The Incident at Badamya Page 8

  "A what?"

  "A singer of sentimental love ballads, Mr. Ba Sein, in nightclubs and on radio. He had also a very pretty face, I recall, which made the murder very emotional and exciting to those who enjoy such matters."

  "And she was convicted of killing him..."

  "By both popular and jury votes, yes. I believe what preserved her from the death penalty was that it was not a premeditated murder, and that witnesses were produced who testified that this Arno Lerina had an ugly temper and the regrettable habit of hitting people—knocking them about— when angry."

  Mrs. Caswell said with a shiver, "It equaled the Lizzie Borden case, you know, it was in the papers for months and months, the murder itself and then the trial—and she so beautiful!"

  Baharian said dryly, "I recall a few people who felt it was her beauty that convicted her."

  "Nonsense," snapped Mr. Gunfer, "she killed him, didn't she? Ran him through with a carving knife. They counted how many plunges of the knife?"

  "She must surely hear everything you're saying," Gen protested. "She's not that far away, sitting on the step."

  "I'm surprised you've forgotten how many plunges of the knife," said Baharían, "or perhaps in time you'll recall?"

  Gunfer glared at him. "You make light of it, how dare you! For myself, how I'm ever to sleep with a murderess in the same room I don't know."

  "This I am delighted to hear," said Baharian. "I've not wanted to mention it but you are a very noisy sleeper and snore hideously."

  "I wonder," mused Lady Waring.

  "It's quite horrid to learn who she is," said Mrs. Caswell, "but—she does seem very nice."

  "You can't mean you like her!" gasped Mr. Gunfer.

  "Well," began Mrs. Caswell and stopped, looked confused, rallied and said defiantly, "You liked her, didn't you? Before you looked into her passport?"

  "We all found her unobtrusive and very courteous," intervened Lady Waring, "but I feel distinctly uneasy about this. Pleasant as Miss Thorald seems to be, we know nothing about her temper under stress and I recall that there is both a knife"—she nodded to Gen—"and a carving tool"—here she nodded at Mr. Ba Sein—"and I feel that it would be wise to keep them under guard. I'm not accustomed to associating with people who take a life but I would imagine—" She hesitated, searching her own feelings of revulsion. "I would imagine that once having taken a life it is perhaps not so difficult, in a moment of passion—after all, she is a convicted murderer."

  "Murderess," pointed out Baharian.

  She said indignantly, "I find your attitude difficult to understand, Mr. Baharian, but since you introduced yourself as an adventurer—"

  "No, it was you who introduced the word, Lady Waring. What I am trying to point out is that if we're to survive this—this situation—with death always a possibility, and not from Miss Thorald, as you well know," he said deliberately, "we can at least try to get along with one another. Nothing is going to change the fact that Miss Thorald is here with us, you have no choice about it."

  U Ba Sein gave a delicate cough. "Excuse me," he said, "but certainly—surely—there is choice in attitude, is there not? We have been imprisoned for three days... Here is a woman who has already experienced eight years of imprisonment—which is surely a matter of interest—and for myself I have noticed that she carried in her bag one razor blade but no razor, which also interests me when I observe that her sleeves are long and remain pulled down to hide her wrists.. ."

  Baharian gave him a thoughtful glance.

  "Nevertheless," said Lady Waring, "this is very jarring. No one else among us has murdered anyone."

  "Can you be sure?"

  Her mouth dropped open in astonishment. "How dare you!"

  Mr. Ba Sein smiled. "There are so many forms of murder, are there not? Small murders, small deaths..." His eyes looked into hers so knowledgeably that she found herself breathless for a second. Small murders... / mustn't allow this, she thought, disconcerted, and leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes to shut out Mr. Ba Sein's penetrating gaze. She understood what he was implying: I'm vulnerable today, she thought, why am I suddenly remembering all the times I killed the eager, loving, child-confidences of Jane and Barbara by indifferent or snubbing remarks; why is this man recalling to me all the hatreds, angers and revenges I've nursed in my life? She thought wearily, / grow old and wounds mount but how many wounds have I given as well ? There entered into her memory a dinner party given long ago at which a guest— scientist or philosopher—had announced that people misunderstood death, they died not of too little life but of too much life, that as the skin withered and the future grew short it was the past that took on flesh, until ultimately the sheer accumulation of experience and memory became too heavy to carry.

