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 worship 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 space 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 sturdy—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-worshiper, then. Mighty little of these people or their talk or dialects I don’t know.