The Blue-Eyed Shan

by Becker, Stephen;

  “Silver from the mines at Bawdwin,” Aung said. “And look there, plenty fruit, bananas. Also blinded paddy birds in bamboo cages. And there by the table—a Jew-man.”

  “A Jew? In Hsenwi?”

  “Plenty Jew-man Rangoon side.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “India.”

  Greenwood was gazing at a swarthy, lugubrious merchant with a small hawkish nose and eyes at once cheerful, alert and ironic. He wore a blue longyi with a black aingyi—a single-breasted jacket—and a black skullcap. Before him, on a broad table covered with white cotton, lay row upon row, heap beside heap, of pliers, small wrenches, machine screws and wood screws, hammers and nails, nuts and bolts, braces and bits; all this Greenwood took in as they crept by, and he thought he recognized a stack of the little paperboard rectangles on which thumbtacks are sold by the hundred.

  They chugged on. Greenwood pointed: a corral, donkeys and ponies. Aung pulled up. The horse-master was a Shan, so Aung kept silence and turned expectantly to Greenwood, who said, “Greetings and blessings.”

  “Blessings and greetings.” The Shan was sturdy with a scraggly mustache and pointed beard, and unruly sideburns.

  “A fine season,” Greenwood said. “Has there been rain in the hills?” Villagers drifted toward them.

  “Little, little.” The Shan seemed to realize abruptly that he was speaking his own tongue with a true foreigner; he made rabbit teeth and stared hard at Greenwood’s eyes, side arm, khakis. “This is not the stranger’s first arrival here.”

  “That is true,” Greenwood said amiably. He wondered how far coincidence could stretch, and almost asked this man for news of the village of Pawlu in the valley of the Little River Mon, but decided not to declare himself without need. “I come from Lashio, and not for the first time.”

  “Perhaps the stranger fought the Japanese.”

  Greenwood answered immediately, “Yes.” Not all Burmese, not all Shan, had fought the Japanese. Their earlier quarrel was with their English masters, and the Japanese, men of Asia, had come to expel the English. Nevertheless, truth was respected here, and Greenwood did not hesitate.

  “As did my village,” said the horse-master, and Greenwood breathed easier. A child shouted “See the yellow man!” and the townspeople laughed.

  “What village was that?”

  “Kawsu, not far from Kengtung.”

  “Then you are a long way from home.”

  “One travels; one trades.”

  “We have nothing to trade,” Greenwood said, and he raised his voice to sow rumor, “but my friend must return to Lashio with this vehicle, and anyone who brings him a paying passenger will share the proceeds.”

  The crowd murmured: “Good.” “Aha.” “Reasonably said.”

  Aung spoke now, and his Shan was not good. “Best wait here by horse, or go zayat? Travel man come what place?”

  “Few travelers here,” said the sturdy Shan. “Better to try the zayat.”

  “Good sense,” Greenwood thanked him. “Blessings and greetings, Horse-master.”

  “Greetings and blessings, traveler.”

  Aung kicked the motor into life. Cautiously they wove among the pye-dogs, children, gossips and flirtatious women, with Greenwood waving little salutes. “I forgot to ask, where is the zayat,” Aung said.

  “Close by the temple.”

  And the temple was close by the market, and Aung and Greenwood simply sat for a time, allowing curiosity seekers to gather. Greenwood was properly courteous to the aged and properly reserved with the tittering women, and he made a joke or two with the children, who were always more forthright. He also advertised Aung’s return journey, and in half an hour Aung had made preliminary contact with one obvious opium runner and one rotund, chirping peanut wholesaler, and after five minutes apiece of enthusiastic haggling they settled in among the jerricans, immediately lighting white cheroots.

  Greenwood paid Aung liberally, fifty rupees, and they shook hands in the Western fashion. There was a pause, as between two men who in other times might have become friends. Greenwood wished him a safe journey.

  “And you too,” Aung said. “Thank you for not speaking wog English.”

  The zayat was a large one, of bamboo and timber, one room about thirty feet by thirty with a thatched roof, a cooking fire on a small hearth against the north wall, and an ancient monk in a saffron robe knotted over one shoulder. The monk was bald, serene, imperturbable. The sudden appearance of a huge fair-haired man bearing arms was only another of nature’s accidents, another of the negligible obstacles on the road to Nirvana. Greenwood greeted him politely, and hoped that his weapons would not profane the house.

