The Burma Legacy (20 page)

Central Yangon was laid out as a grid, the numbered north–south roads crossing named streets at right angles. The house Harrison was looking for was on a junction, but he couldn’t remember which, though he recollected a wrought-iron balcony overlooking the main road. The address had been on the faded yellow letter his friend had written twelve years ago, but he’d destroyed it because it reminded him so chillingly of all he’d turned his back on.

Than Swe. Still living in that corner house in 1988, but today? Harrison hoped he wasn’t dead. Because however shamefully he’d neglected their friendship, he was the key to the past. The one key he had.

When they were children Than Swe was the only Burmese friend he’d had. They’d played in rivers and streams and frightened one another with tales of wild beasts from the jungle. At the age of thirteen Perry had been sent to boarding school in England, but the friendship had continued in the summer holidays. After the war they’d met again in Rangoon when he returned in 1953 to work for a timber exporter. Their conversation then was of politics, books and women.

Harrison walked on along Market Street, peering up at every corner house, hoping to recognise it. After six blocks, he began to think he must have missed it. The heat was getting to him. He needed a rest and stepped into a tea shop which seemed to be staffed by cowed boys no older than ten. As soon as he sat down, one of them hovered for his order.

‘
Lek peq-ye
,’ Harrison mumbled, hoping he’d
remembered the right Burmese words. The boy scurried away and returned with a brimming mug.

As he sipped the sweet and milky tea, he watched the children scurry from table to table, snapped at by a fat slave-master perched behind a counter stacked with pastries. At the next table a middle-aged man was studying him intently. Eventually he leaned forward.

‘Where you from?’

‘England,’ Harrison replied. He drank up quickly wanting to avoid conversation.

‘Yes,’ the man nodded, as if he’d guessed all along.

‘Tell me,’ said Perry, having an idea, ‘do you know the house of U Than Swe?’

The man’s face lit up. ‘Oh yes. You walk one more street.’ He beamed with pleasure at having been of service.

‘Thank you very much.’ Harrison stood up. The tea had done its work. He was ready to move on.

At the next junction he looked up and there it was. He experienced an extraordinary sensation of coming home. The familiar balcony, still the dark green colour he remembered. And the french windows behind it, open in the way they’d always been.

Insein Prison

Tin Su squatted in a long corridor, waiting in line with scores of other inmates’ relatives. She kept her eyes averted.

There was a Buddhist saying that people don’t own their children, but are given them temporarily to take care of. She’d done her best for hers in the years past and was still doing so now, but the fact that she was here in this place to see her son made her think she’d failed.

She sighed wearily. Whenever she came it was the same. The long wait for her name to be called. The all too brief interlude with Khin Thein.

Her first born, he was the only flesh and blood she had left. Her other son had vanished on the eighth day of the eighth month in 1988, when the Burmese people rose up to demand a return to democracy. A million people on the streets believing the dictatorship could be overthrown. Then the soldiers had opened fire. She’d looked for her son for days after. In the hospitals. Tracked down his friends, but all they could do was shake heads and wipe away tears. She’d never found him. Never learned his fate.

She looked up. A prison officer had appeared at the end of the corridor. He called out five names, but not hers.

She slumped back into her memories, the stepping stones that had brought her to where she was now.

Her journey had begun forty-seven years ago when the Englishman had walked into the library in Mong Lai. He’d had wild, fair hair and a proud face. She’d likened him to a lion. His eyes had been startlingly blue, and the sensation of knowing they were exploring her slender back as she’d reached up for a volume of Dickens had caused her to wobble on the ladder. There’d been an extraordinary intensity about
his gaze, a look which conveyed desire, with a directness no Burmese man could ever contemplate. But a look which had burned with something else. Something dark, which in all the years she knew him she’d never understood.

She remembered trembling when signing the book out to him, blushing over her inability to spell his name. At first she’d thought he’d said ‘Pelican’, then he’d taken her hand with the pen in it and traced the letters for her in her ledger. P-E-R-E-G-R-I-N-E. Peregrine Harrison.

