Under the Dragon (18 page)

‘For sure, it is Palaung-style. You can tell here,’ Michael said, pointing at the fine, narrow shaped stakes and slim, contoured waist. The stallkeeper, his wife, their customer and the daughter of the jaggery stand owner nodded in unison. ‘You must take a train to get there, to Lashio and Hsipaw.’

‘Lashio,’ repeated the stallkeeper.

‘Hsipaw,’ insisted his wife.

‘Oh oh,’ said Katrin.

‘Lashio or Hsipaw?’ I asked, wearied by the prospect of more travel to uncertain destinations. The muddled run-around and heat were beginning to wear us down.

‘Both,’ answered Michael, then added, ‘Or maybe neither. On reflection I am not certain that you are permitted to travel there. It was until very recently an area of much insurgent fighting.’ For almost fifty years the Rangoon government had been at war with the country’s minorities, trying to subjugate small national and ethnic factions fighting for independence, driving the peaceable Palaung to violence. In recent months truces had been signed to end the hostilities. ‘I will make some enquiries,’ promised Michael, flourishing his kyat-thickened wallet. ‘Now will you allow me the pleasure of buying you a selection of baskets before we go on to see my mall?’

Mandalay is a city whose reputation outshines its reality. It disappoints in the same manner as Shanghai, Casablanca and Timbuktu. The resonance of an exotic name is let down by the mediocrity of the streets. Khartoum and John O’Groats are far more interesting places to think about than to visit. What, one wonders on arrival in Blarney, was all the fuss about? A century ago Scott wrote: ‘Mandalay is a vastly less interesting place than it used to be. A siding from the railway cuts its way through the city wall…a carriage drive goes around Mandalay Hill; the pigs have all been eaten up and the pariah dogs are poisoned periodically by municipal order. A, B and C roads testify to the unromantic stolidity of the Military Intelligence Department; electric trams make it easier for the Burman to move to the suburbs and leave the town to the hustling foreigner. There are no agreeable scallywags. There are Cook’s tourists instead.’ The modern snap-happy tour buses, the frenzied construction projects, even the gun-carrying drug barons in the city’s discos would not have surprised Scott.

We decided to get out of Mandalay. There was nothing to hold us there. We even managed, with little grace, to talk ourselves out of the visit to Michael’s mall. The Pagan bus ride had exhausted us and I asked his driver to return us to our hotel. Michael for his part looked into our onward travel into the Shan Hills. I felt no compunction in taking advantage of his help. He found that we were allowed to visit Lashio, but by train only. In a perverse twist of Burmese officialdom, bus travel along the same route required a permit from the military authorities. Michael kindly booked us two Upper Class seats on the next morning’s train. We would have caught it, if not for an unexpected visitor.

Our hotel room, which had once been painted green, was lit by a single neon tube. Two bedside lights dangled on their wires from the wall, which had lost much of its plaster. The grimy window was barred and its curtains were stained with suspect black marks. The towel rail was a rusty length of pipe and the sink took two minutes to drain. ‘In this Hotel most of the rooms are comfortable and up to the standard of the Western type,’ claimed the promotional brochure. “Hot showers are also available.’

Katrin sat with her head between her knees in the dark, then lay on the sagging bed and moaned. I tried to cool her with a bamboo fan until the onset of the first bout of diarrhoea. I rubbed Tiger Balm into her temples after she vomited with candid, colourful violence. Our Myingyan lunch was the likely culprit, but the illness could simply have been brought on by the conspiracy of heat, travel and poor hygiene. About midnight my gut too began to churn. Over the next two days our usual sparing use of medicines went out the grimy window. Instead of food we nourished each other on drugs alone: Nurofen to soothe aching heads, Diorolyte to replace lost salts, Dextrosol to try to restore energy. We swallowed Valium, bought over the counter in Bangkok, to induce sleep. To ward off malaria we tried to keep down our Paludrine and Nivaquine. Our bodies were doused in medicated talcum powder and ‘Neat Deet’ (100 per cent Diethlytolumide) mosquito-guard. Our posteriors – rubbed raw by the bouncing bus journey – were soothed by pots of camomile lotion. By the third day my state of mind became delirious. I convinced myself that I’d contracted hepatitis. As I swung from diarrhoea to constipation and back again, I began a course of Ceporex to dislodge my florid amoebic travelling companion. Katrin battled on without antibiotics and, on the fourth morning, woke with the taste for something other than pharmaceuticals and flat 7-Up.

