The Wood-Carver

by Alastair Gill (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection Myanmar

“Excuse me. May I join you for tea?” The request was delivered in carefully phrased, precise English. I looked up. A small grey-haired man had stopped by my table and was peering at me through thick glasses. A grubby blue shirt hung loosely around his torso, the collar pulled back so far onto his shoulders that the top button was digging into his neck. He held a newspaper. I gestured for him to take a seat, and he lowered himself onto a chair. “I am Jonathan,” he said. “That’s right. It’s the name my English teacher gave me when I was a schoolboy. When the British were still here in Burma…” he tailed off. “Where are you from? What are you doing in Yangon?” “A teacher? Very good. I am a wood-carver.” “What do you carve?” “Oh, many things,” he smiled, clasping his hands meekly on his lap. He let his unblinking gaze rest on me, as if to reassure himself that he had my attention. “But mainly Buddhas. During the dictatorship I was the government’s official wood carver. Well, I had many strings to my bow, as they say, but… I’m eighty-five, I’m retired now,” he said. “But I still carve every day.” At first his smooth ochre skin, stretched tautly across his cheekbones, had seemed that of a much younger man, but when he raised his eyebrows a stack of delicate, gossamer-thin lines would crowd his forehead. A boy in a longyi skirt brought fresh cups, then poured out rich sweet Burmese tea from a battered aluminium kettle. Jonathan talked of the days of empire, the Japanese occupation, independence, and even his visits to England: “I visited Liverpool, and London – and Oxford!” Eventually, he paused. Will you be here tomorrow?” he asked. “I would like to bring you a Buddha, one of my carvings.” I shook my head. “I’m going to Bagan, to see the temples,” I explained. “I need to go to the railway station now to buy my ticket.” “Ah,” said Jonathan. “That’s a pity.” He looked down at his empty cup. “Will you come back to Yangon?” “On the twenty-second,” I said, ticking off eight days in the air. “Very good. So I will meet you here on the twenty-second, at… six o’clock,” said Jonathan, looking at his watch. “We can have tea and I will give you the Buddha. But do you know how to get to the station? I’ll show you the way.” * He moved slowly, deliberately, carefully placing one foot in front of another as if testing the firmness of the ground underfoot. From time to time he would stop and turn slowly around on the spot, as if reacquainting himself with the city he had lived in most of his life. After a mile or so, we ascended to a walkway across the railway yards. Weeds sprouted between the rails, and soot-streaked carriages listed in sidings like lines of lifeless, sun-bleached beetles. Beyond lay the station building, with its tiered golden turrets soaring high over the earthly squalor of its dank ticket halls and waiting rooms. When I emerged, ticket in hand, Jonathan was leaning against a wall. He looked suddenly brittle and frail. “So you have your ticket?” he asked. “Good.” Half-way back across the bridge, he stopped, stretched out an arm to the railing, then sagged against it and slipped to the ground. His eyes were distant; his breath came in short gasps. I squatted beside him. “I feel very tired,” he sighed. “Very tired. I’m sorry.” I helped him down the steps, then lowered him gently onto the back seat of a taxi. “The twenty-second,” he whispered. “Six o’clock.” The taxi disappeared into the Yangon traffic. * “More tea?” The boy approached with his kettle. I checked my watch again. Six-twenty. From a nearby temple a calm, disembodied voice muttered Buddhist prayers through a loudspeaker. I remembered him, his head lolling back hopelessly against the side of the overpass, his ragged breathing, and I knew. But for a long time I remained sitting at the empty table, amid the whirling rush of buses, mopeds, taxis, porters and betel leaf sellers, as the city came breathlessly alive with the dusk.