The Blue-Eyed Shan

by Becker, Stephen;

  The others were lurching downhill now in a clumsy bullish gallop. Greenwood shot one more outraged look at the road and bellowed, “No! No! Back! Naung, bugger you, back!”

  They skidded, halted, crouched and stared wildly up the hill at this madman; far below, the Chinese faces turned like sunflowers.

  “The poles!” he shouted. “Those buggering cages! He cannot land! Do you hear me? Come back! Come back!”

  He watched the Argus zoom, climb steeply, bank and diminish.

  “You saw,” Olevskoy said. He and his majors were drinking local tea within their ring of ready ordnance and placid donkeys. The Wild Wa had not molested the animals, perhaps because they wished these foreigners to depart, perhaps because asses’ heads did not satisfy their gods’ demands.

  “I saw,” said Major Wei, much subdued.

  “We are in a peck of trouble,” said Major Ho.

  “I cannot believe it,” Major Wei said. “He led us out. He could have had himself flown out months ago, but he led us out. He was loyal to us as we were loyal to him.”

  “And what more can we ask?” Major Ho was matter-of-fact. “He led us out. That is all he promised.”

  “They were carrying those accursed footlockers,” Olevskoy said. “Do you know, I think our position has improved.”

  The majors waited. Major Wei was no longer toting his Browning automatic rifle; it was set up in their front and only line, manned by two nervous corporals.

  “They’ll need us,” the colonel said.

  General Yang sat bewildered. What were those poles, those cages? No one had explained. They had raced pell-mell back over the ridge, then trotted cursing to council. Fate lay heavy upon the general. He was a baffled immigrant with two footlockers. “Those poles could be chopped down and cleared away,” he said.

  “Not now,” Greenwood said. “The Wild Wa would cut us to pieces from the woods.”

  “I could return to my troops,” the general suggested, “and establish a defense. Even attack. We could coordinate.”

  “Attack what?” And would they have you? Greenwood was busy, translating aloud, assessing, sifting quick ideas. “You go out on foot tomorrow, to the west, with Jum-aw.”

  Wan said, “We must send this Jum-aw to parley with his cousins the Wild Wa.”

  Mong said, “We could send a piglet to parley with a leopard.”

  “Let us have the Russian officer,” said the Sawbwa.

  Naung spat. They were in council before the Sawbwa’s house, but this time they were not seated gravely in a circle. They were standing, kneeling, pacing and cursing. Below them women and children were drifting onto the Common Field, burdened with foodstuffs, trailing livestock. Each isolated house was a trap; a massed village was blood and bone, brothers and sisters, companions in life or death.

  “We need them” Greenwood said. “Thirty-some trained fighting men. That’s about as many as there are Wild Wa.”

  “Then let them stand and fight,” Naung said. “Let them each kill one Wild Wa.”

  “Well, curse it, Naung,” Kin-tan said, “today I think you may be wrong.”

  Naung dipped deep into his rum; the bowl hid his eyes.

  “Bugger it, Naung,” Greenwood said, “no rum now!”

  “I shall send an emissary,” the Sawbwa said. “Perhaps Ko-yang.” The Sawbwa was impelled by powerful memories, by impressions that had become certanties: Shang, a soothing American voice that eased his blindness, his early injustice to Green Wood. And now the gods had sent a Russian in the hour of need; to the Sawbwa, events were proceeding harmoniously.

  “Well, we have the mule by the wrong end this time,” Mong said, “but here is what I believe. I believe that if we invite the Chinese to enter, the Wild Wa will flow in behind them.”

  “So I believe,” said Naung, “and then you will have an occupied Pawlu.”

  “That need not follow,” said Wan. “What if, as the Wild Wa flow in, we attack from both flanks?”

  They mulled this.

  “And further suppose,” Kin-tan said, “that upon a signal the Chinese turned and made a stand. There is a tale of Hu-chot proceeding in that manner.”

  “So that we squeeze those flowing Wild Wa from north, west and south,” Greenwood said, “and slice them up and fling them back across the road.”

  “One does not squeeze shadows,” Naung said. “One does not slice shadows. One does not fling shadows.”

