Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle

by Dorothy Gilman

  He squatted down beside her. "You have seen him, too, he was here a minute ago, this is his house." He pointed to where the young man had stood. "His name is Nouvak; he's a bright young man who knows how to deal with things."

  "Yes, but can we leave? Bonchoo, they can't be far ahead of us, Cyrus and the—"

  He held up a hand. "Wait—Nouvak will tell you, he knows things. We are in luck, he speaks Thai, Akha, Hmong, some Shan and some English."

  "English!" This seemed a miracle indeed in this remote mountain village.

  The older woman had retreated, taking the children with her. The younger woman sat back on her heels and spoke words that neither she nor Bonchoo understood. "What is she saying?" Mrs. Pollifax asked. "Can you thank her?"

  A voice behind them spoke. "I thank her for you, she is my wife Apha." It was Nouvak, returned, and after he spoke to his wife she gave Mrs. Pollifax a last timid smile and disappeared into the house.

  Nouvak sat down beside Bonchoo and regarded her gravely. "I am buseh—headman," he said. "My English words not much useful, I practice, okay?"

  "Please, yes."

  He proceeded carefully, frowning over each word. "Bonchoo say you have lost a sahmee, a—"

  "Husband," put in Bonchoo.

  Nouvak nodded, studying her face. "And you seek for him."

  "Yes." Bonchoo had been right, she thought, clearly these were the eyes of a man who "dealt with things," they were alert, intelligent, bright.

  "And bandits seek you also, Bonchoo say."

  She darted a quick glance at Bonchoo but his face was impassive. "Yes—two men."

  "With guns? They have guns?"

  "I don't think so," she told him and glanced questioningly at Bonchoo.

  Bonchoo said, "If they had guns they would have shot us. No guns."

  She did not want to talk about guns. She said, "You've all been very kind but can we go now?"

  "Go?" Nouvak looked astonished. "But night comes!"

  Bonchoo intervened. "He's right, it's not safe in the jungle at night and you need rest. He has said we may stay the night. Tell her what you've done, Nouvak."

  "Yes. Already I send two men to the forest," he said. "To seek for farang and two Shan."

  "For Cyrus!" she murmured happily.

  "Also I have sent four mens to—to—"

  "Guard?" suggested Bonchoo.

  Nouvak grinned, suddenly boyish. "Okay—yes. Up trees to guard village for bandits. No, watch for bandits. My English—too slowly it returns! Now the dzoema comes and we talk."

  "Dzoema" repeated Mrs. Pollifax doubtfully.

  Bonchoo translated. "He tells me that in this village, in all Akha villages, the headman—the buseh—is the man who deals with the outside world, with the government people, with the Chinese merchants who come to buy or sell, with the selling of rice and cloth to buy iron to make knives and rifles and machetes and such matters. It is the dzoema who guides the life inside of the village and governs it."

  "Ah—I see," said Mrs. Pollifax, and feeling better now she moved to sit cross-legged, her feet tucked under her. An excruciatingly thin man was striding across the compound toward them, looking dusty and tired as if he'd been fetched from a faraway field. He gave her and Bonchoo a shrewd glance and sat down next to Nouvak, his eyes on Mrs. Pollifax. He and Nouvak began speaking together, with Bonchoo listening attentively.

  They appeared to be speaking about her and she watched the dzoema for expressions on his face that might explain the conversation. His skin was dark, the veins on his temple, his neck, his hands and arms standing out in ridges. He gestured frequently in a way that matched his expressive face. Once he laughed and she saw that his teeth were stained red from betal; when he listened he became very still, his eyes searching the face of the speaker.

  Bonchoo turned to her at last. "They have been speaking of what is best. They have made us welcome, but hearing of bandits makes them uneasy, they moved here because in their last place they were robbed by bandits of silver, of the money earned from their cash crops, of an M-16 and of two goats."

  "Oh dear," she said with a sympathetic glance at Nouvak. 'Trouble we don't want to bring them."

  "I've told them we can pay well for food, you have money?"

  "A lot of 25-baht bills," she told him, trying to equate their value in U.S. money.

  "Good, five will do for now, they're not rich here as you can see. They have also spoken of this situation. If they find no farang and Shan nearby—"

  She said quickly, "But if they're not far away they would find them?"

