Blue Poppies

by Jonathan Falla

  The caravan crept onward, the noise of a hundred or more people and their pack animals little more than a rustle, a soft thumping that the river sounds absorbed. No child’s cry, no pan clanging, no rocks kicked aside to crash into the gullies. Only, once, a small snort from a pony—but they did not stop moving and the Chinese flare did not burst out.

  Still Jyeko crept along the path.

  They traveled on for three hours more and then stopped. They were frightened of losing each other in the night. If a family went astray now, not only might they perish, they might also fall into Chinese hands and give the whole caravan away. So they halted and rested as best they could, huddled by the baggage without putting up the tents. They allowed no fires until dawn, the hour when the light of the flames was lost and a faint mist concealed the smoke. Filling themselves quickly with barleymeal and thick buttered tea, they stripped the bandaging from the animals’ feet and their own boots, remounted and set off again, sagging with weariness.

  At the head of the caravan rode Jamie, tugging the radio mule and its quivering flag mast. As they pulled away from the resting place, a Khampa youth rode up and clapped Jamie on the shoulder: “Hey, Mr. Jemmy, we fooled the Chinese! Brilliant, hey?”

  But Jamie gave him such a scowl that the young man backed off, puzzled and hurt. Jamie rode on, nodding drowsily in the saddle, the radio mule’s flag bobbing in the cold morning air.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE CHINESE HAD wasted no time in returning to Jyeko.

  There was, after all, little to prevent them. Captain Duan had arrived at Chamdo in time to see the Commander of the Second Field Army (PLA) receiving the surrender of the Lhasan Governor, Ngabo Ngawang Jigme. The first stage of the occupation was over already.

  General Wang was feeling expansive: eastern Tibet had capitulated in less than a week with hardly a battle worth the name. When the PLA had closed in on Chamdo, chaos had ensued. Ngabo, an aristocrat of smooth manners and weasely policy, had fled the town, taking his officials and every available horse in a desperate scamper westward. Abandoned, betrayed, beside themselves with rage, the Khampa levies had run amok, looting and destroying everything remotely connected with the rule of Lhasa.

  For many years, a cruel story persisted about the fall of Chamdo: that there had been no battle, only fireworks. The Chinese, it was said, had set off a splendid display of rockets and fire-crackers in the hills above the town that had panicked the Tibetans. In fact, Governor Ngabo had not required sparklers to send him flying. He’d turned tail before the enemy arrived. The humiliation could not have been more complete. Around Ngabo’s residency, the tents and bivouacs of the Second Field Army now clustered.

  Chamdo was a shambles, with many buildings burned in the rioting, the military magazine blown to smithereens, the radio station wrecked. But here, as in Jyeko and every other town they had captured, Chinese policy was to woo the Tibetans: nothing to be seized without payment, nothing looted or razed, no one shot out of hand. Captured Tibetan soldiers had been handed their rifles back (empty) and were then filmed presenting them to the Chinese with fixed smiles of “Friendship,” after which, they’d been given a little money and told to go home. It was, to the ferocious Khampas, utterly bewildering.

  Captain Duan, exhausted, cold, famished, had ridden from Jyeko in sixteen hours overnight, but he requested an immediate interview with General Wang. In the course of this, he presented an account of events at Jyeko and gave his surmises as to the fate of the dead soldiers in the river. Forty minutes later, he emerged with the command of a punitive expedition and the rank of major. At dawn the next morning he was on the road back to Jyeko.

  He arrived the following afternoon to find the village virtually deserted. He rode through the familiar lanes, half expecting a sniper’s bullet. With every yard, every familiar lane, Duan’s anger intensified. Such humiliation! Fooled and butchered! He was not at heart a particularly hard or ruthless man; at least, he had not been born such, and in another time might have enjoyed a peaceable career in hydraulic engineering like Colonel Shen. But the desperate decades of civil war had taught him that his personal survival was largely in his own hands. If he must be zealous, he would not flinch. Thus, zeal had become a way of life.

