jurisprudent
08-12-2010, 07:18 AM
Feedback is greatly appreciated.
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To J K and S.T.C.
"Blessed celestially,
Got a direct link with destiny
.......................................
I found a God that I can pray to
Deep inside my soul"
Jamiroquay
Have you watched “Apocalypse Now”? Did you like it? Do you remember the napalm flames? The turn of the fan on the ceiling in the sweaty Saigon room? The river, the jungle?
If you can remember all these images, then you can surely understand what I was going through in my journey down Irrawaddy. The small ship, a tin can wading in the brown waters of the huge river, was slowly leaving the delta and the bits of civilization I could find there. The jungle was the place I really feared. Black, hot, full of thousand eyes. The Burmese I hired were looking at me with their sly and suspicious stares. I thought they would throw me in the river and turn back, taking all my money. Shiny green dollars. They could do anything for money. I suspected that they needed money to escape from Burma. I thought that everyone should escape from Burma.
I was sitting on the deck, the air was humid, full of premonitions of rain, I could smell the wet jungle leaves. With a file in hand, I felt as if I had just walked out of “Apocalypse Now”. My mission – to find one young man. 28, with blond hair, mixed Anglo-French origin, heir of substantial fortune. Last time seen in the Delta of Irrawaddy. I spoke to a man who told me he had seen this guy, four years ago, when he came and asked for a legendary monastery in the jungle. And was told to go down the river. Down the river, no directions, just sail and search for the imposing golden domes. There is the place you want. I was told the same, but I was not a freakish boy and I knew that my friend could have been long ago eaten by the tigers and jaguars before he found the monastery. So I was stopping at each damn uncivilized village on the river banks to ask about a European with blond hair and blue eyes. He might have married local girl, bought a piece of land, growing rice and smoking opium away from the Western world, who knows.
But, apparently, my guy had been quite a complicated person. It’s a long story. I had just came home after seven years in Thailand when a friend called me and said that a magnate was looking for a person to jump into Burmese jungle and fetch a young fool who had pinned himself there. No problems. The magnate died and I was contacted by the executor of his will, his eldest son, a director of mighty automobile concern, who told me that his younger brother Paul disappeared in Burma and the family wanted him back. And I was going to be paid freaking amounts of money to get the boy home, neat and safe.
I have never been to Irrawadddy before. My dad was an English officer, long ago. I was raised in Indochina, my family remained here. I have not spent more than three or four months in Europe. I have been a detective, journalist, spy, agent, merchant, smuggler; naughty boy in general. My dream is to get a nice Malaysian wife and spent all I have in our small nice beach house, with two kids – a girl and a boy. I don’t like European women, maybe I am not a European at heart. When I finish with this game, I was thinking, I will have the money to get my home in Malaysia.
Now to the boy. Paul. Nice looking, but, my file was saying, shy, introvert. Raised in a countryside France villa, then moved to London where the family business was based. Very bright student, then a short conflict with the father – the old magnate – and Paul just disappeared, dedicating his efforts to lots of causes – human rights violations, jungle revolutions, Greenpeace and climate change, etc. He had travelled on the five continents, arrested in Venezuela for organizing a march against Hugo Chavez’s government, a brief incarceration in Vietnam for smuggling grams of weed, a month in a Sudanese hospital due to viral infection. Paul had been a champion of getting into serious troubles. He had changed his name, several times, but preferred to be called Pablito, the way he was named by two revolutionaries in Central America, one of them was a former lover.
At night, I would sit on a chair just behind the bridge, feeling the rattle of the old engine beneath the tin deck of the ship. I would watch the dusk, growing into sticky darkness, flowing above the waves of the river, disappearing into the impenetrable wall of jungle trees. I felt the threat, the fear and the stirring desire to explore. I guess that had been felt by the madmen who had been discovering risky places like this. I have always wondered what draws people to such strange sites – jungles, temples. As far as I am concerned, it’s money, I am a freelancer. But others? Only sheer insanity can draw you to these godforsaken, goddamn land.
Yes, it was a great question what made that boy, Paul/Pablito come here. Last time he was in Honduras, he had a girlfriend, a young revolutionary, some wild La Pasionaria, who got killed in a fight. Then, my data indicates he arrived in Burma and jumped into the jungle. To forget his lost love? I thought he was mad enough to do it even without a noticeable reason. In England, there were some millions of pounds waiting for him. I would better drag the naughty kid to his brother and make him embrace the riches of civilization again, if he was still alive, of course.
The temple appeared at noon, on the seventh day of our journey. I wrote this down in my diary. I am always keeping the diary as to remember all places I have been to when I am reporting to the client. Yes, the temple. Several golden domes supported by high imposing columns. A giant statue of Buddha, covered by gold and precious stones. Buddha’s head was reared above the jungle rooftop, ascending to the heavens. There were men striding in all directions, lots of small boats were hurrying round a wharf near the gates of the complex. I waved in that direction and the crew turned the ship, slyly watching my moves. They expected it was the time to get their money and be dismissed.
I know lots of languages. I do not have friends but when I was a kid, I was communicating with children from lots of Asian sites. I am not fluent in Burmese but I can utter a number of highly useful words. I spoke to several men, all were clad in yellowish robes and it was not difficult to guess they were monks of various ranks. Yes, I was walking to and fro, looking at each one’s face, searching for the special one among them. When I reached the big Buddha statue, I saw all were nodding and I lowered my gaze too. But I stepped back, startled. A pair of clear blue eyes was watching me. This was a man of hefty physique, a healthy look, with bald head, wearing a robe. He stood right in front of me, staring at my face with his clear eyes, and I sensed the creeping feeling that I had arrived where I needed to.