  “A zayat can be profaned by bloodshed or concupiscence,” said the monk, “not by things.” He sat before a small prayer wheel with a bowl of cutch beside him, dipped a bristle brush into the yellow dye and proceeded to paint the wheel in slow strokes, humming on one note as he worked. Greenwood set his pack and weapon against the wall and sat cross-legged watching. After a time he asked, “Is there food? Drink?”

  The monk said, “Bah! Only sleep.”

  After a time Greenwood asked, “Is there a tavern?”

  “There is a wineshop,” the monk conceded.

  After a time Greenwood asked, “And where is this wineshop?”

  “It is a few houses east.” After a time the monk asked, “You are English?”

  “American.”

  The monk shrugged at this pagan. “A kind of English.”

  After a time Greenwood asked, “Do you never eat?”

  “As the gods provide.”

  Greenwood hoisted his traps and walked on to the wineshop.

  All sound ceased as he entered. Calmly he nodded to the company, and conversation swelled again, murmuring along beneath the clack of tiles. This was a tavern of quality, with tables, benches and mahjongg. Greenwood sat by the wall. He ordered rice, fish and bananas, also rice wine of the lesser fermentation, more like rice beer. The room was gray with cheroot smoke, but the smell was soft, comfortable, like the taste of his food, the fish aromatic, the bananas sweet, even the red pepper not aggressive.

  He bought beedies from the stout waiter and said, “I will take a hand at mah-jongg if needed.”

  “They play for money,” the waiter said, “and consequently with skill.”

  “Nevertheless. The traveler alone must pay for his diversions.”

  “Of all sorts. A woman later?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “No woman?”

  “A vow.”

  “Then mah-jongg it is. More wine?”

  “Yes. A cruet.”

  The waiter bowed, and Greenwood read his mind: here is a foreigner who is also a fool, who drinks and plays at one time.

  Greenwood had drunk up half the cruet, and dusk had arrived, and lamps had been lit, before the invitation came. Men entered and left the tavern, some in longyi, some in robes, some in cotton trousers with the short mountain jacket. The same mix, Kachin and Shan and Chinese and the true Burman face from the lowlands far to the west. They smoked the white cheroots and the brown, and also beedies, and they bore arms, and they drank rice beer and tea.

  “At the center table across the room there is a place,” said the waiter.

  A Shan, a Burman and a Chinese. Through the haze Greenwood recognized the horse-master.

  He paid his tally, and tipped well, and set down yet more rupees. “When I leave I will take ten cakes of rice-in-leaves and five bananas.”

  The waiter approved. Here was prudence.

  Greenwood saw knives, a kris, a kukri, few firearms; he felt conspicuous slinging his Thompson, lugging his pack. But other than monks and clerks there was not an unarmed man for hundreds of miles around; he sighed for peace. At the table he said again, “Greetings and blessings,” and was bade welcome. “It is my superstition,” he said, “to sit by the wall.”

  The three players consulted wordlessly; the Burman rose
and bowed toward the seat, hands open.

  “You are kind to a stranger.”

  “You are not a stranger,” said Horse-master, “and it is no superstition. I like to keep an eye on the company myself. And the doors.”

  Greenwood said, “Help me finish this wine,” and waited to hear their excuses; mah-jongg is played by four, but each for himself.

  “A vow,” said the Burman.

  “A vow,” aid the Chinese.

  “I’ll have a mouthful,” said Horse-master.

  The Burman wore a dark gray aingyi. Four white cheroots peeked from a pocket. He played with care, placing tiles precisely and quietly, grounding a flower or a season without obvious annoyance, exposing a ch’ao or a p’eng without obvious satisfaction. The Chinese played quickly and muttered. Horse-master played with a certain dash, an almost contemptuous flick of the tile, a nonchalance, an indifference to fate.

  Greenwood played as a foreigner should; that is, like a beginner; that is, with care and deliberation though not so slowly as to be impolite. Losing required no great effort. These three were old hands.