  “Then why have the Wild Wa never taken Pawlu? Has Naung surrendered before the battle? Is Naung already beaten?” Greenwood chose the soft voice and the sorrowful gaze.

  Naung chose thunder. “By the gods, you know better!” His hand leapt to the hilt of his knife. “Rather I would die! You speak so to me?”

  “That’s better,” Greenwood said coldly. “We need anger and not rum. Wan and Kin-tan are right. We cannot fight the Wild Wa at night; we need to see. If the Chinese cross the road at sunrise, the Wild Wa must move, attack, infiltrate or go home; and even the Wild Wa cannot move in daylight without some stir. How many can there be? Thirty, forty? If we pick off ten, the battle is won.”

  “So it must be,” said the Sawbwa. No one even looked at him.

  “But it cannot be done without Naung,” Greenwood said. “I am older now and bookish, and unused to command. My weapon fits my hand still, but Naung must give the word.”

  Naung dried his bowl, tossed it aside and said, “Complete the assembly in the Common Field. Order latrines dug. Bring livestock; rice; pots and bowls. Meanwhile there is only murder in my heart, so I leave you for a while.”

  “Come back,” Greenwood asked. “I am going to the road. I shall be the Sawbwa’s emissary.”

  “Curse you,” Naung said, but returned. “Was there no other way but by Pawlu?”

  Olevskoy too felt the fever rising. He was a general at last, and he coped with all problems: stores, munitions, discontent, deployment, grand strategy. And with all possibilities: weather, disease, attack, withdrawal, allies. The men muttered against General Yang and he did not upbraid them; this shift in loyalty was to his own advantage. Major Wei was unhappy, Major Ho bovine. Olevskoy kept close watch on the obvious approaches to Pawlu, the gaps in vegetation, the ditches and depressions. On the Shan slopes he had spotted observation posts, great clumps of Alpenrose, the Chinese called it sheep-stagger-bush, on flats or shelving rock.

  He hoped for a message. Corporal Pao’s death had taken him. The colonel had stood, sometimes alone, against a variety of enemies, but never against lethal shadows. He supposed that this was like jungle fighting. He had read of jungle fighting. It made good reading.

  He knew what ought to be done, what he wanted to do, and he smoked half a packet of Russian cigarettes from Fang-shih reviewing the problem and refining his solution. At first light tomorrow he would enter Pawlu. The Wild Wa would harass him. If the Shan were alert, they could annihilate these little beasts from both flanks. Meanwhile he and his men would drive for the center of Pawlu. After that, some arrangement: provisions, a guide, a laissez-passer. Or a dash south toward Siam. But first these pestilential trolls.

  He was all soldier now and wasted no energy in lamentations. If he was not invited, he would crash the gate. There was, of course, a flaw. There was always a flaw. Everyone had agreed upon this, from Clausewitz to some American called Murphy, and General Yang had told him that it was the rule even in mathematics, even in physics: there was always a flaw. The flaw here was that if the Shan could annihilate the Wild Wa from both flanks, they could annihilate the Chinese from those same flanks.

  “Major Ho,” he called. “Major Wei. To me, please.”

  Thuan-yi now lay on South Slope sheltered by masses of sheep-stagger-bush. He had seized his moment, daring all alone for the good of his people: when the flying metallic thing thundered past the cages and every man’s eyes followed, Thuan-yi had sprinted across the road like a hare and dived into deep foliage, breathless at his own courage and wit. He was well and truly cut off for now
; he could call his men only by risking his life and theirs; but he lay between the Chinese and the Shan. Once this side of the great road he had made his way up the slope at a slug’s pace; and now he was a clod, or a rock, or the shadow of a bush. His gods had smiled, and would again.

  “You’ll do as I say,” Greenwood told Yang. “You’ll go out tomorrow with the boy.”

  “And leave others to fight.”

  “You’ve done your fighting. The last thing we need is a general.” They were back in the House of the Dead, and Greenwood, prowling and taut, felt larger every moment. He could not fill his lungs. He inhaled enormous quantities but could not still his soul. With the bandits in the hills he had been shamefully frightened, and now he was resolute and almost exhilarated. It was the comfort of compulsion, the absence of choice.

  “I am here only because my men stood by me,” Yang muttered, “and now you ask me to run out. I did not foresee these complications.”

