The Jewel Trader Of Pegu (18 page)

“noisy, noisy” in his language.

Myint San forged ahead with her plans, turning to Antonio for the aid of his one good arm and to me for my two thin ones. —
You
will come to keep us safe?
It was more command than question, and who was I to deny those who have so aided me? Mya very much wanted to go to make her own pleadings at the temple, and I had little choice but to let her come along. Antonio demanded that we get a third cart and three other men with arquebuses to accompany us. Servants scurried off with messages, and we waited more than an hour until the carts lumbered to the house. The servants loaded the baskets of fish, flopping and splashing, onto the carts, and we began our pilgrimage.

If you haven’t traveled in the carts of this country, you haven’t experienced torture—torture beyond even Dante’s imagination, torture enough to turn the holiest Israelite into an apostate. They are more coffins than conveyance—the open basket of the cart resting on the wooden axle and two large, roughly rounded slabs of wood for wheels bumping along the uneven roads. The wheels weren’t greased and made shrieking noises, like the tortured deni-zens of hell—you could hear our screaming carts a half mile away.

We could have made better time walking if not for the women and children; and for much of the way, Antonio, Win, and I walked beside the carts. The journey was not unpleasant, despite the dust and discomfort of the cart.

The temple was in a quiet spot shaded with a crown of palms, and the river, more a narrow stream, curved behind the trees. A handful of monks strolled the grounds, and no more than a half-dozen women and children were sitting on the steps leading to the Buddhas when we arrived. They were outnumbered by troops of large brown monkeys, some who sat scratching themselves indecently and others who ran around making a nuisance of themselves in hopes we would feed them. A solitary jester, well fed, makes me smile, but these thin, scraggly creatures, grown unaccustomed to making their way in the jungle, had turned aggressive, for few pilgrims visited in these hard times. Their sad, surly antics brought no laughter, only reminders of the world beyond these quiet grounds.

We carried three baskets of fish along a path that ran through the palms to the river. Maybe four dozen or so silver fishes a bit longer than the length of my hand—the larger ones had been sold earlier in the day—squirmed and flopped on the way to their unexpected freedom. Win passed some coins to the monks. They blessed the fishes, and the family and servants dumped them into the shallow water. A few lay still, beyond the power of prayers, and the rest skittered here and there, surprised to find themselves back in cool water, not searing flames. Perhaps the heat and the journey had tired me out, but try as I could to put myself into the hearts of Win and his family, this seemed a useless gesture, a bit of magic that wouldn’t trick even a heathen’s gods. Mya, more moved than I, tugged at my sleeve, and smiling, pointed toward two fish who seemed most revived and darted downstream together—one was longer and thinner than his partner. —
There we go.
I smiled too, hoping it would be so.

Prayers said and monks thanked with words and gifts, we began our return to Pegu in the dim light of dusk, serenaded by unseen birds and insects. Despite the sounds of the jungle and our noisy wheels, this part of the day is for me a gentle, serene time: the day takes a long, calming breath before exhaling into the darkness of night. But what we feared and had prepared for cut short the tranquil hour. Our shrieking wheels announced our coming. Less than a mile from the temple, five men, silent and pale as wraiths, emerged from the jungle. If it hadn’t been for the swords they waved and the quick slashing of one of the bullock’s front haunches, I would have felt pity for their spectral appearance and put a coin in a begging bowl if offered. One of the brigands grabbed the driver of the first cart and threw him to the ground, and another menaced Myint San with a short sword and froze our guards for fear he would slit her throat. I was walking with Antonio, arquebus on his shoulder, behind the last cart. When, in the confusion of the attack, I turned toward him, he had disappeared. Just as I wondered where he had fled—a shameful thought I regret—I caught in the dimness his figure crouching, camouflaged by thick vegetation at the side of the road. In that very instant the leaves exploded with flames and the brigand at Myint San’s side screamed and fell to the ground, his chest torn red with blood. One of our guards jumped from the first cart, and grabbing his gun by the muzzle, swung the heavy wooden butt of his weapon and knocked unconscious the brigand who had attacked the first driver. The other three fled into the jungle. How Antonio managed with his wounded shoulder I can’t say. In our moment of danger he reacted without thinking of himself or his injury.

