by David Dagley
The following morning Cale kissed Paula good-bye and dressed well before the light of dawn. He walked to the far end of Paula’s verandah where he climbed down a self-contained, iron-strapped fire escape ladder with his bag over his shoulder. Cale couldn’t see anybody around, so he darted into a cavernous tea shop where he ate roti and drank sweet tea with a group of Indian café workers while waiting to board the private tour bus to Taungyi.
The minivan already seemed stuffed full of irritable Western travelers with backpacks when Cale got on board along with a few other Westerners. They were passing through Mandalay for their next destination. After the new boarders individually haggled for their seats, the minivan took off down a rough road in a cloud of red dust before a red dawn. The springs and shocks had long since lost their definition and purpose. Another warm day was on the rise in the central plains. The tour bus turned east and rose up on to the Shan plateau via a series of switchbacks rising ever higher. Around one of the more treacherous bends, Cale noticed a minivan, like the one he was in, at the bottom of a gorge—smashed, crashed, and left to be trashed. It had obviously tumbled to its precariously awkward resting place. All the usable parts had been stripped and salvaged, while the bulk remained as a reminder to tourists and minibus drivers alike.
A sign read “Kalaw.” It looked like a newly developed military project. The military were widening the road and paving it. Lots of women and children were working, crushing rocks into smaller rocks, shoveling and picking at the edge of the road, carrying baskets of rocks, boiling tar in barrels and drums, and spreading rocks evenly everywhere across the new-to-be-surfaced road. It was very hot. Cale was sweating, and he wasn’t moving. His back was stuck to the black plastic seat cover. He couldn’t imagine the exhaustion these people were going through. Along the edge of the road the dust lay in a three-inch thick layer of powder. The minivan created a dust storm wherever it went, covering the workers in clouds that mixed with their sweat and caked on their clothes and skin.
Cale found the Enle Hotel after a short walk. He also saw the basket shop on the corner. Before dinner Cale took a stroll to the end of a jetty overlooking the lake. It was serene and peaceful. Out on the lake, fishermen stood at the back of their shallow wooden boats and rowed standing up, hooking a foot around a long oar and shoving it or kicking it backwards against the water. A few boats had two men on them, paddling in unison and moving briskly through the water with little or no wake. In the middle of many of the boats sat large netted cones, which the fishermen dropped periodically to trap fish. They sat patiently with three-pronged spears and stabbed at minnows. A woman waved and drew Cale into a cheroot-rolling building. Six young girls sat around on mats on the floor rolling cheroot cigars and tying them in groups of one hundred. Cale bought one hundred cheroots tied together with twine and set off for dinner. As Cale walked back along one of the pathways between two stilted homes, he felt the path give way with each footfall. The pathway was floating and made of matted grasses with full vegetable gardens floating on each side, supported with poles.
Cale ate at a food cart where lots of Burmese people were also eating dinner and laughing with a storyteller. He listened to the story, not knowing what was being said, and watched the children who were listening intently. Many Burmese nodded at Cale, and he nodded back with a smile. After eating he wandered the streets, looking in some of the shops that were still open. He eventually came full circle, walked into the basket shop, and looked at a display table of gardening tools, then at a stack of multicolored and multi-patterned blankets.
A young girl came over to him and asked, “Hello. Can I help you find something?”
“Yes. I’m looking to buy a blanket,” Cale replied.
“A blanket from which region?”
“What do you mean?”
“Each design is from a town or province,” the girl explained.
Cale flipped the corner of the stack and didn’t look at the girl, “Do you have any blankets that are just black?”
“Hmm, I think we do. Let me go ask my father. I think he can help you. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared around the side of the basket shop.
Cale continued to sift through the pile of neatly stacked blankets for a few minutes, admiring the sharp color contrasts and the squared-off patterns.
A man came out from behind the shop. His hands were covered in grease, and his shirt had fresh mud caked on one shoulder. “Hello, what is your name, please?”
