Raji, Book Three

“And if you were queen of Burma, what would you do?”

“Please,” she said, pulling her hands from mine. “Do not make of me a fool. I am not a child that is to be indulged.” She looked away toward the palace. A light winked off in one of the tall towers.

“Believe me, Kayin, I never indulge anyone. I’m deeply interested in your thoughts and ideas about what’s to be done with the world. It’s our generation, yours and mine, that’s to repair the damage done by rich old men, living in their ivory mansions. A year ago, I would have argued against you and on the side of the British. But now, I don’t know what to think. I find it very difficult to take issue with you. I wanted our evening to be pleasant and beautiful. All afternoon, I thought only of how I could bring cheer into your life, and perhaps get you to like me a little. I really think of you as my intellectual equal, and when I ask what you would do if you were in control of your own country, I mean it as a theoretical question. What would you do if you suddenly had the power to do something for your people?” I didn’t know where this speech came from, but I was beginning to sound like the debater I once was.

Kayin looked at me for a long time. This wasn’t the look I remembered from our walk to the bank earlier that day, where our conversation was light and carefree. This was a look of antipathy or malice.

“You are American.”

I nodded.

“You are close to being British.”

I shrugged, then shook my head. I didn’t consider myself close to being British at all.

“Then, may I put it this way?” she asked. “You are closer to British than to Burmese.”

I agreed that was true.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Busetilear, but if I were Queen of Burma, as you say, I would summarily kick out all the Anglos, including Americans, and also the Germans and especially the French, and do it smartly, too.”

“I believe you would,” I said. “I believe you would surely do it.”

“And now what do you think of your new Burmese friend?”

“What do I think of you?” Now it was I who looked away to gather my thoughts. “I think you’re a rebel. I’m pretty sure you know a bit of American history and of how we threw off the yoke of British rule a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Yes.”

“They called us rebels and terrorists. They tried to suppress us with their military might. They will do the same thing here in Burma.”

“Let them try,” she said, “perhaps we have a Patrick Henry and a Betty Ross waiting somewhere in our own population.”

Betsy, I thought but didn’t correct Kayin this time.

I stood and held out my hand to her. After a moment, she took it and pulled herself up.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said.

“And?”

“And we’ll have a cup of tea in the dining room and talk about medical students and revolutionaries.”

Chapter Three

In the hotel dining room, we shared a pot of tea, along with golden shweji, the little wheat cakes with coconut cream and raisins. We talked until 11 p.m., when the dining room closed. We then left the hotel to walk back toward her rooms, but as we reached the corner of the building, the skies opened in a heavy downpour.

“This way, quickly!” she said as she took a key from her purse while we ran.

When we reached a side entrance to the hotel, Kayin slipped the skeleton key into the lock and shoved open the door. We jumped inside, already wet from the rain, then she closed the door and locked it.

In that small anteroom, we stood facing another door, and across from it was a stairway leading up to the floors above. Kayin said the door led to the kitchen, where the cook and his staff would be cleaning up. Neither of us made the decision to take the stairs; it was simply the only option.

In my room, I gave her a towel and my robe while I went to the bathroom to put on dry clothes. When I came out, she was drying her hair, and I could see she kept on her wet clothes under the robe. I knew she was uncomfortable and nervous about being alone in the room with me, so I suggested we scoot the chairs out onto the balcony. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the moon peeked through a break in the clouds. Outside, she wouldn’t feel threatened, and we could relax.

I had no intentions of trying to make love to her. If that came at some point later in our relationship, it would be fine; even wonderful. But not on this night. It wouldn’t be proper. I wanted to know more about her past, as well as her plans for the future. Anyway, I had no idea how to get a woman into bed. Did one simply ask a girl to get undressed? Or should there be a few hours of drinks, jokes, and foreplay, as I’d read in books? Perhaps the man patiently waited for the woman to tell him when it was time to proceed to the next step.