Myint San and Mya were weeping, and the servants loudly echoed their tears. I held Mya and comforted her more with silence than words until she stopped shaking. The wound to the bullock was fortunately more bloody than severe, and the drivers staunched the bleeding with wet clay and leaves. The brigand lay pale and moaning, his life flowing from him. Even I, who had not seen until then what a musket ball could do, knew his death was near. Antonio and Win hurried the servants to tend the wounded animal and herded the women back into the carts. We wanted to start up again, before we would be enveloped in full darkness. Antonio told the drivers to drive ahead and the women not to turn around. I went back to where Antonio stood over the fallen man.

—
Leave this to me, Abraham. Your hands are clean. A little more
blood won’t make any difference to mine. I’ll put the bastard out of his
misery.

—
What about the other one?

—
We’ll leave him. When he comes to, he can take care of his friend
here.

I caught up with Mya’s cart, and turned in time to see Antonio take a large stone from the side of the road and bring it down with his one good arm on the head of the wounded man. Don’t think harshly of him—he didn’t want the man to suffer. I think he would have wanted the same done to him on the battlefield.

The half-moon lit our way back, and we finished our journey without incident. Once we arrived at the safety of our home, you can imagine the blessings and offerings Mya made to her idol and the prayers of thanks I offered the Holy One, blessed be He. To see a dead man, laid out pale and lifeless like a painted statue, is far different from a man struck dead in front of your eyes, the anguish of his last moments, the fragility of life writ in red before you. I feel a bit the fool writing as if I had discovered the truth of our fleeting mortality, but just because others have long seen what is fresh to my eyes makes it no less true. The image of that brigand writhing in the throes of death will remain forever in my mind.

Sleep may be calling, but I am clear-eyed: it is the here and now that is most dear. All the rest, past and future, is as insubstantial as the morning fog. There is time enough in one life to be a righteous man. Joseph, enough talk of rebirth—what good is another life without memory of this one? Of you, of Uncle, of Mya, of all those bound to me by love and affection. This life is the life I must live.

Safe now in the quiet of my home, I look back on yesterday.

When Antonio fired his arquebus to save us all, and held the stone in his hand to save me from whatever punishment God might have meted out or from the guilt I might have inflicted on my own soul, he and I became bound forever beyond the blood we share. I would trust him with all I hold dear. With equal passion, I feel that when I embraced Mya before her people, without pause or shame, I reaf-firmed the silent vow I made months ago to take her as my bride. I know in my heart, so long hidden from me and shut off from others, that we are one.

Your cousin,

Abraham

13 August 1599

Dear Joseph,

Every gust of wind brings another rumor. If rumors were rice, everyone’s belly would be full.

—
Syriam has fallen.

—
Syriam remains in Pegu hands.

—
The king’s eldest son has thrown in his lot with the king of Toungoo
and lives there in pampered splendor.

—
The son was greeted in Toungoo by the sword and his head sits atop
a bloody pike.

—
The king has sent his white elephants—dearer than all his kin—to
appease the Arakan king.

—
Nandabayin’s own daughter has been sent weeping to Arakan as a
royal bride.

—
The Toungoo demand no less than the Tooth of Buddha; and if Nandabayin bows to this demand, the city is doomed; and if he doesn’t,
our fate will be the same.

—
Not all the gold statues and precious stones in Nandabayin’s treasure-house will soften the Arakan king’s heart.

An optimist grabs at a branch, thinking it sturdy enough to float safely to shore, a pessimist thinks it weak as straw. All of us tread water in these tumultuous seas and wait for others on the hilltop to determine our fate. Strong swimmer or weak, we will be saved or drowned by currents outside our control.

