Everything Is So Political

by Sandra McIntyre

  –I’ll have a beer too.

  –One beer…

  The restaurant owner is a young Burmese guy who somehow got his hands on a pair of worn Levi’s and a black motorcycle jacket so he looks like an Asian James Dean. His wife sits at the corner table with the baby on her lap. She wipes the surfaces, brings the bill or a cigarette when the meal’s finished but usually just sits there playing with the kid or staring out at the golden stupa.

  I say to him—Maybe it’ll come back on.

  –Football game is tonight. They give us electricity for that. The army always gives electricity for football.

  Out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant the two British guys from the guesthouse appear. One with dark shaggy hair coming down over his forehead, the other blonde, taller, with the most angular face I’ve ever seen, like carved by a torrent of mathematics.

  The owner says to me—Please wait, please. Two more foreigners—and then goes to the door to seat them.

  Foreigner. Foreigner. Come here, foreigner. Trespassing in that territory not your own; the riverbanks of lawless Burma, endless fields of slave-grown rice and knowledge of those vast hidden valleys of opium tucked away behind the mountain range, down roads no foreigner has the permit to travel.

  * * *

  The vapour of my exhale coats the flashlight’s beam, the temperature dropped close to zero but don’t have the sweaters for it. I took the blankets off the empty bed and doubled them on top of my own. I’d frozen my balls off in the air-con bus from Yangon too. Everyone was bundled in caps and jacket-layers, glad for the respite from the heat but I’d been just aching to roast. The tropics are for sweating out your toxins. They seep out your pores and turn into a scum you scrape off and rinse down the drain. But here the altitude is higher, Kalaw settled on the brink of the mountain chain before edging down to the Shan plateau: Himalayan foothills scuffing the Indo-Chinese peninsula.

  Booted footsteps across the porch to the room next door: A Spanish couple returned from trekking today, come back from dinner and begun to play music from some iPod speakers. I hear them unpacking and repacking, their minutes of comfortable, familiar silence through the wall and then the guy’s sudden off-tune singing; the girl joins in a quarter-pitch higher.

  My flashlight fades to a sickly yellow. I knock it hard against my book cover, it flashes brighter then weakens to the same jaundiced ray. The Spanish couple goes silent and I imagine them in the beginning strokes of a passionate kiss. The room is perfectly quiet as the flashlight drizzles its last fading beams into black. Cold and dark, huddled under these blankets alone: the ache of the solo traveler settling on top of me like some nighttime nausea—some cage I stare out of like a bus window onto the passing river valleys. The weight of solitary transport, the desolation of a second pair of eyes not there. I’d convinced myself it was better this way. Complete freedom without the bother, without the worry of someone else’s stomach growling for food, their legs tiring from the pace, plus all the portals traveling alone would open. But now in the freezing ache of this dark, I feel like a remnant—lost and unmatchable. Behind the wall, the Spanish couple attempts to fuck quietly.

  * * *

  The owner seats the British guys at a table next to mine in the centre of the room. They order beers and when he comes back I order a cigarette.

  –Sure, sure. One cigarette.

  –The Londons are fine—I say—I’ll take one of those.

  –One London…

  The guy with the angular face looks over as the owner brings me the smoke.

  –You ordered just one?

  –Yes—I say—You can do that here. Have a London though. The local brand will knock you out.

  –I’ve smoked them before.

  The other guy says—You’re at the same guesthouse as us.

  –I think so.

  –Did you trek today?

  –Yesterday.

  –Alone?

  –No, with a guide from the guesthouse.

  –Up to the lookout?

  –Yes.

  –You’re quite high at that point.

  –Yes. The view is incredible.

  –We’re going to Inle tomorrow. Have you been?

  –Everyone goes to Inle. I’ve heard Hsipaw is quieter.

  –We’ve been there too. On the way in, a week ago.

  –How long have you been here?—I ask.

  The brown-haired guy answers—This is our third week in Burma. We came in from China.

  –I didn’t think you could do that.

  –We teach English in Baoshan, just across the border.

  –The Burmese have terrible pronunciation.

  –Chinese are worse. Their tongues get lost in their own mouths, don’t they, Jake.

  Then the angular guy leans back in his chair—We get cheated so often because we’re foreigners. That’s how it goes though. I don’t mind it so much, but Seth always takes it personally.

  –I don’t really—the guy Seth says.

  –I was followed in Yangon—I say to them—I’d rather be cheated than followed.

  –But the Chinese will cheat you to your face.

  –They think we can afford it. That’s why.

  –We were on the same bus as from Yangon, weren’t we—the other one says.

  –Yes. I saw you. We took the same truck to the bus station too. Everyone goes the same direction through here. It’s hard to find a place to be alone—I stub the cigarette in the dish.

  –Jake didn’t think you spoke English.

