Golden Earth

by Norman Lewis

  It took us two hours to cover the twenty miles to Tatkón, and here we stopped for lengthy repairs, since, besides the trouble with the petrol supply, the front brakes had seized and had had to be disconnected. I went over to the station and raised the matter of the ghosts with an unemployed ticket collector. He roared with laughter at the absurdity of the rumour. ‘Why, anybody knows that it’s not everyone who can see a ghost. It’s a matter of psychology; therefore they can’t frighten all the passengers.’

  * * *

  After Tatkón my friends were able, with relish, to renew their pessimism. The stretch of road between Tatkón and Pyinmana, they assured me, was the most dangerous in all Burma. The conversation turned naturally on descriptions of atrocious events that had taken place in these hilly and pleasantly wooded surroundings. We were passing through what might have been the Wye Valley, in the exhaustion of late autumn, yet lashed by a strange sun, with a river meandering among the rocks, and eagles flapping overhead. The woods had been patchily and inefficiently burned back from the road, so that there was cover for an ambush only at intervals of about a hundred yards. All the many small bridges had been blown up, and replaced by temporary structures of wood or metal. Sometimes these secondary bridges had been demolished too, so that we were obliged after all to ford the stream in a lurching, swaying rush. Battles had been fought along this main north-south axis. It was a graveyard of ‘soft’ military vehicles, and there were a few burned-out tanks lying about. Some of these wrecks, bowered in ferns, probably dated from Japanese days, and small dun-coloured birds had taken possession of them and were popping in and out of the shell holes. This drive was a memorable torture. The craters of shells and mines had only been loosely filled in, and the surface had been deeply rutted and macerated by armoured traffic. Sprawled out like fakirs across the protuberances of our potato sacks, we were tossed from side to side and shot into the air as the lorry’s wheels crashed into the holes in the road. A few square feet of tarpaulin had been rigged up on a crude frame over our heads, and the sun struck at us through its many openings. Groaningly Mr Pereira implored me for more mepacrine to help him to endure the ordeal.

  * * *

  We reached Pyinmana by the early afternoon, entering the town by streets where dentists, as if in celebration of a great victory, had hung out many banners, upon which fleshless jaws grinned in ecstasy. The lorry dropped us at the Hwa Sein Store, a wooden-framed building from a Wild-Western film, where we fell into chairs round a table, while Mr Pereira, on the verge of collapse, refreshed himself with an Ovaltine. We sat there for half an hour, afraid of what the effort to move might cost us. Sweat glistened like powdered mica on our skins. A Tibetan, vaguely outlined against the sun as if seen in a floodlit aquarium, floated up out of the street. His eyes glowed through the strands of hair hanging down over his face. Untying the yak’s-hair knots that secured a paper packet, he showered gems on the table top. The JSM bought an emerald for eight annas, and tenderly presented it to his wife.

  A gharry took us to the station, where we found the train that would leave for Rangoon next day already standing at a platform. Here Mr Pereira came into his own at last. Formally presenting himself to the station master, he had a second class carriage reserved for our party, and a notice was hung on the door to say that it was occupied by railway officials. At the same time, he learned an important piece of news. At Pyinmana, the senior railway staff occupied a small block of flats near the station, and this possessed the splendid amenity of a communal bathroom. The station master recommended us to present ourselves there, precisely at four o’clock, when the water would be turned on for half an hour. He gave us a chit of introduction for the man in charge of the bath.

