The Incident at Badamya Page 4

"I think he became frightened. Perhaps when one loses God this happens. Are you married, U Hamlin?" she asked, turning a solemn face toward him.

  Startled he said, "Married! No, why?"

  "I was thinking that perhaps you could marry me so I could go back to America with you."

  He laughed in spite of himself. "Look, it doesn't work that way, Zen." Seeing her face he said gently, "Scared?"

  Reaching into her shoulder bag she brought out her magazine and handed it to him. "Is it like this?"

  "What on earth," he said. "A magazine for teenage girls?"

  "Yes, there is an aunt I've never seen who sends these to me."

  "Well I'm glad to hear you've an aunt somewhere, you'll be going to her, I assume?"

  She nodded without interest and said seriously, "Have you attended a pajama party, U Hamlin?"

  With equal seriousness he assured her that he had not, and lest this diminish her opinion of him he hastened to remind her that he'd not been in the United States for over a year but that he was sure he would have been invited to a pajama party if he'd been available. After riffling through a few pages with photographs of pretty girls in ruffles and curls he hazarded a quick glance at Gen in her tattered sneakers, battered hat and dusty clothes and understood her anxiety. This struck him as rather hilarious because—having no sisters—he was accustomed to looking on male-female relationships as adversarial, a matter of coolly outmaneuvering these flirtatious creatures of artifice and guile; now it struck him for the first time that Gen was female, if still a child, and he was feeling for her not only sympathy but empathy. It was an educational moment for him. He handed the magazine back to her and said dryly, "Don't worry, just be yourself, which in itself will surprise people. What are you scowling about?"

  Gen's eyes were fixed upon the fanner walking in his fields below them. She said, "I think I should go down and ask that man if he's seen the steamer, and when. He looks safe to ask."

  "Does it matter if he's seen the boat?"

  She nodded. "I think so, we can't always walk close to the river because you'd be seen by too many people in the villages. If we should miss seeing the boat—"

  "Then for pete's sake don't walk straight down the hill," he told her. "Circle back and approach him from the road. "

  She placed her hat squarely on her head and rummaged in her shoulder bag, brought out her slingshot and tucked it in her pocket. "See you," she said, and jumped to her feet and left him.

  She walked slowly, happy to be alone for a few minutes, keeping an eye out for small stones for her slingshot, heading for the next curve in the road to the north, far enough away from the fanner so that he'd not see her point of entry. She was thinking what a relief it would be to exchange words with the farmer after speaking English for these last few hours; news of the steamer was not her sole purpose in leaving Hamlin, she knew a deep longing to return to the familiar after being so quickly wrenched away from Thein-gyu. Once she reached the road the farmer saw her and she approached him briskly, thinking how he resembled U San Ya just a little, which deepened her pang of homesickness.

  She stopped in front of him. "Nay gaun thlah?"

  He smiled. "Nay gaun baday, but I speak English, and you—you are the daughter of the Christian man in Theingyu, the one watched over by a thamma deva?”

  She grinned. Of course she and her father had been the only Amyaji for a distance of many miles but even if she were Ma Nu herself she knew she would have been quickly placed and identified. "I am, yes," she said, "and I would like to ask if you have seen the steamboat on its way upriver."

  He nodded. "I saw, yes."

  "Has it passed your village, then?"

  "It has passed," he told her, "but I hear that maneiga— yesterday—it met with—" He frowned, reaching for the English word. "Mato tasha?"

  "Accident? What sort of accident, and where?"

  He described it with gestures. "It was stuck a long time, long into the night, between—" He named two villages. "It may still be there for I hear the soldiers from the boat were looking for someone."

  "How many miles?"

  He considered, and held up seven fingers.

  Only seven miles away .., her heart leaped at this news. "Thank you," she said. "Oh thank you very much," she said warmly, and walked back through the rows of stubble, trudged up the road until out of sight and circled back to Hamlin waiting for her on the hill under the neem tree.

  "Good news," she told him eagerly. "He says the steamer ran aground yesterday only seven miles from here and may still be there!"

