“I don’t know Jim, it wouldn’t be too good if they kept him out long.” Con pondered, stroking his goatee. “The men won’t like it. He’s the only missionary that stayed in after the Stilwell walkout. That is, the only missionary who stayed right with his people. If they keep him out any length of time the Kachins won’t like it.”
“Doesn’t the Colonel know that?” Niven said, warming with the soft steadiness of Con’s voice. The warmth in the voice that failed to hide its hardness, yet still gave you its undivided attention.
“He must … maybe … never mind,” Con hesitated.
“What is it, boss?” Niven asked. “Do you think maybe they’re getting up an offensive?”
“Just hoping, Jim.”
“Son-of-a-bitch. An offensive!” Niven exclaimed.
“Come off it, Jim,” Con snapped icily. “We’ve no right to talk like that. We’ve no right to assume anything is coming. That attitude just gets the men worked up, then if nothing happens we will have trouble.”
“Sorry, Con,” Niven bowed his head and puckered his lip slightly, looking suddenly almost comically young. Fleetingly he glanced at the monkey. She was sitting down. Instinctively she scratched herself between the legs, then inquisitively she scratched on. Niven turned away, looking back at Con. “I understand, I know better.”
“Oh, hell,” Con sighed. “I’m hoping for an offensive just as bad as you are Jim. They can’t expect us to bear all the pressure much longer … anyhow, I’m glad to know the Priest is with Danny.”
“I like the Englishman,” Niven said handing Con the scotch bottle. The monkey screeched. Con stared at her and she quieted down, then he grinned and winked at Niven.
“Danny is the finest man I’ve ever known,” Con said heavily, stroking his goatee. “The finest.”
“Is it true, boss, that he’s a real Hindu Yogi?”
“Danny’s everything, I guess. Yes. And he’s a real Yogi.”
“He’s a smart son-of-a-bitch I’ll tell you that,” Niven said authoritatively. “He must speak five languages.”
“Yes, he’s smart that way too. He speaks twelve languages. Fluently,” Con said. “He knows over fifty dialects of Chinese alone. The only white man out here that knows more Chinese is Stilwell.”
“Jesus,” Niven said taking off his thin gold rimmed glasses, wiping them with a khaki handkerchief. “The way he just sits for hours. You know … with his legs crossed over his thighs and his back so rigid and straight, the Lotus Seat he calls it. It’s part of his religion, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Jim. Part of it,” Con said sitting up straighter now, inhaling deeply of the fresh cool north wind, snow crisp from its passage from the Himalayas.
“Why do they call it the Lotus Seat?” Niven looked inquisitively, genuinely interested now.
“Danny explained it to me once, it is the best position in which to concentrate really. The straightness of the spine allows a free and straight circulation from the stomach to the brain. The blood flows freely to each brain center and it’s also a very restful position.”
“It don’t look it. And why the name Lotus?” Niven asked.
“Well, years ago,” Con replied, “Thousands of years ago the Indians used to chew lotus leaves. Actually they probably chewed opium or poppy leaves. They’d get high from the leaves … like people do from dope and get into a dream state.
“When a yogi sits in such a position and concentrates he gets lost in some out of this world thought but he does it without drugs. He even gets in this state quicker than people can who take drugs and of course with no after effects or let down.”
“It looks like goddamn hard work,” Niven said fingering his glasses.
“Meditation is damn exhausting. It’s a world of bliss and a very ecstatic state and you have to know how to achieve it,” Con smiled. “The only thing that can be likened to it that we know about is a sexual orgasm. But it isn’t really that. These men who practice meditation can stay in it for hours, even days. How would you like to pop your nuts on a twenty-four hour basis, Jim?”
“Wheuu … Jesus!” Niven said looking at Con admiringly. “Where did you learn all this stuff?”
“From Danny.”
“And it’s on the level they get a sex kick like that?”
