The Blue-Eyed Shan (20 page)

“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.

“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 shimmering, tintinnabulating clang of a huge brass gong silenced Naung.

“By the gods,” Mong said, “a wedding!”

Kwin the drummer tapped, tam-tam, tam-tam, slower than the blood's pulse and with never a break: tam-tam, tam-tam. On the women's side the field seemed iridescent, streaked and shot with grass-green, sky-blue, sun-gold; the men's side too was peacocky but more moderately so, blue shirts mainly, a touch of yellow or white, the sun glittering off silver cones and ornaments. Tam-tam, tam-tam.

The women whispered. The tinier children toddled and tumbled. Ko-yang, all in white but blue-sashed, stood beside Cha, also in white. Loi-mae dimpled toward the men's side at Naung, who tried to assume a haughty and bored air as a joke but could not repress a smile. Lola was nowhere to be seen. The Sawbwa stood in his scarlet-trimmed turban and silken gray gown, and Za-kho stood shiny bald, puny within his voluminous saffron robe. Za-kho was not truly a priest but had once been a novice. He was all they had of the Lord. The Sawbwa's head trembled, his lips twitched; he announced: “Za-kho!”

The calm was profound. Somewhere afar, a hawk whistled. Naung's heart opened to his people. He wanted to reach out and touch them all. The breeze died, as if in respect. Tam-tam, tam-tam.

“The Lesser Cold is ended,” Za-kho informed them. From the grove behind the Sawbwa's canopied chair Lola glided, naked but for a white longyi. She danced toward Za-kho, long steps and short. Slowly her arms rose, like the smooth branches of the willow after the monsoon: the villagers could almost see tiny leaves burgeon. “The Greater cold is to come, yet already the heavens are prepared for spring as Ko-yang and Cha are prepared for seedtime. The gold planet blesses the evening. The fire planet hides at dawn.” Tam-tam. “The wood planet is rich with sap. There will be heavy rains and rich crops and a fruitful marriage. Now as the hour of the horse, for strength, merges with the hour of the sheep, for fecundity, let these two be joined.”

“Let these two be joined,” repeated the Sawbwa, “in loyalty to each other, to Pawlu and to their sawbwa.” There was yet majesty to this ancient wreck. Ko-yang bowed his head; so did Cha; the Sawbwa blessed them, both hands high.

Lola danced nearer, twirled, offered her body to the sun. A baby squalled; quickly its mother gave suck.

Za-kho cried, “Ko-yang!” and chanted incomprehensible verses. He cried, “Cha!” and chanted more.

He made solemn pause, and when he knew that the silent village was listening with its heart he went on in words that all could comprehend: “And Ko-yang's house is Cha's house; and his rice her rice; and his cloth her cloth; and hers his; and they shall share love and pain and good and evil; and when one's body is sick the other's heart shall be sick; and their children will be a gift of the Lord, and the spirit of the Lord will dwell with them.”

From the Sawbwa he accepted a leather bag; from the bag he drew rice. He sprinkled the happy pair who stood meekly before him. Lola darted close, dipped a hand into the pouch and flung grains high; rice fell on the couple's bare heads. Lola danced away, leapt, twirled, dashed to the grove; benevolent nats would stay to glean the rice, and evil nats would scramble after her in jealous fury, grow confused in the shadowed grove, and be lost. Tam-tam, tam-tam.

Za-kho took Cha's hands and placed them between Ko-yang's. He touched their brows with his fingertips and withdrew. Ko-yang released Cha's hands and placed them on his shoulders, and he set his on her shoulders, and they leaned to press their foreheads together. For some seconds they stood brow to brow.

Ko-yang then slipped the gold sash from Cha's shoulders and placed it in her hands. And then the blue sash and green, and, last of all, the red sash from her waist. Patiently he unknotted the leather thong about her neck. He knotted it about her own neck. He slipped a hoop of silver from his neck to hers.

The village cheered and shouted.

Cha rushed to the women's side and flung her sashes this way and that. Lola dashed back from the grove to scuffle for the gold; she lost, and pouted. Cha returned to Ko-yang's side and they embraced before all.

Then as the Sawbwa and Za-kho stood blessing their people—tam-tam, tam-tam—the couple's parents, all four still alive, a good omen, came forth with bowls of meat and wine, and Ko-yang placed a morsel in Cha's mouth, and Cha placed a morsel in Ko-yang's mouth, and they drank from the same silver bowl.

At that a roar went up, and the village came to its feet, milled, cried out, smacked it lips in hunger and thirst, and formed a line to whack Cha's bottom or slap Ko-yang on the back of the head, and with a flourish and a rataplan the drumming ended the Kwin shouted, “Beer!” and flexed his aching fingers. “Long life!” cried the Sawbwa, and even before his voice had faded, Lola's piping soprano echoed him: “Long life! And many sons! And many daughters!” A little laughing swell of plain good humor arose from those who heard her, and even Za-kho laughed aloud, so that Lola too had to laugh, a quick embarrassed trill, and buried her head in Loi-mae's breast.

“Eh, white women!” Naung said. “Sharp-smelling and flabby, with no music and no art, only the rush to the pallet with the legs spread and that coarse hair!”

Naung was pleasantly drunk. They were all flying a bit, as the Shan phrase put it, on good homemade rum. Their bellies were full, their hands and faces greasy. Heaps of bones dotted the grass, and every man clutched a bowl. A few warbled old tunes softly, each addled songster oblivious of the others. Again the boys surrounded them, all eyes and ears. “They cared only for piasters,” Naung said.

But he said nothing of his first European whore, Naung the great village fornicator timid, almost terrified before this huge pink creature, and spilling his seed early, so that she made a loud joke in a foreign language and there was laughter from the other cribs. Nor did he mention the second visit, payday and his pride, scorn, resolution melting even as his hand closed on the piasters; nor admit that he had requested a very young one, so that she would not make fun of him. And she did not make fun of him, but performed like a monkey, and took all his piasters, and again and again he returned to her, the little belly, the hard white bottom, the curly hair, and he dreamed of her.

“There was an officer's wife interested in me,” he confessed. He did not say that he had been gardening for a capitaine and through a crevice in the louver had seen the wife washing her parts. “Is there more of this rum?”

Bowls and jugs were plied and passed. Men and boys seized the moment to drift into the woods to relieve nature. When they were reassembled, Naung said, “It was all boring. The life those people lead is inhuman. Drunk half the time—”