Under the Dragon (24 page)

‘Nearby?’

‘Yes. Please you eat in restaurant?’ he asked. Behind him three clocks noted the time in Rangoon, London and Beijing. ‘There will be special entertainment. You very welcome.’

We lay down for an hour and then, rather than brave a
thingyan
drenching or watch satellite reruns of American sitcoms, decided to take ourselves down to the dining hall. We had to eat, and the prospect of another evening of Laughing Cow cheese on crumbled water-biscuits did not excite us. I also hoped that ‘nearby’ might mean Hsipaw and that, over a quiet dinner, we would be offered a lift to our destination. But as we approached the noisy hall I realised once again that my hopes were misplaced.

The door swung open and the music stopped. Our breakfast waiter, now dressed in a clean and pressed linen jacket, led us across the room towards the central table. The local band, who had been warned of our arrival by the receptionist, struck up a clanging fanfare sort of welcome. It reminded me of ‘Jailhouse Rock’. The hundred-odd Chinese guests straightened their ties. All eyes were on us, or at least on Katrin. She was the only woman in the room.

No sooner had we sat beneath the heavy perspex chandelier than a jug of beer was placed on our table. ‘We didn’t order this,’ I said.

‘It is a gift from the gentleman opposite, sir,’ said the waiter with a deferential gesture.

The well-groomed executive at the next table raised his glass and said, ‘Chin-chin.’

Katrin smiled but did not drink. ‘I think we should have settled for
Baywatch
,’ she whispered.

With a twang of the guitar the executive then stood up and mounted the stage. The band broke into a mellow refrain and, right on queue, he began to sing. ‘The wrong and winding road…’ Katrin took my hand under the table. His voice was terrible. ‘That leads to Yunnan…’ The other diners did not move or meet our eyes. ‘Will never disappear…’ Their sombre looks were as expressionless as their grey suits. ‘I’ve walked that road before…’ Then the song’s chorus began and, without warning, the hundred Chinese accountants joined in like a massed corporate choir. ‘Many times I’ve been at home and many times I’ve drived, anyway you never know the many ways I’ve died…’

‘But still they leak me back,’ the executive sang on in solo, ‘to the wrong, winding road.’ I glanced towards the exit and wondered if we would ever get out of Lashio. Theravada Buddhists believe that our past conscious and unconscious actions determine both our current lot and our spiritual position in the next life. The law of causation suggested that if our day of judgement was to be in this fiercely bleak hotel, we had clocked up a bumper crop of past wrongs. ‘Don’t leave me standing, dear,’ crooned the executive with feeling. ‘I’ve walked that road before…’ The corporate chorus joined in for another whine before leaving the final refrain for the soloist alone: ‘…that leads me to Yunnan.’

His last note hung in the air like a mosquito in a bedroom after midnight. Then there was silence. Sweet silence.

‘I think we’d better applaud,’ I hissed, reluctant to cause offence. So we did, and in delight of our approval as much as for their performance itself, the others clapped too. The executive was pleased with the response. He bowed and left the stage. ‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ I said, and looked around for a menu, failing to notice that a second accountant was mounting the stage. He nodded to the band and, in a swirl of discordant chords, began to jiggle to an approximation of ‘Crocodile Rock’.

‘I remember when rock was young,’ he wailed in a toneless serenade, ‘me and Suzy had so much fun…’ His superior’s singing had been mellifluous in comparison. ‘…holding hands and spitting stones, had a pair of wellies and a place of my own…’ As he howled I wondered if the accountant, who had lived through the Cultural Revolution, had ever had the chance to have fun. He certainly would never have had a place of his own, let alone Wellington boots. ‘…while the other kids were rocking round Bangkok…’ We had become hapless, honoured guests at a conference karaoke evening. It was too late to escape from the revelry but, I reasoned, at least we could eat. I managed to catch the waiter’s attention. ‘…we were hopping bopping to the crocodile rock oh…’

I asked to see the menu, but before it arrived plates of spare ribs and stir-fried rice appeared on our table. The well-groomed executive broke off from the ‘I-never-knew-me-a-better-time’ chorus to smile. I tried to make myself heard above the clamour, making the usual, embarrassed English excuses.

‘Please,’ he insisted, ‘you are our guests tonight. Enjoy the meal.’

