“My god,” whispered Edgar. “That sound.”
“Aaah,” said Captain Nash-Burnham. “I should have realized you would love the music.”
“No, not that…sorry, I mean yes I do, but I have never heard that sound, the wailing.” And even though all the instruments were playing, the Captain knew exactly which one the piano tuner was referring to. “It is called a hneh, a sort of Burmese oboe.”
“Its song sounds like a dirge.”
Onstage, the girl began to dance, slowly at first, bending at the knees, shifting her torso to each side, raising her arms higher with each pass until she began to wave them. Or better: until they began to wave themselves, for in the glow of the candles they seemed to float from her shoulders, defying the surgeons who would have one believe the arm is tethered to the body through an intricate rope of bone and tendon, muscle and vein. Such men have never seen an a–yein pwè.
The music still moved softly, out from the darkness at the edge of the pwè-waing, into the clearing, and into the dancing girl.
The girl danced for nearly half an hour, and only when she stopped was Edgar shaken out of his trance. He turned to the Captain, but words eluded him.
“Beautiful, Mr. Drake, no?”
“I…I am speechless, really. It is hypnotic.”
“It is. Often the dancers are not as good. You can see by her elbow movements that she has been trained for dancing since she was very young.”
“How?”
“The joint is very loose. When a girl’s parents decide she will be a meimma yein, a female dance performer, they place her arm in a special brace to stretch and hyperextend the elbow.”
“That’s horrid.”
“Not really,” Khin Myo spoke at his left. She held out her arm; at the elbow it bent back gracefully, curved like the body of the saung.
“You dance?” asked Edgar.
“Only when I was young.” Laughing. “Now I stay flexible by washing Englishmen’s clothes.”
The girl had been replaced onstage by a harlequin-like character. “The lubyet, the jester,” whispered Nash-Burnham. The crowd was watching the painted man, his clothes festooned with bells and flowers. He spoke excitedly, gesticulated, and made tooting sounds as if in imitation of the band, danced, somersaulted.
At his side, Khin Myo giggled, covering her mouth. “What is he saying?” Edgar asked her.
“He is making a joke about the host of the pwè. I do not know if you would understand. Can you explain it, Captain?”
“No, I hardly understand it—he is using quite a bit of slang, no, Khin Myo? Plus, the humor of the Burmese…twelve years here and it still eludes me. Khin Myo doesn’t want to explain it because it is probably naughty.” At this she looked away, and Edgar saw her touch her hand to a smile.
They watched the lubyet for some time, and Edgar began to get restless. Many of the crowd had also stopped paying attention. Some brought out meals from baskets and began to eat. Others curled up and even went to sleep. The lubyet wandered occasionally into the audience, plucking out cheroots from people’s mouths, stealing food. Once he even approached Edgar, played with his hair, and yelled out to the crowd. Khin Myo laughed. “And now what is he saying?” asked Edgar. At his question, Khin Myo giggled again, “Oh, I am too ashamed to say, Mr. Drake.” Her eyes shone in the dance of the earthenware lanterns.
The lubyet returned to center stage and continued to talk. Finally Nash-Burnham turned to Khin Myo. “Ma Khin Myo, should we try to find the yôkthe pwè?” She nodded, and said something to the now drunken host, who jumped sloppily to his feet and waddled over to shake the hands of the two Englishmen. “He says come back tomorrow night,” said Khin Myo.
They left the pwè and walked through the streets. There were no streetlights. Were it not for the moon, they would have been in complete darkness.
“Did he tell you where we could find yôkthe pwè?” asked the Captain.
“He said there is one near the market, in its third night. They are playing the Wethandaya Zat.”
“Hmmm,” murmured the Captain approvingly.
They walked silently through the night. Compared to the raucous scene of the pwè, the streets were quiet, empty except for the stray mongrels that the Captain chased away with his cane. Lighted cheroots bobbed in darkened doorsteps like fireflies. Once Edgar thought he could hear Khin Myo singing. He looked down at her. Her white blouse trembled lightly in the wind, and sensing his stare she turned to him. “What are you singing?” he asked.
“Sorry?” A small smile flickered over her mouth.
“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “It must have been the wind.”
The moon was high in the sky when they reached the yôkthe pwè, their shadows had retreated beneath their feet. The play was well under way; beyond a raised bamboo platform nearly thirty feet long, a pair of marionettes danced. Behind them a song rose up from a hidden singer. The audience sat in various states of attention, many children were curled up asleep, some of the adults talked among themselves. They were greeted by a fat man who motioned for a pair of chairs to be brought out, as before. And as before, the Captain requested a third.
The man and Khin Myo talked at length, and Edgar’s attention shifted to the play. At one end of the stage stood a model of a city, an elegant palace, a pagoda. It was there that the two elaborately dressed puppets danced. At the other end of the stage, where there were no lights, he could make out a small collection of twigs and branches, like a miniature forest. By his side, the Captain was nodding approvingly. Finally Khin Myo stopped speaking to the host, and they sat down.
“You are very lucky tonight, Mr. Drake,” she said. “Maung Tha Zan is playing the princess. He is perhaps the most famous princess puppeteer in all of Mandalay and has played alongside the great Maung Tha Byaw, the greatest puppeteer ever—one sometimes even hears men from Mergui say ‘Tha Byaw Hé’ whenever something wonderful happens…Oh, Maung Tha Zan is not as skilled as Maung Tha Byaw, but he sings so wonderfully. Listen, soon he will start to sing the ngo-gyin.”
Edgar didn’t have time to ask what this was, for at that instant, from behind the stage rose a plaintive wail. He caught his breath. It was the same tune he had heard that night when the steamer had stopped on the river. He had forgotten it until now. “The ngo-gyin, the song of mourning,” said Nash-Burnham at his side. “Her prince is soon to abandon her, and she sings of her sad fortunes. I can never believe that a man can sing like this.”
But it wasn’t a woman’s voice either. Soprano, yes, but not feminine, not even, Edgar thought, human. He could not understand the Burmese words, but he knew of what the man sang. Songs of loss are universal, he thought, and with the man’s voice something else rose into the night air, twisted, danced with the smoke from the fire, and drifted into the sky. The sequins on the body of the princess marionette shimmered, starlike, and he thought that the song must be coming from her, the puppet, and not the puppeteer. At the base of the stage, a little boy who had been holding the candles to light the puppets moved them away from the princess and her city, walking slowly to the other end of the stage until the forest emerged from the darkness.
It was a long time after the song finished before any of them spoke. Another scene began, but Edgar was no longer watching. He looked up at the sky.
“In Gautama’s final incarnation before Siddhartha,” said Captain Nash-Burnham, “he gives up everything he possesses, even his wife and his children, and leaves for the forest.”