  We went there and found a small group of railwaymen waiting in reverent silence as if for the performance of some fairly dependable miracle, such as the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius. The man in charge of the bath stood with his back to the door, of which he held the key. A few years before, the bathroom must have been a showpiece, and even now it was luxurious and sybaritic in the desolation of Pyinmana, which, as an important marshalling-yard, must have been bombed on numerous occasions. A few tiles survived on the floor, like a broken Roman mosaic, in an amorphous surface of cement. The bath had a huge, chromium-plated tap, which someone still went to the trouble of polishing, although it had been swivelled round until it hung over the floor, and the daily blessing of water was delivered, not through this, which had become no more than a symbol, but from a cruelly naked pipe, which jutted directly from a hole in the wall. Just as the hour of four clanged somewhere in the town, moisture gathered at the rim of the pipe, and the first drops began to splash in the stagnant lake at the bottom of the bath. Any natural desire a Burman might have felt to be the first to assuage his skin’s prickly heat, was easily outweighed by considerations of the merit to be earned by deferring to a stranger. I was merely asked not to splash on the floor any of the precious fluid more than I could help. The water was amber-coloured, but, as the man in charge of the bath had proudly claimed, clear. Although quite warm by ordinary standards, it was indescribably refreshing after two scorching, waterless days.

  Over the top of the broken door could be seen the remains of a baronial folly in the Oriental style, a gabled, redbrick house, of which only the façade remained, flanked by two machicolated towers. In the other corner of the view was a pseudo-Renaissance building in the Portuguese style, to which had been added four Mogul turrets, and two towers terminating in onion-shaped cupolas. This, too, had been burned out.

  As I stood at the door of the bathroom, while the water evaporated like alcohol from the skin, the whole panorama of the marshalling-yards came into view. There was a background of palms partially screening the ruined gothic and Asiatic fantasies, and a few trees with lacquered foliage, from which hung down black beans. Beneath the trees were long lines of goods-trucks, most of which would never run on their own wheels again; and distributed about the yards were step-pyramids of railway sleepers, which were in constant demand to prop up temporary bridges. Along the tracks, and round these obstacles, sauntered parading crowds, the girls in longyis of bright silk, and carrying parasols, the men wearing sun-helmets which, being enamelled green and blue, looked like chamber-pots. A dozen Indian labourers were cooking their food, each, for fear of contamination, at a separate fire. There were two sounds, the occasional deep purring of a pagoda gong of rare quality, and the shrieking of kites in the sky. In this scene there were no clear, sharp colours. It was overlaid by yellow light, as if seen through a shop-window over which a sheet of yellow cellophane had been stretched to prevent the goods from fading. To me, coming out of the damp coolness of the bathroom, it was like plunging into warm milk.

  * * *

  Pyinmana had previously been the headquarters of Thakin Than Tun, leader of the White-Flag Communists. (Three months after I left they re-entered the town and fought a battle with Government troops in its streets). From this stronghold, which was later stormed by Government troops, he directed the insurrection which broke out on March 6th, 1948; it was the first of a series of revolts directed against the Socialist Government by a number of racial and political minorities. Of all the insurgent movements, that of the White-Flag Communists in combination with the Karen National Defence Organisation, was the most serious. It started off with a succession of victories. Towns were captured all over Burma, until finally, a year after the outbreak, Mandalay itself fell; and Rangoon, and the Government’s survival, were threatened. After this the tide slowly turned. The insurgents were beaten by shortage of ammunition, their internal divisions, and by the tenacity of the Government forces. Mandalay was recaptured shortly after its fall, and all the large towns in insurgent hands occupied one by one. The Karens withdrew into the mountainous area known as Karenni, lying between the towns of Loi Kaw, Papun and Thaton, while the Communists, the PVO, and the army mutineers took refuge in the small villages and the jungles, where they still carry on the
ir fight. The Communists appear slowly to be absorbing their competitors, with a consequent accretion of strength.

  The Burmese insurrections have a formless and bewildering complexity that make them almost incomprehensible to the Westerner who has not studied their history on the spot. To an outsider the programmes of all the insurgent groups seem identical. They are all apparently of the extreme Left, and resolved to extirpate landlords and capitalists, permit freedom of worship, distribute the land to the peasants, and smash fascism. Each body accuses all the others of failing to respect these ideals, and all accuse the AFPFL (Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League) Government of being no more than a sham behind which the brutal exploitation of the country by foreign interests is permitted to continue.

