Burmese Lessons (26 page)

As I haul
my ass up the filthy stairs at two in the morning (the elevator is broken), I think about the blister. I reach my floor feeling the painful pressure of it. Exhaustion and the depressing effect of alcohol spread through my body, compounding the ache. Ouch. The blister of love, honey. It’s good that Maung doesn’t have a key. I would hate to walk through the door and find him in bed. I mean, on the mattress. I bet she sleeps in silk sheets on a teak frame.

But what if I’ve just heard some malicious gossip? I wish. I believe what Nola told me. Truth often has an unsettling familiarity.

I try to see the bright side. If your lover must cheat on you, shouldn’t it be with the daughter of a rich gem dealer? Anything else would be too dull, and therefore insulting. I bet she has long, black, luxuriant hair. And a twenty-four-inch waist.

That fucking bastard.

Ha-ha. Literally.

I consider escape. I will pack up a bag of clothes, grab my passport,
and go to the airport. I will fly back to Greece. The island in spring is my beloved.

I
don’t know why Jung made such a big deal about dreams. The important ones are obvious. They are the adolescent poetry of the subconscious.

I dream that I’m in an enormous bed with red tie-dyed sheets. Above the bed is a watercolor painting of an elephant in the jungle. This painting is owned by a man I’ve never met.

Across the room is a teak armoire with two high shelves at the top. Out of reach, hanging from the upper shelf, are a series of keys on separate key chains. They belong to the French writer Colette. I wonder if I’m allowed to touch them. How? They’re too high anyway.

Then all of a sudden I am rock-climbing, splayed on a broad back of stone, trying to hold on to a rope and a sheet of red canvas at the same time. (The canvas is the same color as the bedsheets, but the material is much coarser, like an old-fashioned sail.) Far away, people shout commands, but I can’t hear properly; I don’t know if they’re above or below me. I see only perpendicular angles of rock and vaulting space. Though I’m in danger, I feel no fear. The shouting mountaineering types are more experienced than I am. I worry that I’m going to do something wrong. That’s where the considerable anxiety in the dream comes from: not that I’m going to fall to the ground and break my back but that I’ll do something wrong. I
am
doing something wrong: I’ve got twisted up, entangled in my efforts to hang on to both the canvas and the rope.

I wake up with my arms crossed under me, stiff. The left one is asleep—I can’t move it. It’s like a severed arm in the bed with me. It takes more than ten minutes for the pins and needles to melt away.

Then the phone rings.

•    •    •

“I
already told you: I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”

“But why not? What’s wrong? You are upset.”

“Yes, I’m upset. I’m pissed off at you.”

“Do you want me to come right now?”

It’s ten in the morning. I don’t often see Maung during the day. If he stays over, he leaves in the morning, like Dracula. I’ve never had lunch with the man.

“Let’s have lunch,” he says. Asshole.

“I don’t know if I’ll feel like eating.”

“Oh, this is bad.” Given the merest permission, he would laugh.

I say nothing.

“Do you want me to come now? Is it an emergency?”

Is it? In the great scheme of things? Refugee camps. Guerrilla skirmishes. Detailed histories of incarceration in my head, my notebooks. Malaria swelling the brain.

“No. It’s not an emergency. Just come over tonight.”

I hang up in his ear.

I
try to meditate in front of my humble altar.

I bow down three times.

And laugh, with a ragged catch in my voice. I need to change the flowers: the water stinks. It’s all a bit silly. A real Buddhist would be scandalized by the Buddha on a cardboard box.

Only enlightened people can meditate with this kind of angry hangover. For a while, slouched in the half-lotus position, I think about how badly I want to have sex with Maung. Which just makes me angrier. And it’s not that I want to claim territorial rights over his body, either. Well, maybe just a few territorial rights—but that’s not the conscious motivation. I’m suffering attachment, as the monks would say. The lovely, aggravating thing about making love is that that is exactly what happens. You do
it enough with one compatible, friendly person and you make love. You create affection, not just orgasm.

