The Blue-Eyed Shan (19 page)

For a moment, an uncomfortable moment, once rare but less to each season, Naung squatted and scrutinized this malformed chieftain. Too often treachery had worked its way to the surface of Naung's mind. That his people should be led by this abortion! The Sawbwa had altered much since Naung's departure in the year he had learned to call 1939; the Sawbwa had aged in mind and body, but his authority was undiminished. He was, for one thing, a rainmaker. “In the second night I shall bring rain,” he would say, and rain would come. Naung tended to atheism and suspected a trick; the Sawbwa perhaps smelled clouds forming, or sensed a shriller note in the jungle fowl's shriek. The visions were more difficult to account for: the Sawbwa saw distant wars, tall foreigners, railways in the jungle.

Naung too had seen distant wars, tall foreigners and railways in the jungle, and what the Sawbwa conveyed was logical, reasonable and not easily verified. Yet the village believed him always. He spoke with gods, with the Lord Buddha and the nats of the hearth and forest, the gods of the mountain and the river, spoke to them in the village tongue and in Chinese; and he transmitted messages—early monsoon, much thunder, excessive rainfall, a plague of speckled scabs on the whiskered fish, plant now, reap now, send no opium to Nan-san this year. Yet it was perhaps a long series of meaningless predictions and instructions, a run of accidental triumphs, that had elevated this outlander to the ranks of seers and demigods.

Naung said never a word of this aloud, not even to Wan, his Second Rifle, who was over forty and remembered well the Sawbwa's arrival, half dead, half blind, raving on the road. Now and then Naung caught a dubious frown flitting across Wan's face as the Sawbwa pronounced. “Perhaps … These were modern times. And Naung was a traveled man, who had seen steamships and French ticklers. His sergent-chef, his sergent-instructeur, had not functioned by rolling on opaque eye and muttering in whispers; nor had the Japanese.

Gazing thoughtfully upon his Sawbwa, Naung wondered which was working within himself, ambition or reason.

Both. He would like to be sawbwa, but principally because he believed the position required intelligence and forcefulness rather than trances, mystical communications, murmured vaporings. The life of a village lay in the hands of its sawbwa; Naung's hands were not palsied.

Now, however, he had a day's work to do.

Lola's hair shone sometimes like polished teak. Loi-mae plied the Chinese brush, an elegant brush of hog's bristles and rosewood, purchased by a barter for a lump of amber the size of a hen's egg. “No, Weng-aw should not touch you there,” she said.

Lola giggled.

“You have so much time,” Loi-mae said gently. “A year, perhaps two, before your moon cycles begin.” In the still morning the house was pleasantly redolent of pork and peppers.

“Cha says it is like hearing birdsong, with a man inside you.”

“And sometimes it is like being bruised in some crazy game. Besides, Cha has room for a man. Cha has been a woman for four years. And now she will marry Ko-yang. You must try, when your time comes, to marry an unmarried man, as Cha is doing. It is always best to be first wife.”

“Weng-aw is not married.”

“He is not a man either. Lovely hair! The braids will shine.”

“I remember my father's hair. Was it like hearing birdsong when he was within you?”

“Oh yes. His hair was sometimes the color of the plantain and sometimes the color of cutch. In one light this, in another light that.”

“And I remember his skin. Ow! A knot!”

“Stand still. His skin was like anybody's where the sun had touched it, but in other places it was like milk. There! Turn now and let me see, little dancer.”

The child-woman stood almost naked, and Loi-mae smiled. Truly, the hair could not be described. The color of a gyi fawn, or the glistening tawny underfeather of a falcon's wing. And the face so lovely and fresh, the brows darker than the hair but lighter than Loi-mae's. And the breasts, young fruit, barely rounded, barely budded yet surely promising.

“Turn again. Now the plaits.”

“I think it is funny that we make love as the pigs do.”

Loi-mae sighed. “I wish you would think of anything else. It is not only pigs, but all creatures with warm blood. All creatures that nurse the young.”

Lola said positively, “Chickens do not nurse the young. Yet Weng-aw is like a young rooster.”

“Then Weng-aw has not much to boast of,” Loi-mae said loftily, and Lola's laughter pealed.

“My funny mother,” Lola gasped. “My beautiful mother.”

