She joined him, noting ruefully that even here the sound of Mr. Gunfer's snoring competed with the shrilling of cicadas in the forest. The air had cooled; a sliver of half-moon hung in the sky and a lantern glowed in the window of the guard hut, carving a circle of gold in the darkness.
She must have sighed, for Mr. Ba Sein turned his head to observe her. He said, "You grow tired, Lady Waring?"
"There's a limit to how long one can sleep on a stone floor night after night," she said ruefully. "And there are also—I admit—too many things to think about." She hesitated and then said frankly, "I am finding it very tedious— for the first time in many years—to think of anyone other than myself. Mr. Ba Sein, I would like to apologize for my rudeness to you when we first met. I am being forced to realize—naturally against my will," she said dryly, "that I have become a very disagreeable and arrogant woman."
"Have you?" he said politely.
She smiled at him. "You know it very well, Mr. Ba Sein .. . When I met Helen Caswell I dismissed her—no, condemned her—as a witless and boring woman, apologetic for her very existence, and I did not respond well at all to Mr. Baharian, whose heroic proportions now appear to conceal a heroic nature as well. It's unsettling and it's making me cross. I don't like change, even in my opinions; I find it threatening."
"To what?" asked Mr. Ba Sein with interest. "And why?"
"I'm in danger of losing my anger," she told him. "I need my anger, I have been sustained by anger, I can't imagine how I'd live without my anger, and now—"
Mr. Ba Sein chuckled. "You speak with such fierceness that I almost see you shaking your fist at the heavens in your rage."
"Heavens? If you mean God I am perhaps angriest of all at God," she said tartly. "I stopped believing in him on the day that I heard Eric had been killed."
"Oh?"
She nodded. "I demanded answers of him," she said. "I demanded explanations and comfort—I suppose even bitterness and sterility are prayers of a sort—but God was silent. What is one to conclude?" she said with irony. "God did not appear to me in a vision, I had no healing dreams, I experienced no sense of Eric being with me still. God was deaf."
Mr. Ba Sein smiled. "What a burden you people in the West place on God! In the East, in much of the world, as you no doubt realize, it is believed that we live many lives, returning to this earth again and again, bringing consequences and responsibilities with us from past lives to meet again and work through. The stream of experiences that we call 'good,' and those we call 'bad,' come to us not from God but from ourselves, from what we've been in the past and what we make of ourselves in the present. Earth is a learning ground, that's all."
She gave him a sharp glance. "I suppose you mean what Gen called kan and what in India is called karma—as you see, I am familiar with the words," she said with a sniff. "There are theosophists in England, and anthroposophists as well. Rather bizarre people, I might add, the women tend to wear woolen stockings and beads, and are very earnest."
Amused, he said, "Yes, and Mrs. Caswell is witless and boring, and Mr. Baharían no more than a large and untidy man."
She laughed in spite of herself. "Touché, Mr. Ba Sein ... As a matter of curiosity, do Buddhists believe in God?"
He said in his tranquil voice, "The Buddha has said that God is like a moon reflected in a thousand bowls of water."
"That sounds rather detached."
"Does it? You in the West paint life on such a small canvas, Lady Waring, we in the East see life as a long, long struggle toward perfect knowledge, a procession of souls given flesh to love, hate, kill, victimize, forgive, sow, reap, create and destroy, be sinners or saints until at last we break through our shells to the God inside of us." He shook his head. "But in only one lifetime?"
"Procession," she mused. "A procession in the dark, then, lighted only by a candle."
"And the candle," he said, "is God."
She sighed. "So we return to God again—I'd prefer to return to my anger, Mr. Ba Sein."
He nodded. "One feels it in you, yes."
"And what would I be without it when it's all that's fueled me?"
"Drop it and find out!" he said with a laugh.
They had been noticed by the guards, one of whom had left the hut to stand in the glow of the lantern and watch them. Pointing to him Mr. Ba Sein said, "We are making them uneasy, they need their sleep, too."
He rose to his feet and so did she, but she touched his arm, her voice serious. "You've not answered my question, Mr. Ba Sein, what would I be?"
"Emptied," he told her gently.
