The Blue-Eyed Shan

by Becker, Stephen;

“Tell! I shall do better. I shall show, and if you like, you will buy.” With that he unslung his sack and set it in the road. Deftly he untied its mouth, dramatically he flung it wide and flat. His treasures lay heaped in the center. He sorted them with affection. “You see.” He displayed a small stone cruet. “In this is bat’s blood, for longevity and sexual prowess. And here”—he brandished a leather pouch—“are serpents’ tongues in great variety, including one of the king cobra and one of the krait, each wrapped in a patch of cleaned and boiled sheep’s intestine. These, of course, offer protection from snakebite but also from the priest’s-cowl-poison of Kachin arrows.”

  “How time alters all things,” Greenwood said sympathetically. “The Kachin have abandoned the crossbow for the rifle.” Priest’s-cowl-poison was aconite or wolfsbane, he knew.

  “Well, as an honest trader,” said the Tibetan, “I must confess that I have no defense against bullets. I have, however, this jade, and these, my prizes.” He untied a small square of yellow cloth; the yellow was well-chosen, and made a bright background, showing a dozen small flawed rubies to advantage.

  “You do this for two strangers,” Greenwood said, “who could leave you by the side of the trail with your throat cut, and make off with these wonders.”

  “It is,” the peddler explained, “as the Lord wishes.”

  “But I have no luck and little faith,” Greenwood said sadly, “and no wish to buy such beauty when some bandit will doubtless take my head soon and all the rest.”

  “And where are these bandits? Which way do you travel?”

  Greenwood waved vaguely. “Small east and big north. I confide this in a man of worth,” he added. “You will kindly not gossip.”

  “Have I gossiped with you?”

  “No indeed.”

  “Well then,” the beggar said. “Still, I may tell you that all is at peace Salween side. I travel down from small west big north, and there is little news. East of the Mekong, wars and cataclysms.”

  “And by what road did you come?”

  “Well, over many moons, Sumprabum and Myitkyina and Bhamo.”

  Greenwood knew the territory, and was disappointed; this was a well-traveled route, with rest houses and tea shops and occasional electricity now, and on the Irrawaddy north of Bhamo stout riverboats with stewards and teak fittings. He had hoped for more: high passes, monasteries, endless forest, the holy beggar passing unperceived among armies of hill bandits. Furthermore, it was of no damn use at all to know that Sumprabum and Myitkyina and Bhamo were calm; Greenwood had seen them all and was not headed that way now. “A long and arduous journey,” he said. “And what place claims the honor of your birth?”

  “Ah,” said the beggar, “it is a small place and you will not know it, but a holy place. Gyatsa Dzong.”

  “But who does not know of Gyatsa Dzong?” Greenwood protested. “It lies in eastern Tibet on the holy northern river, the Tsangpo, which in Assam is the Dihang and then the Brahmaputra known and revered the world over.”

  The beggar rejoiced with his eyes, his hands, the very arch of his back. “Oh my lord traveler! You have gladdened this unworthy servant! Can it be that you have seen Gyatsa Dzong?”

  “No, I have not,” Greenwood lamented. “Only heard, from those more fortunate.”

  The Tibetan bowed, acknowledging the compliment, and said, “And your own birthplace?”

  “Saint Louis, on the river Mississippi, which is also holy, and the town is named for a bodhisattva.”

  “Surely a great city.”

  “No, no.” Greenwood’s downcast eyes made his apologies. “Only eight or ten huts in the mud and snow, and its citizens smear themselves with yak butter and stink all summer.” He held forth the rubies, and the beggar took them casually, and bound them up. “We are heading into China and away from these peaceful hills,” Greenwood said, “so will have little need of rubies. In Motai and Fang-shih—tell me, old friend, is there gossip of Motai and Fang-shih?”

  “Well, Fang-shih is in China.” Swiftly the beggar retied his sack. “So there is plenty of trouble to come. I heard nothing of Motai.”

  “Will you eat a bit? Or take a potato?”

  “A Shan potato?” The beggar was overjoyed. Greenwood dug one out of his pack and and the man took it bobbing bows. “Peace and thanks.”

