Читать книгу Raji, Book Three - Charley Brindley - Страница 3

A smiling young lady tapped the bell sharply under her palm to call the next bellhop forward.

“Have nice stay we hope, Mr. Busetilear,” Kayin said as she handed me a three-dollar receipt for a week’s stay at the hotel. She could never quite get her tongue around the pronunciation of my last name, Fusilier.

I screwed the cap back on my fountain pen and put it away, but before I could thank her for the pleasant remark, the bellhop grabbed my suitcase and snatched the room key from our joined hands. Kayin had pressed the key into my hand but seemed as reluctant to let it go as I was of losing her touch.

“Make haste with Po-Sin this way, and quickly,” the boy said, dragging my heavy suitcase across the floor. “Jump on lift before ascends away to top, if it pleases you.”

Po-Sin was apparently in a hurry to be finished with me and my luggage so he could collect his dime tip and get back to the lobby and his place in line with the other boys awaiting the next big spender. He was around fifteen years old and smartly dressed, wearing a cap with no bill—similar to a fez without a tassel—a tight-fitting, maroon waist-jacket with three yellow stripes on each sleeve. He also wore a brightly colored longyi, the traditional wraparound skirt-like garment worn by both men and women in Burma.

I took my cap from the counter and turned to follow Po-Sin. A few steps away, I glanced back to see Kayin watching me. A brief frown crossed her lips before she revived her commercial smile for the next guest.

“Welcome to Hotel Nadi Myanmar,” she said to a stiff young Englishman who flourished his furled umbrella before him as if it were some sort of benign weapon used to clear his path of any undesirables. The man wore spotless white ducks and a matching pith helmet, with a long albatross feather sprouting from the band.

I looked down at my dirty old sailor’s cap, then back at Kayin. Her words and smile for the Englishman were the same as she gave me only moments before.

* * * * *

It was an accident, my bumping into Kayin at the hotel’s front door—she coming out as I returned to the hotel after a walk down to the river. This was the day after I first met her at the front desk. Earlier, when I left my room and went out, I’d looked toward the desk, hoping she’d be unoccupied and I could ask some aimless question about where to find the nearest Buddhist temple or how far was it to the river. But she was busy with the hotel manager, an Englishman, and I thought it better not to interrupt.

“My sorry, Mr. Busetilear,” Kayin said to me on the street outside the front door of the hotel after we collided. “I am so awkward.” She knelt to pick up her packages.

“No, no.” I knelt down and deliberately bumped my head against hers. “It was my fault.”

She laughed and rubbed the side of her head as I rubbed my forehead. “Perhaps better next time,” she said, “that we should steer clear of each other so not to bring more harm.”

Her laugh was beautiful, and exactly the response I’d intended.

“Do you happen to know,” I asked, “where is the nearest Buddhist temple?”

Her eyes widened. “You are Buddhist?”

“No.” I took her elbow to help her to her feet. I couldn’t lie to her. I’d already deceived her with the head-bump, but that was justified. “No, I’m not a Buddhist, but I would like to see the inside of a temple.” I was certain she was Buddhist, as most Burmese are.

“I have only right now one hour for lunch, and I must run the errand at bank for that Mr. Haverstock, our manager, then also to American Express office.”

“Oh.” I was crestfallen. This was unpretended. I really was disappointed that she’d be otherwise occupied. “I see.” I had a sudden inspiration. “May I walk with you to the bank? Then you can point me in the direction of a temple.”

If she’d made up the story of the errands for the hotel manager and she was actually going to meet her boyfriend, or husband, then she’d tell me to mind my own business and find a temple by myself. A woman as beautiful as she was must have a boyfriend, if not a husband.

“Of course,” she answered right away. “I would be happy for your company on walk to the bank. It is quite long way to go.”

We chatted easily along the way about Burma, Mandalay, the hotel, her job, her boss, and just as we neared the personal information I really wanted to know, she stopped me.

“Well,” she said, “here it is, the bank where I must leave hotel money.”

I looked up at the imposing Romanesque building rising four stories above. Chiseled into a marble slab over the doorway were the words “Reserve Bank of India.” At that time, Burma was still part of India, and the British used the same currency throughout the area.

“Already!” I was genuinely surprised we were there. “But you said it was a long way.”

“We have come more or less twelve blocks, probably.” She stood beside the bank door, smiling sweetly.

“Oh,” I said after a moment. “Where is that temple?”

“Just go down here this way two or more blocks, then on your left side, walk a bit until you see bright color yellow side of house. Stop and try to see small bridge right just ahead of your left-hand side, another few minutes you will be presented in front of Shwe Nadaw temple.”

I couldn’t be sure, but I had the distinct feeling she tried to disorient me with her rapid directions.