  Horse-master said, “Wu,” and won big, with four k’ang and a pair of red dragons; he was East Wind and collected double. Greenwood snarled at the loss, and Horse-master flashed a winner’s grin. They shuffled the tiles. Horse-master asked, “Just passing through?”

  “Yes,” Greenwood grumbled. “It would obviously be too expensive to stay.”

  Horse-master laughed.

  No one was cheating, though there might be a chipped or stained tile now and then that the others would recognize. Greenwood took his time. Games were played to appropriate rhythms and were not to be forced. The room itself was a haven, warm with the buzz of men at truce; anarchists, bandits, tribesmen, they were fighting the government in Rangoon and not the townsfolk of Hsenwi. Only to be left alone! That was all they asked. In their hills and villages, in their fields of poppy and tobacco. Even the Wild Wa wanted only serenity; it was unfortunate that their peace of mind depended on other men’s heads.

  In an hour he lost forty rupees.

  Halfway through the second hour he won a limit hand, and he had his omen: he made Four Small Blessings hidden, and on the next tile the Chinese would have made Three Scholars.

  The Chinese cursed; he was East Wind, and paid double.

  Horse-master contemplated Greenwood. They saw each other more clearly. “On your way to where?”

  “Kunlong,” Greenwood said.

  “Surely not to play mah-jongg.”

  “Surely not.”

  Horse-master smiled faintly, to show Greenwood that he liked a close-mouthed man. “Nor to piss into the Salween.”

  “No.”

  The smile persisted. A game within a game! The tiles were stacked. “Well then, you are with British intelligence,” Horse-master said.

  “I am not British.”

  “Some other tribe, then. But surely a spy. You will sit on a mountain above the Salween and spy on the Red Chinese with military glasses.”

  “Hiking out in six months to report on the number of donkeys, pye-dogs and silkworms. Forgive me, Horse-master, but if you were sending a spy among the Chinese—”

  “True, true, by the gods! He would not have yellow hair and blue eyes! Who is East Wind here? Too much chitchat and not enough money-making.”

  Play continued. The Burman lit a cheroot, the Chinese accepted a beedy, Horse-master agreed to split another cruet of rice wine. They were old friends by now, the tiles warmed by four hands, no one winning or losing uncomfortably. The Burman was from Shwebo, a tobacco merchant, up for the harvest. Greenwood understood: tobacco was cut and cured in late summer, but opium was harvested in December and January. The Chinese was a buyer of tea. Of course. Horse-master grinned. “And what do you buy?”

  “I sell.”

  The pause was gratifying but short. “A good sharp answer,” said Horse-master. “So then. May one ask what you sell?”

  “One may.”

  “By the gods, this is a talker! So then. What do you sell?”

  “Peace of mind.”

  “Ah,” said Horse-master, “a priest.”

  Greenwood called for a discarded 5-bamboo, and tuned up four overlapping ch’ao in bamboo with a pair of white dragons.

  “That’s pretty,” the Chinese said.

  “Like music,” the Burman said.

  “You carry plenty of luck,” Horse-master said.

  “I hope I don’t use it all here.”

  “And how do you provide peace of mind?”

  “I’m a prince’s bowman.” It was the old Shan phrase, and the Burmese image, for riding shotgun.

  “Finally we have it! Thus your tools, there.”

  “Thus my tools,” Greenwood said. “The men of the hills come down with their harvest. The men of Kunlong bring it here. They return with silver. I am a lonely traveler and will work for the companionship.”

  “Honorable labor and the terms clearly stated,” said the Chinese. “Stack tiles, now.”

  “You will not be long unemployed,” Horse-master said. “Ox trains go up every few days at this season.”

  “I want to leave tomorrow,” Greenwood said.

  “Come to my horse yard at sunrise,” Horse-master said, and they drank to it. Greenwood was careful not to win another game, and when they parted for the night he had lost just enough to pay for future favors.

  His ten cakes of rice-in-leaves and his five bananas were waiting in a flimsy reed basket. He bore them to the monk, who said, “What are you atoning for?”

  The oxen were small and humped, the common Burmese beasts of burden. “These are honest Kachin and a couple of town Shan,” Horse-master said. “The Kachin have sold some good jade and are heavy with silver.” He hesitated, and his smile went lopsided. In harder tones he said, “If you walk crooked ways, it will be laid to me; and I will have every Shan in these hills after your head.”

