Burmese maze 1

 Chapter One

 

1886

 

The sun blasts through the shuttered window casting strips of darkened shadow across the pale wall, pock-marked with mould, splashes ancient and new in various shades of black. A metal cross on one bare wall is caught in the rays of the sun sending shafts of golden light at diagonals to each corner of this quiet cell. Quiet, save for the never-ending tick, tick, ticking of the crickets outside, and in the distance, across the quadrangle, the soft hum of women’s voices in a holy chant. It was this ethereal sound that seems to ride in on the back of the hot sunshine that disturbs little William from his sleep. He lifts his head with its soft red curls gingerly from the pillow, on which he has spent a restless night. So many worries for one so young. Willie, as he is to become affectionately known by the nuns who will go on to care for him, feels the unnatural prickle of the stiff and starchy sheet against his soft skin. He blinks, several times, and screws up his face, as he tries to take in this strange new room that has been his shelter – for last night at least. There is one familiar sight, however, the dark head of his sister Kitty, just peeping above the sheet that drapes around her tiny body. He can tell from her stillness, and the steady rise and fall of her shoulders, she is still in the midst of a deep sleep. Like her brother, she is lying in a cot, a box actually, made out ofwood from what appears to have been in a previous life, a crate designed for carrying vegetables. The cell is somewhat different to their usual bedtime habitat - a straw hut on stilts in a nearby local village. Here they are usually to be found curled around the body of their mother, Ma-hla, who makes her living by rolling tobacco leaves into cigars. 

 

As William watches his sister’s slumbers, he wonders how his mother has coped without them, on this first of many nights they are to experience apart. He does not know it, but there are to be very few ever again during which the brother and sister will spend a night with their mother under the same roof, straw or otherwise. William and Kitty had been picked up from the dusty streets of Rangoon the day before by two nuns while their mother was working. They were taken to the convent, where moments ago William had awoken. Sister, Mary Josella, once a lovely young Irish colleen called Nora Kelly and now wizened with age and the sun, had noticed them on a number of occasions and had become increasingly concerned for their welfare. The nuns knew that if the mother of the children goes on to marry a Burman - which she will do within the year - then it is extremely unlikely that this man will bring up two ‘Kabayha’ children as his own. William felt different. People treat him differently, they look at him differently, and they speak to him differently. He and Kitty are the Eurasian ‘urchins littering Victoria’s streets’, beautiful, but ‘yellow bellies’ none the less. It will be the considered opinion of some in years to come that they were deliberately abducted from their Burmese mothers, who it was thought had been abandoned by their European fathers, in a ratified scheme endorsed and indeed financed by the state. Thereby creating a section of the community which was below the British but above the Burmese in status and who it was said could be educated to fill specific roles serving the white colonials as teachers, accountants, nurses and civil servants. 

 

With a myriad of thoughts going through his young mind, pangs of hunger suddenly strike, and it occurs to him that itmust be well past his breakfast time. Just as he begins to wonder whether they would be given the delicious cold curry, which he loves so much at home, he becomes aware of a commotion going on outside the shuttered window.Amongst the cacophony he recognises a voice, that of his mother speaking in broken English and rather loudly. “Where you put my children? Why you take them?” she cries. Her fearless young son jumps out of his box and runs to the window, where he pulls back the shutters, to be immediately faced by the side of his mother’s head. She isremonstrating with Sister Mary Josella, who towers above her. Their mother does no more than jump inside over the window ledge as soon as she sees him. Not to be left behind, Sister follows suit, her white, long habit proving no incumbrance to the athletic feat, which sees both nun and young mother end up in an undignified heap on the floor. The extraordinary act of hurdling results in disturbing Kitty from her dreams. She is distinctly alarmed by the vision that confronts her and so starts to wail, the kind of wail that cuts out for ten seconds and then comes back again, only manytimes more piercing than it was before. Mother comfortsdaughter and the situation, to William’s relief, calms down. 

 

Gaining her breath back, Sister Mary Josella with her kind piercing blue eyes says in her soft Irish accent sweeping the dust from her habit: “My dear, please understand that we fear for your children’s future. Here we can look after them safely. We can feed them, clothe them and bring them up in the Catholic faith. They will have religious instruction every day. William will be educated by the Brothers of the Christian Schools and Kitty will attend lessons given by the Sisters of The Good Shepherd. We are sure their father would approve.” Ma-hla, pleased to have made contact withher children, is eventually appeased acknowledging they will be well cared for and that she will struggle to provide for them. The world of the nuns is alien to her. Like many of her contemporaries, she has a strong sense of her own heritage and culture, is literate and follows the Buddhist faith of her nation. Despite this, she appreciates their intention is to help and protect her children, and so she leaves appeased by the promise that she can visit them.Burmese mothers visiting their Eurasian children is actually discouraged, but Ma-hla is told she can see them on Sunday afternoons. 

 

Until recently she had shared the quarters of the children’sfather, Thomas Nicholls, the second son of a tobacco manufacturer based in Chester, England. He had been homeonce before, and when he leaves a second time, Ma-hla hasno reason to believe he will not come back to them. It may well be the climate of uncertainty, constant threat of uprisings and risk to business, which prevents Thomas’ return. These are anxious times for anyone with relatives in Burma. After two Anglo-Burmese wars, a third is about to start, which will go on to lead to the annexation of Burma by the British a year later in 1886. The months pass with no word from Thomas. Kitty will not see her father for 35 years. William, feeling abandoned, will never agree to meet him again. He cannot not have known at the time that his father had made provision for their welfare, but the greedy and avaricious rice merchant entrusted with passing on funds transferred to him from England never passes it on. 

