_By_ GEORGE GILBERT
_Copyright, 1918, by The Story-Press Corporation._
Flood-time on Salwin River, Burma! _Pouk_ trees and _stic-lac_ in
flower. By day the rush, the roar of water fretting at the knees of
Kalgai Gorge, above which the Thoungyeen enters the main current. And
the music of the elephants’ bells as they come along the track bound
down or mayhap up to work in the teak forests. By night the languorous
scent of the _serai_ vines luring the myriad moths, the wail of the
gibbons, the rustle of the bamboos chafing their feathery leaves
together in the winds that just falter between rest and motion.
At Kalgai the traders pause in going up or down, over or across. From
everywhere they come, and coming, stay to chaffer, to chat, cheat,
scheme, love—aye and even slay! Why not? It’s life—raw life!
Take away the medicine. Give me rice curry and chicken and fish cooked
with green bamboo tips and sourish-sweet _pilou_ of river mussels. And
then a whiff of _bhang_ or black Malay tobacco that the gypsies of the
sea smuggle in....
My name? Paul Brandon will do. My father was a Stepney coster. Mother?
Oh, a half-caste Mandalay woman. Yes, they were married at the mission.
He took her home. I was born in London. But I ran away; came East....
Don’t mind if I babble, ma’am. And forgive me if I pull at the sheets.
Or if the sight of a white woman, old, patient, trying to be kind to me,
makes me shy. When my head clears, I’m white; when the fever mist comes
over my brain, I see things through my brown mother’s eyes.
Thanks for fixing the ice pack on my head. No, that mark on my forehead
is not from an old bruise. A Karen-Laos woman put it there with her
tattoo needles. It has a meaning. It is the Third Eye of Siva.
Thanks for pulling-to the shade. Those bamboo things the yellow and
brown folk use are not shades. They are full of holes where the weaving
is that holds them together. Why, you can see through them—see the most
unbelievable things....
Oh, yes, the mark on my forehead. A girl put it there with her needles.
Now that you touch it, it _is_ sore. Well, so would _your_ head be sore
if a giant python had smashed his wedge-shaped head in death stroke
against your wrinkled brow, executing the Curse of Siva.
How long have I been in Maulmain?... A week? Well, I won’t be here
another. But it’s queer how a man will drift—to his own people.
Thanks for the little morphine pills. Yes, I know what they are. Give me
a dozen, and they may take hold. A man who has smoked _bhang_, black
Malay tobacco and opium, and who has drunk _bino_ isn’t going to be hurt
by sugar pills. They only wake me up, steady me.
Why didn’t I know Pra Oom Bwaht was a liar?...
――――
Karen town on Thoungyeen River! Temple bells chiming or booming through
the mystic, potent dusk; mynah-birds scolding in the _thy-tsi_ trees.
Frogs croaking under the banyans’ knees in the mud. Women coming to
worship in the temples—women with songs on their full red lips and
burdens on their heads—and mighty little else on them. And the fat, lazy
priests and the monks going about, begging bowls in hand, with their
_cheelahs_ to lead them as they beg their evening rice.
Thanks for the lime juice, ma’am. Let me talk. It eases me.
To Karen town on Thoungyeen River—Karen town with its Temple of Siva—I
came long before the rains. This year? Mayhap. Last? What do the dead
years matter now?
To Karen town I brought wire rods for anklet-making, cloths, mirrors,
sweetmeats—an elephant’s load. Once there, I let my elephant driver go.
Three days of good trade I had, and my goods were about gone, turned
into money and antique carved silver and gold work. At the close of the
third day, as I sat in front of the _zana_, smoking, smoking, smoking,
listening to the buzz of the women and children, Pra Oom Bwaht came.
He was tall for a Karen man of the hills, all of five foot two. The
Karen plainsmen are taller. He sat a space beside me in silence—sure
mark of a man of degree among such chatterers.
“Have you seen the temples of Karen?” he asked finally.
Lazily I looked him over. He was sturdy—a brave man, I thought. He had a
cunning eye, a twisty mouth, and in his forehead’s middle a black mark
showing harsh against his yellow skin.
“What’s that?” I asked him, touching the mark. He winced when I did it.
“Dread Bhairava,” he said, using the Brahman word for Siva, Queen of the
Nagas. He was a snake-worshiper, then. Mighty little of these people or
their talk or dialects I don’t know.
“Come with me, white trader?” he asked me. “I am Pra Oom Bwaht.”
Idly I went. So, after visiting the other temples, we came to the Temple
of Siva, perched on its rocks, with the river running near and its
little grounds well kept. It was the hour of evening worship. The
worshipers, mostly women, were coming in with votive offerings.
But among them all there was a Laos girl, shapely as a roe deer,
graceful, brown, with flashing black eyes and shining black hair neatly
coiled on top of her pretty head, and with full red lips. As she passed,
Oom Bwaht just nudged me—pointed. She turned off at a fork of the path,
alone.