Saving Fish From Drowning (38 page)

laughed, except Esmé. A few kids reached to pet the dog, their eyes seeking permission. “Just the head,” Esmé instructed firmly and with a watchful eye. “Right here. Gentle.” And the little dog licked each child’s hand like a benediction.

Roxanne motioned to Black Spot to come over. She held up her camcorder. “Do they mind? It’s okay?”

“Please,” he said, and swept his hand back to suggest an invitation that she take it all in.

She did a panorama, rotating to include three hundred sixty degrees, narrating where they were and how welcoming the Karen tribe was. She saw Dwight. “Honey, stand over by those women behind you,” she directed. He knew the ploy. Instead of capturing him, she would film the natives in natural poses. But as soon as she pressed the record button, the old ladies looked up at the camcorder and waved.

“What hams,” Roxanne said. She waved back. “We’ve come to this beautiful place . . .” she now narrated for the video.

Wyatt and Wendy were talking to two young women. Wendy

pointed to herself.

“America,” she said, and then pointed to Wyatt: “America.” The women repeated, “Merraga, Merraga.” Black Spot uttered in their dialect: “They come from the United States.” One of the young 2 6 7

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women shot back, “We knew that. They’re telling us their name.

Both are called the same.”

“They’re so friendly,” Wyatt said, and let two boys look at the photo captured on his digital camera. The rest of my friends were similarly engaged in meeting the inhabitants, making the most of this cultural activity. Bennie tried to buy a few items that looked interesting—a bamboo cup, a wooden bowl—but when he inquired about the price, intending to double whatever was asked, the owners insisted he take them for free. “They’re so generous, which counts twice as much because they’re poor,” he told Vera.

The greatest attention, of course, was heaped on Rupert. The crowd surrounded him and moved him toward a long carved plank that was laden with a banquet—a banquet, that is, by the standards of a tribal people bedeviled by years of hardship. Black Spot gave out the invitation: “Please, we inviting you—eat, sir.”

To my friends, the jungle repast looked ill conceived, one dish after another, what Moff called “mystery meats,” grayish-greenish substances, some shiny, some slimy, none of it looking palatable. But as they would soon discern, the food was actually quite delicious.

There were seasonal weeds, sticky rice, and the leaves of woodland trees and shrubs. There were also, in beautiful small bowls carved out of tree knots, tubers and seeds, buds and stems, small growths that were as delicious as pistachios and almonds, fungi of all kinds, gathered from the base of trees, left to dry, and then stored for occasions like these. The main platters held nascent reeds. And at the other end of the long narrow table were bowls with roots, sliced fermented eggs, roasted larvae, and a prized chicken. The dishes had been colored and flavored with whatever dry goods were stocked in the primordial kitchen: colorful ingredients of shrimp powder and turmeric, coarse chili and curry, garlic chips in place of fresh, preserved vegetables, as well as paprika, salt, and sugar. Next to the chicken, the most prized dish was the talapaw, a vegetable soup pre2 6 8

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pared by the twins’ grandmother, who knew just the right amount of spices and peppers to pinch with her fingers and mix into the crushed rice, fish sauce, and green beans, ingredients that Black Spot had brought her after his last foray into town. To bind all these many flavors, a big pot of rice was set in the middle of the table.

The twins’ grandmother signaled Rupert to be the first to fill his bowl. “Yum,” he said in flat voice. “I’ll just dig right in.” After his first bite, his eyebrows rose. After his second, he announced, “Not bad.” The young women around him kept their faces down, but

beamed and giggled as he nodded, and gave a thumbs-up. Two young boys mimicked the gesture.

Marlena leaned over and said to Moff: “I think Rupert has found some female admirers.”

