The Blue-Eyed Shan

by Becker, Stephen;

  He had never been so happy and was intelligent enough to fear that he would never again be so happy. He heard in February of 1942 that the Japanese were invading Burma. Pawlu considered this irrelevant, at most insulting. Now and then bizarre tales prowled the mountains: the Dalai Lama was dead, Lung Yun had executed a Yunnan sawbwa, there was a road all the way from Lashio to Kunming littered with the corpses of foreign vehicles, opium was once more legal in China. (This last was exaggerated by Pawlu’s natural desire for a favorable balance of trade. Opium was legal only in Japanese-occupied territory.)

  Greenwood lit a cheroot and agreed that this was a degenerate age. He did not change his way of life. He made cooing sounds to his daughter and inexhaustible love to his little woman. In early April he parleyed with a Kachin amber merchant who mentioned the influx of Americans. Greenwood chuckled: a few diplomats and businessmen must indeed seem like a mob if they were American. Americans spoke loudly.

  No, no. Soldiers.

  The Kachin was only gossiping and had nothing to gain by lies. He was uncertain what a fleet consisted of, but reported that even before invading Burma the Japanese had, somewhere east of Shanghai, destroyed the entire American fleet—ferries, was it? gunboats? yes, yes—sending a ten, or perhaps ten tens, of aircraft to accomplish this with large bombs. The Kachin himself had spoken to Americans recently, down by Maymyo. All this was true, by the gods, and the great places of Asia were now Japanese. Singapore, which had once been English even as Burma was. Indochina. Siam. The Philippines. He believed the Siamese government had declared war on America; that was serious.

  A rush of patriotism stunned Greenwood. Anger shook him, and he asked, “Have the Japanese set foot in America?”

  The Kachin shrugged. “How can one know? Far places, far places.”

  Greenwood then forfeited all standing as an anthropologist by blurting, “Those buck-toothed bowlegged sons of bitches!”

  The Kachin smiled. “They will free Burma. You watch.”

  Loi-mae knew immediately that the axis of Greenwood’s world had tilted. He loomed in the doorway and explained. Loi-mae stepped to the cradle and took up their daughter. Greenwood said miserably, “We agreed I could not stay forever.”

  “All the same I am heartsick,” she said.

  Greenwood saw her fresh, not the native mistress but the wife and mother. He saw himself fresh, and he knew what treason was. “I too am heartsick,” he said, and he had not seen much betrayal or death, rapine or destruction, so he wept openly before her.

  And then Greenwood the father, Greenwood the Shan, no longer the gangling student but well fleshed and muscled, Greenwood who had toiled in the fields, stood sentry, tapped poppies, sat on the men’s side at weddings, attended village meetings, shot game, been honored with tattoos, been mocked for pride when his little woman swelled and his firstborn was delivered, stood humbly before Pawlu and its Sawbwa and tried to say why he must leave. The men sat to one side and the women to another, and the sun westered low, the sky rosy. Yes, his woman was here. Yes, his daughter was here. Yes, the people of Pawlu were his people. Yes, his heart was a cracked bell.

  But the land of his ancestors had been attacked. The graves of his ancestors had been desecrated. His father and mother had no other son. To fail them would be to insult the gods.

  The Sawbwa understood these arguments.

  How would Phe-win feel, or Wan or Mong or Kin-tan, if the Japanese came to Pawlu? If they took the women, the crops, the silver, if they quartered themselves upon the people?

  The Sawbwa understood these arguments too.

  Greenwood would leave his silver and his amber, and wanted only a pony, to take him to Kunlong and then Hsenwi.

  The Japanese were attacking the English?

  They were.

  The Sawbwa himself detested the English.

  Greenwood sat silent.

  But it was not given to man to know the gods’ intent. The Sawbwa would not oppose his departure.

  Pawlu would weep for its loss but would send him on his way with blessings.

  Loi-mae too understood but her anguish could not be contained; it spilled over in silent tears. Greenwood was unable to explain the ferocity of his reaction, the depth of his need to go; it was as if he were some primitive warrior who had never been blooded and could not bear the shame of it.

