The Blue-Eyed Shan (23 page)

“I know it well.”

“So. How do you come to know it?”

“It one of half a ten that lead into or out of Pawlu,” Greenwood said. “Toward the end of the war my job—among others—was to glean fallen flyers. Many hours from here I found a Chinese general, and we came by this trail to Pawlu.”

“And what was a Chinese general doing in these hills?”

“He was to be decorated. The Chinese gave many medals and took many photographs for the newspapers. For this to be done in the presence of their leader so that he might be in the photograph, it was necessary to fly the heroes home to Kunming or Chungking.”

“Soldiers.”

“Politicians. Soldiering does not require brilliance—I have myself soldiered—but does not necessarily render a man silly. A politician, however, must smile upon all people at once, and so much become, in time, a fool or a knave.”

“This you have learned from your study of man.”

“Well, I go too far. But I will say for sure that during the war Chinese politicians were a rare breed and worthy of study.”

“This does not tell me why a general was in these hills.”

“His aircraft was crippled, he believed by ground fire, but perhaps by age and hard use. Do you know about parachutes?”

“Yes.”

“We never found the aircraft. We took the general to Pawlu, where he joined us in harassing Japanese and repelling Wild Wa, and after a while we sent him on his way to Nan-san. Where he went then I cannot say. The Japanese were here and there but not everywhere.”

“I hope he reached home,” Jum-aw said.

“He reached home. I imagine he even won a second medal, for surviving the jump. Medals were awarded for everything but outright treason.”

“You dislike wars.”

“Correct. Three-handed rogues attack the wind with loud shouts, and are promoted and enriched. Meanwhile good men die. Well, will you go back or will you come along?”

“I have guided you, now you shall guide me,” Jum-aw said.

“And my wages?”

For a moment Jum-aw took him seriously.

A few hours later, when he knew he was home, Greenwood halted. “Look there.” Half a skeleton hung from a tree. “A bandit. Give me your rifle.”

Jum-aw only scowled.

“Do as I ask, Jum-aw. Give me obedience for my wages.”

Jum-aw went on scowling, but unslung his rifle and handed it over.

“A genuine antique,” Greenwood said. “That is some weapon.”

“It fires true.”

“Your father's?” It was a Springfield .30-03, almost half a century old; but its makers and owners had respected metal.

“My father's. Since a boy.”

“Now your knife.”

Jum-aw protested.

Greenwood said it again.

Jum-aw yielded.

Greenwood slung the rifle and tucked the knife into his belt. “Follow close.”

“And if there is fighting?”

“It would be no fighting, only the quick death of two travelers. When the thunderclap sounds, it is already too late to cover the ears. We proceed empty-handed, smiling and singing.”

They did no signing, but at intervals Greenwood called out, “I will wrestle Wan and Kin-tan at one time!” or “Old Mong is a famous fornicator!” His chest was tight, as before a fire fight or with a new woman. They were rising circuitously but persistently from the valley west of West Slope. A faint haze hung above what he thought was the village. He wondered if a house was burning. More likely a plot of brush.

One moment he was riding along, composing an elegant insult, and the next he was overwhelmed by a horde of Shan who scared him half out of his tattoos. They surged and swarmed, seizing the bridles, shouting at Greenwood, dropping from trees, hemming him about. The ponies boggled at first but stood their ground. Greenwood whooped and hollered, vaulted off his steed and commenced whacking old friends. Old friends pummeled him in return. He heard Jum-aw—“My lord! My lord!”—and craned to see the boy in Kin-tan's embrace, pedaling vainly a yard in the air.

By now there were tears in Greenwood's eyes. “By the gods,” he said, “what a reception! I never heard a sound.”

“We saw you half an hour ago,” Wan assured him. “Old Green Wood! Never did I think to see you more.”

“Nor I you, you old killer. Kin-tan, put down that boy. Or have you taken to monkish love?”

Kin-tan released Jum-aw and embraced Greenwood. “I never thought of that. He is a pretty boy. And how goes the old rifle?”

“Well. The gods have been kind.”

The others were subsiding. A flight of forest crows, blue-shouldered, flapped above them.

Greenwood wiped his eyes with his bandanna. The others glanced at the crows, or fiddled with their weapons. Greenwood said, “Is Loi-mae well? And Lola?”