  The owner arrives at my table—One fried rice…

  * * *

  The bus grumbles slowly along the side of the mountain, hovering in that insomnial space between first and second gear. Black plants coated with dust shake as we pass. Drifts of four a.m. cloud catch the headlights as we climb into cooler air, further into Burma, further north into Shan State where the opium grows. Why am I here? Why can’t I sleep, and why always alone? The shaggy palm huts built right up against the road are coated in the same dust as the plants. They shroud some huddled family against the roadside chill. The guys across the aisle attempting to sleep too. Keep seeing their heads nod then jerk back to awake when the angle bumps off. I think they’re British but can’t tell. I’ll see them around the town or some village monastery tomorrow. That’s how it works—the same travelers following the same well-worn paths. I lay my head against the cold pane of the rattling window and watch the anonymous huts pass, full of dozing babies, mothers, fathers, brothers gone missing for years and years.

  Then along the ditch, blurred human shapes begin to flash by the periphery of my sleep-starved eyes. A line of them, spaced evenly like telephone poles but couldn’t be: Men and women—their hands bound with chains, heads bowed, feet apart and ankles shackled. Their skins are dusted with the blow of the passing cargo trucks, longyis dirt-stained and torn. Dozens of them lining the roadside like totems, a forest of deliberately planted trees.

  –Prisoners—a voice whispers from the seat behind me, a man chewing segments of an orange—Them prisoners by the army. You know…politics—A fleck of orange catches his lip.

  * * *

  The lights suddenly flicker on. Across the street, cheers and applause from the men smoking at the teashop, their seats already saved for the game. The television screen, no bigger than a book, hums to life and the flames of lighters ignite fresh cigarettes.

  The owner goes out onto the street and switches off the generator. Then the restaurant is just the quiet silt of night air, quiet except for oil in the pan.

  –Every evening now—I say—since I’ve been here.

  –They deal with it well, though.

  –The army drains it all to Naypyidaw. They keep every road lit, even in the middle of the night.

  –We heard there would be military on the way
to the lookout. Is that true?

  –On the far side of the valley there’s a barracks. You can see it.

  –We heard it was a college.

  –You mean the one in Pagan.

  –That’s a horrible story…—Jake continues.

  –Yes, but go on. You should tell him—Seth says.

  –You know you can take a boat from Mandalay to Pagan…

  –That’s right.

  –On our boat there were soldiers who were escorting a prisoner of some sort. They kept him in a cage on the deck.

  –A prisoner of what?

  –I don’t know, but there were soldiers guarding him.

  –There were two. And they had rifles. He must have been political. They said they were transferring him to a prison in Pakokku. But it’s a tourist boat, so there’s all these backpackers around him. And an Austrian woman asked one of the soldiers why they were taking him, what had he done.

  –She had guts.

  –Yes, and listen to this. We’re sitting there, you know, wondering what this was all about. And then Seth here noticed the man was mumbling to himself.

  –Mumbling what?

  –He was saying something under his breath. We couldn’t understand it at first. But then we started recognizing English words and then realized he was talking to us, but quietly so he wouldn’t get caught. He was being forced to kneel so he couldn’t look at us, but he was saying something about foreigners in Burma…

  –That’s right—Seth said—Foreigners must know what’s happening in Burma. That’s what he said…

  –He was a professor.

  –Right. From the University of Yangon.

  –Yes. And there was an older French lady who took his picture and passed him food through the bars. She wanted to do something.

  –Food?

  –She only had some bananas.

  –Some Germans tried to give him dollars when the guards weren’t looking, but the prisoner said he couldn’t take the dollars. Said dollars were useless to him in prison.

  –He needed kyat.

  –But then the guard spotted us and said we shouldn’t give him money. We could give him food, but no money. He had a few thousand kyat tucked under his feet from the French couple but then the soldiers searched the cage and found it.

  –They took it from him and told us we could only give him food.

  –They spoke English?

  –The guards didn’t but we knew what they meant.

  –The prisoner actually spoke very well. Seth thought so.

  –The guards weren’t happy his English was better than theirs.

  –The man could talk to us and the guards couldn’t understand, you see.

  –The soldiers got angry and they put a tarp over the cage.

  –It was this big plastic sheet.

  –The French couple was really moved. The woman was, wasn’t she, Jake.

  –Yes. She started crying when they covered the cage with the tarp. She couldn’t stop.

  –You couldn’t say anything?

  –The Germans tried. But the soldiers said it was their job.

  –And the French woman was crying because she couldn’t believe it. She said it wasn’t fair and couldn’t she couldn’t bear it. We were stuck on the boat, you see…

  –Yes, I think so.

  Then the angular guy’s face locks on the doorway. All of us turn as a green-uniformed soldier steps into the restaurant, a slender woman in a longyi traipsing behind him. The patrons are quiet as the officer speaks to the owner then is seated near the far wall, the gazes of the other diners lowering to the plastic tablecloths printed with soccer balls. The officer has the darkened skin of someone who spends his time outdoors, probably in charge of a battalion or two. His forehead appears devoid of creases until it furrows when he looks in our direction. The woman’s face is a smug doll with tiny, bitten lips.