When lunch was over, Roxanne held up her camcorder and captured the happy occasion. Bennie stood next to the pecked-at banquet table. He waved and called: “Hi, Mom! We love it here! Good food, too. Yummy-yum.” Marlena tried to think of something to say about the strangler figs. “Our new home . . .” she quipped, and gestured toward the tangle of vines. “The rent is supercheap. Comes with expansive backyard and lots of trees. We’re moving in.” Rupert was caught showing the tribe yet another card trick. He looked up at the camera and grinned. “The way things are going I may never leave this place. . . .”

All at once, a child’s high voice cried out, and everyone fell silent.

All heads turned toward the coppery-haired boy with a smoky cheroot hanging from his mouth. He was standing on an upturned stump and looked wild. He was rocking forward and back. His twin sister mounted the stump next to his, and she, too, began to sway.

Staring blankly, the boy seemed to be in a trance, moving his upper body in cadence to his keening. The people of the jungle fell to their knees, shut their eyes and clasped their hands, and began to pray.

The twins’ grandmother stood and began to speak.

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“Christmas entertainment’s starting,” Moff announced. “Must be the manger scene.”

My friends glanced about. Who were these people? They could

not fathom what the twins were doing, yet they certainly looked odd. But as I had found more and more often, with the proper attitude, the Mind of Others—and a bit of eavesdropping on private conversations—many truths are knowable.

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STUCK TOGETHER

The boy was praying, not to a Buddhist deity, as one might

expect, but to the Christian God, the Great God, and his emissary, the Younger White Brother, Lord of Nats. This was a renegade ethnic tribe who had no orthodox religion but had accommodated a pantheon over the past century. And so they believed in Nats and witches and green ghosts as both mischief makers and deliverers of disasters. They worshipped the Lord of Land and Water: O Lord, we’re sorry we had to chop down the saplings, but please don’t let our soil and crops wash away to the bottom. They had given thanks to the Crop Grandmother in the days when they had fields: We pray to you to give us good rain, good rice, no chewing insects, and not too many sticky weeds.

And they believed in the Younger White Brother, who had been part of their mythology for hundreds of years. They had once had an A M Y T A N

elegantly written language, and not the chicken scratch that some now used. Their stories were contained in three books of Important Writings. Those writings held their strength, their protection from ill forces. The books were supposed to be safeguarded by two divine but absentminded brothers, who lost them by placing them where they were eaten by wild animals or burned by a cooking fire. As prophesied, one day the Younger White Brother would bring back another copy of the Important Writings and restore their tribe’s power.

As you can imagine, missionaries over the years found a willing flock, who readily accepted Jesus and were keen to learn the Bible.

The tribe mistook each of the pastors who arrived over the years as the Younger White Brother. As with the Buddha, the tribe gave offerings to the Great God to receive merit, and this gave the missionaries merit and made them happy. The tribe loved consensus and mutual respect. When a pastor died—as many did, from malaria, typhoid, or dysentery—the tribe waited patiently for him to return as a Reincarnated One. In 1892, the one who would be the most influential of the Younger White Brothers arrived among the Karen.

He was born in England, an ordinary boy, named Edgar Seraphineas Andrews, his odd middle name chosen by his mother, who thought she had passed from life while giving birth to him but was then miraculously returned to vital shores by a large-winged angel, who pried her neck from Death’s cold grip. That was the Seraph.

The rest of his name came from his father, Edgar Phineas Andrews.

They were not a titled family but a rich one. In former years, the elder Andrews had been noted for his charm, his prodigious conversational skills, and his generosity. Aided by his wife, Matilda, he used to invite battalions of guests to join him for weeks of witty parties, in which the visitors were required to dress in the funny costumes native to whichever of the colonies had been chosen for the evening’s theme. But in later years, his perceived charm dwindled along with his bank account. Duped in a speculation scheme, he suf2 7 2

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fered a devastating reversal. There were no more costume balls filled with laughter, no laughter, for that matter, for there were no servants to attend to the preparation, upkeep, and disposal of laughter. No manservant or valet, no cook or scullery maid, no gardener or groomsman. Matilda Andrews fell into a perpetual state of mortification and remained in her rooms talking to the wives of dignitaries in her mirrors. Young Seraphineas kept to himself and read books—

books on magic, which he perceived to be the fine art of conjuring money out of rich fools. He practiced many of his illusions on his father, a willing subject, as he had already proven all too well.

