WE HAD INSPECTED only half the Maichi territory by the end of spring.
When summer arrived, we reached the southern border, and now would have to turn north. The steward told me that the inspection wouldn’t end until the fall, when harvesting began.
Before us now was the southern boundary, where Maichi land bordered Wangpo’s. It was there that I received a message from home. The chieftain told me to stay at the border awhile longer. His intention was clear: he wanted Chieftain Wangpo to attack us, a small band of people led by an idiot son and a crippled steward. But Wangpo was no fool, and did not want to provoke the mighty Chieftain Maichi to give the latter an excuse to destroy him. We had intentionally crossed over to his side, but his people merely followed our movements without showing their faces.
One rainy morning, the crippled steward said, “We won’t go out today, since they won’t dare take any action. We can rest. Tomorrow we’ll set out for the north.”
As the rain fell, the groom gave the horses new shoes, while the guards cleaned their rifles. Two singers sang back and forth, one high, the other lower. Unfolding a piece of paper, the steward wrote a long letter to Chieftain Maichi to report the situation at the border, while I stayed in bed and listened to raindrops falling on the tent.
The rain stopped abruptly at about noon. Out of boredom, I ordered everyone to mount up. We crossed the border at the same place as before, just as the sun broke through the clouds to beat down on our backs. Our feet were sodden, so we sat down to dry our wet boots on a patch of low grass.
Chieftain Wangpo’s riflemen were hidden in the trees, their sights trained on our backs. Having a gun aimed at you is like being bitten by an insect—it’s a prickly feeling, slightly painful. But they didn’t dare open fire, and we knew exactly where they were hiding. Our machine gun was loaded and ready; at the slightest movement, a hailstorm of bullets would be upon them. Unconcerned, I was able to take in the scenery around me. The best time to view mountains is when the sky has cleared after a rain. Only at such times are things dressed in the brightest colors, bathed in the most delightful light. Every time I’d ridden past here before, I’d seen bright, beautiful flowers beneath roadside pines, but today they looked especially pretty, so I pointed them out to the steward. “Those are our poppy flowers,” he said.
That’s exactly what he said: “Our poppy flowers.”
It was immediately clear that they were indeed the flowers that had made the Maichi family so powerful. There were three plants, standing tall in the sunlight, with shimmering flowers. The crippled steward deployed our forces before we walked toward the flowers. The riflemen lying in wait opened fire. Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Four loud shots, like someone beating a cracked gong. The riflemen must have been trembling with fear, for they ought to have done better than merely kill one man and wound another with their four shots. The poison-testing shaman fell facedown, clutching a clump of grass. One of the singers squatted down, holding his shoulder as blood seeped between his fingers. Stillness reigned for a moment before our men returned fire. It sounded like a true hailstorm, after which everything went deathly quiet in the woods, except for the sounds of shattered leaves falling slowly to the ground. All four riflemen lay dead beneath the tall trees, curled up as if afraid of the cold.
I can’t recall why, but instead of simply pulling out the poppies, I had my men dig in the ground with their bayonets. Words cannot adequately describe what we found. Beneath the poppy plants were three square wooden boxes, inside of which rested three decomposing heads. The plants were growing from the ears of the heads. If you’ll recall, we’d beheaded the poppy thieves and returned their heads to Chieftain Wangpo. Well, the thieves had stuck the seeds in their ears before being caught; Chieftain Wangpo had obtained his seeds from the heads of men who had sacrificed their lives for him.
And he had memorialized his heroes with flowers blooming from their heads.
Canceling our planned northbound trip, we rushed back to the estate. On the way, the steward and I agreed that the news would certainly surprise everyone.
But the extent of their surprise, particularly my brother’s, went far beyond what we had expected.
That smart person jumped out of his chair, shouting, “Flowers blooming in dead men’s ears! How can that be?”
Up till then, he’d always treated me with kindness. In a word, no brother in the Maichi family history had ever been so kind to a younger brother as he. But that day was different. He raised a disdainful finger to me. “What does an idiot like you know?” Then he ran up to the steward, yelling, “I think you both had a bad dream!”
I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him. He was the smartest person in the world, his only weakness being that he was afraid that sometimes he didn’t come across as smart enough. Though he normally seemed quite blasé, that didn’t mean he was uncaring; rather, it showed that he understood and could manage things without really trying. Seeing the pained expression on his face, I honestly wished I’d had a bad dream, one from which I’d awaken to find myself still in bed in a tent at our southern border, with the rain falling outside.
