The Blue-Eyed Shan (28 page)

Major Ho waited.

“I might want to arrive in this Pawlu with my footlockers and a small, easily disposable bodyguard.”

Major Ho exhaled in noisy dismay. Such perfidy from his General Yang?

Olevskoy said, “So you like the women, do you?”

It was as Yang had predicted. The riverbed broadened, perhaps deepening too, and the rush and roll of the angry water fell to an even flow. Its banks amazed the men, brilliant sand, scattered boulders, monolithic slabs.

The trail resumed a quarter-mile or more downstream. A long sandy spit jutted from the far shore almost to midstream. On this side the trail ran for another half-mile; crossing to this shore one would be borne downstream from the spit. The general seemed to remember this ford, yet with puzzlement, the geography askew, perhaps a trick of the memory, perhaps a shift of the sands.

There were violent eddies off the point, but the sharp bend in the river assured that anyone even halfway across would be swept—perhaps drowning but not lost—ashore on that beckoning strand. “Imagine this in monsoon time,” he said. Perhaps that was it: a different season. “Even here at this wide stretch—eight or ten feet higher, and all this under water.”

“I always heard that the air of the Salween's valleys was poisonous,” Major Wei said.

“Rivers breed legends. Dragons. Plagues. Spells and curses.”

“With permission, sir, we ought to drive a donkey into the river and see what becomes of him.”

“Not a bad notion,” Yang said, “but surely not before lunch. We have more than that to do. We shall rest today and cross tomorrow.”

They did drive a donkey into the stream. He, naturally, made every effort to turn back, and had to be pelted with stones, and the water behind him made frothy by rifle fire and finally a grenade; frantically the beast struck out then, swimming, braying, choking and blowing, aimless and terrified; the current rammed him ashore near the tip of the strand; he scrambled to dry land and stood indignant.

Yang, Olevskoy, Wei and Ho spent the rest of that afternoon planning a tactical exercise of much beauty, considering the resources and techniques at hand. “No air cover,” said Yang. The exercise was minutely detailed. The majors instructed the sergeants. The sergeants instructed the common soldiers. They all gobbled a noisy dinner, turned in early, left small fires to burn down. Before the midnight moonrise, by star-shine and in silence, a fire team crossed, swimming, led by Major Wei. Their orders were to dig in on the beach, with scouts to melt into the screen of oaks and evergreens.

Before dawn the second wave, under Colonel Olevskoy, followed. This was risky beneath a waning gibbous moon, but every man and every weapon on both banks covered the move. Olevskoy's men landed, fanned out, and set up machine guns.

At first light Yang and the main body crossed. Yang sat his pony insouciantly, the footlockers ingeniously hitched to his own shoulders, high and dry fore and aft. His insouciance was slightly demented: if he was killed, if he should lose the footlockers …

Major Wei, exultant, waved his automatic rifle. He was a large handsome man in rude health crossing borders, and dawn was as good a time as any to be a soldier.

“Not bad,” Olevskoy conceded. “Our last maneuver.”

He was proved wrong within the day. Alert now to signs of Wild Wa, Yang sent scout teams flanking wide, and when the southerly team stumbled on a gang of well-armed bandits and opened fire immediately, the ruffians—some said four, some seven, some ten—fled firing and galloped directly toward the main body, which, ready and waiting, wrought destruction. The brigands wheeled and flew, leaving two dead behind. Olevskoy suggested taking their heads as an offering to the Wild Wa: one was swarthy and mustached, a striking specimen, and the other fat and bald. Yang opined that parading through these mountains with heads on pikes was less refined, and more bellicose, than he cared to appear.

Sergeant Chang approached then, diffidently, with the day's bad news: one of the scouts had taken a bandit's lucky snap shot full in the chest, and was dead.

They bore the body to General Yang, the body of a corporal from Honan, a scrawny farm boy conscripted to fight Communists. The men gathered in soldiers' silence, and Yang said a few words, and they buried him there, just off the trail, in a glade ten miles from the majestic Salween, a long way from home, but what dead man is not?

They rode on, wearied. Olevskoy napped, nodding in time to his pony's steps. In the main Yang was honest; he had not lied about his intentions, merely been smoky. Too smoky? Shifty? An honest man and a fine general mais tout de même que'qu'chose de louche ici. This Pawlu: were they Wild Wa, perhaps? Was Yang leading the column into a lion's den? Most logically Yang would attach himself to an opium run and push on to Lashio and Mandalay. But what then? What was in those footlockers? His future.

