The Piano Tuner (18 page)

“Are you certain? Perhaps I should send a note of
apology.”

“For what? If anyone is in trouble, it is myself,
and I’m not worried. We often argue. But we must not let it ruin the
evening. Ma Khin Myo, I thought that we could take Mr. Drake to see a
pwè
tonight.”

“That would be lovely,”
said Khin Myo. “And Mr. Drake”—she turned to look at
him—“is very lucky, as this is the perfect season for the
pwè.
I think there must be at least twenty in Mandalay
tonight.”

“Excellent,” said the Captain, slapping his
leg and standing up. “Let’s go then! Ready, Mr. Drake?”

“Certainly, Captain,” said Edgar, relieved to see the
Captain’s good spirits. “Dare I ask what a
pwè
is?”

“Oh, a
pwè
!” laughed
Nash-Burnham. “What’s a
pwè
? You are in for a
wonderful treat. Burmese street theater, but that doesn’t begin to
explain it. You must see it really. Can you go now?”

“Of
course. But it is night, won’t these plays have ended?”

“On the contrary, most have not yet begun.”

“A
pwè,
” began the Captain
before they were out the door, “is uniquely Burmese, and I might even say
Mandalayan; here the art is at its finest. There are many reasons to hold a
pwè,
for births or for deaths, for namings, when Burmese girls
get their first ear piercing, when young men become monks, when they stop being
monks, when pagodas are dedicated. Or even nonreligious reasons: if one wins a
lucky bet, builds a house or even digs a well, when there is a good harvest, a
boxing match, when a fire-balloon is released. Anything else you can think of.
A propitious event, and a man holds a
pwè.
”

They
were walking down the road in the direction of the canal Edgar had visited that
morning with Khin Myo. “Actually,” said the Captain, “I am
surprised that we didn’t see a
pwè
when we drove through
town this morning. The driver probably knew about them and tried to avoid them.
People will sometimes set them up in the middle of the road, completely halting
traffic. It’s one of the administrative problems we’ve inherited
from the Burmese. During the dry season, there may be dozens of
pwè
throughout the city. And on nights like tonight, when the
sky is clear, they are especially popular.”

They turned a corner.
Down the street, they could see lights, movement. “There is one!”
exclaimed Khin Myo, and Nash-Burnham, “Yes, we are lucky, lucky indeed.
We have a saying that there are but two types of Englishmen in Burma, those who
love the
pwè
and those who can’t bear it. Since the first
evening of my arrival, when sleepless with excitement, I took to the streets to
explore and found myself at the edge of a
yôkthe pwè,
a
puppet drama, I have fallen in love with the art.”

They were
approaching the lights, and Edgar could see a wide crowd of people seated on
mats in the middle of the road. These were arranged around an empty patch of
earth and a thatched structure. In the center of the empty plot stood a pole.
Around the pole, flames flickered in concentrically arranged earthenware pots,
lighting the faces of the first row of spectators.

They stood at the
edge of the crowd of seated families who looked up at the new arrivals. There
was much chattering, and one man shouted something toward a large house behind
the shack. Khin Myo answered him. “They want us to stay,” she
said.

“Ask him what is being performed,” said
Nash-Burnham.

Khin Myo spoke again, and the man answered at
length.

“It is the story of the
Nemi Zat,
” she
said.

“Wonderful!” The Captain stomped his cane on the
ground with pleasure. “Tell him we will stay for a moment, but that we
wish to take our visitor to a
yôkthe pwè,
so we cannot
stay here till the end.”

Khin Myo spoke again. “He
understands,” she said.

A servant emerged with two chairs and set
them down on the outskirts of the crowd. Nash-Burnham spoke to her directly.
When she brought another chair, he offered it to Khin Myo. They sat.

“It looks as though they haven’t begun,” said the
Captain. “In fact, you can see the dancers still putting on their
makeup.” He pointed to a group of women who stood by a mango tree
applying
thanaka
to their faces.

A little boy ran out into the
center of the circle and lit a cheroot from one of the flames in the
earthenware pots.