  Next morning—ashamed, angry, sure that he was defying the gods, fate, luck, but unable to hang back—he bound his bedroll, strapped on the 1917 Smith & Wesson .45 revolver he had never fired in anger, touched every hand in Pawlu, embraced Loi-mae and hugged Lola tight, and started down the trail to Kunlong with Kin-tan for guide and escort the first day.

  He pushed hard. In Kunlong he saw Chinese soldiers, on their caps white suns against blue, and this seemed incorrect; but he reminded himself that the Japanese would seem even less appropriate. He rode on to Hsenwi and was dazzled: Chinese troops and trucks jammed the roads. Rather, Chinese troops and American trucks. The noise deafened him. The trucks seemed to be headed for China. Why Chinese troops in Burma? Where were the Americans? The British? Somebody must be going south to Lashio!

  He was hungry, he was tired, he was disoriented. Here in Hsenwi he was also hot, and the trucks raised dust. He wore cotton dungarees and a blue cotton work shirt and sweated himself muddy. “Where’s the horse market?” he bawled. A scuttling Burman started in alarm and waved uncertainly. Greenwood waited for a break in traffic and urged his pony across the road, into an alley, toward the river. Vehicles rumbled, horns blared, the pony shied.

  He sold the pony cheap, an ounce of silver, and felt worse, more treacherous and cowardly, betraying the beast than leaving Pawlu; it was as if he had sold the pony for the cook-pot. He shouldered his bedroll, checked his pistol and headed for the Lashio Road. Trucks rumbled by, all on their way to China. He crossed a bridge. On the west bank of the river he sat on his bedroll and waited.

  An hour later, under hot cloudless skies, a dusty automobile halted at his wave. “Lashio!” he cried. The driver, a Burman, waved him aboard impatiently. Greenwood never knew what the man’s errand was. They bucked and twisted their way to Lashio, arriving at sunset. “No more,” said the driver. “English car. Stop here.”

  “South,” Greenwood said. “I want to find the Americans.”

  “Lorry.” The Burman pointed down a road. “Much lorry.”

  Greenwood hopped out and trotted down the road in the gray-green twilight. Lashio swarmed with trucks; its very air was exhaust. He found a truck depot (shortly he would learn to call it motor pool) full of Chinese troops, and made himself heard over the roar of engines: “Americans! The American army! Where is the war?” No one listened, no one understood. He spotted what seemed to be a dispatcher’s shed and pushed through the doorway.

  A number of Chinese officers were obviously in full dispute. They fell silent and goggled at him. “I want to go south to join the Americans,” he said quickly. “I want a truck headed south. Can you help me?”

  All but one Chinese showed incomprehension or sullen resentment. The one exception, a ranking officer by the look of his shoulder boards, turned a round face to him and smiled a blinding smile. “Well! Company! I too swim against the tide. Can you drive a camion?”

  “I can drive anything,” Greenwood said. “All these trucks are headed the wrong way. Is the war over? Have the Japanese invaded the United States?”

  “The war has only begun. No one has invaded the United States. I shall explain later. For the moment you are an American intelligence officer with vital information, and you must find the Chinese Fifty-fifth Division. Is that clear?”

  “Absolutely. Speed is essential.”

  “I like you, laddie,” said the Chinese. “Show me identification and behave imperiously.”

  Greenwood dug out his passport and glowered. He spoke forcefully. The Chinese officer translated. Other officers bestirred themselves reluctantly. In half an hour Greenwood was at the wheel of a six-ton truck—a F
ord, of all things—blaring his way southward, his headlights boring through a thronged Lashio. “I haven’t driven for two and a half years,” he said. “Christ, they’re all coming north! It’s not a retreat; I don’t see soldiers; what the hell is going on?”

  “My English is rusty,” said his companion. “By the way, I am Major General Yang Yu-lin.”

  “A major general! My name’s Greenwood. I’m an anthropologist.”

  “And why have they sent an anthropologist here?”

  “They haven’t,” Greenwood said, wondering if he should add “sir.” “I was in the Shan States for two years, more, two and a half. I just heard about the war a few days ago and I figured I better come out and be useful.”

  “Ah. An idealist. I feel much the same. It is not easy to be useful.”

  “Can you tell me what’s happening? What’s the situation?”

