6

It was morning when they first sighted land, three days from Calcutta, a lighthouse perched on a tall red stone tower. “The Alguada Reef,” Edgar heard an elderly Scotsman beside him tell a companion. “Bloody hard to navigate. She’s a graveyard for passing ships.” Edgar knew from the maps that they were only twenty miles south of Cape Negrais, that soon they would reach Rangoon.

In less than an hour, the ship passed buoys marking the shallow sandbanks that spilled out from the mouth of the Rangoon River, one of hundreds of rivers which drained the Irrawaddy Delta. They passed several anchored ships, which the old man explained were trading ships trying to evade port dues. The steamer turned north, and the sandbars rose above the land to become low wooded shores. Here the channel was deeper, but still almost two miles wide, and were it not for the large red obelisks on either side of the mouth, he wouldn’t have known they were navigating inland.

They steamed upriver for several hours. It was low, level, mostly unremarkable country, yet Edgar felt a sudden excitement when they passed a series of small pagodas, their coats of whitewash peeling. Further inland, a collection of shacks, clustered at the water’s edge, where children played. The river narrowed, and both shores came into closer focus, the sandy banks fringed with thickening vegetation. The ship followed a tortuous course, hindered by sandbanks and sharp bends. At last, at one of these bends, boats appeared in the distance. On deck there was a murmur and several passengers filed toward the stairs to return to their rooms.

“Are we there?” Edgar asked the old man.

“Yes, soon. Look over there.” The man raised his arm and pointed to a pagoda that capped a distant hill. “That’s the Shwedagon Pagoda. You must have heard of it.”

Edgar nodded. Actually, he had known of the temple before he had been given the Erard commission, reading of its splendors in a magazine article written by the wife of a judge from Rangoon. Her descriptions were loaded with adjectives: gilded, golden, glittering. He had scanned the article, wondering if he’d find mention of an organ, or a Buddhist equivalent, conjecturing that such an important house of worship needed music. But there were only descriptions of “shimmering, golden jewels” and the “quaint ways of Burmans,” and he tired of the article and had forgotten about it until now. In the distance, the temple looked like a small, shiny trinket.

The steamer slowed. The dwellings that dotted the shore now began to break through the foliage with regularity. Further along the bank, he was startled to see timber elephants working, their drivers sitting across their necks as they hauled giant logs from the water and stacked them on the shore. He stared, incredulous at the strength of the animals, at how they whipped the logs out of the water as if they were weightless. As the boat approached the bank, they came into clearer view, rivulets of brown water spinning down their hides as they splashed along the shore.

They passed other vessels on the river, now with increasing frequency, double-decked steamers, worn fishing boats painted with swirling Burmese script, tiny rowboats and thin skiffs, fragile and scarcely large enough for a man. There were others, vessels of unfamiliar shape and sail. Close to the shore, they were passed by a strange ship with a vast sail fluttering over two smaller ones.

They were approaching the docks quickly now, and a series of European-style government buildings came into view, stately structures of brick and gleaming columns.

The steamer approached a covered landing attached to the bank by a long, hinged platform, where a crowd of porters waited. The steamer hesitated, its engines churning in reverse to slow its course. One of the deckhands threw a rope to the quay, where it was caught and wrapped around a pair of bollards. The porters, naked except for loincloths tied around their waists and tucked between their legs, clamored to lower a plank from the dock. It slapped loudly against the deck, and they crossed it to help the passengers with their luggage. Edgar stood in the shade of the awning and watched the men. They were small and wore towels wrapped around their heads to guard against the sun. Their skin was patterned with tattoos, stretching over their torsos, emerging on their thighs to twist and twine and end above their knees.

Edgar looked at the other passengers: most stood idly on the deck, talking to each other, some pointing and remarking on the buildings. He turned back to the porters, to watch them move, the shape of their tattoos changing as the sinewy arms tensed under the leather trunks and portmanteaus. On the shore, in the shade of the trees, a crowd waited by the growing pile of bags. Beyond them, Edgar could see the khaki uniforms of British soldiers standing by a low gate. And beyond the soldiers, in the shade of a line of sprawling banyan trees that followed the shore, hints of movement, shifting patterns of darkness.

At last the tattooed men finished unloading the luggage, and the passengers walked across the gangplank to waiting carriages, the women emerging under parasols, the men beneath top hats or sola topis. Edgar followed the old man he had spoken to earlier that morning, checking his balance as he crossed the rickety gangplank. He stepped onto the dock. His itinerary said that he would be met at the port by military personnel, but little more. For a brief moment, he felt a sudden surge of panic, Perhaps they don’t know I have arrived.

Beyond the guards, the shadows stirred, like an animal awakening. He was sweating profusely and took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

“Mr. Drake!” someone shouted from the crowd. Edgar looked for the voice. There was a crowd of soldiers standing in the shade. He saw a raised arm. “Mr. Drake, over here.”

Edgar pushed his way through the crowd of passengers and servants milling about their bags. A young soldier stepped forward and raised his hand. “Welcome to Rangoon, Mr. Drake. It is good you saw me, sir. I would not have known how to recognize you. Captain Dalton, Herefordshire Regiment.”

“How do you do? My mother’s family is from Hereford.”

The soldier beamed. “Fine luck!” He was young and tanned, with broad shoulders, and blond hair combed back diagonally across his head.

“Yes, fine luck,” said the piano tuner, and expected the young man to say something else. Rut the soldier just laughed, if not for the small coincidence, then because he had recently been promoted to captain, and he was proud to state his rank. And Edgar returned the smile, for the journey, after five thousand miles, suddenly seemed to have brought him back home.

“I trust you had a pleasant trip?”

“Pleasant indeed.”

“I hope you won’t mind waiting for one moment. We have some other luggage to carry to headquarters.”

When everything had been gathered together, one of the soldiers called to the porters, who loaded the trunks onto their shoulders. They walked past the guards at the gate and into the street to where the carriages waited.

Later Edgar would write to Katherine that in the fifteen paces that carried him from the gate to the waiting carriages, Burma appeared as if from behind a curtain lifted from a stage. As he stepped into the street, the crowd swelled around him. He turned. Hands struggled to thrust baskets of food forward. Women stared at him, their faces painted white, their fists grasping garlands of flowers. At his feet, a beggar pressed up against his leg, a mournful boy covered with scabs and weeping sores, and he turned again and tripped over a group of men carrying crates of spices suspended between long poles. Ahead, the soldiers pushed through the crowds, and had it not been for the branches of the giant banyan trees, those looking out from the office buildings would have seen a line of khaki passing through the mosaic, and a single man moving slowly, as if lost, turning at the sound of a cough, now staring at a betel vendor who had spit near his feet, trying to discern if this was a threat or perhaps merely an advertisement, until he heard one of the soldiers say, “After you, Mr. Drake,” for they had arrived at the carriage. And as quickly as he entered the world, he escaped, ducking his head inside. The street seemed to recede immediately.