Saving Fish From Drowning (33 page)

I wanted to fill the silence with all the words I had not yet spoken.

THE PAPERMAKER WAS the first to report to the military police that he had seen the missing tourists. “You saw them before or after they disappeared?” the police asked.

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“Must have been
before
,” answered the papermaker. “Otherwise, how could I be telling you I saw them?” Go on, they said. They were standing in the papermaker’s yard, in front of his house, a six-poled, one-room affair. The tourists had been his customers, he explained.

He went over to a bucket and picked it up. They had watched him as he lifted it and poured a batter of mulberry leaf mash onto a wood-framed silk screen. And then he had taken this wooden trowel—see how it’s the same width as the frame, and see how it spreads the slime thinly and evenly over the screen? Then, he said, he took bits of flower petals and ferns. The police watched him sprinkle them onto the silk screen in captive flourishes. The pretty little girl with the dog liked that very much, the papermaker said. He went to another frame, which had already dried, and peeled off a sheet of rough-hewn paper, the kind that sold for ten dollars in American stationery stores. Can you believe it? Ten dollars! That’s what they told him anyway, though he charged these customers only a hundred kyats.

The little girl picked up a sheet of paper, and as soon as she did, the Chinese lady, who must have been her mother, offered to buy it for her. The little girl said nothing, would not even look at her, as if her mother were invisible. Then the girl spotted the sun umbrellas, made of the same flowery paper, popular items with tourists. The Chinese lady again wanted to buy one for her daughter, simply because the girl had looked at it! And after the mother paid, the daughter smiled—although not at her—and this filled the woman with joy.

I tell you, American children are so easy to please, the papermaker said to the police, because they have so many desires to choose from.

The cheroot maker also said the Americans had come by. He knew they were Americans because none of them smoked, and they admired the lacquered containers more than the dozen cheroots they held. They had politely watched his girls making the cheroots. The police now paused to admire a particularly lovely girl with a sweet face and large cat eyes. She took a flat, disc-shaped cheroot leaf and 2 3 0

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expertly rolled the blend of tobacco and woody root together with a filter made of layers of cornhusks. The cheroot maker appeared to think hard as he went on: A tall man with long hair bought a dozen, to qualify for the free container. And when he lit one to smoke, the black lady was very upset, as was a pretty young woman who turned on a small whirring machine around her neck. Something seemed very peculiar about those foreigners, the cheroot maker concluded.

Several women at the silk-weaving factory confirmed that they, too, had seen the foreigners. All the women who worked on the first floor of the rickety wooden building were old, and their job was to spin thread out of silk. The black lady and a woman with pinkish hair, they said, were very curious and asked odd questions. They asked about their work hours. “Whenever there was daylight,” the thread spinners had answered, “dawn to dusk, every day.” And their wages? “Two or three hundred kyats a day”—less than an American dollar. And what happened to them if they were sick or injured?

How much were they paid? “Of course there’s no pay for days not worked,” they had told her. Wasn’t that a strange question to ask!

The policemen nodded.

The second floor was much noisier, and the women here were

young, some just girls, for they were the weavers and had to be energetic to operate the looms. The weaving women reported that the black lady was astounded by their skill, more so than most tourists, who seemed to think their bodies were merely extensions of machines. The police now watched a young woman move her feet rapidly over the outer then the inner pedals of the loom, her arched soles flexed and dancing. Meanwhile her hands operated at another rhythm to jerk a string with the exact degree of force needed to send a wooden threader flying from left to right, right to left. This required enormous concentration and coordination, the old weaving woman said, and as everyone knew, no man possessed the ability to stay eye-sharp for such a long time. It was a patient woman’s work, 2 3 1

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the ability for hands and feet to think independently, for the mind to remain focused through the same movements, thread after thread.

Between daybreak and light’s end, each woman created a full yard of intricately patterned silk that would sell for the fixed price of ten U.S.

dollars. That was how they helped their company make a very good profit, they said. Yes, they enjoyed their work, they told the American black lady. Very, very much. Constancy is its own satisfaction, said one of the older ladies, the predictability of days, the serenity of seeing the same loom and spools, the same co-workers beside me, the same wooden walls and high roof, with only occasional rain tapping the roof, like the thrumming fingers of a god, which was a small but welcome intrusion.