  Behind the façade of anti-Government ‘democratic-fronts’, and the barrage of allegation, one suspects on examining the facts a clash of power-hungry personalities, from which some have emerged defeated to become the relentless opponents of those who have reached the top. The departure of the British from Burma left a yawning vacuum of Governmental office to be filled, and offered in the army the prospect of immediate promotion for thousands of officers and men. Many were hurt in the scramble. As an illustration of the attitude of the disappointed place-hunter – and of the real motive behind a political coup – a better example could not be found than the two leaders of the army mutiny who, after announcing their intention of abolishing feudal landlordism, offered to surrender if they were guaranteed the portfolios of Defence and Home Affairs.

  The PVOs (Peoples Voluntary Organisation) were originally the Burmese equivalent of the Maquis, formed after the war into this body in an attempt to keep its members under disciplined control while the process of postwar resettlement went on. The resettlement of the rank and file of peasants was a simple matter, but the officer-class, having tasted power, refused to return to the banality of its prewar existence, and quietly refilled the ranks as fast as they were emptied with any restless spirits who cared to join, irrespective of military or resistance services. They then drew up their political programme, but since it had to be Leftist, and there was nothing they could think of to add to that of the Communists, or of the Government, they amalgamated these programmes, but dropped from one the expropriation of foreign concerns, and from the other, the land reforms. The PVOs revolted in July 1948, when the Communist insurrection was well under way, and for a time joined forces with them. Later they fought each other with particular ferocity, and the PVOs split into two groups, white and yellow, the whites remaining underground and the yellows joining the Government to fight their erstwhile comrades.

  The formation of the Red-Flag Communist organisation, as an offshoot of the original Burma Communist Party, appears likewise to have been a matter of internal politics and of political rivalry between the two principal figures in the movement. Thakin Than Tun, who headed the party before the split occurred, served as a minister during the Japanese occupation, while Thakin Soe, leader of those who broke away, spent most of the war as an underground fighter. It was his contention that as the Communist Party was a party of struggle, only those fashioned by struggle could give correct leadership. He also accused Thakin Than Tun of misappropriation of party funds, and the latter retaliated by an attack on Thakin Soe’s morals, which were said to be lax even by the easiest of Burmese polygamistic standards. After the break each side gave priority over the other political tasks in hand to the other’s extermination. Thakin Soe, however, by the severity and ruthlessness of his methods has continually lost the support of the Burmese peasantry, while his White-Flag rivals by their relative mildness and strict discipline have extended their influence, and have even attracted middle-class cultivators – whom Thakin Soe would be inclined to extirpate as Kulaks – into their fold.

  It is interesting to study the phrasing of the manifestos produced by these various parties. The language of political censure, monotonous and repetitive as it is at any time, is further enfeebled here by a very special Burmese problem. It seems that at some time, perhaps at the turn of the century, when the Fathers of the Western Left were relaxing with their families at the Berlin Tiergarten, they were much impressed by the appearance, and by what they read of the habits, of certain animals; and on the basis of this composed a short lexicon of execration, which unfortunately their political inheritors in all parts of the world have taken over. In a Buddhist environment, however, such animals as hyenas, jackals and vultures, eaters of carrion-flesh, and not killers in their own right, occupy a highly honourable position. Much strain is therefore put upon the remaining clichés of political abuse. The Karens, who would probably be reactionary enough if ever they could seize power, call the present Government ‘collaborators and stooges’; the Burmese army is ineptly described as the ‘handmaid of the imperialists’; while the system is ‘dominated by adulterers, thieves, dacoits, self-seekers, and those who are extremely vicious’. The PVOs propose to wipe out ‘such opportunists as bad-hats, landlords, counter-revolutionaries and deviationists’ – deviationist having become here a meaningless term of abuse, since the PVOs subscribe to no Party-line. They themselves, in fact, are described as deviationists by the Communists, who accuse them in their manifesto entitled ‘Why we are fighting the PVO’ of ‘sucking deliciously’ the freshly spilt blood of fighters for freedom and democracy. Each party and movement reviles the others and the Government in power, as ‘fascists’ – another word from which the meaning has drained. All speak of the activities of their own side as an expression of that mystic entity, ‘the people’ – the people’s Government, or the people’s will.

