The Blue-Eyed Shan (7 page)

He skirted East Poppy Field, his blood running hot and strong, the breath in his lungs like wine. His valley and his people. Killing was commonplace and not difficult. But not all men had such good reasons.

Unless they climbed to the ridge, the Kachin would cross or round East Poppy Field, which was precautionary terrain, for show and maneuver; Pawlu proper began half a mile to the west, through Red Bullock Pass. The pass was the first line of Shan defense and the people of Pawlu had never, so far, needed another. Organization. Method. Naung was proud of himself. He was a born fighter.

Wan was waiting at the pass. Naung raced to him. “Kin-tan?”

“North Slope. Mong, South Slope. Don't fret. No one will outflank us. What is it this time?” Wan was a bull of a man, powerful, over forty monsoons and could lift a grown goat in the crook of one elbow. He would surely have been First Rifle if Naung had not acquired foreign experience and then become a legend for his Long-Haul-with-Koko. Beside him Naung, who was thirty and wiry, felt a stripling.

“Two Kachin.”

“A brave people. No help for it. Weapons?”

“Rifles.” Above them a cat seemed to miaow. Naung scanned the sky. “There. A kite.”

“Waiting for carrion. And there it is: your Kachin.”

The two horsemen were bordering the field by the north path. Naung and Wan lay among sheep-stagger-bush on the south slope of the pass; the Kachin would ride directly toward them for half a minute or more.

“How shall we do it this time?”

“We just take them,” Naung said. “No pranks and no haste. We can kill them a ten of times.”

“Once is usually enough,” Wan said. “I think we should stop talking.”

Naung examined his weapon again and unfolded the trigger. This trigger simply folded forward out of the way—that was the ingenious safety; and for firing it had to be deliberately plucked down. Naung had thirty-two rounds in his magazine and hoped to use no more than two. Perhaps the pistol this time? Wan was sighting an old British rifle. Traders brought ammunition, two and three cartridges at a time, once a full box of fifty, and the pompous Indian wanted an ounce of silver for it. Wan had taken twenty for ten catties of rice. Wan now had half a magazine, but his was a bolt-action rifle and if he missed, or if his round of unknown origin misfired … No. Naung would use the mitraillette, to be certain. He trusted his own ammunition. It was four years old and more, but the gods had blessed his Long-Haul-with-Koko and this ammunition was sacred.

They saw the Kachin at the same moment and there was no need to speak or signal. The two horsemen approached at a leisurely walk, squinting here and there, rifles still at the ready. They seemed to believe that because they were not singing and dancing no one would notice them. Now Naung could see bandoliers, a silver ornament in the turban; one of these Kachin was missing an eye and wore a bit of colored ribbon on his blouse, probably a British or American medal. The sun washed them in clear golden mountain light.

Naung and Wan fired simultaneously. No refinements: they aimed for the heart and fired. The Kachin were dead before they fell. The ponies bucked and shied, the Kachin slid to earth. Half a ten of Shan emerged from the bushes and trees and caught the ponies while Naung covered the Kachin and Wan confirmed their release from this life. One rifle was an M-1, the other an Arisaka 99. The bandoliers were almost full. A blessing. In small leather bags they found silver pieces. One carried opium and a pipe of inferior jade. In the cloth boots they found articles of carved superior jade, doubtless for trading. These two men carried no food, no spare clothing, no religious objects. They were far from their own shrines, and would cross to the long night without ritual.

Naung freed his magazine and counted cartridges. Good! Only two gone! The lightest touch of the finger! For the hundredth time he wondered why this mitraillette had been conceived without single-shot fire as well. But only two gone! He was pleased. “Take the heads,” he called out. “Leave the bodies on the upper slope. Sentries, back to your posts. Kin-tan, take charge. I'm going home. Cages tomorrow.”

The men groaned and cursed. Naung laughed. “You call yourselves Shan! Bandits, more like. Scared to death of honest labor.”

“All we ask is honest labor,” they protested. “Is paddy-work not work? And the tea harvest? And the poppies?”

“We are farmers, and not roadside carpenters,” one said.

“Nor killers either,” Naung said, “but when there is work to be done, we must do it.”

“And we will,” Wan said, “but complaining is half the pleasure.”

They all chuckled, and the strapping Kin-tan deployed some of the men, and the rest filed through the pass, two on Yunnan ponies, all of them cheerful, homeward bound, their women and children waiting for them, and the Sawbwa. It was the Sawbwa's work to see that no harm came to his people, that they dealt justly with one another, that they committed no blasphemy and comported themselves with honor, that no bandit or guerrilla ever set foot in their valley, that the Wild Wa never took a Shan head.