“Not a sex kick really, Jim. I only used that as a comparison, it’s much more than that. When you have a sexual orgasm a great part of the thrill is the fact that everything is momentarily blank. You leave the world. You escape from the reality of living, but only for a second. The Yogi learns to live in a vaster realm of understanding. They do not meditate to escape this world but to gain better ones. They understand this world better. Danny used the word ‘tolerate’ … you learn to tolerate and accept without being bitter.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” Niven said putting his glasses on. “That Danny is a smart son-of-a-bitch.”
Down on the side of the hill the tiger roared and Scheherazade froze and the entire night sounds of the forest stilled. Con reached over and untied the monkey and held her to him as Lau’rel walked into the headquarters.
“Evening, old chaps,” Lau’rel said lightly. “And Madame Scheherazade,” Lau’rel withdrew his bush hat bowing slightly. “How is the young lady?”
The monkey looked up at Lau’rel understandingly, then clutched tightly at Con as the tiger roared below and several more answered with deep bellowing grunts.
“Everything is fine, old boy,” Lau’rel said looking down at Con.
“Did you check the outpost on the north hill?” Con asked.
“As you directed. I ran into Nautaung up there.”
“Good. Did you give my message to the Subadar?” Con asked.
“As you directed,” the Filipino smiled, his black and wavy hair shining and reflecting in the firelight.
“Good boy, Lau’rel,” Con said, the ancient Spanish face of the Filipino suddenly reminding Con of a painting he had once seen of an officer in the Spanish Crusades.
“What was Nautaung doing up there?” Niven asked.
“What does Nautaung do everywhere?” Con said stroking the back of the monkey’s neck. “Making sure everything and everybody is all right … give Lau’rel a drink Jim,” Con said still looking up at Lau’rel. “Sit down José,” Con invited in a warm yet firm voice.
“Where’s that shit La Bung La?” Niven asked. “Why wasn’t he checking the outpost. Shit … how can you check anything when you’re always taking a bath.”
Con’s eyes squinted, his broad forehead wrinkled.
“What’s wrong with La Bung La?” Lau’rel asked. “He looks like a capable fellow.”
“Haven’t you noticed yet?” Niven sniffed his nostrils knowingly.
“There’s nothing wrong with La Bung La, José,” Con interrupted.
“That shit,” Niven said sarcastically. “That chicken shit son-of-a-bitch.”
“Shut up,” Con said briskly and the monkey grabbed tight to his shirt. “Just because I don’t like La Bung La personally doesn’t mean he isn’t a good soldier. Personal opinions are no good in this kind of army. In any army. Remember that. We’ve got enough troubles just existing … staying alive and in one piece, without you causing any dissension.”
Niven flushed and spit into the fire. The fire hissed and the monkey registered unease.
“Pass the bottle, Lau’rel,” Con said. Lau’rel passed it to Niven and Niven held it out to Con. Con drank and then they all drank. The monkey refused.
“I just saw Billingsly,” Lau’rel said to Niven. “He says we’re going to play some poker a little later.”
“Did you ever play with him before?” Con asked and tossed a pack of cigarettes to Lau’rel. Lau’rel took one and passed the pack to Niven. They all lit up.
“I haven’t had the pleasure of a game with him as yet,” Lau’rel said touching the medallion that hung from his neck.
“God help your pocket book!” Con laughed, revealing teeth that were white an
d even.
“He knows his cards,” Niven said.
“He’s not so hot,” a voice spoke from behind.
They all looked around at the tall straight figure of Danforth, the American half Indian. They watched as the Oregon staff sergeant walked heavily around them.
“Where are we going to play?” he squatted warily by the fire next to Lau’rel. “I could use a little extra.”
“Where are we going to play?” Lau’rel asked Niven innocently.
“I’m not sure I want to play now,” Niven sulked.
“What’s wrong, Pullmotor?” Danforth spoke huskily, his eyes coldly hostile.
“Funny boy,” Niven said sarcastically. “Why don’t you grow up and get off that Pullmotor business.”
“Put a log on the fire, Lau’rel,” Con said evenly, looking penetratingly from Danforth to Niven, noting the intensity between them.