“Dixon, Cale Dixon.”
“That is the right answer. Will you come with me, please? We can talk in back, behind the shop, where I am working,” he said while showing Cale his greasy hands.
Cale followed him around back where he saw a Chinese motor in pieces, laid out on thatch mats around the tail of a longboat. A naked baby boy swung back and forth from the rudder pole, lifting his feet to clear the red gas tank and the rails.
Cale noticed a great deal of water inside the boat. “A man in Mandalay said I should contact you and that you might be able to get me to Rangoon?”
“Do you know anything about Chinese engines, Mr. Dixon?”
“Not a thing.”
“That’s too bad,” the man said smiling. “Lucky for you, I do. Can you be ready to go tomorrow morning at 4:30 a.m.? We want to cross the lake before the MTT tour tax officer gets to his post.”
“Sure, I can be ready.” Cale asked uneasily, “Are we going in this boat?”
“Yes, unless you have another one in your pack.” The man watched Cale look at all the engine parts and the water on the inside of the hull and patiently explained, “There is water in the boat to make the seams swell shut, Mr. Dixon. And there is a water pump, as well.”
Cale looked around for the water pump as the man came to the edge of the boat and stood next to Cale. “Where’s the pump?” Cale asked.
The man picked up a large empty coffee can and handed it to Cale, “Do you know how to use one of these?” The man laughed at his joke and the look on Cale’s face. The man picked up his baby boy. “Mr. Dixon, seriously, there is no problem. I will take you safely downriver. It will cost you one thousand kyat, that’s about $7 U.S. dollars. That pays for my time, the boat rental, petrol, and the rental of one black blanket. You might want to buy another blanket for yourself. It will be cold and foggy tomorrow morning on the lake. You will want it.”
Cale handed over one thousand kyat and said, “Thanks, I think.” Cale smiled at the little boy and the man. “See you tomorrow then.”
“Yes, 4:30 a.m. No later.” The man put the baby back in boat and returned to the engine.
—
24
—
It was late, and the house was dark and still. Shadows danced around the study walls as Father Won sat silently hunched over a hand-drawn chart on old brittle parchment. He had been translating small blocks of foreign scriptures from the extinct or conquered past. Three candle flames repetitiously wavered as Father Won exhaled. Some of the characters on the chart had gotten wet at some point and had blurred into evaporated inkblots. Dried blood spatters had cracked and fallen off, leaving stains of their own across what Father Won thought to be the original map of his ancestors’ vaults found over the last 300 years, claimed from the Hun. He stared at a particular block of scripture with many corridors leading to it, trying to remember where he had seen the symbols before, in which book they were, how old they were, and in the end wondered why he couldn’t remember. Reaching under his glasses, he squeezed the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair. After rubbing his eyes he looked up and around the room, trying to focus on some of the larger print titles of the books on the shelves at the far end of the room. Above the shelves of books, pictures of his forefathers surrounded the room, each painting telling a chapter of the bloodline from the beginning and through the generations. The oldest picture was of an enormous, armored warrior king being slain by one of the Won forefathers. A gold key on a chain flung out of the falling king’s armo
r—the first key. Father Won grabbed the chain around his own neck and pulled out the same key.
His wife hobbled into the study and asked, “Are you coming to bed, or are you going to stay up all night again?” She saw the key in her husband’s hands.
He looked at her and calmly put his key back inside his shirt, replying, “No. I’m done here for the night. I’m getting stumped by some of the symbols. My head is fuzzy, and I forget where I’ve seen some of the characters before, or what book they’re in, and sometimes what part of the continent they belong to. It’s driving me mad.”
She huffed at him and said jokingly, “You are mad.”
Father Won grunted out a smile and nodded in agreement.
“You’ll do what you can, and your sons will help you. Everything takes time,” she said, trying to be comforting.
