Saving Fish From Drowning (53 page)

Both?
Moff was flummoxed. Was this an overture to be friends—or more? Heidi quietly watched him and prepared her heart for disaster.

At five o’clock, another special report with Harry Bailley aired, this time filmed on location in Mandalay. “We’re at the top of gor3 8 0

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geous,
gorgeous
Mandalay Hill, where you can see for miles in all directions,” he began, and my friends listened, hoping for clues as to where they might be found.

THE SPECIAL REPORT from Mandalay had been filmed only that morning. When the Burmese camera crew arrived at the base of the hill, Harry was disheartened to learn he would have to climb a staircase of one thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine stone steps. It looked like a fast ascent to heaven via a heart attack. But what he lacked in aerobic conditioning he made up for in hope that he would find clues to his friends’ whereabouts. Thank God the staircase was covered with a canopy to keep the blazing sun off his back. As instructed, Harry removed his shoes, then held them up to the camera, saying: “No footwear allowed in holy places, which this is.” He began the long march up.

The stone stairs were smooth and coolly sensual. He thought

about the millions of bare soles that had climbed these same steps over the past centuries. What prayers did they come with, what fungus on their feet?

At first, he maintained a good pace, passing by tables of nibbana goods, Buddhas both crude and fine, replicas of pagodas, and lacquer bowls and boxes. But after a hundred steps, he found it difficult to breathe without making it sound like the death rattle. He gestured to the camera crew to stop filming, but they seemed to think he was asking for them to take a tighter shot. Never mind, then. He was experienced at this sort of thing, saving the shot, providing cutaways that would later make the editing easier. Ah, here was his opportunity for a transition: a small table full of cheap wooden Buddhas.

Brilliant. He feigned having them catch his eye. With his back to the camera, he panted, out of breath. He held one of the wooden Buddhas up to the sun and examined it like a jeweler inspecting dia3 8 1

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monds. He realized he was perspiring copiously, but unlike the set for his own show, this one lacked a hair and makeup artist with a powder puff at the ready to take off the shine of perspiration. The only puffs he saw were the smoky ones emitted by the nuns, monks, and kids sucking on their cheroots. He looked around for something that might do for a handkerchief and settled on his shirtsleeve. He faced the camera. Damn, they were still filming. What to do? He held the statue smack dab in front of the camera. “Cleverly carved, in a primitive sort of way so popular with art collectors now.” He asked the woman to name her price and made no attempt to bargain, thinking it best to show American generosity. He peeled off the bills, the equivalent of three dollars in U.S. money. Now he’d have to resume the torture of the stairs.

God! It was bloody hot, and the air was thick, settling in his lungs like gravel. Well, if Moff, Rupert, and Esmé had climbed these bloody steps, he could, too. It was all part of his effort to do what he could. These on-location news spots were their best chance at keeping the attention focused on his friends. This way, if they had been abducted, the kidnappers would be afraid to kill them. If they were lost, a million people would be on the lookout for them. Filming the updates was as important as any
Fido Files
episode he had done—

amend that to
more
important, even more than the ones he did during sweeps week. His friends depended on him.
Lives
depended on him. Love depended on it. Thus refreshed in spirit and body and heart, he looked right at the camera and said in a commanding voice:

“All right, then, onward and upward.”

This time, he paced himself, leisurely admiring the architecture, or the plains below and the increasingly expansive horizon. He took a lengthy rest at a temple located at the midway point. “They tell me this place contains three bones of the Buddha, first-class authenticated relics,” he narrated. “It strikes me that this display is rather similar to what the Catholics do with saints. They enshrine a rib or 3 8 2

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a lock of hair, which can then be viewed centuries later by pilgrims seeking renewal.” He was proud that he had thought to say that. It was important that people identify with the place and not think it was foreign and thus incomprehensible and bizarre.

A few flights more, and he saw another convenient excuse to stop: a statue of a woman kneeling before the Buddha, offering him some pies. He glanced down at his notes. Good Lord! Those weren’t pies; they were breasts! What was this statue supposed to symbolize? And why was the Buddha smiling? What would the Buddha possibly

do with the breasts? “And here we see a pious woman,” he quickly thought to say, “offering a gift of . . . herself.” He was about to make some cultural comparison to Christian martyrs, but decided against it. That would not benefit his friends in any way. With the image of severed breasts in his mind, he resumed climbing, now less buoyant, less certain.

