No More Learning

But it corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways you



can’t imagine. There’s an everlasting sense of being a sneak and a liar that torments us
and drives us to justify ourselves night and day. It’s at the bottom of half our beastliness
to the natives. We Anglo-Indians could be almost bearable if we’d only admit that we’re
thieves and go on thieving without any humbug. ’

The doctor, very pleased, nipped his thumb and forefinger together. ‘The weakness of
your argument, my dear friend,’ he said, beaming at his own irony, ‘the weakness appears
to be, that you are NOT thieves. ’

‘Now, my dear doctor — ’

Flory sat up in the long chair, partly because his prickly heat had just stabbed him in the
back like a thousand needles, partly because his favourite argument with the doctor was
about to begin. This argument, vaguely political in nature, took place as often as the two
men met. It was a topsy-turvy affair, for the Englishman was bitterly anti-English and the
Indian fanatically loyal. Dr Veraswami had a passionate admiration for the English,
which a thousand snubs from Englishmen had not shaken. He would maintain with
positive eagerness that he, as an Indian, belonged to an inferior and degenerate race. His
faith in British justice was so great that even when, at the jail, he had to superintend a
flogging or a hanging, and would come home with his black face faded grey and dose
himself with whisky, his zeal did not falter. Flory ’s seditious opinions shocked him, but
they also gave him a certain shuddering pleasure, such as a pious believer will take in
hearing the Lord’s Prayer repeated backwards.

‘My dear doctor,’ said Flory, ‘how can you make out that we are in this country for any
purpose except to steal? It’s so simple. The official holds the Burman down while the
businessman goes through his pockets. Do you suppose my Finn, for instance, could get
its timber contracts if the country weren’t in the hands of the British? Or the other timber
firms, or the oil companies, or the miners and planters and traders? How could the Rice
Ring go on skinning the unfortunate peasant if it hadn’t the Government behind it? The
British Empire is simply a device for giving trade monopolies to the English — or rather to
gangs of Jews and Scotchmen. ’

‘My friend, it iss pathetic to me to hear you talk so. It iss truly pathetic. You say you are
here to trade? Of course you are. Could the Burmese trade for themselves? Can they



make machinery, ships, railways, roads? They are helpless without you. What would
happen to the Burmese forests if the English were not here? They would be sold
immediately to the Japanese, who would gut them and ruin them. Instead of which, in
your hands, actually they are improved. And while your businessmen develop the
resources of our country, your officials are civilizing us, elevating us to their level, from
pure public spirit. It is a magnificent record of self-sacrifice. ’

‘Bosh, my dear doctor. We teach the young men to drink whisky and play football, I
admit, but precious little else. Look at our schools — factories for cheap clerks. We’ve
never taught a single useful manual trade to the Indians. We daren’t; frightened of the
competition in industry. We’ve even crushed various industries. Where are the Indian
muslins now? Back in the forties or thereabouts they were building sea-going ships in
India, and manning them as well. Now you couldn’t build a seaworthy fishing boat there.
In the eighteenth century the Indians cast guns that were at any rate up to the European
standard. Now, after we’ve been in India a hundred and fifty years, you can’t make so
much as a brass cartridge-case in the whole continent. The only Eastern races that have
developed at all quickly are the independent ones. I won’t instance Japan, but take the
case of Siam — ’

The doctor waved his hand excitedly. He always interrupted the argument at this point
(for as a rule it followed the same course, almost word for word), finding that the case of
Siam hampered him.

‘My friend, my friend, you are forgetting the Oriental character. How iss it possible to
have developed us, with our apathy and superstition? At least you have brought to us law
and order. The unswerving British Justice and the Pax Britannica. ’

‘Pox Britannica, doctor, Pox Britannica is its proper name. And in any case, whom is it
pax for? The money-lender and the lawyer. Of course we keep the peace in India, in our
own interest, but what does all this law and order business boil down to? More ba nk s and
more prisons — that’s all it means. ’

‘What monstrous misrepresentations! ’ cried the doctor. ‘Are not prissons necessary? And
have you brought us nothing but prissons? Consider Burma in the days of Thibaw, with
dirt and torture and ignorance, and then look around you. Look merely out of this



veranda — look at that hospital, and over to the right at that school and that police station.
Look at the whole uprush of modern progress! ’

