ROAD TO MANDALAY

by Rolf Richardson

  Su must have already discussed this with the gnome because she replied at once: “About five hours. Maybe six if the storm continues.”

  This news further lifted our spirits. Tomorrow night we should have a proper roof over our heads.

  Gudrun said, “That’s excellent. Even so, I don’t think we should hang about. Let’s be off as soon as possible.”

  “It won’t be that easy.” Su seemed embarrassed.

  “Why not?”

  “The guide will only allow one of us to go with him.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “He phoned the village before we left. They said it would be too dangerous. Bad men around. If people... people like you turned up...”

  She let the implication hang in the air. ‘People like us’ meant big, very different Europeans. A group that would stand out like bouncers in a chorus line.

  We couldn’t even plead our cause. Out here in the wilds we were mobile-less, wi-fi-less, incommunicado. In an age of instant access to just about anywhere, it was an unnerving feeling.

  The next obvious question was, “I suppose that person to go with our guide has to be you?”

  Su nodded, almost apologetically. But the logic was inescapable. She was the only one who would blend in with others in the village. The only one they would accept. At least for the moment. We were no longer in control; would have to dance to the tune of others.

  “We’ll talk about this again in the morning,” said Gudrun.

  “No doubt we would. But our sleep wasn’t nearly as sound as could have been expected a few moments earlier.

  45

  Dawn broke with a hint of sun and only a feeble finale of rain drops. It was warm and humid.

  Tossing around in the wee hours, we must all have come to the same conclusion: that local realpolitik offered us no choice. Su would have to be our emissary to the village on the river. Although she was Freddie’s girlfriend and had so far proved to be loyal, she was not one of us. Nevertheless, we would have to trust her.

  Gudrun must have come to the same conclusion, because she spent breakfast briefing Su: we needed a boat to take five people downriver as far as the road to Lashio. We were prepared to pay good money, which the gnome had intimated should be in US Dollars. So Gudrun handed Su a pile of Greenbacks bearing the bearded face of Ulysses Grant. Told her this was our deposit. She must then bargain for the final price. In truth, ‘bargain’ was hardly the word. They could charge what they liked: what they reckoned the market - we - would bear. Gudrun had often boasted, probably to impress us, that Stockmann was an almost bottomless pit of talent and funds. We could only hope this was true. Also that Burmese hill tribes were unaware of it.

  Su and the gnome departed shortly after nine, promising to be back by the following afternoon. We asked for a top up of rations, something more interesting than the supermarket fodder in our backpacks. It looked as though our holiday in the forest might be rather lengthy.

  Breakfast over, it was time to explore. The storm had forced us into our aeronautical shell and it was only now, with trees still dripping but nothing falling out of the heavens, that we were able to take a proper look at our surroundings.

  According to the gnome, the plane had crashed during World War Two. The early 1940s. Over 70 years ago. A lot would have changed in the forest since then. We could see that our small clearing had probably once been a good deal larger, because there were no really tall trees around. Just vegetation that had grown... well, during the past 70 years. Had this been a small landing strip in the forest? Unlikely. The pilots should have been pretty good at handling difficult conditions and this had been no ordinary landing, but a wheels-up emergency.

  Freddie and I surveyed the aerial corpse. Our genius had changed and matured since our first meeting and it was good to have him to myself for a change.

  “Definitely a Dak,” he commented. “Look, Pratt and Witney Wasp radial engines.”

  The said engines were no longer properly aligned, the starboard one having been half crushed by impact with something solid, maybe a tree trunk. The right wing was also bent, badly enough, I’d have thought, to have ruptured the fuel tank.

  “No fire, though,” commented Freddie, as though reading my thoughts. “Probably ran out of fuel. Or nearly so.”

  “The Dak was great at belly landings,” he continued. “The wheels didn’t retract completely and showed just enough rubber to serve as skids. A good pilot could do a wheels-up with no more damage than a couple of bent props.”

  It sounded as though aviation was another of Freddie’s little obsessions. If you’d spent years, twelve hours a day, interviewing a computer screen, you’d be able to accumulate a goodly number of obsessions.

  To underline the point, he continued in full flow, “Most people think the Dakota was named after the American state, but it was actually an acronym. For Douglas... Aircraft... Company... Transport... Aircraft. Change the letter C in Company to a K, and you have DAKOTA.”

  We continued our investigation, Freddie keeping up a flow of technical jargon, much of it above my head. Meanwhile, I tried to get a feel for the bigger picture.

  The good news was that our temporary home was probably the best we could hope for in these surroundings: obviously used by the locals as a forest shelter, it had been well waterproofed and the windows gave plenty of light. An effort had also been made to keep the area in front of the door reasonably clear of undergrowth. We had a good view of the sky, a bonus in a rainforest.

  It was in this clearing, eating our lunch, that we began considering the bad news.

  “We don’t want to spend too much time inside,” said Gudrun. “If it’s not raining, like now, it’s nice to get some fresh air. But we must be careful not to drift off too far. Always keep within sight of the plane. Terribly easy to get lost in places like this. Become disorientated. Go round in circles and thirty years later someone comes across your bones.”