I hated my lack of experience in matters of love, and I knew when, or if, it came about, I was sure to make a hundred juvenile mistakes. Of course, I was aware of the mechanics and function of sex from my studies, but those professors of medicine wrote nothing of the emotional or sensual side of that most intimate of all human behaviors. Why had Raji and I never made love? If for no other reason than to see how to go about it and what should be done, and in what order. But no, we were too ‘intellectual’ to indulge in the crass activities of other young people. We couldn’t lower ourselves to waste time on romance. Too bad; I could certainly use the experience now.

We squeezed ourselves onto the little balcony, then relaxed in the chairs as we watched the city lights wink off one by one. The noises filtering up from the street slowly diminished until we heard only the occasional clatter of wheels on cobblestones as a rickshaw driver pulled his last customer home from a late night on the town.

“Are you warm enough?” I asked Kayin.

She smiled and nodded.

As we sat facing each other, with our knees touching, I could almost feel the pulse of her heartbeat.

“Have you always lived in Mandalay?” I asked.

“Yes. I was born in the Quang Ka quarter, just down near the river.”

We left the politics alone and talked about ourselves. Her mother died when Kayin was nine. She was raised by another member of her family. They didn’t have enough money to send her to school, but she learned English from a man she called Than-Htay. At fourteen, she was already supporting herself and made her way as best she could by selling fresh fruit on the streets. She was then hired by the hotel because of her knowledge of English.

I talked about my mother and father, the farm in Virginia where I grew up, Octavia Pompeii Academy, then medical school. In the spring of 1928, my mother moved all the family’s investments to government bonds. The returns weren’t so high compared to the roaring stock market, but investing in the stock market, she told me and Papa, was like riding a wild bull—it was surely exciting, but at some point the beast would throw you to the ground and perhaps trample you to pieces. Because of her good judgment, my family was financially better off in 1932 than before the crash of ’29. The good old U.S. government kept right on paying dividends on my mother’s bonds, despite the Depression.

I told Kayin about leaving school and hiring on the ship bound for India. I wrote to my mother but didn’t ask her for any money. With so many people suffering from the devastating economic depression, I felt I had no right to my family’s money. They’d built up the farm from nothing, and the bulk of their income now came from the government bonds and a small herd of miniature horses, but all that had nothing to do with me. I resolved to be as destitute as the vast majority of the world and try to make my own way.

By 3 a.m. on our first night together, Kayin and I knew almost as much about each other as we knew about ourselves. That was also when she began teaching me to speak Burmese. I’ve always had a knack for languages, learning Hindi very quickly from Raji. The grammar was a bit difficult, but slang was my biggest problem. Learning a nation’s slang is always the downfall when one tries to go native.

“What time do you have to be at work?” I asked her.

“Seven.”

I walked with her the few blocks to her home, a nearby apartment located above a shop, where she lived with another girl. I asked why she didn’t live at the hotel, and she told me it was far too expensive.

She would get only a few hours’ sleep before returning to work, so I decided to get up early and find things to do around the city. If she had to stay awake all day, then I would, too.

We met for lunch at the Yadana cafe.

“Do you not tire of restaurant food,” she asked, “all time, every meal?”

“Yes. It’s all right for a while, but then everything begins to taste the same.” I broke a cracker and spread a little butter on it.

She sipped her tea and glanced over at a waiter who picked up a few coins from a nearby table. “And it is also quite expensive.”

“I know.” I nibbled my buttered cracker.

“Will you not come to our home for dinner tonight?” Her teacup rattled into the saucer when she hit the rim instead of the center. Her face flushed a little as she looked down at the offending cup.

“Willingly,” I said. “But your roommate?”

“Lanna will not mind,” Kayin said quickly. “She shall be glad of the company.”

We set a time for me to drop by for dinner that evening as we walked back to the hotel.

“You must be exhausted,” I said.

“No, not at all. I found last night very delighted.”

“Delightful,” I said. “Does it bother you when I correct your English?”

“I am grateful to you for doing that. How else should I know?”

“And,” I said, “as you teach me Burmese, you can give the corrections back to me.”

“I will,” she replied as we came to the door of the hotel. “I will be looking for you tonight.”

Kayin touched my hand, and I had the distinct feeling she wanted to kiss my cheek but held back. I certainly wanted to kiss her.

She hurried into the hotel and back to work.