  His men now smashed open the doors of every house but found almost no one. A handful of Tibetans were rounded up and taken to the monastery. There, just three monks remained, attending the very elderly Abbot who sat motionless and watched the troops with tiny, watery eyes as they waited for the Major.

  Duan’s progress through the village had led him, naturally, to the house where the radio had been installed and he himself had lodged. On reaching the gate, he found it shut but not barred. He dismounted, put a shoulder to the old timbers and opened it without difficulty. Again, he half expected a welcoming fusillade, but was met with silence.

  The British technician had obviously fled with the villagers. The door of the radio room was closed but, in the shed next to the stable, Duan could see the bulky generator on its stone foundations. Not something you’d carry away in a rush. In the stables themselves, however, Duan was surprised to find a mule and a pony. The animals stirred uneasily. He came out into the courtyard, momentarily uncertain.

  Then he saw the child. Dechen was standing in the doorway. She looked at him with the same clear gaze as her mother. Duan heard a voice call, “Dechen?” A moment later, the woman was there and staring in frozen alarm at the Chinese officer.

  Duan regarded them without speaking. Then he took a few steps towards them, his Tibetan speech awkward still but his manner punctilious. “Good afternoon,” he began. “I daresay you remember who I am.”

  The woman said nothing, but pushed the little girl indoors behind her.

  “I am surprised to find you still here,” Duan continued, “after all your compatriots have fled.”

  “I am unable to travel,” said the woman. Duan saw once more her misshapen leg and stick. He also noted again the two sturdy-looking animals in the stable.

  “I would have thought some arrangement could have been made. In a Chinese village you would have been better cared for. You’d not have been left alone.”

  “There are others here,” said Puton.

  “Yes,” said Duan. “We have found them. Incidentally, I have had the honor to be promoted since we last met. I am a major now. I shall lodge here again tonight.”

  He watched carefully for any reaction. She made none.

  “Do you have any objection?” he said.

  But she turned inside the house, leaving him there.

  Major Duan watched her go in some surprise—not least, that he had asked her if she had objections. This was a punitive expedition, for heaven’s sake! He took a few short strides to the doorway. She was clearing the room, gathering up some belongings and pushing them into large saddlebags. “We are not here on a courtesy call!” Duan barked at her back. Puton straightened and looked at him again. He continued, “It may not have escaped your notice that a number of Chinese soldiers have died in your disgusting hovel of a village. Men who brought freedom to Tibet.”

  “I am from Lhasa,” replied Puton. “This is not my village.”

  “So, you won’t be upset at its fate.” Duan spun on his heel. As he did so, three of his troops barged in through the gate—then saw him and stopped, unsure what to do next.

  “These people are to be left undisturbed,” said the Major. “I shall be lodging here tonight.” He called over his shoulder to Puton, “Make up a bed for me in this room.” Then he marched out of the gate.

  As Duan departed, Puton subsided onto the empty packing case that stood in the center of the now shambolic room. Jamie had taken his most precious and useful belongings, but had been forced to leave much behind: the forsaken books, equipment and surplus clothing were heaped in desolation. Puton had pushed them roughly together, clearing space for herself and Dechen.

  She regarded the untidy jumble with a weary shiver. She had expected that the C
hinese would return, though their speed had caught her by surprise. She had expected Duan’s return too, and had tried to gauge what that might mean for her. She’d recalled the silent stare he had been giving her the moment before they heard shots and shouting and he had run for his horse. She had tried to convince herself that he would be too busy at his commander’s behest to notice her again. But she had not predicted that he himself would be in command.

  So: once more, her fate was out of her hands. A shiver of dismay passed over her. All she could ever do was rise to meet the future as it closed on her. Taking this resolution literally, she stood, took a deep breath and decided to prepare food and tea; that at least might mollify the Major. She looked about to locate Dechen. She missed her—then saw that the little girl had gone into the main bedroom and was sitting on the kang, which Puton had lit to warm the house. Her daughter, on Jamie’s bed. Puton’s heart shrank, her eyes stung, her throat tightened. She bit her lip and went to the kitchen.