His forwardness in touching her like that had shocked her. In fact everything about him had left her breathless. His physique was rugged yet he’d moved in a graceful way. Not effeminate, yet devoid of the brutishness common amongst Europeans. He’d said he was in the hill resort for a week, taking a break from Rangoon.

The next day he’d reappeared, not to return the book or seek another, but to talk to her. With no sense of shame he’d told her he couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. She could still feel the heat of her blushes. He’d asked if she would join him for dinner that evening at the hotel where he was staying, a colonial mansion by the edge of the town’s small, artificial lake. She’d refused, of course. It was unthinkable for an unmarried Burmese girl to be seen alone with a man. And even if she’d been tempted to break the rules of her society, she’d had nothing suitable to wear. When her father died she’d given away her finer clothes, because their bright colours had seemed to mock at her grief.

She remembered how her rejection of his invitation had startled him, as if he were unused to being denied something he’d set his heart on. Then a twinkle had come to his eyes and he’d left the library, telling her he would be back.

Several hours later ‘Per-grin’, as she’d called him, had returned with a parcel. He’d placed it before her, saying she couldn’t possibly refuse to dine with him now. Inside the package was a
longyi
of Mandalay silk. She’d blushed to the roots of her hair, startled that a man could have such insight into a woman’s mind. He’d stayed there talking, telling her about his life, as if to prove there was nothing unwholesome about him, charming her, until she’d given in.

She’d been nervous that evening. More nervous than ever before. Per-grin had offered his arm as they walked up the steps of the hotel, but she’d refused, not daring to touch him. The table he’d reserved was on the terrace overlooking the lake, and as they’d taken their seats she’d been conscious of the disapproving stares of the staff and other guests.

Eventually she’d begun to feel sufficiently at ease to tell him about herself. He’d listened, and he’d smiled – except when she’d talked of the war years living under the Japanese. It had felt wonderful to have a man
listening
to what she said rather than rebuking her foolish thoughts as her father had done.

The next day Per-grin had been waiting outside the library when she arrived for work. And in the days that followed, with no family to caution her, she’d allowed herself to fall in love with him.

One day he’d hired a car and driver and asked her to accompany him to a pretty waterfall 30 kilometres away. After a hot and dusty journey, they’d climbed up past the torrent and looked down on the valley from the ruins of a monastery. She could still remember the sun glinting off a distant stupa. He’d talked about the life of the Lord Buddha, as if the stories were more familiar to him than to the shaven-headed monks who begged in the streets every day.

They’d watched the sun set beyond the distant peaks, and then he’d asked her to marry him. It had shocked her. Shocked her too when she heard herself say ‘yes’. As the car rattled and banged its way over the stony road back to the town, she’d let him hold her hand. He’d told her about the home they would set up in Rangoon, with servants – a gardener and a cook. Of the beautiful babies they would have, to whom they would impart all their wisdom. And in time, if they wanted, they could travel the world. Even to England, to the land she’d read about in Trollope, Jane Austen and Dickens.

That night she’d let Per-grin come into her home. And there, in a room filled with her treasured books and with photos of those no longer with her, they’d embraced. At first he’d done it the Burmese way, a nose pressed to a cheek and a little sniff. But then he’d put his lips against hers. She’d felt the hard press of his flesh and her physical desire for him had been awakened. He’d taken her into her sleeping room and they’d lain down on her mat. A part of her had wanted him to open her up as a woman there and
then, yet deep inside she’d feared it. Feared this might be a dream after all. Again that night, his intuition had been good. He’d held back, understanding her caution. Told her they’d be married as soon as they reached Rangoon, and then they would make love. Every day and every night, and never be parted.

The prison guard was back. More names called out.

This time hers was one of them.

Market Street, Yangon

Set into the side wall of Than Swe’s house, a stone staircase led up to the first floor. Perry Harrison gazed at it, remembering the indentations in the treads and the scar along one wall where something metallic had been scraped. The last time he’d walked up them was in 1963, the day before being expelled from the country, along with all foreign workers. They’d said their goodbyes, he and his lifelong friend, believing the generals’ nationalisation programme would be disastrous and short lived and it wouldn’t be long before he could return. They’d been right on the first point but wrong on the second. Burma’s crippling socialist isolation had lasted twenty-five years.

