The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 20

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."

He nodded again and went away. I turned down the side path after the Laos girl....

There was a full moon that night. About the middle of the night we came up the path to the temple again, the Laos girl and I.

"Come," she had said to me when I had asked her for my heart's desire, "come to the temple, and I can prove it is folly."

So we came. The temple door was open. The priests were gone-no one has to watch a Naga temple at night. The dread of Siva is enough to protect it.

A rift in the temple roof let in a shaft of white moonlight. It struck upon the image of Siva. The image was seated on a white ox, carved of some white stone. A sash around the image was made up of human heads; it had six arms, each covered with carved snakes that were so lifelike they seemed to writhe in the wavering light. In the middle of the G.o.d's forehead was the mark of the third eye-the scar of Siva.

We went slowly down toward the image. Before it was a huge chest. Nagy N'Yang motioned me to sit on it. She sat beside me. Again I pleaded with her for my heart's desire.

She pushed me away.

"You are afraid to be near me," I mocked.

"Hush," she pleaded. "I am afraid-of yielding to you."

I moved to clasp her, my heart leaping at her confession. She smote her little hands sharply together. I heard a shuffling of softly shod feet in the pa.s.sage behind the image.

Wat Na Yang, chief priest of the temple, stood before us with his yellow robes, his yellow skin, his hands calmly folded across his paunch. "What seek ye, children?" he asked.

"The way of love," I laughed. I plunged my hand into my robe and felt the gold against my middle.

In the great chest on which we sat something awoke to life. I heard a stir, a rustle, a noise as of straining.

"Nagy speaks," the priest warned.

I felt the Laos girl shudder by my side.

"What is it?" I asked. I stood up. A creeping horror came over me.

Nagy N'Yang sprang up as I did and flung back the lid of the great chest with a strength I had not expected. Out over her shoulder shot a long coil, then another. When she stood erect in the moon-glow, a great rock python was wrapped about her matchless form. The mark of Siva on her forehead gleamed against her ivory brow like an evil blotch, yet it did not take from her beauty, her alluring grace; nor did the immense bulk of the python bear her down.

"The great serpent knows his own," whispered the yellow priest. He pointed with his fat forefinger. I saw the red tongue of the python play over the ivory bosom of the girl.

Yet I did not shudder. It seemed fitting. They were so in harmony with their surroundings.

The eyes of the python blazed in the moon-glow like rubies of the pigeon-blood hue, then like garnets, then like glow-worms; then they sank to a lower range of colors and finally to rest. He was asleep under her caresses. She patted his wedge-shaped head, soothing him. Ah, that it had been my head she thus fondled!

Suddenly Nagy N'Yang seized the great serpent just back of the head, uncoiled it from her with a free, quick succession of movements and cast it into the great chest again. Then, with a curious indrawing of the breath, as if relieved from a nerve strain, she sat down on the chest.

"Well have I seen," I said to her. "But little do I understand."

"I may not wed," she said. "I am Siva's."

"I can kill the snake-"