  She tried to stifle her terrors with activity. A week ago she had almost forgotten fear: she had been lifted above it, borne up by delight. But in Duan there was a quality that brought the terror screeching back into her head. It was his piercing watchfulness, as though he sought the weaknesses in everything and everyone he laid eyes on. She had felt that gaze laid on her.

  At the monastery, Major Duan spared himself the effort of haranguing the few remaining villagers. Nor was he going to butcher them. No slaughter of reprisal: General Wang had been coldly precise on this point. The assumption must be that the guilty had fled; those left behind, mostly elderly and infirm, were probably innocent. Thus, the gathered rump of Jyeko was curtly informed that the following morning their village would be destroyed. They themselves could go where they pleased: to seek shelter in other villages, to starve, beg, freeze or whatever, it now being late October. They would be permitted to take only what they could carry themselves; the PLA had need of any pack animals. The Abbot and his attendants, however, would be keeping Duan company. He had an idea that they might be useful in due course.

  It was now nightfall and Duan’s exhaustion was catching up with him. (By PLA standards he was an “older” officer, past his fortieth birthday.) He gave instructions for the morning, ordering his men to billet themselves in the plentiful empty houses. Then he returned to Jamie’s compound escorted by two junior officers and a bunch of troopers. On reaching the gate, however, he dismissed them all to occupy the house next door. Duan entered alone.

  He noticed at once that no bed had been prepared for him. His tired mind prickled as if at a challenge. He stepped back onto the porch and saw a light in the kitchen.

  “I requested you to make me up a bed,” he said from the doorway, his voice more coldly questioning than ferocious. Puton was tucking dung fuel into the stove under a pan of steaming water. She straightened, sitting silently on a crude three-legged stool that Jamie had made for her. She didn’t look up, but said: “There is the kang.”

  “Excuse me; I observe that the kang is occupied by yourself and your little girl. It is no business of the People’s Liberation Army to deprive a mother and child of their bed.”

  But the Major’s insistence that she sleep in comfort was less welcome than it might have seemed. With him installed in the main room, she was trapped. She’d have given much to return to her old quarters with a simple brazier for warmth.

  “If the meal is ready, I shall have it now,” said Duan.

  He ate exactly as Jamie had done, off the upturned packing case. She began to clear a space by the wall for his bedroll, feeling the eyes on her back as she worked. With her stick in one hand, shifting the junk was a laborious business. Major Duan said nothing: he neither berated her slowness, nor offered to help. He merely observed her.

  “We shall be leaving in the morning,” he said, as he washed down the simple food with unbuttered tea. “You also.”

  She turned sharply and stared at him. What was this? Where was he dragging her, and why? Major Duan enjoyed the effect. “I would prefer to stay in Jyeko,” she said.

  “But you tell me it is not your home.”

  “I have made it my home.”

  “You informed me that you came from Lhasa. I shall be accompanying General Wang to Lhasa shortly. It is my duty to see you safely returned to your family.”

  “I have no family,” she said desperately.

  “All the more reason why I should look after you. Such is the obligation on the People’s Liberation Army: to ensure the welfare of all Tibetans.”

  “Thank you, but I can—”

  “Everyone will be leaving tomorrow. I do not think that you can look after yourself in a deserted village, do you? Besides which, I cannot imagine why you should be so fond of a place in which you have apparently been heartlessly abandoned. Can you enlighten me on this point? You are, may I say, a well-made young woman.”

  She was flummoxed; she began to mumble something about “My daughter . . .”

  “Your little girl, of course, will be with us,” said Duan. A delicately sharpened edge came into his voice. “I shall be delighted to have your company on the road.”

  Her mind spun, her wits tied themselves in knots, her guts writhed and tightened. She could not think her way ahead of this. She put out one hand to the wall to steady herself and heard herself breathe quickly.

  Duan said: “Now, I have had several rather tiring days. I must sleep. If you have completed those preparations, I shall turn in.”