“Did you say on my left was the yellow store, or right?” I tried to make it even more confusing.

“Wait right here three minutes or little more, then we shall walk by that place together.”

With a bright smile, she went inside the bank. I watched her through the window as she handed over the hotel’s money to a teller, then went to a young lady sitting at a desk and leaned over to tell her something. The lady glanced in my direction, and I looked away to watch a policeman ride by on his bicycle.

After leaving the bank, we walked along Yadanar Street to the banks of the Nadi Canal, where I purchased ohno khauk swe from a street vendor for our lunch. The food consisted of rice noodles and chicken cooked in coconut milk. It was very spicy, as most Burmese food is, and delicious.

We were late in getting back to the hotel, but Kayin assured me it was all right. I told her if she got into any trouble with the manager, I would make it up to her with a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant.

“Well,” she said, “might be just a bit of trouble I get into.”

At 6 p.m. when she got off duty, she would go home to change, she said, then meet me in front of the restaurant at eight.

It was a long wait for me, and I realized during that interminable afternoon that I’d never been on a date with a girl. Raji and I had done many things together, but nothing one could actually call a date. I was twenty-one and uninitiated, as my father would say. I wondered if Kayin was initiated. Why had I never been out with a woman? Why had Raji and I never made love? What was it like to make love? And why was I thinking about it so much now, since I never had before? And much more of the same, for many hours.

Finally, the evening came, and I’d already been pacing in front of the restaurant for forty-five minutes, wondering if I were on the wrong street. But there she was, promptly at eight, coming along the sidewalk toward me, her heels clicking a quick cadence.

I was very nervous and self-conscious. Sitting at a candle-lit table with a beautiful woman was new for me. I didn’t know whether to ask questions or talk about myself. I’d spent a lot of time with another beautiful woman; Raji, but we had an easy, almost familial relationship. Nothing romantic. I had a feeling there wouldn’t be any romance between Kayin and me either. I was such a klutz that I was sure to bore her to sleep. If she yawns, I decided, we’ll get out of here and I’ll walk her home.

But Kayin was no boor. She talked easily about Burma, her job at the hotel, and she asked questions about America and the freedoms we enjoyed.

At first I kept my answers short and to the point, not wanting to dominate the conversation. She moved from one topic to another, keeping a nice balance between questions and answers.

Our food came and an hour passed quickly, then another.

After the delightful dinner, we strolled for hours through the parks, past many temples, and all the way up to the Golden Palace, with its wide moat and tall towers at each of the four corners.

“Have you ever been inside?” I asked.

“The Golden Palace?” she said. “That is where King Rama lives.”

“Ah, King Rama’s palace. But have you been inside? I wonder what it’s like.”

“Oh.” She hesitated and watched one of the towers for a moment before she went on. “In the photos I have seen, it is, how you say, ornament?”

“Ornate,” I said.

“Yes, ornate. I am sorry my English is no so well.”

“Your English is wonderful. Will you teach me Burmese?”

She looked at me for a long time. “Why did you come to Mandalay?”

We stood at the edge of the moat, tossing pebbles into the dark water.

“I’m on my way to Myitkyina,” I said. “My friend is meeting me at the hotel in a few days. I signed the two of us onto a riverboat called the Gaw-byan. I guess we’ll be working as deckhands, I’m not sure. But we don’t mind hard work.”

“Why Myitkyina?”

“Just to see what’s there.”

“But what do you do?” she asked.

At that time, I still called myself a medical student. Actually, I was no longer one and probably never would be again. So what was I? A bum, that’s all I could think of, but I couldn’t tell her that.

“I’m a medical student.”

“When will you finish medical school?”

Her questions were much better than mine. She was getting to the heart of things, and I was feeling a bit uncomfortable.

“To tell you the truth, Kayin, I may never go back to school.”

“Why?”

“I’m discouraged, disillusioned, and sick of how the politicians and businessmen have ruined our world.”

“And you have come to my Burma to find what?”

What indeed. Why was I in Burma? Why was I anywhere? This wasn’t the way I thought our evening would go.

“I’m beginning to believe I came to Burma to find you.”

Kayin removed her sandals and sat on the edge of the moat. She splashed her feet in the cool water, then picked up a handful of pebbles.

“Not possible,” she said.

I sat down beside her. “What is not possible?”

She didn’t answer; only tossed the little rocks into the water, one at a time. I removed my shoes and socks. The water was much colder than I expected.

“It is not possible you came all this way to find me.”

“But I did find you.”

“Then you came for nothing, no reason.”

She seemed to struggle with her emotions as the stones splashed into the dark water. Finally, she turned toward me and held my gaze for a long moment, then she dropped the last stone into the moat and dusted off her hands.

“You see these eyes?” she asked.

I nodded.