“They never learn,” said the Sawbwa, his cloudy eye rolling. “How many heads are up?”

“Nine,” Naung said, “along both sides of the road, and some are naked skulls, now.”

“Barbarous. It makes me feel no more civilized than the Wild Wa.”

“It is the only way,” Naung insisted. “We count a hundred bandits each moon who see them, think twice and pass on by.” Before the Sawbwa he made a tiny row of Kachin boots, pipes, jade. “The meager leavings of two lives.”

“It is the end of order. The earth's underpinnings tremble and shift. The last lakh of years is passing.” The Sawbwa's pale, greenish skin gleamed; his thinned hair was white, his good eye was a doe's eye, his nostrils were broad and noisy, his teeth jagged and brown. He had been known to speak with the dead. “Before the war we killed only Wild Wa, and only when they came headhunting. Now the hills crawl with bandits and every man is his own state with his own law.”

The two were squatting before the Sawbwa's house, chatting across an aromatic fire in the clay-and-stone hearth. A small vat of potato soup bubbled promisingly. If you stood one hundred rows of one hundred men in a field, that would make a lakh of fingers. So many years were the Sawbwa's concern; Naung's concern was tomorrow.

“You did well.” The Sawbwa sighed. “But these cages! We never used to do that. Over in Yunnan they did it.” From his shirt he drew a bamboo pipe two spans long: he plucked a brand from the fire and blew tobacco smoke. “It is well. Go to your woman and child.”

Naung sniffed at the soup. Always that inner twinge when they said, “Your child.” He rose, bowed briefly, slung the mitraillette and padded down the road. The Sawbwa's house overlooked most of the valley, and the evening report was to Naung an excursion, a bracing stroll to West Slope and then, at sunset, a grand view east over poppy fields and potato patches, plum orchards and terraced paddy; the poppies were plump now. The wood-and-bamboo houses, forty-two of them, were hospitable in the late light, contours soft and shadowed, fires flickering, knots of farmers gossiping and smoking. And according to the season there were pleasant odors, in the autumn drying fish, in early spring the heavy wet aroma of muddy furrow (Naung had learned during the war that when the rest of Burma was dry as a bone the Shan States enjoyed mountain rains, and he took this as evidence of the Lord Buddha's favor), in summer from the slopes rich billows of sheep-stagger-bush blossom and in the valley harvest odors, potato and barley and peanut, and the smell of paddy. In fall Naung shot gyi and pheasant, and once he had hacked to death a somnolent python, which was tasty boiled.

He entered his own leafy lane. His house sat well back among bamboo, looking south; at this time of year sunshine was a blessing early and late. High on the ridges above the valley Naung saw rime now and then, in December or January, like a Kachin mantle of silver; it vanished in an hour.

Loi-mae was pounding millet. Naung stood outside in the dusk sniffing at a warm, moist northerly breeze. He heard a toktay croak, and counted: six times. Here where he was born he had meat, drink, warmth, shelter, an amiable woman of beauty to share his life, and a stepdaughter of nine who brightened his house like a flock of rainbow swallows. True, the daughter was not his; true, the woman had been another's; never mind. Pawlu was all this and more: cool dry season, warm dry season, monsoon. The occasional wildcat, a flight of bats, good opium for relaxation. Pawlu was some two hundred souls who asked little of life yet had much.

Naung entered his house, feeling, as always when he crossed his own doorsill, a man of worth. “Blessings.” Loi-mae came to embrace him. Lola skipped to them and tugged at his jacket. He let his cheek rest warmly against his wife's, and then he rubbed his daughter's head and drew her too into the embrace. His wife, Loi-mae, was a goodly woman and comely. He had wondered, for a time, whether Green Wood had found her beautiful as Western women were beautiful. To Naung she was the most beautiful of all, but not for size, or shape, or feature: for the soft voice, the hearth, the soup, the gentle hands, the constancy.

His daughter's beauty was unquestioned, and was still a source of wonder to the whole village, as was her bubbly disposition. She was a busybody, welcome everywhere, an imp born of the sun and fated to laugh, skip, dance and make merry in the bright mountain light. When she passed by, plowmen paused to wave; when she transplanted, she cheered the whole paddy full of Shan. Even the other children liked her. Loi-mae had been more wary of the other children than of the grown men and women; these last, after all, knew hunger and death and were inclined to kindness. Loi-mae had not burdened Naung with her worries, but he sensed the narrow way this child had walked, and sensed too Loi-mae's relief, like a burden set down, that the child was a child of the village and not of a stranger.

