Raji, Book Three. Charley Brindley
of the castes.”
“And the British treat me worse than they treat the pure Burmese. They think I am some sort of aberration. My mother was the only person who ever loved me, and she...” Kayin pressed my hand, and I knew she was crying. “I cannot never do this to another child to come,” she whispered.
“Kayin.” I lifted her chin and gazed into her wet eyes. “If you have a blue-eyed child, you think he will be treated as an outcast also?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe you should remain childless all your life because of something your mother and father did as an act of love?”
She gave no response.
“You, my beautiful Burmese friend, should be proud you’re part of two different worlds. You are, I think, about eighteen or nineteen?”
“Nineteen.”
“We’re almost the same age. I’m twenty-one.” I reached for her other hand. “And you’ve just made me realize I’ve been beating myself up for the past six months for something that’s not my fault.”
She knitted her eyebrows in a look I’d soon learn to love.
“My friend and I left medical school because we were disillusioned with the mess the last generation had made of the world. We saw no purpose in continuing our studies just to carry our degrees to the bread line and beg for handouts.”
“But doctors are needed all over the world.”
“Maybe so, but we were determined to go into research and work on cures for malaria and smallpox. Now all the research projects have been shut down for lack of funding.”
“Research is fine,” she said, “but do you realize the British take all our resources, and what do they give us in return? Protection! Protection, they say, from invasion, from illnesses, from our own ignorance. If they would only give us a little medical help, we would be most grateful. But we have only a handful of doctors and nurses for our twenty million people.”
“Why, that’s ridiculous,” I said. “You should have one doctor and a nurse for every five hundred people.”
“This is very true, but we would be happy if only our seriously ill could see a doctor from time to time.” She was agitated now, and I smiled as I watched the blue fire in her eyes. She’d forgotten about her personal problems as she attacked the British overlords. “The smallpox epidemic that took my mother, killed many thousands, and nothing was done to help us.”
“But schools. I know the British provide schools and government administration.”
“Ha!” She laughed. “The British have wonderful schools, the best. They bring many teachers from England to teach their precious children the proper way of speaking and eating and how to rule over the poor, retched natives the once-proud Burmese people have become. Our children still squat in mud huts and watch someone scratch numbers in the dirt. That is your wonderful British 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