Saving Fish From Drowning (37 page)

But this was the dry season. This was when the hunter soldiers were lazy, getting ready for the good times of Independence Day. The numbers of soldiers had been fewer at this season the year before, but there was no sure pattern to anything that SLORC did.

Black Spot ran ahead of my friends, as they wearily plodded

onward. Another hundred yards lay in front of them before they reached No Name Place.

Earlier, while they had rested by the fallen log, Grease had sprinted up the mountain and into the camp to announce that the Younger White Brother and his retinue were coming. The inhabitants of No Name Place stood still. This was the miracle they had prayed for. For three years, they had given offerings that this might come to pass.

“This is true?” an old grandmother finally said.

“Kill one of the chickens,” Grease said. “They’re expecting a feast.”

And then the tribe members ran in different directions. There was barely enough time to ready themselves. Women pulled out their best clothes, black boxy jackets woven with checkerboards of red and gold diamonds. The old women dug out of the ground the last of their silver bangles. Some ladies covered their chests with a profusion 2 6 0

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of ropy necklaces made of glass beads from the old traders and Chinese beads that had been in their families for hundreds of years.

Others had only plastic.

Grease heard Black Spot’s whistle, a signal that he had crossed the bridge. He returned the call with two shrill blasts. Half a minute later, Black Spot rushed in and his friends surrounded him. They spoke rapidly in the Karen language, unable to contain their happy disbelief. “You got so many to come!” one man said. “God is great!”

said another. “Which one is the Younger White Brother?” And Black Spot replied that it was clear, if they used their eyes. They looked at their approaching saviors, my friends, lifting one heavy foot after the other, all of them exhausted, except for Rupert, who could have run circles around them, and was now striding forward, yelling, “Come on! We’re almost there.”

A thin little girl of three ran forward and grabbed Black Spot by his legs. He lifted her in the air and examined her face, before concluding that her laughter and smiles were signs that she was well, the malaria gone. He set her atop his shoulders and walked farther into the camp. Black Spot’s wife watched this, but did not smile. With every reunion, she would think, Will we remember this as the last?

Black Spot was the headman of this small tribe of people, the survivors of other villages. He guided them toward consensus by providing them with sound reasoning to solve squabbles. He often reminded them of their tradition to remain unified. Like all Karen, they stuck together, no matter what.

My friends entered the encampment and were instantly surrounded by a dozen tribal people who pushed and jumped to get a glimpse. They heard the natives uttering a pretty garble of sounds.

Some of the old women had their hands clasped and were bowing rapidly. “It’s like we’re rock stars or something,” Rupert said.

Bennie saw that some of the men had slung their arms around

Black Spot and were offering him a cheroot. Others jumped on the 2 6 1

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backs of Salt and Fishbones and hooted. “These people sure are friendly with those guys,” Bennie remarked. “Walter must take people up here a lot.” My compatriots were disappointed to think that the formerly “rare opportunity” might be a common tourist destination.

“What tribe are they?” Vera asked Black Spot.

“They are Karen,” he said. “All good people. The Karen are the original people of Burma. Before there are Bamar or others tribe coming to Burma, the Karen people are already here.”

“Kah-REN,” Roxanne repeated.

“You like Karen people?” Black Spot asked with a grin.

“They’re great,” she said, and this was followed by a chorus from my friends, affirming the same opinion about a people they as yet knew little about.

“Good. Because I am Karen, too.” Black Spot pointed to the other boatmen. “They are Karen, too. Same. Our families are living here in No Name Place.”

“No wonder you knew the way up here so well,” Bennie said.

“Yes, yes,” Black Spot said. “Now you are knowing this.”

A few of my friends suspected that Walter and Black Spot had a deal going on under the table. But if they did, what did it matter?

This was an interesting place.

With a throng of Karen people trailing behind them, my friends came into a larger clearing, an area about fifty feet in diameter. Above, the sky was barely visible through the overlapping tree canopies. The campsite was partially covered with mats. Close to the center was a stove made of stacked rocks, with a maw for feeding wood. Flanking that were teak logs used as tables, on top of which were assorted bowls of food. The surprise Christmas lunch. Fantastic.