  “We might have to move on,” Alexei pointed out. “If Su and the guide don’t come back. We can’t stay here forever.”

  “Of course Su’ll come back.” Freddie was indignant at the implication his girlfriend might do the dirty and abandon us.

  “Su might have no option,” Gudrun pointed out. “The people in the village might not allow her to come back.”

  “If they don’t return tomorrow, how long do we sit here doing nothing?” asked Alexei.

  It was the brutal question we dreaded; but could not be avoided.

  Gudrun thought for a moment, then replied, “There’s enough food for... well, depends how we ration it; probably another four or five days of normal eating. Longer if we start cutting back. But reducing calories means losing strength. Taken to extremes it leads to starvation. Like Scott of the Antarctic.”

  “This is hardly the Antarctic,” I said.

  “The principle’s the same. Food is our fuel. We need enough of it to stay fit. And ultimately, alive”

  “I’d have thought we can afford to stay here another three days if they don’t turn up,” said Alexei. “They say it’s only five or six hours to the river. Once there, we have a fighting chance.”

  “Assuming we can find the river,” I said. “The reason we have a guide is that we need one.”

  “We know the river lies to the east,” said Gudrun. “And not too far away. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west. We should be able to set a rough course.”

  “If we can see the sun,” I said. “It often seems to be rather cloudy. Anyway, aside from early and late, the sun is pretty near overhead. Tailor-made for... what was it you said... going round in circles.”

  “And our bones lying here for another thirty years,” added Alexei.

  Gudrun munched away silently for a while, chewing over the problem as well as her food. Eventually, she continued. “We mustn’t forget the weather.”

  “Are you expecting more like last night?”

  She nodded. “Winter is the dry season in Burma. The mon
th of May – that’s now - sees the start of the Southwest Monsoon. By June it will be very wet. We need to get to civilisation before that.”

  “Haven’t I seen somewhere that Assam - which can’t be a million miles away - is the wettest place on earth?” I said.

  “Place called Cherrapunji,” Freddie confirmed. “One thousand and forty-two inches in a year. A world record.”

  Was there any useless bit of information our genius could not regurgitate? Only the fact itself seemed to interest him, not its implications. Our plight in being close to the wettest place on the planet in the rainy season did not appear to concern him at all. Freddie was a man without emotion. Except when it came to Su. There, at least, he was showing signs of being human.

  For the rest of the day we wandered within our restricted perimeter, trying not to think about the dreadful possibility that we might be left to stew in the jungle. Freddie pottered around the ‘Dak’, humming to himself, seemingly convinced his Su would come back to him. A man without a worry in the world.

  I felt like taking a dose of Asperger’s myself.

  46

  The following day was one of the worst I can remember. On top of the fear that Su might be detained - or simply decamp, never to be seen again, another fear started to surface.

  Su would have arrived with a wad of dollars as a deposit. We were known to be flush with plenty more to pay the full price. Why supply us with a boat at all? Why not just come back, take our cash and then dispose of us? It was a hard world and they owed us no loyalty.

  By early afternoon I had convinced myself that if anyone did appear they would be intent on robbery followed by massacre. So when, shortly after 4pm, the familiar figure of the gnome hove into view, I grabbed Alexei and whisked us both behind the nearest tree.

  “What the hell...?” began Alexei.

  “Sshh!” I whispered.

  The gnome was followed by Su. Then came two men, one middle-aged, the other young. I could see no guns, nothing to signal evil intent. They were greeted by Gudrun. Smiles all round. Hugs between Su and Freddie.

  I gave them a few moments more. Then, feeling a complete idiot, I said to Alexei, “Can’t be too careful.”

  We joined the party.

  Alexei began a brew-up, while Su told us about her visit to the village, which stood just far enough from the river to avoid being flooded. The discussions had taken some time, because the gnome’s Burmese turned out to be rather shaky, while the village head man - the older of the two now with us - only spoke a dialect of Chinese the other two were not too familiar with.

  The sum of it, said Su, was that the village would be happy to provide us with a boat - price to be agreed, but that right now the situation was too tense for us to travel. There were armed units, both government and rebel, along the river. The priority for the village was keeping its head down and avoiding trouble. They could not risk being seen with foreigners.

  “Does that mean we have to stay here?” asked Gudrun.

  The answer was, yes.

  “For how long?”

  Su shrugged. “Until the military go away. Hopefully within a few days.”

  Gudrun was clearly frustrated, muttered something about paying top dollar danger money, but Su said there was nothing to discuss. The head man had been emphatic. We would have to wait.

  However... he also said he would like to leave his son - the younger of the two men from the village - with us as a sign of their good intent. This lad knew the jungle path to the village, but would only take us there in an emergency. Or when the coast was clear.

  Yet again we had no option. Gudrun gave her reluctant assent and we drank to the agreement in Alexei’s newly brewed tea. Gudrun and the headman, with Su as interpreter, then went off to hammer out the price to be paid when a boat was finally handed over to our satisfaction. I never got to know the figure.

  Next morning the gnome left on his return journey to Ruili and the head man went back to the village. Leaving Gudrun, Freddie, Su, Alexei and me to wait out events. Plus our new guest, the head man’s son, who came to be known as Jim.