  Bonchoo nodded. "Yes, but if not, then they offer help in the morning. Probably," he added laconically, "to get us out of here before we bring trouble to them."

  "What help?"

  "A boy named Anu to guide us. The Akha know the forest and they know the smugglers. He says there is a Shan camp hidden deep in the jungle about twenty li—five or six miles from here, on the Burma border."

  She said eagerly, "And they think that's where Cyrus is being taken?"

  "Yes, but to go there is dangerous," he cautioned. "It's just over the border—another country—and if the smugglers think we spy on them—" His hand chopped the air. "They kill, and who's to know? We die in jungle. We will have to be very bold, and hope."

  She looked at him seriously. "For myself I have to go, if Anu will only show me where to go, but you, Bonchoo? Does it frighten you?"

  "Frighten!" he exploded. "I have been one scared Bonchoo all day, never never will I write letters again or be so greedy—if Wen Sa and my phi-spirits let me live."

  "And do you think they will?" she asked wistfully.

  Bonchoo sighed. "I will hope," he said, and seeing his cheerful face turn somber, she thought, He fights for his future, too: wife, children, work, village, just as I fight for mine: one large, very dear man who likes to read in the bathtub, puts garlic in everything, loves to crouch in the cold to bird-watch—and I love him.

  With a gesture toward Nouvak and the dzoema Bonchoo added, "They do this because you lose a husband and your search for him surprises and impresses."

  Nouvak's lips curved into a smile. "Our women do not leave the village, it's not Zang. We have proverb: A woman deals with what is between the house and the rice bin, a man deals with what is between other villages and ours."

  She wondered what Zang might be.

  He rose to his feet. "This is my house, you are welcome," and having said this, he walked into the house and disappeared behind a reed partition.

  Bonchoo said, "I am going to see if I can buy a machete. Rest, there will be food soon."

  But Mrs. Pollifax did not feel like resting, she was curious about this village, and the pain of her blisters had been alleviated by the paste that had been applied to them. Bonchoo and the dzoema had strolled to the end of the compound where a young man joined them carrying a machete that Bonchoo began to examine. Stepping into her shoes, she winced only a little and walked a few paces to test her strength. Shadows had begun to lengthen in the compound, and the forest behind the village was very still. As she continued walking a dog barked at her halfheartedly and then slunk away. Three girls wearing the ubiquitous headdress and carrying baskets of firewood on their backs came trudging up the path from the forest and stopped when they saw her.

  "Hello there," she called.

  They looked at each other, giggled and hurried away, darting curious glances over their shoulders. A hen emerged from behind a house, clucking noisily. A naked child wandered into the street, picked up a stick and disappeared among the trees. She felt that she had wandered into a different time warp and this was disconcerting to her, and yet she felt a sense of great peace that was healing after a day of shock and tension, as soothing to her jaded nerves as the herbs that had been applied to her torn feet.

  She was peering into a rice bin at the end of the street when Nouvak walked up behind her. He said almost shyly, "You look at our village."

  "Yes," she said with a s
mile. "Can you tell me about it? Bonchoo says you are Akha people, am I rude to ask what that means?"

  He gave her a long look. "Come, I show you a thing," he said. "And while I show you—you do not recoil?—I practice the English. You walk?"

  She nodded and he led her up one of the many paths entering the village; they ascended to a cleared space and crossed it, coming at last to the path that entered the deeper forest. Here he stopped and pointed. All that Mrs. Pollifax could see were two tall tree trunks standing a short distance from the path, scarcely noticeable against the forest except for a crossbeam that made an unusual horizontal among so many verticals.

  "Our guardian gate," he said. "Very important to Akha, we have two." Lifting an arm, he pointed to the forest. "Outside is world of danger, inside gates we Akha live happy. The gates guard us from evil spirits, wild animals, violent death, robbers and sickness."

  She turned to look into his face. "You find so many dangers out there?"

  "It has shown us its dangers," he said simply, "it does not treat the Akha well." He said this philosophically, without resentment. "We get pushed away, we move many times."

  "Doesn't the government here protect you at all? Does it provide schools for you, for instance?"

  He smiled briefly. "The school arrives two to three times monthly but teacher speak no Akha and children speak little Thai. We are not—what is word?—citizens of this country, we have to protect ourselves. We do not wish to move down—" He pointed down the mountain. "We wish to stay free and be Akha, so when people want our land we go."

