Somewhere in Burma

They smell the village first. Before they see it, before they even know it is there. Sam's map shows a green, jungly void here in the

Kachin hills, just forests unbroken from the eye of a mapping plane above. But they smell the village and know it has to be an entire village, not just the remains of a single human, but many. Men, women, children.

When that awful stench rises up the hillside and hums around them, Sam, Marianne, and Ken crash to a halt where they are on the track. That first horrid breath of carrion decaying ambushes them. It punches into their lungs. They cough violently into their hands, bend over from the waist to squeeze out that smell from their bodies. When they straighten, Marianne reaches out a shaking hand for Sam, who is ahead of her in their single-file walking, and the other hand to Ken, who is behind her.

"It cannot be," she whispers. "Say it cannot be, Sam. Not again."

Sam tears his gaze from Marianne's face and down to the glistening brown and green leaves on the forest's floor. He hears Ken hobble closer to Marianne, grasp her arm into his chest, and lay his head on her shoulder. For comfort. Sam can say nothing, his tongue grows thick, glues itself to the top of his mouth, and tears prickle at the back of his eyes. As they stand there, linked together in the slowly dripping forest, the sun comes out somewhere above them, hews through the monsoon clouds, sends glittering spears of slanting light between the leaves and branches.

Marianne begins to cry. Not again. Not again, she says to herself.

Sam straightens his back, swabs at his eyes, and ties his filthy and damp handkerchief around his nose. "We must go see," he says.

Marianne holds him back, not letting go of his hand. "No. Let us go around. There must be a way around. Why do we have to go through the village?"

Sam begins to trudge down the track, his boots gathering leeches from fern fronds. It is only when they cut away a tiny triangle of his flesh that he even knows they are there, feasting on his blood with surgical precision, feeding poison into his body to keep the blood thinned, and flowing. But he does not feel their bite, does not feel them plop onto the ground, fat and satiated, gray with pleasure from the feed.

"There must be something in the village we can salvage, Marianne," Sam says, more to himself than to her. "We have no food left; we have to go through the village."

"I'm not coming," she says, and sits down on the ground, pulling Ken, whose hand she is still clutching, down with her. The leeches drop off from the trees onto their heads, wend their way around their collars and slide inside.

"I'm not coming either," Ken says now. His face is discolored, ash on his cheeks, salt around his mouth and his eyes. His ankle is swollen, the skin straining against the bandages that are drenched in blood again. The leeches on Ken's shirt and his khaki pants move downward, enticed by the scent of fresh blood.

Sam bends to whack at them and knocks them to the ground. He takes out his tin of cigarettes, shoves three in his mouth and lights them all together. That first draft of nicotine gladdens his lungs, and the air around them is so still, so humid that the smoke hangs over his head in a mist. Sam gives Marianne and Ken a cigarette each, then sets his, lit end smoldering, against the leeches on his legs. They shrivel in protest and drop off, one by one.

"Aren't you afraid of the Japanese smelling the smoke, Sam?" Ken asks, his face more drawn in fatigue now that they are at rest, even so briefly.

"It's doubtful that they can smell anything beyond the death of that village."

"I'm not going there," Marianne says again. She too is tired, but there is something else in her eyes, something Sam has not seen before today. Fear. Marianne is afraid of confronting a scene much like the one she left behind in the Kachin village where she lived for so many years. There, every death was of someone dear, someone she had laughed with, taught the scriptures to, kept safe from the menace of the white man. They had been her children, given to Marianne by her god. And in the end, they had taken care of her, given her the gift of her life. So Marianne sits stubbornly amongst leeches and dead leaves, her heels dug into the ground, upwind from another, shattered village that has not survived the onslaught of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Sam squats on his haunches, his knees creaking. "Tell me," he says. He cannot order them to move. They are not children; they are not even army. Well, Ken is, and Sam outranks him. But the rules do not seem to apply here anymore. Sam will not leave Marianne and Ken on the hillside to forage through the dead village on his own. He does not know what he will find there, who will still be living, who dead, what terrors await to haunt future dreams for many years. He does not know if the Japanese still linger, if he will come out alive. He does know though that they have to scavenge for food. From their last supply drop all they have left is a can of cherries in heavy syrup, a can of cream to go with it--not enough to keep them alive. Sam also cannot leave them alone here even for a brief while, no matter how stubborn they are, how pigheaded; he is their guardian and he must either stay with them or take them with him. He chooses to take them with him. Since he also cannot order them to lift their behinds from the forest floor and follow him, he will coax them.

"Tell me," he says again. Gently.

Marianne 's eyes fill with tears. She shrugs the thick straps of her haversack from her shoulders and pulls it onto her lap. From inside, she draws out a whittled teakwood pipe and a dried plantain leaf full of a powdered substance, much like tea leaves. She stuffs the pipe, sets it smoking with the lit end of her cigarette, and inhales. As the opium races through her lungs, into her veins, it dulls the sharp edges of fear on her face. Her blue eyes, washed out and overexposed to the Burma sun, glaze over. The opium smacks its calmness into her with even just that one draw, for Marianne, like Sam and Ken, is hungry, is tired, is weak from the rain and the blinding heat. She offers the pipe to Ken. Then to Sam. And they both clasp it gratefully, even Sam, despite his best intentions--and he does intend to go into the village, come what may--wants the blessed relief of a few hours without worry.

A grinning idiocy comes over Sam. His mouth widens and his ears seem to grow funnel-like on either side of his head. He can hear every drip of water in the hush of the forest.

"Have you?" he asks, feeling his lips stretch over his teeth.

Marianne lifts a slow gaze to his and then shifts on her buttocks to face Ken.

"Once," Ken says. "I've been in love only once, Sam." He had asked Sam this very question, once, so many days ago, and it is only now Sam thinks to ask him back. But Sam has mulled over this word, this love, not wanting to think of the other word, death, in relation to his missing brother, Mike.

"Who ," Sam begins and then pauses to consider the pictures of emotion Ken displays so violently across his youthful face. The effect of the opium takes away all pretense of civility Ken might otherwise have shown--his mouth twists, he heaves from his stomach, his fists clench into bloodless stumps at the ends of his wrists. Sam almost shudders at this sudden and unexpected ugliness. Ken is the ideal of an all-American boy--thinly muscled, lean jawed, clean shaven, with an easy manner and a beguiling, faultless smile. But some passion lurks beneath that surface, pulled out by Sam's innocuous question.

"What is her name?" Sam asks, more out of curiosity than anything else. He watches Ken with care, leaning forward. Marianne does not see any of this, for she is humming a tune and examining her fingernails with the studied attention of the very inebriated.

Ken turns from the bright scrutiny of Sam's blue eyes and rests his chin against the tree trunk behind him. His voice comes out sour. "What do names matter? It was a pretty enough one. Rosalie."

Chapter Eight.

One hard-pressed Resident, Sir Berland Glancey, had travelled hundreds of miles to talk to one of the Princes about a problem. He was very put out to be told that his Highness could not be disturbed. He protested that he had come a long way and eventually the Maharajah appeared. "Ah, Sir Bertrand," he said in a state of excitement, "we are having a vet), urgent Cabinet meeting."

The Resident, appreciating this sort of priority, was suitably impressed. "Yes," went on the Maharajah. "There is a most interesting item on the agenda; we have three canaries and we are trying to decide which one sings best."

--Ann Morrow, The Maharajas of India, 1998