Burmese Lessons (43 page)

After the deposit is paid, a slovenly attendant pushes the gurney into a small private room. Half an hour later, when Maung wakes up, I elbow my way between the women with a cup of water. It is my petty triumph
that I react to his thirst before they do. I hold the plastic to his lips, I lift his heavy head off the pillow, he drinks. I would like to kiss the top of his head, but I refrain. He smiles at me like a drunken man, noticeably disoriented, still untangling himself from an underworld. But, as he slowly drinks, his eyes change. They focus in a discernible way. He has seen the three women and two men standing beyond me, also at the bedside, watching him, watching us. He takes the cup in his own hand, finishes drinking, and addresses them.

I don’t understand what he says. It’s a joke. Of course, he would make a joke. They smile, the men laugh, I laugh, but there is no hiding it, from myself or from them: I do not understand. More words, discussion, and I step away; he needs to talk with everyone, acknowledge each person. We have all been sick with worry.

I know what a quick study he is, what a precise reader of inflection, inference, pointed glance. Part of me wishes he were still sleeping—vital signs stabilized—so that I could have him to myself. Within minutes he apprehends the tension: how the women want to care for him, how my presence here is problematic.

What am I but an intruder? What do I know of his life with them, the struggle they have lived through together? Nothing. Or only words. I can see and feel the edges, the hardness of this, another life, a more rigorous life than I have ever imagined living, an existence that requires sacrifice and love and
stopping
, too, a diminishment of the self. A silencing of the self. It has not been thrust upon me as it has been thrust upon them. I have to choose it.

I sit on the single chair in the room. The people crowd around their leader—I find it so difficult to use that word—and I observe their expressions of concern, the women’s hands busy folding towels, giving water, lifting to check the saline drip. The low tones of Burmese resonate in the small space.

If I back away emotionally, get myself out of it, I am able to appreciate their love for him. It makes me ask, What do I know of his love for
them?
I can only think of our love. I want love to be all of a piece—good big love, one size fits all—but it isn’t like that. There are many kinds of love, and sometimes it divides people, makes us jealously face each other down.

In Buddhism, jealousy and envy are called defilements. They do defile the more noble emotions, the more generous heart. It’s all right. I don’t have to hold his hand or touch him. I’ll get a room at the guesthouse and visit him early, or late. There is no such thing as visiting hours in a hospital like this. When I’m not here, I’ll go to the local temple and meditate. I will use this; I will work with my defilements in meditation practice. Oh, I am so good!

A few minutes later, everyone leaves. I am confused, then touched—he has asked them to give us a moment. We look at each other. I am flooded with happiness and a pure gratitude to see him awake, fully conscious, though he looks like hell. I go to his bed, lean down, and kiss his cheek.

“I am so glad to see you. We were afraid for you.”

“Me, too. I was wishing that I could die because the pain was so bad.”

“I’m glad you didn’t get your wish.”

He nods. “I know it’s been hard. I’m sorry. But I think you should go back to Bangkok.”

“Maung! You’re sick. They still don’t even know exactly what’s wrong. I want to stay here.”

“There are lots of people to take care of me now.”

I am burned right to the core. It would be a strategic error to cry, but that’s what I want to do. Cry until my nose runs. Then blow my nose noisily. He doesn’t want me close to him.

I do not cry. My sensitivity is the problem. To be Burmese, one has to absorb the sadness into the already sadness-saturated body. The Thais are this way, too; I’ve seen it in my Thai friends. What is the first truth of Buddhism? The first truth is that life is full of suffering. Certainly one sees that plain fact right here, and in the waiting room fifty steps away. The
ability to endure, then, is a necessity. You must absorb disaster, loss, death, a host of other minor disappointments. There is no need to wave any of these around like gaudy flags; you furl them up tightly, inside. If you are a Burmese dissident, a fighter, a revolutionary, you can also plant them in the cause. A profound political cause can absorb human suffering for decades.