He spoke first, slowly, in bad English, as if he had forgotten his mother tongue. I shook my head, extended my hand for a handshake, but he stepped back and told me to follow him. We walked past the statue, down to the river, in a small quiet grove where only monks were hurrying, in their yellowish clothes, to and fro.
“I am pleased to see other European here”, I began, and he turned to me his face, with displeasure. He wanted to be alone, I guessed.
“Where do you come from?”
“I was born in England, raised in the States, lived in Thailand and Malaysia. Now I want to join the monastery and be at peace”
Nice words. I have been thinking of this moment for weeks. What to tell him? I am the man who has to bring you to the big money guys on the banks of Thames. Or, I am a smuggler, I was in prison for a year and a half, please take me as a pure soul, I want spiritual resurrection. Bull****. I am former businessmen, I have been trading Asian goods; in the slump – well, does he know of the crisis? – my business went bust, I am bankrupt and my woman left me and fled with a young stud. I am disappointed by life and existence in general, I want to leave the materialistic world behind and find a new way. Nice story.
He was listening to me, his face turned to the mud on the banks of Irrawaddy. “Yes, he said, I thought of this when I saw you. Exactly this. Many people come here, with similar life stories. But afterwards they leave. Go home. They cannot stay here, they do not belong to this place.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Almost five years. If you want to stay that long, you should change.”
I nodded. Of course. I will throw away my bank account number, I will tear my birth certificate, I will learn Buddha’s words by heart. Anything you say. He told me to wait there while he was talking to the “father”, as he said. I was bemused by the golden domes and watched the moving white cotton clouds springing right over Buddha’s forehead.
He returned, and I was impressed, again, by his upright body, the breadth of his shoulders, the aristocratic posture of his head. A walking statue; I glimpsed at Buddha, then back to Paul. I had not asked him of his name yet. Don’t forget, I am the consumerist fool from the wicked Western civilization.
“You can stay, as long as you endure, if you pass the Irrawaddy dolphin test.
God, strike me down, burn me in your saintly barn, I had no idea of this. I looked to his blue eyes, so clear and stable and impenetrable, that, for a second, I felt like a fool. Run, my friend, away from this place, back to the delta, back to Malaysia, get a girl (preferably from the streets, some of them had been really tortured by life and this makes them so nice and obedient to kind masters) and live among palm trees and opium. Then I gathered myself. “Okay”, I said.
He showed me the way to a small boat, bobbing on the river waves, so weak and small I feared it could take me. But we jumped in it together and, threshing the oars, we reached the centre of the brown muddy waters of Irrawaddy. Paul gave me a net, big and wide, and told me: “You have to catch a dolphin. I will not say how it looks like, you have to recognise it. Then you will decide what to do with it.”
I threw the net into the waters, thinking of the killing monsters the river kept in its depths. If there were dolphins, what about sharks? Alligators - I have already seen them, lying recklessly on the banks, waiting for an overloaded boat to turn upside down and give them a lunch or, better, a dinner. Paul was standing next to me, looking at my hands, and I really do not have the hands of a businessman, so I felt weak under the blue X ray gaze of his eyes. But he said nothing.
It was late in the afternoon, about sunset, when something pulled the net; I dragged it and saw the greyish body of something that strongly resembled a dolphin. It fell into the small boat, between me and Paul, and we stared at it. Long, wet, with a strange wide forehead, two black eyes that reflected the last sun rays with some red and orange sparks within. I was looking at the dolphin and, God knows it, the damn river creature was watching me, too. The body was slowly expanding and contracting, I sensed it was fiercely fighting for its breath. Long, grey, wet under the sun. I turned to Paul – “What now?” He shook his head. “You decide”. I gazed back at the dolphin, the black and still eye staring at me with less and less light filling its depths, and then I simply sighed. “I cannot. I will throw it back.” I lifted the wet body, I could feel the warmth of life beneath the skin, and threw it; it swiftly turned, as if nodding to me, flipped like playing a game, and submerged into the great river.
Paul put his hand on my shoulder, hugged me at once and said: “You passed the test. If you had killed the dolphin, we would not have allowed you to stay here.” We were threshing the oars back to the land. “People think they have the power to change and transform life but we are moving fragments of the big picture and cannot take away what is not ours.” I admit, I was simply thinking it could have been quite tasty.
While he was leading me to one gilt pavilion, he mumbled absent-mindedly, “I suppose it will be easier for you to call me Paul, that’s my name in the world you come from”
We stepped inside the pavilion and I was astonished by the plainness I saw inside – a white rug stretched from end to end, and a man, apparently a monk, quite aged, who had knelt down and nodded to us. I greeted him and he said he was glad that one more soul seeks revelation in the monastery. I was given a room (or, better, a small niche to breathe) and had to wear a yellow robe.
I went back to the ship that was left on the wharf, with the crew perched on the deck, in the oncoming sticky darkness. I gave them what they wanted and they decided to set off on the next morning. Walking back to the temple, I took out a cigarette and lit it. Paul, who was sitting under a big tree, ran to me and pressed my body to the nearest the wall. “Throw away the cigarette”, he said, no, he hissed, in a low voice, without the usual stable clear gaze of his eyes. “You will never smoke here. Never.” He looked fierce. I threw the cigarette in the brown waves of Irrawaddy. He stood upright, watched it, and then added – “In the world you come from, people support themselves through these things. Cigarettes, alcohol, clothes, cars…”
“Yes”, I interrupted him, “It’s bad for health”.