“Your father was like you, always joking,” Loi-mae said. “And I am not beautiful.” In the lazy midmorning warmth a mynah scolded. “I am too tall, like a man.” But braiding her daughter's silky hair she knew her own modesty false. She could, and often did, still recall Green Wood's words, “In all the world, none like you,” and even if his talk was what the Shan called honeyed grains of rice, it had been soul-stirring. She, Loi-mae, a beauty! “You can rouge your forehead afterward,” she said. “First we cook.”

“Chicken and rice?”

“And leeks.” But the memory of Green Wood persisted; she saw Green Wood on a pony, turbanned, bearded, rifle slung, teeth flashing, laugh booming. How he had changed, her skinny teacher! With her he had grown almost stout, and then overnight he had become a warrior. And she had stood clutching her daughter and watched him ride up over West Slope to the Burma-side trail, and her eyes had flooded, and everyone looked politely away as she stood weeping, and when her sobs began, Chung took the child and they walked together to the house.

Well, that was years ago. Never mind Green Wood. She would not see him again, or with luck any outsider, and Naung was a man among men.

“I was just thinking of my father,” Lola said. “Will I travel one day?”

“I have spent all my life in Pawlu,” Loi-mae said firmly, “and I do not know why you should want to travel. All we hear of the world is trouble. What is there to see? Pagodas as tall as an oak. Carts that roll without oxen. I knew your father for five years and what did I learn?” But a wave of heat lapped through her even as she denied it. “To boil eggs, which is already silly, and to boil them just so, with the white hard and the yolk soft, so that the egg can be neither drunk nor munched but must be eaten with a spoon.” And I learned to couple like a she-leopard and to make the two snakes, and I learned that I could complain to a man when the cramps came and he would be kind to me, and not even Naung will do that, but only wrinkles his nose and mutters about women. “And to beat a raw egg into a cup of hot milk and add honey. The whole village laughed. He loved it, and let them laugh. He said it deepened his sleep. Mong taught him to tap poppies and told him the yen would help him sleep, but Green Wood preferred cheroots. I remember he was sick the first time he smoked yen.”

“He was a nice man, and so tall,” Lola said. “Is my hair finished? Will it hold while I dance?”

“He was a strange man,” Loi-mae said. “Yes, all right, dress now. He was the gentlest man I knew, his hands were like little birds, and he seemed to love everybody, but as it turned out, he also loved to kill Japanese. There was a warrior inside the scholar, and the war woke him, and I wonder if he ever went back to sleep.”

“I like my hat,” Lola said, “but I will not wear it now for Naung's sake.”

“Good girl. Green Wood loved to see you wearing it. Down over your eyes and ears. Some Japanese office, you were!”

“It was his nicest gift.”

“He killed the man himself; it was indeed a gift. Well, now the chicken. “Loi-mae took a straight stick and stepped out into the yard. She spotted the plump red hen, made a dash and nabbed it. She held it upside down by its flanks, its head trailing in the dirt, and she laid the stick across its neck as its bright red eye blinked, and she stepped on the stick first with one foot and then with the other, to either side of the hen, and she tugged upward and the hen fluttered and muted and died.

Naung's patrol was a five-kilometer hike, and he often thought of himself as the sergent-chef. He covered his perimeter quickly enough this morning, picking up the relief and changing the guard without incident. Mong was tired and complained of age; he would enjoy the wedding feast so much less after this dull night of starting at the scurry of toktays and other small lizards. “You liar,” Naung said. “You missed your Chung, that's all.”

Mong admitted this merrily, and veered off the main trail toward his own hut cackling about the detrimental effects of abstinence on a man's health. Naung clambered up the slope south of East Poppy Field and glassed a few of his roadside bandit cages, proceeding then to a slower and more meticulous examination of the upper slopes far across the hazy morning, the playgrounds of the Wild Wa. He saw only a distant tendril of smoke. It was as if the Wild Wa did not exist. If only that were so! Far to the east he noticed the faintest wisp of cloud.

He rose, took a last glance about him, and headed home at a shuffling trot. He considered Lola as he pattered along, Lola who was growing up. There was now a certain slight roundness to her breasts. She was not his daughter and—it struck him like lightning—Shan law did not forbid her to him. For one quick, sharp instant the notion thrilled him. It then sickened him, and he winced and groaned aloud.

