But I digress, gentlemen, for which I beg your forgiveness. To continue: we received the piano at the docks and transported it by horse cart to the town center, where we immediately began to prepare for its transfer. The route to our site presented two general types of terrain. The first, from Mandalay to the foot of the Shan Hills, is a flat and dry plain. For this leg I commissioned a Burmese timber elephant, despite my reluctance to entrust such a delicate instrument to an animal that spends its days hurling logs. Employing Brahmin cows had been suggested, but there are times when the trail grows too narrow for a pair, and it was decided that an elephant would be better. The second leg presented more daunting challenges, as the trails were too steep and narrow for such an animal. It was decided that we would have to continue on foot. Fortunately, the piano was lighter than I expected, and could be lifted and carried by six men. Although I had considered traveling with a larger group, and perhaps an army escort, I did not want the locals to associate the piano with a military goal. My men would be enough; I knew the route well and there had been only rare reports of dacoit attacks. We immediately set about making a litter on which to carry the piano.
We commenced our walk on the morning of 24 February, after I had finished with official matters at army headquarters. The piano was loaded onto a large munitions cart. This in turn was attached to the elephant, a giant of a beast with sad eyes who seemed utterly unfazed by her unusual load. She moved briskly; fortunately we had received the shipment in the dry season, and we were blessed with excellent weather for our journey. Had it been raining, I think the trip would have been impossible, with inestimable damage to the piano, as well as a heavy physical toll on our men. As it was, it would be a difficult enough journey.
We marched out of Mandalay, followed by a line of curious children. I rode on horseback. The ruts in the road caused the hammers to bounce against the piano strings, which made a lovely accompaniment to an arduous walk. We made our first camp at dusk. Although the elephant moved steadily, I realized that once on foot, we would progress much more slowly. This concerned me: I had already been in Mandalay for one week. I contemplated returning to Mae Lwin ahead of the piano, but the men tended to be rough with the instrument, and despite repeatedly explaining the delicacy of its internal parts, I still had to order them to treat it gently. Seeing the great effort the army has put into transporting the piano, and the important purpose it will serve, it seemed foolish to lose the instrument to impatience so close to our final goal.
Wherever we stopped, we attracted a group of locals who crowded around the piano and speculated as to its use. In the early days of bur trek, either I or one of the men would explain its function, and we would then be barraged with requests to hear it played. In such a manner, I was cajoled into playing no less than fourteen times in the first three days of our journey. The locals were delighted by the music, yet the constant playing exhausted me, as they would only disperse when I told them that the instrument had “run out of breath,” while of course I really meant the musician. By the third day, I commanded my men not to tell anyone the true function of the piano. To any inquiring villager, they reported it was a terrible weapon, and subsequently we were given a wider berth for our passage.
The fastest route to Mae Lwin is to travel northeast to the Salween River, and there descend by the river to the site. But with the drought, the water has run low, and fearing for the piano, I chose to march to the bank directly across from Mae Lwin and cross there. After three days the road became steeper, rising out of the Irrawaddy Basin onto the Shan Plateau. Reluctantly, we unloaded the piano off the elephant cart and transferred it to the litter, which we had constructed in the form of the palanquins used in Shan festivals—two parallel beams for the men to hold with added supporting crossbeams beneath the piano. The piano was loaded so that the keyboard was facing forward, since it was best balanced this way. The elephant’s driver returned with her to Mandalay.
As the trail rose, I realized that the decision to carry the piano was well informed—the trail was far too treacherous to carry it on the cart as we had across the lowlands. But my satisfaction with this decision was tempered by the sight of my men struggling beneath the load, slipping and stumbling to keep it from crashing to the ground. I truly pitied them and did my best to boost their morale, promising a festival in Mae Lwin to celebrate the arrival of the piano.
Days passed, and the routine was the same. We rose at sunrise, ate a quick breakfast, and then once again raised the litter and continued our walk. It was unusually hot and the sun was merciless. I must admit that despite the discomfort I felt at making my men labor under such a burden, it was a stunning vision, the six men dripping with sweat and the piano glistening, like those new hand-colored photographs that are now so in fashion in England and occasionally trickle into the marketplaces here—the white turbans and trousers, the dark brown bodies, the piano black.
And then about four days from camp, with some of the steepest terrain remaining, disaster struck.
On a particularly eroded jungle trail, as I rode ahead chopping at the overgrowth with my sword, I heard a scream and a ringing crash. I ran back to the Erard. The first thing I saw was the piano, and after hearing the crash and thinking it destroyed, I was momentarily relieved. But then my eyes moved to the left of the piano to where the five tattooed bodies huddled around a sixth. Sensing my presence, one of the men yelled “Ngu!” or “Snake!” and pointed to his fallen comrade. I understood immediately. Struggling forward, the young man had not seen the serpent, which must have been angered by my footsteps and struck his leg. He had dropped the piano and fallen. The remaining men had done their best to balance the Erard and keep it from crashing to the ground.
When I reached the young man, his eyelids were already beginning to droop, the paralysis setting in. Somehow he, or another of his companions, had managed to catch the snake and kill it; when I arrived at the scene, it lay dead and broken by the trail. The men were using a Shan word for it which I didn’t know, but called it mahauk in Burmese, known to us by the genus Naja, or the Asian cobra. But I had little stomach for scientific investigation at the time. The wound still bled from two parallel gashes. The men looked to me for medical advice, but there was little we could do. I crouched by the young man and held his hand. The only words I could say were “I am sorry,” as he had fallen in my service. Death from cobra bite is terrible: the venom paralyzes the diaphragm so the patient suffocates. It took but half an hour for him to die. In Burma, few snakes other than the Asian cobra kill so fast. A Shan remedy for snakebites is to tie off the wound, which we did (although all knew that this would be to little avail), to suck on the wound (which I did), and to apply a paste of pounded spiders (but we had none and, in truth, I have always doubted the efficacy of this cure). Instead one of the Shan men said a prayer. At the side of the trail, flies had already begun to gather about the snake. Some landed on the young man, and one of us swatted them away.
I knew from Shan custom that we couldn’t leave the body in the forest, an act that would have also offended the respect for a fallen comrade that I believe is one of the shining principles of our armed forces. And the horse spooked when we approached her with the body. Yet simple arithmetic suggested the difficulty of carrying him out of the jungle. If six men had struggled under the piano, how would five carry the piano and their friend? Thus I realized that I too would have to bear the litter. At first the men protested, suggesting instead that one of them return to the nearest village and hire another two porters. But I objected; we were already several days behind my expected arrival in Mae Lwin.
We lifted the young man and set his body on the top of the piano. I searched for rope, but we did not have enough to adequately secure the body to the piano. Seeing this, one of the men removed the young man’s turban and unraveled it. He tied it around one of the young man’s wrists, passed it beneath the piano, and tied it to the other wrist. Then he passed it back under and across to do the same with the opposite leg. For the young man’s other leg we used the short rope. His head fell back over the keyboard, his long hair still tied in a small bundle. We were fortunate to find the means of securing the body; all were loath to think of the corpse sliding off the piano as we passed along the trail. Had not one of the Shan suggested using the turban, I do not know how we would have proceeded. Admittedly, the idea had also occurred to me, but to remove a Shan’s turban in life is a mortal insult. And I did not know the customs with regard to such a death.