“My eyes are from my Scottish father. All my life I have been an, how do you say, an outlaw?”

“Outcast?”

“Yes, an outcast. My people, the Burmese, treat me as untouchable.” She looked down at her hand, which I now held in mine. “Do you understand an untouchable in India?”

“Yes, a dalit, the lowest of the castes.”

“And the British treat me worse than they treat the pure Burmese. They think I am some sort of aberration. My mother was the only person who ever loved me, and she...” Kayin pressed my hand, and I knew she was crying. “I cannot never do this to another child to come,” she whispered.

“Kayin.” I lifted her chin and gazed into her wet eyes. “If you have a blue-eyed child, you think he will be treated as an outcast also?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe you should remain childless all your life because of something your mother and father did as an act of love?”

She gave no response.

“You, my beautiful Burmese friend, should be proud you’re part of two different worlds. You are, I think, about eighteen or nineteen?”

“Nineteen.”

“We’re almost the same age. I’m twenty-one.” I reached for her other hand. “And you’ve just made me realize I’ve been beating myself up for the past six months for something that’s not my fault.”

She knitted her eyebrows in a look I’d soon learn to love.

“My friend and I left medical school because we were disillusioned with the mess the last generation had made of the world. We saw no purpose in continuing our studies just to carry our degrees to the bread line and beg for handouts.”

“But doctors are needed all over the world.”

“Maybe so, but we were determined to go into research and work on cures for malaria and smallpox. Now all the research projects have been shut down for lack of funding.”

“Research is fine,” she said, “but do you realize the British take all our resources, and what do they give us in return? Protection! Protection, they say, from invasion, from illnesses, from our own ignorance. If they would only give us a little medical help, we would be most grateful. But we have only a handful of doctors and nurses for our twenty million people.”

“Why, that’s ridiculous,” I said. “You should have one doctor and a nurse for every five hundred people.”

“This is very true, but we would be happy if only our seriously ill could see a doctor from time to time.” She was agitated now, and I smiled as I watched the blue fire in her eyes. She’d forgotten about her personal problems as she attacked the British overlords. “The smallpox epidemic that took my mother, killed many thousands, and nothing was done to help us.”

“But schools. I know the British provide schools and government administration.”

“Ha!” She laughed. “The British have wonderful schools, the best. They bring many teachers from England to teach their precious children the proper way of speaking and eating and how to rule over the poor, retched natives the once-proud Burmese people have become. Our children still squat in mud huts and watch someone scratch numbers in the dirt. That is your wonderful British education system.”

“And if you were queen of Burma, what would you do?”

“Please,” she said, pulling her hands from mine. “Do not make of me a fool. I am not a child that is to be indulged.” She looked away toward the palace. A light winked off in one of the tall towers.

“Believe me, Kayin, I never indulge anyone. I’m deeply interested in your thoughts and ideas about what’s to be done with the world. It’s our generation, yours and mine, that’s to repair the damage done by rich old men, living in their ivory mansions. A year ago, I would have argued against you and on the side of the British. But now, I don’t know what to think. I find it very difficult to take issue with you. I wanted our evening to be pleasant and beautiful. All afternoon, I thought only of how I could bring cheer into your life, and perhaps get you to like me a little. I really think of you as my intellectual equal, and when I ask what you would do if you were in control of your own country, I mean it as a theoretical question. What would you do if you suddenly had the power to do something for your people?” I didn’t know where this speech came from, but I was beginning to sound like the debater I once was.

Kayin looked at me for a long time. This wasn’t the look I remembered from our walk to the bank earlier that day, where our conversation was light and carefree. This was a look of antipathy or malice.

“You are American.”

I nodded.

“You are close to being British.”

I shrugged, then shook my head. I didn’t consider myself close to being British at all.

“Then, may I put it this way?” she asked. “You are closer to British than to Burmese.”

I agreed that was true.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Busetilear, but if I were Queen of Burma, as you say, I would summarily kick out all the Anglos, including Americans, and also the Germans and especially the French, and do it smartly, too.”

“I believe you would,” I said. “I believe you would surely do it.”

“And now what do you think of your new Burmese friend?”

“What do I think of you?” Now it was I who looked away to gather my thoughts. “I think you’re a rebel. I’m pretty sure you know a bit of American history and of how we threw off the yoke of British rule a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Yes.”

“They called us rebels and terrorists. They tried to suppress us with their military might. They will do the same thing here in Burma.”

“Let them try,” she said, “perhaps we have a Patrick Henry and a Betty Ross waiting somewhere in our own population.”

Betsy, I thought but didn’t correct Kayin this time.

I stood and held out my hand to her. After a moment, she took it and pulled herself up.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said.

“And?”

“And we’ll have a cup of tea in the dining room and talk about medical students and revolutionaries.”