‘Of course I don’t deny,’ Flory said, ‘that we moderni z e this country in certain ways. We
can’t help doing so. In fact, before we’ve finished we’ll have wrecked the whole Burmese
national culture. But we’re not civilizing them, we’re only rubbing our dirt on to them.
Where’s it going to lead, this uprush of modern progress, as you call it? Just to our own
dear old swinery of gramophones and billycock hats. Sometimes I think that in two
hundred years all this — ’ he waved a foot towards the horizon — ‘all this will be gone —
forests, villages, monasteries, pagodas all vanished. And instead, pink villas fifty yards
apart; all over those hills, as far as you can see, villa after villa, with all the gramophones
playing the same tune. And all the forests shaved flat — chewed into wood-pulp for the
News of the World, or sawn up into gramophone cases. But the trees avenge themselves,
as the old chap says in The Wild Duck. You’ve read Ibsen, of course? ’

‘Ah, no, Mr Flory, alas! That mighty master-mind, your inspired Bernard Shaw hass
called him. It iss a pleasure to come. But, my friend, what you do not see iss that your
civilization at its very worst iss for us an advance. Gramophones, billycock hats, the
News of the World — all iss better than the horrible sloth of the Oriental. I see the British,
even the least inspired of them, ass — ass — ’ the doctor searched for a phrase, and found
one that probably came from Stevenson — ‘ass torchbearers upon the path of progress. ’

‘I don’t. I see them as a kind of up-to-date, hygienic, self-satisfied louse. Creeping round
the world building prisons. They build a prison and call it progress,’ he added rather
regretfully — for the doctor would not recognize the allusion.

‘My friend, positively you are harping upon the subject of prissons! Consider that there
are also other achievements of your countrymen. They construct roads, they irrigate
deserts, they conquer famines, they build schools, they set up hospitals, they combat
plague, cholera, leprosy, smallpox, venereal disease — ’

‘Having brought it themselves,’ put in Flory.


‘No, sir! ’ returned the doctor, eager to claim this distinction for his own countrymen.
‘No, sir, it wass the Indians who introduced venereal disease into this country. The



Indians introduce diseases, and the English cure them. THERE iss the answer to all your
pessimism and seditiousness. ’


‘Well, doctor, we shall never agree. The fact is that you like all this modem progress
business, whereas I’d rather see things a little bit septic. Burma in the days of Thibaw
would have suited me better, I think. And as I said before, if we are a civilizing influence,
it’s only to grab on a larger scale. We should chuck it quickly enough if it didn’t pay. ’

‘My friend, you do not think that. If truly you disapprove of the British Empire, you
would not be talking of it privately here. You would be proclaiming from the house-tops.
I know your character, Mr Flory, better than you know it yourself. ’

‘Sorry, doctor; I don’t go in for proclaiming from the housetops. I haven’t the guts. I
“counsel ignoble ease”, like old Belial in Paradise Lost. It’s safer. You’ve got to be a
pukka sahib or die, in this country. In fifteen years I’ve never talked honestly to anyone
except you. My talks here are a safety-valve; a little Black Mass on the sly, if you
understand me. ’

At this moment there was a desolate wailing noise outside. Old Mattu, the Hindu durwan
who looked after the European church, was standing in the sunlight below the veranda.
He was an old fever-stricken creature, more like a grasshopper than a human being, and
dressed in a few square inches of dingy rag. He lived near the church in a hut made of
flattened kerosene tins, from which he would sometimes hurry forth at the appearance of
a European, to salaam deeply and wail something about his ‘talab’, which was eighteen
rupees a month. Looking piteously up at the veranda, he massaged the earth-coloured
skin of his belly with one hand, and with the other made the motion of putting food into
his mouth. The doctor felt in his pocket and dropped a four-anna piece over the veranda
rail. He was notorious for his soft-heartedness, and all the beggars in Kyauktada made
him their target.

‘Behold there the degeneracy of the East,’ said the doctor, pointing to Mattu, who was
doubling himself up like a caterpillar and uttering grateful whines. ‘Look at the
wretchedness of hiss limbs. The calves of hiss legs are not so thick ass an Englishman’s
wrists. Look at hiss abjectness and servility. Look at hiss ignorance — such ignorance ass
iss not known in Europe outside a home for mental defectives. Once I asked Mattu to tell



me hiss age. “Sahib,” he said, “I believe that I am ten years old. ” How can you pretend,
Mr Flory, that you are not the natural superior of such creatures? ’

