The Incident at Badamya Read online

  Prologue

  In the Soho District of New York there is a small marionette theater inserted between two warehouse lofts, a theater that has known fame twice, first in the mid-sixties when it was discovered by theater critics, given reviews in Newsweek and Time and a cover story in Life magazine, and again in the late seventies when the theater produced an authentic Burmese production of the Creation of the World, with the twenty-drum saing waing and gongs, cymbals, songs and puppet dances, followed by a tale from the Jataka.

  1

  There had been omens.

  Mr. San Ya, drawing his horoscopes by the light of a candle, had seen at once that the new month was not auspicious; he had painstakingly drawn it a second time but still it promised only more violence.. , his country was experiencing a difficult birth. The Prime Minister had announced there would be peace in one year but that announcement had been issued two years ago and the rail line to Rangoon was still cut, the roads unsafe, and the insurgents split into even newer fragments. What was one to make of them all: the AFPFL of the government, the Red Flag Communists, the White Flag Communists, the PVO divided into White Banner and Yellow Banner factions, the KNDO, and lately the battles fought against the KMT who sought sanctuary in the north from Mao in China?

  Most ominous of all were the bandits, the dacoits, who had leaped into the vacuum.

  Mr. San Ya sighed as he blew out his candle and retired to the mat on the floor with his sleeping family. He was not a man given to worry but in those moments before sleep seized him he had lately begun pondering how his small village on the Irrawaddy might acquire another gun. There was only one gun in the village, tonight in the hands of Ba Pe, whose turn it was to stand guard until dawn, but one was not enough. As usual Mr. San Ya's thoughts wandered to the foreigner in their midst and he considered again how he might tactfully inquire of Mr. Ferris if he owned a gun. It was Mr. San Ya's opinion, somewhat prejudiced, that a foreigner with a sixteen-year-old daughter to protect had a duty to own a gun even if the man was a Christian and had been a missionary before his leikpya—his soul—had sickened. Like the Prime Minister, Mr. Ferris had announced many months ago that the "tumult and the shouting," as he phrased it, would soon go away and that he intended to "brave the storm"—he spoke like that—but in the vocabulary of the British under whom Mr. San Ya had once served he thought him a bloody fool: he had stayed too long. He thought that Mr. Ferris would have been surprised to learn that he was regarded with kindly tolerance strictly because of his daughter Gen, who Ma Nu insisted was protected by a thamma deva. That she was protected by a thamma deva was quite possible, thought Mr. San Ya, nodding judiciously, but if that was the case then Mr. Ferris would not need a gun and might be persuaded to lend it to the village. If, of course, he possessed one.

  Persistent worry was not in Mr. San Ya's nature and presently his eyes closed and a snore escaped him. Outside, the full moon poured its milky light over the village, bleaching its forty-one thatched roofs and cutting deep shadows into its maze of lanes and paths. It followed Ba Pe as he left the north gate of the village to stroll down the main path to the south gate, the rifle slung over his shoulder, but it failed to reveal the man hiding behind the pagoda outside the gates who had been told that an American lived in this village and might help him.

  The moon shining on her face woke Gen Ferris, or perhaps it was the manic cries of a cuckoo in the trees beyond the compound. She stirred and her eyes flicked open to move drowsily around a room blurred by the shroud of mosquito netting under which she lay. She found the faces of the American movie stars on the left wall: Doris Day and Joanne Dru, Dan Dailey and Bing Crosby, and on the right wall the watchful eyes of the marionette that Htun Schwae had carved and costumed for her in miniature: Zawgwi the alchemist, the all-powerful lord of magic and sorcery, his red clothes and his red wand the color of blood in the moonlight. But Htun Schwae, she had protested, doesn't your carving Zawgwi small in size make his power small? and Htun Schwae had looked at her gravely and said, Does your being small in size make your power small, Zen?

  Now she remembered that tomorrow was special because it was said that a river steamer from Rangoon was on its way and would be reaching Theingyu around noon, the first steamer in months; it was rumored that Europeans were aboard and it had been a long time since she had seen a European. She smiled, not aware of San Ya's horoscopes or of such matters as omens. Her eyes closed and she slept, the smile lingering on her small-boned white face made paler by moonlight.