“Not only. It’s bad for your soul. These become the pillars of your life and you depend on them”
‘If I want to be completely free, then I have to cut off my flesh and live back in the cave, like the first men.”
“Not exactly. When your soul is not dependent, you are free”
Just to make it clear, I don’t like philosophy. I don’t like religion. When I was a kid, my mother, a Catholic, used to take me to the church. I hated it. It’s so false. Then I started going to the gambling house and found out the better place for prayers – “please, God, send me a pair of Queens and I will…” Nevermind. I simply hate things you cannot eat, drink, ****, or make money out of. I will tell you what I think about my soul – it’s crap. If there is a God, I should be tortured to the end of Time and Universe. At nineteen, I raped a Thai girl. Yes. On a beach. Sand, moon, waves, she was two years younger, playful, her clothes were wet and sticking to her body. Come here my dear. She screamed, never wanted it, but I could not help myself. So my soul is black as furnace.
I stopped smoking. The next several days were long, hot, lonely hours. Paul had disappeared somewhere, I could not really get along with the damn monks. When he came back, he agreed to have a walk with me, and we took a small boat, again, and travelled down the river, along the great jungle trees.
Paul was talkative, refining his English, with a certain desire to say things to a European (I am not one, really). He was very calm but now I knew that was the thin crest of ice above the darker waters. I wanted to talk with him about his past and he was, at first, reluctant; then he lay back, on the floor of the boat, bounced by the flow of the waves, and, closing his eyes, began to recollect his days of old.
“My mother was French. Long blonde hair, mild skin, glamorous smile. Met my father on a course in London. At first, he was an engineer, working on big machines. Very hard working. He was thirty when he set up his own company, at the age of fifty he was rich. Immensely rich. Automobiles. Contracts for the Defense department. Spy equipment. My brother, he is ten years elder, was schooled to become the manager of the company. Always responsible, always reliable. A tactic in mind. At that time I was living with mom, in the French villa.”
Young Paul, among the golden fields of wheat, under the limitless blue sky, in the olive groves, surrounded by the purple grapes. A small countryside Eden. No sudden sound of engines, no wheels and machines. The mother, the grandpa and grandma, the dusty library, him lying alone in the shades of the hot summer afternoon with a book. Alluring images.
“At fourteen they brought me to England. My English was bad, school was a difficult time. But I did my best, I was a shy kid, hiding, watching and observing, almost mute. No friends at all. My father, who was already a rich man, was a dedicated Presbyterian. He was always telling me success follows efforts. Always. Work hard, my boy, and you will end up, like me, behind the big wooden table in the City skyscraper. He was a genius, I admit, and he was harsh. I could never meet his standards.”
Paul was sitting in his room, expensively furnished, watching the outside world, the rain and the people under the umbrellas, the cars with wet windscreens, and longed for a walk with no point and direction. But he knew that was not what was wanted from him. So he sat there, being consoled by the miraculous books of ancient battles and geographic explorations.
“I think dad was pleased I was the best at everything I was doing, but then I sensed I was not as good as he wanted. In the end, he said, I should be a lawyer. My brother will be the manager; I will be the lawyer of the company. I enrolled at the law school. I liked it. Really. I was revolting at heart against the injustices of life – blind old woman robbed in a scam, a criminal getting away due to procedural tricks, oppressive governments shooting mothers of helpless kids.”
Each time Paul would go to his father office, he could see the deals, the plans, the business in motion. And he sensed he would never be that good. His father and brother were brilliant in that. Paul’s heart was not there. They quarreled a lot. After graduating, Paul disappeared.
“I bought a one-way ticket to Nicaragua and joined Amnesty International. Then I met a girl. Tall, long curly hair. My first one. She was a Marxist, and I thought she was crazy, but so beautiful. She made me read a lot of stuff and finally I went to the jungle with her. Have you lain in a jungle? It’s not a real home. Nevermind. We were going to and fro in Central America, fighting for Communism. She was killing, I was afraid to shoot people. One morning they trapped us, ambushed the camp and started shooting. I woke up in her blood. I was the only one to survive.”
Paul was drifting from one to another hot point on our small planet. Once, visiting London, he went to see his father, rather sick now. Paul was a tall and handsome one, quite different from what his dad knew, and at first he could not recognise him. And Paul was not feeling a part of this family at all.
To be frank, he was a freak. I had had a tumultuous time, too, and I had never had a family, only some casual prostitutes. This was a spoilt boy who lost his teddy bear and, instead of crying at home, wanted to cry in the jungle under the trajectory of bullets. But I was impressed by his experience of being a rover of the globe. When he stopped blabbering about his past, he wanted to know about me. I was wandering what to say, then felt it was the right time to catch a “dolphin”, again.
“Your father is dead. Six months ago. You brother is managing the business. He contacted me and wanted to bring you back home. There’s a fabulous share waiting for you in the bank.
Haha, he laughed, sudden and ugly smile. “That’s all? So you have a mission. People don’t lie when they come here. Never. We are open at heart. Always.”
“Mate”, I said, “I don’t really care. Think about that. I am here. Just come for a week in London. They don’t want else. Some even thought you might be dead.”
