The Blue-Eyed Shan

by Becker, Stephen;

  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 wh
om 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.”

  “They seem unaware of this,” Wan said.

  “Out of season,” Kin-tan said. “The Wild Wa are even now preparing niches in their cursed oak trees.”

  Greenwood sat cold and empty. He tightened his embrace; Lola snuggled. “May I go to him?”

  “No.”

  “May he—”

  “Not yet. It must be thought on.”

  “It is the Sawbwa who must decide,” Za-kho rebuked Naung.

  Naung said bluntly, “I think not.”

  The Sawbwa frothed only slightly. “To deny order in the morning is to invite chaos in the evening.”

  “It is I who must fight, and Wan and Kin-tan and the men, and it is we who will say.” Naung’s voice trembled; his anger pressed upon them all.

  “Yet we owe the general much,” Wan said, “and it is true that Pawlu must pay it debts or face future afflictions.”

  “We must learn his plans,” Kin-tan said, “and his men’s, and we must discover the nature of this foreigner.”

  “So much I concede,” Naung said.

  “That is well,” said the Sawbwa. “To rage at a small flame is to fan a great fire. As lustful desire clouds the brain, so heedless hatred fogs the judgment.”

  Naung said, “Bugger.”

  “Let Pawlu betray its benefactors and we shall drink the wind,” the Sawbwa went on. “In a dissolute age the honest beggar is the gods’ favorite.”

  Naung said, “Bugger again.”

  “The general may come here. And the foreigner if he is not an Englishman or a Frenchman.”

  Naung pondered. “That too I concede. But I do not concede that these outlanders may call Pawlu home. Green Wood, I want the truth. Every man here and your own daughter will listen, so tell me the truth or make your peace with your gods. You came here to find your general and take him out?”

  “No more and no less,” Greenwood said promptly. “With no evil intent. This I swear by the life of my daughter.” He rubbed Lola’s head. “But thirty-two men! My heart shrinks.”

  “So does mine,” said Naung, “but my guard triples. Well then. This I propose, o Sawbwa!” The mockery was lost; the Sawbwa thawed. Naung’s glance was for Wan and Kin-tan. “Green Wood will not leave the village; this, as a bar to evil communications. He may send a message, and we can bring his general and his colonel under escort. They will concert plans immediately to leave Pawlu and take their rabble with them. These soldiers are not to cross the road and will be shot down like pye-dogs if they do so.”

  “That is what I recommend,” the Sawbwa said.

  Wan and Kin-tan agreed.

  “Three days,” Naung said to Greenwood.

  Greenwood kept his peace and contented himself with visits to old friends, Na-yuan the blind woman, Kung the one-armed veteran, Chung’s daughters, whom he praised appropriately and warned of Jum-aw’s citified wiles. He chatted with Chung, he chatted with Loi-mae and Lola. He slept badly, stimulated by Yang’s arrival, tense at Naung’s hostility, depressed by insistent forebodings, odd spurts and pricks of shame and guilt. All that night, it seemed, dusky Wild Wa slipped into his nightmare like personal demons to mock and menace.

  Next morning he tramped heavy-eyed to Naung’s house, where he drank tea and ate twice-cooked fish. His manner with Loi-mae, and hers with him, were the easy ways of old friends, and Greenwood felt that it would be possible after all to do no harm. Lola chattered, wore the Japanese officer’s hat at a perky tilt, showed Greenwood how her breasts wer budding. When he left for the Sawbwa’s house, Loi-mae hugged him tight. Always, he felt at that moment, there would be love and trust, and the rest, the panting and gymnastics, was perhaps not as important as he had once believed.

  “I attend council with my father,” Lola announced. Her tone was peremptory. “And I wear my Japanese cap.”

  Loi-mae pursed her lips, but said, “Why not?”

  “She will be safe with me,” Greenwood said, scowling. “Just let that Weng-aw even smile at her!”

  Lola pranced and preened.