We saw the tourists the whole time, up to the moment they were leaving, one of the weaving women told the police. But in the next moment, they were gone, with just the strong smell of them left behind. Snatched by Nats, that’s what I think.

HERE IS how it actually happened.

At nine-thirty in the morning, my friends had finished visiting the weaving mill. They were standing on the jetty, ready to climb into the longboats. “Our next stop,” Walter said, “is my Christmas surprise to you. We may have to walk in just a little ways, but I think you will enjoy it enormously.”

Everyone liked the sound of those words: Christmas surprise.

What a delightful combination of syllables. Black Spot and Salt also heard how easily they agreed to such a simple invitation. A surprise could be anything, could it not?

What Walter had in mind, in fact, was a visit to a local school where young children had practiced singing a Burmese rendition of

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” He and the teacher had agreed months before that it would be a joyous event for the schoolchildren 2 3 2

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and foreigners alike. He would bring whatever groups came in December, and he would also suggest that they make a small donation to the school’s book fund. Even though the schools did not officially celebrate Christmas, it was their duty to help win over more tourists as part of the “Visit Myanmar” campaign to change foreign perception of their country. The past two groups Walter had led said it was a highlight of their trip, one that had touched their hearts. Walter hoped this group would like it as well.

As my friends waited on the jetty, they had no idea that this humble pageantry was the Christmas surprise, and thus they were impatient to be on their way and see what source of awe or amusement awaited them. But as usual, they were delayed, waiting this time for Rupert.

“You should buy him a watch,” Vera said sharply to Moff.

“He’s got a watch,” Moff replied.

“Then one with a timer and an alarm.”

“It’s got two timers.”

Stepping off his boat, Black Spot offered to help Walter find the boy. Walter could go in one direction, he in the other, and both would return in fifteen minutes. A good plan. Off they went.

Happily, next to every dock and jetty there are vendors with trinkets to see, lacquerware to buy, and folk art to admire. The goods were laid out on cardboard tables, and the vendors urged the tourists to examine the excellent quality—see, touch, buy! Bennie and the women bargained in earnest, while Moff, Wyatt, and Dwight stood at the end of the dock and lit up cheroots, commenting that they tasted like a cross between a cigarette and a joint. Esmé dipped into the treats her mother had brought and found a bag of teriyaki turkey jerky she could share with Pup-pup.

Within ten minutes, they saw that the boatman in the brown

longyi had returned with Rupert. The miscreant confessed he had been demonstrating a card trick to some local men.

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“What did I tell you about everyone sticking together?” Moff said.

“You can’t just go off and do what you want.”

“They begged me to show them,” Rupert explained. “Honest.”

Moff gave the usual lecture about one’s responsibility to the universe, how it was rude to keep anyone waiting, let alone eleven people.

“Ten,” Rupert said. “Harry’s not here.”

“What about Walter?” Moff said.

Yes, what about Walter? Fifteen minutes went by, then a half-hour, and still he had not returned. Salt, the round-faced friend of Black Spot, gesticulated to the tourists that he would go in the direction Walter had taken, to see what the delay was. After five minutes, he returned with a big smile. He and Black Spot had a quick exchange in their dialect. “Okay, okay, no worries,” Black Spot told the tourists.

He gestured to his boat and motioned them to step in. And then, pointing to some vague place on the other side of the lake, he said,

“We are going there.”

“Hey,” Esmé said. “He speaks English. Did anyone notice? He

speaks English!” No one paid much attention to Esmé. They assumed that everyone spoke some amount of English.

“What the hell is Walter doing
there
?” Dwight said aloud.

Black Spot smiled enigmatically. “Christmas surprise,” he said, recalling Walter’s words. The words were like magic. Their secret helper had told them that the boy would never come willingly. And Black Spot had worried over how he would persuade the Younger White Brother that this was his calling. But then their helper gave him a useful tip: The boy would not go unless everyone else went with him. And see how easy it was. They did not even know what the surprise was, yet they were willing to go find it.