  "Hey—that is good news. That does it, we get moving, daylight or no. “

  "Not yet," she said as he scrambled to his feet. She rummaged in her bag and brought out her extra shirt, gave it a wistful glance and said, "Sit—I'll make you a gaum-baun." She knelt in front of him, so near that she felt suddenly awkward and self-conscious, aware that Ham lin was not her father, that he was male and she was female, sixteen and nearly a woman, which was another new and strange feeling for her. Frightened that he might sense her confusion she wrenched her gaze away and carefully wrapped the shirt around his head, fashioning it into a turban. However, to observe the effect she quickly moved away from him, a blush lingering warmly on her cheeks. She thought, This must be what Mi-Mi feels with Chun Tun.

  It was a revelation. "Now we can go," she told him.

  He laughed; he had seen and felt nothing. "How do I look?"

  Squinting at him she said in a practical voice, "You might rub some dust across your face to match the dust on your clothes. You're a little tall for a Burmese but your skin is dark enough ..." She nodded. "From a distance—with the gaumbaun—you will look Burmese." She grinned. "But up close they would have to have very bad eyesight to think so."

  "Then no one must get near us, obviously!"

  They had not watched the fields around them while Gen worked over his gaumbaun; now as Hamlin reached to pick up the knapsack he said, "Down! Get down—someone's coming!"

  Before she flung herself to the ground Gen had a glimpse of one man walking across the field and heading directly toward the hill on which they'd rested. "There is only one," she whispered, watching U Hamlin dig into the knapsack for the knife that was their only weapon.

  "Yes but why isn't he on the road? He must have seen us!"

  They lay in silence on the warm earth, listening, hearing nothing until a twig snapped nearby and a voice said, "Zen? Zen, it's BaTu."

  She rolled over and looked up in astonishment at the young man standing over them. "Ba Tu?" she gasped, and to Hamlin, "It's Ma Nu's son!" She leaped to her feet. "How did you find us, where did you come from, I thought you miles away from here in the army!" To U Hamlin she explained, "He's a sitta, a soldier."

  Hamlin eyed him suspiciously. "Then let him sit down and explain how in hell he knew we were here."

  Ba Tu obligingly sat down, and Gen joined him. "I come to return this," he said, reaching into a torn pocket. "I do not know why you are not at home with your father and Ma Nu," he said in a troubled voice, "and I do not know why you walk with this man who is Ingalei," he said, giving Hamlin a hard glance, "but when I saw this I knew you were not in Theingyu."

  From his pocket he drew her father's gold watch and dangled it for a moment in the sun before he placed it on the earth between them. "Haw many times did we play with tins, Zen, you and me and Chun Tun and Mi-Mi and Nyun, in the compound of your father?"

  Gen looked at the watch, her brows drawn together in a frown. Lifting her eyes to Ba Tu she said slowly, "But I carried this with me when 1 left Theingyu, Ba Tu, and there is only one place you would have found this watch."

  He nodded. "Yes."

  "At the pagoda where the dacoits camp."

  "Yes."

  Hamlin was silent, glancing from one to the other, puzzled, waiting.

  She said softly, "It is said in the village you went away to be a soldier. This was not true?"

  "No, Zen," he said gravely.


  "Then you are the man the dacoits went to meet and bring back to the pagoda for rice?"

  “ Yes. " His eyes began to dance and he grinned boyishly, his teeth very white against his dark face. "And very angry we were to learn there was no money. What a trick you played, Zen, I had to truly laugh when I found the gold watch on the floor of the pagoda and understood what frightened Chi Ti."

  "Then you are a dacoit, Ba Tu . . . Oh, what will Ma Nu say?"

  "Ma Nu knows."

  Gen gasped. "How can that be?"

  "Zen," he said seriously, "you know how poor we are, my father works long and hard for U San Ya but without land we will always be poor. This is my chance, I will go back with gold and kyat—already there is some buried deep in the earth back in Theingyu—and when all this fighting is over we will own land at last. You will not speak of this? If the gold watch of your father had not been left behind by mistake in the cave 1 would not be here, or know how

  Chi Ti came to be so frightened, but when I saw the gold

  watch I was troubled. What has happened to take you from

  Theingyu, Zen?"

  Gen told him.

