The Incident at Badamya Page 7

  "Then you'll never be free, small one, don't you know that? Be yourself."

  U Hamlin had said this, too, although humorously and not without some malice, she remembered. It all seemed very difficult, meeting these people from another world, and she sighed.

  Miss Thorald glanced up from her knitting and said tactfully, "It's true that she's unusual but her hair needs a trim. I could do this with my sewing scissors if she'd allow it."

  "Will I look more American?" asked Gen.

  "Listen!" interrupted U Ba Sein, holding up one hand to still them.

  They were silent, hearing the sound of guns firing below the hill. The rifle fire was sharp, staccato and sounded surprisingly close to them as it stopped, began again, stopped, resumed.

  Baharian said dryly, "They are no longer bathing in the river."

  Gen closed her eyes and prayed to her father's God that they'd not found U Hamlin.

  The exchange of fire moved away, shrank in volume, became distant and then died, but there was no more talk of escape, and they turned almost gratefully to a discussion of Gen's hair. "Because," said Baharian, "I think we very much need the diversion now of that promised haircut by the beautiful Miss Thorald who owns our only pair of scissors. You are prepared, small one?"

  "Yes," Gen said, and fumbled eagerly in her shoulder bag for her magazine. "Can I look like one of them? I don't have curls," she said, shyly handing the precious magazine to Miss Thorald. "They all have curls and fringes."

  "They're called 'bangs,' not fringes," Mrs. Caswell said, peering over Miss Thorald's shoulder.

  "Insipid," said Lady Waring, craning her neck to see. "Make her look like a doll."

  "Then I'll give her a side part and comb it nicely across the brow, and merely trim the ends."

  "I'd rather have bangs," Gen said stubbornly.

  Baharian said, "What interests me more than bangs is what each of us has brought here. The small one's bag reminds me: from it she pulls a marionette called Zawgwi and now a magazine. Miss Thorald has brought with her the knitting bag in which she carries wool and scissors. I would suggest we empty our pockets to learn what other treasures we have to fortify us."

  Mr. Gunfer said explosively, "A violation of privacy, Baharian!"

  "For myself," said Baharian, ignoring him, "I place on the floor a paperback copy of Shaw's The Young Lions, my passport and my wallet. Miss Thorald?"

  She had brought out her scissors; a razor blade fell to the floor and she hastily picked it up, stuffing it back in the knitting bag, her face scarlet. "Besides my knitting and scissors I have one paperback book and a small hardcover book. You want them on the floor, too?"

  Mrs. Caswell said eagerly, "Oh please yes, I love a good read, we'll have a library!"

  The two books were placed on the floor and Baharian looked at their titles and then at Miss Thorald. "The Wisdom of Lao-tse—and essays of Emerson?" he said softly.

  Miss Thorald said nothing.

  "Not novels," Mrs. Caswell said, disappointed.

  "Well, I have nothing except my passport," sniffed Lady Waring, "and a small bottle of aspirin."

  "Which may prove of infinite value... And you, Mr. Ba Sein?"

  He bowed and brought from the folds of his longyi a carving tool with a wooden handle, a pencil, a small notebook and a pair of reading glasses.

  "And you, small one?"

  Gen removed the contents of her shoulder bag piece by piece and placed them on the floor: the slingshot, the eight hundred kyat, the knife and matches, the child's book of crossword puzzles—used over and over by erasing each penciled entry—the passport and her birth certificate. There was still a small bulge when she felt inside, and to her surprise she found the little bag of tea that had started out in the knapsack. "Tea!" she said, pleased.

  "Bravo," commented Baharían, and turned to Mr. Gunfer.

  "Oh no," said Gunfer, backing away.

  "Oh yes," said Baharían. "I'm twice your size, Mr. Gunfer, I warn you I shall—what are you hiding?"

  "You wouldn't dare!"

  Baharían seized him and gripped both of his arms. "Lady Waring, kindly see what Mr. Gunfer is going to voluntarily and graciously offer to share with us, eh?"

  Lady Waring, looking amused, moved to empty his pockets while Gunfer protested vehemently. Her look of amusement faded as she lifted two chocolate bars from his left pocket. "Chocolate!" she cried indignantly. "And all of us so hungry? Shame on you, Mr. Gunfer!"