Father Won continued to smile at his wife and her supportive ways. Behind his smile his mind flashed to regret for not telling his loving wife that their first born was no longer amongst the living. “I wish I knew a linguist. They might be able, at the least, to point me in the right direction.”
“That would make it easy, wouldn’t it? Too bad you don’t trust Mr. Bower. You understand what will happen if you share information with him?”
“Yes, woman, I understand,” Father Won snapped.
She moved around the room, tidying up loose books and placing them back on the bookshelves where they belonged. She finished up, walked behind her husband, and lightly massaged his shoulders while looking down at the chart on the desk, “You cannot expect to solve a 300-year-old puzzle overnight. Be patient; tomorrow brings new light. Come on to bed.”
Father Won pointed at the chart and said, “I’ve been looking at this chart longer than I’ve known you, wife, but you’re right. I’ll be up soon. I just have to put these things away.”
The agima kissed Father Won on the top of the head and turned to walk out of the study. She shut the double doors behind her, and the house went silent again.
Father Won sat quietly for a moment with his eyes shut, listening to his own breathing. His heart was healthy, and his lungs were clear. He suddenly leaned forward and began delicately rolling up his old chart to put it in a protective tube. He walked it over to a safe behind a picture of one of his ancestors sitting at a desk toiling over the same chart he was locking up. In the picture there was a woman standing obediently a few paces behind his ancestor’s chair. Her head was partially bowed. The ancestor had his hair pulled back into a standing weave, held up with a horizontal piece of bone. There was a lit oil lamp on the desk for him to study by. Father Won looked into the background to his ancestor’s painted shadow. He knew the combination of the standing weave and the horizontal bone silhouette appeared as a sword or knife handle with the blade buried down his forefather’s spine behind the collar of his robe. Father Won looked at the woman again and affirmed that only the family Un Jang Do sheath was clasped around her neck and that the handle section was absent. He put the chart in the safe and looked up at the painting once more. He began strolling around the study with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at some of the other paintings on the walls. He looked at the original painting of the first of his family nobility, a painting called “Victory.” It comforted him to know that most people never really looked into the background of the painting because they were so impressed with the two larger-than-life main characters. There was a forest behind the Won warrior and a gray castle wall behind his adversary. Three archers stood on the wall with bows drawn and pointing towards the battling pair. Looking closely Father Won could detect the slightest angle difference in one of the archers’ projected flight. The archer was pointing his bow at his own king, while the other two were pointing their arrows at the Won warrior. Father Won turned on a light so he could see more clearly. He grabbed a chair, put it in front of the painting, and stood on it to get a direct look at the detail. Two archers had their arrows drawn in their bows and heads slightly turned towards the third archer, who just held a bow. His arrow had already been released and taken flight, piercing his own king below his raised arm and swinging sword. The Cho king simultaneously took a mortal blow from the blade of the Won warrior. The feather flight of the arrow was camouflaged granite gray and imbedded, faintly outlined, in the same color castle wall. Both warriors were bloodied and wounded, but victory was eminent for the Won. Two more subtle shadows stood amongst the trees behind the Won warrior.
Father Won got off the chair, backed up to the light switch, turned it off, slowly walked to a bookcase, and pulled out a picture book containing all the paintings of his ancestors and another book of his ancestors’ chronicles. He set them on his desk near the three candles and began flipping through the pictures. He began taking notes on each picture, not so interested in the obvious, but scouring the backgrounds and consistently finding another person’s partial silhouette mixed in with the shadows and the instrument of death, coinciding with the manor of death in the ancestors’ chronicles. The pictures told the story of how his ancestors lived as well as how they died.
It was getting light outside when Father Won shuffled out of his study with his head down, pondering the refreshed insights that cast dark questions into the roots of his family tree and the potential knowledge that may have passed down through unknown others as it did through his family.