  “The situation.” Yang pondered. “You may not know that in nineteen forty the Germans swept through France and France simply collapsed. A few brave men stood their ground and died. Otherwise it was France repeating and paying for all her ancient sins, corruption, greed, cowardice, complacency, class. To a Chinese that sounds familiar. It was the end of the world, and during the retreat, somewhere along a hot dusty road crammed with refugees, crippled tanks, ambulances, horses and wagons, babes at the teat, fancy cars, deserters and trapped tourists, somewhere along that Via Dolorosa a journalist approached a wounded captain of French infantry, haggard and hobbling, and asked him for an appraisal of the situation. ‘The situation,’ said the captain, ‘is desperate but not serious.’”

  “Oh good God,” Greenwood said. “I knew there was a war in Europe. What else have the Germans got?”

  “Europe. They’ve invaded Russia.”

  “Holy Jesus,” Greenwood said. “What about here and now?”

  Yang recited a brief history of the war in Asia.

  “Then why are these trucks rolling north?”

  “Ah, well, you see, China needs supplies. It is now Chinese habit—” The general held his peace while Greenwood maneuvered past a file of dazzling headlights, skidding off the shoulder at one point but recovering quickly. “—Chinese habit to consider all battles lost but the war won. If you find this confusing, it is because you are limited intellectually, and do not possess a subtle Oriental mind.”

  The general was smiling again, teeth gleaming in the glare of oncoming headlights.

  “We need supplies, you see.” The general’s tone was calm, amused, only faintly ironic. “We Chinese, that is. We need them in order to lose more battles but win the war. These trucks are of value in themselves; they also carry arms, fuel, spare parts, tires, personal effects, sealed chests of Burmese jade and silver, antiquities, and, I imagine, spools of electric wire, radio sets, boots, canteens and misdirected payrolls.”

  Greenwood groaned.

  “Indeed. We have a general, you see, called Yü Fei-p’eng, who is in charge of transport. His mission is not to send a maximum of matériel to the front in a maximum of working trucks. That would be very Occidental and unsubtle. His mission is to withdraw as much matériel as possible from a lost battle so that we can win the war.”

  “Then Burma’s lost?”

  “No, but I fear it will be shortly. Then, you see, General Yü’s wisdom will be validated; having salvaged great quantities of this and that, including some personal fortunes, surely including his own, he will be awarded a medal and promoted.”

  “And why are you the exception?” Greenwood asked. “And why do you talk with a burr?”

  “I was tutored once by a Scots lady,” said General Yang. “I have been seconded to the Fifty-fifth Division and am merely obeying orders.”

  “Nobody else is obeying orders.”

  “On the contrary, everybody is. You forget: all battles are lost if they require combat. Patriotism demands that we withdraw in good order.”

  “Well, we’ll find your Fifty-fifth,” Greenwood said. “I wish I knew more about war.”

  “Never say that, laddie,” General Yang admonished him. “Your wish may come true.”

  They struggled south for two long days against a swelling stream of northbound traffic, more and more of it on foot, more and more of it swathed in bloody rags. They discussed politics, the First World War, America, China, village life, the lost bones of Peking Man, unearthed outside that great city in the 1920s, and where were they now? “Ah yes, Sinanthropus pekinensis,” said the general. “A cousin at several removes. A scapegrace. The family has not heard from him for ages.” They discussed languages; Greenwood spoke English and Shan and read technical German; Yang’s mother tongue was Mandarin, his French perfect if accented, his English burred and enthusiastic, his German military, his Japanese rudimentary. They enjoyed each other’s company. Each was impressed, and saw in the other an exotic of distinction.

  Twice they filled their tank from jerricans. Traffic thinned. They found a wounded lieutenant who reported in full. The 55th had vanished. Burma was surely lost.

  “Drive me to Mandalay,” said General Yang to Greenwood, with a loose wave at the wall of shadowed forest. “Turn right somewhere.” Again that luminous, golden smile irradiated the Burmese twilight.

  The lieutenant declined a lift, and proceeded northward.