He made a priest's face at his daughter. “Little golden one, what have you done with your day?” For some weeks after his return from Indochina, during his courtship of Loi-mae, he had been embarrassed by the child's tawny hair, by a golden glow that seemed to shine forth from her gleaming skin. And then Loi-mae had said, “Her father was a good man and she is a lovely child, and let us have no frowning or perplexities.” Naung had answered, “She is a lovely golden child and all say so.” Loi-mae had said, “Then let there be no fears and no forbidden words. She is a daughter of two worlds, and even her name is a name in both.”

Lola was not merely nine now but nine and a half, and she spoke up sedately: “I ground millet. I found and fetched eggs. At Lower Stream I pounded garments. And Chung says I must learn soon to tap the poppies.”

He feigned severity and said, “Well, that is not bad.” Lola was a beautiful name, a beautiful word, musical and sweet. “I hope you found time to play.” He lunged for her and hummed along her neck.

She squealed and giggled. “Not much time. Cha's wedding is only three days off and there is much to do.”

“And what can a girl of nine do?” Naung scoffed. “What does a girl of nine know of weddings?”

“A girl of nine can polish the silver ornaments. Tui said I did well. And I am to dance.”

Naung was proud that she had been chosen to dance, so did not mention it. “What do they use for polish in Tui's house?”

“Pig's grease and river sand.”

“Too harsh,” Naung said. “Pig's grease and paddy mud do better. That Tui was always a harsh woman.”

“You lived with her long enough,” Loi-mae said.

“Well, that was years ago before the war, when I was a boy, and you would not have me, and it was only a month or two. I don't envy Kin-tan.”

“I am going to live with Weng-aw,” Lola said.

“Not yet you aren't,” Naung said, and nuzzled her again.

“When the time comes,” Lola said firmly.

“You will live with more than one man,” Loi-mae promised, “and when you become a wife it will be to a man you know and value.”

Naung smiled at his wife, who returned the smile. There were moments in Naung's life so complete, so swollen, that he feared the gods' wrath, as if one day he might be made to pay a great price.

The moment dissolved. He sat on a reed mat and leaned back against the oak-and-bamboo wall, content. He felt for his pipe and tobacco, and lit up. “Beer would be good,” he said, but Loi-mae was already scooping a cupful from the keg. Naung sipped and watched his woman work. The beer danced in his belly. Millet cakes she was preparing, surely potatoes, maybe papaya. The venison was long gone. What more could a man ask? All this, and a floor of wide-planked teak-wood too!

“Lazy man!” Loi-mae said. “Go bring us a fresh fish.”

Naung groaned. “Why not ask before I light my pipe?”

“The pipe can be lit again. Or Lola will keep it burning.”

Naung grumbled but was happy within. Loi-mae's face was round, her eyes bright, almost black, shiny with life, her lips full, her teeth only slightly stained; she smoked little and chewed betel less. Her body was strong but accommodating, and she loved him within her, or seemed to, and in this Naung was shy and uncertain; and she cried out encouragement and thanks. She was not stringy like Wan's woman, a scold.

He took a bamboo pole from its pegs on the rear wall, and a round wicker basket without a bottom, and a wicker creel which he slung on his back. “I'll go,” he said, “but I'll be hungry afterward. And later—you know what fish does to a man.”

“Big talk,” she complained. “Who snored first last night?”

“Perhaps if my woman were less homely,” he suggested, and she beat him out the door, pounding his back with the flat of her hands and laughing as she cried, “O! O! You rhinoceros!”

Light lingered over West Slope and the Sawbwa's house. Naung touched his pistol. The evening sounded normal, a calm voice here and a laugh there, a pye-dog's yap. Naung hurried. He would need more than starlight, and the moon would be late tonight. The air of dusk was cool and soothing on his face. He trotted toward the upper paddies. They were submerged now, with waterweeds growing that would later be fertilizer. Each spring Pawlu dispatched a body of armed men to follow the valley's deep stream to the River Lae, a tributary of the great Salween. These men made bundles of reeds and grasses, and strung the bundles on bamboos, and laid them down in shallow water, weighting them with stones. Fat river fish came to the shallows to spawn, and their eggs clung to the reeds and grasses. At the proper time the men gathered these reeds and grasses in great baskets and bore them home, and scattered them in the paddies, and soon the eggs hatched and later the fishing was good.