  "Shame!" he shouted at her. "What about the pearl necklace I saw you slide inside your dress when they captured us? Worth a king's ransom, I'd guess. What about that, you haven't mentioned that, have you?"

  Mrs. Caswell, covering her ears, cried, "Oh stop, I can't bear shouting!"

  "That's your problem," Lady Waring told her angrily, and to Mr. Gunfer, "My pearls are of great sentimental value to me and I need not point out that they're scarcely edible. If you're thinking I could use them as a bribe to get us out of here, don't be a fool, these people are fanatics and politicians, they'd only accept the pearls and laugh at us. They much prefer to humiliate us." Reaching into his other pocket she angrily removed a paperback book with a lurid cover. "And here's a novel for you, Mrs. Caswell," she said contemptuously. "Vampire Love by Cynthia Gore, author of—it says here—Mrs. Carlisle's Folly and Blood on the Moon. What strange taste you have in reading, Mr. Gunfer!"

  "Thank you," said Mrs. Caswell, apparently unaware of her contempt and looking pleased. "I read Blood on the Moon in—yes, it was when we were in Egypt."

  Mr. Gunfer regarded her with hatred before turning back to Baharían. "You will unleash me now, please, after this— this rape. Thieves, all of you—those were my chocolate bars, mine!"

  "Let's not get hysterical," said Baharian.

  Ignoring the storm around them Miss Thorald knelt beside Gen, scissors in hand. "I'll give you bangs," she whispered with a conspiratorial smile, her face so near to Gen that she could see just how she might carve her features in wood, if given the chance to carve a princess. She studied the slant of the high cheekbones, the small heart-shaped mouth, the eyes that subtly tilted at their outer corners, and then as Miss Thorald lifted her scissors Gen forgot puppets and gave herself up to the bliss of being redesigned.

  7

  Lady Waring thought Gen's haircut dreadful but she held her tongue. She was curious about the girl—a child emotionally, she felt, yet oddly adult in so many ways— and forgetting how she herself had been at sixteen these contradictions challenged her. At least the girl was not cut from the common pattern, she decided, thinking of her own two daughters whom she disliked intensely. The girl carried secrets and Lady Waring, being well acquainted with secrets, looked forward to ferreting them out of her, it would give her something to do—that is, if she could wrest the girl away from Mr. Ba Sein; at the moment the two were seated on the step in the doorway and he was demonstrating with pencil and notebook how to plan the carving of a marionette's head. She sighed; the stone floor was cold and hard and with an effort she stood up, quelling with a glance Mrs. Caswell's move to help her. ("You don't suffer fools lightly," Matthew had said once, to which she had replied, "Would you, if you were surrounded by them?")

  Mrs. Caswell had returned to her reading of that dreadful book Vampire Love, Miss Thorald was knitting, Mr. Gunfer staring gloomily at the walls, and Baharían was pacing. "Ten times around the pillar I shall call one lap," he had announced. "I am a large man, I need exercise." Mr. Gunfer had been right about boredom, thought Lady Waring, she might very well die of it closeted here with these impossible people while waiting for her trip north to continue. Of them all, she found Mr. Gunfer the most distasteful, he had actually turned vicious about the pearls she now wore tucked inside her blouse. But no one—no one, she thought fiercely—was going to take away her pearls, they were all that she had of her son Eric, they had been his gift to her on the day that he'd reached his majority and received his inheritance, presented to her with a bow and that bew
itching smile of his—but I mustn't think of Eric, she thought, and she walked across the room to peer at the faded designs on the wall, at eroded figures of men in robes, a nearly indecipherable collection of temples and the faded head of a Buddha. She would ask Gen or Mr. Ba Sein about these, she decided, it would give her something to think about.

  The quiet was interrupted by Gen rushing in to say, "The Man with Two Eggs is coming."

  "Who?"

  "The man who captured me in the village below the hill, 1 think he's an officer."

  Baharían stopped pacing, Miss Thorald looked up from her knitting, Mrs. Caswell rose nervously to her feet, Mr. Gunfer said petulantly, "It's high time we receive attention from a superior."

  The man who entered introduced himself curtly as Colonel Wang. A peasant colonel, mused Lady Waring, studying his rough-featured face, but an efficient and ambitious-looking man, and therefore dangerous. Obviously he was in a hurry, impatient at this need to stop and see them. He said testily, "You have blankets and now I hear you ask for wood?'