Instead of meditation, I read some of my Buddhist texts. As usual, Ajahn Fuang, the beloved Thai abbot, is being wise and reasonable. I resist the impulse to heave the book across the room.

Truly pathetic. I’m trying to forgive Maung before he has even apologized for being a dishonest cheat.

I
t’s a challenge to argue in a small, unfurnished apartment. No place but the mattress to sit on, and no barrier props—no tables or sofas to stand behind, no chair backs to clutch. There is nothing upright in the room but us, and the fridge, which can’t participate in any useful way.

I sit at the head of the mattress with my back against the wall, and Maung sits at the end of it on the floor. We’ve been facing each other for a while now, talking in fits and starts.

“Who told you about this?”

“What does that matter? I want to know why you didn’t tell me.”

“It is not a simple situation. It is not easy to explain.”

“Try.”

“I was seeing her. And it’s true, her family has money. They support the movement. That’s important. But it wasn’t working out. They wanted me to marry her.”

“No big surprise there, Maung. She’s their daughter.”

“She’s been married before. She’s divorced now.”

“Jesus! Because she wasn’t a virgin, she didn’t have a right to expect a serious commitment from you? That’s great news for me!”

“That is not what I said.”

“But it sounds like that’s what you meant.”

“That is not what I meant. I meant she is an adult. Her parents cannot plan things for her.” His voice lightens into familiar explanatory mode. “You know, not all Burmese girls are virgins when they get married for the first time. The Burmese are not so crazy about this virgin thing.”

“Apparently.”

“Why are you being like that?”

“Like what?”

“So cold when you speak.”

“Because I’m angry. I’m hurt.”

Long pause. “Karen, I am sorry. I didn’t tell you because the relationship I had with her is over. I still see her sometimes, because I am still connected to her parents.”

Meaning money. Zoë was right. The revolutionary coffers are not that deep. Do you know where he gets his money? I’ve thought a lot about that tense conversation I had with her in the truck. It seems like years ago, though barely six weeks have passed since I was at the lake. And the first thing she asked me about him was whether or not he had a girlfriend.

He looks at me beseechingly. That is the only adverb. “Karen, it is a delicate situation. I have to … what is the word? Withdraw. I have to withdraw slowly, because of the political involvement.”

Slow withdrawals! That should be hilarious. I would like to explain it to him, and make us both laugh, but I just sigh.

I’m already getting tired of politics as the excuse for lousy behavior. A lot of people around here do that—Marla is the perfect example, along with other icy, finger-wagging people I’ve met recently. I’m being politically
astute and savvy, I’ve joined the revolution—that’s why I treat people like shit.

“What about Angie?”

“Angie?”

“Yes, Angie, your Chiang Mai girlfriend.”

He smiles. “You were talking to someone who does not like me.”

“I bet Angie doesn’t like you much, either.”

“Angie is my friend. She is my friend for a long time.”

“Am I really supposed to believe that, when everyone else thinks you’ve been a couple for years?”

“If we were a couple, we would be married now.” No laughter here, and no beseeching. “I’ve never had a sexual relationship with her. She is my friend. I told you that from the beginning. So that you would understand. I don’t care about gossip.”

We regard each other in silence.

It’s hard for me to look at him. What does it mean to love a man’s body? Will I love this man in five years? In ten? In twenty? Why do I love him so intensely right now, when I know that he has betrayed me? I don’t really believe his explanation about the Burmese woman. About Angie? Maybe. Even now, he might continue the relationship with his invisible, gem-laden compatriot because ABSDF needs the money.

I am angry at myself because I don’t really care.

I don’t know him, not really. How dare I say I love him?

Yet what is this feeling, if not love? How else do you do it except by doing it, by wading into the swamp, mouth-deep?

I recognize his clothes now, one pair of jeans or another, a light-green plaid shirt. The cornflower blue button-down collar he’s wearing today. I know the feeling not only of Maung’s skin but of his clothes, the way his body has imprinted its shape into the materials. I think that’s what happens with love: you wear the beloved, and he alters your form, as you alter his. Despite my drunken talk of flying off to Greece, there is nowhere to go but toward the man in front of me.

