That Savage Water (13 page)


Are placed
– I think. Borders have a tendency to rake and gather.

Then that lizard on the wall behind his head poised with suction feet, droplets from the faucet down water bottle, upper lip, jawline. The slow, tenacious force of liquid traversing surfaces, dangling from edges, held suspended by an eternal fidelity to identical molecules.

Then feel myself move closer to him, seeing the pores on his cheeks like divots in a full brown moon, ferocious grey beard, and me not certain of anything except a scalding loneliness that creeps up from my belly into the cave of my mouth, burns at my teeth and then suddenly pours out in a cascade of hot, violent sobs – a mustang leaping wild against his paddock. Strong and muscular, his arms gather around me as I give in, resting against the warmth of his skin through cotton shirt, smel of curry heated through sweat, faint cologne like wood chips and mineral. My frantic breaths through scattered weeping, the Sikh's hands on my back pulling me into his shoulder. From inside his chest, I hear him offer a deep bass of soothing moans, empathetic, the nook of his neck taking my tears as he rubs full-palmed against my skeleton. Then, in my feeling like a fragile cloud just spent of its thunder, he takes my shoulders and holds me away from him.

I hope you manage to get to Kashmir someday – he says, dropping his blue-turbaned head in a conscious bow – It is really the most beautiful of places on earth. I sincerely wish you that pleasure – he turns and disappears into his room.

Then down the hallway to mine where I gather my belongings from a water-marked table, the lighter rings where the varnish disintegrated. Passport, handkerchief, Aspirin, guidebook. Backpack with T-shirts, sandals, plaid longyi I huddled beneath in the rocking carriage of the night train from Bangalore weeks before. Dim mounded bodies three-tiered under cabin lights and ceiling fans, an Indian man reading his Bible by penlight curled on the middle bunk. Crossing the Western Ghats with the pole star glowing out the open window, humid night breeze wipes across foreheads, the passing lights of the countryside. Zip pockets, hoist bag on back, glance beneath the sagging bed frame for the plastic bottle cap I dropped last night but never found. Leaving Goa. Away from Alexis. From Ari. From that curse of water bottles, accidental knee-touch, hallucinated kiss on the cheek meant to capture me. Forget them. Thirteen hour night-bus north, to Varanasi instead where troops of monkeys perch on temple rooftops, the promise of sunrise over cleaner rivers. Flatter, more forthright ground. Dreams of peace without the bother. White mineral deposits, bubbling subterrains, a glistening wet trickle over snow-dusted rock faces, storm-front cirrus, oxygen, the cobalt blue sky over wild and treacherous borders.

The power is out for the fifth night in a row, the moon still half-hidden beneath gnarls of black gas – truck exhaust blown upward. Beyond the deck of the guesthouse, the indigo shadow of a satellite dish swivels towards that glowing moon like a giant phototropic leaf anchored to the building's roof. Behind it, the golden stupa in the centre of Kalaw suddenly illuminates; the monks must have ignited the generators. The chugging thrust of combustion echoes out over the town as dogs with clicking paws sniff the pavement, foraging for food on the street below. My stomach growls, mixing with the engine whirr: All creatures wanting to eat tonight, that's the scavenger in us. So I grab a vest and cap, pick burrs from my bootlaces caught from yesterday's trek to the look-out; I lock the door to my room and head out into the blackened street.

Nighttime village. Kalaw. The foothills of the Himalayas.

The bus grinds to a halt under a flank of fluorescent bulbs. The driver's naked voice shouts back to us, all sleep-quieted and still. The aisle lights flicker on and we creak open like moist shells from our bundles of sleep. Passing through Naypyidaw means government checkpoints, the army's paranoia manifested as a constant pain-in-the-ass. I search for my sandals kicked off in the grit beneath the seat, grab my jacket and yawn with the woken others. Off the bus onto the roadside ledges of Burma.

Heavy-eyed passengers shuffle through the midnight hut, the patrolmen inspecting identity cards and flashlighting faces.


Foreigner! Hello, foreigner
– a lone soldier gestures me away from the queue to the road –
You come here. Yes, come here, foreigner!

His rifle cuts a shadow across his cheek.


Where is your passport?

Here. Canadian.


You travel only one, foreigner?