‘…Suzy went and left me for some foreign guy,’ they sang on, ‘long nights crying by the record machine, dreaming of my wellies and my old blue jeans…’

We managed to grab the odd mouthful of food between the medley of Beatles numbers, after ‘Yesterday’ and before ‘Help!’, but in their tipsy excitement the initially reserved accountants began to crowd around our table. They nodded at the stage, encouraging our enjoyment of the proceedings.

‘I can’t get no, no satisfaction…’ The musical murder of the Rolling Stones was followed by the slaying of the Spice Girls. ‘I’ll tell you what I want what I really really want…’ One trader, who had been drinking alone at a small corner table, subjected us to Abba’s ‘Money Money Money’. ‘I work all night I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay…’ His more idealistic neighbour tried to hum ‘Imagine’. Then, after all the senior officials in the room had sung their party pieces and we thought we could take no more entertainment, the well-dressed executive appeared at my side and asked to dance with Katrin.

‘It’s up to her,’ I said.

Katrin’s instinct was to refuse the invitation. But the nature of the country was to be hospitable, and opportunities to reciprocate were rare. ‘Well, maybe just a short one,’ she said, somewhat grimly.

As soon as Katrin had left the table the knot of accountants closed around me. ‘Your wife is very beautiful,’ said one, taking her chair.

‘Thank you.’

‘I will give you two hundred grams of jade for her.’

‘Three hundred,’ offered another with a laugh.

‘I’m afraid she’s not for sale,’ I replied, shrugging off the offers but irritated at their liberty.

‘One kilo; my best price.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘A new Mercedes, then,’ smiled a little man at the back, taking a different tack. ‘With CD player and air conditioning.’

I shook my head.

‘Her weight in gold,’ shouted the ‘Money Money Money’ drunk, who was then admonished by his peers for mocking their negotiating technique.

The first dance finished and Katrin reclaimed her chair. It was then that the queue began to form. One by one the officials and managers lined up at our table for the chance to dance with her. The attention made her feel anxious, even threatened, but she treated them all equally although, because of their number, she soon had to ration her time.

‘I wonder if any of you are travelling to Hsipaw in the morning?’ I shouted above the chorus of ‘Saturday Night Fever’.

‘Kunming is a more beautiful city,’ replied one functionary. ‘Maybe your wife would prefer to see it?’

Katrin danced for a minute each with half a dozen men, smiled for every flash photograph, and then began to protest. She had had enough. The accountants wanted more dancing, insisting on it in good humour but with unpleasant undertones, so I reinforced her refusal.

When the band took a break, a raffle was held. Katrin won a porcelain doll, even though she hadn’t bought a ticket.

‘So you will not forget our friendship,’ said the well-groomed executive.

Then the whisky started to flow, and we seized our moment to escape from the hall. As the men became distracted we slipped into the night.

Outside the streets were dark. No lights glowed in Lashio. The town’s electricity had been disconnected. Katrin breathed in the fresh air and shivered, as if to shake off the touch of many hands.

‘We should have watched that rerun of
I Dream of Jeannie
,’ I lamented, wishing we had stayed in our room.

‘I felt like a commodity,’ she said, furious at herself. ‘I’ve had enough of Lashio.’

‘We’ll go tomorrow.’

We walked for a few minutes, but beyond the glare of our floodlit hotel we risked stumbling into an unseen pothole. I took Katrin by the arm. She – and I – had encouraged our hosts’ arrogance by embracing Burmese politeness. The accountants had taken advantage of our affable courtesy.

‘I didn’t like pandering to their assumptions,’ she said. ‘They thought they could do with me what they wanted, because women in the West are free.’

‘I don’t think it’s a matter of national stereotypes.’

‘It would be the same for any woman,’ she said with a shudder, maybe thinking of Ni Ni. ‘And the paradox is that with them I lost my liberty.’ Katrin’s freedom, Ni Ni’s innocence, Kwan’s respect for the past and May’s hope for the future; unless one defends that which is most cherished, it is stolen away. ‘I’m worn out. Can we go back to the room?’

As we turned back towards the Lashio Motel the muffled revelry of the water festival rose up from the darkened town. But we were not about to be drawn into more celebrations. Then a distant glimmering caught our eyes.