Nevertheless, I stay on the mattress, holding my knees. He remains at the end of it, on the parquet tiles. It’s good to see him from this small distance.

“Can you still love me?” he asks. I’ve never heard his voice with so much quiet in it.

I stand up unsteadily and step down to the floor. I stretch my hands out to him. It could almost be that stupid fairy-tale scene of the man on bended knee, proposing. But Maung gets up quickly and hugs me.

“I will think about it,” I mumble against his blue shoulder.

“About loving me?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Please think about it carefully.”

We pull away from each other. He lights a cigarette. I go to the bathroom. And when I come out he’s sitting on the floor again. “I also need to talk to you about something,” he says. “Two things.”

So much for that Western cliché I was so looking forward to: lustful making-up sex.

“What?” I sit in the middle of the bed.

“I got a phone call from Marla the other day.”

“Oh, no!” I launch myself over backward, feeling the mattress springs between my shoulder blades.

“She had a lot to say about you.”

“I can only imagine.”

“She says that you are not trustworthy, because you are a writer.”

I let out a howl and come up on my side, propped on my elbow, head in hand. “Sounds like the SLORC Censorship Board.”

Maung speaks as if he’s giving a report. “She told me that I should not help you to meet Burmese people and do your interviews, because of what you might do with the information. She thinks you could hurt the movement.”

I sit up again, slightly breathless. “When did she call you?”

“Yesterday.”

My mouth opens; nothing comes out.

“You see? Some people do not like you, either. It’s not so good when they talk about us, is it? When they try to turn people into enemies?” There is nothing smug in his voice, just the usual resonant thoughtfulness, and something new—a cunning I’ve not heard before.

“She was a real a bitch to me when I first back from Burma. But this is unbelievable. That she would call you. Fuck! Does she know we’re together?”

“I don’t think so. She called me because she knows I have many contacts. She knows I could send information out to everyone in Mae Sot, Mae Hong Son, Mae Sarieng, every border town, every camp. Just a few phone calls and faxes, the news gets out, no one would talk to you. She may have called some people herself.”

“What a fucking bitch.”

He makes a face at the nasty language. “People want power. They do many strange things to get it. If they think someone is stealing their power, they do bad things. They do violence. Or they do small bad things. They make excuses. Or lie. I am also like that. We are all like that. You, too. It is the human problem. That is why it is important to be diplomatic with people. To be careful, to not offend. You reassure them that you respect their power.”

“Oh, come on. To not offend! Isn’t the SLORC offended by all of you?”

“I am talking about the people we work with. You know, the NGOs, the journalists, the foreigners. They need us. Marla needs us. She has been involved with Burma for a long time. It is a big part of her life. If we were not here, she would not be here, either. This is a relationship. We are on the same side, but we still need to be diplomatic.”

“You know, it’s a Greek word.
Diplo
for ‘double’ and
mati
for ‘eye.’ The diplomat sees the situation with two different sets of eyes.”

“You are clever, you can do that easily.”

“But not with people who are jealous control freaks!”

“Yes. Especially with them. You don’t need to be a careful diplomat with the ones who love you. You need to be a diplomat with the ones who do not.”

“I’m too honest.”

“Yes. There is a saying in Burmese: ‘It is good to tell the truth. But it is better to tell the truth in a more appropriate way.’”

“But Marla is not telling the truth!”

“I am not talking about Marla. I don’t know why she dislikes you so much. Because you are pretty? Because you smile a lot? You are also just … young.”

I shrug, feeling pissed off at Marla and petulant with Maung. “So what if I’m young!”

He reaches over and kisses me. “Don’t worry. It’s a problem that goes away with time.”

“What else do you have to tell me?” I hope some other deeply humanitarian NGO type hasn’t been gouging me in the back.

He holds my gaze. One two three four five six seven. The long stare is the preface: This will be unpleasant. But I don’t want you to be upset.