Golden Earth

by Norman Lewis

  Enquiring in the market place, I found that there were no lorries going to Nam Hkam that day. This did not surprise me. I had learned no longer to expect a dovetailing in such travelling connections. Mu-Sé was said to possess a circuit house, but supposing it to be in some exposed position, outside the town, I decided that I might as well stay in one of the Chinese places in the square. Returning to the shop where we had had tea, I managed with some difficulty – since the Chinese are not a gesticulatory people – to make the waiter understand what I wanted, and was led into a dim, lattice-screened interior, where, upon a board raised a few inches from the earth, I put down my bedding. Mu-Sé was a hot town, and outside an ardent breeze had sprung up, carrying processions of whirling dust-genii through the streets.

  I decided to take a siesta, and had just settled down when a form darkened the doorway, which in this room was the only source of light and air. In obedience to a silent beckoning, I got up and went out. My visitor – who had shrunk somewhat in the light – proved to be an elderly Kachin police officer, with a flat, sensitive face. He was dressed in khaki-drill shorts, a grey woollen pullover, and a forage cap, worn, after the fashion of all Asiatics, on the top of his head. His manner was apologetic and discouraged, as with a slightly sad smile he led me to a jeep and motioned me to get in. The Indian who had so recently been flying a kite outside the Shwebo Motor Store, and who was a mildly interested onlooker, now moved towards me and said, ‘He is taking you to the police station, sir.’ Owing to the complete absence of everything that might have been described as autocratic in the police officer’s attitude, I could not decide whether I was under arrest or not. I got into the jeep and we drove away, turning off the main square into a side street, which emptied its dust and ruts after a hundred yards into what looked like a neglected playing field. At the end of this was a long low bamboo construction, raised on piles. This I judged to be the police barracks, as uniformed Kachins were lounging about, or sitting on the steps leading up to the several entrances of the long house. The distant prospect was splendid. Behind the barracks the ground rose gently, scored with paths like intersecting lines drawn idly with a compass. Gradually the groves of trees, the bamboo thickets closed in, till summits of the low hills were covered with frothing vegetation. Somewhere beyond came the dividing line, the true frontier, where the forests of Burma shrivelled and expired on the slopes of the mountains of Yunnan. With this rampart of pyramids the horizon was closed; golden and glowing slag-heaps, other-worldly in the purity of their utter desolation.

  Policemen took my luggage out of the jeep, and carried it up to the lieutenant’s room. My bedding roll was laid out on the bamboo floor next to the lieutenant’s. Between them was a soap-box, on which the lieutenant’s washing-kit was exposed in military style. A tommy-gun leaned against the box. A tinted photograph on the wall showed my host, or gaoler, dressed as a Buddhist novice. While I was examining it I felt a light tap on the arm and turned to find myself now also provided with a soap-box, on which stood a bowl of hot water, a neatly folded towel and a tablet of some much-advertised brand of soap. The lieutenant smiled as if at the memory of secret pain, and went out. I washed, got out a camera, and followed him, noticing as soon as I had reached the bottom of the steps, that a policeman had appeared behind me, carrying a chair. When I stopped, he stopped, and put the chair down. As soon as I moved on, he picked the chair up and followed me. It seemed to me that I had better fall in with the inference and sit down. I did so, and in a few minutes the lieutenant came up and squatted beside me. He put a tumbler in my hand. It was a brand new one, just unpacked, and was lightly coated with straw dust. The manufacturer’s label was in position, bright and unsoiled. Raising his pullover, the lieutenant groped underneath, found the breast-pocket of his shirt and brought out a pinch of dried herbs, which he dropped into the tumbler. A waiting policeman now approached with a kettle, and filled up the tumbler with hot water. At the bottom, the herbs stirred with sudden impulse, and blossoms uncurled like moths newly released from their chrysalises. Petals unfolded and straightened, stamens thrust forth, until the bottom of the glass was gay with daisies. While the lieutenant looked on eagerly I sipped, for the first time in my life, an infusion of camomile.