  “Strangers meet, and good is done,” Greenwood said.

  “So it should be always.”

  “Go with the Buddha, then.”

  “And you, lord traveler.”

  Greenwood and Jum-aw watched the old fellow trudge away, to the crest of the hill and out of sight.

  “He carried a knife,” Jum-aw said.

  “Of course he did. To slice potatoes, to skin hares.”

  “No hares for that one. He is of those Buddhists who will not eat meat.”

  “I have never truly understood,” Greenwood said. “There are Buddhists who will not eat meat, and there are Buddhists who live wholly off their herds, and I have known Burmese Buddhists to gorge themselves on chicken.”

  “And there are some who make fine soldiers,” Jum-aw said. “But not that one. That was a wasted encounter.”

  “Cheer up,” Greenwood said. “First, he was not a bandit. Second, all is well in Sumprabum, Myitkyina and Bhamo. Third, he will tell everyone he meets about the foreigner headed for Motai and Fang-shih.”

  Jum-aw liked the joke. “Which way is Fang-shih?”

  “The other way.”

  “And how do you know so much of Gyatsa Dzong?”

  “From maps and books,” Greenwood said. “It is probably eight or ten huts in the mud and snow, and its citizens doubtless smear themselves with yak butter and stink all summer.”

  “Then you are a liar,” Jum-aw said.

  “Oh yes.”

  Jum-aw laughed uproariously, so that Greenwood had to shush him. What with nats and bandits it was best to proceed with decorum.

  A fire was out of the question; late in the day they nosed up through pines and bracken, taking the ponies over heavy beds of pine needles to exasperate possible trackers. Jum-aw had spotted a clearing on a ridge; from the shelter of an adjacent grove they could look out over half China and half Burma, and take their rest in peace. “Bears cross such clearings,” Jum-aw said, “but there are none hereabouts, I believe.”

  “Do they eat plants or animals?”

  “They eat whatever is smaller than they are. Best of all, they like grubs and honey.” Jum-aw was tethering his pony to a pine.

  “Do your people ever hobble horses?”

  “What is ‘hobble’?”

  Greenwood explained.

  Jum-aw was emphatic. “A smart horse could reach the sea overnight in hobbles.”

  “Not the sea!”

  “It is a saying only. What will we eat? This mountain life makes an appetite.”

  “You are a city boy,” Greenwood scoffed. “Tonight we have cold barley instead of rice. Cold saing if you like, or cold chicken. Tea would be luxurious, but a fire is impossible.”

  “Fruit?”

  “The little red prunes. And oh yes, peanuts. Why do you ask? You helped me load. You know what we have.”

  “I know what we have. I do not know in what manner, or how quickly, you propose to consume it. A fire would be a blessing,” Jum-aw added wistfully. “Nights are cold in these hills.”

  “Not as cold as death.”

  “True. Then we must eat great quantities. For the inner fire.”

  They broke their bedrolls and shared the evening meal as the sun dimmed, filtering low through the grove behind them. To the east night gathered swiftly. “Plenty of Kachin in that night,” Jum-aw said.

  “Plenty of Shan too.”

  “A gentler people.”

  “Though fine warriors when the times demand it.”

  “And you too are a warrior?”

  “I was a warrior when the times demanded it,” Greenwood said.

  “And now?”

  Greenwood
hesitated.

  “If the question is less than polite,” Jum-aw said with care, “remember that we may die in these hills. I am less formal than in the town.”

  “It was not that. I am thinking how to explain. It is not easy to explain even to my own people. I study the ways of man.”

  “That is a considerable study.”

  “It is an endless study.” Night was rushing down upon them. An exhilaration close to fear, like chills and fever, coursed along his skin.

  “Does the work have a name? Are you a magistrate?”

  “The Shan have no word for it. I am a man of science, and my science is man. I am also a professor.”

  “I prefer to think of you as a warrior. Professors do not carry tamigans. What does this study teach you?”

  “Sometimes it teaches me that men and women behave as they do because of the rules they set themselves. Sometimes it teaches me that they set those rules because of the way they behave.”

