The Blue-Eyed Shan (25 page)

“I will. Sleep well.”

“Sleep well, all.” Naung stood immobile and impassive; he gazed first at Greenwood, then at the Sawbwa, then at Wan and Kin-tan; and he padded into the darkness.

Za-kho said, “The planets are in favorable position.”

The Sawbwa said, “Green Wood has come back to us.”

Wan said, “They must not cross the road. We can fetch Yang from there, but his men may not cross.”

“That is the way to do it,” Kin-tan said. “When will Yang arrive?”

Greenwood showed palm. “Perhaps a day, perhaps a month.”

“Perhaps he is dead,” Wan said.

Greenwood was to sleep in the House of the Dead, a clean, bare, two-walled hut where corpses were washed and laid out, and later that evening, pack stowed, belly full, heart sore, he stood out back in the brush pissing manfully.

He heard no footstep, only felt the hard hand on his shoulder and heard the hostile voice. “Green Wood.”

“Naung,” he said. “Let me piss.”

He tucked in and turned. Naung's dagger flicked out like a toktay's tongue. Its sharp tip pricked Greenwood's chin. “This is for you,” Naung said, “what harm soever comes to Pawlu.” Naung's meaty, rummy breath stank.

“If harm comes, it will come to me first. I have stood before between Pawlu and harm.”

“I fear that the harm has already come.”

“Put up the dagger.”

“I should kill you now. I know this as the Sawbwa knows the rain.”

“Would I bring harm to Lola? Or to Loi-mae?” When Naung's gaze shifted at the mention of his woman, Greenwood made a move, half in earnest, nimbly whacking Naung's wrist back, reaching swiftly under the arm to grasp the hand, haft and all, and wrench down and back, not far enough to do harm or cause great pain but far enough to say, I am not a beginner. He released Naung immediately. “You must do better than that.”

Naung said, “When the time comes I will. Now listen: whatever the Sawbwa says, you will not leave the village unless for good; and if your general comes at all he will enter the village alone.”

“If he comes, I will take him away within three days.”

“Three days I give you,” Naung said, and backed away, and seemed to vanish.

Greenwood slept badly. Too much rum. He woke several times, once from a dream of Loi-mae, and he considered simply retreating; but he knew that he would not. Perhaps he had not yet exhausted his luck.

They owed him this much. He had once been First Rifle, and that was no small thing. He had once held Pawlu in the hollow of his hand. He had once been a Shan.

Lying in the dark, he ransacked his heart, and he found greed, and selfishness, and impatience, and dread, and he wished he were half a world away.

9

Across the Salween

General Yang's tatterdemalion company rattled and backfired into Fang-shih at sunrise of a frosty winter morn just after the turn of the year 1950. The general drove point, he and Major Wei and the two footlockers wedged into the one operational jeep. Colonel Olevskoy and his lady brought up the rear. The army of fifty-six men rode in four ill-assorted trucks and one weapons carrier. The general and the colonel, mollified by adversity, had learned to be cordial.

In a small square the vehicles drew into a column of twos and halted. Olevskoy vaulted his tailgate and marched briskly to his general. “Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Colonel. You seem jaunty.”

“I'm filthy and hungry. Is there a hotel? A barracks? Are there public baths?”

“I hope so. I am none too savory myself. The sawbwa here is a modern soul.”

“Ah. We shall call upon him.”

Yang could not restrain a feeble grin. “He will not see us, you know. He'll be out of town.”

The sawbwa was indeed out of town. His prime minister, or grand vizier, received General Yang. While the sawbwa here was a cosmopolitan gentleman, noted gourmet and keen judge of women without regard to provenance or ancestry, his factotum was dapper, bald and faintly feminine, a classic mandarin in his gray gown and black hat with red button. This statesman affirmed that the sawbwa enjoyed electricity, foreign journals, indoor water closets and spectacles from Hong Kong, actually made to prescription. To meet General Yang would have afforded him unforgettable pleasure. It was nothing short of calamitous that he should be at this moment visiting his outlying parishioners and constituents.

General Yang was jolly: “We're lepers now.” The sawbwa's house seemed to be humming, vibrating; this was somehow a comfort.

The secretary, fifyish, barbered, showed palm. “Surely not lepers. Only an embarrassment.”

