She climbed into the shower, let the water stream over her, and went over the plan again. She was to take a room at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok and wait to be contacted by someone who would direct her to the people who would take her into China through Burma. Here she was, waiting, afraid to leave the room for fear she would miss the contact, feeling trapped. Anger rising, she got out of the shower, twisted her wet hair on top of her head, and pulled on her bikini. Sam's people had better move their asses or she was going to turn around . . .
And do what? she asked herself as she strode through the corridor. Go back to the status quo with Obregon? Ignore Marie-Claire? Forget about her mother? She stepped through the double doors and ran point-blank into a wall of heat but it didn't even slow her down. She dumped her towel and keys on an empty chaise, kicked off her sandals, and, almost without breaking stride, dived into the pool. The water pressing against her felt good, moving felt good. She swam the length of the pool underwater, surfaced for a gulp of air, swam back again. She did this twice more before climbing back out of the pool, her lungs aching.
When she reached for her towel, her keys clattered onto the tiles. Her vision was blurred, but she could see a note folded tightly and tied to the chain. With wet hands that would not work as fast as she wanted, she opened the paper and read: "You will be glad to go to Grand Palace this day at 3, see Jade Buddha. Sam says."
She buried her face in the towel, pretending to dry it, and when she looked up again a tall, blond man was standing in front of her, a drink in his hand.
"You swim well," he said in accented English. She dried her hair slowly, and wondered how he knew to speak English.
He repeated the remark in French. She did not smile, but she did not frown either. Her tone was careful: "Is there a reason I should be talking to you?"
"Ah, you do speak English. I thought you might like a drink. Dreadfully hot, this country, for an Austrian like me."
She managed a short, perfunctory laugh. Just a pickup, she thought, a standard line, it had happened to her enough times, she should have known. This thing with Sam was making her paranoid.
"Thank you no," she said, "I'm meeting someone."
She sat on the carpet in front of the Jade Buddha, her legs tucked under her so her feet were pointing at no one—an important point of courtesy to the Thai, who were seated all around her. She had positioned herself in front of a fan, so the heat was not oppressive. The Jade Buddha sat, high above her, a small green figure in a glass case. Amazing, she thought, the power of religion here, as the man to her right bowed to the Buddha and rose to leave, smiling at her and whispering, "Samsas." She looked at him blankly, not knowing if he was speaking to her or to someone else, or if it were some kind of prayer. Confused, she looked away. "Samsas," he repeated, and she got it: Sam says.
Outside in the courtyard he handed her a note, pressed his palms together, fingertips up, and left. It was from Sam, and it was dated three days ago. "Sorry I couldn't wait, but I'll be here when you get back. Take a bus to Chiang Mai, check in at the Railway Hotel, then go to the Night Bazaar to a shop called Srisupan Gems. Ask for Phorn. He will make all arrangements. I'll be waiting for you in Bangkok when you get back. Happy trails."
She leaned against one of the mythological beasts that guarded the Chapel Royal and grimaced. Happy trails. Wrong, Sam. You've got it wrong.
She arrived in Chiang Mai in that gray period between sunset and dark. The evening air smelled of smoke and jasmine. She climbed into a pedicab, told the driver to take her to the night bazaar, and leaned back to try to get a sense of this northern town. It was the jumping-off spot for the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Laos and Burma came together, and where the opium poppy was the largest cash crop. For all its notoriety, she thought, the town seemed prosaic. Even in the gathering dark, she could see shards of light glint off the golden stele of a monastery behind a high wall. She stopped at a food stall and pointed to the green coconuts piled in a bucket of ice. With a machete, the man sliced the top off one and, with great precision, placed a straw in it. Then he handed it to her with a flourish and a smile.
"Thank you," she said, pressing her palms together in a wai, before paying him. It was the right thing to do. The man broke into giggles, as the Thai tended to do, and insisted she sit on his chair to enjoy her drink.
She took two long, deep sips of the cold coconut water and then asked him to direct her to the Srisupan shop. He repeated the name twice before he began calling out wildly. Presently, a small boy appeared, and May understood that she was to follow him.
She had a hard time keeping up, as the child ducked between the stalls—dozens of them, set up every night in the broad wasteland only a few minutes from the heart of town. "Wait," she called out, but the child scurried ahead, she had simply to plow her way through the night throngs, muttering, "sorry, sorry."
Phorn was short and thick with a heavy smile perpetually in place. He wore an immaculate white knit golf shirt, shiny green trousers, and dress shoes. "Oh yes," he said when she told him who she was. "Everything is quite okay." It was a phrase she would hear over and over again in weeks to come. That night she had no idea that it was applied as soothing balm, that all it meant was, "Everything is out of your hands."
When she came out of the Railway Hotel the next morning a small girl, about eight, approached her carrying a huge rattan tray. On it were stacked a dozen small woven cages; inside each were two tiny sparrows fluttering madly.
"Ten baht, madame," the girl said, holding out one of the little baskets in which the birds batted wildly.
May laughed. "Whatever would I do with them?" she said out loud. The girl's eyes were opaque; she did not understand. A pedicab driver standing nearby answered for her: "You set them free, madam. Make a wish and if they fly off together, your wish is granted."