  "And where do you come from?" she asked.

  Not understanding, he said, "We come from our first ancestor A-poe-mi-yeh. All our ancestors live with us in spirit, they live with us right now."

  Mrs. Pollifax, somewhat jarred by this, glanced around to make sure they were alone.

  "We ask for guidance from them," he went on. "We invite them for food and drink at festival times. We live with many spirits, the rice spirit, the harvest spirit, the tree spirit. Maybe we have no written history but we know it— every man must know his ancestors sixty families back in time."

  "Sixty generations!" she murmured. "You're not Buddhists, then."

  "No—forest people!"

  "But why, if someone should want your land, do you just go? You have rifles, I have seen them!"

  "Because the Akhazang tell us not to fight."

  They had begun to stroll back toward the village but at this she stopped. "Akhazang?"

  "Yes, we live by its rules. The Akhazang tell us how and when to plant our rice, how and where to build our house, how to hunt the deer and boar, how to live and how to die."

  "But—none of this is written?" she said, frowning over this.

  "Not written," he agreed, smiling at her. "But still we know. Our ancestors tell us. We learn it from our mother, from our father, from the pima and dzoema. It is told us many times—we know."

  She bent down and picked up a pebble. "This, too, has a spirit?"

  "Oh yes! Did you not know?"

  She smiled and dropped it into her pocket with the banana skins and eggshells. "Your English keeps growing. Where did you learn it, Nouvak?"

  "Mission school, Burma, but when the fighting began—" He shook his head. "That is when I was small boy, now we live here. The Akhazang say, 'Although a person changes, Akhazang does not change. Although a house is moved ten different places, the ancestor-basket does not change.'" He hesitated and then added, "You are sure they had no guns?"

  Startled, she said, "Yes."

  He nodded. "What we wish is to grow our rice and hunt, make joy with our festivals and raise our children to live by Zang. I am glad you see no guns."

  "And what would you do if they came to the village with guns?"

  "If we could not make them friendly with our rice wine," he said with a smile, "we would—woosh" he said, pointing to the dense forest behind them. "Always we live with the forest near us to hide in. The trees are our friends, like the sky and the stars and the sun and the rocks."

  Touched by his beliefs and trying to remember that for the Akha, too, this was the twentieth century, she gave him the only gift she could think of by saying with great firmness, "They had no guns."

  They had reached the compound now. He said, "To sleep in my house—you do not mind?—you must become a grandmother and sleep on the men-side. That too is Ak-hazang, you are not Akha and must not sleep on the women-side."

  She laughed. "I don't mind, I will be a grandmother in your house." Down at the far end of the compound she saw Bonchoo seated on the platform of Nouvak's house smoking a large cheroot, his feet dangling: this was a new Bonchoo, affable and relaxed, content in the moment.

  Whereas I, an American, she thought ruefully, want instant results. I can be grateful for rest, food and a place to sleep tonight but I cannot shrug off the shadow over my life: I have lost a sahmee. She called, "Any news yet from the men looking for Cyrus?"

  He shook his head. "Not yet, not yet..."

  Seated on the floor of Nouvak's house they dined on sticky-rice, rolling it into glutinous balls with their fingers and popping it into their mouths. There were small chunks of meat and boiled pumpkin in a bowl swimming with juice but Mrs. Pollifax dared not ask what the meat was, given the poverty of the village and the dearth of animals. Rice wine had been brought out for the occasion and she understood that it was not lightly presented. "Daw! Daw!" Nouvak told her cheerfully, which Bonchoo informed her meant drink, drink. It had grown dark outside but there was enough light from the hearth to illuminate the house, which amazed her, being made almost entirely of bamboo. The overhead beams were laced with straps of bamboo; baskets hung from a woven bamboo ceiling, they sat on mats of bamboo on a bamboo floor, and the partitions that divided the house into kitchen, men's side and women's side were made of bamboo, all of it cut, woven, spliced and tempered by hand.

