The Blue-Eyed Shan (31 page)

Olevskoy was neither subhuman nor insane. He now mocked himself. But his eye glittered and his blood simmered.

“I suppose you had no choice,” Greenwood was saying, “but it's a whole damn army.”

Yang spoke wearily. “What can that matter? Think, laddie, think what we have here. What can you matter or I or even Pawlu?”

“You're wrong. These bones and this village—”

“Half a million years, you said. The oldest
group
, you said. Chou Kou Tien was a village too, you said, a village like Pawlu in its own way, five hundred thousand years ago. What does Pawlu give the world but opium? Mankind has just fought two long wars and killed some hundred million people in half a century, to very little effect; and you boggle at this risk? These bones are like a piece of the beginning of the universe.”

Greenwood's mind dwelt on Loi-mae and Lola, on the bonds of flesh, on Lola's leap to womanhood; on the Little River Mon and the seeded fish and the rum and tobacco and yen at nightfall. “I boggle,” he said.

“Then back off,” Yang said, “and stay here, but for God's sake help me first. Only help me aboard that plane. Greenwood! I am a retired general, a permanently defeated field marshal of lost causes. I have wasted a life! I am a human sacrifice to fools and knaves! I have nothing to show for decades of work, pain, wounds, idiot honor in a world of thugs—”

They started like thieves when Naung emerged from the night. “Blessings and greetings,” said the Shan.

“Greetings and blessings.”

“All is well? Do you require rum? tobacco? yen?”

“All is well,” Greenwood said, “but these new dangers are my fault, or so it seems to me.”

“The sentries are three-deep and the village stands safe,” Naung said politely.

“Then sit,” Greenwood invited him. “Be at home.”

“In the House of the Dead?” Naung allowed a quick smile.

“Then command me.”

“I cannot command you, and you know it.”

“Then ask.”

“I ask in the name of all: join our council.”

When Greenwood had translated, the general said, “I will not leave these boxes.”

Naung shrugged. “Bring them. And your weapons.”

“Always,” said the general.

So Naung and Greenwood and General Yang walked beneath the stars, each outlander bearing a footlocker. “So many stars,” Greenwood said. “Like snow, like all the grains of sand on all the shores of all the seas.”

“Or all the words in all the languages,” Naung said.

Greenwood laughed, well rebuked, and shut up.

“Any one of us would give his life for Pawlu,” Kin-tan said reasonably, “so we are prepared to give yours at need.”

Greenwood found this inarguable, so did not protest.

“How simple was the war,” said Mong.

“Now we must fight on two fronts,” Wan said.

“And one of them is no front at all,” Kin-tan said, “but a myriad of shadows. Green Wood: can we hire these Chinese?”

“Hire, perhaps. Not trust. Who rides the tiger …”

“Come to the point,” said Mong. “What are your own plans? Tell me the truth, now.”

“Remind me of one lie I have ever told you.” Greenwood laid a firm hand on Mong's forearm.

“This quest for eminence,” Mong muttered.

Mong was not often glum.

“I hope to put the general aboard an aircraft, with luck tomorrow, and to remain with you until these dangers are past.”

“And the eminence?”

“And my tattoos? And my daughter? And my blood that sank into Shan soil?”

A rumble of approval cleared the air. This was oratory.

“Then to work,” Kin-tan said briskly. “An order of battle.”

“Let Green Wood speak,” the Sawbwa said.

“Naung is First Rifle,” Greenwood said. “Green Wood fought the harder war,” Naung said.

Greenwood, vigilant at this excessive courtesy, said, “Naung too has fought his wars, and here and now he is the better man. I wish that he and I had fought side by side in the big one.”

“As to that”—briefly Naung's face lit up, elfin, v's and creases—“I am not sure to this day who was my friend and who my enemy.”

General Yang sat between his footlockers. He obviously understood little of this, and seemed a weary intruder, a traveler tired of his journey, an old man in danger of flab and ennui.

“The boy Jum-aw could be useful,” Wan said.

“He has been useful to my daughters,” Mong said lugubriously, and the tension vanished in a rattle of laughter.

“No help for it,” Kin-tan said. “We must sacrifice these Chinese.”

“We cannot,” said the Sawbwa.

“I stand with the Sawbwa,” said Ko-yang. “He has invited the Russian.”