“That circular space is the stage,” said
Nash-Burnham. “The Burmese call it the
pwè-wang—
”

“
Pwè-waing,
” corrected Khin Myo.

“Sorry,
pwè-waing,
and the branch in the center is
the
pan-bin,
am I correct, Ma Khin Myo?” She smiled. He
continued. “The Burmese sometimes say it represents a forest, but I have
a feeling that it sometimes only serves to keep the audience back. In any case,
most of the dancing will take place within the
pwè-waing.
”

“And the earthenware
pots?” asked Edgar. “Is there any significance to them?”

“Not as far as I know. They light the stage if the moon is not
enough, and provide a constant fire for cheroot-lighting.” He
laughed.

“What is the subject of the play?”

“Oh, it varies widely. There are many types of
pwè.
There is the
ahlu pwè,
a
pwè
sponsored by a
rich man to commemorate a religious festival or the entry of his son into the
monastery. They are usually the best, as he can afford to hire the finest
actors. Then there are the subscription
pwè,
when a member of a
neighborhood will collect money from others and pool it to hire a
pwè
company, then an
a-yein pwè,
a dance
performance, then the
kyigyin pwè,
a free performance offered
by an actor or company trying to make their name famous. And then of course the
yôkthe pwè,
puppets, which I promise you we will find
this evening. If that is not enough to confuse you—please correct me if I
make any errors, Ma Khin Myo”—“You are doing very well,
Captain”—“there is the
zat pwè,
or real
story, a religious play that tells one of the stories of the Buddha’s
lives. There are as many of these as the Buddha had incarnations: five hundred
and ten, although only ten are usually performed, the so-called
Zatgyi
Sèbwè,
dramas about how the Buddha overcame each of the
deadly sins. That is what is playing tonight: the
Nemi Zat
is the
fifth,” “Fourth,” “Thank you Khin Myo, the fourth
Zatgyi Sèbwè.
Khin Myo, would you like to explain the
plot?” “No, Captain, I am very much entertained listening to you
speak.” “Well, then I see I must be careful in what I say …
I hope you are not bored, Mr. Drake?”

“No, not at
all.”

“Well, we won’t stay for more than an hour, and
the
pwè
will go until dawn. It can take up to four days to
complete … In any case, you must know the plot, everyone here does
already, these are only retellings of the same story.” The Captain paused
to think. “This one is about Prince Nemi, one of the Buddha’s
incarnations, who is born into a long line of Burmese kings. As a young man,
Prince Nemi is so pious that the spirits decide to invite him to see heaven.
One moonlit night, perhaps very much like tonight, they send a chariot down to
earth. I can only imagine the awe of Prince Nemi and his people as they watch
the chariot descend, and fall before it, trembling with fear. The Prince boards
it, and it disappears, leaving only the moon. The chariot takes Nemi first to
the heavens where the nats live—nats are Burmese folk spirits, even good
Buddhists believe they are everywhere—and then to
Nga-yè,
the underworld where the serpents called
nagas
dwell. At last he
reluctantly returns to his world, to share the wonders he has seen. The finale
is quite sad: it was the tradition of the kings that when they grew old and
sensed that death was near, they left their homes and traveled into the desert
to die as hermits. And so one day, Nemi, like his forefathers before him,
wanders into the mountains to die.”

There was a long silence.
Edgar could see the dancers packing away the
thanaka
and straightening
their
hta mains.

“It is perhaps my favorite
story,” said Nash-Burnham. “Sometimes I wonder if I love it so
because it reminds me of myself, of what I have seen … although there is
a difference.”

“What is that?” asked Edgar.

“When I return from the plains of heaven and
Nga-yè,
no one will believe my words.”

The night was hot, but Edgar felt
a shiver through his body. About them, the crowd had grown silent, as if they
too were listening to the Captain. But one of the dancers had arrived
onstage.