  * * *

  The flashlight is completely dead now. I’d laid it somewhere on the bedding so when I rolled over it dropped to the floor with a cold, cylindrical thud. Hope the bulb didn’t break. I’ll buy new batteries tomorrow if the shops have them. Seth and Jake, both pleasant guys, hiking to Inle in the morning and starting early. My trek to the lookout was stunning. My guide Harry knew everything about the landscape, the bark of the trees, how the water buffalo follow exactly in each other’s footsteps so they won’t break their legs. He knew about the poppy farms near the Chinese border you could only get to by truck—four days into the mountains by road. Knew about how the traders smuggled opium in the rectums of cattle and how the army oversaw it all. We stayed the night at a farm on the lookout and could gaze down into the dusk-filled valley and hear the tea harvesters talking by their distant echoes, their tiny shapes shifting on the far surfaces of the slopes as they picked. The farm grew every kind of food—a sky-forest Eden in perpetual harvest: Squash vines, papayas, citrus, beanstalks, fields of snap peas, marigolds, and roses. Goats and squadrons of chickens patrolled the yard. I took a shower using a bucket and cold water from a trough, naked and looking out over the valley as the sun set. Harry said that on a clear day you could see all the way to Mount Popa near Pagan. That’s a hundred kilometres away I said and he said yes, but you can sometimes see it. A warm woolen blanket and dinner waited for me inside the smoky hut and at night the stars pierced through the black canopy—a billion of them, like there was more of them than sky. And they had a depth too; not just a flat surface but a space you could actually see into, like you could tell which of the light had traveled from farthest away. Across the canopy of stars, a satellite drifted like a beacon, white and blinking, tracing the curve of space.

  * * *

  The officer looks over at us, his thick lips cushioning a toothpick. He leans over and says—You are American, no? Three Americans in Burma…

  –We’re British—Jake says.

  –Canadian—I say.

  –Americans…come to Burma…for trekking—his ruddy face drops, drunk, like searching the racks of his brain for some lost vocabulary. He calls over to the owner in Burmese and repeats his demand to him. The officer gestures to us.

  Then the owner, fear-faced, translates—He say, it very dangerous for everyone in Burma when the foreigner talk about politics…

  –No—I say—We didn’t talk about politics. We don’t even care about it really.

  –We came for the trekking—Jake says.

  The owner translates back and then from the soldier to us again. His hand trembles beside the pocket of his Levi’s.

  –He wants to know where you stay. What guesthouse.

  –Don’t tell him that, Jake. He doesn’t need to know.

  –I won’t.

  The officer pushes his chair back from the table, keeping his eyes somehow on all three of us at once and then the owner with that look on his face like he was going to be in for it if we didn’t leave. Across the road, a ball is kicked into a net and the men at the teashop jump up to applaud the T.V.

  –Again he ask—the owner says—You stay what guesthouse?

  –Don’t tell him—Seth says—It’s none of his business…

  –I won’t. We’ll leave, it’s okay.

  Seth and Jake stand from the table and reach for their wallets to pay. The woman in the corner lays the baby on the table and starts to calculate the bill on the pad. But the officer puts his hands out, mutters to the woman with tiny lips and they both stand ready to leave. The officer stares at the owner, a long dark glare the colour of a lie. He drags a slow finger across his throat. The restaurant is a rectangle of silence as they turn and leave.

  –We weren’t even talking about politics—I say—Don’t know what his problem was.

  –He was listening to us, from outside…about the boat ride.

  –I don’t know.

  –That must
have been it.

  Then the restaurant plunges back into darkness. Across the road, the men watching football cry out as the television snaps off. Moments of pitch black at the plastic-covered table, silent except for the shouts from the teashop then the sudden pull-start of the generator and the feeling that everything in the country had been kicked in the gut but was determined to get up again like it had a thousand times before.

  * * *

  I say goodnight to the British guys and wish them luck on their trek. I close the door to my room and feel around for the flashlight in the dark, my room where my backpack lay open on the second bed looking in the shadows like the mound of a sleeping body I was finally coming home to. It was a shame the men across the street couldn’t finish the game. Their dejected footsteps picked across the shattered sidewalks ahead of me, the beams of the oncoming headlights blinding us.

  The Spanish couple is silent now. I curl beneath the blankets thinking about what Seth had told me about the prisoner. That was tough to hear, especially after the officer left the restaurant with the wife having done what he did. I hope the owner is alright. But that’s how these places are, I think, as I pull the blankets over my head. Beautiful but dangerous. The owner had to translate to us and we could see on his face he didn’t want to but had no choice. All of us understood and were on his side. And then the frustrated shouts from the men across the street where the T.V. had gone out.

  Maybe I should have stayed in Thailand, stayed swinging in hammocks next to beach bars, not venturing out into the wilds of Asia just to suffer this loneliness. Like at the lookout when I stared across the valley feeling fresh after my shower and the water buffalo were called home by the bells of their owners as the sun set. The huts on the valley floor beginning to smoke from their evening fires and the children chasing their dogs and the hills glowing purple in the dusk and then beyond them just the trees.

  Credits,

  for previously published works.

  “Stray Dogs” appeared in Riddle Fence #10 in November 2011.

  A different version of “The Brothers Wolffe” appeared under the title “The Wolffe Brothers” in Kudzu Review, Issue One, Volume 1, Winter Solstice 2011.