Under the Dragon (13 page)

* * *

It had been through her ears, and not as other women through her hands and eyes, that Ma Swe had come to know the four loves. She had been born a frail child, at once fearful and curious, obedient yet independent, with an intense aversion to the sun. As a baby she had wailed through the hot season, crying to her mother to be taken into the leafy tamarind shade, cooing at her through the cool monsoon rains. Warm weather did not agree with her. So almost as soon as her legs would carry her she had retreated out of the smothering heat and into her own world. In the unlit recesses of the Ananda Pahto she had chased cold-blooded lizards and mythical tales, spinning herself into the
jatakas
, or Buddha birth stories, singing old love epics about the
kinnayas
, lovers half-bird and half-human who wept for seven hundred years after being separated for one night. Ma Swe loved the legends because her mother had been a poet. In the cool of evening she had been meshed into the passages of poems. ‘Listen, my lovely,’ her mother had said as they sat beneath the rhyming tree which grew in the temple precinct. Ma Swe had obeyed, hearing the song in her words, gaining a kernel of truth from each story. ‘Into every poem goes my only life,’ her mother had told her, and after each recital they had wound around and around the tree, repeating a line from here or a stanza from there, before collapsing in a heap to drink sweetened lime juice to the music of language. The gentle, loving childhood had set the pattern of Ma Swe’s life; to attend to others, to cherish the finite, to accept her insignificance. It also taught her the art of listening.

It was as a child that Ma Swe had been drawn to the first love. There were caves near the temple, and she had often played alone in their dim shadows. She was not afraid of the dark but rather of that which she could not hear, and one day she overheard the soft sound of whispers. She squeezed herself into a dim alcove and, above the beating of her heart, overheard the rustle of clothing. Beyond a stone lattice a man sighed, murmuring eternal promises in a moment’s passion, and a woman laughed in the blackness. Ma Swe lay as still as a reclining Buddha, almost near enough to the lovers to have been taken into their entwining arms, and listened. The thrill of their intimacy stirred her and she trembled beside them for hours, hidden in the alcove until nightfall. She hung onto the silence long after the unseen couple had regathered both their clothes and their modesty, and departed.

The wonder of the second and third loves had come to her five years later with the wails, pain and push of labour. She had been an adolescent lying on her sleeping mat in the family house, listening through a moonless night and thin bamboo walls. Late in life her mother had borne a last child and first son, but within twelve months the family’s whirl of joy had tangled into taut sorrow. The boy died from cerebral malaria. As they washed the little corpse from head to toe, then closely swathed it in new white cotton cloth, Ma Swe wept alongside the women. She shared the aching emptiness of her mother’s arms, but grieved alone for the loss of a brother.

Another decade later, as a wife herself, Ma Swe had understood the fourth love. Every night in her dark solitude she had reached out to grasp it. She tuned the radio to hear the voice of the man who had been gone for too long ever again to be her lover, whose child she would never bear, who would always remain her companion. The carnal and the maternal, platonic and filial love; all her life Ma Swe had learned by listening. At school, at the side of her mother’s cooking pot, even when walking alone in the arid, brick-littered fields between the
payas
of Pagan, she had always been quiet and intent, observant yet somehow distanced from experience. It had seemed such an obvious concept to her, to listen and to learn. But as she grew older the people around her had seemed to lack both the patience and the inclination to pay attention to anyone other than themselves.

The family that had embraced her could not alone contain her, and she had to reach beyond its confines. In time it was in the unpicking of the poems that she had come to understand her need to leave Pagan. Her mother’s words helped her to decide to train as an editor. There was so much noise and static in the world. Both deafness and verbosity muddled the search for clarity, and Ma Swe had learned the importance of succinct expression. She had an ear for the leanness of good writing, as well as the good fortune to have a teacher who was a member of the Burma Socialist Programme party. Ability had always played a large part in a child’s education, but with the military controlling the country a parent’s connections were more important. Ma Swe’s teacher was her uncle and he arranged for her a scholarship from the Ministry of Home and Religious Affairs. The condition attached to it would not become apparent until later.