The women's side was like a field of summer flowers, and the tinkling voices and laughter were like silver bells. Loi-mae was most notable in red silk trousers and tunic, her coolie hat trimmed in silver from the mines of Bawdwin and amber from the Kachin diggings. Lola was in a bright blue longyi, and her hat was a bamboo cone adorned by a single silver clasp. Later, when she was a woman, she would show off jewelry. Silver and amber were earned by work or won in combat, and not to be lightly sported.

Pigs and sheep were spitted, and a saing calf; the aroma was intoxicating, and Chung made rumbling complaint, smacking her lips and sniffing windily at the pungent air. She was enormous in golden-yellow trousers and tunic, the collar and sleeves trimmed with blue and green beads; her hat was the ceremonial half-man's half-woman's, a narrow yellow turbanlike circle about a bamboo cone, and the tip of the cone was silver to the width of four fingers.

All about the roasting grounds stood lidded bowls an arm's length across, brimming with abundances of chicken, rice, dried red dates, prunes and bamboo shoots; or potatoes; or mixed fruits and nuts for nibbling before the feast, peanuts, preserved pumpkin strips, dried peach flesh, breadfruit and sugarcane, figs and orange rind and mounds of pumpkin seeds. Each house had supplied its own creation, including chickens variously prepared; the larger animals were culled from the common flocks, though the saing was owed to Wan's skill: with only one of his precious cartridges he had felled the beast clean.

The spits were tended and the bowls passed by the bride's family and, Cha's family being small as village families went, such of their friends who desired merit before the Lord. These were never lacking. There were many also who served not to acquire merit but to atone for past sins, which also were never lacking.

Cha sat modestly among the women, eyes downcast, awaiting her moment. She wore light blue silk spangled with silver disks: part of her dowry, and uncomfortably heavy. When she raised a fig to her lips, her arm strained visibly against the weight of her cuff, and the sleeve dragged. The abundance of silver was ostentatious, but a bride was forgiven. Envious and delighted, Lola neglected her munching for minutes at a time. “Manglon,” Chung was saying, “for pears there is only Manglon, as I have heard; but Manglon is a long way, somewhere near India, I believe.”

Dwe said with assurance, “For crab apples there is only Hsipaw.”

Cha's mother and sister were assembling the bride's gifts. She would bestow not only her silver but also a soapstone Buddha, a full jute sack of ginseng root, a tusk of ivory and lesser offerings like a bale of thanat, the wrapper used for green cheroots.

An emaciated older woman, Kyau, was insisting that rainbows gave off poisonous vapors. She spat a stream of betel.

Some hundred paces north of the women, at the foot of West Slope, the Sawbwa sat beneath his white canopy, smiling and nodding. Beside him sat Ko-yang, and from time to time the Sawbwa bent to whisper. This was customary. He was imparting wisdom.

Loi-mae teased Chung: “But in Yunnan you would be a queen. In some parts of Yunnan the women warm silkworn cocoons between the breasts to hasten the hatching. You would be a rich lady!”

Lola crossed her arms on her breast and pressed gently. I will be married in summer, she decided, and serve fresh fruits, the little oranges and bananas, and fresh tomatoes too.

And a hundred paces north of the Sawbwa the men squatted on the dry grass, or sprawled or lay flat, surrounded by a ring of attentive boys and exchanging views on economics and politics. “We should have run some sheep up from Kokang a long time ago,” one said. “Not only is the wool finer, but the meat is thicker and tastier.”

“It would depend on the feed,” said another.

“Cotton and cattle,” said another. “Never mind wool. In cotton and cattle is every man's need.”

“They need lusher grass.”

“Where sheep graze no grass remains.”

“We should reactivate the salt works.”

“Who wants to go down in holes?”

“Over by Mongmao there are no holes. They dig a horizontal shaft in the correct spot, and the rains run the salt right down to their pans. How much do we need for one village?”

“At least the English are gone, with their bagged salt.”

That led to talk of war and to the by now obligatory request that Naung recount his adventures. They were never the same twice. “My first day off in weeks,” he complained. “Let me get drunk.” But these formal protestations were customary, and soon he was launched on the prelude to his Long-Haul-with-Koko. “Has everyone a cheroot?” he asked. Ko-yang was a close-fisted young man, but today the cheroots were his gift. “Ko-yang had his sisters rolling these for weeks.”