A day or two later, when the graves were completed, came Hkakngi, the parting of the dead from the living.
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The Zemi believes in an after-life. The dead, he thinks, linger in their old homes until forced to go, and after a death in the house, food and drink are set out for the ghost at every (103) meal until ceremonial separation is complete. On feast-days, sometimes, great bowls of pounded soap-creeper, thick with suds, are put out so that the ghosts may bathe, like the living, and join the celebrations. At Hkakngi comes the final parting. The last sacrifices are made. All that the dead will need in the next world, gourds, cloths, tools, seeds, anything else omitted from the grave-goods at burial, must be provided now. When everything is done, the priest goes up to the top of the village. Then, when his ritual there is complete, he moves down the street, and, calling aloud, bids the ghosts take their possessions and go. When the last of the invisible host has passed through the lower gateway and taken the Low Road to the land of the dead, the old man shuts the gate, and returns again to a village emptied of all but living men.
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The village priest was a most gentle and charming old man. I had from him, during my stay at Laisong, more small kindnesses than I can ever remember. He always called me " Daughter " and was wonderfully good in admitting me, a woman and an outsider, to watch the village ceremonies, and in answering questions about the ritual and the underlying beliefs. So it was with Hkakngi.
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The preparations were over by noon, and, with Namkia, I went to the village to see the final separation. The street was entirely deserted. We walked up it between rows of half-closed doors, round which, here and there, a woman peered. Not a child, not a dog, not a chicken was out; a few men stood concealed in house-porches, well back behind woodstacks; and the whole, long, stony space was clear under the noon sun.
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We were half-way up it when there was a long cry behind the upper morung. Namkia pulled me back at once to one side, behind a fence and a big boulder. The priests had finished their ceremony at the upper gate, and were coming down, telling the ghosts to go. The living must all withdraw; for souls are chancy things, easily drawn away into the passing crowd of spirits, and, when the soul goes, the body dies. (104) The old priest came into sight at the head of the street. He carried a smouldering brand; the grey smoke coiled gently up from it as he walked. There was not a breath of air. The old man's white hair glinted in the sunshine. His voice was unexpectedly clear in the hush.
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" O all you dead ! Go to your own place and leave the living here. O all you dead ! It is time to part. Let the living remain, and let the dead go ! "
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There was something indescribably melancholy in the cry. There was something eerie, too. The old priest himself had lost a son that year. The earth was red and raw over the new gravestone, just across the street from where we stood. We neither of us moved. It felt cold in spite of the windlessness and the sun.
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The old man passed on. He turned the corner by the lower morung, and his voice came back from behind it :
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" O all you dead ! Go to your own place - - -"
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Still nobody stirred. The silence lasted, perhaps, for five or six minutes; and then we heard the priest's voice proclaiming as he returned.
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" The dead have gone to their own place ! The dead are separated from the living ! The dead have gone to their own place ! "
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The tension relaxed. Doors opened, pigs were kicked squealing out, men laughed and talked, and all through the village life and movement came flowing back.
