Golden Earth

by Norman Lewis

  The priest was tall for a Burman, and I could not help fancying that he bore a facial resemblance to certain of the nats. There was an impudent self-possession about him. He was quite clearly a powerful person, a stork among the frogs. I was struck once again by the extraordinary similarity between professional counterparts of different races. I had seen this face, this confident and slightly contemptuous manner, in Haiti; but that time it had been a voodoo houngan. Before beginning his part of the ceremony the priest sent one of his assistants, who was importantly dressed in a threadbare British officer’s uniform, to tell me to remove my sandals, and not to take photographs when he danced. Although I was not actually inside the booth, and therefore technically showing no disrespect, I decided to acquiesce in the first demand, and to ignore the second, although with discretion.

  Taking up a spray of leaves in each hand the priest went into an easy, swinging dance. He waved the leaves about as a Jamaican obeahman might have waved a pair of maracas. After a time he stopped and signalled gropingly, eyes closed, for the buffalo mask to be brought. At this the crowd stiffened. The amiable gossip died away. Spitting out their cheroots, the members of the orchestra struck out in a new, purposeful rhythm. The mask was handed to the priest by one of the fat dancers. She held it at arm’s length, and he took it from her, and keeping it about a foot from his face, began another stage of the dance. This consisted in mimicking the actions of a buffalo charging, turning away, charging again; directed at first one section, then another of the shrinking crowd. He then stopped, put on the mask, and immediately fell down. The drama of the moment was much heightened by the crash of drums and gongs. These barbaric and wonderfully timed musical effects jarred one for a hair-raising fraction of a second into a sensation of the reality in the performance.

  The buffalo-priest lay writhing on the ground. At the end of the convulsion he raised himself painfully to his knees, and then charged, head down – with remarkable speed in view of his posture – into a group of children who fled screaming from the booth. He was restrained from following them, and from charging in other directions by the prayers, the entreaties, the strokings, of several of his female followers. Finally, quietened down, he was led, still on hands and knees, to a large enamelled basin, in which floated bananas and green herbs. Thus the ceremony culminated in the man’s making a ritual meal – of buffalo food. Pushing his face beneath the mask down into the bowl, he caught a banana in his teeth, and emerging, ate half of it complete with skin. After that, the buffalo mask was untied and put back on the shelf, and while the priest was led away into the background to recover, the female dancers prepared themselves once more to go into action.

  What was the meaning of this ritual? Clearly the women were nat-ka-daws – spirit wives, and professional prophetesses, whom I had read all about in a little booklet on the subject, published in Burma. Nat-ka-daws prophesy publicly on such occasions, and by private arrangement on the payment of a small fee. It is a regular and recognised profession, of which there are so many members that it has been seriously suggested that they should be classified under their own occupational heading in the forthcoming census of Burma. They differ from spirit mediums in most other parts of the world in that they are considered as married to the insatiably polygamistic nats who possess them, and who through them convey their wishes and decisions to animistic Burmese humanity. Such a relationship usually begins with the nat falling in love with the woman. According to my Burmese authority, he visits her at night, well-perfumed and ‘dressed in up-to-date clothes’ (and one quails before the vision of a Mongolian folk-hero in an American-style, flowered sports-shirt and a plastic belt). When actually in possession of his lady-love, he can be expelled by a saya – an expert in white magic – or (in the Colonial days) by an officer of the Crown in full uniform. Nothing is said in the booklet about a nat’s reaction to Burmese republican officials. Normally, however, a woman’s relations or friends would not interfere, because, just as possession by a lwa carries social prestige among the Haitian adherents of the voodoo cult, it is a paying proposition in the lower strata of Burmese society for a woman to become the bride of a nat.

  The union is regularised at the bridegroom’s expense, with mystical entertainments on a lavish scale, the nat usually being represented by another wife, to whom the bride is solemnly given away by her parents or guardians. The occasion is one for rejoicing. The girl has been recognised by the powerful guild of nat-ka-daws as one of themselves. From that time on she earns an easy living by fortune-telling, or, if she decides to go into business, the capital is put up ‘by the nat’, that is to say by the wealthy and powerful association of his wives. Nat-ka-daws, owing to their prestige and power among their neighbours, prosper in all their enterprises. The principal drawback to this arrangement appears to be that a girl who has married a nat cannot remarry without his permission, which is rarely given. But a most fortunate aspect of the matter lies in the fact that the nats are said to prefer spiritual to physical charm, and that women whose lack of attractions has kept them single are often married off in this way. The union is supposed to be far from platonic, and the nat’s visits, in incubus shape, are said to be more frequent than those of a normal husband.

