Saving Fish From Drowning (39 page)

Seraphineas Andrews knew of the myth of the Younger White

Brother. How convenient that he was supposed to be white. Andrews set up an impromptu church on a busy market day. He opened a traveling table and placed a short stack of twelve cards on one side and the open Bible on the other. “Within your villages,” he intoned, “you have many Nats, who want to do you mischief and harm.” He

fanned out the cards with a single tap of his finger. “I have captured their likenesses here.” The crowd peered at the faces: the Lord of Spades, the Lady of Spades, the Son of the Lord of Spades . . . He then called upon the Heavenly Father and Lord Jesus to recognize him as the Younger White Brother who had come to deliver these souls from evil. “Show me a sign that I am the one chosen to lead the Lord’s Army.” He looked upward. The pages stirred and stood upright for a moment, then rapidly flapped forward.

There was another sign that Seraphineas Andrews often used. He would select the most blustery man from the crowd and ask him to pick a card from a full deck of fifty-two, which was always the king of clubs, one of the colorful cards that represented a Nat. Next he 2 7 5

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was told to pick another card, and invariably it was the two of diamonds. He was then told to hide that card—behind his back, in his turban, under his shoe, wherever he liked. Seraphineas would then slip the two of diamonds into the cards and shuffle the deck, tap the top card, and ask the man to turn it over. Without fail, the Nat card that the man had hidden would be there, and the one he retrieved from its hiding place would be the two of diamonds. Seraphineas Andrews would ask the crowd: “Do you now believe that I am the Lord of Nats, ruler over all Nats?” And the open pages of the Bible would fly forward, calling forth the answer.

The Lord of Nats soon had a fast-growing flock. His followers were called the Lord’s Army, and this subgroup of Karen constituted both his cherished children and his soldiers in battle. His doctrines contained the precise combination of elements that would keep an oppressed people under absolute control: fear of oblivion, strict laws of obedience, harsh punishment for doubt, rituals with feasting, the manifestation of miracles, and the promise of immortality in a Kingdom of Everlasting Rice Fields. In a few years, Seraphineas Andrews’s flock grew to thousands, bolstered by the numerous “children of the Lord of Nats,” the hundred or so conceived by Seraphineas Andrews and his two dozen perpetually virgin wives.

If any good can be said of Seraphineas Andrews, it is the schools and clinics he built. He allowed his daughters and eventually all girls to attend school so that they could read and write and do sums. The instruction was motley, a collision of English and Burmese, but one can’t quibble with the good of an educated mind in any language, even if it’s pidgin.

There is one other mystery associated with Seraphineas, which has never been settled to any degree of certainty. It involves a book, wittily written in an acerbic voice, that was published in the United States under the name S. W. Erdnase, and entitled
Artifice, Ruse, and
Subterfuge at the Card Table
—the work of an obviously cultured 2 7 6

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mind. No one has ever determined the identity of S. W. Erdnase.

Some, however, point out that “S. W. Erdnase” is “E. S. Andrews”

backward.

Through trick or book royalties, Seraphineas had money to buy goods in America, and a friend would ship these to Burma. Every year the crates arrived, with schoolbooks, blackboards, and medicines, as well as replenishments of favorite foods. There were also white dresses with rickrack for his virgin brides and the latest fashions for his wardrobe, all in a creamy ivory: French-tailored shirts, morning jackets and waistcoats, cravats, and a Panama hat. The kidskin boots were always lacquer black. The walking stick was ebony and gold, with an inlaid ivory handle.

One day, while on a picnic with several of his favorite wives and sons, he walked into the jungle and did not return to his half-eaten meal. At first, no one worried too much. The Lord of Nats had the power of invisibility. He had often disappeared when soldiers of the British Raj came to arrest him for swindling and murder. He had given some of his invisible powers to his children as well. But this time, too many hours passed, the hours turning into days, then weeks, then months. No trace of him was ever found, not a scrap of clothing, shoe, bone, or tooth. The Important Writings were also gone. In later years, when it was time for myths to be enlarged, several of his followers recalled that they had seen him flying with white bird-angels to the Land Beyond the Last Valley—to the Kingdom of Death, where he would conquer its ruler. But he would return, the faithful said, never fear, for it was written in the book of Important Writings. And when he did return, they would recognize him by the three Holy Signs, whatever those turned out to be.

