Saving Fish From Drowning (56 page)

What happened? What could cause this kind of sadness? Would

knowing be even worse than wondering?

Vera comes into the eye of the camera, her hand is reaching, and then the eye of the camera is a blur, and Moff is weeping like a baby, and when the eye can see clearly again, the world is askew, full of smoke and ashes rising. She must have put the camcorder on top of something, so that now it is looking up. Red words are flashing:

“Battery low,” pulsating like a heart. Its eye does not flinch, never looks farther ahead into the dark or to the sides. It stares straight up, observing flecks of ash rising in golden smoke and the red flashing words. Its ear listens without favoring any particular sound, it is simply acting as witness to the babble and shouts, the shuffles and sobs, the occasional crackle of wood as it is consumed. It is calmly tucking these final moments into itself for safekeeping, into memory that winds back in time and will one day move forward.

That is what Harry is watching. He has entered that world and has become the eye blurred by smoke, brushed by the haphazard flight of moths, stuck in a mise en scène, the entire world, his only existence.

He cannot blink and lose even a millisecond. He is memorizing all there is, this moment to the next, to another and another . . . until all at once the screen goes back, and there is nothing more to memorize.

He was so dazed he did not hear Belinda. “Are you okay?”

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Zilpha leaned toward him. “Do you want to watch it again?”

Harry shook his head. He was emotionally exhausted. He took

the tape from the camcorder and gently wrapped it in the white cloth, then slipped it into his shirt pocket. Walter and Heinrich never mentioned a Christmas surprise in the jungle. But what did Walter remember? He was probably brain-damaged from that brick that hit his head. And Heinrich was perpetually soused, that Teutonic drunkard.

“Are you still going to Rangoon?”

“Yes, of course . . . No . . . I don’t know.”

“You think they’re still in the jungle?”

Harry’s mind was racing. The witnesses had said they were in Rangoon. But on the tape, they were stuck because the bridge had collapsed. The tribe wasn’t able to lead them around Bagan, Mandalay, Rangoon. . . . The next minute the truth sprang forward. The lousy bastards had set him up! All those tour sites and witnesses, rubbish. What a bloody blinkered fool he had been. And then he remembered that his reports had kept the focus on his friends. Belinda said that the story was splashed all over the news in the United States. That had been part of his plan—in fact, he rationalized, that was the main one. So now what? Was Marlena still in the jungle?

Anything could have happened in the days since the tape ended.

Belinda and Zilpha remained silent, waiting patiently for Harry to announce his decision. Even before meeting him, the two had discussed the possibility that the TV Myanmar search was a sham, and that Harry had been their sucker. He was like many people who were desperate, needing to hang on to any kind of hope. Several networks besides GNN suspected a public relations ruse, but they had decided not to raise doubt yet about the possibility of concocted eyewitnesses, since there was nothing solid to counter either Harry’s belief or popular opinion.

He turned to the women. “I have to get back to the lake, to that damn resort. They’re somewhere near there, that’s clear.”

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Belinda and Zilpha looked at him quizzically. It was a reporter technique to elicit more information.

“Look,” he said, now fully under control again, “the group was never in any of those cities where the witnesses reported them to be.

I had a feeling that was the case, but I went along with it so we’d continue to get coverage. I didn’t want my friends to be forgotten. The media can make things happen, you see. I know, because I work in television.”

Belinda and Zilpha nodded. “Listen, this might be a stupid question,” Belinda said, “but how are you going to search for them?

Who’s going to take you? If it’s true what they said on camera about the minesweeping and all, the military isn’t going to rescue them.

They might do something that isn’t what you have in mind, especially if your friends are linked up with Karen rebels.”

“Wait a minute,” Harry yelped. “Who said they were rebels?”

“The military thinks all Karen tribes hiding in the jungle are rebels.”

Harry frowned. “How do you know that?”

Belinda kept a straight face. “They’ve been doing special reports on the military regime on Global News Network.”

Harry thought fast. “I’ll get the American Embassy to intervene.”

“They can’t do anything at the lake,” Zilpha said. “They aren’t allowed to leave Rangoon without permission.”

Harry recalled someone else’s saying that—the expatriate at that other resort on the lake. Damn. “I still have to speak to someone at the Embassy. They can put the pressure on and make sure we find my friends without anyone being harmed.”

“Maybe you should go to Rangoon as planned,” Belinda said.

“That way you can meet with the Embassy people personally.”

Brilliant, Harry said to himself. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“Yes,” he said, “I had been considering that. And I’ll give them the tape. They’ll see that it gets aired, and that way, the whole world will be watching.”

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Belinda looked at Zilpha out of the corner of her eye. They’d have to work fast to return to the bureau in Bangkok. The disc they’d recorded had to reach Global News Network before Harry gave his tape to the Embassy; otherwise, bye-bye, exclusive.

Belinda asked if Harry was still going to do the update in Rangoon with TV Myanmar. He snapped a brisk no. He’d play along with them and let them fly him to Rangoon and pay for his hotel, and then he’d feign food poisoning before the shoot. Let them get a dose of their own medicine, he said to himself.

Before leaving Zilpha’s room, Harry said, “I can’t thank you enough for letting me use your camcorder and computer. You’re a godsend. Say, what is it you two do?”

“We’re teachers,” Belinda said immediately. “Zilpha teaches kindergarten, and I’ve got first grade.”

Harry broke into a smile. “I thought it might have been something like that.”

THE NEXT MORNING, in Rangoon, Harry arose at five and went over his plan. He would wait for the reporter to call him at seven.

He’d make his voice hoarse to sound deathly ill and to ensure that it was impossible for him to speak on camera. A couple of retches might be good, too. He’d play the part thoroughly. No shaving today, and no shower. He mussed his hair, put on rumpled clothes. At eighty forty-five, he would take a taxi to the American Embassy. If anyone from TV Myanmar saw him leave the hotel, he would say he was trying to find a Western doctor. Had he covered all the bases?