Edgar was immediately taken by her beauty, her dark eyes
exaggerated by the heavy
thanaka
on her face. She was thin and looked
perhaps fourteen, and she stood in the center of the
pwè-waing,
waiting. Although Edgar hadn’t seen them when he had arrived, a group of
musicians was seated on the opposite side of the
pwè:
a small
ensemble, drums, cymbals, a horn, a bamboo instrument he couldn’t
identify, and the stringed instrument he had seen in Rangoon—it was
called a
saung,
Khin Myo told him, twelve strings strung on a boatlike
frame. They began, softly at first, like a tentative slip into water, until the
man with the bamboo instrument began to play, and a song rose up over the
pwè-waing.

“My god,” whispered Edgar.
“That sound.”

“Aaah,” said Captain
Nash-Burnham. “I should have realized you would love the
music.”

“No, not that … sorry, I mean yes I do, but
I have never heard
that
sound, the wailing.” And even though all
the instruments were playing, the Captain knew exactly which one the piano
tuner was referring to. “It is called a
hneh,
a sort of Burmese
oboe.”

“Its song sounds like a dirge.”

Onstage, the girl began to dance, slowly at first, bending at the knees,
shifting her torso to each side, raising her arms higher with each pass until
she began to wave them. Or better: until they began to wave themselves, for in
the glow of the candles they seemed to float from her shoulders, defying the
surgeons who would have one believe the arm is tethered to the body through an
intricate rope of bone and tendon, muscle and vein. Such men have never seen an
a-yein pwè.

The music still moved softly, out from the
darkness at the edge of the
pwè-waing,
into the clearing, and
into the dancing girl.

The girl danced for nearly half an hour, and
only when she stopped was Edgar shaken out of his trance. He turned to the
Captain, but words eluded him.

“Beautiful, Mr. Drake,
no?”

“I … I am speechless, really. It is
hypnotic.”

“It is. Often the dancers are not as good. You
can see by her elbow movements that she has been trained for dancing since she
was very young.”

“How?”

“The joint is
very loose. When a girl’s parents decide she will be a
meimma
yein,
a female dance performer, they place her arm in a special brace to
stretch and hyperextend the elbow.”

“That’s
horrid.”

“Not really,” Khin Myo spoke at his left.
She held out her arm; at the elbow it bent back gracefully, curved like the
body of the
saung.

“You dance?” asked Edgar.

“Only when I was young.” Laughing. “Now I stay flexible
by washing Englishmen’s clothes.”

The girl had been
replaced onstage by a harlequin-like character. “The
lubyet,
the
jester,” whispered Nash-Burnham. The crowd was watching the painted man,
his clothes festooned with bells and flowers. He spoke excitedly, gesticulated,
and made tooting sounds as if in imitation of the band, danced,
somersaulted.

At his side, Khin Myo giggled, covering her mouth.
“What is he saying?” Edgar asked her.

“He is making
a joke about the host of the
pwè.
I do not know if you would
understand. Can you explain it, Captain?”

“No, I hardly
understand it—he is using quite a bit of slang, no, Khin Myo? Plus, the
humor of the Burmese … twelve years here and it still eludes me. Khin
Myo doesn’t want to explain it because it is probably naughty.” At
this she looked away, and Edgar saw her touch her hand to a smile.

They
watched the
lubyet
for some time, and Edgar began to get restless.
Many of the crowd had also stopped paying attention. Some brought out meals
from baskets and began to eat. Others curled up and even went to sleep. The
lubyet
wandered occasionally into the audience, plucking out cheroots
from people’s mouths, stealing food. Once he even approached Edgar,
played with his hair, and yelled out to the crowd. Khin Myo laughed. “And
now what is he saying?” asked Edgar. At his question, Khin Myo giggled
again, “Oh, I am too ashamed to say, Mr. Drake.” Her eyes shone in
the dance of the earthenware lanterns.

The
lubyet
returned to
center stage and continued to talk. Finally Nash-Burnham turned to Khin Myo.
“Ma Khin Myo, should we try to find the
yôkthe
pwè
?” She nodded, and said something to the now drunken host,
who jumped sloppily to his feet and waddled over to shake the hands of the two
Englishmen. “He says come back tomorrow night,” said Khin Myo.

They left the
pwè
and walked through the streets.
There were no streetlights. Were it not for the moon, they would have been in
complete darkness.

“Did he tell you where we could find
yôkthe pwè
?” asked the Captain.