Although many missionaries had come and gone since, it was

Seraphineas Andrews’s influence that prevailed with this Karen splinter tribe. His followers continued to be known as the “Lord’s Army,” but his actual descendants were few, for most of them had 2 7 7

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been killed over the periods of upheaval. The rusty-headed twins were two who remained, from the lineage of the Lord of Nats and his Most-Most Favorite Concubine. She was much higher in status than the Most Favorite Concubine, and somewhat lower than the Most-Most Favored Wife. This was according to the twin’s grandmother, who was not from the paternal side, and so not of the divine lineage. But she was the one who named the boy “Loot” and the girl

“Bootie,” English words meaning “goods of great value taken in war.” She kept them from being that, as she now testified to the tribe and the Younger White Brother.

“EVERYONE RECOGNIZED Loot and Bootie as divinities,” the

grandmother recounted. “There were three signs. . . .”

The first was their double healthy birth when times were bad—

they were the long starving days, for sure. But the moment those two came into the world, a big juicy bird fell from the sky—glutted drunk on fermented fruit—and landed head side down and feet side up, right in the cooking fire. All we had to do was pull it out, brush off the ashes, and put it in the pot.

No tears, that was the second sign. The twins never cried. Why a divinity has no need to cry, I don’t know. But they never did. Not when they were babies. Not when they were hungry. Not when they fell down and broke a nose or a toe. Not when their father and mother died. This would be very strange for anybody else, but not when you are a divinity.

But the greatest proof came the day the soldiers chased us into the river. It was three years ago, when we still lived in the southern end of Karen State, to the south of where we are now, before we came back to the home of the Younger White Brother. In those days, we lived among the flat fields. Down there they were building the big oil pipeline to Thailand, and many villages were burned down to make 2 7 8

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room for that. My husband was the headman and he told them that the SLORC army would not only burn our homes but also force us to work on the pipeline. We knew what happened to people who did that. They starved. They were beaten. They got sick and died. So we made a plan. We wouldn’t go, that was the plan. We would take our best things high in the mountain and deep in the jungle—our cooking utensils, our farming tools. We would leave a few junky things just to fool them into thinking we would come back.

We flatland farmers went to live in the jungle like the hill tribes.

We lived by a big stream, and we learned how to swim the slow green waters. We bathed there every day, and it was never deep. We had made another plan. If the soldiers came, we would jump in the river to escape. But the day the soldiers came, the stream was running like a crazy spitting demon. It was the monsoon season. Still, we ran for the water as the soldiers ran for us. I grabbed Loot and Bootie—and the river grabbed us, and there was no time to think what was up and what was down as we tumbled along.

Some of the villagers were thrashing, some were paddling, and I was holding the edge of a bamboo pallet, that’s what Loot and Bootie were sitting on. How we got this pallet, I didn’t ask myself at the time, never did until just now, and now I am telling you that the Great God gave it to Loot and Bootie, since there was no reason He’d give it to me.

So on this pallet, Loot and Bootie were riding, and I was hanging on to just a small edge, a pinch, careful not to tip them over. I saw our whole village moving down the river as one, and I had a vision—

or maybe it was a memory—it was everyone in the threshing field on the first day of harvest, which wasn’t so long ago and was also coming up soon. In that field, we thrashed as well, moving through waves of ripened grass. We moved as one, for we were the field, we were the grass, that’s how I remembered it. And here we were again—our entire village, our headman, my family people, and the dear old faces 2 7 9

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of girls who had pounded the rice with me since the days we wore our littlest white smocks. Now they were pounding the white water to keep their heads afloat.

Those old girls and I saw the green soldiers running along the banks of the river. Oh, they were mad that we had escaped. We had jumped into the river and ruined their fun. They’d have to wait another day, wouldn’t they? The old girls and I had a fine laugh about that. Their eyes were crinkled into smiles, and over each old face was a beautiful shiny veil of water, poured from the top of her head, running over her eyes, then falling into the cup of her happy mouth.