“Yes, I might be dead”, he repeated, looking at the water. A dolphin suddenly sprang above the waves, looked at us with the blackness of its eye, and submerged, disappeared. “Tell them I am dead. You have not found me. I was killed. Whatever you like. I don’t belong to their place, my friend. At all.”
As we reached the banks, I put my hand on his shoulder. “You did not finish your story. How did you end up here?”
“I came to protest against the Burmese dictatorship but got sick and went to the hospital. There was a monk who told me he could talk to God. I laughed. Before he died, he said I could talk with God, too, I just needed to find the right place. A girl told me of the temple and I thought, let’s gives it try, just one try. When I arrived here, in the monastery, I could not pass the dolphin test. I killed the dolphin. I merely thought it was a useless fish. And the monks refused to admit me, they did not give me food, and I had to sit on the quay, day and night, waiting for another ship to take me back to the delta. What a fool I am, I was thinking. How could I come here, to seek some damn God?”
At night, he sat on the mud, breathing the tropical heat, and saw several dolphins playing, saw hundreds of fish, different, strange, magnificent. Playing. The river was so alive, perfect, full of randomly moving bodies that were, in fact, absolutely coherent, driven by an invisible hand.
“The multitude. The many facets. The rich interplay.” he concluded. When he told this to the “father” of the monks, they allowed him to stay. Paul left the boat and walked away slowly, as I was standing behind.
We talked again, on the next morning, and he simply shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Tell them I am dead, I don’t care. I do not. There was no point in trying to persuade him, it was the feeling of gliding on the icy surface of his crust – the eyes were too clear, too focused, an army gathered in rows for a battle. I nodded to Buddha, the watcher with head in heavens, and found a small boat that would take me to the nearest civilized place. I was staring at the slowly disappearing scene of the columns and the dome, left behind, glittering under the morning sun; I had spent ten days here. A dolphin passed by the boat.
You know I am not a dreamer and I am working for the money. I would call the rich brother and simply say: Paul is alive, he is a monk in a jungle Temple and is absolutely mad. Write him off. Completely. That’s all. Give his share to the kids in Somalia. This is what he would have liked to do.
Finally, I managed to leave the godforsaken Burma and moved to Singapore. Got a hotel room, a shower, then a walk under the bright flickering lights of the late afternoon city. So hot. The night was coming, I walked about the streets, the vibe of the risky quarters, the prostitutes. Then I reached the gates of the cemetery and made my way to the graves of my mum and dad. Stood there for a minute or so, then back to the centre, where I sat in a bar, lit a cigarette and wanted the inner flame of whiskey in the night.
It’ bad to say it, but I really hated dad. My father was an officer and then worked in the administration, from nine to five, always ready, zipped, neat, clean, well-mannered. He wanted a nice boy, too. He thought to be an official was the best job in the world. Steady pay, good pension plan, two week holidays, a two storey house. He wanted to send me to school for administrators. I ran away, ****ed a prostitute, lived with her for two months and gambled all I had. Then started smuggling alcohol. I have a few transgressions, to put it this way. Two years ago, I occasionally got an office job in Indonesia, I felt it’s not that bad. No random nights, some security and stability – or I am simply getting older. So, I thought, I was always running from my dad’s life pattern but when I tried it, I started to like it. Funny thing. He wanted to put me on a certain avenue, then I reverted to the opposite one, but finally was attracted by the previous.
I was sitting there, on the bar, watching a TV placed high above, and I was following the news about a Nobel prize winner, a Burmese dissident. I lit another cigarette. Dirty prisons, torture, pain, despair. Why was she doing that? I would not choose it. A strange avenue. Then I recalled Paul, his stray dog life, and the bank account waiting for him, and shook my head again. Fool. If I had that money, I would buy a yacht and live with – your attention, ladies and gentlemen – at least two Thai girls. Starry Asian nights. But Paul never wanted this – and woke up in the pool of his lover’s blood. Horrifying. Thinking about that, I am not sure he had ever really known what he wanted. Strange avenues of life.
I walked slowly back home, under the pale moon light, it was a full moon. There was a small restaurant with an open part where the tourists could watch the cooking of delicious things – sharks, octopuses. I saw a dolphin, dead, cut into two halves, the black eye remote and fixed without inner sparks. In the hotel, I found a Bible in the drawer. Big black book. I read a few lines and lit a cigarette. If there is a God, I thought, it cannot be up there, that’s ridiculous. Also, I can never bow down to the Buddha’s big statue. Then I recalled the image Paul described – the night river, the jumping fish and dolphins, random but still in line. In line, not drifting, from country to country, from city to city, from one to other freakish deed. The harbor was just over the roofs of the houses nearby, the ships were moving to and fro, small twinkling lights, a web of yellowish spots. If all avenues could disappear, I thought, and mingle into one, a single one with many diversions.
On the next morning I called London. I heard the husky voice of the brother. "I am sorry", I said, "I travelled down the river, and apparently your brother had disappeared. It is suspected he had died. I doubt if there are any chances to be alive."
The same night I met a girl at the bar. Tall, green eyes, a journalist who wanted to know something more of Southeastern Asia and especially Irrawaddy, she was writing for an American magazine. We talked a lot, I did not **** her, but I think she liked me. I told her I can take her there. She was fascinated by the story of the temple and the dolphins. "I seek the divine element of life", she said (she loves poetry, I am starting to read that thing). And I will certainly take her to the river.