  Outside, through the slits in the wall, she could see a half-moon rising... underneath the house she could hear a pig grunting as it foraged for the scraps of food that fell through the seams. She was aware of a number of children peering in at them over the floor of the veranda, whispering and giggling as they watched the guests: she and Bonchoo were an attraction. It was seven o'clock, the end of a day that had begun so innocently with Cyrus in a luxurious hotel in Chiang Mai, and now she was to sleep in an Akha village deep in the forests of the north. The contrast was palpable. Bonchoo, in the meantime, had begun talking in what he explained in an aside was country Thai, and after the men had laughed uproariously several times she asked to know what he was saying.

  "Our Thai folktales are not for women's ears," he explained with a grin. "Very earthy. I am paying for our dinner with my wondrous stories."

  Mrs. Pollifax, feeling ungenerous, wondered what she might do to pay for her share of their hospitality; there was only one possibility and as the fire dimmed and the children began to yawn in the rear she told Bonchoo, "I know a few magic tricks."

  He looked at her in surprise and a dawning alarm. "But they live very close with spirits here, what do you mean?"

  She told him.

  "Aha—gohn lamet! he told Nouvak.

  "See dahn?"

  Bonchoo shook his head. "No, no—see kow, white magic."

  "What is this?" Nouvak asked her seriously. "You show us?"

  Mrs. Pollifax drew out a coin, held it up for her dinner companions to see, and caused the coin to vanish and then to appear all over again: in midair, and then from Nouvak's ear. There was a long and astonished silence and then a child laughed in delight, and then another. Nouvak grinned broadly. At the sound of laughter the women came in from the kitchen and the children swarmed over the platform to see, while shouts from the compound brought a gathering crowd to stand outside and watch.

  Gaining confidence, Mrs. Pollifax drew out a 25-baht bill, rolled it up, palmed it and, leaning forward, drew it out of a small girl's mouth. Laughter exploded, mingled with giggles and shrieks. H
er instructor at home would undoubtedly be shaking his head and saying, "Clumsy, Emily, clumsy!" but in an Akha hill village what she produced was a miracle of magic, and the children grew so eager that Nouvak had to order them back so that the women could see. Drawing near to the end of her repertoire, she began to rue her success, but her audience did not mind in the least that she repeated her tricks a second, a third and then a fourth time. Bonchoo watched, his eyes warm with pleasure in her, and she learned that no matter what language children spoke, their ooh's and their ahh's were the same in every country. She could not have found a more appreciative audience.

  A shout from the forest suddenly interrupted them. Startled, Mrs. Pollifax's coins dropped into her lap and she turned to see two young Akha men hurrying up the path and shouting.

  Bonchoo and Nouvak at once rose to their feet; the crowd at the edge of the veranda fell back. There were exclamations and excited bursts of speech.

  "What is it?" asked Mrs. Pollifax. "What's happening?"

  Bonchoo turned to her, smiling. "They have found him!"

  "Cyrus?" she gasped. Her fears and tensions fell away from her and she jumped to her feet, straining to see into the darkness beyond the hearth.

  "He's coming now," Bonchoo told her.

  Behind the Akha men a paler face shone in the dimness and Mrs. Pollifax stepped eagerly forward.

  Abruptly she stopped. "But—that isn't Cyrus!" she cried and then, desperately, "That isn't Cyrus, I don't know who this man is but he's just not Cyrus, not Cyrus at all"

  The man they had brought to her stopped and glared at her. In a coldly furious voice he said, "I don't give a damn who I'm supposed to be, I demand an explanation for this outrage. I was sound asleep in my sleeping bag when these two—two savages—prodded me with their guns and forced me here. The name's Mornajay, Lance Mornajay, and who the hell are you? he demanded.

  CHAPTER

  11

  "Emily Pollifax," she snapped, disliking him intensely because he was supposed to have been Cyrus and it was unforgivable that he was not Cyrus. What was more, he was arrogant, and obviously an American which made his arrogance especially annoying. He exuded authority: a large man in his late forties with a large pale face and a powerful jaw topped by a leonine head of curly gray hair. He was dressed expensively in exquisitely cut camping clothes: suede boots, faded jeans, denim shirt, and they were all immaculate. An expensive camera was suspended from his neck; he carried a sleeping bag in one hand and wore a backpack across his shoulders. And he was not Cyrus. He said explosively, "My good woman—" "Not your good woman," she hurled at him, and as more men came to stand next to him, "Is one of those men your guide?"