  Perhaps I’ve already lived too long, she thought. Murders have been done to me and I have made very sweet revenges but Mr. Ba Sein is right, one need not wield a knife or shoot a gun to kill life, let him without sin cast the first stone.

  Miss Thorald was still sitting on the step of the temple when Gen came looking for her. "1 want to understand," Gen told her. "I thought you had some wonderful secret I could learn so I could be like you. Like a lotus. I thought you must be very wise."

  Miss Thorald turned her head to her and said, "One learns a little wisdom in a prison . . , too late."

  "But you have taken life, like a low Buddhist who kills for food." Struggling with this Gen said, "It's not that I haven't seen people kill—I have seen this—but that was war."

  Miss Thorald nodded. "There are sometimes marriages that are like a war."

  "Not love?"

  "Love and hate. . .jealousy, anger, possession. I will say this, Gen, because you will be a woman too, and when Mr. Ba Sein said that I experienced eight years of prison this was not true, I was in prison long before that—all my life, really."

  "What do you mean?"

  She smiled. "You want me to list for you all my faults and flaws? There was vanity above all, because 1 was always admired for my prettiness, and so 1 became ambitious. Spoiled, actually, and greedy, and because of this—which I've had many years to think about—I attracted the wrong kinds of men, men so afraid they'd lose me, so wanting to prove themselves, and so jealous, that they could be cruel. And because I'd never grown up, because I'd relied only on how I looked, I had no way to deal with cruelty, I accepted it, until—until—"

  "Was he cruel, then?" asked Gen.

  "My lawyer pleaded self-defense at my trial," said Miss Thorald. "That was very ironic, for it would have been kinder if I'd learned self-defense years earlier. And walked away—just left... Be wiser than I, Gen!"

  Gen thought about her words, and then, "What is it like to kill?"

  "Two people die," said Miss Thorald. "Two lives end. "

  Gen nodded. "And what will you do in the village where your brother is a missionary?"

  From behind them Baharian said, "Penance, obviously." Sitting down on the step between them he said, "Sorry, Miss Thorald, but can you imagine how difficult it is not to eavesdrop? I, Terence Baharían, confess to much curiosity about—” Swiftly he reached for her hand and before she could snatch it away he pushed up the long sleeve of her blouse. "1 see that the wise Mr. Ba Sein was right, how many times have you tried this?"

  Gen's eyes widened at the long puckered white scars running up and down and across her wrist.

  Miss Thorald was silent.

  He said deliberately, "What an ego trip! What self-pity to do this!"

  Miss Thorald gasped. "How dare you!" she cried, leaping to her feet.

  Rising to face her he said, “Your nostrils flare beautifully when you're angry but you are a coward, Miss Thorald, a coward."

  "Oh you know nothing—nothing*." she flung at him, turned to run out into the compound, saw the guards, turned helplessly and gasped, "This awful place!" and ran inside.

  Baharían, seeing Gen's startled face, said, "Well, small one?"

  Gen's voice t
rembled. "Ma Nu would say an evil nat owns people at such times but in America I do not think they believe in nats. U Baharian, what happens to people to make them so mixed up and miserable?"

  "Life happens."

  "You mean kan," Gen said, nodding. "But you were cruel, weren't you?"

  "The beautiful Miss Thorald wishes to hide, she wishes to throw away the rest of her life because of her past." He shrugged. "Me, I do not like waste. It is possible she will find—what is that prim word, redemption?—doing missionary work with a brother—that is what Victorian novelists tell us—but it is more likely she will feel lonely and alien, and every passion in her will be killed." He added wryly, "She must be watched, that one, she has killed a husband, now she would find ways to kill the self in her, a second murder for which there would be no public trial."

