Tanner On Ice

Chapter 7

They were polite at the airport in Rangoon, but surprisingly thorough. The customs agent examined my passport, compared my face to my photograph, and assured himself that my visa had all the right things stamped on it. He went through my day pack, even uncapping my toothpaste and shaving cream. I don’t know what he expected to find in there.

There was an Englishman who’d flown in on the same flight from Bangkok, and he went through the line just ahead of me. He studied a map while I had my turn, and refolded it while I zipped up my pack. “Next time through,” he said to me, “I intend to pack one of those dummy cans they sell in novelty shops in Piccadilly. It looks like shaving soap, but when you open it out pops a great green snake.”

“You’d give the fellow a heart attack,” I said. “What do you suppose he was looking for, anyway? I know there are all kinds of things you can’t take out of Burma, but what is there that anyone would want to smuggle in?”

“Drugs,” he said.

“Isn’t that coals to Newcastle? I thought most of the world’s opium came out of the Golden Triangle.”

“I wouldn’t say they were rational about it,” he said. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to bring drugs in. The people here haven’t any money, so what kind of market would they be? They can barely manage a couple of kyat a day for betel nut. My sense is they’re fearful of moral corruption. That’s why they sealed this place off all those years, and now that they want the tourists they’re terrified of what we might bring in with our luggage. Well, it’s Western ideas that they’ve every reason to fear, and there’s no way to catch them up in a Customs queue. I say, do you want to share a taxi into town? I’m booked at the Strand, but I could drop you anywhere along the way.”

The car was a blue Toyota, the driver a slim Burmese with an outgrown brush cut who seemed to understand English but didn’t offer any of his own. He stowed us in the back seat and our bags in the trunk and bent over the wheel.

“Sun’s out,” my companion said, “and it’ll be a scorcher in a couple of hours. First time in Burma? Business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure,” I said. “Though if I happen to run into any business opportunities-”

“You won’t turn a blind eye to them. What’s your line?”

“Import-export,” I said. “It’s my uncle’s firm, and he told me to keep my eyes open. But I’m really here as a tourist.”

“ Rangoon, Mandalay, and the ancient city of Bagan, right?”

“The usual places, I suppose.”

“Well, the natural sights to be seeing. And it’s not as though they’ll let you go anywhere you want. Certain regions are off-limits. They’ll bend the rules for an organized tour group, but the man on his own who wants to stray from the beaten path won’t find it easy.”

At the roadside, an enormous billboard loomed, its Burmese legend helpfully rendered in English as well. LOVE YOUR MOTHERLAND, it counseled. RESPECT THE LAW.

“The gospel according to SLORC,” he said. “Inspiring, don’t you think?”

“It’s longer in Burmese,” I remarked. “I suppose English is a more concise language.”

“It takes fewer words to get your point across than French or Spanish. I don’t know how it compares with Burmese.” He leaned forward, a barrel-chested man in his forties, his black hair gone snow white at the temples. “Of course,” he said, “there might be more to the Burmese message.”

“How do you mean?”

“They may not have translated all of it. It might say something like ‘Love your motherland and respect the law or we’ll lock you up and throw away the key.’” I chuckled, and he said, “I asked your line and didn’t tell you mine. I’m an agronomist, trying to sell the Burmese on the idea of putting more into the soil so they can get more out of it. Human waste only goes so far.”

“Is that what they use?”

“If you get close enough to the Irriwaddy, you’ll swear it doesn’t all go on the fields. Name’s Harry Spurgeon.”

“Evan Tanner.”

“And you’re an American. What part of the States?”

“ New York.”

“Never got there myself. Spent some time on the West Coast – Portland and Seattle. Vancouver, but that’s not the States. And I got to Kansas City once. Now, there’s a town. Ah, another uplifting homily from SLORC.”

It was another of the same white letters on a red field, but the message was different, something about the duty of the citizen to reject influence from outsiders.

“I wonder who handles their public relations,” Spurgeon said. “That’s quite the thing for the tourists, and who else travels this road? ‘Welcome to Myanmar, and keep your outlandish ideas to yourself.’ But of course that’s not what it means.”