* * * * *

Lanna and Kayin’s home consisted of two small rooms and a tiny kitchen above a weaver’s shop in Hoa-Bin Road. They shared a communal washroom with some other families in the building next to theirs.

“Where’s Lanna?” I asked as I settled myself on the floor at a low table where Kayin had directed me.

She ran to the kitchen to attend to something on the stove. “She had to go on urgent family business, will return in two hours,” she said as she brought a large tray to the table. “More or less,” she added and gave me a quick smile as she took her place on the floor across the table from me.

What a wonderful dinner we had. Central to the meal was a large platter of steamed rice, with a delicious chicken curry, along with two large salads for us to share. One called lephet, and the other a ginger salad. The lephet was carefully arranged on a long plate with a multitude of ingredients, including dried shrimp, toasted yellow peas, sesame seeds, fried garlic, green peppers, lime juice, and green chilies, all mixed at the table according to one’s taste. For desert, we had a tasty coconut custard.

As we cleared the table and put away the food, I told Kayin it was the best meal I’d had since I left home for the academy, five years before. With typical Burmese modesty, she refused to take credit for the meal, saying Lanna had done most of the preparation before she left.

It was late, and Lanna hadn’t come back. Kayin showed no concern about her roommate, and I soon realized she probably wouldn’t be home that night.

Chapter Four

The technical difficulties I’d pondered over the proper approaches to making love never developed. We were simply sitting on cushions next to each other on the floor, listing to Glenn Miller’s music coming over the radio from the BBC, when she laid her head on my shoulder. I slipped my arm around her, then, almost as a continuation of my movement, she tilted her head back, leaving our lips on a slow collision course. From that point on, nature took complete control of our bodies.

The last thing I remember was hearing the words to Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love. Then it was another night without sleep, but neither of us minded. I think Kayin realized from my fumbling that I’d never been in bed with a woman. She whispered into my ear that she wasn’t sure about what to do, so we’d have to learn together. By sunrise, we were both thoroughly initiated in the art of lovemaking.

All the next day, I prowled libraries, museums, parks—doing anything to stay awake. Finally, in the evening she came to my room. We didn’t bother with food or drink, but went straight to bed and slept soundly in each other’s arms until four in the morning. We got out of bed two hours later, and I walked her home so she could get ready for work.

* * * * *

A week later, early on a balmy Tuesday afternoon, I leaned on the counter, chatting with Kayin. I knew Mr. Haverstock, the manager, would be gone for at least an hour. Every day at around that time, he would leave, saying he had to inspect the rooms to make sure the employees had done a proper job of cleaning.

“The bloodless fool,” Kayin said as she tallied the hotel ledger. “Everyone on staff knows he is soundly sleeping in one of the vacant rooms. He naps for an hour or more, letting us think he is performing some sort of critical management duty. But we are happy for it. It is at that time we can relax and do what we want. It is not that we are lazybones or finding careless time; it is only that we can get more of our work done without him peeping over our necks every minute.”

“Bloody fool,” I corrected her slang.

“Yes, he is that also,” she said.

Suddenly, she became alert and her commercial smile came back. She looked beyond me, and I knew another guest was coming to the counter from behind me.

“Welcome to the hotel Nadi Myanmar,” Kayin said to the newcomer.

“Hey, sailor,” the guest said. “Goldbricking again and flirting with the lady, I see.”

I recognized the voice. “‘Bout time you got here, Raji.” I turned to face her.

She gave me a hug and kissed my cheek. As I leaned back to look her over, I saw her gaze pass over my shoulder. With a tiny smile, she nodded toward Kayin.

“Oh, I’m sorry...” I started to introduce them, but I could see half of that had already been done. Kayin held Raji with the coldest look I’d ever seen in my life. She then gave me that same hard stare.

“Ahem,” Raji cleared her throat. “Perhaps you forgot to tell her about me, Fuse.”

“Fuse?” Kayin repeated my nickname, and the word dripped with a venom only a woman can inject into a single syllable.

“I told her you were coming,” I said to Raji while I watched Kayin’s eyes. I never knew the color blue could be so very frosty.

Just then, her professional smile returned and she greeted a pair of new guests. While the man and his wife filled out the hotel register, I tried to get her attention.