"Then I would be nothing."
"On the other hand," he said softly as they entered the temple, "on the other hand when a gourd is hollowed out it becomes empty and is of great use to the world because of its emptiness." And with a smile, "Good night, Lady Waring, I wish you a restful sleep now."
12
Already their days had begun to have a dreamlike quality, blurred by the monotony and the tedium, the hours so alike, so long and so difficult to fill that only darkness and daylight defined their passing, and it seemed inconceivable that they had been confined to the temple for only a week. Each morning Gen went down to the river with a companion and checked for a note under the rock from Ba Tu. Grass and rods were found for the cloth puppets. The rice was brought at nine and again around six in the evening; Baharían did his laps in the compound each morning and afternoon. U Ba Sein and Gen planned their marionette show and while he taught her several of the great yokthe pwe stories she in turn taught words of Burmese to Mrs. Caswell and to Miss Thorald, who read Vampire Love and knitted, unraveled her knitting and began again. U Ba Sein meditated, Lady Waring read Emerson and went on to sample Lao-tse, and Mr. Gunfer made his way through Gen's book of crossword puzzles.
And they talked and they argued.
"What," asked Mr. Gunfer distastefully, "is a four-letter word for 'tootsies'? "
"Feet," said Baharían with authority.
"And a song entitled 'Oh, You Beautiful' what?"
" 'Doll,' " said Mrs. Caswell. Turning to Gen, "What do you want from your new life in America?"
"Want from life in America?" she repeated, puzzled. "That's what I would like. Life from America."
"I'll rephrase that," Mrs. Caswell said, smiling. "What do you look forward to, hope for, want for yourself?"
"Well," Gen told her earnestly, "U Ba Sein says this life is an important one for me and I want to learn what he means."
"I see," said Mrs. Caswell, giving U Ba Sein a quick, startled glance across the room. "This particular life, you mean, speaking from the—er—Buddhist viewpoint of many lives?"
With a nod, "Yes, I want to learn why I've lived in Burma, and why my mother died of typhoid seven years ago and my father last week. These matters are important to me."
"Philosophy," said Mrs. Caswell, nodding. "But 1 really don't think—"
"And at the end of my life," Gen said firmly, "I want— oh, to be a very wise person, like U Ba Sein."
"Not rich? Not happily married with many children?"
Gen brushed these aside with a wave of her hand. "Wise.
I want—oh, I want that very much. But wisdom needs much living, so what I want—yes—is life in America."
Quite astonished by Gen's firmness, even by the passion with which she spoke, Mrs. Caswell was reduced to saying, "I see."
"And what," said Mr. Gunfer that evening, "is a five-letter word for a rich man?"
Baharían said, "Being a socialist you'd not know, I suppose. You did say you're a socialist?"
"Try 'nabob,' " suggested Mrs. Caswell, counting on her fingers.
"But a socialist turned prosperous," pointed out Lady Waring with sarcasm. "At least I assume such books as Cynthia Gore has written have made rather a lot of money. "
Mr. Gunfer said with equal sarcasm, "Enough so that I could come to Burma and be captured by insurgents, yes."
"As a socialist I daresay your sympathies would lie wi
th the insurgents then, Mr. Gunfer?"
He said stiffly, "I don't approve of their methods—"
"—not when they include you, of course, no."
"—but I certainly approve of their plans and dreams for making Burma a socialist country."
"Is that what they want?"
"From what I've heard and read, yes."
"So you're a Communist," she said accusingly.
"Not at all. Socialism," he told her, "is quite quite different, but not to your liking either, I'm sure, since in the distribution of wealth and land, Lady Waring, you would certainly have to share your fortune."
She sniffed. "What fortune? Since the war, England is a ravaged country with shortages of everything. I cannot believe this would have happened if Mr. Churchill was still our Prime Minister, it's been a great shock to me, the country turning to the Labor Party."
"I'll bet. How many castles have you had to sell?"
"No castles, Mr. Gunfer," she told him coldly, "but it's been necessary to sell a country home that's been in the family for generations."
"Country home," he said savagely. "May one inquire how many rooms in this 'country home'?"