When the stomach cramps abated, I volunteered to venture out to find food. The hotel had advised us that it could ‘provide us with our petty requirements on the ground floor’, but when I stumbled downstairs there was no one at reception. I stepped out into the scorching sunlight to hail a taxi but only succeeded in attracting the attention of a passing cycle trishaw. I didn’t feel that I had the strength to travel in an open vehicle.

‘Where you go?’ asked the driver, spouting the usual patter. ‘Mandalay Hill? Golden Palace Monastery? I know good restaurant. You want girl?’

‘Food,’ I groaned, still scanning the street for a cab. ‘My wife is sick.’

‘Sick?’ said the driver, with sudden, sincere concern. ‘Is she with child?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘If she is with child then sesame seed is very good. She will have strong, big baby. My wife like sesame. We make six healthy babies together.’

‘Okay,’ I said, looking into the fine-featured Indian face. ‘I need soup too. A clear broth.’

‘No problem, sir,’ the driver smiled, his black eyes sparkling with a child’s optimism. ‘Sesame and soup. I help you.’

I collapsed onto the seat and tried to shield myself from the sun’s glare. The Indian strained to push the trishaw into the traffic. I had lost weight – more than a stone – but the oven heat still made me a heavy load. We cut in front of a clutch of other cyclists and my head began to ache. ‘Six children,’ I managed to repeat.

‘Yes sir, four good girls and two better boys. I am proud father.’

‘Children here seem to be so well behaved. My wife and I haven’t heard a single child misbehaving since we arrived.’

‘I think it is because in Burma many generations of a family live together.’

‘I suppose because of Buddhism too,’ I heard myself add. ‘I mean, teaching children to obey their elders.’

‘Buddhism?’ laughed the Indian. ‘It is a luxury, sir. If you are wealthy enough you give money to a pagoda, then it is very comfortable. I say this as a Muslim, of course. But every ordinary man must live hand-in-mouth.’

‘Hand-to-mouth?’ I suggested.

‘Yes, sir. Day-to-day we survive with bribery and black market. It used to be that a bribe was called tea money. Now we pay so much it is called beer money. I am very blessed with my family but,
insh’allah
, I wish for no more children.’

‘Because of the expense?’ I asked.

‘In times before there were three kinds of people in Burma: poor, middle and rich class. Today there is only poor and rich class.’ He turned onto 26
^th
Street and swung his trishaw away from the other traffic out into the middle of the road. ‘Chinese and Singapore men come to Mandalay, build new enterprise, we must move to “new pastures”. His black eyes flashed with anger as he gestured at the New Great Wall Hotel. ‘This is a brutal repressive regime,’ he hissed, his passion and an oncoming bus alike startling me. ‘You must understand this.’

‘I do.’ I felt weak, the blood pounded in my ears, yet once again I appreciated the private courage of individual Burmese.

‘The Lady understands,’ he whispered.

I almost said Aung San Suu Kyi’s name out loud, but the Indian put his finger to his lips. ‘Aren’t we a little far away from the kerb?’ I asked instead.

‘Walls have ears, trees have eyes,’ he warned as we wheeled past the New Land Souvenir & Money Changer Shop. ‘In next days we have water festival, sir.’
Thingyan
marked the start of the Burmese new year. At the height of the dry season in every city and village buckets of water are thrown at passers-by in celebration. ‘The people become excited, and then you must be careful. The police turn blind eyes to many things and it becomes an outlet for people’s grievances. The government encourages this bad behaviour.’ He pedalled in silence across an intersection. ‘Our leaders are very arrogant; they wish us ill. They are like another people, like men from Mars.’ His mouth tightened into a red razor-cut of rage. ‘To change this we will have to sacrifice ourselves for the country,’ he hissed, ‘or the country will be damned.’

We shuddered to a stop at the Nylon Ice Cream Bar and the shadows lifted from his face. His black eyes sparkled. The need to talk was contained. ‘Here very clean food,’ he announced, like any other benign tour guide.

It seemed to be the least likely place in Mandalay to buy a bowl of soup. ‘Do they sell broth here?’

‘Oh no, sir. You eat pineapple ice cream here and I find sesame seeds.’

‘And soup.’

