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“But madam, I did not eat one of your fried fish.”
“You are a cheater,” she replies. “A person who takes without paying for what he takes.”
“But, madam, I’ve taken nothing from you. I have not come within five feet of your stall.”
“Ha! And you’re a liar to boot. I have many witnesses who will testify that they saw you enjoying the smell of my fried fish as you ate your meal. You would not have been able to eat that disgusting mush of rice and vegetables without taking in the sweet aroma of my fish frying. So pay me the silver quarter and don’t make any more trouble for yourself.”
The confrontation soon draws a crowd. The fish seller plays to the onlookers, who have to agree that indeed the traveler availed himself of the smell of the fish frying. Even the traveler can’t deny that he smelled it as he ate. But he insists that he has no duty to pay for that privilege.
The matter is taken to a royal judge, who hears the evidence. The judge deliberates on the matter in a court-house nestled under the shade of a coconut tree, with chickens pecking for grain along the road nearby. Several minutes pass before he announces his verdict to the parties and the crowd who have accompanied them to the court.
The judge finds that the basic facts aren’t in dispute. The traveler’s enjoyment of his meal was indeed enhanced by the pleasant smell of the fish frying. He receiv
ed a benefit. But what is the value of that benefit? The fish seller says the price for a plate of fish is a silver quarter. The judge orders the parties to leave the courthouse and to walk out into the sun. He tells the traveler to hold out a silver quarter in the sunlight so that the fish vendor can grasp its shadow. The judge reasons that if a plate of fish costs one silver quarter, then the exchange value for the smell of the fish must be the shadow of a quarter.
Calvino set the book down and stretched back in his chair. Saxon was sending him a message. First through the food he ordered, then through the story of the peasant who gets into trouble over fried fish he hasn’t ordered or eaten. Like open secrets in a secretive society, the message was another paradox.
He looked out at the unbroken forest of trees between his hotel and the Shwedagon Pagoda, the gold-domed top catching the late afternoon sun, casting shadows over the treetops in the distance. Burma was a place of shadows, where hungry men squatted along the road, smelling the fish, while the cooks patiently waited to make their play.
The Black Cat’s brother might have been that man on the roadside, caught smelling the cooking fish. His sister was politically active. He figured the Black Cat thought her brother’s case had the smell of fish.
She had impressed Gung, the owner of Le Chat Noir, with her views about the Lesson. Maybe she’d been talking about Burmese proverbs, like the one about the poor man and the fish vendor, all along.
SIX
The Rangoon Running Club
A TAXI BEARING Calvino, Colonel Pratt and Jack Saxon pulled to a stop in front of the Traveler’s Hotel. They got out and walked toward a couple of dozen people—foreigners and Burmese—dressed in running shorts and shoes, some doing stretching exercises, others clumped in small groups, leaning against SUVs, gossiping and laughing.
Half of the runners looked like old hands in their heavily washed official Rangoon Running Club T-shirts. More than half of them were women. Most of the crowd looked like fit thirties or early forties fighting a rearguard battle against their fifties, clawing back their youth. Saxon didn’t exactly fit in. He was older than the others, and he dressed for the occasion with a hill tribe band around his forehead, an earring in his right ear and a silver band around his left wrist, each little pinky nail painted red and big toenails painted green. Some would say he’d gone native. Others thought Saxon was playing out his rebellion against the conformity of a London, Ontario upbringing. Everyone agreed that no one had ever seen hill tribe members who dressed like Jack Saxon. He had his own style, his Pistol Penis identity gear.
Calvino wondered which one was Ohn Myint.
“You never told me how the Colonel and you got Paul out of that mess,” Saxon said to Calvino. “He must have some pull inside the department with the big guys. Or the cops are more honest than their reputation.”
“Multiple interpretations are what reporters do,” said Calvino.
“Funny about that. Paul told me the Colonel paid forty thousand baht, saying it came from me,” said Saxon, looking at both Pratt and Calvino.
“Why would Pratt do that?” asked Calvino with his best poker face, covering a losing hand.
Saxon rolled his eyes. “It’s a question mark. A puzzle, a mystery.”
“One of those unsolved mysteries from the days when most mysteries were never solved,” said Colonel Pratt.
“I remember those days,” said Saxon. “I miss those days. Anyway, I’d like to pay back the forty thousand.”
“Tell your brother not to believe everything he hears,” said Colonel Pratt.
Saxon slowly rolled his jaw back and forth, front teeth biting his bottom lip.
“I’d offer the same advice here.”
Calvino wore a pair of baggy blue shorts and a T-shirt that said “New York Mets.” Saxon led the way through the crowd of runners. A couple of buzz-shaved black youths, no more than twenty years old, were doing warm-up. They were the only ones warming up, and the only ones who looked like they didn’t need to. If they’d had “US Embassy Marines” tattooed on those shaved heads, they couldn’t have been any easier to spot. The two men shared that combat-trained stare—wary, catlike watchfulness that was really a studied, fully situational evaluation of the opponent’s capability—all of it concentrated into a sniper’s squinted eye as they surveyed the other runners.
“Those are the winners,” said Saxon. “They win today, they’re barred from winning for a month. It’s hard enough to run 10K with the slight hope you might win, but with these two Americans running, no one else has a chance.”
Saxon walked up to one them.