  The next day the rumors of a steamer proved to be true but whether it was also true that it carried Europeans could not be substantiated because the steamer did not stop at Theingyu, which was seen as ominous because this had never happened before. Gen stood and waited on the shore with Mi-Mi, who had brought food to sell the passengers; the long plank that substituted for a gangway was ready to be lifted into place when the shabby old blue and white riverboat steamed around the curve in the Irrawaddy, leaving a triumphant wake behind it. Murmurs of pleasure rose from the villagers lining the river's bank: smiles, laughs of delight blossomed, and a sense of excitement. But the steamer's speed had not diminished and it was Mr. San Ya who first expressed dismay. Slowly the murmurs of delight faded, and with it Gen's hope of seeing a European. However, because of the boat the Japanese had sunk in the middle of the river during the war, the steamer had to sail tantalizingly close to the shore and it was possible to search out the faces of the people lining the rails. Straining to see, Gen thought she found a woman who might be European, sitting very erect in a deck chair, dressed all in silky gray with hair to match, but it was no more than a glimpse for people kept getting in her way. What drew her gaze at last was a Burmese standing at the rail who seemed to be staring directly at Gen. Her gaze returned to him and she became very still, puzzled by the way he regarded her, as if she was familiar to him. He was a small plump man with a brown face. It was disconcerting—she felt hypnotized by those eyes—and then he released her by turning his head away and she wondered at its happening at all, even as something deep inside her whispered, / will see that man again . . , and then the steamer turned midstream, the faces became profiles and then disappeared as the boat proceeded on to Kyaikkasan, five miles upstream.

  Mi-Mi turned to her with eyes anxious for her friend. "No Ingalei, no Ameiyikan, Zen."

  Gen said, "Keissa masibu—never mind," and hid her face by leaning over and picking up little Ah Par, who squealed with delight.

  But to Mr. San Ya the steamer not stopping was seen as another omen, and in the afternoon, while the men worked in the fields and while Mr. San Ya—being a man of pon— played dominoes with Htun Schwae in the shade of a neem tree, the foreigner in their village, Gen's father, ended his life with a bullet in his head, which proved in the most unfortunate manner that he had owned a gun after all.

  2

  Her true name was Geneviève Beauchamp Ferris but owing to a difference in phonetics among the Burmese she was known to them as Zen, and her last name pronounced as Perris, and Zen Perns she had become to everyone except her father. She was sixteen years old but looked twelve, except when her small face turned pinched, at which time Ma Nu, who cooked for them, said she looked like a little old woman. In the five years they had lived in Theingyu her father had rarely been seen; it was known from Ma Nu that he tutored Zen when he was well, suffered recurring bouts of malaria and was engaged in writing a book, although about this Ma Nu was skeptical because she never saw him at work. In the meantime Zen was nurtured by Ma Nu and by the villagers, and trudged up and down the lanes in her odd felt hat and ragged sneakers, grave and self-contained as she visited Htun Schwae to see his marionettes, or helped Mi-Mi sweep the courtyard of the nearby monastery t
o gain merit.

  The gray felt hat was all that she had of her mother, who had died of typhoid during the Japanese occupation, and the sneakers were the gift of an aunt in America whom she had never seen but who sent wonderful magazines that Zen shared with the village, so that in nearly every house, in company with a picture of Aung San who had been assassinated at the time of Independence, there hung small pictures of movie stars and of American advertisements for Coca-Cola (“Refreshment Is Sincerely Yours With Ice-Cold Coca Cola for S cents") and Tangee lipstick ("for lips men love and love to kiss") and Noxzema Beauty Cream ("are blemishes giving YOU an inferiority complex?").

  Now it was left to Ma Nu to tell Zen what had happened during this long dusty hot afternoon. She found her down by the river mending a net with Maung Au, who caught fish for the village and was therefore a low Buddhist because he took life. When Ma Nu told her that her father was dead Zen gave a queer little cry and flung out a hand in protest, as if to ward off such news, and then her face tightened, she straightened her shoulders and walked silently back to the house with Ma Nu.