  It was late afternoon when Lady Waring heard a heartbroken cry from Gen, who was seated under the archway on the step. She held up a hand to still the bickering between Gunfer and Baharían, and silencing them, they heard it, too.

  They rushed to the doorway, Baharian almost running into the pillar in his haste. The two soldiers playing dominoes in the shade of the guard house jumped to their feet and leveled rifles at them but only Miss Thorald noticed this. The others stared at what Gen had seen: the steamer Khayioe was passing under the hill, leaving a silvery wake of V's behind it as it headed downriver on its return trip to Rangoon.

  Gen put both hands to her face. "I should have been with them, that's my steamer," she whispered but no one heard her and she bit her lip to keep from crying.

  It was Mrs. Caswell who burst into tears. "We've been forgotten—they've abandoned us! My husband—oh, they've forgotten us!" she cried, and she turned and beat her fists against the wall of the temple, screaming the words over and over until Baharian stepped up to her, turned her around, said, "My dear lady, forgive me," and slapped her hard across the face.

  8

  By evening a semblance of peace had been established with the lighting of a fire, the charcoal and bricks having been brought to them with their rice, and an iron kettle bestowed upon them as well. With this second meal of the day they sipped boiled water flavored with a few leaves of Gen's tea, and for dessert divided Mr. Gunfer's bars of chocolate. "But I am still hungry," complained Lady Waring. "And I will never eat rice again, never."

  The steam from the kettle had contributed a healing warmth to exacerbated nerves, and following Gen's outburst and Mrs. Caswell's hysterics the bickering had died for want of fuel. Huddled around the dying fire, the flickering light throwing bizarre shadows across their faces, they looked to Gen like witches and warlocks from a book of fairy tales that she'd cherished in Maymyo before the war. Except for Miss Thorald, she amended, whose hair the firelight had turned into flame-gold. She was glad to see that U Baharian had approached Miss Thorald and was calmly asking for her favored passages in Emerson. U Ba Sein sat cross-legged with his eyes closed and Lady Waring's eyes were closed, too, as she sipped her tea—she was imagining herself back in England—while Mr. Gunfer stared sulkily into the fire and Mrs. Caswell slumped against the pillar looking pale and depleted.

  Gen thought it a dreary scene; it had been a difficult day, and night was still to come, and a miasma of unspoken hostility hung over the room.

  Suddenly Mrs. Caswell spoke. "I wonder," she said. Her voice faltered, rallied, she said almost angrily, "I really think—yes, there's something I want to ask.., no, suggest."

  U Ba Sein was the only one who did not look surprised. In spite of their being only seven in number Mrs. Caswell had been persistently overlooked, except for her hysterics of the afternoon, which had drawn their reluctant attention and was remembered now only with embarrassment.

  "Which—ask or suggest?" said Mr. Gunfer disagreeably.

  She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders, an act that led Gen to look at her more closely, and with sympathy. With a quick glance at Mr. Gunfer she said, "I've been thinking—remembering—something that happened to me once, and I don't see why I shouldn't speak of it, I want to speak of it." Her voice was defiant.

  Baharian said cordially, "Please do, Mrs. Caswell."

  "Thank you," she said. "I was remembering it because I feel—rather upset just now, and I admit lonely and a little frightened. It's something that happened to me in Africa, in fact not long ago at all."

  "Your husband was doing archaeological work there?" asked Baharían politely.

  She shook her head. "No—that is we'd been in the Sudan, excavating in the desert, but I'd had sunstroke and was very tired, and so he made arrangements for me to go south to Northern Rhodesia for a week—on safari—because it's higher there, you see, and he thought the altitude and the change would do me good." She stopped, remembering, and with a timid smile said, "I won't bore you with how invigorating it turned out to be for me—the cool nights, the camping, the evenings around a fire, the good sleeps, the game viewing by Land Rover during the days—except to say that I learned during those five days certain things about the bush country, such as how very dangerous it was and is at night, when the bush belongs to the animals and the wildlife, not only animals but snakes as well—snakes that can kill in seconds ...

