Under the Dragon (31 page)

‘The Palaung believe that we are descended from the sun and a dragon,’ she told him. Their wait for the dawn had lulled them into silence. She tried to fill it with an old legend. ‘A dragon princess – a
naga
– who lived deep down in the earth decided that she wanted to see the light of day. So she changed form and became a beautiful girl, and when the sun prince saw her, he came down to her and loved her for seven days. But then he tired of her and returned to his home in the sky.’

‘I won’t tire of you.’

‘In time the princess, because she was really a
naga
, laid three eggs and, in her rage at the prince, threw them away. The first fell into the Gangaw Taung. It broke and turned all the mountains that it touched into jade. The second egg landed at Mogok, which is why the hills there are filled with rubies and sapphires. But the third egg was caught in a tree and did not break. The sun warmed it until it hatched into the first Palaung.’ When Saw Htoo chuckled she told him, ‘We believe it to be the real history of our origin. It is no less fanciful than your loaves and fishes or walking on water.’

‘You believe that the first Palaung was born in an egg?’

‘We wear clothes in stripes to recall the
naga
’s scales. Our hoods remind us of the dragon’s head. Our dresses are of the early morning sparkling. The daytime green and midnight black honour our parents. I believe this; at least I would if I could find my clothes. Where did you hide them?’

‘You don’t need dragon’s scales when you are with me.’

‘Saw Htoo, I need my clothes. It’s nearly morning.’

He laughed and took her then, at last, by the fire as the tea brewed, and afterwards slept deeply, briefly, like an ox. At dawn a crow cawed away to the north-east of the house. It was a bad omen. While Saw Htoo slept Nan Si Si made a mark on him with a piece of charcoal, as the old woman had taught her, knowing that if he was killed and a baby was born to her with a birthmark in the same position, his spirit had entered into the body of the child.

They ate the last of the rice for breakfast. Taste is the most social of the senses, and the most intimate. Mouths are used to talk and to kiss, as well as to eat. Flavours cannot be savoured from a distance. Taste brings pleasure, from mother’s milk to a last curry, from lovers’ first embrace to their children eating around the family table. Nan Si Si found her clothes under the house, hidden with the pack of explosives. She dressed while Saw Htoo prepared his kit. ‘Come home,’ she told him as the sun rose above the trees, ‘and do not fear.’

‘I am not afraid, Nan Si Si.’

A man’s voice whispered outside the house. It summoned him, and this time did not frighten them. They were prepared for its call. Saw Htoo went out into the morning and met his platoon. He divided the supply of cartridges and charges. She rolled up the bedding.

‘I heard you calling my name in the night,’ he joked in Karen to the youngest soldier. ‘I would have thought you’d have more manners.’

‘It wasn’t me, sir,’ replied the soldier, surprised by the accusation. ‘I didn’t leave the village all night.’

‘I can’t think what kept you awake,’ teased the Lieutenant, noticing Saw Htoo’s tired eyes, and the other men laughed with him.

Saw Htoo came back inside and kissed her goodbye. It was time. ‘It wasn’t the village boys,’ he decided. ‘It was the Lieutenant. I should have known. He’s such a joker.’

‘You will come back, Saw Htoo,’ she whispered. She hadn’t told him about the charcoal mark

Nan Si Si – and the angry dragon child within her – watched him walk away up the path towards the far horizon.

WE AWOKE to the sound of lapping waves, to the smell of sweet water, to the caress of cool morning breeze. My tongue tingled in anticipation of more papaya and honeydew melon. Katrin slipped out from under the sheet to open the bedroom curtains. Her bare feet padded on the terracotta-tiled floor. I blinked away the sudden brightness. Two dark-haired lovers drifted in the bay, the man held in the woman’s arms like a child at her breast. The water’s calm, mirrored surface reflected the whiteness of the sky. Beyond the lake, high above the floating islands woven from the stems of hyacinths, we watched a single, black bird circle the embrace of misty hills.

The evening before we had arrived at the Gypsy Guest House in the dark, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, not knowing the place where we had chosen to stop and recuperate. The electricity supply had fused and I had tripped on the stairs and dropped our luggage. Katrin had walked into a cupboard while looking for the bathroom. We had eaten our midnight feast of fresh local fruit in silence and by torchlight, until the batteries had run out. We had undressed and found the bed by touch alone, falling into a dead sleep of utter exhaustion.