  He had addressed Baharían and it was Baharian who replied. “Firewood, we're all very thirsty but dare not drink water from the river."

  Lady Waring added coldly, "You might add that we'll soon die of starvation as well, if that's what he wants."

  "One thing at a time," Baharian told her firmly, and to Colonel Wang, "We'd like to boil our drinking water."

  "Ah yes, I see," he said, and nodded. "Very well—that can be done."

  "We heard guns," said Mrs. Caswell timidly.

  "Yes," he said. "Some fools thought they could take back the village below."

  "What village is it?" asked Baharian.

  "It's called Badamyâ." He looked them all over, nodded and strode out.

  Lady Waring followed him. "Colonel Wang!" she said sharply.

  He stopped under the archway and turned. "Yes?"

  "As the eldest member of this group I should like to know your plans for us. Just how long do you expect to keep us here?”

  He shrugged. "A week, possibly a fortnight—"

  "Fortnight!"

  "—depending entirely on the government in Rangoon."

  "You know it's outrageous!"

  He smiled faintly. "Naturally for you it is outrageous but you must surely see that you're extremely valuable to us as pawns, Lady Waring. It is not every day we catch such big fish as Europeans wandering through this country."

  "What do you expect to gain from this?"

  He leaned comfortably against the wall of the archway. "Come now, you must not pretend such innocence. You give us life-and-death power over seven lives, and because of who you are we expect to extract much from Rangoon."

  "You look Chinese to me," she said abruptly, accusingly. "Surely Wang is a Chinese name?"

  His shrewd eyes rested on her with interest. "True, yes, I am Chinese from Yunnan, but the men I lead are Burmans, Shan, Kachins, Lisus, all peasants—it's their turn now at last—and if they need a Tayou, a Chinese, to show how, well—we have won our revolution, we know. You English," he said with scorn, "overestimate yourselves. You governed this country with utmost indifference for decades, destroying customs, rituals, taking oil and rice and rubies from it for yourselves, bringing in chettyars who robbed farmers of their land . . . You have always regarded brown skins as inferior, have you not?"

  She looked at him helplessly; anger rose in her and died because in all honesty she could not deny what he said.

  "There will be great changes—and you," he said dryly, "you, a member of English aristocracy, will now be one of our instruments for change."

  She ignored his irony. "You want to take over this lovely country for yourselves, then?"

  "You surprise me—'this lovely country'? You do not see it as backward, primitive?"

  "Perhaps I did at first," she admitted. "At the moment I would prefer it to stay the way it is."

  "Nothing stays the same."

  "You're a fanatic, Colonel Wang."

  He smiled. "I ask, will anything but fanaticism make for change? Wisdom and compromise come later."

  "An intelligent fanatic," she said, nodding. "The most dangerous of all. Will we be harmed?"

  "I hope not," he said pleasantly. "You must understand that you are only—as I have said—pawns on the board in a struggle for power, recognition, change. If the government in Rangoon does not pay attention, if it refuses to deal with us, I ask you, what power would be left to us if we free you in the end? Who would believe our threats after that?"

  "You mean you'd kill us if they don't meet your terms? You've threatened Rangoon with our—our murders!" she said incredulously.

  "But of course," he said simply, and with a polite bow he left her standing there and strode across the compound and down the hill.

  Watching him go, her eyes blinking against the harsh sunlight, she thought, How strange, how ironic, if my life should end in this country where Eric died, and the two of us be buried here. . . The others, too—so many unspent lives, all for some cause that a decade from now may be forgotten . .. Turning she found Baharían and Miss Thorald standing several paces behind her. "You heard?" she said.

  They nodded.

  "The others?"

  Miss Thorald shook her head and Baharían said, "They remain at the opposite side of the temple, behind the pillar, Lady Waring, they could not have heard."

  She said slowly, "I think it's best they not know."

  "With this I agree most devoutly," said Baharian. "It is not the happiest thought with which to entertain our long days and longer nights."

  Lady Waring looked at Miss Thorald, who had reacted with neither the expected shock or fear, and she wondered at her passiveness. Such a silent woman, restful of course, thought Lady Waring, but irritating now, her incessant knitting a reminder of Madame DeFarge knitting away at the guillotine as she watched heads fall, a simile Lady Waring found appropriate if their lives were to be forfeit to a fledgling government in Rangoon. "And you, Miss Thorald?" she asked.