Away in the dark there glowed a low-lying line of stars, like fireflies marching in regimental rank. We stepped with care down the black lane towards them, unable to see our feet, unable to judge our progress, drawn by the flickering lights. After a few moments we found ourselves on a broad avenue. Bamboo scaffolding had been erected along the length of a long billboard, and painters, working by candlelight, were updating the sign. In the half-light we could make out the familiar official propaganda: ‘Burmese land – our land, Burmese language – our language. Love your motherland.’ As we watched, the patriotic catchphrase was blocked out and replaced by a slogan promoting solidarity with the Burmans’ new brothers. ‘We live like eggs in the same nest; break one shell and all our nests are torn down,’ directed the new decree from the junta. Its sentiment reinforced my unease. The sign painters worked on in silence, their candles flickering in the night breeze.

The next morning we felt in need of sanctuary and so, after breakfast, we went to look again for St John’s Anglican church. The church had been built before the last war by the then District Commissioner John Shaw. I had heard of its active congregation – a mixture of Shans, Chins, Karens and Wa hill tribe peoples – and of its minister, the Reverend John Michael Tay-maung. American Baptists and English missionaries had been active in the Shan State during the nineteenth century, but only about 4 per cent of Burmese citizens had remained Christian. I was interested to see how they coped in the Buddhist borderland.

It was a national holiday and most Burmese were still in bed, nursing hangovers, praying that the flash frenzy of
thingyan
water-throwing had washed away the old year’s realities. The air was humid from the wet streets, as if the monsoon had arrived early, and our sandals squelched in the mud. A drunk, having been unable to find his way home in the dark, slept off the night’s excess on the roof of a bus.

At first we could not find the church, even though it fronted onto the main street. We walked up and down the empty, sodden road, past the new town hall and the old No.1 and No.2 hospitals, around the Ko Nyi ‘Beauty Adorner’ Salon, searching for a steeple.

‘My feet are killing me,’ complained Katrin, ‘I can’t go much further.’

It was only after twenty minutes of wandering that we caught sight of the church, hidden behind the concrete pillars of another building site. Its exterior was the colour of dirty linen. The neglected walls were encrusted by a decade’s grime and the filthy cross perched above the door was canted at a precarious angle. But the neat interior would not have been out of place in an English village, assuming that frangipani grew in the Home Counties. Katrin and I stepped into a lush hanging garden, under streamers of white
hkayayban
blossom and bursting trumpets of scarlet hibiscus. An exuberant jasmine encircled the altar. Luscious flowers sprouted from every nook and pew. A sparrow darted into the eucalyptus. The fabric of the church was adorned with unrestrained curtains of vegetation. At the centre of the pious plantings moved a dark figure holding a trowel.

‘Reverend Tay-maung?’ I called.

‘I’m sorry, but John is away until Sunday,’ replied the gardener, laying down his trowel. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Do you know how we can get to Hsipaw?’ I said, more out of instinct than reason. The familiarity of a church, albeit one more floral than Kew Gardens, had eased my last remnants of reserve.

‘We’ve asked everywhere,’ said Katrin, anxious to put Lashio behind us.

‘I can drive you.’ The gardener’s response was so spontaneous that I suspected he had misunderstood me.

‘Hsipaw is forty miles down the Burma Road,’ I said. ‘It is a long way.’

‘I know.’

‘You have a car?’

‘My uncle owns a fine car.’ He stepped down the aisle towards us. ‘But I would ask that you purchase the petrol, if you do not mind. It is rather expensive for me. Have you eaten breakfast?’

‘At the hotel.’

‘Then it will have been of questionable quality. Please, let me invite you to join me.’ When we hesitated the gardener insisted. ‘You are my guests. I will care for your journey.’

Throughout our travels in Burma – and in its Shan State – arrangements had a tendency to work out. Logistics didn’t defeat us. We were never lost or stranded for long. It was not because of forward planning or the persuasive power of dollar bills. It was because of the generosity of the peoples of Burma. Someone always, eventually, turned up to help us – as now. Buddhism alone did not explain their behaviour. The Burmese value
bama hsan-chin
, a standard of good conduct that honours a knowledge of the scriptures, respect for elders, discretion and modesty. To the foreigner the word translates into a care for guests.

The gardener had false teeth and a thinning crown of short silver hair. A halo would not have looked out of place above his head. He introduced himself, but spoke so lightly that we didn’t catch his name. In the vestry he prepared an unnecessary second breakfast of fried eggs, toast and a huge bunch of bananas. It is said that in Burma the hungry need only to ask and food will be provided, while in China it is not the custom to ask, so one waits for it to be offered. It seemed that in the Shan State one was fed without even being hungry. Our gentle host sat us by the font under a potted white jasmine and watched us eat, not touching any food himself.