Olevskoy reverted to his sexual reveries. Would it be possible, he wondered, to create a young woman who literally could not sleep without it? Two of them, perhaps, each renewing the other's ardor. No, no. Perverse.

General Yang's pony ambled along as if retired from a mail route, and the general let himself be lulled. He had begun to recognize the countryside, mainly by looking back, as he had seen it first while entering China; stretches of trail now seemed familiar, and oddly contoured hilltops. Within half a day they should strike a green valley running south, perhaps brown at this season, but fringed by stately mountain oaks.

At need he could set the footlockers one atop the other on his knees. Even the smallest aircraft would suffice. He spun visions: a landing field, a car purring, a warm hotel with a cocktail bar, no, not a bar, what did they call it? A lounge, a cocktail lounge. A tailor then. A small house, eventually, with a view of mountains or river, perhaps both, classically Chinese, all those scrolls of mountains and rivers, the single gnarled tree, the single fishing boat. A salon facing south and a studio facing north. Perhaps he would marry again, perhaps a housekeeper would do. The promptings of the flesh were feeble now and intermittent, to say the least; was he only tired, or truly aging?

Well, much to do still. Wild Wa, Pawlu, Olevskoy, thirty-three—no, thirty-two now—men learning freedom and perhaps rebellion. His control more tenuous, less satisfying each day. Only let Greenwood be there! He could handle Greenwood. Major Wei: he must do something generous for Major Wei.

They were strung out along a slope, shambling westward and scanning ridges and valleys to the south, when they saw, high on the next ridge, half a mile from them and a bit below, three short, dark men—presumably men—surely men, as the glasses focused, with straight black hair and wide, flat noses. Yang lowered the glasses. “One rifle. A crossbow, I think. The village higher on the ridge: you can see smoke.”

“I saw.” Olevskoy emitted a scornful, sickened grunt. “Wild Wa! Wild animals!”

“With a religion,” Yang said, “and a strict moral code.”

“That's about eight hundred meters,” Olevskoy said. He called to a corporal. “Your rifle.”

“A vain and foolish cruelty,” Yang said.

Olevskoy sighted and fired; donkeys bucked.

“High,” Yang said, “and see them scatter! They disppeared into the brush like rabbits.” The glasses fell to his chest. “Possibly a good idea. The warning shot across the bow.”

“Animals,” Olevskoy said.

And that was all: two days more, six meals, two nights' deep sleep in the nippy mountain air. Yang suffered fresh pangs at each landmark. He had been five years younger. It seemed an infinity of time, as if he had aged by a generation in those five years. He led them down and down, to a grassy plateau that seemed a valley and that gave way to accommodating foothills, rolling and green even in winter, and then along shadowed, verdant trails by a whispering brook. He halted the column, turned to encourage his men with a wave and a smile, and led them up onto a road. A serious, broad road, suitable for civilian horsemen, for merchants' carts. The men exclaimed. He led them south.

Between the lines of cage they halted. In silence they contemplated the grotesque human heads in their tiny barred bamboo cells, like counters in some grisly game. The afternoon light fell clear on the living, and sharpened each wrinkle in flesh or cloth, polished each glitter of metal, blanched the skin's pallor. General Yang realized that they were all exhausted, physically and morally. Not sleepless; not diseased; not starved; in Fang-shih most had found food, women, liquor, beds. A deeper exhaustion, an exhaustion of years and not of weeks. They were strong, healthy men, yet a company of ghosts, exiled and empty. A chill fell upon his heart.

So this was the end of the odyssey, the epic journey: Peking, Paris, thirty years of army life, innumerable wars that constituted in truth one long war: Shanghai and Taierhchuang, Burma and again Peking, Manchuria and Huai-Hai and Kunming and the Salween, barracks and tents and hotels and hovels, and now this road lined with miniatory gibbets and gory bandits' heads. Welcome, General Yang. Welcome to the future.

“We shall bivouac east of the road,” he told Olevskoy, “and we shall not cross the road without permission.”

Olevskoy was startled. “Pawlu?”

“Pawlu,” said General Yang.