P.S. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPV0-hBJbKU
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To J K and S.T.C.
"Blessed celestially,
Got a direct link with destiny
.......................................
I found a God that I can pray to
Deep inside my soul"
Jamiroquay
Have you watched “Apocalypse Now”? Did you like it? Do you remember the napalm flames? The turn of the fan on the ceiling in the sweaty Saigon room? The river, the jungle?
If you can remember all these images, then you can surely understand what I was going through in my journey down Irrawaddy. The small ship, a tin can wading in the brown waters of the huge river, was slowly leaving the delta and the bits of civilization I could find there. The jungle was the place I really feared. Black, hot, full of thousand eyes. The Burmese I hired were looking at me with their sly and suspicious stares. I thought they would throw me in the river and turn back, taking all my money. Shiny green dollars. They could do anything for money. I suspected that they needed money to escape from Burma. I thought that everyone should escape from Burma.
I was sitting on the deck, the air was humid, full of premonitions of rain, I could smell the wet jungle leaves. With a file in hand, I felt as if I had just walked out of “Apocalypse Now”. My mission – to find one young man. 28, with blond hair, mixed Anglo-French origin, heir of substantial fortune. Last time seen in the Delta of Irrawaddy. I spoke to a man who told me he had seen this guy, four years ago, when he came and asked for a legendary monastery in the jungle. And was told to go down the river. Down the river, no directions, just sail and search for the imposing golden domes. There is the place you want. I was told the same, but I was not a freakish boy and I knew that my friend could have been long ago eaten by the tigers and jaguars before he found the monastery. So I was stopping at each damn uncivilized village on the river banks to ask about a European with blond hair and blue eyes. He might have married local girl, bought a piece of land, growing rice and smoking opium away from the Western world, who knows.
But, apparently, my guy had been quite a complicated person. It’s a long story. I had just came home after seven years in Thailand when a friend called me and said that a magnate was looking for a person to jump into Burmese jungle and fetch a young fool who had pinned himself there. No problems. The magnate died and I was contacted by the executor of his will, his eldest son, a director of mighty automobile concern, who told me that his younger brother Paul disappeared in Burma and the family wanted him back. And I was going to be paid freaking amounts of money to get the boy home, neat and safe.
I have never been to Irrawadddy before. My dad was an English officer, long ago. I was raised in Indochina, my family remained here. I have not spent more than three or four months in Europe. I have been a detective, journalist, spy, agent, merchant, smuggler; naughty boy in general. My dream is to get a nice Malaysian wife and spent all I have in our small nice beach house, with two kids – a girl and a boy. I don’t like European women, maybe I am not a European at heart. When I finish with this game, I was thinking, I will have the money to get my home in Malaysia.
Now to the boy. Paul. Nice looking, but, my file was saying, shy, introvert. Raised in a countryside France villa, then moved to London where the family business was based. Very bright student, then a short conflict with the father – the old magnate – and Paul just disappeared, dedicating his efforts to lots of causes – human rights violations, jungle revolutions, Greenpeace and climate change, etc. He had travelled on the five continents, arrested in Venezuela for organizing a march against Hugo Chavez’s government, a brief incarceration in Vietnam for smuggling grams of weed, a month in a Sudanese hospital due to viral infection. Paul had been a champion of getting into serious troubles. He had changed his name, several times, but preferred to be called Pablito, the way he was named by two revolutionaries in Central America, one of them was a former lover.
At night, I would sit on a chair just behind the bridge, feeling the rattle of the old engine beneath the tin deck of the ship. I would watch the dusk, growing into sticky darkness, flowing above the waves of the river, disappearing into the impenetrable wall of jungle trees. I felt the threat, the fear and the stirring desire to explore. I guess that had been felt by the madmen who had been discovering risky places like this. I have always wondered what draws people to such strange sites – jungles, temples. As far as I am concerned, it’s money, I am a freelancer. But others? Only sheer insanity can draw you to these godforsaken, goddamn land.
Yes, it was a great question what made that boy, Paul/Pablito come here. Last time he was in Honduras, he had a girlfriend, a young revolutionary, some wild La Pasionaria, who got killed in a fight. Then, my data indicates he arrived in Burma and jumped into the jungle. To forget his lost love? I thought he was mad enough to do it even without a noticeable reason. In England, there were some millions of pounds waiting for him. I would better drag the naughty kid to his brother and make him embrace the riches of civilization again, if he was still alive, of course.
The temple appeared at noon, on the seventh day of our journey. I wrote this down in my diary. I am always keeping the diary as to remember all places I have been to when I am reporting to the client. Yes, the temple. Several golden domes supported by high imposing columns. A giant statue of Buddha, covered by gold and precious stones. Buddha’s head was reared above the jungle rooftop, ascending to the heavens. There were men striding in all directions, lots of small boats were hurrying round a wharf near the gates of the complex. I waved in that direction and the crew turned the ship, slyly watching my moves. They expected it was the time to get their money and be dismissed.
I know lots of languages. I do not have friends but when I was a kid, I was communicating with children from lots of Asian sites. I am not fluent in Burmese but I can utter a number of highly useful words. I spoke to several men, all were clad in yellowish robes and it was not difficult to guess they were monks of various ranks. Yes, I was walking to and fro, looking at each one’s face, searching for the special one among them. When I reached the big Buddha statue, I saw all were nodding and I lowered my gaze too. But I stepped back, startled. A pair of clear blue eyes was watching me. This was a man of hefty physique, a healthy look, with bald head, wearing a robe. He stood right in front of me, staring at my face with his clear eyes, and I sensed the creeping feeling that I had arrived where I needed to.
