education system.”
“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