  They buried Gen's father three hours after his death, quickly and in a grave outside the village because it was believed that such a violent premature death would bring harm to the village, that the spirit of Mr. Ferris, unripe for departure, might remain behind to haunt their dreams, bring a poor rice harvest or disease to the villagers. There were no pongyi summoned from the monastery, in spite of Gen's filling their rice bowls each morning; in such cases there was not even a coffin but out of deference to Zen a rough coffin was constructed by two of the young men and they carried her father to the shallow grave on the hill with only Zen in attendance. Not even Ma Nu dared go with her but waited by the village gate, fingering her prayer necklace with its one hundred and eight beads.

  The sun was setting in an eruption of fire and gilt and saffron and pink, and the rooks were circling the thorn trees, twittering and scolding but not quite blurring the sound of the temple bell from the monastery beyond the next hill; it was the time of day that Gen had always loved most, but as Maung Au and Aung Thoo lowered the coffin into the ground and tossed stones and earth over it her face was stern. Finished, they waited for her but she shook her head.

  "Ceizu timbade—thank you," she said, and they left to immediately wash their hands of the dirt from this unripe green death. When they had gone Gen frowned. There were no tears in her: she had been thrown on her own resources for so long, for half of her sixteen-year-old life, that a whole cast of characters named Geneviève had never been allowed entry—small genevieves that in the course of growing up normally would have surfaced and might even have flowered; they had been replaced by a Geneviève who was self-reliant, practical, cheerful, and who sometimes felt a stranger even to herself.

  She was being practical now, thinking not of her father but of the steamer that had passed Theingyu today, and of how it would be tied up for the night at a village not too far away, and of how in a few days it would begin its trip back to Rangoon. Her father had not been so uncaring as might first have been assumed: she had understood this when she unwrapped the small pile he left for her on the table and had found the bank book; almost all of their money was gone. Soon after they had come to Theingyu he'd shown her the account book with its four figures and he had explained that here was the money for their return to the United States and for Gen's first years at college. Now the figures had shrunk to three and there was barely enough for one passage out of the country to America.

  Other than the account book, her father had bequeathed her the address of her aunt in New York City, Gen's birth certificate, a passport issued in New York in 1934 with a photo of her mother and father holding a two-month-old child who was Gen, his gold pocket watch, eight hundred kyat and a note that read: It's time for me to go, Gen. If you can get to Rangoon there'll be help. Go to New York— / couldn't—and God bless you.

  He had not signed it; they had never known each other very well and he was not a man to show affection but he had told her to go to Rangoon, and it was of Rangoon that she was thinking. Eight hundred kyat wouldn't last long, it was less than a hundred dollars in U.S, money but she thought it would buy passage on the steamer to Rangoon, and food for the long trip downstream, and once in Rangoon she had the bank book to prove enough money for passage to America. There was the old bicycle in the shed behind the house and if she left early in the morning, at sunrise, she could peddle north and look for the steamer.

  It was the efficient thing to do, before the money ran out.

  "Lai labala?" called Ma Nu.

  "Cecchin," she called back.

  The sun had slipped behind the trees, leaving the sky a luminous mother-of-pearl with tender strokes of fading mauve and saffron. With a last look at the grave she turned and walked down the hill to Ma Nu, who saw that her face was pinched again, like that of an old woman.

  "You will live with me, you can be my thami now," Ma Nu told her.

  "Ma Nu, you already have two daughters and three sons," she pointed out. And no land, she might have added, so that Ma Nu's husband had to work for Mr. San Ya in his paddies.

  "Then you can still live in your house, there is money for rice?"

  Gen shook her head. "There's a little money but—mas-aluppabu—it isn't enough to live on," she said. "I will have to leave, Ma Nu, my father has written, 'go to Yan-goun.'"

  "Bedo?"

  "Soon," she said.

  "Khimbya toy autthe mathwabane!" protested Ma Nu.