He spoke first, slowly, in bad English, as if he had forgotten his mother tongue. I shook my head, extended my hand for a handshake, but he stepped back and told me to follow him. We walked past the statue, down to the river, in a small quiet grove where only monks were hurrying, in their yellowish clothes, to and fro.
“I am pleased to see other European here”, I began, and he turned to me his face, with displeasure. He wanted to be alone, I guessed.
“Where do you come from?”
“I was born in England, raised in the States, lived in Thailand and Malaysia. Now I want to join the monastery and be at peace”
Nice words. I have been thinking of this moment for weeks. What to tell him? I am the man who has to bring you to the big money guys on the banks of Thames. Or, I am a smuggler, I was in prison for a year and a half, please take me as a pure soul, I want spiritual resurrection. Bull****. I am former businessmen, I have been trading Asian goods; in the slump – well, does he know of the crisis? – my business went bust, I am bankrupt and my woman left me and fled with a young stud. I am disappointed by life and existence in general, I want to leave the materialistic world behind and find a new way. Nice story.
He was listening to me, his face turned to the mud on the banks of Irrawaddy. “Yes, he said, I thought of this when I saw you. Exactly this. Many people come here, with similar life stories. But afterwards they leave. Go home. They cannot stay here, they do not belong to this place.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Almost five years. If you want to stay that long, you should change.”
I nodded. Of course. I will throw away my bank account number, I will tear my birth certificate, I will learn Buddha’s words by heart. Anything you say. He told me to wait there while he was talking to the “father”, as he said. I was bemused by the golden domes and watched the moving white cotton clouds springing right over Buddha’s forehead.
He returned, and I was impressed, again, by his upright body, the breadth of his shoulders, the aristocratic posture of his head. A walking statue; I glimpsed at Buddha, then back to Paul. I had not asked him of his name yet. Don’t forget, I am the consumerist fool from the wicked Western civilization.
“You can stay, as long as you endure, if you pass the Irrawaddy dolphin test.
God, strike me down, burn me in your saintly barn, I had no idea of this. I looked to his blue eyes, so clear and stable and impenetrable, that, for a second, I felt like a fool. Run, my friend, away from this place, back to the delta, back to Malaysia, get a girl (preferably from the streets, some of them had been really tortured by life and this makes them so nice and obedient to kind masters) and live among palm trees and opium. Then I gathered myself. “Okay”, I said.
He showed me the way to a small boat, bobbing on the river waves, so weak and small I feared it could take me. But we jumped in it together and, threshing the oars, we reached the centre of the brown muddy waters of Irrawaddy. Paul gave me a net, big and wide, and told me: “You have to catch a dolphin. I will not say how it looks like, you have to recognise it. Then you will decide what to do with it.”
I threw the net into the waters, thinking of the killing monsters the river kept in its depths. If there were dolphins, what about sharks? Alligators - I have already seen them, lying recklessly on the banks, waiting for an overloaded boat to turn upside down and give them a lunch or, better, a dinner. Paul was standing next to me, looking at my hands, and I really do not have the hands of a businessman, so I felt weak under the blue X ray gaze of his eyes. But he said nothing.
It was late in the afternoon, about sunset, when something pulled the net; I dragged it and saw the greyish body of something that strongly resembled a dolphin. It fell into the small boat, between me and Paul, and we stared at it. Long, wet, with a strange wide forehead, two black eyes that reflected the last sun rays with some red and orange sparks within. I was looking at the dolphin and, God knows it, the damn river creature was watching me, too. The body was slowly expanding and contracting, I sensed it was fiercely fighting for its breath. Long, grey, wet under the sun. I turned to Paul – “What now?” He shook his head. “You decide”. I gazed back at the dolphin, the black and still eye staring at me with less and less light filling its depths, and then I simply sighed. “I cannot. I will throw it back.” I lifted the wet body, I could feel the warmth of life beneath the skin, and threw it; it swiftly turned, as if nodding to me, flipped like playing a game, and submerged into the great river.
Paul put his hand on my shoulder, hugged me at once and said: “You passed the test. If you had killed the dolphin, we would not have allowed you to stay here.” We were threshing the oars back to the land. “People think they have the power to change and transform life but we are moving fragments of the big picture and cannot take away what is not ours.” I admit, I was simply thinking it could have been quite tasty.
While he was leading me to one gilt pavilion, he mumbled absent-mindedly, “I suppose it will be easier for you to call me Paul, that’s my name in the world you come from”
We stepped inside the pavilion and I was astonished by the plainness I saw inside – a white rug stretched from end to end, and a man, apparently a monk, quite aged, who had knelt down and nodded to us. I greeted him and he said he was glad that one more soul seeks revelation in the monastery. I was given a room (or, better, a small niche to breathe) and had to wear a yellow robe.
I went back to the ship that was left on the wharf, with the crew perched on the deck, in the oncoming sticky darkness. I gave them what they wanted and they decided to set off on the next morning. Walking back to the temple, I took out a cigarette and lit it. Paul, who was sitting under a big tree, ran to me and pressed my body to the nearest the wall. “Throw away the cigarette”, he said, no, he hissed, in a low voice, without the usual stable clear gaze of his eyes. “You will never smoke here. Never.” He looked fierce. I threw the cigarette in the brown waves of Irrawaddy. He stood upright, watched it, and then added – “In the world you come from, people support themselves through these things. Cigarettes, alcohol, clothes, cars…”
“Yes”, I interrupted him, “It’s bad for health”.