‘Yes sir. And soup.’

The Indian slipped across the road to the Min Min Restaurant. I waited, drank a cup of stewed, sweet, umber-coloured tea and turned down three offers of ice cream. The girls at the next table giggled and pretended to look away. A stranger, who introduced himself as a retired ophthalmologist, stopped at my table to ask if he could be of assistance. Even in my delicate state I was struck, once again, by the stark contrast between the rulers and the ruled.

Ten minutes later the Indian returned with sesame bars and clear chicken broth, carried in small plastic bags. I held them on my lap like bloated bladders on the ride back to the hotel. Along the way he said, ‘A word of advice, sir. Do not eat Burmese food in the evening, eat Chinese or Indian. Burmese food is cooked for lunchtime only.’ I would have told him that it was a light lunch which had poisoned us, but the rocking trishaw and the bubbling balloons of broth conspired to turn my stomach. The Indian looked away while I was sick in the gutter.

At the front door of the hotel he wished us health, happiness and at least six children. ‘A big family is good,’ he reminded me. ‘With all the generations living together.’

I thanked him for his kindness, and promised to pass his suggestion on to Katrin. ‘I’m grateful for the advice on sesame too.’

‘Sesame will help, but you must take it upon yourself, sir,’ he insisted. I went upstairs and lay down on the bed. Katrin ate the soup and sesame with pleasure. By the next day we were both well enough to rebook the tickets to Lashio.

Our train, the 131 Up, was scheduled to depart at 0445. Its unlit wooden carriages sat waiting on the grassy rails. Its silent passengers were crammed six to a bench in Ordinary Class. Candle wax covered the carriage dividers, evidence of the long night spent on the siding. Around the station other travellers slept under tarpaulin or in box-like mosquito nets erected on the platform. There were no timetables posted, no announcements made. There was no sign of a locomotive.

As we picked our way by torchlight towards the Upper Class carriage, the strange anthropomorphic shapes began to stir. Whole families unwound themselves from their sheets and possessions. Women folded away the insect nets. Bedding was bundled into baskets. Water sellers decanted brimming beakers, for the travellers to wash themselves over the tracks. Mothers rucked their babies up onto their backs in
longyi
slings knotted across a shoulder. Old women squatted and chatted, smoking morning cheroots rolled in maize leaves. The bare, dozing heads of five ragged urchins lolled off the edge of their mat on the buckled concrete. Their weary father had overslept. He pummelled the children awake. A pregnant mongrel with swinging, swollen teats idled past them. There was still no sign of a locomotive.

The deep, upholstered armchair seats and private booths made the Upper Class carriage look like a cross between a threadbare gentlemen’s club and a filthy American diner on wheels. Its petite Burmese passengers dozed within the arms of the moth-eaten thrones. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed out of the fermenting drains as we sat down to wait. Our travels – like Burma’s transportation system – had begun to seem haphazard. The search for Scott’s basket was unfolding by chance, not design. My frustration made me anxious to shape our journey, to give it form. The waiting increased my irritation and I began pacing up and down the carriage, as if my activity might speed our departure. The Lashio Express was a public conveyance without any sense of urgency or obligation of service. Its passengers remained patient and uncomplaining. Their low expectations made me angry. I marched along the platform looking for the conductor, taking matters into my own hands. But I could find no one in authority. There were no officials willing to offer an explanation for the disordered delay. I sat back down in the armchair and tried by force of will to move our shapeless, ragged trip forward. We remained unmoving and uninformed for two more hours.

Then a cleanly-groomed Lieutenant boarded our carriage. His features were well proportioned and his perfect teeth sparkling white. A whistle sounded as soon as he took the seat opposite us. The locomotive had arrived.

At once everyone awoke. A cry went down the train. The carriage’s heavy glass windows were slammed shut as we started to move. Water suddenly slapped against the shutters, splashed into doors, poured through the vents in the ceiling. Passengers who didn’t close their windows in time were drenched by the buckets and hoses. Some shutters were jammed open. Those travellers laughed in helplessness as the trackside deluge soaked them to the skin. The water streamed down the aisles and sloshed under our seats. It was the start of the water festival and only the Lieutenant didn’t smile.

‘Like sailing ship,’ joked the conductor as we rocked north-east from Mandalay, the carriage lunging forward then jerking back on the ill-aligned rails, water dripping off the ceiling.