With these bright veils, my old sisters wore young faces again, like the first time we wore our singing shawls. It was for an old-old elder’s funeral. We walked ’round and ’round the body, pretending to mourn, and shook the shawl fringes to sound the bells. And the young men went ’round and ’round the other way, to catch our smiles and count how many they caught. How glad we were that the old-old elder finally had the good sense to die.

And quick as that, the years swam by, and there we were in the crazy water, over fifty years old, the age of our dead elder. And the young men were now running along the banks in their ugly green uniforms. We saw them tip the noses of their rifles at us. Why were they doing that? And each nose made a little sneeze, like this, up and down, up and down, but no sounds. No crack, no hiss, just one watery veil turning red, then the other, and me wondering, Why no sounds? No
boof-boof
. My sisters were shuddering, trying to keep their spirits in their bodies, and I was trying to grab them to hang on, but then with one great heave, they went limp, just like that.

When my senses came back, I saw that the twins and their pallet were gone. I pushed my poor old sisters away to see if Loot and Bootie were underneath. The soldiers still had their rifles aimed toward us. All around me, the villagers were pounding the water, but 2 8 0

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not to get away. They were hurrying to shore. Maybe my husband told them to do this. Everyone listens to the headman and doesn’t argue. Maybe he said, We’ll work the pipeline and make another plan later. Whatever he said, I saw them climbing the banks. They were sticking together, because that’s how we are. And I would have done that, too, but I had to find Loot and Bootie first. The Great God told me I had to do this.

So I stayed in the water by the Great God’s will and against my own. Only one soldier tipped his rifle nose at me, but he was very young, and instead of a little sneeze, his rifle made a big one, so he couldn’t shoot anything but the sky. I saw our village was already on fire. The thatch of the houses was burning, the rice sheds, too, black smoke rising. I saw my family and the other villagers crawling on knees and hands toward the soldiers. My husband, my daughter, her husband, my other daughter, the four sons of my rice-pounding sister, her husband, who was still looking back to see where she was. I saw some of them fall flat onto their faces. I thought they had been kicked. One by one, they fell. One by one, I shouted, Ai! One by one, I was leaving them. And even if I had tried to swim back, the stream was too fast, and it carried me away, like an empty boat.

I was going to tip myself over and fall to the bottom of the river.

But then I heard them, Loot and Bootie. They were laughing like the tinkling bells of a singing shawl. They were still on the pallet, spinning in an eddy. After I reached them and checked them twice for holes, I cried and cried for I was so happy, and then I cried and cried again for I was so sad.

That was the day I knew Loot and Bootie had the power to both resist bullets and disappear. That’s why the soldiers never saw them.

That’s why they’re still here. They’re divinities, descended from the Younger White Brother, who also knew how to disappear. Of course, Loot and Bootie are still children and quite naughty at that, so 2 8 1

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mostly they disappear when I don’t want them to. But now that the Younger White Brother has come, he can teach them how to disappear properly. It’s time they learned.

Why am I still here? I have no divine powers. No such thing for me.

I think the Great God kept me so I can watch over Loot and Bootie, and that is what I do, my eyes never leave them.

He also wanted me to live so I could tell this story. If I didn’t tell it, who would? And then who would know? I’m past the age when most are gone, so that’s proof, too, of the Great God’s will. He told me to bear witness of what I know—just the important parts, and not about the old girls and how pretty they looked. But that’s what I remember, too, that and no sounds. Why no sounds?

The important part I am supposed to tell is everything I didn’t see, what happened after the river took me away. I now know this: Some they shot as soon as they came ashore. And others, they tied their hands behind them, poured hot chilies in their eyes, and covered their heads with plastic bags, then left them in the sun. They pounded many with rifles and our own threshing tools. To the rest, who wept, they shouted, Where are your rifles hidden? Who is the leader of the Karen army? They took one man and cut off both hands and all his toes. They dangled the babies to make the fathers talk. But we did not show them the rifles. No one did. How could we? We had no rifles. So a soldier showed a man his rifle and shot him dead. They shot all the men who were still living. I cannot tell you what they did to the babies. Those words won’t come out of my throat. As for the women and girls, even the ones who were only nine or ten, the soldiers kept them for two days. They raped them, the old ones, too, it didn’t matter how young or old, six men to one girl, all night, all day.