“You don’t like it, Pullmotor?” Danforth said to Niven slowly taking the trench knife from his scabbard, beginning to clean his nails. He was wide shouldered and narrow hipped and did not look Indian, or half Indian, or even a third Indian and certainly not enough Indian to have been born on the Klamath reservation.
“Pullmotor. So you don’t like Danforth’s little joke,” tasting in Niven’s irritation a depraved sort of pleasure. “Well, you’ve earned that name. We can’t help it if the sight of you makes people want to give you air,” Danforth said looking at Lau’rel and then at Con, gleefully half smiling, half seeking approval.
Niven glowered. He picked up a small stick twisting it into the earth, then threw it hard into the fire showering sparks. The monkey screeched, holding tight to Con.
“That’s enough of that shit,” Con spoke in a cold even voice, becoming at once the focal point of the group. “Both of you are acting like a couple of kids.”
Danforth ran the blade of his trench knife across the stubble beard of his chin scratchingly. “But this punk.…”
“Enough,” Con said sternly.
The half Indian eyed Con balefully.
“Cut it out now. And for good,” Con said. “Or goddamn it something is going to happen to you both. We have no time or energy, in this business, to waste on enmity.” He looked icily from one to the other. “You’ve all got bigger jobs than to argue with each other.”
“Sure, old chaps,” Lau’rel injected. “There’s no reason why we can’t have a friendly little poker together. Really.”
“Where will we play?” Danforth asked furtively.
“Let’s play at Billingsly’s then,” Niven said gloomily.
They all looked at Con. The monkey was resting her head on his sinewy neck. Con nodded approvingly.
“Fine,” Lau’rel sighed. “About eight thirty then. Come along, Niven. Let’s eat,” he said rising. Niven stood up.
“Niven,” Con spoke calmly. “Ask Billingsly for that box of cigars in my mule pack. I’ve quit chewing them for awhile.”
“A whole box?”
Con nodded.
“Gee, thanks Con, see you later.” They started up the hill. “A whole box, Lau’rel,” Niven said joyfully, childishly.
Danforth put his knife in his scabbard, slowly getting up from his squatting position. He looked down at Con.
“Take it easy on Niven,” Con looked up eyeing him evenly. “Jim’s been out here five months now, all the way, and he isn’t the healthiest guy around. And radio men like him don’t grow on trees. Niven’s the best.”
“Sure,” Danforth said hesitatingly. “Sure. I understand,” he said reluctantly, then turned and walked heavily away.
Con stared into the fire feeling vaguely uneasy. The flaring tempers of Niven and Danforth had left an emotional resentment permeating the air. It seemed strange that it should hang there now that its initial energy had been spent. More and more he saw emotion play a predominant part, until he had become certain that it was the dominating force of his outfit’s character.
The Kachin people were in their own land, fighting their own war as they had for centuries warred since they had come down from the icy tundras of the Khans. They had evolved a resistance to emotion with regards to war, Con knew. But they were not immune to it. There was no positive immunity to fear.
It was the white men that worried Con. The Kachins looked up to them, depended on them. They could not serve their purpose if they continued to allow their feelings to become personal or run amuck. They must learn what they had never been taught in training, what they could not teach a man in training; to adapt themselves to the uncertainty of war’s situations, to adjust logically to whatever presented itself. What a successful leader of men needed most was composure, balance, and presence of mind.
Con put the monkey down abruptly and tied her to her rope leash. Slowly, deliberately he lit a cigarette.
Composure plus Balance plus Presence of Mind equalled Security. Security, the sedative of sensation. And what was the fear of death but the fear of loss of sensation, or of encountering a new unknown sensation? Give them a sense of security and men, whether at play or at war, will know no harm. It sounded simple. Very simple. Simple indeed. Too goddamn simple.
Explain it to Niven and Danforth. How can you explain it? You don’t try. You give it to them. You take it out of you, drain yourself of it if you must, but you give it to them, even if they don’t know it. They will pass it down. It was the only way. There just wasn’t any other way. The osmosis of the soul, Danny had once said.