“Kayin, I need to tell you—”

“Please move to lounge or the restaurant,” Kayin interrupted me icily. “Or to your room to conduct personal business, please, now. I must perform my work.”

The man glanced up at me, then at Kayin, who gave him an almost sweet smile and indicated she wasn’t referring to him.

I took Raji up to my room, which was probably my second mistake of the day, since Kayin still smoldered in the lobby.

“She is very beautiful,” Raji said as I closed the door and put her suitcase on the bed.

“Yes.”

“How well do you know her?”

“Very well.”

“Very?” Raji gave me a quick look and grin.

“Very!”

“Really?” She stood still, staring toward the French windows, as if she were trying to remember something. Finally, she opened her suitcase and picked up a white taffeta dress to shake out the wrinkles. “And you told her about me?”

“Yes, many times.” I took a hanger from the closet and handed it to Raji for her dress. “I told her we went to school together, crossed the ocean together, went to India to see your family...”

“She seemed quite surprised to see me,” Raji said, giving me a puzzled expression.

“Well, maybe I forgot to tell her you were a woman.”

“You forgot?”

I made a helpless gesture.

“Fuse, sometimes I’m surprised you’re able to function on your own without adult supervision.”

“Me, too. What should I do?”

“You, my friend, are a very intelligent man, and at the same time a complete idiot.” She gave me her hangered dress and motioned for me to put it in the closet.

“Yeah, but what can I do now?” I hung her dress on the rod next to my robe.

“Stay here. I don’t want you making any more damage. Are you understanding me?”

“I’ll stay right here until you come back.”

For over two hours, I paced the floor. Exactly twenty-three steps from the front door to the French windows, and twenty-three back to the door. I tried to read a book but couldn’t concentrate. I stood on the balcony, counting the people below. I shaved twice and cut myself three times. I changed my shirt, polished my shoes, then, in my shiny black pointy-toe wingtips, measured the distance between to the French windows a few more times. The twenty-three steps never varied an inch.

Finally, I heard female laughter outside in the hallway, then my door opened. Raji and Kayin came into the room, arm-in-arm, still laughing. Probably about me. I didn’t care—it was a beautiful sound.

Kayin gave me a severe look, then kissed me. “Why,” she asked, “did you not tell me that Raji was a woman?”

“As my best friend,” I indicated Raji, “has told me many times, I’m a blockhead.”

“Yes, you are,” they said together.

Raji took one of the chairs as Kayin and I sat on the couch.

“Have you two been talking about me for the last two and a half hours?” I asked.

“No, silly,” Raji said. “That only took the first five minutes.”

Kayin laughed. “Then we had a good, long talk about India, Burma, and how we should go about kicking the British from both our houses.”

Raji had a wash-up and changed her clothes, then I took the two ladies out for a delightful dinner at a small restaurant overlooking the docks. Near the end of the meal, I poured a little wine in each of their glasses.

“Raji,” I said, “you might have the room to yourself tonight.”

Kayin and Raji looked at each other, then laughed.

“What?” I asked.

“I already have a room for myself,” Raji said. “On the fourth floor of the hotel.”

“We took care of that earlier,” Kayin said, “before we went up to your room.”

* * * * *

On the third night after Raji’s arrival, she and I waited for Kayin to finish her shift at the front desk and join us. Meanwhile, we studied the map of the Irrawaddy River valley and reconsidered our plans to travel to the Chinese border. I wanted to stay on for a while in Mandalay, and Raji understood my feelings but wasn’t sure about what she wanted to do. Traveling on without me really didn’t appeal to her.

“How’s your tennis game?” I asked.

“Tush!” Raji gave me a look and rolled her eyes. “Tennis indeed. Panyas Maidan doesn’t know one end of a racquet from the other. I repeatedly had to take the man by the hand and show him where to stand when serving the ball. Then, last Thursday night, when he took me to the teahouse at Radha Bazaar in Baneeji Street, he let slip, or maybe said on purpose, that the dowry my mother promised him might not be enough. I almost choked on my curry. Then I wanted to choke him, and my mother.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” I said, “your mother had already promised him a dowry, along with your hand in marriage, before we met him that first night?”

