Dragon Apparent, page 29
Although Dupont could find no signs of a definite taboo, he was still very uneasy that no one had come out to greet us. The correct thing on entering a Laotian village with the intention of staying the night was to ask for the headman and obtain his permission to do so. Unless this were done it would be a grave discourtesy to enter any house. Dupont emphasised that while the Laotians were tolerant, civilised and hospitable, there were certain indispensable forms, and as we mooched about the deserted village, he poured out information on the subject; even describing the position for correct sleeping; body stretched out at right angles to wall containing door, feet pointing to the door. When I suggested that we might find an empty hut and sleep in it, he was startled. Although the villagers might overlook minor breaches of custom, he said, this would be a grave one, involving them in an expensive purification ceremony before the hut could be occupied again.
I offered no more suggestions and in the end we found a rather scared-looking woman who said, when Dupont spoke to her in Laotian, that the headman was away, and was not expected back. It was quite clear now that we were not welcome, and Dupont said that perhaps it would be better, after all, not to sleep in the village. Thinking about this experience afterwards, I concluded that the villagers dared not welcome us in the usual way, being unable to guarantee our safety, with the Issarak bands and the Viet-Minh in the neighbourhood. I expected that Dupont would now resign himself and return to Vang Vieng, but he began to produce arguments for carrying on. The worst thing about the convoy, he said, was that it prevented our seeing so many things and doing so many things that we could otherwise do. Up in the mountains there were Meo villages, he said, and he badly wanted to get another Meo dog. They were rare and hard to come by, but he knew one of the Meo chiefs who would oblige him. Having found out that I was very ready to be interested in such things, Dupont produced this Meo village as a kind of gaudy enticement. The only thing that separated us from the leisurely enjoyment of such pleasures, was a single village, not more than three kilometres away, which, once passed, was the last until we reached the military post of Muong Kassy, fifty kilometres away, over the mountains. Dupont’s final suggestion was that we should stay where we were until about an hour after dark, then creep up to the outskirts of the village – Pha Home was its name – with lights off, switch on the lights to make sure there was no barrier, and rush through it.
At about half-past eight, then, by which time Dupont was convinced that the village of Pha Home, with its Viet-Minh visitors, would be peacefully sleeping, we started off. It was difficult to approach the village quietly, as the road was uphill all the way. Dupont stopped and tried to quieten the exhaust, by squeezing the ends of the pipe together. This certainly reduced the exhaust note to a strangled snuffling, but through it sounded too plainly the miscellaneous rattlings that nothing could stop, and as soon as the headlights were switched off there was no way of avoiding the pot-holes and the small, loose boulders, over which we crashed continually. It was lucky for us that the village lay back about a hundred yards from the road. In spite of the hour, it was full of light and animation. As we sneaked past we could see a bonfire with a group silhouetted round it. Our passing appeared to go quite unnoticed.
We reached Muong Kassy about two hours later and slept in a large, barn-like Laotian building of thatch and bamboo, which served as the officers’ mess. Insects had been at the bamboo and the slightest movement filled the air with a powder which had the effect of snuff. The building swayed slightly with each step, but no more when there were twenty occupants, as there were next day, than when there were only two.
* * *
Muong Kassy was the headquarters of a company of Engineers whose job was the upkeep of the bridges. They were uncomfortably isolated here on top of a small hill rising only partially free of the forests, with magnificent views in all directions, which nobody noticed any longer. There was no doctor, so that casualties of any kind might have to wait several weeks for a convoy going in any direction. In the rainy season, when roads and bridges disappeared, the garrison was confined to barracks for five or six months. Outside the stockades the usual straggling collection of Laotian and Chinese huts had formed, with saloons selling ‘shoum’, a fire-water made from maize. Everything was brought by convoy and was in short supply, except the shoum which was a local speciality. The store-keepers also had a stock of what was described in English on the label as ‘fruit tonic’. The fruit tonic was made in Siam and was probably an industrial by-product; but the garrison had found out that shoum plus fruit tonic was more effective than either separately, and that stunned by a good stiff early morning dose of this, the day’s boredoms could be better supported. A shoum-and-fruit tonic relaxed the nerves too. It was after we had been introduced to this Muong Kassy custom that Dupont changed his plans, and quite forgetting about his pregnant wife, and the bicycle she might succeed in putting together, he said we would stay the day, and leave next morning.
Taking a guide from the camp, we went for a dip in the river.
There was a recognised place about a mile up the river, which was free from weed and rock, and once again, because the water was deep and swiftly running, it was very cold and refreshing. We had been swimming round for an hour or so when we noticed a number of Laotian girls hanging about. They were not watching us, but sauntering backwards and forwards in twos and threes, chatting to each other. By the time there were twelve of them, Dupont, keeping well in the water called to them and asked if we were disturbing them in any way. One of the girls came to the edge of the bank, bowed, and looking down at her feet said that it was their usual bathing time, but that there was no hurry, of course. Dupont asked the girls if they would retire for a moment, and they walked a short distance away and stood in a preoccupied circle while we got out of the water. We then dressed quickly and walked on down the path leading to their village. After about a hundred yards we looked back. All the girls, quite naked, were in the water. At that moment two bonzes were strolling slowly along the bank past them; but the girls paid no attention. The bonzes were wrapped in the mantle of holy invisibility.