“What’s it about?”

“Our Lady of Perpetual Indignation,” he said. “Aung San Suu Kyi.”

I was looking at the back of our driver’s head when Spurgeon spoke the name, and it seemed to me his neck muscles went rigid at the sound of it. I nudged the Englishman’s arm, nodded at the driver.

“No harm,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to engage a Burmese in conversation on the subject. Might be awkward for him. But it doesn’t matter what he overhears, so long as he doesn’t need to acknowledge it.”

“But foreign influences,” I said. “How-”

“Ah. Well, she lived abroad for a time, didn’t she? Got an Oxford education and married a don. Came back to her homeland, which you or I would regard as an act of patriotism, and foolhardy in the bargain. SLORC’s line is she’s been tainted by her time and associations abroad.”

“Are they serious?”

“No, they’re just trying it on. The Japanese could take a stand like that and be sincere about it. Look at the lot who emigrated to Peru. When their sons and daughters tried to move back, they were regarded as gaijin. They’d lost their Japaneseness for having been raised overseas. But the Burmese aren’t quite that xenophobic. This is just SLORC trying to get around the fact that her father is the greatest hero the place ever had. There’s a street named after him and the city’s major market, and there are statues and pictures of the man everywhere. So they’ve got to say she’s not a true daughter – of her father or of Burma, either. She went abroad. She got corrupted by foreign ideas. I don’t know if this fellow buys it” – he indicated the driver – “but if he does he’s an exception. The people voted for her, and they’d vote for her again if they got the chance. But SLORC’s got the guns and the soldiers, and they’re not going to make the mistake of calling another election. Why embarrass themselves?”

“Why bother with the billboards?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say the campaign’s the work of a genius, Tanner. It’s entirely wasted on visitors, unless the idea is to show who’s in control. As far as the native populace is concerned, I daresay there’s something in the Big Lie theory. Say it loud enough and often enough and people will believe it in spite of themselves.”

“I suppose.”

“And there’s a ‘Big Brother is watching’ effect, a verbal equivalent of having an oversized statue of Mao or Lenin forever glaring down at one. Now there’s an importer’s opportunity!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Lenin statues,” he said. “They’ve pulled them down all over Russia, and nobody has any idea what to do with them. They’ve carted some of them to the smelter, but there are still plenty left. Here’s what you do, Tanner. Get yourself over to Russia and find the largest and tackiest one you can. Then see if you can’t peddle it to that town in Arizona that bought the London Bridge. Be a perfect companion piece, wouldn’t you say?”

There were more SLORC billboards in Rangoon, along with signs welcoming us to Yangon and a hideous multicolored statue of a child who was evidently the mascot of Myanmar tourism. She had her hair in pigtails and carried a little basket, and if she’d been a living breathing child you’d have wanted to smack her one. In comparison, the billboards looked pretty good.

Spurgeon asked me where I was staying. I hadn’t booked a room, and didn’t want one. I wouldn’t be sleeping, and was traveling light enough that it would be no hardship to keep my pack with me – and a blessing if I had to leave in a hurry. And I wasn’t sure how it worked in Burma, but in a lot of countries they wanted you to leave your passport at the hotel desk, reclaiming it when you left. I didn’t much want to do that.

All I told Spurgeon was that I hadn’t selected a hotel yet, and the look he gave me showed he thought I was daft. “We’ll see if they can find room for you at the Strand,” he said. “It’s like Raffles in Singapore, one of the great old hotels, and they’ve kept it up well. You’ll be happier there than at one of the sterile new hotels.”

I didn’t say anything, but when we pulled up in front of the Strand I shouldered my pack and told Spurgeon I thought I’d rather walk around first and see something of the city. “I might want to stay someplace a little more modest,” I said. “This looks awfully grand. I’d feel a little too casually dressed for the lobby.”

I was wearing khakis and a bush jacket, and he assured me my attire was perfectly acceptable. I said again that something smaller and more modest would suit me, and he caught on that the Strand was a little too rich for my blood.