“Well and happy,” Kin-tan said.

“The gods be thanked. And who is dead?”

“Phe-win. Dropped one noon like an old oak.”

“Let him rest. The best of fighting men.”

“My father Yau,” said Wan.

“Let him rest. A good man and kind to me.”

“Gyan died only a couple of months ago,” Kin-tan said, “in a fight by the wide road.”

“Let him rest. You took revenge?”

“Many times over. A couple of the old women died, old Pham, and Hu-mei of the thin lips and big teeth. Do you recall them?”

“I recall everyone,” Greenwood said. They were walking toward the crest now, leading the ponies, strolling and chatting like a club or a team. “And the Sawbwa?”

Wan said. “He is the same.”

Greenwood caught the dry tone. “Before I forget: treat this boy well. His name is Jum-aw and he guided me up from Kunlong.”

“A city boy,” Kin-tan scoffed, but he made Jum-aw the gift of one curt nod.

Greenwood returned the boy's rifle and knife. Jum-aw worked at a smile, and then a swagger.

Kin-tan went on, “Did he guide you well?”

“He let me smoke a cheroot one night and we woke up with half the bandits in Burma pissing on our fire.”

A shout of laughter rewarded him. “So you surrounded them,” Wan said.

“I was lucky. One was an old friend from up Bhamo way. I tell you, they scared me white.” He used the Shan phrase without thinking and no one noticed; but he noticed.

“And here you are,” Wan said. “This is a good thing. Ko-yang and Cha were married today and you come to bring them luck.”

“Luck! I came for the feast. Tell me, who is First Rifle? You, Wan?”

“No. A good soldier called Naung. You never knew him. Where is he anyway?”

“He was with us,” Kin-tan said.

Their shadows were long upon the path; the sun rode low behind them.

Wan said, “Ai-ya.”

No one spoke for a bit. Greenwood understood.

The Sawbwa jittered and jigged. “Green Wood! Green Wood!”

Greenwood bowed, then patted the old man's shoulder. The Sawbwa had his name right, which was sufficient unto the day. The Sawbwa gurgled happily. “An omen! Did I not say?”

“Indeed,” Wan agreed, with the look of one trying to remember.

Za-kho made syllables.

Mong whacked him on the back of the head. “Eh, Chung will be happy! Many a time she smacked her lips over you!”

“What! I never knew!” Greenwood played the fierce thwarted lover. They were encircled by half the village, all chattering and chirping laughter on the festive field. “Ko-yang, what have you done?”

“What many a better man did before me,” Ko-yang called cheerily, pleased by Greenwood's notice. He had been only a boy. He laid a husband's hand on Cha's shoulder.

“My friend and guide Jum-aw,” Greenwood announced. “Will you treat him as your own?” Where was Loi-mae? Where was Lola?

“And why not!” It was Chung, elbowing irrepressibly through the crowd. She burst toward him and they embraced, and she too whacked away at him, the top of his head, his shoulders.

“So, mother of us all, I see you well.”

“You see me well.” Chung drew back for a more leisurely inspection. She turned her head and spat betel juice. “Pale,” she said, “but still strong. I remember how skinny you were ten years ago.”

“Chung, come closer.”

They spoke aside, quietly, beneath the crowd's chatter.

“Loi-mae,” Greenwood said, “and Lola. Instruct me.”

Chung's pause conveyed a judicious melancholy. “They are well. Lola is a little goddess. Now listen: Loi-mae is the woman of Naung, who is—”

“First Rifle.”

“Yes. It is my feeling that you must not try to cook on ashes.”

“I will do no harm,” Greenwood said, remembering Horse-master's definition of wisdom.

“Who can ask more? But can it be? There was much love.”

“There was.”

“And when one loves another, one loves even the dogs and cats.”

“I remember the saying.”

“And to love without due regard to what is right is to anger the nats of the hearth.”

“I will do no harm,” Greenwood said. “Can we go to them now?”

He followed Chung up the trail to Loi-mae's house. He supposed it was Naung's house now. Naung's absence was understandable but awkward; better to meet, let Greenwood indicate acceptance, even submission, and have done with it.