What I do know as a fact is that two merchants, a Dutch trader in spices and a Portuguese doing well in lac, have cut short their pursuit of profits and left for the safety of Melaka. They paid a pre-mium to find a ship that would sail against the winds; and they had to sell some of their stores at a loss because the hold wasn’t large enough for all their goods. I can travel lighter but am not yet ready to leave. Win, my barometer of royal winds and weather, sees the dark clouds, but he clings to the hope that Nandabayin can appease the rulers of Toungoo and Arakan—that gold and jewels and bended knee will pry apart the vise’s jaws and bring peace. —
Better
for them to yoke a healthy bullock than slay it
, he says.

I can’t stay forever, for the jewels bring Uncle no benefit here. If I must go now, I will have to find a way to bring Mya without harm to her or anyone who helps us. Win cares nothing about keeping Peguan women within the empire. —
There are enough for the men
here, enough to keep the young men from turning to sodomy. If you must
take anyone, take Myint San
. She was not amused.

Win believes it’s unsafe to try to smuggle Mya out on a ship.

—
In times of chaos, a bribe to the right people and can’t we sail free?

I asked.

—
In hard times, you can’t trust anyone. The customs officers will take
your money and then betray you. The risk is too great. Even before you set
sail, a crewman might kill her for fear of his own life. You put the sailors’

freedom at risk, the shipowner’s money, and the merchants whose goods lie
in the hold. If you are in a burning house, maybe you should flee through
the flames and out the back. But be patient, the sparks may not yet set the
bamboo aflame.

Win and Myint San worry about their son, of whom they have heard nothing these last several weeks. When his name comes up, Myint San’s eyes redden, and she struggles to hold back her tears.

I try to turn the subject to other things, which is difficult in these darkening times. I look at her undisguised grief and hear the catch in Win’s voice, despite the impassive visage his people have perfected, and I am ashamed of the tales my European “brothers” tell about Peguans. They speak with solemn faces of the Peguans’ line having begun in the mating of a Chinese woman and a dog—sole survivors of a shipwrecked junk on the coast centuries ago. What blasphemy the Portuguese and Dutch have spawned to free them of guilt, while they murder and plunder all those who don’t wear a cross or have skin the color of theirs. Like the blood libel we Israelites have long suffered, these words are just a circle the Gentiles draw around their own kind to exclude those different from themselves from humanity’s embrace.

I have seen many wonders since leaving Venice, but I haven’t seen men with feet round as oxen or skin scaly as snakes, or fellows with lumps of flesh at the bottom of their spines, large as both my fists, where their ancestors’ tails once grew. These creatures live only in the second- and third-hand tales of those who swear that those who told them swore them to be true. My travels have turned me into a doubter of such certainties. I have dropped “I was told” from my vocabulary. Until I had traveled far from the narrow streets and small squares of our city, I hadn’t noticed how much in our life is told to us by others, how much we take on faith from the eyes and ears of those who have neither seen nor heard what they claim to know. Their opinions are cold dishes served distant from the kitchen where others have prepared them. I have seen so much firsthand on my journey that I am now reluctant to swallow the secondhand notions others serve. I doubt what I haven’t seen myself. Especially when tales come from the mouths of men who believe themselves superior to those they claim to describe and judge.

I have seen with my own eyes only men made of flesh and blood no different, beneath their robes and tunics and hair braided and beaded, than those who walk the streets of Venice. I have seen tears flow down heathens’ cheeks as easily and copiously as ours.

Oh, I have seen wonders fashioned by the Holy One, blessed be He, that have left me awed and silent—the Mouth of Hell’s bubbling field of pitch on the banks of the Euphrates, rainbows arcing the ocean’s waves, palms sparkling in the morning light along rivers half hidden in billowing mist, birds the colors of peacock feathers, and beasts—enough to fill Noah’s ark—not seen by any man who has lived his life behind Ghetto gates. I have seen wonders fashioned by men—castles of desert brick, soaring infidel temples gilded in gold, gentle-faced stone idols with carved gowns draped and diapha-nous, so skilled in their workmanship that you would swear they fluttered in the breeze. In winter’s long night in years ahead, I may be that old man boring all who can’t escape his thrice-told tales of distant lands and adventures more fantastic and unbelievable with each telling. But I know that the true wonders I discovered were the ones that lay waiting in my heart.