That is another part of my problem. I do not have a cause. Not really. I am not like Nola and Charlie, or the other women who are married to Burmese dissidents. I observe, I listen and gather stories. But I am suspicious, still, of joining. I am joined to Maung, to the people in the waiting room, even to the women with whom I compete. I am joined to people. And a few valuable ideas, ideals, fiercely held, upheld. But not to causes. Not to the cause. This is my shortcoming. He must feel it.

I blink, absorbing the tears back into my eyes. “You want me to go away?”

“I think it is better for now.”

I stare at him. The brown skin has regained much of its vitality, its brightness, but his face is noticeably thinner. We can change in the space of hours. I look at his broad cheeks, his lips. There. I’ll have to be satisfied with that, looking at but not kissing them.

I don’t know what else to say.

Goodbye, I suppose.

They are sending me home on the bus, like a child who has misbehaved at camp.

D
oes the whisper begin as I walk away from the hospital? No, it began before, quietly. It’s louder now.
I don’t know if I can do this
.

But you love him.

Yes. But I don’t know if I can be what he needs. I am too spoiled and childish. I want him and I will never have him
.

Well. You will grow up. You will get tougher, like the other women, you’ll become less selfish.

What about my work? Didn’t you just say, Writer, that to be with Maung and to live this life I have to silence myself? Where the fuck have I heard that before?

I’m sure you’re going to tell me.

In a hard chair at church, that’s where, as a twelve-year-old who had figured out the censorial nature of a maniac god
.

I think you should calm down and get yourself some dinner. It’s been hours since you’ve eaten. A whole day.

I have no desire to eat. There is no room in my stuck guts for food
.

At least in
Bangkok I am able to shit.

The system starts to work again the morning I get back to my dusty apartment, after spending a cramped night on the bus. Maybe it was the congee that cured me. All-nighter buses in Thailand invariably stop halfway through their nocturnal journeys and eject their passengers into the lurid fluorescent half-dream of the
cow-tom
experience. Stumbling, purblind with exhaustion, familiar with but always mesmerized by this travel ritual, I, too, took my seat at the table (one of dozens) and ate my bowl of cow-tom, the Thai equivalent of Chinese congee, or boiled rice soup. I was invited to this meal by the lecherous old Thai man seated behind me on the bus, who slid his hand under my ass—ostensibly to wake me up—and offered to buy my soup.

To which I responded, “Don’t touch me, you bad man. I will buy my own cow-tom.”

And I did, stopping myself from having a second bowl because the driver was ready to go.

Ah, Bangkok! You diesel-belching, blemished monster of a city, I am pleased to breathe in your smog from the filthy balcony. I step back inside and admire the shining parquet floor, this room’s most attractive feature, though the coily mattress also seems the height of luxury. Sleep knocks me down for a few blind hours.

Upon waking, I get up and visit the VD clinic at the corner of Soi Dang, hoping the som-tam seller doesn’t see me. The good doctor listens to my symptoms and prescribes the right penicillin for non-honeymoon cystitis. He also looks at me with concern and says, “You are very tired. That’s why the infection is bad. Now take the medicine, and drink lots of water, and rest. Then you will be happy again.”

What a sharp clinical eye. Will it work? Will I be happy again? Am I unhappy? Best not to think about it too much. I drink cold water. I make some ice in the small freezer. Popping it out of the plastic tray, I revel in the cold transparent edges, the white heart. Ice, after weeks of drinking warm water.
Ice
. It’s like a new word.

I dust off the companionable Buddha postcard. I genuflect, sit, breathe in and out. An ice cube melts in my mouth. I meditate long after the cold water is in my stomach. My weariness asks for nothing but stillness. On the exhalation, I release, again, the besieged mind. In. Out. In. Out. Why don’t we learn this in grade school?