Yang had bathed and shaved, though his uniform was scruffy. He sighed. He did not mind wars so much, or famine or even pestilence. But an accumulation of small evils, balks, frustrations, annoyances dissipated the energies. A man, even an army, could be annihilated by hordes of mocking, invulnerable evil spirits. “On est bien dans la merde,” he murmured.

In sibilant French, like a Moroccan or Tunisian, the plumpish secretary said, “Ce n'est pas si grave que ca.”

“Mon Dieu,” Yang said. “I suppose you speak English too.”

“American. They came through here like some Hunnish migration. Though I cannot,” he added quickly, “deny China's debt to them.”

“Indeed not,” Yang said, losing his reserve, abruptly churlish. “About one percent of the Chinese army fought at all, and it had to compete with the other ninety-nine percent for supplies and trained men. I seem to recall that as long as the Burma Road was open, your sawbwa imported Havana cigars and French brandy. One shudders to imagine his privations when the Japanese cut the Road. If not for the Americans, China would still be absorbing the invader, and in a century or so the new Sino-Japanese race would spill into Siberia, Persia, Malaya, goose-stepping and shouting a bastard language.”

“You have eaten much bitterness,” the secretary said in Chinese.

“Yes, forgive me, forgive me.” Yang rubbed his eyes with both hands. “I must say there is little patriotism left in my own heart. I have just spent thirteen years taking orders from scoundrels and blackguards, watching my men die by the thousands, losing a wife and son, losing a mistress, losing a whole war, for the sake of feudalism and foreign bank accounts. Your sawbwa is no hero.”

The secretary reproached him lightly: “But he is remaining.”

“Ah yes.” Yang's good cheer was restored. “While I, being a man of the world, shall transcend narrow nationalism and confer upon a crude materialistic world the benefits of Chinese charm and sensibility.”

“With that sort of talk,” the secretary allowed, “you cannot fail.”

“Kind of you to say so. My problem at the moment is transport. Shall I speak plainly?”

“Speak plainly.”

“I have four trucks, a weapons carrier and a jeep, all aged and weary but functioning. I am prepared to barter them for forty ponies, mules or donkeys. I lose by the deal; but I have my reasons.”

The secretary sat back in his armchair, making a traditional steeple of his fingers. “Shall I speak plainly?”

“Speak plainly.”

“The Communists will be here shortly. They will simply commandeer those vehicles.”

“How if the sawbwa prepared them as a gift? A peace offering?”

“Then he would lose the price of forty ponies, mules and donkeys.”

Yang grunted. “I could take the city, you know, with my fifty men.”

The secretary was shocked.

“I could destroy the power plant,” Yang pursued, “fire Fang-shih, level your compound. War, after all, is war. Permit me to threaten you directly. If your sawbwa sees fit to treat us like pye-dogs, we are justified in razing his little principality.”

“Not pye-dogs,” the secretary protested. “It is awkward only.”

“I could kill a few,” Yang offered, “which, when your new masters arrive, will witness to your resistance and our inhuman ferocity. Perhaps the sawbwa's secretary's head on a tall stake, high above the fabled Burma Road.”

“My dear general,” said the secretary, “what a distasteful notion. You argue persuasively if without subtlety. Is there petrol?”

“What fuels your power plant?”

“Coal.”

That puzzled Yang: whence this hum, this vibration? “The sawbwa has his own electricity?”

The secretary nodded.

“A generator? Running on diesel oil?”

The secretary nodded.

“Then he bought, stole and commandeered all through the war. He must have thousands of gallons stored. Two of my trucks are diesels. I have also about a hundred gallons of gasoline left and will be glad to see the last of it. I was sure I'd be blown to bits by now.”

The secretary mulled all this.

“Well?”

“Done.”

“And the noble steeds?”

“I shall introduce you to our Donkey Woman.”

“A local beauty,” Yang said.

“She has a large nose and is illiterate,” said the secretary, “and looks rather like a donkey—”

“Long silky ears?” Yang murmured. “A bony rump?”

“—but she knows more about domestic animals than any man in Fang-shih. She converses with them.”

“I am already in love,” Yang said.