Yes, alone.


Alone…Alone. You have no friends.

I have friends.


But they don't come with you.

Not to Myanmar.

Over the guard's shoulder the empty highway to Naypyidaw blazes like a spotlit inferno. Clean black asphalt, five deserted lanes in either direction, properly curbed and garden-lined. The army has their own private road network so they don't have to drive with the masses. Same reason they won't allow monks to speak with foreigners at the Shwedagon. Coward paranoid bullshit.


You go to Mandalay?

Kalaw.


Kalaw for trekking?

Yes. For trekking.


How you like it, here in Myanmar?

It's fine.


Why your friends not come with you?
– he hands me my passport.

They stayed in Thailand.


Thailand, no good. See? You come to Myanmar.

Myanmar's not perfect.


Not perfect, no. Go that way, your bus. Foreigner, goodbye.

Back in my seat, a pock-faced soldier paces down the aisle sniffing for contraband and stowaways. Out the window beside the patrol hut more soldiers wrapped in blankets and knitted hats sit smoking cheroots and shuffling sticks into smoldering fires. A rash of embers pops into the air. During nights like these, awoken in the roadside gap, the in-between of destinations where the fields stretch out into a fathomless black and the humans wear all the weary lines their faces can bear, I ask myself where on earth I am and why in the world I brought myself here. Countries later, I still find myself forgetting.

The bus revs its engine and soon we're rumbling down the decrepit two-lane highway again. In the distance, the lights of Naypyidaw stretch out across the fields. Even at three a.m. everything is lit like daytime. Across the aisle, two British guys have put on their sweatshirts and contorted their bodies into some sleep-bearable position. The air-conditioning has everyone huddled into themselves but no one wants to say to the driver we're damn near freezing. I tuck my knees up to my chest as that pit of hunger suddenly expands into a cavern of empty. Can't do anything about it now. Not until a rest stop at least. Thirteen hours north from Yangon to Kalaw.

The headlights of cargo trucks shoot through the chilly night in beams that curdle the retina closed when stared at directly. The street dog beside me peers through the darkness, snout forward. Even that lagging hound so tiresomely using his stomach to slink through the black.

On the sidewalk a generator throbs in front of the small roadside restaurant. A fluorescent bulb dangles above the stove where a man ladles oil into a rusty pan, then the sizzle of onions. I ate at this place already for lunch but the fried rice is the best I've found so far. The tables look out onto the street and through the back window you can see the golden stupa when it's lit. I saw one of the British guys from the bus standing on the deck of the guesthouse when I left my room. He leaned against a wooden post surveying the darkened town and that gigantic satellite dish like he'd been pondering something dark and severe. Or maybe he was thinking of where to go next, since that's always what we're wondering. Where next? So happy to be nomads.

Plumes of steam from some wilted greens hit the cooking man in the face. As the restaurant owner looks up from the bar, his face brightens and says – You back already? Already today you eat here.

Hungry again.

Sit, sit. Okay. Same table you want?

Doesn't matter.

Again you eat fried rice?

Sure – and then – Electricity's off again. Every night now, isn't it?

Every night, sure. Every night. Sometime it stay on, but…you know. Not now. Maybe later.

I'll have a beer too.

One beer…

The owner is a young Burmese guy who somehow got his hands on a pair of worn Levi's and a black motorcycle jacket so he looks like an Asian James Dean. His wife sits at the corner table with the baby on her lap. She wipes the surfaces, brings the bill or a cigarette when the meal's finished, but usually just sits there playing with the kid or staring out at the golden stupa.

I say to him – Maybe it'll come back on.

Football game is tonight. They give us electricity for that. The army always gives electricity for football.

Out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant the two British guys from the guesthouse appear. One with dark shaggy hair coming down over his forehead. The other, blond, taller, with the most angular face I've ever seen, like carved by a torrent of mathematics.

The owner says to me – Please wait, please. Two more foreigners – and then goes to the door to seat them.

Foreigner. Foreigner. Come here, foreigner
. Trespassing in that territory not your own: the riverbanks of lawless Burma, endless fields of slave-grown rice and knowledge of those vast hidden valleys of opium tucked away behind the mountain range, down roads no foreigner has the permit to travel.