  "I loved all of it but when we reached the last lodge," she said, "I felt it had all ended because it was such a civilized place—with a bar, a swimming pool and other people. It was run by a woman who asked if I'd seen a lion and I had to say no, it was the one sight I'd missed. She insisted that I go out that night because there 'd been a lion kill two miles from the lodge but I very politely thanked her and said I'd retire early. Just the same, when it had grown dark—the night falls very quickly there, and early, like a curtain dropping—she came for me and said the men were waiting in the Land Rover, eager to show me lions, so I finally shrugged and went. . .

  "There were five men," she continued. "The guide, the assistant guide, the driver, another young man and most important of all the rifle bearer, for this was night in the bush. They turned on their powerful searchlight and off we went in the Land Rover, speeding down this rutted road at about fifty miles an hour, and after driving for some time the driver shot off through the tall grass, the grass thinned and ahead of us I could see the carcass of a buffalo, and two lions feeding on it..."

  When she hesitated it was Baharian who said, "Go on."

  She nodded. "Of course the lions—with the searchlight on them—immediately raced away, off to the right somewhere through the tall grass, and it was at this point that the driver took off after them—following them, you see— and driving at this incredible speed over the ruts until suddenly—very abruptly—the Land Rover hit a marshy place and came to a crashing halt. The men jumped out to push, and I started to get out, too, to help—being quite accustomed to pushing cars and doing things like that," she said simply, "but this absolutely shocked the guide. I was his charge, you see, a tourist from a great distance—oh he was very firm, I had to sit while they worked. It made me feel like a memsahib but I sat." She smiled faintly. "And they pushed and they pushed and they pulled and pulled but still the Land Rover was stuck.

  "That's when, after considerable discussion in their own language—Nyanja, I believe it was—they came to a decision, which was that they would walk the two miles back to camp to get help—bring another Land Rover with chains to pull the jeep out of the swamp—and I was to stay there and wait, with one of the young men to keep me company.

  "Of course I asked, 'and the rifle bearer, will he stay with me?' No, the guide said, the rifle bearer would go with them. So I was being told to stay in this Land Rover and wait for an hour or so, with the lions off somewhere to the right, and to the left of us the buffalo carcass, to which the lions would surely be returning, and this vehicle squarely between them, with me sitting in it.

  "And I was appalled," she said. "I simply knew I couldn't sit there in the bush at night waiting but they looked on me as this memsahib, you see—there was that kind of distance betwe
en us ... I heard myself say, 'No.., no I'm going with you.' It was the firmest statement I'd ever made in my life." She paused and gave them an apologetic smile. "I am usually quite shy and timid but I couldn't even consider anything else. They protested but I knew I absolutely couldn't stay there and I firmly climbed out of the Land Rover and joined them .. . What I'd not realized, though, was that no one had a flashlight, there was only the searchlight, which was attached to the Land Rover, and of course that was turned off as soon as we left, plunging us into the darkest of darkness so that I took a few steps and stumbled. The guide helped me up, I walked a few more steps and fell over an anthill, and this time when the guide helped me up I said, "We've simply got to hold hands or I'll keep stumbling and falling. ' I could feel their surprise at this but I grasped the hand of the man on my left, and then the hand of the man on my right, and we formed this chain—all six of us holding hands—and resumed walking again in the darkness, and I can tell you that it was such incredible darkness at that point—in the tall grass—that if a lion had leaped out at us I'm sure the rifle bearer would never have had time to kill it. But oddly—and it was odd—I didn't think of this at all at the time, we walked—holding hands— and as we walked we began to talk."

  Her face had become radiant in the firelight and Gen, staring at her, thought she's turned beautiful, how did it happen?

  "We walked, and we talked," she said, "the six of us under that huge dark sky peppered with brilliant stars, and the men began asking me how I came to be in their country and if I had children, a husband... The guide—his name was Kulumbala, I remember—began to speak of his own family and of how he'd walked forty miles to visit his home the week before, some of it by night.., and one by one the others chimed in with stories of their own: their village life, their children, how seldom they saw them...