  Jum-aw mulled this. “Then it teaches you nothing.”

  “Like all attempts to learn everything.” Greenwood was pleased when the boy laughed lightly.

  “Let us listen to the night for a few moments,” Jum-aw said, “and then you will tell me more.”

  They heard their ponies; that was a rustle. After a bit they heard a distant music, a faint chirping far below: peep-peep puppee! Ko-ki ko-ki! Tiktiktik! Jum-aw murmured, “Tree frogs in the valley.” Nearer, only the ponies, until a bat whispered by. “There will be owls in the night.”

  “I remember. Among my people they bring luck.”

  The night was vast now, and empty; only Greenwood and Jum-aw.

  After many minutes Jum-aw said, “What do you think about a cheroot?”

  “What do you think?”

  “We are on a hilltop. The smoke will rise.”

  “And the light?”

  “Light is beneath a blanket, and cup a hand over the tip.”

  “Then we shall smoke a cheroot,” Greenwood said.

  When it was lighted, they complimented its fragrance, cloaked themselves in blankets, and passed it back and forth.

  “So, what have you learned?” Jum-aw did not mock; he sought truth.

  “Well, I have learned to ask you why you want to know.”

  “Ah. Then wisdom is questions and not answers.”

  “There is much truth in that.”

  “Well, I want to know because I am a boy from the hills, and I live now in a town, and each day I see new things. And I know that there are bigger towns, so there is much more to know, and the world is infinitely big—your own country is a hundred days’ ride across—so there is an infinity of things to know. And you have seen more of the world, so I am to ask, and you are to answer.”

  “Good. Remember, though, that you know much that I do not know.”

  “That is true,” Jum-aw said after a judicious pause. “‘The eye of the hawk is keen but the eye of the hog is close.’”

  “That is a Shan proverb.”

  “It is. I saw your tattoos this morning. They are not extensive, but they are Shan tattoos.”

  “I am only a bit Shan,” Greenwood said. “Here: let me ask a riddle. You know that until these last years, until the war, the Kachin would burst forth from a village every twenty years or so, and pack their silver and their goods, and half the village would go to a new place, many tens of warriors, and they would kill all the people there, every man, woman and child, and they would do this without ill feeling, and afterward they would make extravagant sacrifices to the ghosts of the slain.”

  “I know all that.”

  “And why did they do it?”

  “Because they are a cruel and bloodthirsty people.”

  “Ah. You think it was because of what they were.”

  “I do.”

  “But there was no ill feeling.”

  “All the worse.”

  “Ah. But I think there was another reason, and that reason was the rule by which they lived, the rule by which they survived as Kachin and did not become some other people.”

  “And that rule was?”

  “That when a man died, everything he owned—land, cattle, pigs, silver and wives too—passed to his youngest son. So with each generation there were multitudes of older sons with no land, cattle, pigs or silver, yet with their own wives and children to maintain. So they had no choice. To live by the rule, to remain Kachin, they had to go elsewhere, and make another place a Kachin place.”

  In the faintest starshine Jum-aw mediated, and there was silence. They listened, and heard only the night.

  “Then it is reasonable to ask,” Jum-aw said, “whether men do what they do because of what they are, or are what they are because of what they do.”

  “And that is the study of man,” Greenwood said. “The beginning of wisdom is indeed questions.”

  After a while Jum-aw said, “Perhaps the Kachin are not so bad. The evil they do, they do to others. The Bghai Karen do evil to their own.”

  “In what way?”

  “If a Bghai Karen marries out of his rank in life, he is strangled in a pit.” The cheroot glowed.

  “I never knew that,” Greenwood said, truly pleased. “You see: for the moment I am your student, and you are my master. But the Kachin too can be cruel to their own. They used to eat their old ones, and some still do.”

  “Yes, yes,” Jum-aw said with excitement. “They set them on high wooden platforms and poked them with long poles unti they fell off and were killed.”

  “But again without malice. Only relatives and intimate friends were invited to this convivial ceremony, and afterward they made many sacrifices.”