Finally he reached the top, and a pagoda made of blue and silver glass. He was cheered to see the two search-and-rescue dogs. As he walked closer, he saw Saskia. She was sitting on one of a row of tall stools positioned for viewing the landscape from a bird’s-eye advantage. She was not smiling, he noted, and fear ran down his scalp.

Body parts, he guessed, the dogs had found body parts. The camera crew followed him as he walked toward Saskia.

“Any developments?” he asked as coolly as possible.

To his relief, she shook her head. “I gave them the scent samples.

The dogs did a search. The entire terrace, the steps, and they came up with a big nothing.”

Harry exhaled. “So we’ve eliminated this spot. False report. Well, we might as well enjoy the view before we head to the other side of town. And don’t forget. If you see anything suspicious, any sign of the Americans, call the Bear Witness Hotline number on the screen.”

Conscious of the camera still aimed in his direction, he walked to the edge of the terrace and looked out. The plain reached past pago3 8 3

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das, shrines, and turrets, edifices that contained things he could not understand: secrets, glory in death, tributes to Nats, ideas of worship and history foreign and bizarre. As his eyes scanned the panorama in a widening arc, he said quietly to Saskia, “Wasn’t that a horrendous climb? I nearly passed out.”

“Look behind you,” she said. And he turned and saw on the other side of the terrace a Japanese tour group, all wearing identical hats and following like ducklings a women with a yellow flag held high. “I went up that side,” Saskia said.

Harry looked again. He then saw the alternative route, a series of escalators that led to a parking lot just slightly below, where air-conditioned buses waited to whisk the tourists to their next destination.

An hour later, he stood with the camera crew before a massive gold statue of the Buddha in an elaborate alcove of the Mahamuni Pagoda. It was lit by fluorescent tubes and colored lights, giving it the look of the Coney Island arcade game Shoot the Freak. Good Lord, Harry thought, a twelve-foot-high monument of gold. Its eyes appeared to be staring down at its admirers. More than a hundred people sat cross-legged before it, their palms open. Dozens of men, the merit-seekers of the day, waited in line, holding tissue-thin square leaves of gold. The women, who were not allowed to touch the Buddha, gave their gold squares to a man in white. Harry watched as a merit-seeker reached the foot of the Buddha, climbed onto the Buddha’s knee, and stood as high as he could to press his soft gold leaf onto the statue’s arm and rub. With each rub, the gold melded into the Buddha’s body. Others pressed their gold on the Buddha’s hand, which over the years had swelled to enormous proportions from such daily devotion, the manicured fingernails so attentively gilded that they appeared to be piercing the platform.

The merit-seekers had bought their leaves from poor men who did nothing but pound gold for twelve hours a day with a hammer. They 3 8 4

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pounded the gold repeatedly, until it turned into a layer as fine as skin. Often the merit-seekers were also poor men, and to buy the gold, they and their families had to sacrifice a few necessities of life.

But they did this gladly. For how else would they advance themselves in the next life, if not by doing this? Merit was better than food.

Merit was hope.

Saskia waved from the other side of the vestibule, and Harry waved back. She threaded her way through the crowd, the two dogs following. When they were reunited, Harry bent down and gave the dogs hearty slaps on their rumps and scratches behind their ears.

The cameras started to record, and Harry was aware of this. “Hello, love,” he cooed to Lush. “Tell old Harry where you’ve been and what you’ve seen.” The dog thumped her tail in response. “Hey, mate,”

Harry called to Topper. He pointed to his watch and the Lab directed his nose that way. “What say you give me another ten minutes, and then we’ll go for a game of seek. How’s that?” The dog emitted a throaty gurgle in response. Harry looked up at the face of the Buddha, so the camera crew could get a shot before he explained where he was.

