by Daniel Mason
What more can I write? I spend hours looking out at the Shan Hills, trying to decide how to describe them for you, for I feel that only by doing so can I take some of what I have seen home with me. I wander the markets, following the flow of oxcarts and parasols along the rutted roads, or I sit by the river watching the fishermen, waiting for the steamer from Rangoon that would bring news of my departure, or bring me home. The waiting has begun to grow unbearable, as has the oppressive heat and dust that smother the city. Any decision would be better than none.
My dear, I realize now that in all the frightening possibilities we discussed before I left, we never considered what now seems most likely: that I will return home with nothing. Perhaps these words are only the ramblings of boredom or loneliness, but when I write “nothing,” I mean not only that the Erard remains untuned, but that I have seen a world that is very different, yet I have not begun to understand it. Coming here has created a strange feeling of emptiness in me that I didn’t know I had, and I don’t know whether heading into the jungle will fill it, or tear it open further. I wonder about why I came here, about how you said I needed this, about how I am now set to return home, how I will have to face this as a failure.
Katherine, words were never my medium, and now I cannot think of music for what I feel. But it is growing dark, and I am by the river, so I must go. My only solace is that I will see you soon and that we will be together again. I remain,
Your loving husband,
Edgar
He folded the letter and rose from the benches by the Irrawaddy. He walked home slowly through the city streets. At the small house, he opened the door to find Khin Myo waiting.
She held an envelope and handed it to him without speaking. There was no address, only his name scrawled in bold letters. He looked at her, and she stared back, expressionless. For a brief moment, he held it together with his letter to Katherine. As soon as he opened it, he recognized the elegant hand.
Dear Mr. Drake,
It is my deep regret that our first personal correspondence must be burdened by such urgency, but I believe that you are well aware of the circumstances that have jeopardized your visit to Mae Lwin. My impatience must only be equaled by yours. In the attack on our camp, the strings belonging to the fourth-octave A key were snapped by a musket ball. As you know, it is impossible to play any meaningful piece without this note, a tragedy that those in the War Office cannot fathom. Please proceed to Mae Lwin immediately. I have sent a messenger to Mandalay to convey you and Ma Khin Myo to our fort. Please meet him tomorrow on the road to Mahamuni Pagoda. I take full responsibility for your decision and your safety. If you stay in Mandalay, you will be on a ship to England before the end of the week.
A.J.C.
Edgar lowered his hand. He knows my name, he thought.
He looked at Khin Myo. “You are going too?”
“I will tell you more soon,” she said.
The following morning, they rose before dawn and boarded an oxcart full of pilgrims bound for Mahamuni Pagoda, on the southern outskirts of Mandalay. The pilgrims stared at him and talked merrily. Khin Myo leaned close to Edgar. “They are saying that they are pleased there are some British Buddhists.”
In the sky, dark clouds moved slowly over the Shan Hills. The oxcart rattled along the road. Edgar clutched his bag to his chest. At Khin Myo’s suggestion, he had left most of his belongings in Mandalay, taking with him only a spare change of clothes and important papers, and tools to mend the piano. Now he could hear the faint clink of the metal as they struggled over ruts in the road. At Mahamuni Pagoda they disembarked, and Khin Myo led him along a small path to where a boy stood waiting. He was dressed in flowing blue trousers and a blue shirt, with a checkered cloth tied about his waist. Edgar had read that many of the Shan men, like the Burmans, kept their hair long, and noticed that the boy wore his wrapped in a colorful turban that looked like something between the Burmese gaung-baung and those of the Sikh soldiers. He held the reins of two small ponies.
“Mingala ba,” he said to them, bowing slightly. “Hello, Mr. Drake.”
Khin Myo smiled at him. “Mr. Drake, this is Nok Lek, he will take us to Mae Lwin. His name means ‘little bird.’” She paused, then added, “Don’t let this mislead you. He is one of Anthony Carroll’s best fighters.”
Edgar looked at the boy. He seemed scarcely fifteen years old.
“Do you speak English?” he asked.
“A little,” said the boy with a proud grin, and reached down to take their bags.
“You are being modest,” said Khin Myo. “You are learning very fast.”