“And he had the audacity to tell me the dowry wasn’t enough.”

I couldn’t keep from grinning. “What did you do?”

“I told that pompous fool that I wouldn’t marry him if his mother paid me a dowry.”

I laughed.

“And then I told my mother exactly what I thought of her as I packed my suitcase and left for Mandalay.”

“When we were introduced to him,” I said. “I thought he was a rich gentleman.”

“Yes, and an architect. Do you remember when he said he drew pictures of buildings, then left the construction to more capable hands?”

“I do.”

“He draws pictures of buildings all right. He’s a street artist, and a poor one at that. And his so-called club is the municipal park where we had to wait an hour for a vacant tennis court.”

“When will your mother ever learn?” I took my pipe from the inside pocket of my jacket and began to fill it with tobacco.

“When will I ever learn, you mean. And when did you start smoking a pipe?”

I struck a match and drew on the stem. “Last week.” I went out to the telephone mounted on the wall in the hallway and rang up room service for tea and coffee. The night waiter brought the tray up to my room, and a few minutes later, Kayin came in, followed by a man.

“I would like for you to meet someone,” she said to Raji and me. I don’t think Raji noticed it, but I thought I heard a slight tremor in Kayin’s voice.

We stood up to greet him. He wasn’t dressed in traditional Burmese clothing, but instead wore a Western-style gray suit, nicely cut but inexpensive. His posture was very straight, his bearing almost military, and he was taller than most Burmese men. I guessed his age to be late twenties. With the front brim of his black hat turned down, he could have stepped right out of a Charlie Chan movie.

“This is Major Kala-Byan,” Kayin said.

He removed his hat as he stepped forward to take Raji’s hand, bowing slightly. He then took my hand in a firm handshake. “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Fusilier.” His English was good and strongly British.

“I’m glad to meet you, Major. Are you in the Burma Rifles?” I knew many Burmese men joined that unit of the British Army, but I hadn’t heard of any being promoted to officer rank.

I saw him bristle, and he almost made a quick reply but then caught himself. “No, sir,” he said slowly. “I am not in the Burma Rifles.”

Kayin also saw the major’s reaction. “Major Kala-Byan is in the Burma Movement for Independence.”

I was surprised by the look in Kayin’s eyes as she watched the major. I can’t say it was so much admiration as it was pride, like a mother seeing her son do well on the football field.

“I see,” I said, not really seeing at all. Why had Kayin brought a man to us from the underground? And how did she know him?

“Won’t you have a cup of tea?” Raji asked the major as I motioned for him to have a seat on the couch.

“Thank you,” he said as he laid his hat on the couch and glanced at the coffee pot. “But I would prefer coffee.”

Well, I thought, at least he’s a coffee drinker. He was the first person I’d met in the East who asked for coffee.

The major sat in the center of the couch, while Kayin sat on the end, angling herself toward me. As Raji poured coffee for him, I sat back in my chair.

“You and Miss Devaki went to Theodore Roosevelt University medical school in Richmond, Virginia,” the major said, taking the cup and saucer from Raji and helping himself to some milk from the creamer on the tray.

Although his words sounded more like a statement than a question, I glanced at Raji as she took her seat in the other chair.

“But you didn’t complete your degree program?” He sipped his coffee.

I shook my head. This was a question.

I tapped my pipe on the edge of the ashtray, then filled it from the tobacco pouch. I held the pouch out to him, but he declined and took a fresh pack of Lucky Strikes from an inside jacket pocket. He broke the cellophane wrapper, opened the pack, and offered a cigarette to Raji. She shook her head, then he offered one to Kayin. She surprised me by taking one of the cigarettes. I struck a match and held it out toward her. She leaned forward and tilted her head for the light. I watched to see if she would inhale the smoke; she didn’t.

I lit my pipe, then shook the flame from the match and struck a new one to offer a light to the major. He took the light, cupping his hand over mine, as if to protect it from the wind.

“Three on a match?” he asked as he leaned back and inhaled deeply.

Strange, I thought. How does one learn a culture's beliefs and superstitions?