“Smart man,” he said. “Save your money for rubies. Mind you don’t pay for a load of cut glass, now.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be buying any rubies. First I want to do a little sightseeing.”

“I suppose your first stop will be Shwe Dagon Pagoda.”

“Well, I don’t want to miss it.”

“No, and it’s quite the experience to be there at sunrise, but you won’t spoil it for yourself by trotting over there now. You know about shoes?”

“You can’t wear them into the pagodas.”

“Can’t even wear them on the grounds of the pagodas. Have to leave them at the outer gates. Not that you’ll have much chance of making a mistake on that score. There are plenty of signs to tell you to remove your shoes, and of course you’ll see other people’s discarded footwear. That should give you a clue.”

“I guess they take it pretty seriously.”

“The business of shoes? It’s the one thing guaranteed to set them off. Buddhists in Thailand have the same passion for bare feet, but they’re a little more relaxed about it. It’s only the holy areas of a Thai pagoda where you can’t wear shoes. Here it’s the whole shooting match.” He raised a hand, scratched the blaze of white hair at his temple. “That all you brought, that little backpack? Why, you can pop your shoes in there, carry them with you. Not that you have to worry about anyone walking off with them – or in them, eh? They’re an honest lot, the Burmese. Just a little bit queer when it comes to feet. Never point your feet at anyone, shod or bare. I suppose you know that.”

“It said something to that effect in one of the guidebooks.”

“The feet are considered unclean,” he said, “and small wonder after they’ve been traipsing through filthy pagodas all day. Never point them at a Buddha image either, although I can’t imagine how you would avoid it. Wherever you aim them, they’re odds-on to be pointing at a Buddha image, aren’t they?”

He wouldn’t let me split the cab fare with him, and after the poor-mouth act I’d pulled to get out of staying at the hotel, I couldn’t very well argue with him. I walked a block, checked my map, and set out for Shwe Dagon.

There was no dearth of other pagodas en route. As far as I could make out, the Burmese felt about pagodas the way Imelda Marcos felt about shoes. You can’t have too many of them. If you’ve got two fine pagodas standing side by side, why not build a third right across the road? And wouldn’t it be a neat idea to put a fourth one right next door, and… Well, you get the idea.

Shwe Dagon dwarfed them all. I walked barefoot down a long aisle lined on both sides with shops selling handcrafts and, yes, Buddha images, then rode up on an escalator, then walked some more and climbed some more to emerge into what has to be one of the wonders of the Eastern world.

There was a stupa in the central portion, of course, a sculpted upended cone, blindingly white and topped with a gold finial. Around it was an enormous marble courtyard, with shrines or chapels of one sort or another on either side. What you did, as far as I could make out, was walk around the courtyard circling the stupa. Every time you turned a corner another fantasy landscape struck your eye. It looked like the ultimate amusement park, but with no rides or food concessions and no lines to stand in.

It didn’t seem to matter whether you walked clockwise or counterclockwise. The locals, including the monks with their shaven heads and red robes, walked in either direction, and so did the camera-toting Westerners. The latter made up about a third of the company, and were the only ones who got charged admission. The Burmese got in free.

They weren’t there to worship. For all the innumerable Buddhas to be seen there – Buddhas made of every material, Buddhas painted or gilded or left unadorned, Buddhas sitting or standing or, yes, reclining – the Enlightened One was not adored or beseeched or asked to intervene. He was there in all his forms, as I understand it, to raise the level of one’s thoughts and improve one’s chances for a better life next time around. Meditating in a place of high spiritual power was, with alms giving and pagoda building, a way to make merit, and the more you made merit the higher you stood in the Reincarnation Sweepstakes.

You could also make merit by releasing captive animals, and while I was contemplating a sealed Buddha strung with lights like a Christmas tree, a woman came into view carrying a small cage made of twigs. She found a spot she liked, smiled gloriously, and opened the cage to release a white dove, who looked around suspiciously before trying his wings and heading off for the wild blue yonder. The woman followed him with her eyes, then walked off in the other direction.

All well and good, I thought. She’d made merit, and the bird didn’t even have to wait until his next life to have a better time of things. He was out of there, up up and away, free at last.