Less than a week earlier we had been in Namhsan. Our single, fearful night there had passed punctuated by the scamperings of rats and Phahte’s fitful snores. Once in the small hours he had shouted out loud and Katrin had gripped my hand. She hadn’t let go, even when we ourselves had dozed off on the dark edge of dawn, startling each other awake an hour later to find him gone. He had not marched us off to church, so we stole away instead for breakfast with Nancy, that is Nan Si Si. The evening before over supper she had stood up to her son, and even though she had been shouted down, he had listened to her reason in the end. He had put away his pistol and let us alone. We had slunk off to our sleeping mats, hounded only by his tirade against the feebleness of ‘gentle-men’. It could have been far worse. Nancy had acted as our intermediary, intervening on our behalf, and had tempered the worst of his excesses. We had been grateful to her, and for the hour’s peace spent over milky morning tea apart from her son. ‘We need to bite at each other,’ she had repeated to us, hinting at both her distaste for his belligerence and the depth of her devotion to him. ‘It is our way.’

Yet, much as she had wished to help us, she had not been able to find the basket-maker. He had been sent into the fields to help pick tea and would not be returning for a week. We had no option but to leave Namhsan without meeting him. While we waited in Phahte’s Willys, Nancy had wished us a safe journey home. ‘The world is round,’ she had said, then added with a dash of hopelessly hopeful Burmese optimism, ‘Maybe we meet again one day.’

On the drive back not a word had passed between us. The journey took almost ten hours. Phahte had acted with the grace of a spoilt child, stopping and starting every few hundred yards, shooting over twenty-five birds along the way. In Hsipaw, when his driver had dropped us off, he had not even turned around to say goodbye. We never saw if he had a birthmark on the place where Nancy had once marked his father, Saw Htoo.

‘I was fearful for your safety,’ the gardener had said after the jeep had driven away. We had been surprised to find him awaiting our return. ‘My conscience could not let me leave before setting eyes on you again.’

‘That man is dangerous,’ I had flared, turning my anger at myself on him. I had been enraged by my causal acceptance of his assurances of safety. ‘If you ever again help tourists, do not let them travel with Phahte.’

The gardener had nodded in sincere appreciation. ‘Thank you for your advice. But it is not to Phahte that I was referring. It is his enemies who must be feared.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It is considered bad business to shoot a guest,’ he had explained, ‘even your enemy’s guest. Phahte was not so much protecting you, as you were protecting him.’

It seemed that our host travelled by armed convoy because he was frightened. The gardener had learned that years before Phahte had been an ambitious
Tatmadaw
sergeant who had seen the chance to advance himself in Namhsan. The army lacked the resources to police the Shan Hills, so, by fighting off the insurgents and brokering a kind of peace, Phahte had been able to carve out a fiefdom for himself in his mother’s land. The government had been pleased to grant authority to one who, if not reliable, was at least consistent in his greed. Phahte would rule until the
Tatmadaw
had the men and arms to control the area itself. Or until his enemies – who were jealous of his profits – killed him.

The memory of our ordeal had stayed with us on the rocking, retching train ride back to Mandalay, and along the switchback bus trip through Kalaw and Aungban, renowned among Shan truckdrivers for its infamous brothels. We hadn’t had the strength to think of anything else. We had risked so much to reach Namhsan, yet had failed in our objective. Our journey had become an end in itself, but the recollection of my stupidity haunted me. In a display of faith which would have pleased Phahte, I thanked God for our escape from him, and from his enemies.

I ate two mangoes and four sweet, thumb-sized bananas for breakfast. From the guest house balcony we gazed out across picturesque Inle Lake, Burma’s only real holiday destination. Elderly Americans took happy snaps of water buffaloes bathing at the boat landing. A French tour group compared the merits of the Yadana Man Aung Paya with the pagodas of Laos. Nyaungshwe, the waterside tourist town of hotels and souvenir shops, offered fresh food but few smiles. The restaurants had more diners than flies. The bars stocked Carlsberg rather than Steinbräu – ‘brewed by the Sino-German Wuhan Yangtze River Brewery Company Limited’. Shops sold Western goods smuggled over the border from Thailand. An Oral-B toothbrush cost fifty kyat. $50 bought vintage Moët et Chandon champagne. The twice-daily flight from Rangoon was packed with foreigners. Onboard one heard no Burmese spoken. At the Inle Hotel three families of giraffe-necked Padaung women had been put on display like animals in a zoo. They were housed in a compound and tourists paid $3 to photograph them, saving themselves both the time and the trouble of travelling into the hills. Smiles had been unconditional elsewhere in Burma, but in Nyaungshwe faces were harder. No one attempted to pay our bus fare.