  His eyes grew wide, hearing this. When she had finished he said, "But my mother, she doesn't know where you are?"

  "There was no time, Ba Tu, and this weighs on my heart a little."

  He nodded. "Then I must tell her, for she is worried enough about me and it will go hard with her to worry about you too, Zen." He glanced up at the sun and rose to his feet. "I have to go." He looked at Hamlin and his eyes narrowed. "She is my friend," he said in English, "if any harm comes to her—" He left his warning unspoken but Hamlin understood it very well.

  Gen watched Ba Tu stride down the hill, a look of astonishment still lingering on her face. Hamlin said dryly, "You certainly have interesting friends."

  "Well, you're a spy," she reminded him crossly.

  "How does a person keep names straight in this country? Ba Tu, Ma Nu, San Ya—"

  "That's because you don't speak Burmese," she told him. "In English Ba Tu's name would be Mr. Like-his-father."

  "I see," he said, blinking, and then, "I hope you'll forgive me if I refer to him then as Like-his-father. Look, that farmer down there must be wondering what the big attraction is up here, we'd better leave before he comes to look. If we hurry we can cover those seven miles in no time at all. Let's go!"

  Gathering up knapsack and bag they descended the hill on the side away from the road, cut across a field of partly harvested sesamum and set out north again, walking parallel to the road but keeping it always in sight. They did not speak again until Hamlin guessed they had put six miles behind them, and then they stopped to consider where they were, and to reconnoiter the steamer. Taking cover behind a rise in the ground they looked down on the road and across it to a cluster of roofs enclosed by a bramble fence, its south gate open for the day.

  "Know what village that is?" he asked. "Is the river beyond it? What do you think?"

  "I don't know, U Hamlin." The sun was warm now and the heat rising, and with it her anxiety. "I can no longer smell the coolness of the river," she told him, "and we've not seen it for more than a mile."

  "It has to be there," he said. "I figure if we cross the road just beyond this village, to the north of it, we'll find it again, we must be near the boat now, we've got to be!"

  Worried, she said, "But what if the steamer has turned around and started back to Rangoon? I so fear losing it, U Hamlin, I think I must go across the road to the village and ask."

  "I couldn't go with you," he reminded her. "Mustn't."

  "No—we can meet."

  He looked at her closely. "That's what you'd do if you were by yourself?"

  When she frankly nodded he realized—and it was humbling—that he was not the protector of this child that he had fancied. He remembered that without him she would have been openly walking—no, bicycling, she'd told him— through every village they'd glimpsed from a distance, perfectly at ease with the inhabitants. Reluctantly accepting her worry he said, "Okay, I'll head north of the village as planned, hide where I can see you leave the village at the other end and we'll meet up there. Are you sure this is a friendly village?"

  "You mean insurgents?" she said in surprise. "Oh, they hang a flag when they capture a village and there would be soldiers. You can see how quiet the village is." Giving him a serious glance from the shadows of her hat she added, "But you will watch for me, you will be sure to hide where you can see me?"

  "It's a promise."

  "Then I'll go now," she announced and stood up, shouldering her bag. He watched her walk over the hill and down to the road before he picked up the knapsack and moved off in the opposite direction.

  As for Gen, she walked contentedly, knowing what lay ahead: the village would be mazelike, as hers had been, the lanes and paths overhung by trees and narrowed by high fences made of woven bamboo, slats and woven branches of trees. She knew the cool shadows that fences and trees would throw across the lanes, and that at this hour the women might still be at the village well, drawing water for the day and gossiping, the gates to the compounds open now with children playing, babies asleep in hammocks, a grandmother watching over them, perhaps smoking a huge cheroot like Mi-Mi's grandmother. She walked quickly, anticipation growing in her at seeing this, and of hearing news of the steamboat.

  She passed the south gate and the first houses, pausing to marvel at an oleander tree that blazed with color against the monotones of teak and bamboo. Only as she entered the broader lane did it occur to her that the village was strangely quiet, that she was seeing no one at all and hearing neither children nor animals. It was with relief that she caught movement down one of the lanes. A gate had opened and as she stopped to watch she saw a man walk out—no, a soldier, she saw in surprise, a soldier carrying a rifle.