  The morning drifted by. Tension hung like mist. On the slopes and in the common field, men went armed, and some of the women carried daggers, or a dah slung through a waist sash. The high command—Naung, Wan, Kin-tan—was nowhere to be seen.

  The Sawbwa sat before his house in ceremonial dress, his Pawnee headband natural and appropriate. Za-kho attended him like a body servant. Greenwood and Lola strolled not far from them, pausing once for a game of jack-straws with dry reed stems. All along the slopes, and in clumps or couples on the field, villagers consulted and smoked. The sun inched higher in a bright, wintry sky: January in the mountains, yet warm enough to strip away the blouse.

  It was not a cry or a stir that warned them but an eddy in the tension, a ripple, hoofbeats sensed but not yet heard. Heads turned, and groups drew together. Greenwood said, “They come.”

  Lola clutched his hand beside the Sawbwa and Za-kho. Far across the grass, just this side of Red Bullock Pass, a a procession emerged, a squad of horsemen, Naung leading, Wan and Kin-tan on the wings, and in the center, side by side, the general, oddly bulky, and a foreigner. The Shan wore blue, the guests—prisoners?—khaki. The ponies proceeded at a walk. Excitement grew among the villagers, and cries rose. Someone shouted, “Hey, Smiler! Welcome back!” and then they were all shouting, waving, crowding close to the line of march as if to fling blossoms. Yang did smile then, his best effort, and a cheer erupted.

  Greenwood saw that the general had contrived a sling and was wearing footlockers. One jounced against the paunch, another hung behind. The hoofbeats were firm and sharp now on the winter turf.

  Za-kho said, “General Yang is carrying chests.”

  “Ah! Ah! Gifts!” The Sawbwa clapped hands.

  Gifts indeed, Greenwood thought, and then the cavalcade was upon them and he was meeting Yang’s lively gaze. Naung rode proudly and formally. Behind him the foreig
n colonel sat tall on a Yunnan pony. All dismounted at one time, General Yang sliding to the ground, steadying his footlockers. He reminded Greenwood of a street vendor, display case up front, spare stock hanging behind.

  All observed the proprieties. General Yang stepped first to the Sawbwa, bowed and exchanged with him fraternal pats on the shoulder. The Sawbwa uttered chirps of joy, as did Za-kho. Naung and the Shan warriors, neutral, sat their ponies and waited. The other foreigner was a colonel in Chinese uniform, a cold man and pale. His presence enraged Greenwood. Another Occidental here! Greenwood was also alarmed. A capable colonel leading thirty-odd survivors …

  General Yang came before Greenwood, extricated himself from looped ropes and let the footlockers slide gently to earth, an offering at Greenwood’s feet. For a long moment the village was still while the two friends rejoiced in silence. Far away a peacock shrilled. For that moment all under a bright heaven stood well.

  “By God, you did it,” Greenwood said.

  “Hot dog,” said the general, and it set them off, broke the spell; they guffawed like schoolboys, shaking hands, embracing.

  Yang broke away and glared down at Lola. “And who is this woman?” he asked fiercely in his primitive Shan. “Who is this beauty?”

  Greenwood said, “It is no woman. It is merely my daughter, Lola.”

  Yang said, “Nonsense! Your daughter, Lola, is a child. This is a lovely woman!” And he swept her up, tossing her high while she laughed and cried out, “O Yang! Welcome, old Smiler! What have you brought me?”

  Even Naung laughed.

  Warily Greenwood took stock of the bizarre foreigner, who was observing all this with a fixed smile and a flare of the nostrils, as if viewing a mirage, or a vision.

  When everyone had said “Blessings and greetings!” a dozen times and all backs save he colonel’s had been slapped, and Lola was riding on Yang’s shoulders, and it had just struck Greenwood as ridiculous but also possibly sublime that his best friends in the world should be Yang, Wan, Kin-tan, Mong—at that instant Yang said quietly in English, “These footlockers must not leave the village. Find a way to ensure that I too remain. House arrest, hostage, honored guest, anything.”