“Not only. It’s bad for your soul. These become the pillars of your life and you depend on them”
‘If I want to be completely free, then I have to cut off my flesh and live back in the cave, like the first men.”
“Not exactly. When your soul is not dependent, you are free”
Just to make it clear, I don’t like philosophy. I don’t like religion. When I was a kid, my mother, a Catholic, used to take me to the church. I hated it. It’s so false. Then I started going to the gambling house and found out the better place for prayers – “please, God, send me a pair of Queens and I will…” Nevermind. I simply hate things you cannot eat, drink, ****, or make money out of. I will tell you what I think about my soul – it’s crap. If there is a God, I should be tortured to the end of Time and Universe. At nineteen, I raped a Thai girl. Yes. On a beach. Sand, moon, waves, she was two years younger, playful, her clothes were wet and sticking to her body. Come here my dear. She screamed, never wanted it, but I could not help myself. So my soul is black as furnace.
I stopped smoking. The next several days were long, hot, lonely hours. Paul had disappeared somewhere, I could not really get along with the damn monks. When he came back, he agreed to have a walk with me, and we took a small boat, again, and travelled down the river, along the great jungle trees.
Paul was talkative, refining his English, with a certain desire to say things to a European (I am not one, really). He was very calm but now I knew that was the thin crest of ice above the darker waters. I wanted to talk with him about his past and he was, at first, reluctant; then he lay back, on the floor of the boat, bounced by the flow of the waves, and, closing his eyes, began to recollect his days of old.
“My mother was French. Long blonde hair, mild skin, glamorous smile. Met my father on a course in London. At first, he was an engineer, working on big machines. Very hard working. He was thirty when he set up his own company, at the age of fifty he was rich. Immensely rich. Automobiles. Contracts for the Defense department. Spy equipment. My brother, he is ten years elder, was schooled to become the manager of the company. Always responsible, always reliable. A tactic in mind. At that time I was living with mom, in the French villa.”
Young Paul, among the golden fields of wheat, under the limitless blue sky, in the olive groves, surrounded by the purple grapes. A small countryside Eden. No sudden sound of engines, no wheels and machines. The mother, the grandpa and grandma, the dusty library, him lying alone in the shades of the hot summer afternoon with a book. Alluring images.
“At fourteen they brought me to England. My English was bad, school was a difficult time. But I did my best, I was a shy kid, hiding, watching and observing, almost mute. No friends at all. My father, who was already a rich man, was a dedicated Presbyterian. He was always telling me success follows efforts. Always. Work hard, my boy, and you will end up, like me, behind the big wooden table in the City skyscraper. He was a genius, I admit, and he was harsh. I could never meet his standards.”
Paul was sitting in his room, expensively furnished, watching the outside world, the rain and the people under the umbrellas, the cars with wet windscreens, and longed for a walk with no point and direction. But he knew that was not what was wanted from him. So he sat there, being consoled by the miraculous books of ancient battles and geographic explorations.
“I think dad was pleased I was the best at everything I was doing, but then I sensed I was not as good as he wanted. In the end, he said, I should be a lawyer. My brother will be the manager; I will be the lawyer of the company. I enrolled at the law school. I liked it. Really. I was revolting at heart against the injustices of life – blind old woman robbed in a scam, a criminal getting away due to procedural tricks, oppressive governments shooting mothers of helpless kids.”
Each time Paul would go to his father office, he could see the deals, the plans, the business in motion. And he sensed he would never be that good. His father and brother were brilliant in that. Paul’s heart was not there. They quarreled a lot. After graduating, Paul disappeared.
“I bought a one-way ticket to Nicaragua and joined Amnesty International. Then I met a girl. Tall, long curly hair. My first one. She was a Marxist, and I thought she was crazy, but so beautiful. She made me read a lot of stuff and finally I went to the jungle with her. Have you lain in a jungle? It’s not a real home. Nevermind. We were going to and fro in Central America, fighting for Communism. She was killing, I was afraid to shoot people. One morning they trapped us, ambushed the camp and started shooting. I woke up in her blood. I was the only one to survive.”
Paul was drifting from one to another hot point on our small planet. Once, visiting London, he went to see his father, rather sick now. Paul was a tall and handsome one, quite different from what his dad knew, and at first he could not recognise him. And Paul was not feeling a part of this family at all.
To be frank, he was a freak. I had had a tumultuous time, too, and I had never had a family, only some casual prostitutes. This was a spoilt boy who lost his teddy bear and, instead of crying at home, wanted to cry in the jungle under the trajectory of bullets. But I was impressed by his experience of being a rover of the globe. When he stopped blabbering about his past, he wanted to know about me. I was wandering what to say, then felt it was the right time to catch a “dolphin”, again.
“Your father is dead. Six months ago. You brother is managing the business. He contacted me and wanted to bring you back home. There’s a fabulous share waiting for you in the bank.
Haha, he laughed, sudden and ugly smile. “That’s all? So you have a mission. People don’t lie when they come here. Never. We are open at heart. Always.”
“Mate”, I said, “I don’t really care. Think about that. I am here. Just come for a week in London. They don’t want else. Some even thought you might be dead.”