The infiltration of his soul and the souls of the men. That was a fine thought. A beautiful thought. War wasn’t all dirty if it brought out things like that. If it lifted a man’s thinking up to a higher plane which he had never before considered, because he was too lazy to consider, because he had lived such a shallow life that he had never been forced to consider.
Danny was right. War was not a bad thing. The world had to evolve to progress and what changed things more than war. We are the seed of tomorrow. That was the way a man lived on after his death, Danny had said. That gives a man a purpose to live.
For the first time Con began to understand completely. He looked into the dark night, to the west where Danny was now, wishing that the Englishman was here with him. There were many things that he wanted to talk to Danny about. And Danny would understand, Con knew.
He reached over and took the map out of the mapcase and laid the map between his legs. Tonight had to be that night he was expecting. He leaned over tracing the map with his finger. The firelight glimmered and the shadows pulsated over the contour lines.
Now if I were Major Shigito Muzumoto.…
CHAPTER III
Danny de Mortimer, fourth cousin to King George (he was not in reality a cousin to the King but a distant relative of Lord Louis Mountbatten; however people seemed to derive a vicarious elevation in believing that Danny was of royal blood. This myth was so well established that at times he believed it himself.) Danny de Mortimer rubbed the top of his shaven head vigorously with clenched fists. Then he dropped the monocle from his right eye to his extended hand and cleaned it quickly on the fold of his shirt, replacing it deftly like a knife to its sheath.
Now he sat immobile, straightbacked with legs crossed over thighs in the Lotus Seat staring at the valley; the jungle smoking and sputtering in the dusk, the forest about him an array of ever increasing shadows.
Danny looked across the valley and the road of Con’s ambush to the hills where Con’s camp should be, wondering how it went, knowing somehow someway that the young American had been lucky with it.
What was that driving electric quality about Con that never gave him a moment’s rest, that throbbed through him intensely, generating that excessive vitality? What was the nature of his controversy, and if he knew, why did he keep it so buried? Was it the woman Margaret that tore at him?
Not five feet away the Priest snored loudly, his middleheight stockiness stretched to the slope of the hill, his dirty grey-white beard protruding from under the bush hat th
at covered his face, his arms folded childlike across a bottle of Irish whiskey tucked in his belt.
But what of Con? If it wasn’t the woman Margaret what in the bloody devil was it? It could be family, Danny thought. Con’s native sensitivity thwarted by the gentile’s curse of artificial love? That insane parental drive for greatness in the child? Family glory. The vicarious worship that would place their child above all men; rather than the real and true love of the child itself. Jews were different, Danny knew from his years in Palestine. They could never be driven to clan hatred by family antagonism. It was the one quality he admired in the Jews; it was the one thing in a way that helped to make up for their monumental selfpity.
High above him Danny heard the racing drone of a fighter plane streaking northward, straining to identify it until the sound faded away.
But Con.… Had he crossed the line and gone beyond such shallow conflict? Perhaps he had. Perhaps he was finding out that he had been living a life that was foreign to him, a life opposed to that to which his true nature was inclined, aware suddenly that he had piled distress upon distress, tribulation upon tribulation in defiance of a social and economic code that he did not understand … seeking with his defiance worlds of peace beyond the universal concept. A sensitive man who felt deeply and dealt in disorder because he really never had a talent for disorder at all.
Con Reynolds had the best chance of all to find his Dhrama, that Danny knew. Better even than the priest Father Barrett. Danny’s guru had taught him that it was men of wild extravagant beliefs and childlike minds into which true knowledge descended. The young American had not yet learned society’s law of limitation nor was he too educated. For what did education bring but sophistication and from that came only vanity, and what was vanity but idle wind, the holy man had said.
Danny stroked his moustaches twisting the long ends tightly, attuning his wandering mind to the sounds of his camp, aware suddenly that sometime during his thinking the generator had stopped. Now that his message was in, Danny knew, Con would be receiving his over across the valley.
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