Lawrence Block - Tanner On Ice

“We may be able to have beer,” I said, “once we get off the beaten track. But I think we can forget ayet piu.”

“I know.”

“They get their drinking water from the river,” I said, “and I guess it doesn’t kill them. And you’ve had a few years to acclimate to the water in Rangoon, so you’ll be all right. I guess I’ll come down with a case of Burma belly, but it won’t kill me. And I can’t buy bottled water. They might accept a monk drinking beer, but not paying for water.”

“Maybe the water won’t be so bad.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “I’m more worried about the mosquitoes.”

“I have had a couple of bites.”

“I just nailed one of the little suckers. But I don’t think he was the last mosquito in Bagan.”

“If you killed him, you violated the First Precept.”

“Nobody’s perfect. I just wonder what kind of mosquitoes they are.”

“Females,” she said. “The males don’t bite.”

“I mean the species. In other words, are they the kind that carry malaria? I still have Lariam working in my system, but I’m supposed to take a pill once a week, and the week’s up tomorrow. So the mosquitoes will have one or two Lariam-free weeks to bite me, maybe more.”

“And you are worried?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I suppose it’s a more romantic disease than, say, the heartbreak of psoriasis, but I don’t imagine it’s a lot of fun. Come to think of it, what do you do?”

“What do I do?”

“You’ve been living here for years, and I gather you don’t take Lariam or anything else. How do you keep from getting malaria?”

“I don’t worry about it.”

“The malarial mosquitoes only bite at night,” I said. “At least that’s what the book says, though who knows if the mosquitoes have read it. I suppose a person could stay inside from dusk to dawn, but I know you don’t live that way. And there were no screens on the windows of the Char Win, anyway.”

“No.”

“Some people never get bitten. It’s their body chemistry, mosquitoes just don’t like the taste of them. But you said you’ve already been bitten a couple of times tonight, so that can’t be it.”

“No.”

“I suppose some people are naturally immune. The parasites can’t thrive in their bloodstream, so even if they get bitten they aren’t infected.” She was shaking her head. “Then I give up,” I said. “How come you don’t have malaria?”

“I do have it.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “For years, before I ever got to Burma. You never get over it, you know.”

“That’s what I heard. I think there’s a new treatment, but-”

“Perhaps there is. But they told me the parasites stay in your system forever. The body adjusts to them, and most of the time you are fine. Unless the immune system is badly stressed, and then you get an attack.”

“And that happens to you, Katya?”

“Not so often. Only twice since I have been in Burma. It is not so bad. Chills and fever, and a terrible aching in the bones.”

“That sounds pretty bad to me.”

“Well, it is not good. But when you recover you cannot remember it too clearly. Because of the fever, I guess. So it is not so bad.”

“Oh,” I said. “You’re not naturally immune, then-”

“Obviously not.”

“-but it’s possible that some people are, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is possible.”

“And it’s possible I am one of those people.”

“That is possible, too.”

“But not terribly likely,” I said, and slapped another of the bloodsucking little bastards.

Shortly after that she curled up in a corner and went to sleep, leaving me with nothing to do but think and hours to do it in. After a while I slipped out of the pagoda and looked up through the clear desert air at a sky full of stars. I watched them for an hour or so, hoping they’d make me turn philosophical, but my thoughts stayed on a worldly plane, switching back and forth from the probable consequences of malarial infection to those of being exposed as a mock monk, and in the company of a woman.

What would they do to us?

Precepts or no precepts, I somehow didn’t think they would be inclined to shrug it off. I hate to generalize, but I think you can say that no religion is terribly good at taking a joke. The Ayatollah Khomeini hadn’t been able to have a good laugh over The Satanic Verses, and even those faiths that place great stock in turning the other cheek are apt to lose it in the face of sacrilege and heresy.

Great thoughts to wile away the hours of darkness. I’ll tell you, it was a relief when dawn came up (not quite like thunder, but impressively all the same) and we could go out and start begging.

It was easier than I’d thought it would be.

I had seen how it was done, but I’d watched a man fly a jet fighter plane, too, and that hadn’t made me feel qualified to replace him at the controls. Begging, however, wasn’t like that, nor was it one with brain surgery or rocket science. You walked along the street, and you held out your bowl, and people put something in it. Rice mostly, but sometimes it had bits of vegetable in it, and sometimes they gave you a little cake of sweet sticky rice.

And they liked doing it. It was something the average Burmese got a chance to do every day, so they didn’t make a big deal out of it, but they genuinely seemed to welcome the chance to earn merit for the price of a handful of rice.

For our part, we would wait until no one was looking, then scoop the contents of our bowls into the plastic bags in our shoulder bags. I gathered monks generally quit begging when their bowls were full, but we had to net enough calories in a morning’s scrounging to carry us for the rest of the day. We wouldn’t be sitting around meditating, either. We’d be walking east across Burma.

So we filled our bowls and stowed our take and kept going, holding our newly empty bowls in front of us and smiling benevolently on everyone in our path. We repeated the process, and the third time around the donations got a little more interesting. No one thought to toss in a Big Mac or a pint of Johnny Walker, but we were showered with nuts (almonds and cashews), dried fruit (raisins and apricots), and little fried dumplings, contents unknown.

Time to sit on our haunches somewhere and chow down, I thought. And up pops a pair of young soldiers, with holstered pistols on their hips and rifles slung across their backs. Where had they come from?

Well, we wouldn’t have to worry about malaria, I thought. Or dysentery, or whether Social Security would still be intact when we were old enough to collect it.

One of them said something in rapid-fire Burmese. I didn’t catch any of it, but replied with an all-purpose smile and a finger to my own lips, the latter accompanied by a shake of the head. I’d tried out that routine earlier, hoping it would convey the notion that we couldn’t speak, and most people had gotten the message.

It was hard to tell what the soldiers made of it. The one who’d spoken now turned to Katya and either repeated his first question or asked her something else. She did as I had done – a smile, a finger to her lips, a shake of her shaven head.

Jesus, could he stand this close to her and not notice she hadn’t needed to shave her face? But maybe not. He was wearing a uniform and carrying enough weaponry to wipe out a small village, and it didn’t look as though he had had to shave yet himself.

He barked out a command that was as incomprehensible to me as everything else he’d said, turned on his heel and trotted off. I smiled stupidly at the other soldier, inclined my head in a slight bow, and took a step away from him. He moved quickly, extending an arm to block my path, and said something. I didn’t need a Burmese-English dictionary to get the message. He wanted us to stay right where we were.