They glanced about. At the edges were rounded huts the size of children’s tree houses. Upon closer inspection, my friends saw that they
were
tree houses, each the hollow of a tree base just large 2 6 2

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enough for one or two people. The walls were formed of the long skeletal roots, their spacings woven with palm thatch. The roofs were low, and bound with interlaced vines and runners. Other tree huts and various small shelters lay beyond the perimeter.

“It’s so
unchanged
,” Wendy whispered to Wyatt. “Like the twentieth century forgot to come here.”

“You like?” Black Spot said. He was bursting with pride.

The camp now massed with its residents—I counted fifty-three—

many of the older ones wearing turbans and red-and-black smocks.

My friends saw crackly-faced grandmothers and smooth-cheeked girls, curious boys, and men with red betel-nut juice staining their teeth, making it seem as if their gums were bleeding from an ulcerating disease. The people cried in the Karen language, “Our leader has come! We’ll be saved!” My friends smiled at this welcome, and said,

“Thanks! Good to be here.”

Three children ran over to get a closer view—foreigners in their jungle home! They stood in awe. Their young faces were solemn and watchful, and as soon as Moff and Wyatt crouched down, they

shrieked and ran off. “Hullo!” Wyatt called after them. “What’s your name?” Girls in white sackcloth dresses stood at a safe distance, avoiding eye contact. When the white man was not looking at them, they gradually moved closer with shy smiles. One of the boys ran close to Moff, the tallest of the foreigners, and in that universal game of dare, he slapped the back of Moff’s knee and darted off with a high-pitched shout before the ogre could strike him down. When another boy did the same, Moff let out a groan and pretended to nearly topple over, much to the delight of the children.

Two more children appeared, a boy and girl, who looked to be seven or eight. They had coppery brown hair, and both were dressed in cleaner and more elaborately embroidered clothes. The boy had a long white chemise, the girl a Western christening dress with lace edging. Vera noted with dismay that they were smoking cheroots.

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They were actually twins, and according to the tribe’s beliefs, they were divinities. They boldly pushed past the others, grabbed Rupert by his hands, and led him toward their grandmother, who was tending a pot on the rock hearth. The old woman scolded the children as she saw them approach. “Don’t drag him around like that. Hold his hands with respect.” When Rupert was before her, she shyly averted her eyes and offered Rupert a stump to sit on, which he refused. He shook loose from his admirers and walked about the camp.

Marlena observed that except for the twins and older people, few wore the distinctive costumes seen at most dance and cultural spectacles. Could this be an authentic tribe and not one designer-garbed to look ethnic? The head wraps on the men and women were clearly functional and not decorative. They looked like dirty Turkish towels wound without regard to fashion. And the women and girls in

sarongs had chosen loud plaids and cheap flowery designs. The men were clothed in raggedy pajama bottoms and dirty tank tops that hung to their knees. One wore a T-shirt that said “MIT Media Lab”

on the front, and on the back, “Demo or Die.” Who left
that
behind?

Only a few had rubber flip-flops, leading Marlena to recall childhood warnings to never let your bare feet touch dirt lest tiny worms pierce them, crawl up the insides of your legs, into your stomach, ever upward until they lodged in your brain.

Moff stepped closer to the tree houses. Finally realizing what they were, he became excited and called Heidi over. He pointed out the vast roots. “They’re mature strangler figs. I’ve seen them in South America, but these are absolutely huge.”

“Strangler,” Heidi said, and shuddered.

“See up there?” And Moff explained how the seeds had taken hold high in the scummy crannies of host trees. Aerial roots spread downward and girdled the host tree, and as the host grew, the vascular roots thickened in a deadly embrace. “Kind of like a marriage I was once in,” Moff said. The host tree was choked to death, he went on to 2 6 4

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say, then decomposed, thanks to armies of insects, fungi, and bacteria, leaving behind a skeletal trunk. “The result,” Moff said, “is this hollow, a cozy bungalow for rodents, reptiles, bats, and apparently, the denizens of the rainforest.” He looked up and whistled. “I love this. I’ve written a few articles about rainforest canopies. My goal is to get something published in
Weird Plant Morphology
one day.”