  I was still unable to make up my mind whether this was protective custody, or no more than strangely spontaneous hospitality on the police’s part. After a few moments, therefore, I decided to define the position if possible. Gesturing vaguely in the direction of a neighbouring belt of trees, and incidentally, of China, and at the same time smiling inoffensively, I tried to convey the idea that I proposed to go for a walk. This produced no obvious symptoms of disapproval, so I got up, smiled again and strolled away in a casual manner. Having taken an aimless and wavering course for a couple of hundred yards, I bent down to pick something up, at the same time glancing behind. The lieutenant was no longer to be seen, and as no one was following me, I quickened my pace. On the edge of the level, open space was a cemetery with perhaps a couple of hundred mounds. The recent ones were covered with elaborate miniature palaces made of white paper, stretched over a framework of cane. A few of these were intact, minor works of art; and there were others in all stages of disintegration until, on the old mounds, only a few sticks lay strewn about. Beyond the graveyard, the houses were reached again. A street of bamboo-shacks led almost to the edge of a chasm. Standing on the edge of this I found myself looking across a valley. From where I stood, steep banks dropped away to the bed of a wide river, riven by numerous islands and sandbanks. This was the Shweli River, and the opposite bank was China. Peasants with their buffaloes were cultivating strips of land left by the recession of the waters, both in Burma and in China and on the islands that lay between and came under who knows what jurisdiction. From across the river came the sound of cocks crowing, and most strangely, what sounded like the ringing of church bells.

  That evening a lorry went to Nam Hkam, but, for the first time, I learned that even in the Orient a vehicle can be crammed to a degree when not a single passenger more can be taken. Bales had been piled high into the air, so that, in order to reach their perches, the passengers had to scale sheer precipices of merchandise. And either the weight had been unevenly distributed or a spring had given way, because the load tilted most dangerously. Here it was that I began to long once more for a smattering of Chinese, that valuable lingua-franca of all who travel or have affairs in the backwoods of the Far East. It was laborious and a little ridiculous having to keep up this patrol round Mu-Sé bleating hopefully, ‘Car (now a Burmese word) Nam Hkam?’ Finally an Indian appeared with a polite ‘What is your destination, sir?’ And from him I learned that there was no hope of getting to Nam Hkam until the next day.

  There was a permanent market place in Mu-Sé where a nucleus of traders sold such essentials as liver-salts and Vaseline, and a tooth-drawer publicly removed teeth with astonishing speed and address. The market was served by a Chinese restaurant, a grim, open-sided booth with a kitchen in its centre, where the sinister routine of a low-class Chinese eating house was practised without attempt at concealment from the patrons. Here I resolved to tackle the language problem – at least so far as eating went – and persuaded the proprietor, who was grubby as usual in vest and slacks but anxious to help, to accompany me on a tour of his pots. From him I acquired the basic smattering to deal with gastronomic emergencies, and this carried me through Burma. The only adjective that really mattered was chow – fried; from which, of course, the American army slang for food was derived. By keeping to fried dishes, I could reasonably hope most of the bacilli had been destroyed. Mien, which is usually associated with chow in the Chinese restaurants of the West, meant noodles, although here it was pronounced ‘myen’. Chicken was chi; eggs, dan; rice, fan; pork, youk. If you wanted the pork chopped up and mixed with vegetables as well as fried, all you had to do was to precede chow with the onomatopoeic and memorable adjective tok-tok. Strangely enough, this system worked, in spite of my repudiation of
the notorious tones which are supposed to be so baffling to the Westerner, in Chinese. No restaurant owner ever failed to understand my order or even had to have it repeated, and one even went through the complimentary farce of asking me in what part of China I had picked up my knowledge of the language. The word for salt, yem ba was very important. This always seemed to be a rare commodity, only produced grudgingly, on special request. Warm Mandalay Pale Ale was sometimes forthcoming at the average price of a bottle of medium quality wine, by uttering the magic words ku dziu. Tea, sha, was always silently placed on the table as soon as you sat down.