Olevskoy had proceeded directly to the public baths, men's side, bearing a bundle, dragging Hsiao-chi after him and overriding the feeble protests of the attendant, a wizened old man with hairy ears who shrilled his objections in a kind of pidgin Chinese—“No female! Male side! No inside!”—until Olevskoy said “Shut up” and pushed him away.

The baths were sunken basins of stone. Olevskoy shouted for hot water and soap. When there was no response, he shouted promises of castration, broken bones and merciful hanging. Shortly the attendant, assisted by a goggling boy, padded swiftly in with buckets, poured, vanished, returned; the basin filled. Rough towels were stacked on a wooden bench.

Olevskoy had already stripped Hsiao-chi. The old man lingered to salivate; Olevskoy kicked him. “Go away. If you come back before I call you, I shall strike you slightly above both thighs and then strangle you with my bare hands. Do you understand?” Old Hairy Ears absented himself willingly.

Olevskoy stripped himself as well and led Hsiao-chi into the bath. She giggled. “Allez, glousse,” he said. “Giggle away. You are about to be transformed, rendered immaculate body and soul.”

“It is hot,” she said.

“How perceptive. It is indeed hot. No purification without agony. If you want to live in a stinking crib for the rest of your life, all right; but if you listen to me you can be the sawbwa's mistress. Or some commissar's. Sit still, now.” He soaked her down. He scrubbed her first with soap and then with the stiff brush. She cried out. “In the name of God,” he said, “the dirt is peeling off like orange rind. You're three shades lighter already.” He soaped her again, and in detail, paying happy attention to her nipples, her crotch and her navel. “Sit there in your lather,” he ordered. He then soaped himself, rinsed, soaped again, rinsed. “Bath man!” he roared. Clogs clattered. “Four buckets more, tepid, and hurry it up!” The old fellow stared at Hsiao-chi, who sat like a doll, hair lank, body streaked white; he darted away, and returned with four buckets. “Be off,” Olevskoy said. He washed Hsiao-chi's hair. He washed his own hair. He rinsed them both. He handed her gallantly out of the tub and dried her vigorously. “There!” he said. “By God, that's better! You're almost human.”

She was that. She was, he acknowledged, rather pretty. She was sniffing at her own fresh skin, running her fingers along her lustrous breasts and belly with little cries of pleasure. To Olevskoy's joy, he found his penis erect and peremptory. “Let us make the fish with two backs,” he said.

“This one will surely do,” Yang said. “A good round barrel.”

“But a sore on one ear,” said Major Wei.

“For a few days only it won't matter.” They were in the sawbwa's corral, of thirty-odd mou, the general judged; or two hectares or five acres; I am a citizen of the world now.

Donkey Woman said, “Two years old. Look at those quarters.”

Major Wei said, “How odd. Her teeth are seven or eight years old.”

“A vastly accomplished little girl,” Olevskoy said. He sat at ease in the secretary's office, one leg crossed over the other, boots gleaming. He drew happily on a Russian cigarette—this sawbwa must be quite a fellow—and sipped at good green tea.

“She's pretty,” the secretary conceded. “How old?”

“Fifteen.” Olevskoy was firm.

The secretary allowed dubiety to fleet across his glossy face, but made no protest.

“Nothing like a mule,” Donkey Woman said. “Strong, reliable and uncomplaining.”

“Independent and obstinate,” Yang said.

“This one will load two hundred catties.”

“She's right,” Wei said. “The sawbwa's hay is good stuff.”

The secretary asked, “Truly talented? The full range?”

“I guarantee it.”

Hsiao-chi stood shyly against the wall, eyes cast down.

“You understand,” the secretary said easily, “our sawbwa is something of a connoissuer. A lifetime of lore, also practical knowledge. He is no dilettante.”

“I can tell that by his tea,” Olevskoy said. “Fit for the gods.”

The secretary bowed acknowledgment.

“I myself,” Olevskoy went on, “am not without experience. An exile, you understand. Thirty-five years of international service, so to speak.”

“I regret more than ever that the sawbwa cannot make your acquaintance,” said the secretary.

“How many is that now?” Yang asked.

“Four mules, eighteen ponies, twenty-one donkeys.”

“Every one as good as a horse,” Donkey Woman said. She was a homely little thing but had, to Yang's surprise, short silky hair.