Saving Fish From Drowning (32 page)

The two lovers continued their walk into the forest. It was dark and cool in here. They passed blackened circles on the ground. What is that, they wondered aloud, before seeing a group of men farther ahead. One was stirring the coals of an improvised barbecue, the hairy leg of a pig roasting, hoof and all. As they drew closer, they saw two men standing, one wearing a wooden yoke from which a pair of car batteries dangled on a rope. What in the world were those for? The man looked as if he were pretending to be an electrified ox.

Wendy and Wyatt smiled as they passed them; the men seemed embarrassed and looked away.

Wendy and Wyatt did not recognize them, the pilots of the longboats, Black Spot and Salt, who had taken them across the shallow waters of Inle Lake. To most tourists, the people of Burma were indistinguishable beyond male and female, young and old, attractive and not. I am not being critical. It is just an observation. I am the same way with most people, regardless of nationality. But after tomorrow, my friends would come to recognize these men all too well.

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• 9•

NO TRACE

It was Christmas Eve. At nine-thirty, Marlena listened to her daughter’s sonorous rhythms and then tiptoed into the bathroom.

She quickly ran a razor over her legs and massaged an ambergris-scented lotion on them. She removed her sturdy underwear, hoping the humidity would erase the panty line on her skin, then donned a long gauzy cotton sheath the color of tangerine sherbet. With pounding heart, as if she were the daughter and not the mother, she eased past Esmé’s bed and out the door, and slipped down the plankway toward Harry’s bungalow.

Now here they were together at last, Harry and Marlena, lying beneath the mosquito netting, their naked bodies lit by the golden glow of a citronella candle. Marlena’s eyes were pressed shut, and her mind and body were in an unequal battle between maintaining control and losing it utterly and completely. Harry was tracing small cir

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cles on her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, kissing each spot, then feeding on her mouth before continuing the trail downward. Warmth spread over Marlena’s face. It surprised her. Such passion, such heat, such . . .
smoke?

Suddenly Harry yelped, flung himself off the bed and yanked

Marlena to the floor with him. The conical mosquito netting, having floated onto the burning candle, was now like a snowy Christmas tree aflame, the fine white mesh turning into a blackened web of dancing tendrils and lattices. Marlena scrambled to her feet and flung open the door, shouting, “Fire! Fire!” She was about to run out, when she remembered she was naked, and stood paralyzed in the doorway looking back at the brightly burning room.

“We have to get out!” she cried. But Harry had transformed into heroic mode: he grabbed a piece of cloth on the floor, doused it with a bottle of water from the nightstand, and flogged at the flames licking the ceiling. Seconds later, after an eternity had passed, Harry put down the wet rag. “It’s out,” he announced wearily. Marlena turned on the light. The charred wisps of netting floated like a scorched ghost.

Under the fluorescent blueness and amid blackened debris, Harry and Marlena had to confront the various concave and convex slopes of their nakedness. This time it was without the forgiving glow of lust and candlelight, and soon, without privacy as well. What was this?

Shouts of men, footsteps pounding the plankway! Harry and Marlena frantically sought their clothes, so recently abandoned on the floor with happy tosses. Harry managed to locate his trousers and was struggling to get one leg in, while Marlena found only a soggy wad of blackened orange gauze, and realized all at once that this was the pathetic remnant of her sheath, which had been used to put out the fire in more ways than one. She moaned, and at that moment four Burmese men with fire extinguishers rushed in, and Marlena sprang into the bathroom with a shriek exactly one second too late.

Though the fire was out, the men doused the smoldering ceiling 2 2 4

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and charred netting for good measure, each one taking a turn, discharging streams of white powder that exploded against the ash in clouds of gray fallout. Soon Rupert loped in, followed by Moff, Dwight, Roxanne, and Vera. Only Bennie, his CPAP mask affixed to his face, heard nothing. Across the water, the others called out,

“What’s happening?” “Is everything all right?” Marlena donned one of Harry’s shirts and a pair of boxer shorts. As she walked back into the bedroom, she saw a mournful face: Esmé was standing in the doorway.

Soon after, Harry watched Marlena leave with her daughter. She was too distraught to speak, and waved away his questions, his apologies. The tattered netting had been hauled away, the ruined bedding stripped, and now he was alone. The damp bare mattress before him reminded Harry of a shameful time in his childhood.

“What were you possibly thinking?” both his mother and Marlena had shrieked. A headache began to pound in his temples.

He could not sleep, so he sat on the edge of the undamaged twin bed, punching the pillow and cursing, “Sod’s law, bloody sod’s law!”

If anything could go wrong, it would. He pictured Marlena’s face, how ashamed she looked with an inadequate towel wrapped around her hunched-over body, pleading with her daughter to go back to their bungalow and wait. Esmé had remained in the doorway, wordless and inscrutable.

An hour later, Harry finished the last of a bottle of champagne he had bought at Heinrich’s exorbitant price; it had been intended to toast the start of his and Marlena’s love affair. He put down the empty bottle and rummaged in his carry-on case for the liter of duty-free liquor he had bought on the airplane. There it was, Johnnie Walker Black, his fine Scottish friend for the lonely night. Outside, an Intha fisherman, obviously soused to the bones, began bellowing with operatic strength, and in the arena created by the lake and the semicircle of floating cottages, his serenade boomed and reverber2 2 5

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ated for a captive audience. To Harry, the tune sounded like a wail to the universe. It was awful, he mused, well suited to the occasion.

THE NIGHT BEFORE , Walter had assured them that the early wake-up call would be worth it. “A sunrise on Christmas Day,” he had said,

“is the best present you can give yourselves. We’ll go in two of the longboats to a beautiful spot on the lake. Dress warmly and do wear sturdy shoes, no flip-flops. We’ll be doing a bit of walking. After the sunrise, we’ll visit various factories making paper, woven cloth, and cheroots. Bring a camera and a mid-morning snack. If you’re not on the boats by six-fifteen, I will assume you preferred to sleep in, in which case we’ll meet you in the Great Hall for lunch.”