  47

  Jim was not his real name; and he might have preferred not to be called Burmese. He was a Shan, one of the many ethnic groups at loggerheads with central government. Although they probably secretly supported the rebel Shan army, their biggest concern was to stay out of trouble. Hence our detention in the hills, where we would not cause them embarrassment.

  With shoulder length black hair, a hat like an upturned flower-pot and a mauve Longyi cloth to his ankles, Jim could not have looked less like Freddie, but they hit it off at once. Being about the same age was a good start, but it was more than that. Neither could speak the other’s language, but both wanted to bridge that gap.

  To say that Jim was the son of the village head-man may sound grand, but villages in these border areas were dirt poor, with rudimentary education. A different world to Freddie’s London.

  We now had a regular food supply, mainly fish from the river, rice and fruit: not much variety, perhaps, but someone would appear every second day, so it was all quite fresh and a great improvement on our previous pre-cooked supermarket fare. Above all, we no longer faced the spectre of going short, maybe starving.

  Our Dakota fuselage became a well organised shelter; everyone happy on their own little patch; a cooking rota established; almost like home.

  There was therefore little to keep us busy. This was frustrating for Gudrun, who wandered around like a lost soul, rearranging the undergrowth and muttering to herself. Her campaign to extricate Freddie from an alien power was half-way to success - she already had him out of China - but we were now stuck in a dangerous no-mans-land, with no finale in sight. And there was nothing she could do about it.

  Alexei and I, intermediate in age, also occupied a halfway house in outlook. Now that it seemed unlikely the locals would harm us, we were reasonably content to sit back for a while and see what happened. But for the three youngsters it was a holiday.

  Freddie, fixated on facts and seemingly unaffected by the usual stresses of life, set the tone. He saw Jim, the new kid on the block, as someone interesting and therefore worth getting to know. Su was just happy to follow in her boyfriend’s wake. As for Jim, our arrival must have been like a visit of aliens from outer space; the most exciting thing to have happened in the whole of his young life.

  That first morning started tentatively. Jim knew a few words of the Chinese patois that was used to speak with farmers across the border. And Su could just about understand it. So there was a communications bridge, albeit a shaky one. Freddie set about trying to improve that bridge.

  “Ask him if he speaks any English,” he said to Su.

  I thought it was a ridiculous question. But after Su’s translation, Jim’s face lit up and he said, very deliberately,

  “Man United. Chelsea. Buckham Palace.”

  Freddie corrected him, “BuckINGham Palace.”

  Big Burmese grin. “BuckINGham Palace.”

  “Buckingham Palace is not in the premier league.”

  More Burmese grin. “Buckingham Palace not premier league.”

  The English language may not have penetrated every corner of the globe. Yet. But English football has.

  It went on from there.

  They started swapping words. Phrases. With Su on hand to help out. In English, Burmese, and a version of Chinese which Su said was a long way from Mandarin. They revelled in this three-way tangle. Freddie, who knew a thing or two about aircraft, took Jim into the ‘Dak’ to explain the function of ailerons, elevators and airspeed indicators: vital information for a lad living in a muddy village!

  When it was Jim’s turn to be teacher, the subject was his world: trees, plants, insects, birds, the heavens day and night. This could be useful.

  Gudrun, Alexei and I watched, first in amusement, then in amazement. Whereas Jim’s Burmese remained gibberish to us, it wasn’t long before we could understand a fair amount of his Engl
ish. Before our ears, single weirdly accented words, like Man United and Chelsea, acquired verbs and a decent pronunciation. Jim began putting together sentences. In English.

  The same was clearly happening in the opposite direction. Freddie was learning Burmese. Fast. Su had commented on how well he had been picking up Mandarin. The two boys were those rare beings, language sponges, soaking up everything they heard.

  Jim and Freddie became so close, every waking hour spent in a mongrel-lingual banter, that I feared Su might become jealous. Not a bit of it. She viewed the whole process with a benign smile, occasionally helping to solve some abstruse language riddle. Freddie was a lucky lad to have found her.

  Our confinement last ten days. No doubt ten days of intense frustration for Gudrun, but a piece of luck for us. Because by the time we left, Freddie could communicate pretty well in Burmese.

  48

  It was the head-man who broke the good news, arriving late one afternoon during a nasty squall. By now it was mid-May, the Southwest Monsoon getting into its stride. More rain more humidity. Even here, up in the hills, the climate was becoming less pleasant.

  With greeting formalities over, it was show-time: Jim eager to demonstrate to dad his progress in English. Although dad was hardly able to appreciate all these foreign words, he seemed impressed. He was certainly impressed when Freddie did his piece in Burmese. Even more so when Su told him that his son’s English was at least as good as Freddie’s Burmese. It crossed my mind that the head-man might have sent his son not only to keep an eye on us, but also to learn something from these foreigners. If so, his scheme had paid off.

  Next morning we set off early, while it was still cool and before the sun could boil up those downpours. We had become strangely attached to our jungle hideaway; got to know every crinkle and corner of our old wreck. We had felt secure there. It was now time to return to a world where ‘security’ was an unknown concept.