  So Puton passed this unhappy night in Jamie’s bed with Dechen. She slept poorly at first. There was no way of locking the door. She could perhaps have dragged the small writing table in front of it; this would not have withstood determined shoving, but she’d have woken at once with the noise. She had sensed, however, that the more challenge she offered to Major Duan, the more interested he became. She resigned herself to dozing fitfully and at last found a deep, weary sleep.

  She was awakened by a sharp rapping. Instantly, she sat up and stared—but no one entered. As Dechen stirred drowsily, other sounds reached them: the crisp call of orders and reporting, horses in the yard, boots and equipment on the porch. She opened the window shutters; the compound was full of soldiers. She shook Dechen awake and went to the door. There was no one in the front room. As Puton reached the doorway she heard Major Duan’s voice just outside. There he stood, his junior officers on the porch step below him receiving their instructions. In his hand, Duan held a bowl of steaming tea.

  At the sound of Puton’s stick, Duan glanced over his shoulder. “My men have taken the liberty of preparing breakfast in your kitchen. I woke you because we shall be leaving in approximately one hour. You should pack essential belongings at once. We shall bring the two animals in the stable for you and your child.”

  Puton backed indoors without a word. She was appalled at herself. Once again, the Major had preempted her. She returned to the bedroom and began to stuff warm clothing into panniers as fast as possible. Dechen watched, as unblinking and silent as ever.

  Shortly afterwards, she heard more shouting of orders. Most of the soldiers now left the yard at the trot, harried into action by their NCOs. Puton led Dechen cautiously to the kitchen. A pan of tea still simmered. They ate quickly.

  When they returned, Major Duan was in the house once more, packing his own two leather satchels.

  “Ready for our departure?” he asked, his voice kindly enough.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Eventually we shall come to Lhasa. On the way, however, I am obliged to seek out your village friends and hold them responsible for terrible deeds. This will not be a happy proceeding. But after that, I shall be taking you to Lhasa.”

  “Why . . . do you take me?”

  “Oh, not only you. The Venerable Abbot shall ride with us. He will be acting as an intermediary, do you see? Towards you yourself, though, I feel a particular duty. You will accept my protection, will you not?”

  She tried once more to th
ink her way past him, to be ahead of his scheming so that she could turn and face her fate. She began, “I am an ordinary Tibetan woman, no more.”

  Major Duan shrugged. “It is a central creed of Communism that we value the ordinary and the humble above all others. You won’t refuse my assistance, surely.”

  Almost every ounce of Puton desired to scream out, Yes! Yes, I refuse it! But deep within her, one self-preservatory particle whispered, Go along . . . Just for now . . .

  She said, “I want no special treatment. Only for my girl.”

  “I’m afraid that ‘special treatment’ for anyone would be a tall order in the coming days,” replied Duan. “There will be some hard traveling. You will have a military tent for yourself and your daughter that will be placed next to my own each evening. I would not have you exposed to the inadvertent roughness of the common soldier. We leave very shortly.”

  Thus, again, the terms of Puton’s life were dictated. She had no expectation of triumphing over this state of affairs. Hearing it from a Chinese, however, had an uncommonly aggravating effect. Like lemon juice on an oyster, it made her twitch helplessly.

  “I wish to travel in the entourage of His Holiness the Abbot,” she said.

  Duan dropped the two satchels by his side and straightened, looking at her piercingly. He took two strides to the door of the room and shut it. His movements never ceased to be crisp and drilled. Almost before she knew it, he was standing close to her.

  “You will listen carefully to what I say. There is no one else who can or will do anything for you. Is that clear? Tibet has fallen apart. There is no defense, there is no future that is not China. Now, you will be in my personal care. I ask you to consider well, and understand.”

  He put out a hand and took a light hold on her cheek and jaw. “I shall not harm you in any way,” he said. “Nor shall I touch you again without your consent.”

  She was rigid, every muscle locked tight, as she stared back at this sudden man. He let go her face and gave a quick, almost sheepish smile. “All in due course,” he concluded.