‘Poor old Mattu, the uprush of modern progress seems to have missed him somehow,’
Flory said, throwing another four-anna piece over the rail. ‘Go on, Mattu, spend that on
booze. Be as degenerate as you can. It all postpones Utopia. ’

‘Aha, Mr Flory, sometimes I think that all you say iss but to — what iss the expression? —
pull my leg. The English sense of humour. We Orientals have no humour, ass iss well
known. ’

‘Lucky devils. It’s been the ruin of us, our bloody sense of humour. ’ He yawned with his
hands behind his head. Mattu had shambled away after further grateful noises. ‘I suppose
I ought to be going before this cursed sun gets too high. The heat’s going to be devilish
this year, I feel it in my bones. Well, doctor, we’ve been arguing so much that I haven’t
asked for your news. I only got in from the jungle yesterday. I ought to go back the day
after tomorrow — don’t know whether I shall. Has anything been happening in
Kyauktada? Any scandals? ’

The doctor looked suddenly serious. He had taken off his spectacles, and his face, with
dark liquid eyes, recalled that of a black retriever dog. He looked away, and spoke in a
slightly more hesitant tone than before.

‘That fact iss, my friend, there iss a most unpleasant business afoot. You will perhaps
laugh — it sounds nothing — but I am in serious trouble. Or rather, I am in danger of
trouble. It iss an underground business. You Europeans will never hear of it directly. In
this place’ — he waved a hand towards the bazaar — ‘there iss perpetual conspiracies and
plottings of which you do not hear. But to us they mean much. ’

‘What’s been happening, then? ’

‘It iss this. An intrigue iss brewing against me. A most serious intrigue which iss intended
to blacken my character and ruin my official career. Ass an Englishman you will not
understand these things. I have incurred the enmity of a man you probably do not know,



U Po Kyin, the Sub-divisional Magistrate. He iss a most dangerous man. The damage that
he can do to me iss incalculable. ’


‘U Po Kyin? Which one is that? ’

‘The great fat man with many teeth. Hiss house iss down the road there, a hundred yards
away. ’

‘Oh, that fat scoundrel? I know him well. ’

‘No, no, my friend, no, no! ’ exclaimed the doctor quite eagerly; ‘it cannot be that you
know him. Only an Oriental could know him. You, an English gentleman, cannot sink
your mind to the depth of such ass U Po Kyin. He iss more than a scoundrel, he iss —
what shall I say? Words fail me. He recalls to me a crocodile in human shape. He hass the
cunning of the crocodile, its cruelty, its bestiality. If you knew the record of that man!
The outrages he hass committed! The extortions, the briberies! The girls he hass ruined,
raping them before the very eyes of their mothers! Ah, an English gentleman cannot
imagine such a character. And thiss iss the man who hass taken hiss oath to ruin me. ’

‘I’ve heard a good deal about U Po Kyin from various sources,’ Flory said. ‘He seems a
fair sample of a Burmese magistrate. A Burman told me that during the war U Po Kyin
was at work recruiting, and he raised a battalion from his own illegitimate sons. Is that
true? ’

‘It could hardly be so,’ said the doctor, ‘for they would not have been old enough. But of
hiss villainy there iss no doubt. And now he iss determined upon ruining me. In the first
place he hates me because I know too much about him; and besides, he iss the enemy of
any reasonably honest man. He will proceed — such iss the practice of such men — by
calumny. He will spread reports about me — reports of the most appalling and untrue
descriptions. Already he iss beginning them. ’

‘But would anyone believe a fellow like that against you? He’s only a lowdown
magistrate. You’re a high official. ’



‘Ah, Mr Flory, you do not understand Oriental cunning. U Po Kyin hass ruined higher
officials than I. He will know ways to make himself believed. And therefore — ah, it iss a
difficult business! ’

The doctor took a step or two up and down the veranda, polishing his glasses with his
handkerchief. It was clear that there was something more which delicacy prevented him
from saying. For a moment his manner was so troubled that Flory would have liked to
ask whether he could not help in some way, but he did not, for he knew the uselessness of
interfering in Oriental quarrels.
No European ever gets to the bottom of these quarrels;
there is always something impervious to the European mind, a conspiracy behind the
conspiracy, a plot within the plot. Besides, to keep out of ‘native’ quarrels is one of the
Ten Precepts of the pukka sahib. He said doubtfully:

‘What is a difficult business? ’

‘It iss, if only — ah, my friend, you will laugh at me, I fear. But it iss this: if only I were a
member of your European Club! If only! How different would my position be! ’