At five-thirty in the morning, everyone but Harry rose for an early breakfast. As for Harry, after listening to the drunken fisherman most of the night, he had finally drifted off to sleep at four. With so much alcohol in his bloodstream, his sedated brain kept him somnolent until nearly noon, at which time he awoke with a terrific hangover.

In another corner of the resort, Heinrich was also awakening. He often kept late hours. He took a brisk shower, dressed in his woven silk trousers and shirt, and padded over in slapping sandals to the dining hall to greet his guests for lunch. What a surprise to see the hall was empty except for the Famous TV Star. “Aren’t they back yet?” he asked.

“Apparently not,” Harry said, and sipped his coffee.

“And you stayed behind?”

“Apparently so.”

Heinrich went into his office to meet with three of his staff and organize for the day. He glanced at the schedule Walter had given him.

The sunrise viewing and morning shopping was supposed to last only a few hours, with a return by ten or ten-thirty and lunch at noon. Perhaps they had opted to do more Christmas shopping.

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The staff told him of the previous night’s fire. They spoke to him in Burmese. No, no one was hurt, they said.

“Anyone jump in the lake?”

The men laughed. Not this time, but the man sure was hopping scared. They said it was the cottage of the moping TV star in the dining room. The damage wasn’t bad. Workmen were just now replacing the ruined sections of rattan on the ceiling. The bed would dry out on its own. Should they put up another netting?

Heinrich scratched his head. He had meant to buy the fireproofed netting, but the son of one of the head honchos had insisted that Heinrich take a brand of his tribe’s own making, an older style that was illegal in other countries. This was the third fire at the resort.

“Put up a net but remove the candles,” Heinrich said.

There was also a lady in the TV star’s room, the staff told Heinrich, a naked woman. They chuckled to themselves. “Which one?”

Heinrich asked in Burmese. The Chinese lady, they said. He nodded, affirming Harry’s good taste.

“Also sorry to report, boss, we’ve had another theft.”

Heinrich sighed. “What now?”

“The bicycle generator.” This was what they used to power up twelve-volt car batteries during the frequent electrical failures. “They left behind the bicycle this time.”

“Wasn’t the shed locked as I instructed?”

“The lock was beheaded. Cut clean.”

“What about the guard dogs?”

“Still in the pen, but chewing on fresh bones.”

Heinrich counted the items already stolen over the last six months: a small television, the satellite dish for illegally receiving international channels, a bicycle, a hand-crank flashlight, some large Toyo twelve-volt batteries, a box of ginger-flavored sunflower seeds, and now the bicycle generator.

“Go into town and see if the generator is for sale on the black mar2 2 7

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ket. If so, notify the police and report back to me.” But Heinrich knew it was unlikely that the generator would ever be found. Still, it was best to follow proper procedures. He would simply charge the Famous TV Star two hundred U.S. dollars for fire damage that could be repaired for less than ten. With the remaining cash, he would buy a new generator, perhaps a fuel generator this time, now that he had a good black-market source for buying petrol without government rationing coupons.

As with any problem, you simply had to be more creative.

THERE IS A FAMOUS Chinese sentiment about finding the outer edges of beauty. My father once recited it to me: “Go to the edge of the lake and watch the mist rise.” At six-thirty, my friends had been at that edge. At dawn, the mist rose like the lake’s breath, and the vaporous mountains behind faded in layers of lighter and lighter gray, mauve, and blue until the farthest reaches merged with the milky sky.

The motors of the longboats had been cut. All was quiet. The mountains reflected in the lake waters caused my friends to reflect upon their busy lives. What serenity had eluded them until now?

“I feel like the noise of the world has stopped,” whispered Marlena. But then secretly she wondered what had happened to Harry.

Had he lain awake most of the night, as she had? She glanced at Esmé, who still refused to look at her, despite the fact that Marlena had offered to let her have forbidden things for breakfast, coffee cake, doughnuts, a Coke. Throughout, Esmé had remained silent.

She was embarrassed by her mother and Harry. They looked so

stupid
. They wrecked the little house. They nearly got themselves killed. Everybody saw and was talking about it. She had done things far less stupid than that, and her mother had been mad and wouldn’t talk to her. “I just can’t deal with this,” she would tell Esmé, and 2 2 8

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then not look at her for hours. It had made her stomach ache. Well, now her mother could see what that felt like.

“Man, this is so worth it,” Wyatt said. Wendy nodded, silent for once.

Heidi had not felt stillness like this since the murder. The water buoyed her, and the mist took her worries away. She realized, after a while, that she had not thought about bad things, like the boat tipping . . . No, she put it out of her mind, and turned her face toward the mountains.

Here the lessons of Buddhism seemed true, Vera thought. Life was merely an illusion you must release. As she grew older, she was aware of her changing position on mortality. In her youth, the topic of death was philosophical, in her thirties it was unbearable, and in her forties unavoidable. In her fifties, she had dealt with it in more rational terms, arranging her last testament, itemizing assets and heirlooms, spelling out the organ donation, detailing the exact words for her living will. Now, in her sixties, she was back to being philosophical. Death was not a loss of life, but the culmination of a series of releases. It was devolving into less and less. You had to release yourself from vanity, desire, ambition, suffering, and frustration—all the accoutrements of the I, the ego. And if you did, you would disappear, leave no trace, like the mist at dawn over the lake, evaporating into nothingness, into nibbana.

I was appalled at the idea. Evaporate? Would that happen to me? I wanted to expand, to fill the void, to reclaim all that I had wasted.