  At this restaurant I was hardly surprised to find the police lieutenant sitting, with eyes modestly lowered, at one of the tables. I went over and joined him and tried to buy him a meal. After a great deal of explanation in which the restaurant owner and several customers joined, I was finally made to understand that my host, or keeper – whichever the case might have been – was a strict Buddhist and was observing some kind of penance, or Sabbath as it is known locally, involving a semi-fast and some meditation. He could therefore only be prevailed upon to accept a little plain rice.

  While we lingered over tea the day was declining. Children came down from the crest of a bare hill, from which a diminishing cone of light had finally disappeared, dragging at their kites which shone like minute fish against the blue depths of the Yunnanese mountains. The tooth-extractor packed up, unhitching the strings of his trophies from the frame on which they were exposed, and lowering them string by string, as tenderly as if they had been matched pearls, into a bag. The last bullock-cart was driven away, producing with its greaseless axle a plain tune consisting of four notes of the pentatonic scale repeated ad infinitum. Suddenly the square of Mu-Sé had lost a dimension, the wooden shop façades, splashed with their vigorous Chinese characters had become a backcloth, dramatic and even menacing, before which a band of posturing actors with pikes and lances might soon present themselves in the nocturnal scene of such a play as ‘Stealing the Emperor’s Horse’. As the twilight deepened, the restaurant owner went softly from table to table, placing on each a tiny oil-lamp. Over the kitchen he hung a lantern providing a sympathetic illumination for the tapestry of viscera. From various directions came a soft, tentative strumming as if plucked from single-stringed instruments hung in space. Three or four distant voices were raised quaveringly, as if to exorcise this Asiatic mood, in the chanting of a revivalist hymn, a tune to which the words usually sung are, ‘Jesus wants me for an angel’. Occasionally, when these sounds subsided, a bugle could be heard, very faintly, being blown in China.

  We went back to the police barracks and turned in. The lieutenant dimmed the lamp till there was just enough light for him to be able to pick up his tommy-gun without groping for it, and lay muttering his prayers. Beyond the window ebbed and flowed all the sweet, sleep-inducing, night sounds. The monotonous grumbling gossip of the Kachin policemen was woven through with a silver thread of mono-chordic music. This was blown away by the rush of wind through the bamboo thickets, and into the following silence fell a dribble of nightingale notes. The Kachins took up their topic again, and now the subdued rattle of monosyllables was coagulating and shaping itself in the rising tide of drowsiness into odd English phrases. As I fell asleep, someone said quite clearly, ‘a shortage of timber’.

  * * *

  The chief was up when I awoke soon after dawn, but shortly appeared with a pot of tea. Both of us were wearing, like the insignia of some exclusive club, those popular oriental towels which bear the words, ‘Good morning’, and in the language of smiles and signs we passed with each other the time of day.

  Afterwards I took a brisk stroll over to the border, noticing, as I had done on the previous day, that within a few minutes a Chinese appeared, wearing semi-transparent white pyjamas, and pedalling very rapidly on a gaily decorated but much under-geared cycle. Separated by some twenty-five yards, the Chinese and I stood, two solitary and insignificant figures poised over the grandiose setting of this natural frontier, while beneath us the peasants of Burma and of China were to be seen leading out the buffaloes to their morning tasks in the fields. When I turned away and made for the village through the lanes of cactus, whose leaves were covered in elegant Burmese script with what I supposed to be amorous inscriptions, the Chinese was still there, but soon he overtook me, legs whirling and garments streaming. By the market place I was met by the Indian of the previous day. ‘What are you interested in, sir?’ he asked. ‘Rubies and jade’, I told him. ‘But there are no rubies or jade at Nam Hkam.’ The tone contained a mild reproof. He was clearly hurt at an unflatteringly clumsy attempt at deception. He had a fine sensitive face, with that brooding nobility of expression one often finds in Indians, even when in mediocre occupations. As he always appeared, to put some new, straightforward question whenever I visited the market, I supposed that he was the informer assigned to this area, just as the flying Chinaman was probably in charge of the frontier proper.

