They passed seamstresses, their tables set out in the middle of the road, betel vendors, with trays of cracked betel-nut shells and cups of lime, knife sharpeners, sellers of false teeth and religious icons, of sandals, mirrors, dried fish and crab, rice, pasos, parasols. Occasionally the Captain would point something out on the road, a famous shrine, a government office. And Edgar would answer, Yes I have read of it, or It is even more beautiful than in the illustrations, or Perhaps I will visit it soon.
At last the carriage pulled to a halt in front of a small, unremarkable cottage. “Your temporary lodgings, Mr. Drake,” said the Captain. “Usually we put up guests in the barracks inside Mandalay Palace, but it is better if you stay here now. Please make yourself at home. We will lunch today at the residence of the Commissioner of the Northern Division—a special reception in honor of the annexation of Mandalay. I will call for you at noon.”
Edgar thanked Nash-Burnham and slid out of the carriage. The driver carried his trunks to the door. He knocked and a woman answered. The driver led Edgar inside. From the anteroom, Edgar followed the woman to a raised wooden floor, and into a room furnished sparsely with a table and two chairs. The woman pointed at his feet, and Edgar, seeing that she had abandoned her sandals at the door, sat on the step and clumsily pulled off his shoes. She led him through a door to the right and into a room dominated by a large bed covered with a mosquito net. She set the luggage on the floor.
Off the bedroom was a bathing room, with a water basin and pressed towels. A second door led into a yard, where a small table sat beneath a pair of papaya trees. It all felt very quaint, thought Edgar, and very English, except for the papaya trees, and the woman who stood beside him.
He turned to her. “Edgar naa meh. Naa meh be lo…lo…kaw dha le? ” A question mark as much for the correctness of his Burmese as for the question itself. What is your name?
The woman smiled. “Kyamma naa meh Khin Myo.” She pronounced it softly, the m and y melting together like a single letter.
Edgar Drake extended his hand, and she smiled again and took it in hers.
His watch still read four. Now, by the reckoning of the sun, it was three hours off; he was free until it was eight hours off when he would meet the Captain for lunch. Khin Myo had begun to heat water for the bath, but Edgar interrupted her. “I go…out, walking. I go walking.” He made a motion with his fingers, and she nodded. She seems to understand, he thought. He took out his hat from his bag and walked out to the anteroom, where he had to sit again to tie his shoes.
Khin Myo was waiting at the door with a parasol. He stopped by her, unsure of what he should say. He liked her immediately. She held herself gracefully and smiled and looked at him directly, unlike so many of the other servants, who seemed to sneak away shyly when their tasks were finished. Her eyes were dark brown, set beneath thick lashes, and she wore even lines of thanaka on both cheeks. She had placed a hibiscus flower in her hair, and when he walked in front of her, he could smell a sweet perfume, like the mixed essences of cinnamon and coconut. She wore a bleached lace blouse, which hung down to her waist, and a purple silk hta main folded with careful pleats.
To his surprise she walked with him. In the street, he tried again to piece together some Burmese. “Don’t worry about me, ma…thwa…um, you don’t need to um…ma walk.” This was only polite, I shouldn’t burden her with taking care of me.
Khin Myo laughed. “You speak good Burmese. And they said you have only been here two weeks.”
“You speak English?”
“Oh, not so well, my accent is rough.”
“No, your accent is very nice.” There was a softness to her voice that struck him immediately, like whispering, but deeper, like the sound of wind playing over the open end of a glass bottle.
She smiled, and this time dropped her gaze. “Thank you. Please, continue. I don’t want to interrupt your walk. I can accompany you if you wish.”
“But really, I don’t want to bother you…”
“It is no bother at all. I love my city in the early morning. And I couldn’t let you go alone. Captain Nash-Bur nham said that you might get lost.”
“Well, thank you, thank you. I am surprised, really.”
“At my English, or that a Burmese woman is not ashamed to speak to you?” When Edgar couldn’t find the words to reply, she added, “Don’t worry, they see me often with visitors.”
They walked down the street, past more houses with carefully swept dirt paths. Outside one house, a woman hung clothes on a line. Khin Myo stopped to speak to her. “Good morning, Mr. Drake,” said the woman.
“Good morning,” he answered. “Do all the…” He paused, awkward with the words.
“Do all the servants speak English?”
“Yes…yes.”
“Not all. I am teaching Mrs. Zin Nwe when her master is away.” Khin Myo checked herself. “Actually, please don’t tell anyone that; perhaps I am a little too open with you already.”
“I won’t tell a soul. You teach English?”
“I used to. It is a long story. And I don’t want to bore you.”
“I doubt you would. But may I ask then how you learned?”
“You have a lot of questions, Mr. Drake. Are you so surprised?”
“No, no. Not at all, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you…”
She was silent. As they walked, she still remained slightly behind him.
She spoke again, softly. “I am sorry. Here you are kind, and I am rude.”
“No,” Edgar answered. “I do have too many questions. I haven’t met many Burmese. And you know how most of the officers are.”
Khin Myo smiled. “I know.”
They turned at the end of the street. To Edgar it seemed as if they were roughly following the road he had arrived on.
“Where would you like to go, Mr. Drake?”
“Take me to your favorite place,” he answered, startled by the sudden intimacy implied in his answer. If she too was surprised, she kept it hidden.
They followed a wide road west, the sun rising behind them, and Edgar watched their shadows advance headfirst, snakelike over the ground. They spoke little and walked for nearly an hour. At a small canal, they stopped to watch a floating market. “I think this is the most beautiful place in Mandalay” Khin Myo said. And Edgar, who had been in the city less than four hours, said he agreed. Below them, the boats shifted by the banks.
“They look like floating lotus flowers,” he said.
“And the merchants like croaking frogs upon them.”
They were standing on a small bridge, watching boats move through the canal. Khin Myo said, “I hear that you are here to repair a piano?”
Edgar hesitated, surprised by the question, “Yes, yes I am. How did you know?”
“One learns a lot if others assume you are deaf to their tongue.”
Edgar looked at her. “I imagine so…Do you think that is strange? It is quite a distance to travel to repair a piano, I suppose.” He turned back to the canal. Two boats had stopped for a woman to measure out a yellow spice into a small bag. Some of the spice dusted the black water like pollen.
“Not so strange. I am confident that Anthony Carroll knows what he is doing.”
“Do you know of Anthony Carroll?”
Again she was silent, and he turned to see her staring out across the water. In the canal, the merchants poled through ink and islands of hyacinth, calling out the price of spices.
They walked back to the house. The sun was higher now,.and Edgar worried that he might not have enough time to bathe before Nash-Burnham came to take him to the reception. Inside, Khin Myo filled the basin in his bathroom with water and brought him soap and a towel. He bathed and shaved and dressed in a new shirt and new trousers, which she had pressed while he was bathing.
When he came outside, he found her kneeling by a washbasin, already washing his clothes.