“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.”
“They are very good as cheroots go,” Mong said. “He knows cheroots if nothing else. You take a slug’s own time starting a story.”
“You have all heard it before.”
“As who has not? All about what Naung was doing while the rest of us were fighting a war. Still, go on. Even the dullest ritual gives shape to life.”
“I will give shape to your backside,” Naung said, drawing a good laugh. “Now then: when I was a boy I believed that there was much to see and much to learn. Only later did I learn that there is nothing to learn except that there is nothing to learn.”
The syllables rolled out in a chant.
“Wisdom unfolds,” Naung intoned, “and does not penetrate. Wisdom blossoms from the heart, and does not enter by eye and ear.”
“It is so,” Mong said, and Wan at the same moment.
Naung blew smoke, smacked his lips and meditated. “Well, I ran off. You boys, you listen. Unstop your ears, now. I left Pawlu and I ran off with a trading caravan, and I worked like a Tibetan slave for weeks and was hot for the fat women who lay in the wagons. Then in Muong Sing I took my pay, a silver piece with foreign script, and I bought sandals and a new shirt and fucked away the rest, and woke with a headache, so I went to the caravan master and asked to make the return journey also. They thought I was a comical fellow, a real country boy, so they were glad to take me on, but it proved an easterly journey as much as a northerly, and do you know how many days?”
There followed a traditional and appropriate silence.
“Eighty days!”
This was the first intermission. A journey of eighty days was not an experience easily grasped by the mind, even at the fourth or fifth hearing. In two days, for example, one could travel to Nan-san. But forty times that distance? One would traverse whole countries, one would acquire new languages, one would gaze upon oceans.
Some moments of smoking, yawning and sniffing the savory drift of meat smoke seemed only fitting.
“We marched through mountain passes, and valleys of paddy. We crossed the great Mekong.”
Here too a pause was seemly. The Mekong!
“And finally we came to a real city. This I do not ask you to believe, though I swear to it. At night it was all bright lights without fire, like the self-lighting torches we have from the war, but much larger and down both sides of each avenue. Some of you know Lashio, and you have all heard of Lashio—well, I tell you, Lao Cai is five Lashios and maybe ten. It is owned by the French. I went into one building twenty times the size of a house and it cost me a good copper to go in, and on one wall was a whole shadow play, with voice but without people. No real people at all. In this shadow play women danced in steel shoes, clickety-click, and all the men carried cheroot lighters, not the Zippos we all know from the war, but made of silver. For dancing the men wore uniforms, black jackets and white shirts and tiny little black neckcloths right here, so—enough to choke a man. I recall a fair amount of kissing on the mouth.”
The men laughed but Naung had grown pensive. “Lao Cai is not far downriver from the mines of Kochiu.”
Their silence this time was troubled. The very name, Kochiu, evoked miasmas, green fogs, toiling masses of doomed, lethargic slaves.
Naung shook himself and said, “Eh, eh! Never mind Kochiu. We went south from Lao Cai, and at Bao Ha we crossed the Yuan, or the Hong they call it here, the Red River, and finally we came to Hanoi. Now I am not going to try to tell you about Hanoi. Disbelief is disrespect and I would be obliged to resent it. I will only say that Hanoi belongs to the Big Noses, and contains as many houses as Pawlu has poppies, and would extend from here to the Wild Wa ridge, and is full of spirit carts and fire carts and is lighted up all night and noisy at all times. And as many people as there are, so many are the Birds-of-One-Hundred-Intelligences, which the French call the moineau. Immediately I set about learning French.”
Mong groaned. “O this world traveler! Now we must hear the French again!”
“Sacré putain de Mong!” Naung said cheerfully. “Ane bâti et triple buse! These were terms of endearment, like stupid bullock or cut tomcat, that the sergent-chef used for us poor natives. He was a great fat man but strong, with a paunch like a buffalo in calf, eyes the color of honey and curly black hair like those sheepskins the Tibetans bring down. As you see, I joined the army. Moi aller danzarmee. These French drink much wine, red wine, from grapes, and they were at war with the Germans. Also a people called the Yi-tah-li, but I never learned much about those. They ate noodles. The French used to curse them calling them eaters of noodles and species of cunt.”
“It could have been the other way,” Kin-tan murmured, and the prolonged guffaw caused the women to look across and shake their heads in affectionate mockery.
“Naturally, I made a good soldier,” Naung went on. “You know my hand and eye work well together. This was of value in using and maintaining weapons. Often my caporal and sergent said good things about the care and delicacy of my work. That mitraillette, for example, is a complicated weapon.”
But he did not tell them of his year swamping out latrines.<
br />
“So in no time I learned not only to march but to roll a pack, fire a weapon, salute, shave my face and perform complex manipulations. Garde à vous! Portez armes! Croisez la baïonnette!”
But he did not tell them that if some of his caporaux were Annamites, all of his sergents were blancs.
“And the politics! First I thought I was joining the French to fight beside the British against the Japanese. Then about a year later the French general went away and another came, and with him the Japanese—soldiers, trucks, ships down at Haiphong—and the Japanese were giving orders to the French, and raiding north into China. Then the Japanese were running all the chemins de fer. These are the fire carts that roll on grooved wheels over long steel tracks. I tell you the truth, and Wan has seen such down Lashio way.”
Wan stretched his tattoos grinning. He was wearing blue cotton trousers and a white blouse, once Kachin. That he wore it on a day of rejoicing and ceremony indicated that he had taken it in combat everyone understood. His coolie hat was an arm’s length across and the central cone of silver was a man’s hand high.
“And do you know what finally happened? The Japanese killed the French!” Naung exploded, as if some beloved Paris had been annexed by Tokyo. But he did not say that at the time he had been sweeping, window washing and scrubbing modern toilets in a Japanese officers’ brothel. “That was some war! Now listen,” and he chanted his litany, “the English killed Japanese and Burmese, as did the Americans; as did the Chinese when they were not killing each other by mistake; also Burmese killed Burmese, Japanese, English and Americans; and the French killed a few Indochinese but not Japanese or Germans. I never once in my life saw a German. The Japanese killed as many as possible of every kind, English, Americans, Burmese, Chinese and, finally, French. Officers in my army! They killed many officers of rank and imprisoned many others. By now”—his voice fell to a modest level—“I was of some importance myself, and I saw that it was necessary to make my own plans.”
The Blue-Eyed Shan Page 15