But it was real, all right.
I clapped my hands. Sonam Tserang entered and opened the bundles he carried.
The chieftain’s wife quickly covered her nose with a silk handkerchief. Tharna didn’t dare do that, but I heard her gag and choke as a stench filled the room. Everyone slowly approached the decomposing heads. My brother tugged at the leaves to prove that someone had planted the lowering poppies in the ears. In doing so, he lifted up the rotting head and shook the plant. A startled shout erupted from the chieftain’s wife. Then we watched as the head disintegrated and crumbled to the floor. Now we could trace the roots deep into the ear canals, from where tendrils grew and spread into the gray mass.
Turning to my brother, Father said, “It looks more as if it grew by itself than as if someone had put there.”
My brother stretched out his neck as he said with obvious distress, “I think so too.”
Monpa Lama, who had been quiet till then, spoke up. We called him “lama” only because he liked the term of address, for he was actually a shaman skilled in incantations and astrology. He asked me which direction the buried heads were facing. I said north, in the direction of Chieftain Maichi’s land. Then he asked if they were buried under trees. I said yes. That’s it, he said. Our enemy not only stole our seeds, but also cursed us with the most malicious sorcery possible. He turned to my brother. “Don’t look at me like that, First Young Master. My livelihood comes from the Maichi family, so I must tell everything I know.”
The chieftain’s wife said, “Don’t be afraid, Lama. Tell us everything.”
“What kind of curse did they put on us?” the chieftain asked.
Monpa Lama said, “I cannot say until I’ve seen what was placed near the heads. Did the second young master bring back everything?”
Of course we’d brought back everything.
Monpa Lama perfumed the room with fine White Cloud incense before leaving to study what we had brought back. My brother left with him. The chieftain then asked the steward how we had discovered the heads. The steward gave a vivid description, saying quite a bit about the important role played by the second young master. The chieftain looked at my mother, then at me in a completely new way. Then he sighed. I understood what that meant: Damn, in the end, he’s still an idiot. But all he said was, “You’ll inspect the north next year. I’ll give you more attendants.”
“Aren’t you going to thank your father?” Mother asked.
I sat there, saying nothing.
Then Monpa Lama returned to report his interpretation: “Chieftain Wangpo has cursed our poppies with destruction by egg-sized hail at the height of their growing season.”
The chieftain let out a long sigh. “All right. If it’s a fight he wants, then that’s what he’ll get. It starts today.”
The discussion began, and I promptly fell asleep.
It was nearly dawn when I awoke. Someone had covered me with a blanket. Reminded of something, I waved Monpa Lama over. With a smile, he asked, “What has the young master seen now?”
I told him about the pills Headman Songpa had given me, the ones I’d thrown away. The news elicited a shout: “What sort of magic pills have you thrown away? Who has the ability to make pills with wind and light nowadays?” He added, “Young Master, did you throw away all the pills without trying one first?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then you threw up, feeling as if worms were crawling out from your belly, right?”
“Not worms,” the steward said. “The young master said it was fish.”
Stomping his feet, the lama sighed. “That’s it! That’s it! You’d have been cured if you had thrown up everything inside.” He was, after all, a lama, and had something to say about everything. “Fine,” he said. “It didn’t work out for you, but we should have no problem dealing with Chieftain Wangpo.”
I asked Father, “Does that mean war?”
He nodded.
“Let’s call it the War of the Poppies,” I said.
They just glanced at me; too bad there was no one to write that down.
Back when the first Maichi chieftain came to power, a historian had written down what the chieftain said or did. That is how we knew what the first three generations of the Maichi family did, what they ate, and what they said. Then there came a fellow who recorded things he shouldn’t have, and the fourth Maichi chieftain had had him killed. From then on, we’d had no historian, so we never knew what our other ancestors had been up to. The hereditary position of historian had begun at the same time as that of executioner; the executioner was still around, the historian was long gone. Sometimes it got into that idiot head of mine that I’d have a historian if I ever became chieftain. It would sure be interesting to read the records every once in a while to see what I’d said or done. Once I even said to Sonam Tserang, “One day you’ll be my historian.”
That slave of mine immediately cried out, “Then I’ll swap with Aryi. He can be your historian, and I’ll be the executioner.”
If we had a historian now, he’d be standing behind me, licking the tip of his pencil to record that terrific name: War of the Poppies.