  She didn't tell her that of course she must go alone, nor did she mention her determination to leave in the morning; still another goodbye was more than she could bear. Ma Nu walked with her through the lane to the compound and stopped, quietly pointed to the lamp she'd left burning, reminded her to eat well of the fish and rice prepared for her, and with a last anxious glance at Gen continued on to her house to feed her own family.

  Leaving the gate open Gen walked into the compound which was occupied by sheds and a few straggly plants. Unlike the other houses in the village—built high off the ground with only three walls—the house in which she and her father lived had four walls for privacy and three rooms: a large main room with a small bedroom on either side of it; the kitchen, in the usual village fashion, was outside so that cooking odors would never invade the house. In the main room Ma Nu had left the kerosene lamp burning, its light very small against the dark walls. Gen lit a candle from it and carried it into her own room to begin heaping her few belongings on the bed.

  She had taken Zawgwi down from his peg and was carefully tying his marionette strings when a shadow suddenly leaped up the wall in front of her and hung there. She'd heard no steps and no one had called out to her. . , she spun around to see a man standing in the doorway watching her, a stranger and what was most astonishing of all a European. He was an alarming sight, unshaven, a bloody gash across one cheek, his rough cotton trousers torn across the knee. He said, "I was told there's an American in this village." His voice was hoarse, his face tanned to the color of his dark hair and he was wearing Burmese clothes except for a glorious pair of laced-up leather boots on which her eyes lingered for a moment before returning to his face. She said gravely, "You look awful, you'd better sit down, hadn't you?"

  "So you are American." He limped to the bed and sat on the edge of it. "I saw you up on the hill where someone was getting buried and you looked American ... I followed you back. I don't suppose there's any food handy, I haven't eaten in days." He thought about this. "No, there was a banana yesterday, it fell off someone's ox cart. God it tasted good."

  "Yes," she said, knowing that kind of hunger. "Wait here a minute."

  She returned with the dinner Ma Nu had left for her. "I shall have to eat some of it," she told him frankly, "because I'm leaving in the morning and I won't be able to bicycle very far if I don't eat tonight."

  "Leaving?" he said blankly. "What do you mean leaving?"

  She said in a matter-of-fact voice, "It was my
father who was buried on the hill tonight."

  The hand he was plunging into the rice bowl stopped in midair. "Oboy," he said and looked at her, really seeing her for the first time. What he thought he saw was a thin child with a face shadowed by a gray felt hat and wearing a blouse and short skirt of indeterminate color; light from the candle fell on thin wrists and hands and while it shadowed her legs he could clearly see the sneakers from which the canvas had been cut to allow room for her toes. Having announced that her father was dead her chin had gone up an inch and she had straightened her shoulders, but neither made her taller or fatter. "That's hard luck," he said, and then thinking of his own situation, "You're all that's left?"

  She nodded.

  "Where are you going, for pete's sake, and you said bicycling?"

  In a cool precise voice she told him about the steamer. "It didn't stop here today, which it should have done, which means it may not stop here on the way back to Rangoon, so I'm going to go and look for it. If I can get to Rangoon—"

  He interrupted. "You mean there's a boat, a steamer, and it sails down the Irrawaddy straight to Rangoon? Is it safe?"

  She nodded. "I think so. There are always government soldiers aboard with machine guns, I counted at least ten today when it passed. It's the first boat since the rainy season so they must have thought in Rangoon it was safe."

  He whistled. "It sounds good." He swallowed a piece of fish and held out the bowl to her. "Here—you eat some. ' "

  She took the bowl, absently forming rice into a ball and neatly, efficiently dispatching it down her throat.

  He said thoughtfully, "We could go together. . ."

  She lifted her face and gave him a look that surprised him: he was not accustomed to being appraised so coolly, and from a child it was unexpected. "How did you get hurt?" she asked.

  "A bullet," he said impatiently. "Yunnan's sent out a description of me, so now the White Flag Communists are after me and for all I know the Red Flags too. I was supposed to escape into Thailand but I trusted the wrong people and ended up in the wrong country."