"Ten baht," the girl repeated.
How perverse, May thought, to capture some poor creature for the pleasure of releasing it. While she was trying to open the cage she made her wish: Hayes, to see Hayes.
She stood, watching the birds fly off together, until tears stung her eyes. Suddenly she whirled and went back into the hotel, to the desk. Screw secrecy, screw Sam. On a sheet of paper she wrote: Going to find my mother. Meet me in Hong Kong, Peninsula Hotel, April 20. Please. With painstaking care, she printed his name and Paris address and gave the man at the desk fifty baht to send the telegram at once. He looked at the money, dissolved into a delighted fit of giggling, and got right to it.
For three days they traveled, first by jeep, then across a lake on a boat that sat so low in the water her feet were perpetually wet, through a forest on elephant back and finally, by foot. Her companions were Phorn, still in his golf shirt and shiny green pants, but now wearing bright blue Adidas running shoes, a woman of the Meo tribe with black teeth and matching cotton costume heavily embroidered in bright reds and yellows and with loops of silver weighing on her chest, and a wiry young man who was a mahout, or elephant handler.
Only Phorn spoke English, and not very well. She was never quite certain if he understood and didn't want to give her a straight answer, or if he simply did not understand. For this reason, most of the journey, for May, was spent in silence. She did not mind; the heat and the dust and the insects drained her of any but the most immediate concerns. Tiny mites worked their way under the moneybelt she wore, biting her until she had what looked like a red ring separating the top of her from the bottom. Her stomach was giving her trouble, in spite of the medicine she had brought along. She was as physically miserable as she had ever been, and she had to concentrate simply to keep going, to keep her equilibrium. The worst of it was, she had a feeling that things were going to get harder before they got easier. Occasionally, when she watched the Meo woman squatting in the dirt preparing their food . . . stuffing sticky rice in hollowed-out sections of sugarcane, wrapping it in leaves and roasting it deep in the fire . . . she would wonder what the woman could be thinking, how she felt about a
strange English-speaking woman in an Abercrombie safari suit who could only sit and watch.
She did not know when they crossed the border into Burma; it must have happened on the third day. All that afternoon they had traveled by foot along a stony dry riverbed, a canopy of teak and bamboo shading them, the tangled jungle rising on either side. As the light began to lower, Phorn motioned for them to stop. At first she thought they were going to make camp, but logic told her it was too early. Instead, they waited.
After a while. May asked, "Do you suppose you could tell me why we are waiting—is someone going to meet us, and where we will be going now?"
"Oh yes, someone," Phorn answered with his usual set smile. "Everything is quite okay."
There were three of them, small and wiry men in oddly matched clothes—jeans, sneakers, army fatigues, and floppy hats. They carried rifles and shotguns and led a string of sturdy little ponies, each carrying a heavy pack. One of the men, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, set to work. He took the pack off one of the ponies, and repositioned it. Meanwhile, the others had engaged Phorn in a furious conversation in a dialect she had never heard.
It was about her, she knew that. The men would look at her and glance away. They sat on their haunches under a giant teak tree, smoking and chattering. She lit a cigarette too, and filled her lungs with the harsh dry smoke. This feels wrong, she thought, and bit the inside of her cheek. But I've gone too far to turn back.
Phorn approached her. She made no move to meet him, instead, she took another long drag on the cigarette.
"Madam May," he said, "I am very sorry to say, these men say need more money."
"More money? Sam already paid them."
"Not so much enough. Very hard, getting men to take to China. Very hard time."
"Sam made all of the arrangements, they were paid in advance."
"Oh no, Madam, they say he pay not enough."
She sighed. "How much?"
"Two thousand U.S. dollars."
"Christ!" she blurted angrily, not knowing if she should be angry at Sam or if they were extorting more money from her. "Tell them two thousand dollars is all I have, and if they take that now I will be left with nothing," she lied. "Tell them they can have a thousand dollars now, and the rest when I return to Bangkok."
Phorn walked the few steps to the other camp, spoke rapidly for a few moments, and then came back to say, "Give them fifteen hundred dollars, everything will be quite okay."
"Sure," she said, wanting to slap the stupid grin off his face, "sure it will. But tell them they are leaving me with nothing."
Phorn looked at her, for the first time not bothering to mask his disapproval. "Five hundred U.S. dollars is not nothing."
She leaned against the tree and closed her eyes. He was right. In this part of the world $500 U.S. was a fortune. And they could have demanded all of it, they could easily have taken it from her.
She continued the journey north with the Meo woman and one of the Burmese, an old man with a shock of white hair and enough English to explain that she was now in Kachin territory, and what she had just encountered was a caravan of jade smugglers on their way to the Thai border, that he was to deliver her to the Chinese who would then take her where she wanted to go in Yunnan Province.
"Who are these Chinese?" she said, then rephrased her question. "Why do the Chinese come to Burma?"
"To Kachin," he corrected her, "Here, is Kachin land. They come for jadeite."