In 1882, Phineas Andrews was invited to Rangoon by an old and loyal friend, a captain with the Raj, who beckoned him to witness the courage of the soldiers who served Her Majesty in the wild jungles of Burma. At first glance, Phineas became enamored of Burma and her verandahs and lazy days, her palanquins and polite deference to the British. In Burma, he started a small export business in feather fans, the feathers plucked from the marvelous array of birds found in this tropical land. In short order, his business included other exotic luxuries: elephant-leg stools, stuffed-monkey lamps, tiger-skin rugs, and drums fashioned out of the bowls of two human skulls, which produced a sound like no other. Many items remained unsold, but the profit margins were high enough to make Phineas a wealthy man again. In that small society, the Andrews family was soon elevated to the equivalent of high pooh-bahs. They had twenty servants—they could have had a hundred, if they liked—and lived in a house with so many rooms and gardens that most of them had no particular purpose.

Phineas was not a bad sort, merely dissipated and ineffectual. But the youngest of his three sons was “a friend of evil,” as some he tricked would later describe him. Whatever charm his father had possessed for entertaining, Seraphineas used without hesitation for ill gain. Whereas the father could convince his costumed guests that 2 7 3

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he was the Sheik of Araby, the son could convince a tribe of thousands that he was the Lord Almighty of Nats.

Having spent a good part of his boyhood in Burma, Seraphineas Andrews was adept at debauchery in two cultures. He took to bedding loose ladies and seducing laced-up ones, smoking opium and drinking absinthe. In Mandalay, he learned from watching illusionists of all nations and stripes, and soon began to defraud even the savviest gamblers. He found opportunity in the thousandth of a second between movements, and he knew the power of psychological diversion and verbal smokescreen. What his father had lost through speculation he could more than make up through manipulation. The supply of gullible people in the world was delightfully endless.

Seraphineas Andrews made it his habit to discern quickly what religious, mystical, or superstitious beliefs people held. Their illusions, he found, made for interesting twists in his illusions. He might thump a Bible to ask God to deliver the right card into the victim’s hand. He might cause watches to disappear from men’s pockets, and reappear in the palm of the Buddha. The more people believed, the more they could be fooled.

One day, he was performing his usual repertory of tricks, a deck of cards in one hand, the Bible in another. He set the Bible down, opened to Psalms, and as he shuffled and exhorted God to manifest Himself to the unbelievers, an exhalation of his breath caused a few pages to rise and turn. He had not intended to do this, but instantly, a dozen new believers felt the hand of God seizing their necks.

From then on, Seraphineas Andrews practiced and perfected a

trick he called the Breath of God. At first he could turn a single thin page of the Bible from a distance of one foot. He increased this to two feet, then learned to shoot his breath from the side of his mouth without any sign that he was puffing his cheeks or rotating his lips.

In time, he could converse and between words aim his breath backward five feet and ripple the pages from Old Testament to New.

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He had discovered that changing a person’s beliefs was intoxicating, far more satisfying than performing tricks that only induced a temporary bewilderment. For a while, he was able to convince a number of young ladies that God had commanded them to grant

him intimate favors, which they could give freely, for God, they would see, restored their purity as soon as the gift was given. He progressed to cheating grieving widows out of their bank holdings in exchange for a reunion with their deceased husbands. The husbands bade greetings and adieu with the rippling pages. He later had a retinue of young men to carry out his orders, from robbing banks to stabbing to death a man who threatened to expose him as an impostor. When friends of the dead man began to investigate, the crooked finger of fate pointed at Seraphineas Andrews and he ran into the Burmese jungle.