  In Maymyo the general and the anthropologist parted, firm friends, vowing reunion; they had, in the old phrase, made tea together and made water together. Yang attached himself to a Chinese unit retreating westward, and Greenwood haunted the small airport. He announced that he had just spent two years in the Shan States and had intelligence to deliver. By a combination of persistence, gall and tattoos he finagled himself aboard an RAF light bomber that barely lurched into the air from the short strip, and was flown, at the end of April and not a moment too soon, to Imphal in India.

  For some days no one had time for him. The withdrawal had become a rout, and Imphal was crowded. He cabled his parents, after a battle with olive-drab bureaucrats; he wrote to them, and to his university. In mid-May he heard that the Japanese had swept north through Burma, entered southwest China along the Burma Road and reached the gorge of the Salween. Loi-mae! Lola!

  A week later he stood at last before a sunburnt American colonel and asked to join the army.

  The colonel said, “Let’s see your draft card.”

  Greenwood said, “My what?”

  The colonel said, “Your draft card.”

  Greenwood said, “What’s that?”

  The colonel said, “Boy, where you been the last two years?”

  Greenwood told him.

  The colonel was no fool. He enjoyed war, did his job well, and knew exactly where to put Greenwood, who raised his right hand the next day and swore various preposterous oaths. This recruit was then questioned intensively about the Shan States; was asked to converse with a Shan porter, who confirmed that he spoke the language well, that his tattoos were genuine, and that he seemed to know the territory; was set to work with an American sergeant who could field-strip any American weapon while you poured him a cuppa joe and reassemble it before the coffee was cool enough to drink; was interviewed by the aftermentioned General Stilwell, now exhausted, whose resemblance to a jungle cockatoo almost made him laugh; and was, to his enduring astonishment, commissioned a lieutenant of infantry within thirty days.

  “Lieutenants have privileges,” the colonel said, “and your first privilege is, you are going to learn to use a parachute.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Greenwood said.

  “Wait a minute sir,” the colonel said.

  In August of 1942 Greenwood was dropped into a poppy field half a day’s ride from Loi Panglon. With him tumbled a radio so heavy as to be useless (it survived the fall but required its own donkey) and several crates of arms, ammunition and rations.

  He was met mysteriously by a band of laughing Kachin, who thought these methods of warfare a grand joke. Greenwood thought it a grand joke that, speaking South Shan fluen
tly and sporting Shan tattoos, he should have been plumped down among Kachin, where Jinghpaw was the lingo and the Wild Wa were thick as fleas. But he was then a veteran of three months in the army and understood that there was a right way, a wrong way and an army way.

  He enjoyed learning Jinghpaw. He enjoyed trotting about on a pony. He enjoyed shooting at Japanese. He enjoyed laying compass courses, sleeping in the open, sharing Kachin women and decorating his turban with finely worked bits of silver to commemorate successful skirmishes. He enjoyed glassing the hillsides and watching the Wild Wa watch him, little dark people who looked murderous, imps from hell, even at half a mile.

  Most of all, he enjoyed working his way east and south, toward Pawlu; and trotting down the road by East Poppy Field, turban off and blond hair, shaggy, for a passport, to take the track along North Slope and make his way, watched, challenged, greeted with uproar, back to Loi-mae. He was in exuberant health and spirits. They coupled four times that night, a catalogue, a primer of pornography, and Greenwood made Pawlu his headquarters. Japanese were few in these hills but he roamed miles to fight his war, joining his Kachin warriors near Mong Paw or Mong Si or Mong Hawn, swooping about the border area like some flying battalion out of a boys’ book, destroying whole Japanese patrols and the small fortified camps they used as field headquarters, firing at Japanese aircraft in sheer optimism, returning always, after days or weeks or months, to make certain of Pawlu’s peace.

  In 1943 he branched out: in addition to the occasional pilot off course, shot down, victim of mechanical failure, he had various British and American invasions and campaigns to keep track of, bits of fact and rumor racing through the jungle or across the plain. Greenwood’s radio was long dead. He sent dispatches as best he could, suffered mild guilt as he fought his private war, fun, fun, he blew up a bridge, he raced north through Kachin territory to divert the Japanese from an operation called Galahad, he fought through the monsoon in the summer of 1944 because to the Americans war was not a seasonal occupation. Greenwood understood. Had he been told that the war was to last forever, his eye might have sparkled.