Incident at Badamaya

by Dorothy Gilman

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Suspense

Synopsis

"Gilman keeps you turning the pages."
UPI
After Gen Ferris's missionary father commits suicide in 1950, it is up to her to get out of Burma alone. She has one hundred dollars in her knapsack, a slingshot, a magical Burmese puppet, and the New York City address of an aunt she doesn't know. But Gen is captured by Red Chinese forces and imprisoned with six other lost travelers. She vows to escape, not believing that her destiny lies in captivity, never dreaming of the forces that will finally come to her aid....

Release date: June 30, 2020

Publisher: Fawcett

Print pages: 224

Sample

1


There had been omens.

Mr. San Ya, drawing his horoscopes by the light of a candle, had seen at once that the new month was not auspicious; he had painstakingly drawn it a second time but still it promised only more violence . . . his country was experiencing a difficult birth. The Prime Minister had announced there would be peace in one year but that announcement had been issued two years ago and the rail line to Rangoon was still cut, the roads unsafe, and the insurgents split into even newer fragments. What was one to make of them all: the AFPFL of the government, the Red Flag Communists, the White Flag Communists, the PVO divided into White Banner and Yellow Banner factions, the KNDO, and lately the battles fought against the KMT who sought sanctuary in the north from Mao in China?

Most ominous of all were the bandits, the dacoits, who had leaped into the vacuum.

Mr. San Ya sighed as he blew out his candle and retired to the mat on the floor with his sleeping family. He was not a man given to worry but in those moments before sleep seized him he had lately begun pondering how his small village on the Irrawaddy might acquire another gun. There was only one gun in the village, tonight in the hands of Ba Pe, whose turn it was to stand guard until dawn, but one was not enough. As usual Mr. San Ya's thoughts wandered to the foreigner in their midst and he considered again how he might tactfully inquire of Mr. Ferris if he owned a gun. It was Mr. San Ya's opinion, somewhat prejudiced, that a foreigner with a sixteen-year-old daughter to protect had a duty to own a gun even if the man was a Christian and had been a missionary before his leikpya—his soul—had sickened. Like the Prime Minister, Mr. Ferris had announced many months ago that the "tumult and the shouting," as he phrased it, would soon go away and that he intended to "brave the storm"—he spoke like that—but in the vocabulary of the British under whom Mr. San Ya had once served he thought him a bloody fool: he had stayed too long. He thought that Mr. Ferris would have been surprised to learn that he was regarded with kindly tolerance strictly because of his daughter Gen, who Ma Nu insisted was protected by a thamma deva. That she was protected by a thamma deva was quite possible, thought Mr. San Ya, nodding judiciously, but if that was the case then Mr. Ferris would not need a gun and might be persuaded to lend it to the village. If, of course, he possessed one.

Persistent worry was not in Mr. San Ya's nature and presently his eyes closed and a snore escaped him. Outside the full moon poured its milky light over the village, bleaching its forty-one thatched roofs and cutting deep shadows into its maze of lanes and paths. It followed Ba Pe as he left the north gate of the village to stroll down the main path to the south gate, the rifle slung over his shoulder, but it failed to reveal the man hiding behind the pagoda outside the gates who had been told that an American lived in this village and might help him.

The moon shining on her face woke Gen Ferris, or perhaps it was the manic cries of a cuckoo in the trees beyond the compound. She stirred and her eyes flicked open to move drowsily around a room blurred by the shroud of mosquito netting under which she lay. She found the faces of the American movie stars on the left wall: Doris Day and Joanne Dru, Dan Dailey and Bing Crosby, and on the right wall the watchful eyes of the marionette that Htun Schwae had carved and costumed for her in miniature: Zawgwi the alchemist, the all-powerful lord of magic and sorcery, his red clothes and his red wand the color of blood in the moonlight. But Htun Schwae, she had protested, doesn't your carving Zawgwi small in size make his power small? and Htun Schwae had looked at her gravely and said, Does your being small in size make your power small, Zen?

Now she remembered that tomorrow was special because it was said that a river steamer from Rangoon was on its way and would be reaching Theingyu around noon, the first steamer in months; it was rumored that Europeans were aboard and it had been a long time since she had seen a European. She smiled, not aware of San Ya's horoscopes or of such matters as omens. Her eyes closed and she slept, the smile lingering on her small-boned white face made paler by moonlight.

The next day the rumors of a steamer proved to be true but whether it was also true that it carried Europeans could not be substantiated because the steamer did not stop at Theingyu, which was seen as ominous because this had never happened before. Gen stood and waited on the shore with Mi-Mi, who had brought food to sell the passengers; the long plank that substituted for a gangway was ready to be lifted into place when the shabby old blue and white riverboat steamed around the curve in the Irrawaddy, leaving a triumphant wake behind it. Murmurs of pleasure rose from the villagers lining the river's bank: smiles, laughs of delight blossomed, and a sense of excitement. But the steamer's speed had not diminished and it was Mr. San Ya who first expressed dismay. Slowly the murmurs of delight faded, and with it Gen's hope of seeing a European. However, because of the boat the Japanese had sunk in the middle of the river during the war, the steamer had to sail tantalizingly close to the shore and it was possible to search out the faces of the people lining the rails. Straining to see, Gen thought she found a woman who might be European, sitting very erect in a deck chair, dressed all in silky gray with hair to match, but it was no more than a glimpse for people kept getting in her way. What drew her gaze at last was a Burmese standing at the rail who seemed to be staring directly at Gen. Her gaze returned to him and she became very still, puzzled by the way he regarded her, as if she was familiar to him. He was a small plump man with a brown face. It was disconcerting—she felt hypnotized by those eyes—and then he released her by turning his head away and she wondered at its happening at all, even as something deep inside her whispered, I will see that man again . . . and then the steamer turned midstream, the faces became profiles and then disappeared as the boat proceeded on to Kyaikkasan, five miles upstream.

Mi-Mi turned to her with eyes anxious for her friend.

"No Ingalei, no Ameiyikan, Zen."

Gen said, "Keissa masibu—never mind," and hid her face by leaning over and picking up little Ah Par, who squealed with delight.

But to Mr. San Ya the steamer not stopping was seen as another omen, and in the afternoon, while the men worked in the fields and while Mr. San Ya—being a man of port—played dominoes with Htun Schwae in the shade of a neem tree, the foreigner in their village, Gen's father, ended his life with a bullet in his head, which proved in the most unfortunate manner that he had owned a gun after all.