Nok Lek began to secure the bags to the saddles. “I hope you know how to ride, Mr. Drake,” he said when he had finished. “These are Shan ponies. Smaller than English horses, but very good in mountains.”
“I’ll try my best to hold on,” said Edgar.
“Ma Khin Myo will ride with me,” said Nok Lek. He put both hands on the pony’s back and leapt lightly into its saddle. He was barefoot, and he slipped his feet into a pair of rope stirrups, holding the hemp between his first and second toes. Edgar noticed the boy’s calves, muscles like knotted ropes. Nervously, he looked at his own pony: English metal stirrups. Khin Myo climbed on behind Nok Lek and sat sideways with both feet together. Edgar was surprised that the little animal could walk under such a load. He mounted his own pony. Without speaking, they began to move east.
Above the Shan Hills, a smudge of light spread up the sky. Edgar expected to see the sun rise, to mark the day as the start of the final leg of a journey he had begun to think he would never make. But it was hidden in the clouds and the land brightened gradually. Ahead, Khin Myo opened a small parasol.
They rode east for several hours at a slow pace, along a road that ran past dry rice fields and empty granaries. Along the way they passed processions into town, men leading oxen to market, women with heavy loads balanced on their heads. Soon the crowds thinned, and they found themselves alone. They crossed a small stream and turned south on a smaller, dustier road between two wide, fallow rice fields.
Nok Lek turned back. “Mr. Drake, we go faster now. It is days to Mae Lwin, and the roads here are good, not like in Shan States.”
Edgar nodded, and gripped his reins. Nok Lek hissed at his pony; it began to trot. Edgar kicked at the flanks of his. Nothing happened. He kicked harder. The pony didn’t move. Nok Lek and Khin Myo were getting smaller in the distance. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He hissed.
They galloped south along a small road that paralleled the Shan Hills to the east and the Irrawaddy to the west. Edgar stood in the saddle with one hand on the reins, the other holding his hat. As they rode, he found himself laughing, thrilled by the speed. On the hunt, they had only walked the ponies, and he tried to remember when he had last ridden a horse this fast. It must have been nearly twenty years ago, when he and Katherine had spent a holiday with a cousin of hers who had a small farm in the country. He had almost forgotten the pounding thrill of the speed.
They stopped in the late morning at a rest station for pilgrims and travelers, and Nok Lek bought food from a nearby house, curries and scented rices and salads of mashed tea wrapped in the leaves of a banana plant. As they ate, Nok Lek and Khin Myo spoke in rapid Burmese. At one point Khin Myo apologized to Edgar for not speaking in English, “There is much we need to talk about. And I think you would be bored by our conversation.”
“Please don’t mind me,” said Edgar, who was quite content with their spot in the shade, from which he could see the blackened rice fields. He knew they were burned by farmers in preparation for the rains, but it was difficult to convince himself that it wasn’t the sun’s doing. They stretched for miles, from the river to the abrupt rise of the Shan Hills. Like the walls of a fortress, he thought as he stared at the mountains, Or maybe they are falling, like fabric over the edge of the table, pooling on the floor in small hills and valleys. His eyes searched vainly for a road that broke the facade, but foun
d none.
They rested briefly after lunch, and then remounted the ponies. They rode all afternoon and into the evening, when they stopped in a village, and Nok Lek knocked on the door of a small house. A shirtless man came out and the two spoke for several minutes. The man led them to the back, where there was another, smaller raised structure. Here they tied the ponies, rolled out mats on the bamboo floor, and hung mosquito nets from the ceiling. The entrance to the hut was to the south, and Edgar arranged his mattress so that his feet rested by the door, a precaution against any creatures that might visit during the night. Immediately Nok Lek grabbed the mat and turned it. “Don’t point your head to the north,” he said sternly. “Very bad. That is the direction we bury the dead.”
Edgar lay down next to the boy. Khin Myo went to bathe, and later slipped back quietly through the door. She lifted her mosquito net and climbed under it. Her mat lay inches from Edgar’s, and he pretended he was sleeping and watched her arrange her bed beside him. Soon she lay down and soon her breathing changed, and in sleep she shifted so that her face rested close to his. Through the thin cotton of the two mosquito nets, he could feel her breath, soft and warm, imperceptible were it not for the stillness and the heat.