10

Rendezvous in Pawlu

The Sawbwa was inclined to give great weight to Green Wood's opinions, this because his own, though tenaciously held, were few; and because he was grateful, Green Wood being American and the Sawbwa clearly remembering that Americans were good; and because he was still ashamed that when, at Green Wood's advent years before, a natural indifference to fine foreign distinctions had led Wan to refer to “this Englishman,” the Sawbwa had stubbornly detested the foreigner for three months.

Later the gods had offered unmistakable signs that the Sawbwa was forgiven his sins of snobbery and prejudice: Green Wood had left Pawlu upon a rumor of war and had then, miraculously, returned with a trove of arms, in the guise of a warrior, roaming the Shan States, doing good works and coming home always to Pawlu. The arrival of the general and his enthusiastic participation in actions against the Japanese, the Wild Wa and stray bandits had also gratified the Sawbwa. He had noted that it pleased old Phe-win, Huchot's successor, Wan and Kin-tan as well, though he was never certain why. (It was because General Yang had cheerfully placed himself under Green Wood's command. This eminent humility, not to mention good sense, was a rarity at any level, and won the general not merely respect but outright affection.)

So now four years and more after the war, in a cold month and the poppies ripe, the Sawbwa sent for Green Wood, and once more the council sat about a fire before the Sawbwa's house. He was delighted with this gathering, like a grandfather, and rejoicing in Green Wood's return he forgot Naung's news, and was disconcerted to hear Naung say, “Well, Green Wood. Your general has arrived.”

“No!” Greenwood's arms rose in ritual gratitude. “By the gods! Is this true?” So the old man had won through! Lost countless battles, crossed countless bridges, slugged his way through provinces and clawed his way over mountains, and here he was! Greenwood's luck! If it had held this far, it would hold to the end; suddenly and certainly he knew that. “Is he here in the village?”

From the north Lola twinkled toward them.

“He is across the road from East Poppy Field.”

Wan and Kin-tan did not appear suitably joyful.

Greenwood asked, “What is it? There is trouble. Is he wounded? Sick?”

“He enjoys good health,” Naung said regretfully. “He is not alone.”

Za-kho joined them and set a jug of rum before Naung, who plied it and passed it along.

“Of course not,” Greenwood said. Rum at sunset; Shan; mountains; Loi-mae and Lola; Yang and the bones! “His bodyguard.”

Naung waited until Greenwood was in the act of drinking, and said, “A bodyguard of thirty-two fully armed soldiers, one of whom is a Big Nose and a colonel.”

Greenwood lowered the jug.

Lola scampered into the circle, hugged Naung and came to cuddle Greenwood. Playfully she grasped the jug.

“Wait, Lola,” Greenwood said softly. “Not now.”

“Thirty-two,” Naung said. “Four light machine guns, automatic rifles, a full range of rifles, carbines, side arms and grenades, and a sufficiency of ammunition.”

Lamely Greenwood said, “Gifts for Pawlu?”

“You speak foolishness.”

“And an American colonel?”

“American or Englishman or Frenchman, who can tell?”

“The general is a man of good bones,” Wan said.

“All the same,” Naung said, “no one enters or leaves Pawlu without my permission.”

Within the crook of Greenwood's arm, Lola too was subdued.

The Sawbwa cleared his throat, croaked, and sat taller. “As to that, the Sawbwa has a word to say.” He had quickened; it was as if his blood had begun to flow again after many years. “Naung is my First Rifle,” the Sawbwa began.

“Pawlu's,” Naung interrupted.

“But Yang is my friend and may call Pawlu home. To turn away friends is to offend the gods and nats, and would bring wrath and shame to our village.”

“It is not the general,” Kin-tan said. “The general may share my house and my cook-pot. He is a friend, as you say. But thirty-two armed men!”

“Where are they camped?” Greenwood asked.

“In the clearing by the white-pebbled stretch of stream, just across the road,” Naung said. “I have tripled the guard and postponed the harvesting of yen. Maybe”—he brightened visibly—“the Wild Wa will wipe them out.”

Greenwood made a sick mouth. “Thirty-two!”

The Sawbwa said, “With Green Wood he beat off the Wild Wa, in the last year of the Japanese, before the monsoon.”

“Thirty-two,” Naung echoed, ignoring the Sawbwa, “and they have come bumbling through the forest like a herd of elephants and brought a war party of Wild Wa behind them.”