  “If I walked crooked ways,” Greenwood said, “the Small Blessings would not have come to me,” and he opened his shirt.

  “Bugger!” said Horse-master. “A Shan like me!” He tugged at his horse-jacket and revealed the edges of his own tattoos. “You had a Shan’s luck last night. May it be upon you always.”

  “Thank you, elder brother.”

  “This is not to be believed,” Horse-master said. “Wars make prodigies.”

  “They also make good men bad, and bad men good,” Greenwood said.

  “And which are you?”

  “I cannot say. Perhaps my war is not over.”

  “Then you will need your Shan’s luck.”

  “For sure I will,” Greenwood said. “So I will not start by leaving you with half a lie. It is true that I was and am a prince’s bowman, and sell peace of mind. But it is also true that I buy.”

  “And what do you buy?”

  “Wisdom.”

  “Now, that is costly.”

  “I buy it bit by bit.”

  “Shrewdly said.” But Horse-master was puzzled.

  “I seek wisdom everywhere and at all times,” Greenwood said, “and am a teacher.”

  Caution settled over Horse-master’s features. “Then Your Reverence is after all a priest?”

  “By the gods, no! Only a schoolmaster.” Greenwood clapped him on the shoulder; to touch another Shan was to promise him truth. “At a great university where men and women have sought wisdom for three hundred years and more.”

  “Well, I am only a bad Buddhist,” Horse-master said, “but it seems to me that wisdom is, Do no harm.”

  “Or as the followers of Confucius say, ‘Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.’ Yet you took my money with pleasure last night, you great thief.”

  Horse-master twinkled, and his answer was ready. “I told you: a bad Buddhist.”

  “Next time,” said Greenwood, “I will strive to improve you.”

  The wagon train was on the road by midmorning, twelve oxen bearin
g little cargo: bolts of cotton cloth, bags of ax heads, a sack of knives like machetes, eight kegs of nails purchased perhaps from the itinerant Jew, and two cumbersome iron plowshares. The company was four Kachin, three carrying American M-1 rifles and one a carbine, all festooned with bandoliers; and two town Shan, one with a Lee-Enfield and one with a Springfield. East is East, Greenwood decided, and West is West, and they sure as hell have met. In the aftermath of war Burma was a thirty-caliber society. His companions carried sheath knives as well, and three of them canteens. The Shan were properly turbanned, but the Kachin were turned out like veterans, with a khaki shirt here and a cartridge belt there. They were fine fighters and their women at home were handsome, with much silver ornamentation and bright-hued cotton trousers beneath their skirts; but Greenwood was a Shan for better or for worse.

  The journey took two days and they never trusted him a moment. They muttered “tommy,” and he was not sure if it was an echo of the old British army or a dark reference to his submachine gun. They spent the night at a country inn, a hovel, one long room with a trestle framework a couple of feet off the earthen floor and a row of rotting straw mattresses an inch thick. There would be rats, and a variety of insects in the bedding. A Kachin would surely stand sentry. They ate cold rice, cooked that morning, and bananas again, and drank from their canteens.

  Greenwood was a happy man, next day even happier: they arrived at Kunlong and he saw the Salween again. He was at six thousand feet, the air cool and clear, the mountains vivid, the forest etched. He saw the great union of the Salween and the Little White Yi, as they called it here, white water rushing, and he harked to the distant thunder of it and blessed General Yang; General Yang and his miracle, the bones of Peking Man; and even if it was not a miracle but a tragicomic mistake, God bless General Yang! The Salween again!

  He strolled back to town and nosed about, and yes, there was one here who would guide him as far as Pawlu, a Wa but a Tame Wa. Greenwood only said, “If you’re sure he’s tame,” at which the town Shan laughed. The Tame Wa’s name was Jum-aw and he was about seventeen, perhaps a hundred and five pounds, but he had a merry eye and he knew the hills. Yes, he had traveled as far as Meng-ting, also Yuan-ting, and he had seen a flying fox, and was good at snaring hares. He had also seen the pyaung, which was a kind of bison, though he had never killed one; and he had brought down many gyi with his father’s rifle.