—
25
—
Cale packed his things and walked silently through the fog back to the basket shop. The man was having tea with his wife and daughter when Cale walked in with his small pack over his shoulder. The boatman stood, said good-bye to his wife, picked up his son, and kissed him. He turned to Cale and asked, “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” said Cale.
“We have to walk to the canal where the boat is, and then we can go,” the man said as he put on a floppy hat and an oversized jacket. He led Cale down to a thin canal where many boats bobbed quietly at the water’s edge. Cale got in the boat and was surprised not to see any water in it. A flat, wood floor had been put back in the bottom of the boat. Cale sat in the middle and rested his bag under the bow seat triangle.
The man hopped in the back and explained, “For now, you are cargo and must be under the black blanket down on the floor, please. I will lift the blanket once we are in the fog and out on the lake.”
Cale curled up on the floor and pulled his bag to him to use as a pillow. The man covered Cale with the blanket and continued to push the boat out past the other boats with a long pole. The long boat rubbed and bumped other boat rails as they headed out to a bigger canal. Cale could hear the water lap against the hull as they moved quietly through the mist. The boatman pulled the starter, and the Chinese engine roared and shuddered into the silence. Half an hour passed before the boatman lifted the blanket off of Cale. They traveled for two hours without as much as a ripple on the lake before Cale could make out a shadow of a contour of the far shore. The boatman headed for the mouth of a river. The boat swerved and weaved among large patches of braided, lush, green water plants. The fog peeled off into the rising sun, and the heat of the day began. Water buffalo chewed on plants along the grassy banks. A child waved from the back of a water buffalo and jumped off playfully into the silt-laden water with a shrill scream and a splash.
The boatman pointed out some Red Karin women doing their washing and chatting down by the edge of the river. They wore traditional black clothes with bright red turbans on their heads. Fishermen began showing up, tossing their nets into the singular fluid movement of the river and retrieving them by hand, while others used small boats to throw their nets into the deeper water. One particular fisherman caught Cale’s attention; he stood next to his beached boat, throwing a net out into a deep eddy of the river. There was a second net at his feet, and in the background was a small village of thatch-roofed homes with smoke coming from a central fire pit where some men were burning the hair off of a wild boar. Cale thought back to the Cho Museum fisherman st
atue. A mother and son waved from a pier. The mother drooled betel nut juice; blood-red stains painted her teeth and encircled her mouth. The hills drew in along the river banks. Cale knew he was floating deeper into the fabric of the country, a goal of many of the foreigners who come to Burma. Shades of red appeared in the groves of trees standing close to the river. Cale soaked in the heat and beauty of Burma as its tranquilly passed him. Birds flew out of the tall grasses in front of the boat; kingfisher, swallows, cranes, hawks, heron, sparrows, cormorants, and water foul. Sun-bleached wooden structures rose up out of the water on stilts ahead of the boat. The boatman stood on his bench with the long rudder pole phallicly pinned between his legs. He looked over the tops of the grasses and slowed his engine to an idle.
The boat drifted downstream and broke out of the river through the wooden structures and onto another lake. Cale pulled out his map and didn’t see a second lake drawn.
Cale turned and asked, “What lake is this? I don’t see it on the map.”
The boatman shook his head and said, “No, it’s not on the map. Some time back a dam was built to harness electric power. The government is very sensitive in this area because they think some insurgents will try and blow it up. There’s no back-up power system in parts of our country. This lake is much bigger and much deeper than Enle Lake. Some villages had to move out of the basin when the lake began to fill up. As the river turned into a lake, the villagers kept walking away from the water until it stopped. Then they built another village.” The boatman pointed to the southeastern end of the lake, “There is a town there. I will drop you off, and you will take a local bus to Loikaw. You will stay in a guest house for the night. You aren’t supposed to stay at this guest house, but do it anyway. No one will ask you any questions. The bus driver probably will not let you out there, but just walk back to it. Here.” The boatman handed Cale a piece of paper with directions, a map, and a name—Jay Walker.