When we reached the village, Dupont asked punctiliously for the headman, making the excuse that he wanted to visit the pagoda. It was quite evident that this headman was in the good graces of the garrison, and probably supplied them with labour. He was very dignified and had a fine house, with European furniture. Although barefooted, he wore a French suit. On the suggestions of the soldier from the camp he took down his trousers and showed us his legs, which from ankles to thighs were tattooed, in the local manner, so closely that he seemed to be wearing stockings. The annual boun had just been celebrated at the local pagoda and a bonze was in the act of sweeping into a heap the votive offerings with which the floor of the courtyard was littered. There was a great collection of elephants, buffaloes, peacocks and tigers, all woven in basketwork. The kind of thing that Picasso produces when he is not painting, but perhaps rather better. They seemed to me to be of the greatest artistic interest. I asked the headman if it would be possible to take any, as the bonze was crumpling and smashing them vigorously with his broom. But the chief shook his head regretfully. Buddhism had degenerated in these remote provinces and was swamped with reemergent spirit cults. These objects had been dedicated to the phi and would have to be burnt in a ritual fire. The phi would also receive the burnt essence, I noticed, of a large, very obscene, and no doubt magically valuable picture.
* * *
At about this time when the bonze was treading underfoot the village’s artistic output of several months, a party of Issarak or Viet-Minh, timing their action to coincide with the convoy’s arrival at Muong Kassy, had set fire to the forest just south of the post. A steady breeze was blowing from that quarter, and the fire, started over a width of about a mile and fanning out as it advanced, moved slowly towards the fort.
Coming up over the river bank it took us some time to realise what was happening. There was a haze; but then there was always a haze in Laos, although by this time of day it should have been clearing and not thickening. And then we heard the crackling, punctuated with the sharp pops, which might have been distant rifle fire, but which were the explosions of thick stems of bamboo. Looking up then we saw the curtain of smoke hanging over Muong Kassy, white at the top, and black at its base and streaked occasionally by lance-points of flame, which were still two miles away.
We ran to where the car was parked, started it and tried to drive down the road towards the fire. Dupont was as pleased with it as July 14th. In about fifty yards we got tangled up with the convoy and had to leave the car on the side of the road and run on. The fire was advancing on a ragged front and was as irresistible as a volcano. Black smoke was being blown before it so that at first the flames were out of sight; but when they came through they were two hundred feet high – twice the height of the tallest tree. It went forward in zigzagging rushes; eating its way quickly through the bamboo thickets, which went up like oil wells. A lane of fire had broken right out of the general advance and its spear-point was wandering up over the hillside, already level with the fort. Large clumps of green forest were being left behind or encircled and then consumed at leisure as the fire went through the bamboo. It caught at the lianas, too, and went up a tree from top to bottom in shrivelling streamers – just like Christmas decorations catching fire. The noise of the exploding bamboos was becoming deafening and the sky was covered in a cloud through which black ash streamed up like flotsam carried on flood-waters. I noticed, though, that only the tops of some of the trees had caught on the other side of the road.
Orders were given to prepare to evacuate the fort. There was a great deal of ammunition and thousands of gallons of petrol, stored in cans, and the soldiers were swarming like ants stacking it in the road and loading the lorries. Confusion developed and matured into chaos, largely caused by the arrival of half the convoy, which blocked the road and prevented the lorries being driven out of the fort. Before an evacuation could be made the convoy had to be moved on through the village, but half the drivers couldn’t be found. They had wandered off to look at the fire and taken their starting keys with them.
In the meanwhile the Laotians and Chinese rushing out of their houses with their beds and bedding, and piling their stocks of groceries between the wheels of the cars had made rapid movement impossible, even when the drivers could be rounded up. One family was actually at work taking their house down.
And then as an hour passed in struggling tumult with the convoy at last bludgeoned on through the village and safely parked on the other side, and hundreds of crates and cans loaded on to the lorries, the wind veered and the main front of the fire went by, about half a mile away. A few offshoots coming in our direction burned feebly for a while among the bamboos, and it was all over.
Next morning we left before dawn. But when daylight came there was no sunrise for us. For hours we went on climbing and dropping through the haze-dimmed mountain shapes. We were travelling at between 3000 and 4000 feet and there was no under-brush. Instead, a few trees straggled up the mountain sides, bearing sparse blossom like the flowering of an orchard in early spring. As the haze cleared a little we could see that the mountain tops bore caps of yellow grass. Dupont said that this was the work of the Meos and that it meant that we were getting into their country. Shortly we would go up to a village and try to buy a dog.