From another part of the small camp came shouts of jubilation.

The tribe was watching Rupert taking whacks at timber bamboo with a machete that Black Spot had given him. With each swing, the tribe cheered. Black Spot said in Karen: “You see his strength. This is another sign that he is the Younger White Brother.”

“What other signs did you see?” a middle-aged man asked.

And Black Spot answered: “The book and the Nat cards. He manifested the same Lord of Nats. He then made him disappear and jump out in another place.” More people came into the crowd to catch a glimpse of the Reincarnated One. “Is it really him?” the jungle people asked among themselves.

A young woman said, “You can tell he is the one by the eyebrows, thick and at a slant, those of a cautious man.”

“He looks like a TV star,” said another woman, and giggled.

“Is that book the Lost Important Writings?” a man called out.

This time, Black Spot explained, the Younger White Brother chose to bring a black book and not a white one. It was similar to the one the Older Brother lost, but this was called
Misery
, titled like the old Lamentations. Black Spot could read only a little, but from what he saw, he believed it concerned their sufferings over the last hundred years. That would make these the New Important Writings.

“But what did you see him do?” a one-legged man asked. “What did the sign look like?”

“They were at the dock in Nyaung Shwe Town,” Black Spot reported, “and the Younger Brother easily drew a crowd to him, as only leaders can. He spoke with great authority and called upon 2 6 5

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people to believe in his magic.” Just then Rupert walked by, and Black Spot said to him in English, “Please, sir.” He made the fanning motion of a deck of cards. “You can showing us the disappearing of things?”

Rupert shrugged. “I guess.” He slipped the deck out of his pocket and began to shuffle in midair, sending the cards leaping.

The tribe broke into grateful cries. At last, they would grow strong again. No more eating rotted fruit from the Tree of Trial. To the Karen, it did seem fate had led Rupert here. He had the deck of cards, the Important Writings, the slanted eyebrows. For years this splinter tribe had been seeking signs. They had studied every foreigner who arrived at the dock in Nyaung Shwe, where a young man had arrived more than a hundred years earlier, the Younger White Brother. Just as likely, the tribe could have seen other signs—a young man with sandy hair wearing a white coat and a straw hat. Or these: a gilded cane, a carefully clipped moustache, a small wormlike scar below the left eye. Equally convincing: any sleight-of-hand, particularly the ability to change a person’s hat without his realizing it, or to open a book and make it seem as if God were blowing the pages.

These people, now so desperate for any kind of hope, saw what they wished to see, the signs, the promise. Don’t we all see them? We wait for signs that we will be saved, or protected from future harm, or endowed with unusual good luck. And often, we find them.

The people of No Name Place created a receiving line and beckoned the visitors to go through. “Use your right hand,” Bennie advised. “In some countries the left is considered untouchable.” My friends did as Bennie suggested, but their hosts used both their hands to clasp each visitor’s right. They shook hands up and down, gently.

“Dah ler ah gay, dah ler ah gay,”
the people of the jungle murmured, and followed this with a slight bow. Marlena was surprised to feel the roughness of their skin, even on the young children. Their hands had been toughened by calluses and cuts. One man, she was shocked to 2 6 6

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learn, had only two bony fingers on one hand, and he gripped her hard, as if to take away three of hers as replacements.

Rupert was standing next to Marlena, and as they made their way through the receiving line, she noted something peculiar: With Rupert, the Karen looked down, covered their mouths, and bowed extra low. Perhaps it was a custom accorded to men alone. But she saw that Moff and Dwight received only the slight bows shown to her, and the Karen had no problem looking at them straight in the eye. Who knew what the customs and taboos were here?

A few girls spotted the little dog Esmé held tightly to her chest.

They pointed and sang out: “Woo-woo! Woo-woo!” Everyone