Nok Lek woke them early. Without speaking, they packed the thin mattresses and mosquito nets. Khin Myo left and returned with her face freshly painted with thanaka. They loaded the ponies and rejoined the road. It was still dark. As he rode, Edgar felt a tremendous stiffness in his legs, his arms, his abdomen. He winced, but said nothing; Khin Myo and the boy moved gracefully and unencumbered. He laughed to himself, I am not young.
Instead of continuing south, they took another small road east, toward the lightening sky. The path was narrow, and the ponies occasionally were forced to slow to a trot. Edgar was surprised at how Khin Myo managed to balance herself, let alone hold on to the parasol. He was also surprised that, when they stopped and he collapsed in exhaustion, covered with dust and sweat, she still had the same flower in her hair that she had plucked from a bush that morning. He told her this, and she laughed. “Do you too wish to ride with a flower in your hair, Mr. Drake?”
At last, by late afternoon on the second day, they reached a set of small dry hills covered with brush and scattered boulders. The ponies slowed and followed a narrow trail. They passed by a crumbling pagoda with peeling white paint, and stopped. Khin Myo and Nok Lek dismounted without speaking, and Edgar followed. They left their shoes at the door and went through a small portal and into a dark and musty room. A gilded Buddha statue sat on a raised platform, surrounded by candles and flowers. Its eyes were dark and mournful, and it sat with its legs crossed, its hands cupped in its lap. There was no sign of anyone else. Nok Lek had brought a small wreath of flowers from his bag and set this on the altar. He knelt, and Khin Myo did the same, and both bowed low, so that their foreheads touched the cool tiles. Edgar watched Khin Myo, the tied bun of her hair shifting, baring the back of her neck. Catching himself staring, he quickly bowed in imitation.
Outside the pagoda, he asked, “Who maintains this place?”
“It is part of a larger temple,” said Khin Myo. “The monks come here to take care of the Buddha.”
“But I don’t see anyone,” Edgar said.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Drake,” she said. “They are here.”
There was something about the loneliness of the place that unsettled him, and he wished to ask her more, about what she was saying, what she was praying for, why she had stopped here and not at any of the other countless pagodas. But she and Nok Lek had begun to talk to each other again.
They mounted their ponies and began to walk. At the top of the hill, they stopped to look back over the plain. Despite the low altitude, the flatness of the valley afforded them a view of their journey, a lonely country of empty fields and twisting streams. Small hamlets clasped rivers and roads, all of the same brown color of earth. In the far distance, they could discern the grid of Mandalay, and farther, the snaking course of the Irrawaddy.
The road descended over the other side of the hill, and they followed a small rise to a group of houses which lay at the base of a larger mountain. There they stopped and Nok Lek dismounted. “I will buy food. Maybe we don’t see anyone for a long time.” Edgar sat on the pony and waited. The boy disappeared into one of the houses.
Some chickens wandered in the road, pecking at the dust. A man lounging on a platform in the shade of a tree called out to Khin Myo and she answered him.
“What did he say?” Edgar asked.
“He asked where were we going.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said we are riding south, to Meiktila, but we came this way for surveying.”
“Why lie?”
“The fewer people who know we are going into the mountains the better. This is a lonely place. Usually we travel with an escort. But because of circumstances, this is somewhat … unofficial. If anyone wished to attack, we have no help.”
“Are you worried?”
“Worried? No. Are you?”
“Me? A bit. On the ship from Prome, there were some prisoners, dacoits. Fierce-looking fellows.”
Khin Myo studied him for a moment, as if weighing what she should say. “It is safe. Nok Lek is a very good fighter.”
“I don’t know how reassuring that is. He is a child. And I hear they travel in bands of twenty.”
“You shouldn’t think of such things. I have made this trip many times.”
Nok Lek returned with a basket, which he fastened to the back of Edgar’s saddle. He bid good-bye to the man in the shade, and hissed his pony forward. Edgar followed and raised his hand in greeting. The man said nothing as the Englishman passed.
From the basket rose the pungent scent of fermented tea and spices.