Lady Waring hesitated, and Gen, accustomed now to battles waged, guessed that Mr. Gunfer was going to win this one, and she grinned. "Thirty rooms," said Lady Waring.
"Leaving you with—?"
"I will not be interrogated, Mr. Gunfer!"
"The shortages, the ravages, no doubt being only among the poor, Lady Waring. You suffer shock? In an ideal society you would have only one home, and everyone, Lady Waring," he said triumphantly, "would also have a home."
She rallied hotly. "In such a society, Mr. Gunfer, you would be writing tracts, not books of fiction that bring you money for trips abroad!"
"You speak like—"
"Oh dear, do please stop," cried Mrs. Caswell, and when both of them turned to glare at her, "1 do so mind loud voices."
U Ba Sein intervened, saying gently, "This could perhaps be continued tomorrow for it grows very late and it is time, is it not, to sleep now?"
"I don't know why," grumbled Lady Waring, "when tomorrow will be exactly the same as today."
* * *
But the next day was not the same at all because in the morning Colonel Wang paid them his second visit, bringing with him harsh news. Initially his appearance was a welcome relief to Lady Waring because worry had increasingly begun to supplant her boredom and she was impatient for news. During their first hours and days of captivity she had pooh-poohed the delays that Colonel Wang had foreseen but he had made it all too clear what lay ahead if Rangoon proved unresponsive, and each day when Baharian made a mark in charcoal on the wall, denoting another day of imprisonment, her confidence—or had it been her arrogance, she wondered now—had grown a little less. This morning when a sliver of sun could be seen over the fence that blocked their view, and when Gen and Mr. Gunfer had gone under guard to the river to bring back water, she went out into the compound to find Baharian and tell him so.
"But yes," he had said, looking down at her with kind eyes. "Why do you think I stride so ridiculously around this compound twice a day? Soon I will have to begin running to quiet my thoughts, and for a man my size—"
"Perhaps we should be like Mr. Ba Sein," she said. "Nothing seems to worry him, but of course he doesn't know, you and Miss Thorald are the only ones who overheard Colonel Wang. Should we worry?" she asked him. "This is our eighth morning here, does this mean trouble, is it possible there is resistance in Rangoon to freeing us?"
"More likely some resistance to meeting all of Colonel Wang's demands," he said, and led her to the step of the temple and bid her sit down while he struggled into his shirt. "One must look at the bright side, Lady Waring: none of us has become ill from malaria, or from the water—"
"Yet," she said grimly.
"Mr. Gunfer has turned almost civil, and slowly we acquire a taste for cold rice—"
"Speak for yourself."
"The small one has offered to provide meat for us—"
"You mean to catch rats with the slingshot," said Lady Waring with a shudder. "Is it really possible they ate them here during the war?"
"Anything is possible," he assured her. "I myself went ashore in France shortly after D-Day and was pinned down for three days by mortar fire in a cellar without a crumb of food. One more day and—" He shrugged. "Who knows? We at least have rice to eat."
"Yes, tirelessly and tiresomely."
"And we can all look forward presently to being entertained by a marionette show."
"You have still not soothed my worries, Mr. Baharían. "
"They are mine, too, Lady Waring. All—the water bearers return."
Watching Gen and Mr. Gunfer appear from behind the guard hut she said crossly, "Why does that girl volunteer now each morning to go down the hill and bring up water? It's a great deal too much for her, she's thin enough."
"The young do not like to be caged."
"The old do not like to be caged either," she said tartly.
Mr. Gunfer nodded to them, deposited a heap of grass on the earth and carried his bucket inside. Gen, looking discouraged, put down her bucket on the step, dropped a bundle of bamboo stems and began flexing her stiffened fingers. When Baharían said, "You look discouraged, small one," she managed a smile but it was feeble: there was still no message under the rock from Ba Tu, and she too wanted news.
It was now that Colonel Wang appeared, marching briskly across the compound accompanied by two satellites in shapeless khaki. "We have spoken of the devil, as the saying goes," said Baharían, "and now he arrives. Let us hope he comes as a saint to tell us we are to be freed."