Brilliant. He was about to order breakfast, but thought better of it.

So he took out his notes and the rough draft of
Come. Sit. Stay.

At seven, the reporter called, but before Harry could launch into his excuse, the man said tersely, “Today we are not filming. Everything has been canceled.”

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“Oh,” Harry said, forgetting to sound sick. “Why is that?” The reporter was elliptical in his answers. The more Harry asked, the more opaque his comments became. The reporter would say no more.

Harry was baffled. Had there been a national crisis? He turned on the television. Nothing. Whatever the reason, at least it had nothing to do with him.

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• 17 •

THE APPEARANCE

OF MIRACLES

For the past few days, my friends in the jungle had taken turns pedaling the bicycle to keep the car batteries charged. Night and day, they watched the news on the various satellite channels: the BBC, CNN, Star out of Hong Kong, TV Myanmar International,

and what they believed to be the most informative, Global News Network.

For some reason, tonight TV Myanmar was no longer showing

Harry’s reports from Bagan and Mandalay, which used to repeat every other hour. My friends had enjoyed tuning in to those segments when there was nothing new on the other international channels, and having watched them so many times, they could recite the words before they came out of Harry’s mouth: “The aching splendor . . .” When Harry turned to the camera and said those words, my friends always burst into laughter. Their antics had annoyed Mar

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lena. Why were they making fun of him? It was his show that had gotten them on the international news. Tonight she was worried to find no reruns. According to Harry’s report, he was supposed to be in Rangoon today. He was moving farther away, and yet watching him every other hour had made her feel that they were emotionally close.

My other friends had turned their attention to a Global News Network special. They were watching interviews about themselves, padded with comments from family and friends. For the next hour, they learned there were heroes and heroines among them. Who knew that Heidi had discovered the body of her murdered boyfriend? No wonder she was so cautious yet, they now understood with appreciation, skillfully prepared. He was a housemate not a boyfriend, she tried to explain, and they praised her even more for downplaying her trauma.

They also had not known—not even Roxanne—that Dwight had

served for three years as a Big Brother to a kid who had been bullied in grade school and had become a truant to escape the torment. The former kid was now a young man on a track scholarship at Stanford and, inspired by Dwight’s example, also a volunteer at an after-school program for troubled teens. (The kid had not seen Dwight for ten years or so. He had told Dwight he was the biggest bully of them all, which had left Dwight embittered about the whole experience.) Vera, they discovered, had two grown children, who recalled the time she gave money to the disadvantaged in lieu of buying Christmas presents. (Vera had actually bought them bicycles but not the boom boxes they wanted.) They’d been angry at the time, they admitted, but later they realized, as one of them said, that “she was as much a saint then as she is today.”

Whatever portion of truth those televised comments held, hearing them moved my friends to tears and increased their affection for one another. They hugged the recipient of each tribute. From now on, 4 1 0

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they promised, they would celebrate every Thanksgiving together, no matter where they might be. Within that vow, they voiced their belief they would get out of the jungle alive and well.

THE PEOPLE of the Lord’s Army were also listening to tributes, not on television but told to one another as they crouched in a circle.

Their mood was somber, and they had reason to believe that their days were numbered.

Black Spot had taken the tape down to Nyaung Shwe Town days

earlier. He had given it to their trusted source, the same man who took the “Second Life” plants they found. But the tape had not appeared on either of the Harry Bailley shows. And today, TV Myanmar had removed the program, and all the reruns as well. The tribe knew the reason. The generals in charge were angry. They now knew the faces of the Lord’s Army. They would hunt them down and kill them as rebels. They would go to Nyaung Shwe Town and post

photographs of tribe members, and the longboat pilots whom they once beat out of fares would say, “Hey, that’s Black Spot! He took those people to Floating Island.” Arms would be twisted, twisted off, if necessary, until someone blurted out where the Lord’s Army was hiding. And at least one person had a fairly good idea where that was. The tape had not helped them after all. They would not be TV

stars on Harry’s show. The show had been canceled, and that meant they would soon be canceled, too.

All day they had been telling stories, the familiar ones, and also the ones that had never been said aloud. Loot and Bootie crouched in the middle, near the campfire, rocking rhythmically while they sucked cheroots.

A bowl of water was passed around the circle, and whoever took a sip told a story of a brave soldier in the Lord’s Army: A brother who refused to carry the food that would nourish the SLORC army. A 4 1 1

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mother, whose children had already been shot, who never looked away as the mouth of the gun rose to her mouth. A young man who could have jumped on a truck taking the others to safety, but instead went back in the direction where his sweetheart had been captured by the army. A grandfather who refused to leave his burning home. A sister, only twelve years old, dragged by six soldiers into the hidden parts of the forest, where she screamed, then stopped, screamed then stopped, until the rifle shot came and she made no sounds forevermore. She was brave. They all were brave. Those now listening would try to be brave.

When it was close to dusk, the old grandmothers brought out the red singing shawls they had repaired that morning. They had

threaded the iridescent mantles of one hundred emerald beetles onto the long rope fringes, twenty carapaces on each string, knotted off with a small brass bell at the end. Their granddaughters carried out fifty-three blankets and placed them on the mats to air. The married women brought forth the best of their now tattered clothes, so that they might show their sisters the secret weave and knot they had carefully guarded as their own. No need for secrets now. The grandmothers hung the singing shawls on the arms of trees, since the unmarried girls would not be there to wear them and mourn. Soon they would put on these best clothes, and fifty-three people, young and old, would each lie on top of a blanket and roll into a cocoon. They would have already eaten the poison mushrooms the twins had