  Here as elsewhere the phenomenon of possession is accompanied, according to medical evidence, by some physical change; the heart’s action is increased, cheeks are flushed, respiration is shallow and of the thoracic type; the subject sweats profusely, reaches a kind of cataleptic state with complete insensibility to pain, and, when questions are answered, often replies in a masculine voice. These and other signs are closely observed by experts, who decide whether possession has taken place, and who are also able to decide by variations of manner and expression which nat is involved. It is particularly interesting that a nat-ka-daw when possessed by Shwe-Na-be, the dragon nat, writhes and wriggles in snakelike fashion, in exactly the same way as do devotees of the voodoo cult when possessed by dumballa, the West African serpent-god. After learning something of the nat-ka-daws, I now realised for the first time what the Jesuit Borri had meant when he had said, writing in the seventeenth century, that it was considered highly honourable in Indo-China to become the wife of the devil, and that such unions were much indulged in by upper-class Annamese women, who sometimes produced eggs as a result. It now seemed clear to me that at one time formal matches with the spirits were arranged by other Mongolian peoples than the Burmese, and that it might have been – and might still be in remote parts of the Indo-Chinese peninsula – a fairly widespread custom, linked up with the legendary oviparous kings.

  * * *

  It remains to offer a possible explanation of the buffalo dance, to hazard a guess at the legendary or even historical occasion that had inspired it – since other animistic ceremonies, and in particular the one at Taungbyon – re-enact in dramatic form some tragic story that has become ineradicably fixed in folk-memory. I had never heard of a buffalo-nat before, and it is certainly not included in the exclusive original circle of the Thirty-seven. The only explanation, therefore, that I can offer is based upon the remark of an onlooker, who said that the ceremony commemorated the ravaging of the country in ancient times by a buffalo.

  In my superficial studies of Burmese history, limited to what has been translated into English, I have been able to find only one noteworthy mention of a buffalo. This occurs in the description of the great King Anawhrata’s death. Although the Burmese kings in their lifetimes conformed sometimes to the prosaic pattern of history, as we understand it, the manner of their deaths – particularly that of Anawhrata – was often Arthurian. The king had been returning from a profitable expedition, during which he had built monasteries, dams, channels, reservoirs and canals, and was just entering the city gates of Pagan when a hunter approached to report that a wild buffalo called Çakkhupala was ravaging the countryside. On hearing this the king turned back, with the pious intention of ridding his people of this menace. He was surrounded by seven thousand ministers, an
d at the head of four armies, but, says the chronicle, ‘the moral karma of the king’s former acts was exhausted’. The buffalo, which had been an enemy in a previous life, charged and reached over the back of the royal elephant, and gored the king to death. So the king’s ministers and his hosts, his queens, the fifty hump-backed women and the fifty bandy-legged women who served him wearing livery of gold, the women to sound tabors, the women-drummers, harpists and trumpeters, all broke up and scattered in confusion.

  What are the facts that have been transmuted here into a dream? Did the nation, symbolised in the person of the king, undergo a tragic experience, suffering perhaps at this time – or even centuries earlier, since the annals are very confused – defeat at the hands of invaders whose totem was the buffalo? An interesting speculation. Burmese written history which speaks of a succession of 587,000 kings, and omitted from the records events which failed to conform to sacred predictions, is not necessarily more reliable than the legends of the people. But, at all events, it seemed likely that here was all that remained in the popular memory of an ancient tragedy, whatever it was: a piece of self-hypnotic mumbo-jumbo, and two fat women who believed themselves to be the brides of a demon.

  * * *

  Night, which lay like a stifling cloak upon Pyinmana, brought no relief from the heat. In the station precincts, there was a curious gathering of passengers, and of those who used the station-yard for their social promenadings, in a long line on each side of the train which would leave next morning for Rangoon. The JSM came teetering up to explain. He was sucking an American Cream Soda through a straw in the belief that it was country spirit, and his expression, as the beads of perspiration formed and followed regular channels down his face, was of a man bravely enduring torture. The people, the JSM explained, were waiting for the water-truck. At any moment an engine would draw it along the rails past our train, stopping at each carriage to fill up the small cistern carried in the roof. Usually there was an overflow from each cistern, and those who were waiting would catch the surplus, or as much as they could of it, in their cups, or just wet their clothes with it.

  Shortly afterwards the water-tanker came along, with an entourage of well-dressed citizens, who, as the water streamed down the coaches, pressed themselves tightly against the woodwork, or even got down on the track and crouched by the wheels to allow the water to trickle on their upturned faces, their chests, their backs. Some of the men stripped off their shirts, soaked them and put them on again.

  Finding that while the passengers luxuriated in momentary dampness our compartment had been left empty, I went in to begin the stealthy massacre of the mosquitoes and cockroaches, a task which I had carried out in several furtive instalments on the journey from Mandalay to Yamethin. This time I was less successful. All the cockroaches, which were as tame and trusting, and as fat in their way as monastery catfish, were disposed of in a few seconds, and I was quite absorbed with the mosquitoes, which could be caught in the air, sometimes two at a time, and squashed by closing the fist, when I heard a sound like a slight groan. Mr Pereira had hoisted himself silently into the carriage, and was standing behind me, his eye fixed on the corpse of a cockroach, lying feet uppermost in the middle of the floor. Did I realise, he asked me, as soon as he could get command of his voice, that this poor, assassinated creature might quite well be my grandfather in another incarnation? The obvious answer to this was that had my grandfather indeed been reincarnated as a Burmese cockroach, I should have regarded it as an act of kindness to release him from what seemed to me – and would probably, from what I remembered of him, have seemed to him – an unsatisfactory existence. This only produced a sermon on Kan and Karma, on cause and effect, into which the matter of merit-acquisition, and thence, pagoda-building inevitably entered. Rebellious at last, I asked him if he didn’t think that in his own case, it would have been equally, or even more, meritorious to have given his money to the Mandalay leper asylum. The classic answer would have been, not at all, because the lepers were working off in their present unfortunate condition the adverse balance of their karma, created through misdeeds in previous existences, and there was therefore nothing much to be done about it. But by this time Mr Pereira had recovered himself completely and, remembering the need for Absolute Tolerance, however mistaken a point of view, mildly agreed that it might have been a good thing – the soft answer that turneth away wrath, which, in his case, meant one more mark on the credit side of the balance.