  "Yes, I agree," she said, and turned to go back inside.

  They followed but as Miss Thorald walked around the pillar an uneven paving stone tripped her and only Baharian, walking behind her, saved her from falling on the stone floor. Instead it was her knitting bag that flew across the floor, spilling out needles, wool, scissors and passport.

  Mr. Gunfer leaned over and picked up the passport, glanced at it and opened it.

  "That's mine, please," said Miss Thorald, quickly reaching for it.

  "How very photogenic you are, Miss Thorald," he said, gazing at her passport photo. "So many of us look like ghouls in passport photos."

  "Please," said Miss Thorald urgently, "please give it back, it's mine, give it to me."

  Lady Waring looked at her in surprise; there was nothing passive about the woman now, the urgency in her voice had silenced the others as well.

  "Mr. Gunfer—" pleaded Miss Thorald.

  But Mr. Gunfer's eyes had shifted, his expression turning to one of shock, and seeing this Miss Thorald's face became despairing. Lady Waring, moved by her distress, said, "Return it, Mr. Gunfer."

  He said slowly and incredulously, "But this passport— with her photograph attached—bears the name of Lina Thorald Lerina. . , she's Lina Lerina."

  Lina Lerina .., a musical name.., familiar, thought Lady Waring, but from long ago, before the war. . , something to do with—she stiffened in horror. She heard Mrs. Caswell give a small cry, heard Baharían whistle softly, while U Ba Sein sat against the wall watching with interest and Gen with astonishment.

  It was Gen who asked, "What's wrong?"

  Mr. Gunfer said fiercely, "She's a murderer, that's what. Right here—living with us. She killed her husband."

  Miss Thorald said dryly, "I believe the word is murderess, not murderer."

  "I don't understand," cried Gen.

  Baharian was observing Miss Thorald with interest. Over his shoulder to Gen he said, "A very famous murder case,
small one, in very large headlines for many months, in fact only the attack on Pearl Harbor removed it from the front pages."

  "And she was convicted," gasped Mrs. Caswell.

  "Yes," said Baharian. "I take it, Miss Thorald, that you seek sanctuary with a brother after being in prison since then?"

  "You can take it any way you wish," said Miss Thorald, and snatching the passport out of Mr. Gunfer's hand she said in a voice thick with emotion, “That passport was mine, not yours, Mr. Gunfer, and you had no right to pry into it like that. Until this minute I was just another traveler on the steamer, now you rake up a past that I've paid for with eight years of my life, and—oh God," she cried despairingly, her voice breaking on a sob.

  "Oh dear," said Mrs. Caswell.

  Gen, awed by such emotion, torn by Miss Thorald's anguish, moved by loyalty, sprang to her feet and went to stand next to her.

  "Don't go near her," cried Mr. Gunfer, "evil is contagious—may God have mercy on her soul."

  Baharian said, "God may have mercy on her soul but it would seem a little human mercy that's lacking. Shut up, Gunfer."

  Mrs. Caswell said again in an uncertain voice, "Oh dear."

  Lady Waring stamped her cane. "Stop—all of you! Miss Thorald," she said, turning to her, "you can understand our shock. Thrown together as we are by accident I'm sure you can understand our reactions at learning one among us is a convicted murderer. An element of trust becomes very necessary among us all, and so you will also, I hope, understand why it is necessary to our well-being to ask: if you really are the Lina Lerina who killed her husband ten years ago, who and what are you now?"

  Gen glanced up at Miss Thorald, who was gazing at Lady Waring in astonishment; her astonishment turned to anger and she said unsteadily, "That's certainly not the business of anyone in this room." Looking from face to face she added bitterly, "Let's just say I've not murdered any of you.., not yet." Suddenly aware of Gen she said stiffly, "Thank you, Gen," and walked past the pillar toward the archway and the step.

  U Ba Sein interrupted the silence that followed. "Excuse me, such memories amaze me, this happened ten years ago?"

  Baharían nodded. "Ah yes but it was before the war, a time of great innocence, when a murder in New York City could still sell newspapers everywhere. But it is in my memory that it was not quite an ordinary trial because this man Arno Lerina was well known, he had some popularity as a crooner. “