Golden Earth by Norman Lewis

Author:Norman Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781906011901
Publisher: Eland Publishing
Published: 2011-12-09T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Protective Custody

THE LOCAL SECTION of the Burma Road having been declared open to traffic, the headman took me down in his jeep to the point where the hill-track joined it, and where he had established a roadblock, guarded by his men. Seng had come down to see me off, and here we parted most cordially. The soldiers had already stopped a jeep. In it were two Chinese merchants on their way from Kutkai to Mu-Sé. This town was not marked on my map, the production of a very well known map-making firm, which was vague – and, as I later discovered, inaccurate – about this frontier area. The Chinese spoke of Mu-Sé as if it were a considerable metropolis, a local nerve-centre from which well organised transport services left regularly in all directions. This pernicious optimism in informants is one of the traveller’s worst enemies. They said there were lorries to Nam Hkam ‘plenty often’. More than once a day? Oh, sure, more than once a day. Would we get to Mu-Sé early enough to catch one? Oh, sure we would, sure thing.

The Chinese spoke English better than the Burmese perhaps because they had escaped the schools run by religious institutions, with their hallmark of tedious and involved archaism. By comparison the Chinese made it snappy, and cinema-argot ran like a rich vein of fool’s gold through their speech. Their Americanisms are, of course, dated, and as the cinematographic diet of the Far East is largely composed of gun-toting epics, they are drawn largely from the dialects of the cattle-raising states. ‘Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,’ said the driver in amazement, when he learned of my hitchhike from Mandalay.

The Chinese jeep reflected in its purposeful, surging acceleration, its efficient steering and brakes, and also in certain additional equipment, such as fog-lamps, the tastes and calibre of its owner. Wherever a plain black handle or knob had existed, it had been replaced by one of sky-blue plastic. Badges in the dashboard announced membership of motoring associations in places like Hong Kong and Cuba, and would have appeared to be of little service to the Chinese member. Sometimes when approaching a corner, round which the odds of an approaching vehicle being hidden were several thousand to one, the driver would touch a button, and a tremendous fanfare of trumpets would flush from the undergrowth an unsuspected population of pigeons and quails.

This landscape was the wild, natural reserve common to most frontiers. Exposed to endless incursions of bandits, it had not been thought worth while to build villages, or to undertake any settled cultivation. From the absence of trees on the low hillsides you could see that the Palaungs or Kachins had moved through at some time, set fire to the forest and snatched a crop of ‘dry’ rice or maize. The road had been cut, a red whiplash round hillsides and through valleys filled with a dense low tundra of tropical vegetation. We saw few signs of animal

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