  “Stop that,” Greenwood said. “I didn’t foresee them either, and it’s my territory, not yours. I’ll save Pawlu and you save those bones. Jum-aw knows the trail, and owes me a life. If I don’t show up later, you tell everybody Greenwood deserves a footnote somewhere, and write to my folks. Tell them I did right.”

  “I think you’re a damn fool,” Yang said. “Death wish.”

  “Not at all. Plenty to live for. We’ll put your colonel to work and clean up this here town.”

  “You won’t cross?”

  “No! We holler from our side of the road, he hollers from his.”

  “The telephones in Shanghai,” Yang murmured.

  “What?”

  “‘Czarist fascist!’ ‘Crypto-Communist!’”

  “You all right?”

  “I have never been older,” Yang said. “I am exhausted, deeply depressed and in no humor to seek the bubble reputation in the cannon’s mouth. Furthermore, every time I come to Pawlu you start ordering me around.”

  “I see down,” Naung said. He hunkered at his own hearth.

  Loi-mae touched his lips. “It is your voice that commands.”

  “It is the web of events. No man truly commands. And I must bow to the Sawbwa and clap your Green Wood on the shoulder.”

  “He is not my Green Wood.”

  “I want to hear his funny stories and see the hair on his chest,” Lola said.

  “You be quiet.”

  “He is Lola’s father. As the Sawbwa says, it would not have displeased the gods had Green Wood paid a visit to his family.”

  Loi-mae did not speak.

  “I would not have barred the gate to him,” Naung said, “nor reminded you, ever.”

  “I would never hurt you,” Loi-mae said.

  “Well, it would have done no harm,” Naung said, but his eyes were cold. “You must look into your heart now, and take strength from what you find. He may be killed. He may leave, never to return. I believe he would have left had that aircraft landed.”

  Lola crouched, her eyes enormous. “No.”

  “What does Green Wood matter?” Loi-mae asked. The question was a lie; she knew that Naung sensed that. “With all Pawlu at the edge of life.”

  “He is said to be a fighter, at any rate. How inscrutable is destiny! Without him, no Lola; with him …”

  Solemnly Lola hitched the sheath of the northern dagger to her leather waistband.

  The Shan gathered in the Common Field. By families they came, by couples. Old ones trudged, bowed by the weight of food and hoarded silver. On the field, neighborhoods sprang up. Loi-mae and Chung made common household, attended by the boy Jum-aw, abashed to be out of the fighting yet with his rifle to hand. In the center, the Sawbwa and Za-kho held court. Goats and bullocks grazed outside the circle. Fires flickered and leapt, faces loomed and faded. Sadness fell upon the Shan like slow rain: for the lives that might be lost, the houses that might be burned, the animals that might stampede, the children who would learn terror. Beneath, there lay a deeper sadness: that the gods had permitted this. Soon there rose the aroma of roasting saing, and that lightened their hearts, but not much.

  Thuan-yi turned on his side and urinated quietly. He ran a thumb along the blade of his long knife. The thumb bled. He ate a strip of dried dog, and then a cricket.

  In midafternoon Greenwood and Kin-tan set out. A chain of silent, invisible Shan flanked them as they trotted through Red Bullock Pass. Wan had pronounced the road secure, the ridges and East Poppy Field clear. Greenwood, Kin-tan and a shifting, shuttling guard of armed runners made their way to South Slope, where the Shan was thickest, perhaps two hundred paces above the road and the Chinese. Greenwood’s excitement was intense—fervor and not jitters; he still felt large, was sweating copiously and hardly noticed the weight of his weapon.

  No one hindered their progress. Not even a toktay crossed their path. Greenwood dismounted, tethered his pony to an evergreen, dashed the last hundred paces and flung himself flat on the spongy, resinous earth. He crawled then, Kin-tan behind him, to the Roost. Snaking forward he saw the road and the Chinese camp.

  Thuan-yi had contracted, and curled himself about the trunk of his sheep-stagger-bush like the hard-worm about the melon vine. With the sun westering he lay in shadow. He saw Shan, and he saw the albino. This was magic. The albino was with his soldiers below.

  There were two albinos!