“Yes, I might be dead”, he repeated, looking at the water. A dolphin suddenly sprang above the waves, looked at us with the blackness of its eye, and submerged, disappeared. “Tell them I am dead. You have not found me. I was killed. Whatever you like. I don’t belong to their place, my friend. At all.”
As we reached the banks, I put my hand on his shoulder. “You did not finish your story. How did you end up here?”
“I came to protest against the Burmese dictatorship but got sick and went to the hospital. There was a monk who told me he could talk to God. I laughed. Before he died, he said I could talk with God, too, I just needed to find the right place. A girl told me of the temple and I thought, let’s gives it try, just one try. When I arrived here, in the monastery, I could not pass the dolphin test. I killed the dolphin. I merely thought it was a useless fish. And the monks refused to admit me, they did not give me food, and I had to sit on the quay, day and night, waiting for another ship to take me back to the delta. What a fool I am, I was thinking. How could I come here, to seek some damn God?”
At night, he sat on the mud, breathing the tropical heat, and saw several dolphins playing, saw hundreds of fish, different, strange, magnificent. Playing. The river was so alive, perfect, full of randomly moving bodies that were, in fact, absolutely coherent, driven by an invisible hand.
“The multitude. The many facets. The rich interplay.” he concluded. When he told this to the “father” of the monks, they allowed him to stay. Paul left the boat and walked away slowly, as I was standing behind.
We talked again, on the next morning, and he simply shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Tell them I am dead, I don’t care. I do not. There was no point in trying to persuade him, it was the feeling of gliding on the icy surface of his crust – the eyes were too clear, too focused, an army gathered in rows for a battle. I nodded to Buddha, the watcher with head in heavens, and found a small boat that would take me to the nearest civilized place. I was staring at the slowly disappearing scene of the columns and the dome, left behind, glittering under the morning sun; I had spent ten days here. A dolphin passed by the boat.
You know I am not a dreamer and I am working for the money. I would call the rich brother and simply say: Paul is alive, he is a monk in a jungle Temple and is absolutely mad. Write him off. Completely. That’s all. Give his share to the kids in Somalia. This is what he would have liked to do.
Finally, I managed to leave the godforsaken Burma and moved to Singapore. Got a hotel room, a shower, then a walk under the bright flickering lights of the late afternoon city. So hot. The night was coming, I walked about the streets, the vibe of the risky quarters, the prostitutes. Then I reached the gates of the cemetery and made my way to the graves of my mum and dad. Stood there for a minute or so, then back to the centre, where I sat in a bar, lit a cigarette and wanted the inner flame of whiskey in the night.
It’ bad to say it, but I really hated dad. My father was an officer and then worked in the administration, from nine to five, always ready, zipped, neat, clean, well-mannered. He wanted a nice boy, too. He thought to be an official was the best job in the world. Steady pay, good pension plan, two week holidays, a two storey house. He wanted to send me to school for administrators. I ran away, ****ed a prostitute, lived with her for two months and gambled all I had. Then started smuggling alcohol. I have a few transgressions, to put it this way. Two years ago, I occasionally got an office job in Indonesia, I felt it’s not that bad. No random nights, some security and stability – or I am simply getting older. So, I thought, I was always running from my dad’s life pattern but when I tried it, I started to like it. Funny thing. He wanted to put me on a certain avenue, then I reverted to the opposite one, but finally was attracted by the previous.
I was sitting there, on the bar, watching a TV placed high above, and I was following the news about a Nobel prize winner, a Burmese dissident. I lit another cigarette. Dirty prisons, torture, pain, despair. Why was she doing that? I would not choose it. A strange avenue. Then I recalled Paul, his stray dog life, and the bank account waiting for him, and shook my head again. Fool. If I had that money, I would buy a yacht and live with – your attention, ladies and gentlemen – at least two Thai girls. Starry Asian nights. But Paul never wanted this – and woke up in the pool of his lover’s blood. Horrifying. Thinking about that, I am not sure he had ever really known what he wanted. Strange avenues of life.
I walked slowly back home, under the pale moon light, it was a full moon. There was a small restaurant with an open part where the tourists could watch the cooking of delicious things – sharks, octopuses. I saw a dolphin, dead, cut into two halves, the black eye remote and fixed without inner sparks. In the hotel, I found a Bible in the drawer. Big black book. I read a few lines and lit a cigarette. If there is a God, I thought, it cannot be up there, that’s ridiculous. Also, I can never bow down to the Buddha’s big statue. Then I recalled the image Paul described – the night river, the jumping fish and dolphins, random but still in line. In line, not drifting, from country to country, from city to city, from one to other freakish deed. The harbor was just over the roofs of the houses nearby, the ships were moving to and fro, small twinkling lights, a web of yellowish spots. If all avenues could disappear, I thought, and mingle into one, a single one with many diversions.
On the next morning I called London. I heard the husky voice of the brother. "I am sorry", I said, "I travelled down the river, and apparently your brother had disappeared. It is suspected he had died. I doubt if there are any chances to be alive."
The same night I met a girl at the bar. Tall, green eyes, a journalist who wanted to know something more of Southeastern Asia and especially Irrawaddy, she was writing for an American magazine. We talked a lot, I did not **** her, but I think she liked me. I told her I can take her there. She was fascinated by the story of the temple and the dolphins. "I seek the divine element of life", she said (she loves poetry, I am starting to read that thing). And I will certainly take her to the river.
P.S. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPV0-hBJbKU