  He must have found my explanation unsatisfactory because after our third encounter a new kind of policeman arrived and signalled me to follow him. I soon found myself in some kind of military headquarters where a Burmese officer, handsome and dapper in his well-pressed British uniform, grilled me with extraordinary suavity, while butterflies fluttered in and out of the open door and a blind beggar collected alms from the guard. It seemed that I had fallen into the hands of some kind of frontier force. The Burmese officer’s smile became glazed when, in answer to his probings, I told him that I had spent the previous night in the barracks of the Kachin police. My lieutenant was fetched to testify, a rustic and self-effacing figure in these polished military surroundings. A little reluctantly, but with charming resignation, the Burmese officer declared himself satisfied. I could go on to Nam Hkam. A pass and an accompanying letter to the Amat were typed out, to be added to my now bulky collection of official documents. Meanwhile, said the officer, there was no point at all in wandering about the streets of an unattractive place like Mu-Sé. I could wait comfortably in his office until transport was found. Glasses of lemonade were brought in, and then the officer excused himself and went off in a jeep. When I sauntered to the door I found a soldier with a fixed bayonet there. He gulped nervously when I eyed him.

  * * *

  An hour or two later, the transport for Nam Hkam drew up outside. It was a Fordson, externally battered but intact, and scientifically packed with ageing Kachin ladies, who, I later learned, had organised a kind of Mothers’ Association outing to the bazaar of Nam Hkam, which was to be held on the next day. They were all dressed, with the sobriety of their years and station, in navy blue, and wore tall, cylindrical turbans in which their hair had been severely constrained. As usual, I was allocated a dignified position in the front. I found myself pinned firmly against the door-handle by the two dowagers wedged in between me and the driver. Unhappily the engine in this particular vehicle is set back and occupies much of the space in the driver’s cabin, from which it is only isolated by a housing of metal plates. Owing to the external temperature, plus the terrible roads and the decayed state of the engine, this housing soon became blisteringly hot, so that both my neighbour and myself squirmed and struggled endlessly in our efforts to avoid contact with it. The nudging and kneeing provoked by these conditions probably struck my companion, who was about fifty years of age, as improper, because at the first opportunity she changed places, providing a substitute of not less than eighty.

  The journey to Nam Hkam, then, although a matter of only nineteen miles, took several hours, and was endured in the most excruciating discomfort. After the first hour numbness spread from the feet to the waist. Only then could I begin to enjoy the scenery through which we were travelling. A mile or two away to our left across a cultivated plain were low ranges of densely forested mountains, while to the right the land slipped away, down to the Shweli river, an unimportant tributary of the Irrawaddy, which here, mysteriously, for no more than thirty miles, swelled into
a shallow, much-divided flood, as wide as the Salween. Terraced paddy-fields came down the mountain sides like the ceremonial stairways of a race of giants, lapping the plains in mighty, rippling waves. Hundreds of buffaloes slogged through the mud and stagnant water, and egrets crawled about them. The villages were screened behind the matting of roots hanging down, almost to the ground, from huge, old banyans. Wells had stone covers like miniature pagodas – sometimes with horses carved on them. The pagodas themselves were on the Chinese joss-house model, with upswept eaves, often involving much ingenious joining of corrugated-iron, which had been artfully hammered and bent into the traditional shape of wooden logs. Tombs continued to carry their ephemeral palaces of paper. Sometimes we passed a tumulus. Under such mounds the Kachins buried the victims, man, woman and child, of the unlimited warfare they practised whenever compelled by dearth to migrate in force. There were a few isolated houses which advertised the wealth of their owners by the addition to a plain bamboo construction of a carved balcony or some fretwork embellishment of the eaves. Over the Shweli hung a golden mist, composed of particles of sand swept up from the uncovered bed of the river and held in suspension by the wind sweeping down the valley. Just outside Nam Hkam three Chinese Nationalist soldiers in blue cotton uniforms appeared at the roadside. I recognised them from the others I had seen in custody. They seemed to be unarmed, and were probably on their way to Nam Hkam to give themselves up.