  This one trod within a pace of him. Thuan-yi saw the fair skin, the bony nose, the wrinkled corners of the light eyes, the curly golden hair. He also saw the weapon.

  Greenwood cupped his hands and shouted, “Olevskoy! Olevskoy!”

  There was motion among the Chinese. Kin-tan adjusted the binoculars.

  “Oleveskoy!”

  “Who … are … you … and … what … do … you … want?”

  “Greenwood! The American!”

  “It was the Russian who called, “Kin-tan said. “His officers now seek us with their field glasses.”

  “They won’t fire,” Greenwood said. He hollered again, “Olevskoy!” and outlined the tactical problem.

  “Now they are conferring,” Kin-tan said. “They are taking their time about it. The Russian has started a cigarette.”

  At this season there were no blossoms on the rhododendrons, and their odor was earthy and cool, even moist. Perhaps Greenwood did not want a reply from the Russian. This was a recess, a truce; he was lying on a hillside sniffing at shrubbery and the Wild Wa did not exist.

  Olevskoy shouted, “No! Absolutely not! I will not risk an ambush!”

  “I swear to you,” Greenwood shouted, “that there will be no ambush, and that you will have the freedom of the village afterward.” Distant echoes, then calm again.

  Olevskoy shouted, “Do you believe in God?”

  Greenwood was flabbergasted. After a moment he shouted, “No!”

  “Then who are you to swear to anything?”

  Greenwood laughed aloud. His spirits soared at this sudden metaphysical turn. “Do you believe in democracy?” he shouted.

  The answer was immediate. “No!”

  “Then why do you confer with your officers?”

  “That’s what officers are for!” Olevskoy called.

  “He just smiled,” Kin-tan said. “I see machine guns and two of those heavy automatic rifles.”

  “And they’ll have grenades and small arms. We can use it all.”

  Olevskoy shouted. “You must send us a hostage!”

  Greenwood now translated for the Shan. Contempt crossed their faces, but they considered the demand. Jum-aw. They could offer a hostage and a guide in one person, showing good faith and common sense.

  Greenwood shouted this to Olevskoy.

  Olevskoy shouted, “No. No outsider. Maybe … the little girl.”

  Greenwood remembered what was at stake and bit back savage obscenities, but could not disguise the anger in his voice. “We do not make war with children, Colonel. But you may take me.”

  “You!” Olevskoy’s acid laughter carried up
the slope. “They would sacrifice you without thinking twice!”

  “He tossed his head back as if in contempt,” Kin-tan reported. “The sunlight is full on them.”

  Greenwood told Kin-tan what Olevskoy had said.

  Kin-tan fiddled with the binoculars. Then he met Greenwood’s eye and said, “For Pawlu, yes. You or any other hostage.”

  “Lola? He will take Lola.”

  Kin-tan’s dark Oriental features twisted, altering swiftly to incomprehension, incredulity, anger; the stained teeth gritted in disdain. “Men do not think such things! By the gods! That you could even ask me!”

  “I do not want to talk more to him,” Greenwood said. “The seed is planted. If we have time, we’ll come back. He may change his mind.”

  “He is not worth having, this Russian. But he may indeed change his mind, given time. They have no water. That one is rude.”

  “Then I too shall be rude.”

  “Please!”

  “No hostage!” Greenwood shouted. “But the offer stands, and the plan is simple and strong. Afterward, you and I will fight. Do you hear me? I do not want my daughter’s name in your foul mouth!”

  “Then send your wife!” Olevskoy called. “American son of a bitch!”

  Again they passed within reach of Thuan-yi; again he lay immobile. If he killed one? Nothing. He was within their lines, and a weasel was here more useful than a tiger. Already he had learned much. That there was hatred between the two albinos. That there was hatred between the Chinese and the Shan. That his enemy was divided by more than a road or a field, and would never be united. They might, if left properly alone, or if skillfully tricked, make corpses without help from the Wild Wa.

  A choke of laughter escaped him.

  “They’ll be back,” Olevskoy told his majors. “They need us.”

  “But I must go,” the Sawbwa said. His confidence was sublime and he spoke perkily, as if to children who must be humored. “Who better? All my life I have prepared for this; in my youth my fate was linked to the Russians.”