We had lost much weight during our travels, and needed to rest. We didn’t have the energy for new challenges. We decided to rent a power canoe and to spend the day sightseeing on the lake. Our guest house found us a boat and a boatman. I didn’t try to negotiate the price. The YMC ‘New 195’ diesel was hand-cranked into life and, spitting great clouds of exhaust and a spray of water from its long, proboscis-like prop, sliced us out onto the smooth, calm waters.

The local Intha people built floating fields using water hyacinth, staked to the bed of the lake with bamboo poles. The farmers paddled down the channels that ran between them, reaching into the narrow fertile strips, gathering the harvest of green beans and fiery chillies to their canoes. Dragonflies mated above the rows of tomatoes. Incoming freighters rode low on their waterlines, laden with cabbages, aubergines and gourds. Fishermen fished for
nga-pein
carp from their light teak flatboats, balancing on blunt-beaked bows with one leg, rowing with the other, casting their nets with both free hands. Others dropped conical snares into the water and speared trapped eels with a trident. The tourist canoes cut between the fishers and the fields, prows tilted up, nosing at the sun.

Our destination was Nga Phe Kyaung, the ‘Jumping Cat’ monastery, built on stilts in the centre of the shallow lake. Inside, the monks bullied and shoved angry, tail-snapping cats through hoops for the entertainment of tourists. Stocky Korean students left their air-cushioned Darth Vader footwear at the door and bumbled around the ornate wooden interior. Japanese holidaymakers in cycling shorts politely applauded, then chatted among themselves. A sun-blond Californian and a broad-beamed Bavarian shared pointers on the best Patpong sex clubs. Here too, as in Pagan, were Burmese tourists, the nephews of soldiers and the daughters of businessmen, who like the foreigners were determined to have a good time.

Katrin and I wandered away from the performance to sit by the water. At its edge a French tourist had begun to feed the fish. She broke off pieces of
petit-coeurs
, carried by hand from Paris or Marseilles, and dropped them one by one onto the placid surface. The carp darted forward in ones and twos, circling around and around, snapping up the morsels of biscuit. The taste excited them, and more fish followed, drawn like a current into a whirlpool. The woman crumbled whole biscuits into the lake and the feeding grew more frenzied. Dozens of carp swept together in ever tighter circles, swimming closer and closer until the eye of the spiral burst the surface. The water foamed with gleaming scales and gaping mouths. I saw the flash of wild eyes, imagined the gasping for breath. I squeezed off a couple of photographs to capture the moment. We looked up from the froth of fins and gazed out over the lake.

‘May I sit with you?’ asked a slender monk, and we moved aside to make room on the ledge. As he eased himself down beside me I noted his hollow, sunken cheeks and jet-black eyes. ‘I saw your camera,’ he said, gesturing at my heavy, twenty-year-old Canon.

‘You must see lots of cameras here.’

‘Many new ones, yes. But not this model.’

He said nothing more, so I asked, ‘Would you like to hold it?’ I had read that monks were forbidden to ask for anything. Scott had written about their dependence on offerings alone. The custom was intended to impart dignity and to repress desire.

‘If I may.’

I handed him the camera and he turned it in his hands with familiarity, felt its weight then lifted the viewfinder to his eye. He seemed pensive, reflective.

‘The jumping cats are’ – I struggled to find the right word – ‘entertaining.’

‘We try to please our guests. Visitors enjoy the distraction of a show.’ There was no financial motive behind the performance, no requests for donations were made, even though plates of crispies and fresh fruit were always on offer. ‘It helps to relax minds. It also provides us with the opportunity to practise our English.’ As he handled the camera I sensed, beneath his air of meditative serenity, a hint of unholy longing. ‘I used to have this model,’ he added.

‘You hold the camera like a professional,’ I said.