At the orphanage Sister Mary Josella gives the childrenclean clothes, which distracts Kitty from thoughts of separation from her mother. William feels a small sense of pride creeping upon him as he sports his new clean attire. The brother and sister are taken to a small dormitory. A large creaking wooden door opens to reveal rows and rows of children, just like them sitting upon their beds. Their chatter and laughter stops as they all turn at once to look at the new arrivals. They have one thing in common, they arethe so-called ‘café-au-lait’ of |Burma, a label William and Kitty are to become increasingly familiar with as it becomescommonly applied to them. They are now in one of 21orphanages under the care of the religious community, home to almost 800 children in the country.

 

Their mother dutifully comes to play with them every Sunday. She never enters the Little Sisters of the Poor Convent itself but stays in the pretty gardens with theircarefully cared for beds. They are resplendent with a variety of frangipani in shades of white, yellow, pink and orange, emitting heady aromas of banana, pineapple, ginger and spice. William and Kitty, in unison with the other children playing with their Burmese mothers, run around and play before taking shade from the scorching afternoon sun under the large jacaranda tree, whose arched branches are famous for forming a canopy-like, up-turned umbrella. In the centreof the gardens is a beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary whose gaze seems to fall upon them, her delicate hands clasped in prayer with a gold rosary sparkling in the sunshine. The haunting and hypnotic sound of the Sisters singing Ave Maria in the adjoining chapel can be heard. The statue serves as a reminder of the clash of worlds in which the siblings are to grow turning from children into adults in a country where grey-stoned sombre-looking churches will spring up next to exotic gold-leafed Buddhist temples. It is within the hallowed walls of the temples that their mother feels at home taking offerings to the Buddha. Ma-hla’sgrandchildren will go on to file dutifully on Sundays into the churches, knowing very little of their grandmother’s worship in the temples across the road, even though they will walk by them every day. The contrast between the two worlds could not have been more distinct for young William, who will discover he is made to feel uncomfortable in bothcamps. It has been over a year since he has seen or heard from his merchant father Thomas, who is back working at his family’s tobacco factory on the River Dee, very different from the waters of the gargantuan Irrawady, the ‘elephant river’, so called presumably because of its size or because baby elephants like to splash and play on its banks with their a-may (mothers) when they have the chance. 

 

On this particular sunny Sunday afternoon, Ma-hla has arrived at the convent bringing with her one of their favourite treats, ‘boodee in the bounjee’, courgettes fried in chilli batter, which she carries in a shiny metal tiffin box. The siblings hug her legs, clad in a brightly coloured and patterned longyi, freshly woven just a few days ago by a woman in the village. She takes pride in her appearance and wants to look her best for her children. Her long black hair istied up in a bun adorned by a sprig of jasmine hanging like golden droplets from a glossy bed, and she wears a smart fitted linen blouse in the softest of powder pinks. “What have you brought us today Mummy?” William asks diving into the tin. He loves his mother’s cooking. They have beenplaying chilon, a basket-weave ball their mother broughtthem, which they kick high in the air with the inside of their feet in the familiar Burmese manner. After tucking into the boodee their heads sink into the lap of their beautiful motheras she sings them their favourite folk song, Chi O La. It is asong William will sing to all of his 10 children, and they in turn will sing to theirs. She then tells them she has some news. Ma-hla has come to a decision, which is to change their relationship for evermore.  

“I have news for you,” she says. “I to be married to very nice man in village. He knows all about you and has agreed I still come to visit you.” 

“Every Sunday as usual,” William enquires.

“Not every Sunday, but often,” she replies.

Little Kitty holds on to her mother tighter than ever, while William runs off as if unaffected, playing chilon with an aggressive vigour that had not been apparent earlier. “William, William, come back,” Ma-hla calls after him, but her cries are unanswered.

The afternoon ends all too quickly. A bell rings and the children are called in for early evening prayer by the nuns - these Little Sisters of the Poor, who will play an increasingly significant part in the lives of this British Burmese family in the troubled years that lie ahead, lives in which loved oneswill be lost and found; in which disease, wars and civil unrest will take their toll.

 

Ma-hla waves at her beloved children as they disappear through the door to the chapel. The gate closes behind her with a loud clunk of metal against metal. She turns and begins her long walk home, weeping. 

She walks quickly down the dusty road, nervous as night is falling fast. There are still dacoits known to roam the area, looking to make trouble for the Anglos, whose rule they fearsomely and violently object to, and she did not want to run into some kind of ambush. The din of the crickets rises in her ears as she clutches her tiffin box to her chest and the breeze that is now picking up rustles the dry leaves of the bushes. She keeps her head down because if there is a bandit lying in wait, she does not want to alert him to the fact he has been seen. The dacoits have vowed to disrupt everyday life for the British and have taken to the jungles to put up a fight setting fire to occupied territories where they can. It has been announced that a massive 32,000 British troops and 8,500 military policemen have been brought in to counteract their ‘marauding’. One report describes how 12 werecaptured and each shot, one after the other, the first shot taking off the top of a dacoit’s skull, ‘as one decapitates an eggshell with a breakfast knife’ one soldier is reported to have boasted to another. The soldiers were recorded as being thoroughly disconcerted when the dacoits laughed while each one of their comrades was being killed. They dial up their guerilla action and the British authorities in retaliationtake to burning villages. 

 

The young mother arrives safely at her village and relieved climbs the small bamboo ladder up to her empty hut. As she lies down on her mat alone, smoking a cheroot and missing the two warm little bodies of her children, her thoughts return to their father. The rains of the monsoon, a welcome relief after the hot steamy weather of May, pound down relentlessly on to the roof of the hut, reminding her of the first day Thomas came to the plantation near her home in Moulmein.