  Thus the dreadful night wore on. Since the departure platform of the Rangoon train had become also the town’s social centre, there was an enduring babel, in which the keynote was sounded by a mad woman who stood in a clear place for many hours, haranguing the crowd. She was well dressed and cared for, and whenever her hair, which was crowned with cornflowers, escaped its bounds, someone would rearrange it for her. Because of the dry quality of the heat, the temptations and pleasures of life had been simplified, and reduced to the alleviation of thirst. The devil presiding over the delights involved was a dreaming, white-bearded Hindu, who kept a stall with bottles of Vimto and American Cream Soda. His stock, besides these, consisted of a block of ice, and an ordinary carpenter’s plane. When a drink was ordered, he would get the cap off the bottle after a long struggle, take a glass out of a slop-pail full of dirty water, and pour in the contents of the bottle. Then he would unwrap the block of ice from its grimy sacking, plane off a sliver, crumple it and put it in the glass, when it would instantly vanish, as if plunged into boiling water. He was agonisingly slow, and as these bottles of branded mineral waters are supposed in any case to contain a quantity nicely calculated not quite to quench the thirst, the only thing to do was to keep a standing order. Once the ice ran out, and there was a long delay while another block was dragged by means of a pair of clamps and a chain along the platform.

  About midnight, I carried away what remained of the old man’s bottles, went back to the carriage and climbed into my bunk. Mr Pereira, although not asleep, seemed pleasantly relaxed. ‘This evening, Mr Nair, I was able to obtain my customary Wincarnis. I believe that I shall pass a good night.’

  The JSM by ransacking the town had found a supply of country spirit and was occupied by delusions of grandeur. A rumbling Johnsonian undertone had entered his speech.

  ‘Yesterday was it? – No, of course, it could not have been yesterday – but no matter – I encountered at the residence of a friend of mine, where I was taking food, the ADPW (Assistant Director of Permanent Ways). After saluting him, I broached the matter of promotion.’

  ‘And what response did he vouchsafe?’

  ‘My dear colleague –’ (the voice faltered, with a sudden alcoholic change in the wind’s direction) ‘he invited me to get to hell.’

  ‘The dickens he did! These buggers are all the same.’

  * * *

  The next day was passed among the parched greys and yellows of harvested paddy-fields, which now awaited the rains. From this dun wilderness arose nothing but a skyline serration of pagodas, and the low formless silhouettes of towns which had once been dynastic capitals, the greatest and most glorious of South-East Asia in their day. ‘… The streetes thereof are the fayrest that I have seene … the lodgings within are made of wood all over gilded, with fine pinacles, and very costly worke, covered with plates of golde.’ Thus wrote Caesar Fredericke of the capital of the kingdom of Pegu, now dissolved in anarchy. The names of these towns were now, as we passed through them, the motive of a melancholy commentary. Ela. ‘That was a nice place. It was a coaling station, but it has been burned several times, also recently. Steel Brothers’ sawmill, also burned down.’ Toungoo. ‘These are territories dominated by the Karens. Much damage has been done. I do not think they can rebuild. It is stated that the leaders have offered ceremonial food to the monks who will present a petition for amnesty. Also these men’s leader Saw Tapu Lay is observing daily Sabbath. I do not know. But still shooting continues with all modern weapons, and the dropping of bombs.’ Pegu. ‘
Mostly there are Communists who will not agree that food shall come into this town. Therefore all the paddy remains in the villages, and the farmers cannot eat so much rice. They would like to sell this paddy to the Government who will pay rupees 285 per hundred bags. But this rice they may not sell and they cannot eat it. In this town the people do not eat. It is very ruined.’

  CHAPTER 22

  The Shwedagon

  IN RANGOON the great annual pagoda festival was being held, that of the full moon of Tabaung, which coincides with Easter in the West. The Shwedagon Pagoda is the heart and soul of Rangoon, the chief place of pilgrimage in the Buddhist world, the Buddhist equivalent of the Kaaba at Mecca, and, in sum, a great and glorious monument. ‘The fairest place, as I suppose,’ thought Ralph Fitch, ‘that is in the world.’ Fitch had seen the splendours of the Mogul Empire, and it is a consolation to think that as the Shwedagon has been, if anything, improved since Elizabethan days, there still exists one tiny oasis, in a desert of pinchbeck modernity, where the prodigious glamour of the ancient Orient endures.