A soused old man with a bent back watched all this. He had once pounded the gold all day until it shook loose his bones and caused them to crumble. He went up to the movie star and looked him right in the face, trying to get his attention, but to no avail. Harry was busy expressing wonderment as he stared up at the Buddha’s downcast eyes. Ah, the gold-pounder said to himself, the foreign man is so mesmerized by the manifestation of Buddha that he is unable to see another person. He had seen many do that when he was standing next to the Buddha. The tourists never saw him. He turned toward the statue and stood side by side with Harry.

“I see you are a rich and famous man,” he mumbled in Burmese.

“And you can see I am a poor man. I have no shoes to take off before entering this pagoda. But I washed my feet today, so the Buddha 3 8 5

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knows my respect is great. Though I have no gold leaves to bring, for many years I made them for others. So with my labor I, too, have given the Buddha many leaves. In my mind, I take each leaf I have ever made and I put them all on the Buddha’s legs, his hands, his arms, his chest. I have fattened his body. I have given up many material things in life to bring him this gold. In my mind, the Buddha knows this, and I am receiving merit. And so, as you can see, although I am poor, my respect is great, and I am as welcome to come here as anyone else.” He gestured to the people around them. “You can be poor. You can be rich. You can talk to dogs. I talk and no one hears me. But in the next life, we may change places. You might be the dog I will talk to. . . .” The man laughed and wheezed.

While waiting for the crazy man to leave, Harry concentrated on what to say. Finally one of the camera crew shooed away the lunatic, and Harry turned to the camera. “We are in this gorgeous pagoda with a fantastic gold Buddha. Take a look. People are actually putting pure gold on the Buddha as we speak. It’s a constant renovation of sorts. This place is also where monks saw my friend Mark Moffett being led by two suspicious-looking men—”

The Burmese reporter accompanying Harry reminded him to say

that the men spotted with his friend looked Thai or Indian but were definitely not Burmese. Harry nodded, although he was starting to get annoyed at being told once again what to say. The man had also told him to say “Myanmar” and not “Burma,” “Bagan” not “Pagan,” “Yangon” not “Rangoon.” “Would you like to call
me
something else?” Harry teased the reporter, who simply answered no. He now directed Harry to return to the entry of the hall and then walk toward the statue as if coming upon it for the first time. Over the next half-hour, Harry walked up to the Buddha repeatedly and from different angles, forever evincing newfound awe.

It was finally time to show the dogs in action. Harry called for Saskia and the “poochies” to step in front of the camera. “We’ve 3 8 6

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been given special dispensation,” Harry said, “to have the dogs roam this holy pagoda, go where their noses lead them—and rest assured, these highly trained dogs will not do anything to desecrate the place, not a drop.” He reached into a daypack and pulled out three pieces of footwear, a desert boot, a Nike sneaker, and a pink sandal with a daisy at the V of the toe.

“These belong to my missing friends,” Harry explained. “I have taken the liberty of borrowing them from possessions they left behind at the resort. They will prove highly useful. You see, we figure that like everyone here, my friends had to take off their shoes before they entered this pagoda. And as they walked barefoot—in a trance, we are told—they would have left invisible but telltale scentprints on this polished stone floor. What I have in my hand contains their same individual scents. You see where I am going, of course. We’ll have the dogs take a whiff from one of the shoes, that will be the scent sample, and they will use their highly developed noses to match this scent to a scent on the floor. That’s how they will pick up the trail.

From there it is a piece of cake, as straightforward as following Hansel and Gretel’s trail of bread crumbs.” Saskia interrupted to remind Harry that in that particular tale, birds ate up the crumbs, which was why the two children became lost.

“We should edit out the bit about Hansel and Gretel,” Harry told the reporter. He faced the camera again and walked slowly, gesturing to the stone floor. “Even in a heavily trafficked area like this, where thousands have roamed over the last few days, it is quite easy for trained dogs to pick up a scent. Once they’ve found it, we’ll reward the dogs with a game of fetch.” He held up a tennis ball. He called the dogs, and they bounded over with sprightly wagging tails. “All right, then, my little sausages. Let’s have a deep sniff.” Saskia offered the desert boot to Lush and then to Topper. The dogs sniffed with interest, pawed the air in excitement, then sat, their signal that this was the scent they knew they should find. With a barely audible cue from 3 8 7