Playing Lady Gaga, Being Nan Pau. Steve Tolbert

a sun-bleached sky.

      Time seemed to slow: the monotonous drone of the bus, the road’s straightness and flatness, the constant travelling starting to feel endless.

       ‘You can no more hurry life along than you can hurry the phases of the moon.’

      Limestone formations started jutting up and merging into jagged, sheer-sided cliffs, stupas and their spires appearing on the most inaccessible outcrops. How builders got up to those places to build those structures was a mystery to Mya.

      The woman stirred. She hooked an arm through Mya’s and leaned her head against Mya’s shoulder, all the time appearing to sleep.

      The bus slowed. Up ahead a red and white boom gate. Heaped sandbags encircling a propped machine-gun on one side, three soldiers – guns held loosely across their waists – on the other. Mya sank down.

      ‘Wave to the soldiers,’ the mother said, suddenly awake, before picking up her toddler’s hand and doing it for him.

      Seconds later the barrier rose and the bus drove through.

      More boom gates and check-points appeared as they neared Hpa-an, but not once did soldiers board the bus. ‘A different story going the other way,’ the driver noted between check-points, as though Mya might need to know that.

      Storm clouds were building, lightning flaring in the distance.

      The bus entered Hpa-an, weaving through the narrow streets before shuddering to a stop in the central square. The door screeched open. Passengers piled out, though not the woman and her toddler. Boxes and bags were untied and came down from the roof, the passengers collecting them and moving off. When the doorway cleared, Mya got up and descended the steps, bus noise still lingering in her ears.

      A tea shack was just metres away, two of its tables outside. A monk sat hunched over a glass of tea at one of them. The other table was vacant. Mya watched the monk spread his hands and stare at them like they’d suddenly become a mystery to him. She waited for him to look up, meet her eyes, but he didn’t. Sitting at the next table seemed the logical thing to do, but if that monk wasn’t there for her and started asking difficult questions, how long would it take for him to realise who she wasn’t?

      The woman disembarked and, strangely, stood beside Mya, toddler perched on her hip. Again she hooked an arm through Mya’s, as though they were good friends or shared a family. ‘Good to feel our feet on the ground,’ she said.

      Mya nodded, wary.

      From the tea shack a man’s voice called out, ‘Mya!’

      She answered, ‘Yes,’ then realised her mistake. Panic took her breath away.

      ‘Good trip?’ The man was sitting just inside, against the wall. Only his pressed trousers were visible until he stood up and moved outside, his stare like an animal’s fixed on its prey. He put on mirror sunglasses.

      Someone clomped down from the bus and stood behind Mya. She looked over her shoulder into the eyes of the whiskey drinker, a grin spreading across his big slab face. ‘Surprised?’

      The woman let go of Mya’s arm and looked around, holding out her hand.

      The whiskey drinker gave her some bills and she walked away.

      Wide road. Little traffic. A market place a hundred metres or so to Mya’s left.

      ‘Save yourself the effort,’ the whiskey drinker said, close enough for Mya to catch the smell of his breath. ‘You won’t get halfway.’

      She was Mya Paw Wah again, fastest girl in her class. Nearly as fast as Thant, so midfield football player fast. And if she could reach that market place, she’d have a chance of escaping. Or should she just grab her rat poison instead? But the whiskey drinker was close. Getting the poison and swallowing it would take too long.

      Mya looked at him like he was a rotten piece of meat, saying, ‘Something’s died in your mouth.’

      She bolted, passing two motorbike taxis, leaping over a sleeping dog and a pot hole, weaving around bikes and motor scooters. She got to the market, chose the widest aisle and raced on, ducking and sidestepping, stalls flashing past, the eyes of thanaka-faced5 women turning to stare at her. Sandals slapping her heels, people shouting – ‘Sister’, ‘Daughter’, ‘What is wrong?’ ‘Why do you run?’ Sudden silence when they see why.

      ‘Watch out, watch out!’ Mya screamed, darting left through a narrow opening. People jumped back, giving her room; her breath gasping, pounding boots closing in, until a hand grabbed her by the neck, pulled and threw her into a stall.

      4

      Mya stood in front of him, listening to the rain on the roof, eyeing framed portraits of generals on the wall, spots of peeling paint, warped floorboards – anything but his face.

      ‘This girl could not invent the amount of trouble she is in,’ Mister MI said from behind his desk.

      Finally Mya looked at him as he studied her shoulder bag, writing pad, dictionary, rat poison, Nan Pau’s ID card and a folder, its contents unknown to her. ‘Would you agree, Aung Min?’

      ‘I do,’ the whiskey drinker answered from the open doorway, a cheroot pressed between thumb and forefinger.

      Mister MI stood. Hands on the desk, he leaned forward, eyes challenging Mya. ‘I’ve been told by the old nun you shared a ride with in Moulmein and by the abbot of Thein Tan Gyi Monastery, before he was hospitalised, that you are a bright girl. So, that being—’

      ‘Why was the abbot hospitalised?’ she interrupted, her fear turning to surprise.

      ‘Only speak when I am not,’ Mister MI snapped. ‘Otherwise learn silence. As a wearer of that robe, I should not have to tell you that.’ His face softened a little. ‘The abbot, I believe, had a heart attack. Most likely he’s joined his ancestors. But maybe not. Either way, you’ll never see him again.’ He paused to let her absorb that. ‘So, Mya Paw Wah, as a bright student, you must know what a proverb is.’

      She gazed, dumbfounded. What sort of a comment was that?

      ‘Well? Do you or not?’

      ‘Like an aphorism, it’s a short sentence that expresses something true in life.’

      ‘A worthy answer from someone so young.’ He sounded so superior, like he knew everything there was to know about the world. ‘Now, as a student who has been top of her class and been reading the Tripitaka the past few days, I hear, perhaps you can give me an example.’

      It took a while to think of one. ‘When people show compassion for all living things, only then are they noble.’

      A smile crept across his face. ‘Bright as paint, aren’t you? The abbot and old nun were right … about your knowledge anyway, as opposed to your actions. I have a proverb for you, Mya. Tell me if you’ve heard it before. Endings can be read in beginnings.’

      She shook her head.

      ‘I’ll change the wording but keep the essence of the proverb intact. Actions result from thoughts. Or, decisions have consequences that a decision-maker must take full responsibility for. Appropriate to remember, don’t you think, for someone who beat a policman unconscious, posed as a novice nun in an effort to escape and had to be chased down an hour ago only spitting distance from her destination?’

      Mya vowed not to break eye contact until he did.

      He picked up the folder and took out some enlarged photos. ‘We’ll start from the beginning.’ He pointed to the first photo. ‘Recognise it?’

      ‘A protest march.’

      ‘The protest march. Don’t be coy with me. Next one.’

      The photographer had to have been up a tree. She wanted to say something