At least until some enterprising chap trapped him and caged him again, so that another seeker of merit could purchase him and let him loose.

Jesus, talk about the wheel of rebirth! There you had a bird’s-eye view of it. And, if all the people who took turns ransoming and liberating the bird were making merit, what was being made by the people who kept trapping the poor little bastard? Did they pile up demerits? Was the whole deal another zero-sum game, with every bit of merit gained offset by merit that someone else lost?

I decided not to worry about it. Maybe the bird catchers were earning merit in their own way by making it possible for their customers to perform a righteous act. Then again, maybe not. If nothing else, they were earning a few kyat. It was an odd little dance they were all doing, and I didn’t really get it, but these people didn’t need my understanding or my approval.

Maybe it wasn’t as crazy as it looked. In the West, most of us earned a living by taking in each other’s washing. Here they took in each other’s karma.

Same difference.

At four-thirty that afternoon I was sitting cross-legged in front of a sort of chapel immediately to the right of the western gate. I was pretty sure it was where I was supposed to be, but to my untrained eye one chapel looked rather like another.

Still, how hard should it be to find me? My fellow tourists were a busy lot, but the bulk of their activity consisted of either taking pictures or posing for them. When they weren’t behind or in front of a camera, they were gazing rapturously at something and trying to decide if they had enough film to record it for the folks back home.

The Burmese, on the other hand, did almost everything imaginable but take or pose for pictures. Families walked around, the children clutching their parents’ hands. Red-robed monks, ranging in age from small boys to old men, circled the central stupa in a solemn procession. And here a man howled and spat, and there a fellow puffed on a cheroot. Spitting and smoking were evidently okay, as long as you kept your shoes off.

I looked at my watch. 4:32. It was funny, I thought, how twenty-five years could pass in the wink of an eye, and two minutes could take forever. I wondered how long I should wait for my co-conspirator to make contact. I should wait a little while, I had been told, and then return at the same time the following day. But how long was a little while in this holy place? Five minutes? An hour and a half?

Mr. Sukhumvit in Bangkok was a contact the Chief had arranged for me, and he’d been helpful enough, though in one respect I’d have been better off with the Thai equivalent of Zagat’s or Egon Ronay’s Good Food Guide. The person who would meet me in Shwe Dagon was someone I’d located on my own, working what remained of my old network of activists and supplementing it with some contacts I’d made on the Internet. There were exiled Burmese dissidents all over the place, and especially in northern Thailand, and it was through them that this meeting had been arranged.

I had thought about skipping it, even as I’d considered passing up Sukhumvit even before I learned what was on the menu. But I felt so ill-equipped for the task at hand, so utterly unprepared, that I didn’t dare. I needed all the help I could get.

I guess my eyes closed as I sat there, because I didn’t notice the boy’s approach. He coughed gently, no more than a quiet clearing of the throat, and I looked up and saw him. He was standing as straight as a little soldier and I was sitting cross-legged, but our eyes were on a level. He was a tiny fellow, his face a perfect oval, his eyes large and dark. With his shaved head he could have been a monk-in-training – I’d seen some no older and taller – but instead of a red robe he wore a longyi, the close-fitting wraparound skirt all Burmese men wore instead of trousers. His shirt was an ordinary American T-shirt showing Bugs Bunny chewing on a carrot.

He was holding a twig cage, and it was holding a dove just like the one I’d seen released. The same one, for all I knew, although I’d say the odds were against it.

“No, thank you,” I said in English. “No birds today.”

He didn’t seem to get it. He smiled, and extended the cage.

“Bah boo,” I said, which means No. Unless I was giving it the wrong tonal quality, in which case it very likely meant something else. It certainly didn’t seem to discourage him. “Jay zu bah boo,” I said, which ought to mean Thanks but no thanks. This got me a smile, but it didn’t get rid of him. He wanted to sell me that bird.

People were looking at us, too. Maybe the easiest thing was to buy it. “How much?” I asked, and searched my memory for the Burmese phrase. I hadn’t had nearly enough time to study it, I’d just managed to cram in a few words and phrases, and-

“Beh lout lay?” I said. I’d either asked the price or directions to the post office, I wasn’t really sure which.