‘The Club? Why? How would that help you? ’

‘My friend, in these matters prestige iss everything. It iss not that U Po Kyin will attack
me openly; he would never dare; it iss that he will libel me and backbite me. And whether
he iss believed or not depends entirely upon my standing with the Europeans. It iss so
that things happen in India. If our prestige iss good, we rise; if bad, we fall. A nod and a
wink will accomplish more than a thousand official reports. And you do not know what
prestige it gives to an Indian to be a member of the European Club. In the Club,
practically he ISS a European. No calumny can touch him. A Club member iss
sacrosanct. ’

Flory looked away over the veranda rail. He had got up as though to go. It always made
him ashamed and uncomfortable when it had to be admitted between them that the
doctor, because of his black skin, could not be received in the Club. It is a disagreeable
thing when one’s close friend is not one’s social equal; but it is a thing native to the very
air of India.



‘They might elect you at the next general meeting,’ he said. ‘I don’t say they will, but it’s
not impossible. ’


‘I trust, Mr Flory, that you do not think I am asking you to propose me for the Club?
Heaven forbid! I know that that iss impossible for you. Simply I wass remarking that if I
were a member of the Club, I should be forthwith invulnerable — ’

Flory cocked his Terai hat loosely on his head and stirred Flo up with his stick. She was
asleep under the chair. Flory felt very uncomfortable. He knew that in all probability, if
he had the courage to face a few rows with Ellis, he could secure Dr Veraswami’s
election to the Club. And the doctor, after all, was his friend, indeed, almost the sole
friend he had in Burma. They had talked and argued together a hundred times, the doctor
had dined at his house, he had even proposed to introduce Flory to his wife — but she, a
pious Hindu, had refused with horror. They had made shooting trips together — the
doctor, equipped with bandoliers and hunting knives, panting up hillsides slippery with
bamboo leaves and blazing his gun at nothing. In common decency it was his duty to
support the doctor. But he knew also that the doctor would never ask for any support, and
that there would be an ugly row before an Oriental was got into the Club. No, he could
not face that row! It was not worth it. He said:

‘To tell you the truth, there’s been talk about this already. They were discussing it this
morning, and that little beast Ellis was preaching his usual “dirty nigger” sermon.
Macgregor has suggested electing one native member. He’s had orders to do so, I
imagine. ’

‘Yes, I heard that. We hear all these things. It wass that that put the idea into my head. ’

‘It’s to come up at the general meeting in June. I don’t know what’ll happen — it depends
on Macgregor, I think. I’ll give you my vote, but I can’t do more than that. I’m sorry, but
I simply can’t. You don’t know the row there’ll be. Very likely they will elect you, but
they’ll do it as an unpleasant duty, under protest. They’ve made a perfect fetish of
keeping this Club all-white, as they call it. ’

‘Of course, of course, my friend! I understand perfectly. Heaven forbid that you should
get into trouble with your European friends on my behalf. Please, please, never to



embroil yourself! The mere fact that you are known to be my friend benefits me more
than you can imagine. Prestige, Mr Flory, iss like a barometer. Every time you are seen to
enter my house the mercury rises half a degree. ’

‘Well, we must try and keep it at “Set Fair”. That’s about all I can do for you, I’m afraid. ’

‘Even that iss much, my friend. And for that, there iss another thing of which I would
warn you, though you will laugh, I fear. It iss that you yourself should beware of U Po
Kyin. Beware of the crocodile! For sure he will strike at you when he knows that you are
befriending me. ’

‘All right, doctor, I’ll beware of the crocodile. I don’t fancy he can do me much hann,
though. ’

‘At least he will try. I know him. It will be hiss policy to detach my friends from me.
Possibly he would even dare to spread hiss libels about you also. ’

‘About me? Good gracious, no one would believe anything against ME. Civis Romanus
sum. I’m an Englishman — quite above suspicion. ’

‘Nevertheless, beware of hiss calumnies, my friend. Do not underrate him. He will know
how to strike at you. He iss a crocodile. And like the crocodile’ — the doctor nipped his
thumb and finger impressively; his images became mixed sometimes — Tike the
crocodile, he strikes always at the weakest spot! ’

‘Do crocodiles always strike at the weakest spot, doctor? ’

Both men laughed. They were intimate enough to laugh over the doctor’s queer English
occasionally. Perhaps, at the bottom of his heart, the doctor was a little disappointed that
Flory had not promised to propose him for the Club, but he would have perished rather
than say so. And Flory was glad to drop the subject, an uncomfortable one which he
wished had never been raised.