Colonel Wang gestured them into the temple as he passed, and the three of them followed. Inside, Miss Thorald had interrupted her reading of Vampire Love to light a fire, Mr. Gunfer was pouring water from his bucket into the kettle, and Mrs. Cas well, eyes closed, was again reciting her numbers, "77, hni, thoun, lei, nga, hcau ..." but upon hearing them she opened her eyes and rose nervously to her feet.
Gen said eagerly, "Are we leitte? Are we free?"
He ignored this. Folding his arms he looked them over, his eyes moving from one face to another. "You look well," he said with a nod. "Good—now I wish to check your names again." Bringing out a notebook he added, "You will tell me if any are in error... Lady Sara Waring, London, England . . . Helen F. Caswell, Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A. ... T. Baharian, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Calvin Gunfer, New Hope, Pennsylvania, U.S.A
Lina T. Lerina, U.S.A., no other address given . ..
Mr. Ba Sein of Rangoon."
"And now there's Gen," said Mrs. Caswell, pointing to her.
The colonel looked her over distastefully. "Last name?"
"Ferris."
But he neither wrote it down nor asked for a passport so that Gen felt she'd been rendered invisible and of no consequence, and she hated him for this. A low Buddhist, she thought, consigning him to Awizi, the nethermost hell, and hoped that her thamma deva would take note of this.
"And now," said Lady Waring firmly, "you will please tell us what is happening in Rangoon to delay our release."
He laughed. "You are not so valuable as you believed," he said, looking at Lady Waring and obviously entertained by this thought. "They have so far refused our demands."
"That's impossible," said Lady Waring.
"What are your demands?" asked Mr. Gunfer.
"They can't have refused all of them!" cried Mrs. Caswell.
"No? Our demands are not your business but I can tell you they are being ignored, which is very foolish of them because the rice we give each day is taken from the mouths of my soldiers. Times are not good here, not even money can buy rice when there is none, and we cannot feed you much longer. My soldiers did not become soldiers to see their rice given to Europeans. A deadline has now been given to Rangoon."
They waited, eyes riveted on the colonel; a deadline did not sou
nd attractive.
"We have given Rangoon forty-eight more hours," he said. "If our conditions are not—"
He stopped as one of his soldiers carried in their morning bucket of rice. Speaking sharply in Burmese he told him not to interrupt, to be silent, to wait, and when Gen gave the young man a sympathetic glance she saw that it was Ko Thein. So he is back on duty, she thought, but although she tried to catch his eye he hung his head and stared at the floor, as if in shame at being chastised by his superior; a second later Gen forgot him when she heard what the colonel said.
"I was saying that Rangoon has been given a deadline," he continued curtly. "If our conditions are not met in forty-eight hours—" He shrugged and his voice softened. "I am sorry but I have no choice in this matter, I cannot let you go free and I cannot go on feeding you."
"Meaning what?" faltered Mrs. Caswell.
"Meaning you will have to be executed.., shot."
"Executed!" cried Mr. Gunfer.
"You'd kill us?" gasped Gen.
"Oh dear God," murmured Mrs. Caswell. "And what day is today?"
"Today is what you call Tuesday," he said crisply. "If there has been no action from Rangoon by Thursday morning at this hour—" He shrugged. "So be it."
Oh where is my thamma deva now, wondered Gen, her heart jumping as she thought how quickly Thursday would come. She turned to look for U Ba Sein and discovered that he was watching her—she was visible to him at least, and of consequence—but what did he see when he looked at her so closely? He had told her that her thamma deva had not abandoned her but how could she believe him when death was threatened in forty-eight hours and Ba Tu had not returned or left a message? And if she was to die, would she go to one of the four Buddha States of Punishment, to a Seat of the Nats, or would she go to the Christian heaven or hell?
Who am I, she cried silently, and in despair: which? who? in what can I believe?
U Ba Sein smiled at her, a smile so serene that it startled her, and into her thoughts flowed the words he'd spoken earlier: you will be, still, a visitor from the stars. These words steadied her, she straightened her shoulders and her chin went up, she smiled shyly back at U Ba Sein and returned her attention to Colonel Wang.
The Incident at Badamya Page 12