The vapor of my exhale coats the flashlight's beam, the temperature's dropped close to zero but I don't have the sweaters for it. I took the blankets off the empty bed and doubled them on top of my own. I froze my balls off in the bus from Yangon too. Everyone was bundled in caps and jacket-layers, glad for the respite from the heat, but I was just aching to roast. The tropics are for sweating out your toxin. It seeps out your pores and congeals into a scum you scrape off and rinse down the drain. But here the altitude is higher, Kalaw settled on the brink of the mountain chain before edging down to the Shan Plateau. The Himalayan foothills scuffing the Indo-Chinese peninsula.

Booted footsteps across the porch to the room next door: A Spanish couple returned from trekking today, come back from dinner and begin to play music from some iPod speakers. I hear them unpacking and repacking, their minutes of comfortable, mutual silence through the wall and then the guy's sudden off-tune singing. The girl joins in a quarter-pitch higher.

My flashlight fades to a sickly yellow. I knock it hard against my book cover and it flashes brighter, then weakens to the same jaundiced ray. The Spanish couple is silent again and I imagine them in the beginning strokes of a passionate kiss. The room is completely quiet as the flashlight fades its last beams into black. Cold and dark, huddled under these blankets alone: the ache of the solo traveller settles on top of me like some nighttime nausea – some cage I stare out of like a bus window onto the passing river valleys. The weight of solitary transport, the desolation of a second pair of eyes not there. I'd convinced myself it was better this way. Complete freedom without the bother, without the worry of someone else's stomach growling for food, their legs tiring from the pace, plus all the portals travelling alone would open. But now in this freezing dark, I feel like a remnant – lost and unmatchable. Behind the wall, the Spanish couple attempts to fuck quietly.

The owner seats the British guys at a table next to mine in the centre of the room. They order beers, and when he comes back I order a cigarette.

Sure, sure. One cigarette.

The Londons are fine – I say – I'll take one of those.

One London…

The guy with the angular face looks over as the owner brings me the smoke.

You ordered just one?

You can do that here – I say – Have a London, though. The local brand will knock you out.

I've smoked them before.

The other one says – You're at the same guesthouse as us.

I think so.

Did you trek today?

Yesterday.

Alone?

With a guide from the guesthouse.

To the lookout?

You're quite high at that point.

The view was incredible.

We're going to Inle tomorrow. Have you been?

Everyone goes to Inle. I've heard Hsipaw is quieter.

We've been there too. On the way in, a week ago.

How long have you been here? – I ask.

The brown-haired guy answers – This is our third week in Burma. We came in from China.

I didn't think you could do that.

We teach English in Baoshan, just across the border.

The Burmese have terrible pronunciation.

Chinese are worse. Their tongues get lost in their own mouths, don't they, Jake.

The angular guy leans back in his chair – We get cheated so often because we're foreigners. That's how it goes, though. I don't mind it so much, but Seth always takes it personally.

I don't really – the guy Seth says.

I was followed in Yangon – I say – I'd rather be cheated than followed.

But the Chinese will cheat you to your face.

They think we can afford it. That's why.

We were on the same bus as from Yangon, weren't we? – the one named Jake says.

Yes, I saw you. We took the same truck to the bus station too. Everyone goes the same direction through here. It's hard to find a place to be alone – I stub the cigarette in the dish.

Jake didn't think you spoke English.

The owner arrives at my table – One fried rice…

The bus grumbles slowly along the side of the mountain, hovering in that insomnial space between first and second gear. Black plants coated with dust shake as we pass. Drifts of four a.m. cloud catch the headlights as we climb into cooler air, farther into Burma, farther north into Shan State where the opium grows. Why am I here? Why can't I sleep, and why always alone? The shaggy palm huts built right up against the road are coated in the same dust as the plants. They shroud some huddled family against the roadside chill. The guys across the aisle are attempting to sleep too. Keep seeing their heads nod then jerk back to awake when the angle bumps off. I think they're British but can't tell. I'll see them around the town or some village monastery tomorrow. That's how it works – the same travellers following the same well-worn paths. I lay my head against the cold pane of the rattling window and watch the anonymous huts pass, full of dozing babies, mothers, fathers, brothers gone missing for years and years.