Part 20 (1/2)

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 wors.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ce 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 st.u.r.dy-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-wors.h.i.+per, 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 wors.h.i.+p. The wors.h.i.+pers, 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 flas.h.i.+ng black eyes and s.h.i.+ning black hair neatly coiled on top of her pretty head, and with full red lips. As she pa.s.sed, Oom Bwaht just nudged me-pointed. She turned off at a fork of the path, alone.

I glanced at Pra Oom Bwaht. His twisty mouth was wreathed in a smile.

”She lives at the end of that little path,” he tempted. ”She is Nagy N'Yang.”

”Alone?”

”Alone.”