He untied his turban and twisted it again with long deft fingers. “You understand, the people of Burma are very ignorant. They read, they write, but they are ignorant. Laughter means more to them than freedom. Also—” he grinned and his white teeth glittered, “they hate the Chinese. Why? The gods themselves do not know anything about the people of Burma. Yes, but I know this one thing. The people here will not help the Englishman.”
His face was smooth again and he put his anger away inside of himself somewhere. It was there burning out of his eyes and muttering in his voice when he said, “Englishman,” but he did not let it out beyond that again, and in a few moments more he had lifted up his pack and gone on his way.
Be sure such words as these found their way among the men, too, and the General heard of it and one day he called his officers to him.
“We can be defeated by our own selves, if we allow it,” he told them. It was an evening in February, but the air was as hot here as it would have been at home in June. On the wall of the room where they were gathered a lizard ran out from a rafter under the roof, and licked its delicate quick tongue at mosquitoes. Sheng watched it as he listened to the General. There was a new officer here among them, a young man whom Sheng had never seen before.
“I have asked our brother to come,” the General now went on, “and to bring us some direct news of our foreign allies, and to tell us of what we do not know, so that we can wait more patiently.”
Upon this the young officer rose. He was an exceedingly handsome man, his face smooth and his features delicate. It was hard to imagine him a soldier until one saw the thin set of his lips. He had slight delicate hands, and these hands he moved now and then as he spoke.
“I am your younger brother from Kwangsi,” he said. His voice was low and unexpectedly firm. “We came, my men and I, on foot. We had no truck, nor even so much as a mule. We carried our mountain guns and dragged what artillery we had. We crossed into the Shan states and we took with us our Chairman’s command. We went to the Englishmen there and told the one in command that we had come. I gave him our Chairman’s greetings, and I said, what our Chairman has said, ‘If Burma wishes help from us, we will send thousands of soldiers here at once.’ ”
“What did the Englishman say?” the General inquired.
“He spoke very courteously through his interpreter,” the young officer replied. “He said there were already many Chinese forces waiting in Burma, and he was glad to know that more could come — if necessary.”
“Is that all?” the General asked.
“It is all,” the young officer replied. “Except that he assigned us to the mountain territory then, for which he said our guns are well suited. There we wait.”
They all sat immobile, listening. When this word “wait,” fell upon them, the same fleet look passed over their faces. They were all hard young men, seasoned soldiers, and to wait was torture.
“But the fighting is very severe in the south,” the General said. “Do the English plan to fight alone?”
“There are Indian troops also, but under English command,” the young officer replied.
“South Burma will be lost while we wait,” the General said.
“They have told me that Rangoon would be defended to the last,” the young officer replied.
“But North Burma must be held at any cost,” the General said, “and not only until the last. Even if South Burma falls, North Burma must not fall, lest our country be surrounded on all sides by the enemy.”
There was a long silence in the room. The men sat gloomily, staring at nothing. The lizard fell flat to the floor with a slap of its full belly on the tiles and scuttled away, frightened by its own noise.
The young officer had sat down again and now he began to speak from his seat, his eyes fixed on his tightly clasped hands on his crossed knees.
“I asked the Englishman why they did not invite us to come in quickly, seeing that all plans had been made for our coming by the Two Above when they went home from India. He said that we would be invited in when all was ready. He said that his brothers were fighting a delaying war in the south in order to give time for the ground bases and the airfields to be prepared for us, and that the main war would doubtless be fought in the central plains.”
The General gave a sharp loud laugh. “We can fight without these mighty preparations,” he shouted. “We are used to fighting without any preparations!” He struck both palms on the table in front of him and rose and began to pace the room. Without knowing he had looked and walked like the Chairman himself.
Suddenly he stopped and looked at them. “I have this news,” he said. “Our men have met the enemy in the northernmost tip of Thailand, where they were trying to cross the river west of Chiengmai, but that is still not inside Burma. I know this, too, that the enemy is gathering forces at Chiengmai.”
“Is the enemy still gathering there?” Sheng asked.
“Yes,” the General said. “It is we who ought to prevent them, but they are not being prevented.”
He stopped suddenly and looked at them with impatience. “I have nothing beyond that to tell you,” he said abruptly. “Nothing at all, for I know nothing. But if news does not come within a few days, I shall tell the One Above that I must be relieved of my command here. I must protest this waiting. Are we to sit waiting like hatching hens while Rangoon falls?” He motioned dismissal with outflung hands and they rose and went away, all faces grave, for where was there a commander to equal this one whom the Chairman had put over them? Young and yet the veteran of many wars, skilled in hill fighting and the bravest among his men, there was none like him.
Sheng went back very gloomy to his own place, and he looked so surly that none of his men, seeing him pass, dared to speak to him.
The General watched the young officers as they went out of the room. Each of them walked with the long easy step of soldiers trained to walk but not to march. They were slender, graceful, their very skeletons resilient under the spare smooth flesh. He was a hard man and he could be cruel but his heart was soft as a woman’s toward his men. They were precious to him and he knew them, men as well as officers. Name and face went together in his mind, and though he risked his men resolutely to gain ground against his enemy, when he lost men needlessly he went aside alone and wept in secret, not for anger but because the hearts he trusted had ceased to beat and the bodies he had taken pride in were mangled and destroyed. Thus it was his passion not to lose his men without exacting the full price from the enemy.
He sat drinking tea thirstily, for in this climate it seemed to him he could never put in water as fast as it poured out of him in sweat, and then he went to the door and locked it and, having done this, he unlocked a closet in the wall, and took out a small radio. It was his most precious possession for it needed no wires or machinery to link it to the air. He had not known there was such a thing until it had been brought to him in some booty taken from the enemy in one of their battles, and he had not known how to use it until he had seen one like it in the house of the Chairman. He had struggled with himself for a moment as to whether he ought not to tell that one about it, so rare were these machines, but he had downed his conscience. He would need it sorely when he made this campaign.
Now he set it on the desk, and turned the knobs on its face, and set it to this wind and that. This magic thing could make him forget every worry and ill. It was as though his soul could leave his body and go wandering out on the winds and the clouds. Music came to his ears, sweet and wild, voices speaking languages he did not understand, moans and sobs and stammerings not human. But now and again there came words he could understand either in his own language or in the language of the enemy. He understood the enemy very well, for as a boy he had been in Japan for five years, studying. Because he knew the people there so well he could fear them and hate them. And it had stood him well to be able to know what they said.