The Journeyer

set-down hand bells. I daresay a really devout explorer could have spent his whole lifetime wandering among them, without ever getting to see them all. The city might have been the workshop of some Buddhist deity who was charged with the making of those odd-shaped temples, for there was a whole forest of their steeple-handles sticking up from the river plain there, stretching some twenty-five li up and down the Irawadi and extending six or seven li inland on both sides of the river. Our pongyi guide said proudly that there were more than one thousand three hundred of the p’hra, each crammed with images and each surrounded by a score or more of lesser monuments, idol statues and sculptured columns he called thupo.

“Evidence,” he said, “of the great holiness of this city and the piety of all its inhabitants, past and present, who built these edifices. The rich people pay for their erection, and the poor find gainful employment in doing so, and both classes earn eternal merit. Which is why, here in Pagan, one cannot move a hand or foot without touching some sacred thing.”

But I could not help noticing that only about a third of the buildings and monuments appeared in good repair, and all the remainder were in various stages of decrepitude. Indeed, as the brief tropical twilight came on, and temple bells rang out across the plain, calling to Pagan’s worshipers, the people filed into only the better-kept few p’hra, while out of the many broken and crumbling ones came long skeins of flittering bats, like plumes of black smoke against the purpling sky. I remarked that the local piety did not seem to extend to the preservation of holiness.

“Well, really, U Polo,” the old pongyi said, with a touch of asperity. “Our religion confers great merit on those who build a holy monument, but little on those who merely repair one. So, even if a wealthy noble or merchant cared to waste his merit on such an activity, the poor would be unwilling to do the work. Naturally, all would rather build even a very small thupo than tend to the repair of even the largest p’hra.”

“I see,” I said drily. “A religion of good business practices.”

We wended our way back to the palace as the night came swiftly down. We had done our wandering, as Bayan had said, at the time of day that was cool by Ava standards. Nevertheless, Hui-sheng and I felt again rather sweaty and dusty by the time we got back, and so decided to forgo Bayan’s invitation to join him at the night’s session of the interminable play that was being performed for him. Instead, we went directly to our own suite, and told the Thai maidservant Arun to draw us another bath. When the immense teak tub was full of water, perfumed with miada grass and sweetened with gomuti sugar, we both stripped off our silks and got into it together.

The maid, while getting in hand her washcloths and brushes and unguents and little crock of palm-oil soap, pointed to me and smiled and said, “Kaublau,” then smiled again and pointed to Hui-sheng and said, “Saongam.” I later learned, by inquiry of others who spoke Thai, that she had called me “handsome” and Hui-sheng “radiantly beautiful.” But right then, I could only raise my eyebrows, and so did Hui-sheng, for Arun took off her own wrapping and prepared to get into the warm water with us. Seeing us exchange looks of some surprise and perplexity, the maid paused to do an elaborate pantomime of explanation. That might have been incomprehensible to most foreigners, but Hui-sheng and I, being ourselves adept at gesture language, managed to understand that the girl was apologizing for not having disrobed with us during our earlier bath. She conveyed that we then had been simply “too dirty” for her to attend us in the nude, as she was supposed to do. If we would forgive her for that earlier evasion of her due participation, she would now attend us in the proper manner. So saying, she slid down into the tub, with her bath equipment, and began to soap Hui-sheng’s body.

We had both been often attended in the bath by servants of Hui-sheng’s sex, and of course I had often been bathed by servants of my own sex, but this was our first experience of a servant bathing with us. Well, other countries, other customs, so we merely exchanged a look of amiable amusement. What harm in it? There was certainly nothing unpleasant about Arun’s participation—quite the contrary, to my mind, for she was a comely person, and I had no objection whatever to being in the company of two beautiful and naked females of different races. The girl Arun was about the same size as the young woman Hui- sheng, and of very similarly childish figure—budlike breasts and small neat buttocks and so on—differing mainly in that her skin was more of a cream-yellow color, the color of durian flesh, and her “little stars” were fawn-colored instead of rose-colored, and she had the merest feathering of body hair, just along the line where the lips of her pink parts joined.