Harrison began to climb, full of trepidation about what he would discover at the top. The stairs gave
access to a small terrace where clothes hung to dry. He paused to regain his breath. The door to the apartment was open. It always had been, he remembered – for visitors and to let a cooling breeze pass through.

A middle-aged woman in a dark patterned
longyi
and short-sleeved white top emerged, with a baby in her arms. She looked at him without curiosity, as if it were perfectly normal for strangers to turn up here. Even Europeans.

‘Is this still the home of U Than Swe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you tell him Perry Harrison is here?’

She looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

‘We used to be close friends,’ he explained.

‘Yes. I hear him say you name. You please to wait here.’

She turned towards the large, airy dayroom where he and Than had talked so often, so many years ago. On the threshold she glanced back, as if checking he was real.

It was a couple of minutes before she reappeared, still holding the child. With her free hand she beckoned him in. ‘My father not well,’ she whispered. ‘Please, not stay long.’

Her father. There’d been two girls and a boy, Harrison remembered. The woman had a beautiful face and her oiled black hair shone like polished ebony.

Inside the room a very old man sat in a book-lined alcove, the skin clinging to his skull like crumpled
paper. His hands clasped some ancient volume which was held together with black tape.

Harrison hardly recognised him. He felt tears welling up and choked them back.

‘Than? My old friend?’

The Burman stared at him without smiling. The face was so lifeless Harrison wondered if he’d had a stroke.

‘So it is you …’ The voice when it came was as dry as a husk.

The daughter placed a chair behind Perry’s legs. He sat down gratefully.

‘Thank you.’

For a while the two men looked at one another, slowly taking in what time had done to them.

‘You’ll be surprised to see me, I expect.’ Harrison’s voice trembled. ‘I’ve been a poor friend to you.’

‘Yes.’ Despite the immobility of his face, Than Swe’s eyes burned like gemstones.

‘I regret that. I’m sorry.’

‘It comes with age, regretting things.’ The Burman spoke with a light accent.

Harrison’s tears welled up again. ‘But it’s damned good to see you …’ He leaned forward and took hold of Than Swe’s hands, prising them away from his book.

‘You don’t look well,’ his erstwhile friend remarked, unmoved.

‘I’m not. It’s cancer. I don’t have long.’

The Burman nodded. ‘And I suppose you’ve come here to try to clear your conscience. To be reconciled with the people you turned your back on.’

Harrison felt wretched. Stupidly he’d expected instant joy at being seen again, instant forgiveness for the past.

‘Yes.’

‘You have come to see Daw Tin Su?’

‘Well, yes …’

‘And because you have not contacted her for thirty-eight years, you don’t know how to find her.’

‘Help me Than Swe …’

‘I don’t know if I should. She won’t want to see you, you know.’

‘She is … still alive, then?’

Than Swe’s contemptuous glare made him blanch. This man had once loved him but now it felt like hate.

‘I know I have a lot of ground to make up,’ Harrison mumbled.

‘You have left it very late.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

Than Swe began to stir, like a moth emerging from a chrysalis.

‘You see … I am struggling to comprehend, Perry. Is it simply
regret
that has brought you all this way? Ahhh …’ His eyes widened as he perceived the truth. ‘Of course. You are a believer still. Afraid of what awaits you in the next life. You want to improve your standing. To obtain merit before you die. Like the generals in the SLORC who spend their stolen money on new Buddhas.’

Harrison felt winded by Than Swe’s scathing sarcasm. ‘It’s more a matter of being able to die in peace,’ he mumbled defensively.

Than Swe’s daughter returned, carrying a thermos of green tea and two cups on a small tin tray. She poured some for them, then left again.

‘You’ve been unwell too,’ Perry commented, wanting to turn the focus away from himself. ‘Your daughter said so.’

‘I got ill in prison. A long time ago. By the time they released me I was very weak.’