This business of not lighting three times on the same match stems, I think, from the World War of 1918, when three American soldiers were in a foxhole one night. One of the solders opened a pack of cigarettes, took one for himself, and gave one to each of his buddies. The first soldier lit his smoke, held the match out to the second man to light his, then to the third soldier. A German sniper, catching a glimpse of the match flame across the battlefield, took careful aim and fired just as the third soldier took his first, and final, puff.

Perhaps this was a military, rather than a cultural belief. But I had no military background. How had it come to me? I made a mental note to talk with Kayin about this the next time we were alone. If she and I were going to be together, then I wanted to learn her belief system, as well as her language.

I crushed out the match in the ashtray. “No,” I said in answer to his question about me and Raji not completing our degree programs. “We left school in our third year.”

“Why?” he asked.

I puffed my pipe and waited a moment. I didn’t mind talking about school or why Raji and I had quit, but I did resent being interrogated.

“Oxford,” I said as I leaned back in my chair and crossed my legs.

A puff of cigarette smoke obscured the major’s face for a moment, but from Kayin’s look, I imagined he glanced at her.

“Pardon me?” he said as the gray smoke drifted away.

“You went to Oxford University,” I said as I examined the bowl of my pipe, then looked back at him.

“The accent?” He took a bit of tobacco from the tip of his tongue using his thumb and forefinger.

“Yes.” I smiled and inquired further. “What was your field of study?”

“I have degrees in engineering and mining,” he replied as he dropped the bit of tobacco into the ashtray.

“Why mining? I should have thought political science would be of interest to you.”

He sipped his coffee and regarded me over the rim of his cup for a moment before he replied. “My primary interest was in the latest developments in explosives.”

“I left school,” I said, “because I no longer saw any point in it. How about you, Raji?”

“I suppose, to me,” she said, “it is really no more than a sabbatical leave. I will probably go back and finish my degree at some point.”

I looked back to the major. “Does that answer all your questions?”

“I’m sorry,” he said as he put his cup back on the saucer. “I didn’t intend to be rude. Sometimes I’m too direct and forget my manners. I hope I didn’t offend either of you.”

“No offense,” Raji replied, with a smile.

I waved away his concern.

“I know,” he went on in a friendlier tone, “that both of you are sympathetic to our cause.”

I looked at Kayin and saw she was waiting for my reaction.

“What is your cause, Major?” I asked.

The major leaned forward to tap the ash from his cigarette. “Quite simply, we want the British out of Burma.”

“And if the British refuse your invitation to leave?” I asked.

“Then we are prepared to take action against them.”

“‘We?’” I asked. “I’ve read in the newspapers the British have almost five regiments in Burma, plus artillery and gunboats. Do you have enough men to go up against that kind of force?”

“No, we don’t have enough men to confront them now, but our numbers grow every day.”

“And you want me, Raji, and I suppose Kayin, to join your army?”

“Kayin has other duties to perform. But I would like very much for you and Miss Devaki to join with us on a training exercise.”

I wanted to know what Kayin’s other duties were, but he continued before I could ask.

“I’m taking a regiment of irregulars to Ethiopia for a training mission.”

“Ethiopia?” I asked. “Why so far?”

“Three years ago, in 1928, the Emperor of Ethiopia was killed in the civil war. Two days later his wife, the Empress, died of mysterious causes, then Haile Selassie crowned himself the new Emperor. Those loyal to the former Emperor continue to fight the forces of Haile Selassie in the outlying provinces, and we are fortunate enough to have access to one of the airfields in a region they control. We have been invited to use their training grounds for our new recruits.” The major took a last puff of his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “As you say, it is a long way, and that is one of the reasons we are going there. It is so far away that the British will not notice what we are doing. We would like the two of you to go along and serve as our medics.”

“I don’t know about Raji,” I said, “but I don’t feel qualified to perform any medical procedures.”

“Nor do I,” Raji said.

“This will not be in the nature of surgery or treatment of diseases,” the major said, “but more along the lines of first aid.” When he received no response from either of us, he went on. “We expect minor wounds and maybe a broken bone or two, nothing more.”

I glanced at Raji.

Is she thinking the same thing I am? A broken bone or two?