CHAPTER 19
Into the Meo Country
IN THE SENSE that least is known about them, the Meos are the most mysterious of the twelve principal races of Indo-China. This Mongolian people is to be found at altitudes higher than 3000 feet over the whole of Indo-China north of the 21st parallel of latitude. They are utterly incapable of bearing, even for the shortest time, other than cool and temperate climates. Being self-supporting, they rarely come down to visit the markets of the plains and valleys, and when obliged to cultivate fields below the 3000 feet line, they always return to their villages to sleep.
The Meos’ territorial aspirations are purely vertical. By their disastrous method of cultivation, which completely exhausts the soil in a few years, they have been forced steadily southwards from China. In migration, as in the year 1860, when they crossed the frontier of Indo-China, they will fight their way savagely and effectively across low-lying country, only to split up and disperse immediately the mountains are reached. An ethnographical map of northern Indo-China is pockmarked with groups of Meos. Since 1860 they have travelled about four hundred miles and are now filtering slowly southwards down the Annamite Chain, where from time to time a new group is reported on a mountain top. They are said to have been attacked in recent years by government forces in northern Siam, but it is unlikely that anything short of extermination can stop their slow silent movement through the mountains. Europeans who have studied them superficially believe them to be of Esquimaux origin; a theory which is offered to explain their horror of warm climates. These authorities report that they possess legends of eternal snows and of arctic days and nights. But the short description published in 1906 by Commandant Lunet de Lajonquière says nothing of this, and no other scientific account of the Meos has appeared.
Besides the Meos’ predilection for mountain tops they have other claims to distinction. They are utterly independent and quite fearless. Their passion for freedom compels them to live in the smallest of villages and, apart from such rare events as the invasion of 1860, they will not tolerate chiefs or leaders. If forcibly brought to lower altitudes they are soon taken ill and die. They are normally pacific, but if compelled to fight are apt to eat the livers of slain enemies.
The Meos are the only people in Indo-China who are not in the slightest concerned with evil spirits, although they admit their existence. Their complete indifference to all the ghouls and devils that plague the races surrounding them has invested them with enormous prestige, which they are careful to cultivate. They like to encourage the belief, prevalent among the Thais, that they are werewolves and can turn into tigers at wish. They have no funerary cults but celebrate a funeral – or any other event providing the slightest excuse – with orgies of drinking. Husbands and wives keep their own property. Children are given the greatest degree of freedom; and sexual promiscuity before marriage – even with strangers – is general. ‘Sacred groves’ exist – there is a celebrated one at Dong-Van in Tonkin – to which Meo girls resort, and offer themselves freely to all comers. It is said that large-scale maps, upon which the locations of such groves have been scrupulously plotted, are the prized possessions of most French garrisons in Tonkin. Besides breeding fine, white dogs, they are experts at taming monkeys and birds, particularly a kind of minah which they teach a wide repertoire of imitative sounds. The Meos will only part with their animals for an enormous price – payable in solid silver which they immediately convert into massive jewellery.
* * *
But the first village beyond Muong Kassy, perched on a bare hilltop and reached laboriously up a long winding path, proved not to belong to Meos but the ‘black’ Thais – so called from the distinctive dress of their women. It was like climbing up to an eagle’s eyrie and finding crows in possession. A rare species of crow though. Checking up on the ethnographical map, you saw that these were the only black Thais in Laos, although you could follow their tracks in isolated, coloured blobs right down from the frontier of Yunnan where they had crossed over from China. The Thais are the aboriginal stock from which both the Laotian and Siamese nations developed, but the black Thais are the only tribe with a taste for the high mountains, with the hard life and the freedom.
Their village was a philosopher’s retreat. Ten or fifteen huts clung to the flattened summit of the hill, silhouetted, whichever way you looked, against white mist. Ten paces away the slopes went plunging down and were dissolved in vapour. Across the sky was a wavy, unsupported line of peaks. A few ravens flapped about the thatches, and babies, peering at us through the stockades, howled with horror at what they saw.
The headman received us in his hut, which marked the village’s centre. He was dressed in Chinese-looking clothes of some coarse, black stuff, wore a black turban and was smoking a foot-long pipe with a bowl the size of a thimble. We had seen a number of fine white Meo dogs bouncing about in the village and Dupont, speaking Laotian, asked if he could buy one. The chief sent out to see if anyone would sell a dog, and while we were waiting produced a large dish of roasted chicken, already dissected in the Chinese style. This provoked such a lengthy exchange of protestations that the chicken was cold before Dupont decided that we could politely eat it. He presented the chief with some army rations in exchange, and this, too, set in motion a chain-sequence of reiterated offers and mock refusals. Dupont asked if there were any ceremonies taking place in the vicinity. The chief replied that a marriage fair had been organised in the next Thai village, but that you had to cross a range of mountains to reach it.
This custom, widespread in mountain tribes which are split up into scattered, isolated hamlets, is practised by the Meos as well as the Thais. Once a year eligible bachelors and maidens gather at some convenient central point, and each one in turn, the boys alternating with the girls, describes in verse, to the accompaniment of Kènes, their possessions, their accomplishments, or their virtues. Formal offers of marriage then follow, and according to eye-witnesses of the custom, the metrical form in no way inhibits the most banal cataloguing of articles to be included in the marriage contract.