O
ver the next week, I return to my novel, but when I reread the work it’s false. The characters are doing romantic things; they are predictable, they are flat. I’ve started writing about a white woman, an Anglo-Burmese man. They are more graceful and better-looking versions of me and Maung. Nauseating. The people I had before have receded. When I’m not writing the Harlequin romance of Burma, I’m writing political-tract crap.

I stand on the balcony, careful not to put my elbows in the pigeon shit, and light up a cheroot. Both romantic and political self-indulgence involve
oversimplification, which is the dullest, most effective form of lying; but political self-indulgence is the worse crime. I don’t want to write
propaganda
.

“W
hat’s wrong with propaganda?” Maung asks. He’s no longer in the hospital, though he’s still in bed in the Mae Sarieng house. “We need as much good propaganda as we can get.”

“The movement needs
support
, but that’s not the same as propaganda.”

Silence. I fill it by asking, “Are you feeling better?”

“No. I’m still sick. I haven’t had an attack like this for a long time.” As the dysentery subsided, a virulent recurrence of malaria knocked Maung off his feet again.

“I hope you’re not smoking too much. Can you eat anything?”

“I don’t have much of an appetite. It’s all right. I’ve lost all my Bangkok weight. How are you?”

“Just meditating a lot. And writing shit.”

He laughs. We say goodbye without mentioning when we might see each other again.

T
wo days later, I wake to a lightly thudding skull. The headache sinks down until the same monkey banging its nasty drum swings high and low through my bones. An exotic flu. Picked up at the VD clinic, perhaps.

It’s malaria, of course. A dozen or more people have described this pounding achiness as one of the earliest symptoms. Yet it’s relatively uncommon to contract malaria during the dry season, especially when one has Deeted one’s skin to carcinogenic levels. I heave myself up, make a cup of tea, and dismiss the self-diagnosis as melodramatic.

The next day: dengue fever?

Evening of the next day: brain tumor?

The morning after that, in forty-two-degree-Celsius heat, my teeth
begin to chatter. I put on my sweater and my windbreaker and lie down under the hitherto unused blanket. I get up and unfold the big clean towel on top of that and get back into bed. I’m still freezing. Child of Canadian skating rinks, veteran of a poor winter in Montreal without good boots, I’ve never been so cold in my life. When I wash my hands under the cold bathroom tap, it’s like rubbing ice on blistered skin. My brain is curious about the physical manifestations of illness, but I don’t take them too personally. At first I think this is a consequence of my week’s successful meditation practice: I have attained a certain level of detachment from the self. Though no Bodhisattva, I am at least on the long road to enlightenment.

This causes me to feel self-congratulatory until the late afternoon, when,
poof
, just like that, the chills vanish. A few minutes later a fever sparks, catches, and burns across the plains. A state of arduous panic begins under my skin. Something besides fever happens, some other event. I can’t describe how the sensations are communicated to me, but I feel flesh, fasciae, muscle, organs—all of these surge into action, trying to protect the whole. It reminds me of the useless mobilization ants undertake when someone is burning their nest. But the illness—which is unlike any flu I’ve experienced—is taking over. That’s what makes being sick such a perpetual surprise to the healthy person. The illness doesn’t win, necessarily. But it cannot be resisted.

I want to get up and phone someone. My Thai brother and good friend Goong, who stayed with my family when I first lived in Thailand, is out of town. Aye Aye Lwin is on a training course. Chit Hlaing and Ma Tu live more than an hour away by bus, and their schedules are so busy that I don’t want to disturb them. I am shy about calling my journalist friends; months ago we quarreled over white entitlement and Asian politics and I dropped out of the documentary project we were doing together. We’ve seen each other since, but we are no longer close. I don’t know Nola well enough. Besides, she might tell me to pull up my bootstraps and take my quinine. Not that I have any quinine. I sneer at the phone on the floor. Why doesn’t it ring? I don’t want to phone Maung in desperation. I want
him
to call
me
.