The trail rose steeply, and as it did, the vegetation changed, the low scrub-brush giving way to taller plants, nourished by mists that thickened as they ascended. They climbed a spur coated in a low forest, humid like the plains near Rangoon. Birds flitted through the trees, chirping loudly, and around them the movement of larger creatures could be heard through fallen leaves.
A sudden crash, and Edgar turned quickly. Another, this time louder, and then the distinct sounds of breaking branches, something moving fast through the underbrush. “Nok Lek, Khin Myo! Watch out, something is coming!” Edgar pulled his pony to a stop. Nok Lek heard it too, and slowed his mount. Louder. Edgar looked around him, for something, a knife, a gun, but he knew he had nothing.
Louder. “What is it?” he whispered, and suddenly, in front of them, a wild boar bolted across the trail and into the bushes on the other side.
“A bloody pig,” cursed Edgar. Nok Lek and Khin Myo laughed and their pony began walking again. Edgar tried to force a chuckle, but his heart was beating wildly. He hissed at his pony.
As the slope steepened, the path broke off along the flank of the mountain and emerged from the trees, affording the first view in several hours. Edgar was struck by how the scenery had changed. The opposite hillside rose so steeply that he felt that with a running leap he could touch the moss-coated branches on the facing slope, yet to walk there would involve a precipitous descent and ascent through impenetrable jungle. In the valley below, thicker vegetation hid any signs of a river or habitation, yet as the trail rose, the mountains opened onto another valley, where the floor flattened in a series of narrow, terraced fields. Far below, in the staircases of paddy, a pair of figures worked knee deep in water that reflected the sky, transferring iridescent seedlings to the clouds.
Khin Myo saw Edgar watching the farmers. “The first time I traveled into the Shan Hills,” she said, “I was surprised to see rice growing, while around Mandalay the land lay barren. The hills catch the rain clouds that pass up the Irrawaddy River basin, and even in the dry season, they take enough water for a second planting.”
“I thought there was a drought.”
“On the Plateau there is. There has been a terri
ble drought, for several years now. Whole villages are starving, and moving into the lowlands. The hills may catch the clouds, but they also keep them. If the monsoon rain doesn’t move onto the Plateau, it stays dry.”
“And the farmers below, are they Shan?”
“No, another group.” She spoke to Nok Lek in Burmese. “Palaung, he says, they live in these valleys. They have their own language, dress, music. It is quite confusing, actually, even for me. The hills are like islands, each has its own tribe. The longer they have been separated, the more different they become. Palaung, Paduang, Danu, Shan, Pa-O, Wa, Kachin, Karen, Karenni. And those are just some of the biggest tribes.”
“I never …” said Edgar. “Fancy that, hill islands.”
“That is what Anthony Carroll calls them, he says they are like Mr. Darwin’s islands, only here it is culture that changes, not the beaks of birds. He wrote a letter about that to your Royal Society.”
“I didn’t know …”
“They haven’t told you everything,” she said. “That is not the least of it.” She told him then of the Doctor’s studies, of his collections and correspondences, of the letters that he collected each month from Mandalay, letters from distant biologists, physicians, even chemists—chemistry was an old passion. “Half the mail that comes to Upper Burma is scientific correspondence for Anthony Carroll. And the other half is music for him.”
“And do you help him with these projects then?”
“Perhaps, a little. But he knows so much more. I only listen.” And Edgar waited for her to explain further, but she turned back to the path.
They rode on. It grew dark. New unfamiliar sounds shifted in the darkness, the burrowing of scavengers, the howls of wild dogs, the rough voices of barking deer.
Finally, in a small clearing, they stopped and dismounted, unloading a military tent that Nok Lek had brought. They pitched the tent in the center of the clearing, and Nok Lek disappeared inside to arrange the bags. Edgar remained outside, near Khin Myo. Neither spoke. They were tired and the song of the forest was deafening. At last Nok Lek emerged from the tent and told them to enter. Edgar slipped under a mosquito net and arranged his mattress. Only then did he notice the pair of double-barreled shotguns propped up against the inside of the tent, their cocked hammers reflecting the ounce of moonlight that trickled in through a hole in the canvas.