“The Russian will not again enter Pawlu,” Naung said.

It was in the open now, but this was no time for faction; Mong spoke quickly. “Say our lines hold. Say the Wild Wa drive the Chinese across the road. Then one question alone must be answered tonight, and the rest can wait until this war ends: Do we exterminate the Chinese at the road and fight the Wild Wa alone; or do we admit the beleaguered Chinese as allies?”

“Now that is clearly stated,” Kin-tan said.

“We admit the Chinese, with the Russian,” said the Sawbwa.

“We admit the Chinese, with the Russian,” said the Sawbwa.

“We admit no foreigner whatever,” said Naung. “The Russian said he would take this village. With my own ears I heard him say this, in the language of the French.”

Ko-yang scowled. “If we are plucking all the feathers, then I will pluck this one: I think you say that because Green Wood's return has made you uneasy, and you see all foreigners as one foreigner.”

“This is strong speech for a young warrior,” Mong said.

“Ko-yang has a duty to speak plainly,” Naung said. “Life and death are at stake.”

“But to doubt your words is to pass the bounds,” Wan said.

Ko-yang said, “True. I do not give Naung the lie. I only believe that he look a jest for a threat, and I stand by my Sawbwa.”

“And I say we must welcome our Chinese brothers.”

“There speaks a Chinese Sawbwa,” said Naung.

“A sawbwa has no nation but only his people,” said the Sawbwa, “and I am a Shan as was the sawbwa before me, and the Shan of Pawlu are vowed to the Way.” He dabbed at the white froth in the corners of his mouth. His marbled eye rolled fiercely. “To kill an enemy is not the Way, but we accept imperfection. To kill a friend is not the Way and would be not imperfection but sin.”

“To die is surely more virtuous,” Naung said.

“All saints have believed that,” Greenwood said.

“But you and I are not saints,” Naung said.

“It seems to me,” Wan began with dignity, “that perhaps the question is less elevated. We do not know the number of Wild Wa. If it is a raid of impulse they will content themselves with a few Chinese heads and return to Ranga. But if it is a war, if every able-bodied Wild Wa is under arms—”

Oppressed, they sat quietly until Kin-tan said, “It is surely sinful, but there is only the one strategy: the Chinese are intruders, and must bear the brunt.”

“Well then, the remnant must be taken in,” said the Sawbwa.

“I will not object to that,” said Mong.

“I will,” said Naung.

“I am with the Sawbwa,” said Ko-yang again, and Wan and Kin-tan joined him.

“The remnant will be expelled or shot dead,” Naung said. “There will be no armed foreigners in Pawlu while I am First Rifle.”

Only the low crackling of the fire and the Sawbwa's asthmatic indignation relieved a grim silence.

“In war,” Wan said, “the First Rifle commands.”

“So say I,” Kin-tan told them.

“Well and good,” Mong agreed.

“The Sawbwa blessed my marriage,” Ko-yang said. “If the Sawbwa is no Sawbwa, can a Rifle be a Rifle? Will a father be a father, a son a son?”

The silence resumed. Greenwood knew what they were waiting for, and experienced great vexation of spirit. He had earned the right to speak, but only to speak as a Shan. As Yang's comrade-in-arms, he was an intruder; as a foreigner, with an obscure kinship to the Russian, he was seditious; as an American social scientist, he was irrelevant, as superfluous as the Sawbwa and Za-kho, who sat here unarmed. There was Naung with the mitraillette to hand; next Wan and Kin-tan, rifles within reach, pistols at the belt, daggers; Mong with a carbine, a baby Nambu pistol, a Shan dagger; the general's ninemillimeter Canadian Browning a permanent appendage like a goiter, a deformity banal and disregarded; Greenwood himself, the humanist, with a tommy gun and a .45; more weapons in Pawlu than men, women and children. What were a few lives? Chinese lives at that. Nevertheless.

“No,” he said.

General Yang drew a packet of Chinese cigarettes from the pocket of his tunic. He passed the packet. It was declined with grunted thanks. Yang lit up and exhaled gusts of smoke. It was evident that he had grasped little, and was exhausted.