Since Hui-sheng could not speak, and I could think of nothing pertinent to say, we both were silent, and I simply sat soaking in the perfumed water while, at the other side of the tub, Arun washed Hui-sheng, and chattered merrily as she did so. I suppose she had not yet realized that Hui-sheng was mute and deaf, for it became apparent that Arun was taking this opportunity to try teaching us a few rudiments of her own language. She would touch Hui-sheng here, then there, with a dab of soft suds, and pronounce the Thai words for those parts of the body, then touch herself in the same places and repeat the words.

Hui-sheng’s hand was a mu, and each finger a niumu, and so were Arun’s. Hui-sheng’s shapely leg was a khaa, and her slim foot a tau, and each pearly toe a niutau, and so were Arun’s. Hui-sheng only smiled tolerantly as the girl touched her pom and kiu and jamo—her hair and eyebrows and nose—and she made a silent laugh of appreciation as Arun touched her lips—baa—and then puckered her own in a kissing way and said, “Jup.” But Hui- sheng’s eyes widened a bit when the girl touched her breasts and nipples with bubbly suds and identified them as nom and kwanom. And then Hui-sheng blushed most beautifully, because her little stars twinkled erect from the bubbles, as if rejoicing in their new name of kwanom. Arun laughed aloud when she saw that, and companionably twiddled her own kwanom until they matched Hui-sheng’s in prominence.

Then she pointed out the difference between their bodies which I had already noticed. She indicated that she had a very scant trace of hair—this kind called moe—there where Hui-sheng had none. However, she went on, they did have one thing in common thereabouts, and she touched first her own pink parts and then Hui-sheng’s, in a lightly lingering way, and said softly, “Hii.” Hui-sheng gave a small jump that rippled the water in the tub, and turned a wondering look on me, and then turned it on the girl, who met it with a smile that was openly provocative and challenging. Arun sloshed around to face me, as if asking for my approval of her impudence, and pointed to my corresponding organ and laughed and said, “Kwe.”

I think Hui-sheng had earlier been only amused, not affronted, by Arun’s irrepressibly jaunty behavior. Perhaps at that latest and frankly fondling touch, she had seemed a little apprehensive of its portent. But now she joined the girl in pointing gleefully at me, and it was my turn to blush, for my kwe had got vigorously aroused by the foregoing events, and was most flagrantly in evidence. I started guiltily to cover it with a washcloth, but Arun reached over, gently took hold of it with a soapy hand, saying “kwe” again, while, with her other hand under water, continuing to caress Hui-sheng’s counterpart and saying again “hii.” Hui-sheng only went on silently laughing, not minding at all, seeming to have begun to take pleasure in the situation. Then Arun briefly let go of both of us, said joyously, “Aukan!” and clapped her hands together to show us what she was suggesting.

Hui-sheng and I had had no opportunity to enjoy each other during the voyage from Bhamo to Pagan, and not much inclination either, in the circumstances. We were more than ready to make up for that lost time, but we would never have dreamed of asking for assistance in doing so. We had never required any help before, and we did not now, but we let ourselves accept it—and revel in it. Perhaps it was simply because Arun was so vivaciously eager to be of service. Or perhaps it was because we were in a new and exotic land, and amenable to the new experiences it offered. Or perhaps the durian and its alleged properties had something to do with it.

I have not before spoken, as I said I would not, of any of the activities private to Hui-sheng and myself, and I will not now. I will only remark that this night we did not exactly comport ourselves in the manner which, long ago, I and the Mongol twins had done. In this event, the extra girl’s participation was mainly that of a very busy matchmaker and instructor and manipulator of our various parts, during which she showed us a number of things that were evidently accepted practice among her own people, but new to us. I remember thinking that it was no wonder her people were called Thai, meaning Free. However, either Hui-sheng or I, and usually both of us, always had some part of us otherwise unoccupied, with which to give Arun pleasure, too, and she clearly found it pleasant, for she was frequently either crooning or exclaiming, “Aukan! Aukan!” and “Saongam!” and “Chan pom rak kun!” which means “I love you both!” and “Chakati pasad!” which I will not tell the meaning of.

We did aukan again and again, the three of us, on most of the nights Hui-sheng and I remained in the Pagan palace, and often during the days, too, when the weather was too hot for doing anything outdoors. But I best remember that first night—including every least Thai word Arun taught me—not so much because of what we did, but because, a long while afterward, I had cause to remember one thing I failed to do that night.