"Ah," May said, beginning to understand. The Kachin tribes had always ruled the north of Burma, where the best jade mines were. The civil war continued, with the Kachin holding their own ground. But now even the Chinese were coming to them for the fine green jadeite mined in these mountains.
They walked for another day, at times picking through jungle so thick the old man had to cut a way with a machete. She could feel the sweat caking on her body; her shoulders ached and sharp pains shot up the back of her neck. Her mouth and throat were parched, even her eyes felt hot. She tried to loosen her shirt; her underpants began to bind her and she wished she could take them off altogether. She swung her backpack off and dragged it for a time, but then she put it back on when the woman—in her heavy black dress, carrying a load of pots and pans on her head—moved around her, to take the second position behind the old man.
"If I ever get out of this . . ." May was beginning to say to herself when they came into the clearing. Two small thatched huts, a rusted frame of what may once have been a jeep and several haystacks. She hoped she could make it as far as the water jar. At first she did not notice the small knot of men huddled in the shade cast by one of the huts.
Now it was the old man's turn to confer with one of the men who was, she could see now, Chinese. They spoke earnestly for a few minutes, then he turned and motioned her over. "This man say cannot go so far now," he said. "He say too much long they go, man no come."
Her legs gave out under her and she sat down hard, hitting her tailbone on the exposed root of a great tree. She wailed with pain. The old man came to squat beside her, his face registering concern. That was all she needed: she began to cry, short, soft sobs came gulping out of her.
The Chinese stood staring at her. The Meo woman busied herself picking something off her arms. The old Burmese man made soft cooing sounds.
"Okay," she said, rubbing her hand across her face and mixing the sweat and dirt in a large smear. She took a deep gulp. "Okay. Now ask him if he wants more money."
The old man looked puzzled, but he did as she asked.
"No," he said, "no money. Nothing. Can't go."
"Why?" she wailed. "Why can't we go?"
"Man no come," was the only way he could think to explain it.
"So I can't go on? I can't go to China and you can't even tell me why?"
The old man stood there, looking at her and shaking his head in sorrow. She felt numb. This can't be, she thought, Sam was so sure, Sam had made her believe. A sharp cramp ripped through her stomach and she bent forward, to ease the pain. Sam was wrong, and I was wrong to believe him. The sick, empty feeling of failure went through her like a wave.
She looked at the watch she had bought in Bangkok. In eight days Hayes would be in Hong Kong.
Or wouldn't be, either way.
There was time, at least, to get back.
Something dark seemed to hover and settle in her chest. Her mother was just over those mountains, but it might as well be a million miles. She lifted her eyes—they did not seem that formidable, not so high or wild as mountains she had crossed in the Pacific Rim. She put her hands on her head. Why? Why couldn't she seem to do this thing, this one thing? A small, hiccoughing sob broke out of her as she accepted her failure.
The old man took them back, until they met another smuggling caravan heading south, toward Thailand. The old man arranged for this one to take her for $200 U.S. By now she and the Meo woman had worked out a certain routine: for food, for water, for waiting while one or the other went into the bushes. The woman's foul odor no longer offended May; she suspected it was because she smelled as bad herself.
She was trudging mindlessly behind one of the ponies when it stumbled and fell. For a minute she had to balance, to keep from tumbling herself. Several of the men gathered around the beast, two of them taking off its load while the third helped it up again. May sank to the ground nearby, resting against a stand of bamboo. One of the men tossed the heavy bags from the pony's back to the ground beside her, and a brown rock about the size of a football fell out and rolled to her. She reached to touch it, turning it until she noticed a shiny square that had been cut and polished. Through this square she could see into the boulder: a deep green and, below that, a pure lavender color. It was jade, a huge chunk of it, to be sold in Chiang Mai. God, she thought, watching the man who stood guard, his rifle drawn. How did Sam get mixed up in this?
At that moment the guard called out sharply, and the other men grabbed their weapons and scattered to the edges of the carav
an, the animals inside. May looked for the Meo woman, and found her crouching in the bushes, her eyes black with fear. She crawled in beside her and they sat silent for a time, only the ponies making an occasional shuddering sound. Then two of the men moved off, into thick underbrush on both sides of the riverbed. May closed her eyes and thought: It can't get any worse.
She had no idea who was hunting them, but she knew that someone was as they moved through the southern part of Burma. She could not sleep more than a few minutes at a time, she was exhausted, her body too tired to feel the aches and bites and cuts, her feet swollen and bruised and molding inside her walking boots. She could not slow down, she had to go when they went, stop when they stopped. She ate the rice the Meo woman cooked, and never questioned whatever else was in it—though she could make out bits of bamboo shoots and vegetables, she did not know what some of the other things were. Now it was simply a matter of lasting; she wasn't certain she had any control over her own body, she would go as far as she could and stop. That was all. And if that happened, she had no doubt that they would leave her behind, she meant nothing at all to them.
But they did not leave her behind. When she could not get up again after a rest period, they rearranged the loads the ponies were carrying and lifted her onto one of the small, hardy creatures. Her long legs almost touched the ground, and its backbone cut into her, but she didn't care, she was so glad not to have to take another step.
Gift of the Golden Mountain Page 32