‘Well, I really must be going, doctor. Good-bye in case I don’t see you again. I hope it’ll
be all right at the general meeting. Macgregor’s not a bad old stick. I dare say he’ll insist
on their electing you. ’



‘Let us hope so, my friend. With that I can defy a hundred U Po Kyins. A thousand!
Good-bye, my friend, good-bye. ’


Then Flory settled his Terai hat on his head and went home across the glaring maidan, to
his breakfast, for which the long morning of drinking, smoking and talking had left him
no appetite.


CHAPTER 4

Flory lay asleep, naked except for black Shan trousers, upon his sweat-damp bed. He had
been idling all day. He spent approximately three weeks of every month in camp, coming
into Kyauktada for a few days at a time, chiefly in order to idle, for he had very little
clerical work to do.

The bedroom was a large square room with white plaster walls, open doorways and no
ceiling, but only rafters in which sparrows nested. There was no furniture except the big
four-poster bed, with its furled mosquito net like a canopy, and a wicker table and chair
and a small mirror; also some rough bookshelves, containing several hundred books, all
mildewed by many rainy seasons and riddled by silver fish. A tuktoo clung to the wall,
flat and motionless like a heraldic dragon. Beyond the veranda eaves the light rained
down like glistening white oil. Some doves in a bamboo thicket kept up a dull droning
noise, curiously appropriate to the heat — a sleepy sound, but with the sleepiness of
chloroform rather than a lullaby.

Down at Mr Macgregor’s bungalow, two hundred yards away, a durwan, like a living
clock, hammered four strokes on a section of iron rail. Ko STa, Flory’s servant,
awakened by the sound, went into the cookhouse, blew up the embers of the woodfire
and boiled the kettle for tea. Then he put on his pink gaungbaung and muslin ingyi and
brought the tea-tray to his master’s bedside.



Ko S’la (his real name was Maung San Hla; Ko S’la was an abbreviation) was a short,
square-shouldered, rustic-looking Burman with a very dark skin and a harassed
expression. He wore a black moustache which curved downwards round his mouth, but
like most Burmans he was quite beardless. He had been Flory’s servant since his first day
in Burma. The two men were within a month of one another’s age. They had been boys
together, had tramped side by side after snipe and duck, sat together in machans waiting
for tigers that never came, shared the discomforts of a thousand camps and marches; and
Ko STa had pimped for Flory and borrowed money for him from the Chinese money-
lenders, carried him to bed when he was drunk, tended him through bouts of fever. In Ko
S’la’s eyes Flory, because a bachelor, was a boy still; whereas Ko STa had married,
begotten five children, married again and become one of the obscure martyrs of bigamy.
Like all bachelors’ servants, Ko STa was lazy and dirty, and yet he was devoted to Flory.
He would never let anyone else serve Flory at table, or carry his gun or hold his pony’s
head while he mounted. On the march, if they came to a stream, he would carry Flory
across on his back. He was inclined to pity Flory, partly because he thought him childish
and easily deceived, and partly because of the birthmark, which he considered a dreadful
thing.

Ko STa put the tea-tray down on the table very quietly, and then went round to the end of
the bed and tickled Flory’s toes. He knew by experience that this was the only way of
waking Flory without putting him in a bad temper. Flory rolled over, swore, and pressed
his forehead into the pillow.

‘Four o’clock has struck, most holy god,’ Ko STa said. ‘I have brought two teacups,
because THE WOMAN said that she was coming. ’

THE WOMAN was Ma Hla May, Flory’s mistress. Ko STa always called her THE
WOMAN, to show his disapproval — not that he disapproved of Flory for keeping a
mistress, but he was jealous of Ma Hla May’s influence in the house.

‘Will the holy one play tinnis this evening? ’ Ko STa asked.


‘No, it’s too hot,’ said Flory in English. ‘I don’t want anything to eat. Take this muck
away and bring some whisky. ’



Ko S’ la understood English very well, though he could not speak it. He brought a bottle
of whisky, and also Flory’s tennis racquet, which he laid in a meaning manner against the
wall opposite the bed. Tennis, according to his notions, was a mysterious ritual
incumbent on ah Englishmen, and he did not like to see his master idling in the evenings.