“Shit,” he said.

I stared at him. His expression was curiously matter-of-fact. I said, “Shit?”

He nodded, pleased that we were communicating. “Shit.” And he followed that with a string of words I didn’t get at all.

“Na malay bah boo,” I told him, which ought to mean The guy from Singapore made a mistake, but which actually means “I don’t understand.”

“Shit,” he said.

“You said it,” I agreed.

He put the cage on the marble floor between us and held up both hands, the thumbs tucked into the palms. When I didn’t react he tried again, counting on his fingers: “Tit, nit, thone, lay, ngar, chak, kunnit, shit. Shit!”

Oh, right. Shit was eight in Burmese. But eight what? Eight dollars seemed ridiculously high, while eight kyat worked out to around a dime, and seemed ridiculously low. And I didn’t have any kyat, I hadn’t changed any money yet, and-

“Shit,” he said. His face showed the beginnings of exasperation, and I wasn’t sure whether the latest utterance was in Burmese or English.

“No shit,” I said, and dug out my wallet. The smallest I had was a ten-dollar bill, and I handed it to him. His eyes widened and I gestured to indicate that he should keep it, which clearly delighted him. He tucked it into the waistband of his longyi and handed me the cage. I handed it back and indicated that he should keep it, and perhaps sell it to somebody else.

That didn’t please him at all. “Taik, taik,” he implored, and I was trying to guess what the word meant when I realized he was speaking English, insisting I take the thing.

“Oh,” I said, taking it, and thanked him politely: “Amyah ee jay zu tin ba day.”

He nodded and bowed and ran off.

Shit, I thought. I set the caged bird down beside me and looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to five, and I’d have given up on my contact, but suppose he’d waited while the kid gave me the bird? I ought to give him a few more minutes. And so I waited until five o’clock, not really expecting anything, and nobody came within five yards of me, or took any real notice of me at all.

I stood up, bent to work the cramps out of my legs, then straightened up again. I could come back same time tomorrow, I thought, or I could say the hell with it. The latter course seemed the most likely, but I had a whole day to make up my mind.

I started walking, then remembered the bird cage. I could leave it there and let someone else knock a few spokes out of the wheel of rebirth, but maybe it was time I earned a little merit myself. It seemed to me that it had been a while since I’d done anything the least bit meritorious. Since I’d just paid one hundred and twenty times the asking price for this poor benighted white dove, the least I could do was let him loose.

I unlocked the cage door, reached in, got hold of the bird. He did what birds do, although they generally do it on statues, or women who’ve just had their hair done. “Shit,” I said, and I wasn’t talking about the price, either.

I lifted him out and let him go, and my spirit might have soared along with him but for the souvenir he’d left behind. I didn’t have anything to wipe my hands on, and I was damned if I was going to part with another ten dollars. I wiped them on my pants.

Now what was I going to do with the cage? Just set it down, I thought, and let it be somebody else’s problem. And I was in the process of doing just that when I saw the envelope.

Well, actually, I’d seen it earlier, but I’d just assumed it was a piece of scrap paper of the sort you’d use to, well, line the bottom of a bird cage. The bird had evidently made the same assumption, and had acted accordingly, and in abundance. Perhaps he’d assumed the little boy was speaking English when he recited the price, perhaps he’d regarded the word as an exhortation, a command. Or perhaps he’d merely had the benefit of a high-fiber diet.

Whatever the cause, his output had been prodigious, and he’d pretty much covered the cage’s paper liner. But now I got a look at it and saw that it was in fact an envelope, and I took a closer look and saw that something was written on it.

“Eight,” I said, in Burmese.

I reached in, gripped the thing carefully between thumb and forefinger, and drew it out. TANNER EVAN someone had penciled on the front of it, in block capitals. The flap was unsealed, just tucked in, and I untucked it and removed a single sheet of paper, folded twice. I unfolded it and read the message, in the same awkward capital letters as my name:

GET OUT OF BURMA OR YOU DIE.