Marlena told her daughter, “Walter must be getting things ready.”

Esmé still wasn’t looking at her, except by accident.

“We are hurrying now,” Black Spot said. He motioned to them to 2 3 4

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make their way posthaste onto the boats. A few minutes later, the two boats were speeding across the lake, the cool breeze soothing throats that had so recently been swollen with the irritation of delays and cheroot smoke. I sat at the prow of one boat, trying to warn them to go back.

We drifted among islands of hyacinth, into one narrow inlet after another. The canal turned and twisted like a waterlogged hedge maze. After innumerable detours, the boats floated toward a

makeshift ramp constructed of reeds latched together and set atop treadless truck tires.

“Are we sure this is steady?” Heidi said as she stood to climb out.

“Very safe,” Black Spot answered.

Moff sprang out first and extended his hand to help the others. In single file, they walked through a slim cut in the thick reedy banks.

The air had warmed, and the mosquitoes were stirred to action by their footfalls. Hands slapped at legs, and Heidi brought out a small pump bottle of one hundred percent DEET, which everyone gratefully partook of. Vera, who had on thick-soled sandals, sprayed her feet, and unbeknownst to her, the repellent dissolved her coral nail polish, which she then smeared on her opposite foot, which she also did not notice.

A little ways in was a one-lane dirt road, where a truck bulged over the sides. “That must be at least fifty years old,” Bennie said. Two young men waved. They seemed to be acquainted with Black Spot and Salt, who walked over to them and began chatting energetically.

And in fact, they did know each other, for the truck driver was Grease, Black Spot’s cousin, and the other man was Fishbones, the thin man who had piloted the longboat with the luggage the day before. My friends noted that all four men were behaving rather oddly, throwing nervous looks toward them. Ah, the travelers surmised among themselves, they were doing their best not to give away wily Walter’s Christmas surprise.

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Rupert pointed to Grease, and said to Moff: “Hey, that’s the guy who asked me back there to show him my card trick. What’s he doing here?”

“Can’t be the same guy,” Moff said.

“Why not?”

“Because that guy was there, and this guy is here.”

“Well, we were there, and now we’re here.”

Rupert waved his arm back and forth in the truck driver’s direction. When Grease saw him, he waved back tentatively.

“See?” Moff said. “Not the same guy.”

Black Spot returned to the tourists. “Now we are climbing into the truck, we are going to a very special place. Up there. Very nice people.” He pointed toward the mountain.

“Cool,” Wyatt said. “I love to see how people really live.”

“Me, too,” Vera agreed. “Real life.”

“Is that where we’re having lunch?” Rupert said.

“Yes, we are fooding there,” Black Spot said. “Very special lunch we are making for you.”

My friends peered in. The truck’s sides were made of broad timber planks, and over the top was suspended a dark rubberized tarp to provide, they supposed, protection from sun and rain. Both sides of the truck bed were lined with wicker benches, dented in spots, and in the middle of the floor were two monstrous twelve-volt batteries, a funny long contraption into which one of the batteries was set, and baskets and knotted-rope slings of food supplies.

“There aren’t any seat belts,” Heidi observed.

“There aren’t any
seats
!” Vera grumped with a disparaging look at the low benches.

“We’re probably not going that far,” Wyatt said.

“I’m sure Bibi wouldn’t have picked something that wasn’t both interesting and safe,” Vera said. Heidi was standing at the back of the truck, and she listened intently to assess what she was getting 2 3 6

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herself into. Moff got in ahead of her, then pulled her up, appreciating the way her breasts rose and fell with a nice little jiggle. Meanwhile, Black Spot and Fishbones quickly lugged the longboats out of the water and tucked them into the brush. A moment later, there was no evidence of the boats. The two men climbed into the cab with Salt and Grease, and off the truck went, brushing past overgrown shrubs and snapping off branches that were in the way. In the truck bed, the travelers jounced and yelped over each bump. They had all grabbed on to the side slats to brace themselves. Because of the large, dark tarp, they could see only from the rear: the wake of dust, the dense green of untamed ferns and colorful flora.