Charmaine Craig - Miss Burma

Turned out there were no ice factories anywhere near the outposts from which he was hauling supplies; turned out that if you covered ice with palm leaves and stored it in a metal compartment, it lasted for up to two days; turned out E. Solomon’s abandoned ice factory was still standing — albeit in utter disrepair and need of upgrading; turned out, what with economies of scale and the onetime cost of shipping refrigeration machinery from Britain, it made more sense to open two ice factories simultaneously — one to serve Rangoon and its outlying communities, the other stationed farther north in Tharrawaddy, where he could rely on his Karen contacts. This new venture, launched well before the first anniversary of the war’s end, he named Aung Mingala Refrigeration Company. He just couldn’t help referencing the claim to success made by the Burman military ruler and self-proclaimed lord— aung being the Burman word for “succeed,” mingala being a Burman bastardization of the Pali word for “auspicious.” He couldn’t help referencing it because, truth be told, he’d done nothing openly to express his dismay at an evolving slew of negotiations between Aung San and the Brits, the latter of whom had put forward white paper plans to ease Burma toward self-governance (even as they supposedly wanted to ensure the “Frontier” peoples’ involvement in the country’s political future), while the former was sticking to a hard-nosed Burman agenda and encouraging the imperialists to make a prompt exit from the scene. Theft, dacoity, mass strikes. If Aung San didn’t precisely incite them all, neither did he seem to be seeking a way to forestall the collapse of peace; and the spent British — helmed by Attlee’s Labour Party, which had trumped Churchill’s Conservative Party by a landslide earlier that year — were backing away.

But how successful Benny felt with his own expanding business empire — and at just twenty-six! How reassured he felt by the vast metal buckets tipping blocks of ice over the conveyor belts in one of his factories. There was something so undeniable about the ice and the relief it brought others; it quenched a parched place within him and restored his vitality. “Careful not to get your hair stuck in the belt!” he’d call to the children ( his children — and how handsome all three of them were, how bright and articulate and charming). Their delight in the machinery, and in their new proprietorship of something, was his delight; their pleasure in the long tubes of flavored sugar-water, frozen especially for them by the workers, was his pleasure. Even Khin looked on with vague relief at the chugging machinery, pleased, he tried to convince himself, by the reliable creak of the rollers, by the clunk of ice dumped again and again and again onto the belt. Something else— someone else — had taken over her burden. Yes, for the first time in his life, he truly felt like a man.

And that man got a kick out of renting space in the same building as B. Meyer and putting his name on the office door. That man enjoyed the things money could buy — the Steinway concert grand and the Packard and the private schools for the kids; the chauffeur and servants and membership at the old British Rowing Club, where he took up billiards and also bridge again. That man became reacquainted with the Western music they’d mostly missed out on during the war. How he loved belting out love songs (so many about dreams, now that he thought about it) while little Louisa plinked out the melodies at the piano—“Sweet Genevieve,” “Charmaine,” “I’ll Buy That Dream.”

And, bloody hell, did he buy that dream! A large part of his time was now spent cultivating and keeping business contacts, and if at the many parties he attended and hosted he took certain privileges with women, if he did more than allow his eyes to luxuriate in their coconut-oiled hair or kohl-lidded eyes — if he sometimes left Khin’s side to slip some sweet dame a business card, what of it? Hadn’t he earned a certain right to flaunt his freedom? None of it meant anything. None of it had the slightest thing to do with what he refused to entertain — thoughts of the war years (and what he’d suffered, what they’d suffered). And if he doubted his decency now and then, if he questioned the authenticity of his renewed bullishness, if he was ashamed about his lack of involvement on the political scene, if he noticed the return in Khin’s eyes of a disappointment that she’d only just begun to shed — he threw it off with the thought that his wife was back in his bed, back in his corner, and he was back in the ring, fighting as never before.

But several things happened to rouse him from the dream he’d bought. The first was that, in May 1946, when he was twenty-seven, he had the hubris to think he could saunter unscathed down to the old Jewish quarter to drum up some new business. He’d been reflecting on his father and the man’s modest station as head cashier at E. Solomon. His memories had taken him back to the fizzy drinks Daddy had often rewarded him with, and he’d thought, I’m damned if I can’t still feel the cool shape of those bottles in my hand, still taste that bit of sparkling orange sunshine — why not bottle the stuff for everyone to enjoy again? No one else in the country had gotten it together to start up a domestic bottling plant after the war (idiocy, given that drinking water had to be boiled for three minutes minimum). He seemed to remember a pair of ginger-haired brothers, Jews from the neighborhood, whose father guarded secret recipes for several aerated sodas. E. Solomon hadn’t reopened after the war, but wouldn’t Daddy be proud if one of the Jewish grocers stocked drinks from his son’s very own bottling outfit? Mingala Waters — that’s what he’d call it, because the idea had bubbled up from the same well of auspiciousness that hadn’t yet slaked his thirst.

It was near dusk when his car pulled up on Dalhousie Street, where E. Solomon had stood, and where he remembered the ginger-haired brothers living in an overstuffed flat — something between a fleapit and a magician’s lab. He knew this was Dalhousie — his driver and the sign at the corner reminded him as much — but his soul refused to believe it. Where the rows of rickety buildings had been, there was. nothing, a stray dog hunting for food on refuse-riddled mud, a few abandoned pieces of decaying furniture keeping company with the weeds swaying in a gentle wind. (“ One of these days, it’ll all be burned up. You wait and see, Benny.” ) From behind a distant heap of rubble, an isolated bark rang out. He had the frightening impression that the dogs had finally achieved their dominion. Then he noticed, down the empty street, a pair of indolent armed soldiers, Aung San’s henchmen — the star of the Imperial Japanese Army on their caps gave them away. They loitered on a corner, smoking, sporadically eyeing his car, as though positioned there to keep out the place’s past occupants. Hadn’t Benny known that nearly all the members of this once flourishing community had fled after the invasion because they were targets, many perishing en route to India and hardly more than a handful returning to set up shop again? He’d known it, and yet he hadn’t been able to fathom it.

“Take me home,” he told the driver.

When they passed Tseekai Maung Tauley Street, where he’d spent his first seven years, he kept his eyes averted. He had the chilling sensation that his mother was watching him now from their timbered balcony — watching him in all his greed and cowardice. (“ You must not just think of yourself, Benny. Only animals just think of themselves. The worst sin is to forget your responsibility to the less fortunate. Thank God you are a good, noble boy.” )