Flory pushed away in disgust the toast and butter that Ko STa had brought, but he mixed
some whisky in a cup of tea and felt better after drinking it. He had slept since noon, and
his head and ah his bones ached, and there was a taste like burnt paper in his mouth. It
was years since he had enjoyed a meal. Ah European food in Burma is more or less
disgusting — the bread is spongy stuff leavened with palm-toddy and tasting like a penny
bun gone wrong, the butter comes out of a tin, and so does the milk, unless it is the grey
watery catlap of the dudh- wallah. As Ko STa left the room there was a scraping of
sandals outside, and a Bunnese girl’s high-pitched voice said, ‘Is my master awake? ’

‘Come in,’ said Flory rather bad temperedly.

Ma Hla May came in, kicking off red-lacquered sandals in the doorway. She was allowed
to come to tea, as a special privilege, but not to other meals, nor to wear her sandals in
her master’s presence.

Ma Hla May was a woman of twenty-two or — three, and perhaps five feet tall. She was
dressed in a longyi of pale blue embroidered Chinese satin, and a starched white muslin
ingyi on which several gold lockets hung. Her hair was coiled in a tight black cylinder
like ebony, and decorated with jasmine flowers. Her tiny, straight, slender body was a
contourless as a bas-relief carved upon a tree. She was like a doll, with her oval, still face
the colour of new copper, and her narrow eyes; an outlandish doll and yet a grotesquely
beautiful one. A scent of sandalwood and coco-nut oil came into the room with her.

Ma Hla May came across to the bed, sat down on the edge and put her arms rather
abruptly round Flory. She smelled at his cheek with her flat nose, in the Burmese fashion.

‘Why did my master not send for me this afternoon? ’ she said.


‘I was sleeping. It is too hot for that kind of thing. ’



‘So you would rather sleep alone than with Ma Hla May? How ugly you must think me,
then! Am I ugly, master? ’

‘Go away,’ he said, pushing her back. ‘I don’t want you at this time of day. ’

‘At least touch me with your lips, then. (There is no Burmese word for to kiss. ) All white
men do that to their women. ’

‘There you are, then. Now leave me alone. Fetch some cigarettes and give me one. ’

‘Why is it that nowadays you never want to make love to me? Ah, two years ago it was
so different! You loved me in those days. You gave me presents of gold bangles and silk
longyis from Mandalay. And now look’ — Ma Hla May held out one tiny muslin-clad
ann — ‘not a single bangle. Last month I had thirty, and now all of them are pawned. How
can I go to the bazaar without my bangles, and wearing the same longyi over and over
again? I am ashamed before the other women. ’

‘Is it my fault if you pawn your bangles? ’

‘Two years ago you would have redeemed them for me. Ah, you do not love Ma Hla May
any longer! ’

She put her anns round him again and kissed him, a European habit which he had taught
her. A mingled scent of sandalwood, garlic, coco-nut oil and the jasmine in her hair
floated from her. It was a scent that always made his teeth tingle. Rather abstractedly he
pressed her head back upon the pillow and looked down at her queer, youthful face, with
its high cheekbones, stretched eyelids and short, shapely lips. She had rather nice teeth,
like the teeth of a kitten. He had bought her from her parents two years ago, for three
hundred rupees. He began to stroke her brown throat, rising like a smooth, slender stalk
from the collarless ingyi.

‘You only like me because I am a white man and have money,’ he said.

‘Master, I love you, I love you more than anything in the world. Why do you say that?
Have I not always been faithful to you? ’



‘You have a Burmese lover. ’


‘Ugh! ’ Ma Hla May affected to shudder at the thought. ‘To think of their horrible brown
hands, touching me! I should die if a Burman touched me! ’

‘Liar. ’

He put his hand on her breast. Privately, Ma Hla May did not like this, for it reminded her
that her breasts existed — the ideal of a Burmese woman being to have no breasts. She lay
and let him do as he wished with her, quite passive yet pleased and faintly smiling, like a
cat which allows one to stroke it. Flory’s embraces meant nothing to her (Ba Pe, Ko
S’la’s younger brother, was secretly her lover), yet she was bitterly hurt when he
neglected them. Sometimes she had even put love-philtres in his food. It was the idle
concubine’s life that she loved, and the visits to her village dressed in all her finery, when
she could boast of her position as a ‘bo-kadaw’ — a white man’s wife; for she had
persuaded everyone, herself included, that she was Flory’s legal wife.

When Flory had done with her he turned away, jaded and ashamed, and lay silent with his
left hand covering his birthmark. He always remembered the birthmark when he had done
something to be ashamed of.