In her three years at college Ma Swe never missed a lecture. She also never lingered outside. Her pale, translucent skin gave the impression of fragility, as if a bout of fever might be fatal. Her tutors, who were cowed newsmen and imported East German advisors adept at ideological journalism, worried for her health. They singled her out for special treatment, though not only because of her delicate constitution. They saw that Ma Swe observed and absorbed, but kept her opinions to herself. She was a good listener and therefore a suitable journalist. In early 1988 she graduated near the top of her class. But she had no ambition to write editorials for the
Working People’s Daily
. Instead she hoped only to return to Pagan, or at least to nearby Meiktila, and to find herself a quiet position as a regional correspondent, or better still a district editor. The ministry which had supported her education had other plans. They offered her a junior position at the Press Scrutiny Board, the government censor, in Rangoon. Ma Swe was free to refuse the post, of course, but if she turned it down she would be required to repay the full cost of her scholarship – plus interest.

The pages rustled in the fan’s languid breeze. Piles of manuscripts waited on a dozen dark wooden desks, beside Bakelite telephones which only received incoming calls, and carousels of rubber stamps: ‘Approved’, ‘Rejected’, ‘Refer to MI’. The reams of paper were stacked like sheaves of yellowed tobacco leaves around the old plaster walls. A single typed sheet was caught by the breeze and blown free from its binding, sailing across the office, over the bowed Monday morning heads before crumpling to the floor below a barred window. Beneath the slowly turning fans the censors read and yawned and sauntered out for coffee, idling past anxious authors and publishers who waited on the hard bench by the door. Ma Swe found her way to her seat, a ministry crest on its shoulder. She had been issued with a grey civil service uniform and a red pencil. She sat down at her desk and vanished behind the mountain of paper. The telephone rang and she picked up the receiver. The Board’s chairman, a major on secondment from Military Intelligence, barked a curt welcome then counted off the Eleven Principles.

‘In scrutinising literature and the media no publication may contain:

1. anything detrimental to the Burmese Socialist Program;

2. anything detrimental to the ideology of the state;

3. anything detrimental to the socialist economy…’

As he spoke Ma Swe scrabbled in the empty drawer to find a pen. She tried to note the guidelines with her red pencil on the back of a collection of short stories. In her confusion she missed Principles Number Four and Five, but lacked the courage to interrupt the Major.

‘6. any incorrect ideas and opinions which do not accord with the times;

7. any descriptions which, though factually correct, are unsuitable because of the time or circumstances of their writing;

8. any obscene or pornographic…’

Ma Swe broke her pencil lead in the midst of Principle Number Nine.

‘10. any criticism of a non-constructive type of the work of government departments;

11. any libel or slander of any individual.

Is this quite clear?’

‘Yes,
saya
,’ she answered.

‘The Principles are listed on the wall behind your head. Refer to them at each opportunity,’ he instructed and hung up.

Every newspaper and novel, comic and calendar, magazine and religious manual intended for publication in Burma had to pass through the PSB office. Works were submitted either in triplicate at manuscript stage or after printing, when five copies were required. The Board then read and approved – or forbade – distribution. Because of the costs involved in editing text after a book had been printed and bound, most writers tended to censor themselves. They wrote either bland
pyei-thu akyo-pyu
, that is ‘works beneficial to the people’, or allegories, veiled enough to pass the inspection yet not so disguised that readers overlooked their true meaning. A misjudgement meant non-publication; honesty guaranteed imprisonment. The restrictions did little to encourage clarity of thought.

Burma’s press had once been the most dynamic and free in Asia. The country’s first newspaper had been published in 1836. The colonial
Rangoon Gazette
, founded in 1861, had survived until the Second World War. For decades the nationalist cause had been served by Aung San’s
Oway
, the
Dagon
magazine and the
Myanma Alin
, or ‘New Light of Burma’. By the 1950s the country boasted more than thirty daily papers, including six in Chinese and three in English. But in 1962 the situation changed. The country was in chaos, rebel armies threatened to tear apart the union, and the military saw free thought as a threat to national stability. Irresponsible journalists – that is writers who expressed independent views – were perceived as troublemakers, capable of lobbying opinion against the
Tatmadaw
. So, for the sake of national unity editors and publishers were arrested, their newspapers closed or nationalised. To silence the voices of dissent the government banned all private dailies, and the press was placed under the direct control of the Ministry of Information.