“There is another loyalty,” Greenwood began, and could not go on; his mind balked; even the Shan language fled. Good Christ! Loyalty! To the race of man? All men are brothers? He felt a great fool, an interplanetary tourist, but gathered scraps of moral courage for a last attempt. “Naung: now above all I would wish to be your friend, but now above all I must be a Rifle. When my own country made its revolution against the British—”

“Good, good!” cried the Sawbwa.

“—one of us said,” and he paused to frame the translation, which flowed smoothly enough, “‘We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.'”

“Poetry,” Naung said.

“Tactics,” Greenwood corrected him, and felt the first faint beat of guerrilla's blood. “The Wild Wa can annihilate small units. With the Chinese we are twice the force. Let them in. Let them ring us about. Let us man the inner ring behind them. In a day or two or three, with Pawlu's weapons and the Chinese machine guns, the Wild Wa will be halved and will slink home.”

“And when the Wild Wa slink home, and the Chinese reverse their guns and command the poor surrounded villagers of Pawlu?” Naung hawked contemptuously and spat a fat gob into the flames.

Greenwood wanted to say, “Never,” and call upon the general to witness, to swear a solemn oath; he remembered Yang's praise of the Chinese fighting man at Taierhchuang. But he also remembered the famous Fifty-fifth. And he remembered other Russian Whites, other Olevskoys, Denikin, Kolchak, Semenov, massacres, betrayals, savage and fiendish atrocities. He could not answer.

Naung harried him. “Say we let them in. Say they ring us about. Say the Wild Wa slink home. Will you help us then to wipe them out?”

And if not, hold your peace.

“What is all this?” asked General Yang. He yawned prodigiously.

“We're trying to extricate your troops,” Greenwood said.

“Very good. Let me know if I can be of help.”

“The boy must make contact with the Wild Wa,” said Wan.

“Foolishness,” said Mong. “They will gobble him alive. I told you once.”

“He's a Tame Wa,” Greenwood said. “They'll take his head like any foreigner's.”

Gloomy, reluctant, conciliatory, the Sawbwa spoke: “We must use all foreigners first. Even my Russian friend. Even Green Wood's Tame Wa.”

With that, Greenwood experienced a curious sense of release, as if he were no longer in this house, no longer a Shan—and further stirrings of anger and pugnacity, warlike impatience, his breath shallow and tight, his skin crawling; in his nostrils a cruel reminiscent whiff of gunpowder, in his heart a cruel nostalgic wrench. By God! How long had it been since he killed a man? Or wanted to? Ah, holy simplicity!

Wan pursued his idea: “He will tell them that they may have all the Chinese heads they want but must not cross the road.”

“He'll be dead before he sees them,” Greenwood said.

“We must keep those Chinese confined,” Naung said, “not only east of the road but blocked north and south. Here is what must be done.”

They hunched attentively, Greenwood along with the rest. “How is your stock of grenades?” Greenwood asked.

Olevskoy lay beneath the stars amused by Greenwood's moment of speechless shock. They all wanted it, didn't they! And damn little else! They pretended, they lied, they squirmed, but they all burned for it. Some were open, like the Muslims with their four wives and obliging boys. Americans liked to show indignation. The British—British well, there were so many kinds of British, the English gentleman, the Antipodean roughneck, the Cockney. Perhaps the Australians were not British. A strange race. One day there would be one race only, everywhere, a world of mutts.

Or would we all be like that girl? Devoutly to be wished. That glossy hair, floating, the color of alfalfa honey at Sobolyevo. Obviously the American's daughter. And at home he is doubtless impotent. He was here for those footlockers, and not for glory, women or rule. As if this whole rotten civil war had been a conspiracy to transport those silly wooden boxes from one corner of China to another. If Yang should be killed … so light, so light, what the devil—the bones of his ancestors! Some joke there but some truth also. By God, that girl!

And those animals in the forest. Poisoned darts, possibly. Witchcraft, their women at home, crooked, gnarled, drinking blood.

Down the road with her, toward Siam. Not a bad little country. Temples and dancing women.

Or take Pawlu. To rule here! Sobolyevo in Burma!

But the victor never sleeps easy; Major Wei was right.

Siam. Yes.

“He will not stay,” Naung said flatly. The American and the general had returned to the House of the Dead. The fire burned low, the order of battle was clear, cheroot smoke perfumed the night.

Kin-tan was equally positive. “He will stay.”