  “Some did not eat their elders,” Jum-aw said with assurance. “Some buried their elders beneath the floor of the longhouse.”

  “That is true, and the spirits of the elders, now at rest, brought luck and prosperity to the village.”

  “So it is not simple,” Jum-aw said.

  “It is life, and life is not simple. A Kachin woman must be faithful to her husband; but before marriage she may try any number of men, to be sure she selects one she can be faithful to. The Shan may take three wives, but a wife may divorce her husband and keep her property.”

  “You had a wife?”

  “Not quite. Because I am not a full Shan, but a foreigner and adopted, I had a concubine to whom I was faithful. The Shan call them ‘little woman.’”

  “And now?”

  “And now I am returning to Pawlu and I do not know what I may find; as I no longer know the way to Pawlu for sure, and have asked your help.”

  “You have it,” Jum-aw said firmly. “I have known round-eyed men before and never have I liked one. I like you.”

  “My heart fills,” Greenwood said. “I like you.”

  “Then ask me another riddle. Your riddle gave me great pleasure.”

  Greenwood considered. Again they listened, again they sensed no danger. Again the tree frogs’ chorus drifted up from the valley. “Well, then,” Greenwood said, “you know about malaria.”

  “I have seen men shiver and burn.”

  “It is borne by mosquitoes.”

  “I have been told that. It is not easy to believe.”

  “They take the bad blood from one, and their bite passes it to another. And you know that many Shan, most of the lowland Shan, suffer from malaria, and that it disappears sometimes for years and then returns.”

  “I know.”

  “But the monks—you are a Buddhist?”

  “My people worship trees, thunder, tigers and certain hills.”

  “Once more I am your student.” Again the cheroot reddened.

  “About the monks,” Jum-aw said.

  “Yes. Among the monks there is very little malaria. Now, why is that?”

  “Because they are men of the Lord,” Jum-aw said promptly.

  “But even virtuous men who are not monks fall sick, as do some very godly monks. Think and try again.”

  Afte
r a moment Jum-aw said, “Because they live in monasteries and do not mingle with the sick.”

  “And how if the mosquitoes mingle, what then?”

  Jum-aw was now silent for some time. They sat motionless and hooded, ancient travelers in an eternal landscape. Jum-aw said, “I am your student. You must tell me.”

  “Well, you came close,” Greenwood said. “I think, I am not sure but I think, that the mosquitoes are sickened by incense, and so avoid it, and here the monks burn incense day and night in praise of the Lord.”

  “Then it is because they are men of the Lord!”

  “By all the gods, you are right!” Greenwood laughed with him. “And who is now the student? But it is not as simple as you first thought, is it?”

  “No, it is not. Here, my friend. There is one good cloud left in this cheroot. And that is plenty of riddling for one night.”

  “It is.” Greenwood drew in a lungful of sweet smoke, then snubbed the butt in the dry, crumbly earth. “We must listen awhile, and then sleep.”

  They listened awhile, and heard an owl. They observed the heavens, and saw the Hunter stride high. They lay quietly in their blankets, and the stars dimmed. They slept, and when they opened their eyes in the opal dawn, they saw six men in turbans seated upon the ground, calm, curious and lavishly armed.

  6

  The Burma Road Out

  General Yang’s column straggled on. Communists were variously reported to the north, south and east, but always hot on the trail. When the tail of the column fell behind because Colonel Prince Nikolai Andreevich Olevskoy fell into a drunken stupor compounded by sexual exhaustion, General Yang was obliged to administer a polite but public rebuke.

  Olevskoy was sufficiently bitter without that. He had spent much of his youth fleeing eastward, and much of his middle age fleeing westward, and now the trucks were backfiring false alarms, brake drums wearing through, spark plugs fouling, air filters clogging and mechanics deserting. He had no desire to walk to the Burmese border—indeed no desire to visit Burma at all—and his nostalgia for the cavalry was passionate: if he must flee west, how he would enjoy leading a squadron across Asia!

  Furthermore, the skies were a shiny pewter-gray, with never the relief of a good rain.

  Furthermore, the road was in terminal disrepair and road crews had vanished in the prevailing chaos.