  Seeing her his mouth dropped open in astonishment, they eyed each other uncertainly and then as she turned to run away he shouted, "Hei!" and lifted his rifle and pointed it at her.

  She stopped.

  "Bega ladale," he demanded, walking up to her.

  "Theingyu," she told him. "Ba loujindale—what do you want?"

  He was very young and she puzzled him; he peered under her hat into her face and then he walked around her and then he called out to someone, saying there was an Ingalei meimma here who spoke Burmese. She was flattered that he described her as a woman but she would have preferred him to lower his rifle. She stood very still and straight, stubbornly refusing fear. She was remembering U Hamlin, hiding by now outside the village and she was thinking how to get away. She thought it might be possible to run from this soldier, who was scarcely older than herself; she did not believe he would shoot her but he would follow, and then what? Seeing her, U Hamlin might shout or wave, come out of hiding, perhaps try to rescue her and then he would be captured, too, and for him it would be dangerous. But seeing the man who strode down the lane to join them her optimism dimmed.

  This was a seasoned man of middle age and obviously the leader. He walked with confidence, carrying two eggs in one hand and a rifle in the other. He stopped in front of her and looked her over carefully and it occurred to Gen, staring back at him, that he looked more Chinese than Burmese. Her eyes dropped to the eggs in his hand and she tried not to show her envy.

  "Ingalei?" he demanded.

  She shook her head. "Ameiyikan."

  In English, frowning, he said, "You come from the steamboat?"

  This was puzzling. "No, from Theingyu but I am looking for the steamer. “

  This amused him, he laughed and now she was sure that he was not Burmese because he was laughing at her and Burmese never laughed at a person in public, it would have been considered boorish and ill-mannered. "Have you seen the boat?" she asked.

  This amused him even more but when he'd finished laughing he lifted his rifle and said, "Laikkhebala."

  "But I don't want to come along," she told him, holding her ground.

&nbs
p; "Laikkhebala!" he repeated sharply, and giving over the eggs to his companion he pressed the rifle into her stomach. "Walk!" he told her harshly. "Checchin—right away!"

  Under her breath she muttered "Luzou" and gave him a hostile glance but if he heard her call him a bad man he gave no indication; after all, he had a rifle. Pushing and prodding her from behind he forced her to walk up the lane toward the north gate, his companion following. This was a sad way to send U Hamlin a message that he was in danger and to beware, she thought. They passed the north gate and now at last she saw the river which had made a broad sweep away from the villages and the roads and was returning now to hug the paddies ahead. Beyond the rice fields stood a hill that rose sharply out of the earth to overlook the river, an oddly shaped hill, bald and flattened at the top with dense shrubbery running halfway up its slopes like ragged fur. Her eyes searched the flat field ahead, looking for a rock, a tree where Hamlin might be hiding but unless he had fitted himself into an irrigation ditch she saw nowhere that he might be hiding except in the woods toward which they were heading.

  "Where are we going?" she asked. "Where are you taking me?"

  ' "You will see." To the young soldier he said, "She is more swei for us, eh, this nainganjacal"

  So she was real gold, this "national of a foreign country" but not understanding what this meant she hugged her shoulder bag tightly in case it was her eight hundred kyat of which he spoke, or her father's gold watch.

  The river lay tranquil and calm under the late-morning sun, its tranquility at odds with her feelings, which were growing stormy as she began to understand that she might be denied the steamer now and safe passage to Rangoon. The earth was warm underfoot, the sun intense as they negotiated irrigation ditches and entered the copse of trees in which she was sure that U Hamlin must be hiding. Oh U Hamlin, she thought, we have truly separated now and I am sorry .. , be quiet, be safe! They passed silently among the trees; she would have liked to look around for signs of U Hamlin but she walked with head averted, eyes on the ground, and presently the earth tilted upward; they had begun to climb the hill through savanna, razor grass and then neem trees—it was a steep hill—and when she reached its bald crown she was gasping. What she saw first, looking to the west, was the great sweep of the Irrawaddy below— the river she had hoped would take her to Rangoon—and then she turned her head and saw that the hill was occupied.