  To have completed this almost utter chaos, it would have been necessary only to introduce the warring religious factions, now endemic in Indo-China, but in Burma excluded by the universality of Buddhism. In the situation of this unfortunate country there is an element of grim Wellsian prediction come to fulfilment.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Buffalo Dance

  STANDING on a high place in Pyinmana – the balcony of the railwaymen’s flats – and looking out across the derelict rolling-stock, the scorched brick and twisted girders, one saw a glitter of fire, an encrusted brilliance of towers and turrets, that arose shining over at the edge of the town. Even at a mile’s distance there was no doubt that this was some gaudy pretence, but of such a magnitude that a visit, even in this murderous sunshine, was not to be avoided.

  Mr Nair agreed to come with me and, cautiously picking our way through the pools of shadow, we made towards this lustrous illusion, through mean lanes scavenged by dogs which disease had clipped into grotesque, poodle shapes. We found a field full of Chinese pavilions with streaming banners, joss-houses, pagodas with many-tiered roofs, Tartar tents, huge kiosks with façades of peacocks and dog-faced lions. It was a city that might have been built by an Imperial army encamped for a lengthy siege, and in it had been assembled all the glorious beginnings of fairground architecture and carnival floats. It was extraordinary what opulence had been achieved merely by the endless variegation of colours – mostly metallic – and decorative shapes with which every surface had been closely covered. In their erection of this dreamland of wood and paper, the people of Pyinmana seemed to have reacted in an understandable way to the drabness of civic reality. There was something defiant in its spurning of the realities. At night-time there would be theatrical shows, and boxers would dance in their corners before butting and clawing each other behind the peacock façades; but in the meantime, the place was deserted with the exception of a small crowd gathered at a booth in a corner to watch a nat-pwè.

  The booth was roughly built of woven bamboo, its floor covered with matting. There was a shelf running round three sides, and on this the images of the thirty-seven nats squatted moodily. They were a poor collection of idols. Reflecting the fall in dramatic pitch of Burmese life, such godlike attributes as a dozen arms, each raised to flourish a sword, had disappeared, discarded in the nat evolution as something now as useless as the
tail in humans. The convincing malevolence of some of the images to be seen in collections, carved in the days when the nats presided at human sacrifices, inspired spectacular dacoities and bullied kings, was missing here. These were the mean faces of black-marketeers, of usurers calculating percentages and premeditating foreclosure. Among the images was a gilded buffalo mask, also unimpressive as a work of art. The horns were entwined with leaves and sprigs of herbs.

  At the moment of my arrival two stout, middle-aged Burmese women were weaving about in a dance in the cleared space before the images. The dance had no particular form; there were none of the symbolical hand or head movements imported from India into the South-East Asian dance, and none of the painfully learned acrobatics of the Burmese. These were the spontaneous gyrations of the devotees of a West-Indian revivalist cult, preceding, perhaps, an orgy of testifying. The shapeless robes went with the dance. There was an orchestra of drums, gongs, and a squealing hné; and its members, playing with a zest bordering on fury, kept the dancers in a continuous whirl. Before the dancers had set themselves in motion helpers had bustled round them carefully adjusting their turbans, but these immediately became untied, allowing their hair to stream from them like black comet tails. With eyes closed they collided with each other and went spinning away in new directions. Cheekbones and foreheads took on a polish of sweat; foam bespattered their chins. The women helpers dashed after them with bottles of beer, which the dancers sucked at sightlessly and showered back through mouths and nostrils. The audience remained strangely untouched by this frenzy. They laughed and chatted sociably, and gave the breast to their young babies. Although all were drably and poorly dressed by Burmese standards, there must have been some who were socially important, because acolytes kept coming and presenting them with sprigs of greenery. Suddenly there was a stir of interest. The dancers, colliding once again, had fallen to the ground. Now they writhed on their stomachs towards the nat images, and having reached them remained to pray convulsively.