At college Ma Swe and her classmates had learned of their responsibility to promote the ideology of the state. They were taught that the media needed to explain official policies, to inform the people of relevant facts and to exhort the virtues of hard work and sacrifice. Their role as editors and journalists was to help to strengthen the unity of the country, not to undermine it with criticism. The Burmese constitution granted every citizen freedom of speech, expression and publication ‘to the extent that such freedom is not contrary to the interests of the working people and socialism’. There was little room for interpretation and imagination.

But at the PSB Ma Swe was not yet responsible for imposing the Eleven Principles. She was a clerk, and too junior to be in charge of the dissemination of information. Her job was simply to look for spelling mistakes. On her carousel there hung a simple rubber stamp: ‘Fee Payable due to Errors of Spelling’. For every mistake that she found an author was required to pay ten pyas to the Board. There were one hundred pyas to the kyat. This charge was in addition to the reading fee, paid in advance, of fifty pyas per page.

Ma Swe had hoped that she might be able to learn from the work, but when the Major left his office and went out a few minutes later, she didn’t have time to read. The other clerks and the deputy supervisor gathered around her desk, bringing with them cups of tea and conversation. One clerk was from Meiktila and knew her uncle. Many of the others had, like her, studied journalism. The supervisor outlined for Ma Swe the daily routine of trimming words and unweaving thought. It was her work that had led to the recent banning of a series of articles recounting the legends and myths of famous pagodas. The articles, she recalled with pride, were censored because ‘there was no proof that any of the legends were true’.

‘Did they tell the story of the days when it rained gold and silver?’ Ma Swe asked her. ‘That is why there are so many pagodas in Pagan; after the rains even widows became rich enough to build them.’

‘I believe that the legend was mentioned.’

‘And the story of Shwezigon? Where men and celestials laid the rows of bricks in turn?’ The temple’s bronze Buddhas were cast with their right hands held palm outward, fingers extended, to portray the
abhaya
gesture, which means ‘no fear’.

‘I don’t know about gold in Pagan,’ said the supervisor, ‘but it does occasionally rain silver here in Rangoon.’ She and her workmates went on to outline the correct procedure for sharing out the cash bribes that were received by the Board. Ma Swe listened in silence, wary of speaking her mind again. In her hesitant voice she indicated that it was time to begin her reading, but the supervisor laughed and said, ‘Not until after your lunch appointment.’

‘You are being taken out to lunch,’ explained the woman from Meiktila, her face breaking into a grin. ‘It is your first “present”.’

‘We have told him that you are in charge of issuing licences to new magazines.’

‘You have told whom?’ asked Ma Swe, now worried.

‘Ko Lin.’

‘But I do not know anyone named Ko Lin, and I have nothing to do with licensing.’ Ma Swe held up her broken red pencil. ‘I correct spelling mistakes.’

‘Don’t worry, little sister; Ko Lin is a gentleman,’ the supervisor told her, hoping that her smirk went unnoticed. ‘It will be very pleasant.’

‘And amusing,’ said another.

‘He’s a photographer who has decided to become a publisher,’ added the woman from Meiktila, not wishing to prolong Ma Swe’s anxiety. ‘It is only a little joke that we are playing on him. He tries to get his own way, and we don’t wish him to become too confident with his requests to us. You don’t mind, do you? Please.’

It was common practice for a publisher, or a writer if he could scrape together the cash, to entertain his censor to a meal. The favour tended to expedite approval, though not of course if a work was unsuitable for ideological reasons. It followed that the better the meal, the sooner the permission to publish would be forthcoming. A plate of sour-hot fish and noodles at the Palace Restaurant might reduce waiting time from a month to a week. A slap-up mixed grill at the Strand, the best hotel in Rangoon, would guarantee authorisation by the next morning, even sooner if the evening was rounded off with karaoke or a dinner show. The practice was rather like endearing oneself to a wealthy relative, who controlled one’s inheritance and paid an allowance only if it pleased him.