four others got up and went out looking for you as soon as I showed up alone,” answered Cale.
Ian backed up with a nod at Cale and turned for his room.
When Cale came back inside from the verandah, two secret police remained in their chairs, smoking, and he watched two policemen go into the room to the left of Ian and Sandra’s room. Cale’s room was on the opposite side of the main room and in the corner of the building with no other rooms nearby. Cale knocked on his companions’ door and invited them to his room for more privacy. The three of them spoke softly of the pressures they experienced and the awareness of the plight of the simple village people. Oddly enough, they all agreed that the man at the prince’s house was only the son of a prince and considerably less than honorable, possibly Tatmandaw as well. Sandra complained of a bad feeling beginning to shadow their time in Burma.
Cale decided not to go to Lashio at that point, but back to Mandalay to finish his business there, and then back to Thailand for a real vacation, if there was any time left.
At 4:00 a.m., Cale crept passed the two police men sleeping in the front room, slipped out, and vanished in the fog. He walked to the main road and found an open tea shop where a man spoke a little English and directed Cale to the bus station. The man tapped on his watch, pointed down the street, and told Cale to hurry, which fit Cale’s plans perfectly.
Two Western women sat behind Cale on the bus to Mandalay, a bus he didn’t think existed, remembering what the policeman had said to him a day ago at the restaurant, “Not possible. Mandalay too far, somewhere closer.” The girls asked the driver of the bus to play a tape for them on the bus tape deck. He did so. Lou Reed. A song about heroin started to play, which made Cale squirm, hoping the locals didn’t get the lyrics. But they did, and they looked at the girls with a mix of bewildered looks.
On the way, the bus crossed the great plain of grasslands in the Irrawaddy valley. Cale saw eight men, without shirts wrapped only in loungyis, working on the side of the road. A military man with a gun watched over them as they worked. As the bus approached, Cale noticed their shackled ankles. The guard motioned to the men to pick up their tools and chains. They held their chains from behind and stood still watching the bus roll up and pass them. The bus driver waved at the guard through his open window, and one of the prisoners waved, dropping his chains on the ground with a clatter just as the bus passed by. Cale saw the chains plainly and heard them through the bus driver’s open window. The driver looked up at Cale through his rearview mirror and then at the girls who were still glazed and smiling, selfishly oblivious. The road remained empty except for other tourist vehicles and military trucks carrying soldiers to the mountainous regions along the borders, or wherever the insurgents happened to be exposed.
Further down the road, the bus slowed and stopped for a military guard in the middle of the street. A herd of women and young girls shuffled across the road, creating a cloud of dust. Cale estimated around one hundred females. The last few women were being whipped with a long bamboo reed by a woman in military fatigues. The ladies’ shirts were torn and stained with thin blood trails. Some of their tears mixed with the dirt and dust on their brown faces, streaking down to their chins under sun–bleached, weathered straw hats and tattered red and brown scarves.
—
20
—
The phone rang in Seoul. Mr. Won’s father answered the phone, “Yo bo say yo?”
“Father?”
“Yes.”
“Your eldest son is dead. I am finishing up the arrangements for his body to be returned home. His clothes are still in the lab and probably will be for another week, they say.”
Father Won said nothing.
“Would you like me to wait for the clothes?”
“You must. Your brother is most important. But after him come the key and the map of his vault. The key is important, and the map is only a copy. But its importance cannot be ignored, especially at this time. We will mourn together when you return.”
“Yes, Father.”
“What of Rayman?”
“He was home like you said he would be.”
“Be careful my son. Someone went to the island where Rayman’s father was kept before Rayman got there. Robert Stell’s body was burned on a funeral platform down on the beach. We found remnants of burned wood and ashes at the tide line. Rayman sent me a letter thanking me for at least honoring his father’s body with the funeral pyre.”
“But we didn’t burn his body.”
“No, but Rayman thinks we did. We have a lot to talk about when you return.” Father Won hung up the phone.
—
&nb
sp; 21
—
Before checking into the same hotel in Mandalay, Cale crossed to the corner restaurant and picked up a few beers and a bucket of ice. He took a long shower, ridding himself of travel, dirt, and sweat. He sat just inside the balcony doors to avoid the direct sun and drank the coldest of the beers. The distinctive chirp of trishaw bells sounded off like a flock of birds chirping an alarm for a stranger walking down the street, followed by the usual squawk, “Hello Misses. Where you go? You want trishaw? Hello Mister.” Cale got up and looked down to the street below. He saw seven boys on rust-red trishaws near the bus stop. He also saw his elderly trishaw driver sitting separately from the boys, scowling up at Cale. His face was stone with course lines and no expression. He just sat and stared.
Cale felt the eyes of the Tatmandaw all around him, watching his every move. They seemed to watch everybody’s every move. The saying he had heard over and over again, “the walls have eyes,” peaked in his mind. Cale sat back down and fought with his own frustrations about the Burmese military government and the way it enslaved its culturally diverse groups by wielding terror, rape, and brutality as weapons, forcing its own poverty-stricken people into submission.
A knock at the door startled Cale back onto the balcony. He turned in his chair and didn’t make a sound. He looked over the railing. The old man on the trishaw was gone. He looked down to the front entrance stairs and saw no one.
There was a second knock at the door, louder this time.
Cale moved off the balcony and stood in the middle of his room. The tile floor felt cool against the bottom of his feet. Keeping one eye on the door Cale quaffed the rest of his beer and waited in silence—for what, he had no idea. He crouched down and watched a shadow under the door waver, then a letter slid under the door and across the tiles. Cale froze, watching the shadow under the door. The letter was upside-down. The shadow moved away from the door, and Cale picked up the letter and sat down at the foot of his bed.