In his left hand he carried a slender gift for Lola. She was nine now, nine and a half, and what did girls desire at nine and a half? Greenwood had been altogether uncertain. He was not yet sure what they wanted at nineteen and a half or twenty-nine and a half. He had passed a disgusted half-hour in a toy shop, examining doll-houses, tricycles, board games, tinny sets of tableware, scooters; he had decided that East was East and West was West and it was better that they not meet, not on this level, at any rate. Lola might have appreciated a small inlaid bow and half a dozen arrows—archery was now obsolete and fashionable among the Shan, like hunting in England or horse-drawn sleighs in America. But he had recalled that at the age of ten the women of Pawlu were presented with ceremonial daggers, which they were thenceforth entitled to wear at the waist, and he had found a genuine dagger of Lapland, of Swedish steel with a haft of reindeer antler and a sheath of hardened reindeer leather lined with lamb's wool.

And now this path, and the flash of a hoopoe; the last stand of bamboo. The last turn.

The house was shockingly small. In his memory it was spacious and sprawling, love's mansion; in life it was no more than twenty feet by twenty. Would Loi-mae too be small, squat, weathered? The memory of Eden. How many hundred nights of young love, all ideal, the age, the body, the climate, the rules there to be broken one by one, all life a dazzlement and an exploration, and in spring the night breeze suffused with wild rose and honeysuckle.

He stood aside, the stranger, the guest, to let Chung pass before. “Here he is!” She padded inside, and Greenwood followed. “He looks well enough,” Chung went on. “Neither starving nor diseased.”

Loi-mae was not small, squat, weathered. She was the same Loi-mae, rangy for a Shan, oval brownish face, eyes and lips to drown in. Greenwood took one step and halted; went blank and then shy; swallowed; felt love's surge and swell, and the hint of an ebb. Loi-mae shut her eyes in joy and held forth both hands. “O Loi-mae!” he said, and kissed the hands. She sighed then, a long-drawn musical breath, hugged him tight, and averted her lips when he kissed her face. “Ah no,” he said, held her chin, kissed her again, a lingering kiss and a molten kiss, lips melting, tongue soft, body straining. He groaned aloud. Would you stay? Would you fight for her? Take her back?

There came a tug at his jacket.

Lola stared up at him, moon-eyed, sweet, timid, awed, hoping to smile. Loi-mae had gone limp in his embrace, only the clutch of her arms still tight.

“Lola!” he cried. Do no harm. Loi-mae released him, and a look passed between them of almost inhuman intensity—a look of grief, of joy, of fear, of understanding. We have stolen our years of glory, this look said, of perfection, of bliss; we have been like gods; and now it is for the gods to do what they will with us; what they cannot do is annul those years.

He stooped like any father to take Lola by the waist and hoist her high. Like any child, she squealed and shrieked. “O Green Wood! O Father!” He smothered her, nuzzled, held her off for a stern scrutiny. “Why, you are almost a woman!” he said. “And a beauty like your mother!” Loi-mae's perfume was still in his nostrils, and the memory of her embrace still warm. A faint spicy odor: the ginger on her breath. The house too: aromas of pepper and grease. He remembered faint latrine smells when the wind shifted.

Chung had slipped away. Loi-mae stood smiling bravely, eyes bright; she blinked, the smile dissolved. “You are hungry,” she said. She raised a startled hand to her lips: “Yet what is that to me?”

“How could I think of food?” he asked. “You too, you are a beauty; there is none so beautiful anywhere.”

For another hot moment there seemed nothing to say.

Greenwood made an effort. “Have you been well? And Lola?”

“She had chicken skin two years ago. No scars, as you see.”

Lola asked, “Have you come to take me away?”

“O poor Lola!” Loi-mae cried, and hugged her. “No, no, no, would we let him do that?”

Lola teased: “And if I want to go?”

“And leave Weng-aw?”

“Who is Weng-aw?” Greenwood asked.

“A boy who flirts and paws.”

“By the gods,” Greenwood said huffily.

Lola asked, “Have you a child in your own country?”

“Of course he has,” Loi-mae answered swiftly, as if forestalling pain. “Enough pestering.”

“No wife and no child,” Greenwood said, and saw pleasure suffuse Loi-mae's face.

“But women,” she murmured.

“Well, a few, but none like Loi-mae, with the tall swaying beauty of rushes and the melting eyes of the gyi.”