It was now his
breakfast
time.
Orwell - Burmese Days
Occasional faint breaths of wind,
seeming cool by contrast, stirred the newly drenched orchids that hung from the eaves.
Beyond the orchids one could see the dusty, curved trunk of a palm tree, and then the
blazing ultramarine sky. Up in the zenith, so high that it dazzled one to look at them, a
few vultures circled without the quiver of a wing.
Unblinking, rather like a great porcelain idol, U Po Kyin gazed out into the fierce
sunlight. He was a man of fifty, so fat that for years he had not risen from his chair
without help, and yet shapely and even beautiful in his grossness; for the Burmese do not
sag and bulge like white men, but grow fat symmetrically, like fruits swelling. His face
was vast, yellow and quite unwrinkled, and his eyes were tawny. His feet — squat, high-
arched feet with the toes all the same length — were bare, and so was his cropped head,
and he wore one of those vivid Arakanese longyis with green and magenta checks which
the Burmese wear on infonnal occasions. He was chewing betel from a lacquered box on
the table, and thinking about his past life.
It had been a brilliantly successful life. U Po Kyin’s earliest memory, back in the eighties,
was of standing, a naked pot-bellied child, watching the British troops march victorious
into Mandalay. He remembered the terror he had felt of those columns of great beef-fed
men, red-faced and red-coated; and the long rifles over their shoulders, and the heavy,
rhythmic tramp of their boots. He had taken to his heels after watching them for a few
minutes. In his childish way he had grasped that his own people were no match for this
race of giants. To fight on the side of the British, to become a parasite upon them, had
been his ruling ambition, even as a child.
At seventeen he had tried for a Government appointment, but he had failed to get it, being
poor and friendless, and for three years he had worked in the stinking labyrinth of the
Mandalay bazaars, clerking for the rice merchants and sometimes stealing. Then when he
was twenty a lucky stroke of blackmail put him in possession of four hundred rupees, and
he went at once to Rangoon and bought his way into a Government clerkship. The job
was a lucrative one though the salary was small. At that time a ring of clerks were
making a steady income by misappropriating Government stores, and Po Kyin (he was
plain Po Kyin then: the honorific U came years later) took naturally to this kind of thing.
However, he had too much talent to spend his life in a clerkship, stealing miserably in
annas and pice. One day he discovered that the Government, being short of minor
officials, were going to make some appointments from among the clerks. The news
would have become public in another week, but it was one of Po Kyin’s qualities that his
information was always a week ahead of everyone else’s. He saw his chance and
denounced all his confederates before they could take alarm. Most of them were sent to
prison, and Po Kyin was made an Assistant Township Officer as the reward of his
honesty. Since then he had risen steadily. Now, at fifty-six, he was a Sub-divisional
Magistrate, and he would probably be promoted still further and made an acting Deputy
Commissioner, with Englishmen as his equals and even his subordinates.
As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the vastest bribe he would never sell
the decision of a case, because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgments is
caught sooner or later. His practice, a much safer one, was to take bribes from both sides
and then decide the case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for
impartiality. Besides his revenue from litigants, U Po Kyin levied a ceaseless toll, a sort
of private taxation scheme, from all the villages under his jurisdiction. If any village
failed in its tribute U Po Kyin took punitive measures — gangs of dacoits attacked the
village, leading villagers were arrested on false charges, and so forth — and it was never
long before the amount was paid up. He also shared the proceeds of all the larger-sized
robberies that took place in the district. Most of this, of course, was known to everyone
except U Po Kyin’s official superiors (no British officer will ever believe anything
against his own men) but the attempts to expose him invariably failed; his supporters,
kept loyal by their share of the loot, were too numerous. When any accusation was
brought against him, U Po Kyin simply discredited it with strings of suborned witnesses,
following this up by counter-accusations which left him in a stronger position than ever.
He was practically invulnerable, because he was too fine a judge of men ever to choose a
wrong instrument, and also because he was too absorbed in intrigue ever to fail through
carelessness or ignorance. One could say with practical certainty that he would never be
found out, that he would go from success to success, and would finally die full of honour,
worth several lakhs of rupees.
And even beyond the grave his success would continue. According to Buddhist belief,
those who have done evil in their lives will spend the next incarnation in the shape of a
rat, a frog or some other low animal. U Po Kyin was a good Buddhist and intended to
provide against this danger. He would devote his closing years to good works, which
would pile up enough merit to outweigh the rest of his life. Probably his good works
would take the form of building pagodas. Four pagodas, five, six, seven — the priests
would tell him how many — with carved stonework, gilt umbrellas and little bells that
tinkled in the wind, every tinkle a prayer. And he would return to the earth in male
human shape — for a woman ranks at about the same level as a rat or a frog — or at best as
some dignified beast such as an elephant.
All these thoughts flowed through U Po Kyin’s mind swiftly and for the most part in
pictures. His brain, though cunning, was quite barbaric, and it never worked except for
some definite end; mere meditation was beyond him. He had now reached the point to
which his thoughts had been tending. Putting his smallish, triangular hands on the arms of
his chair, he turned himself a little way round and called, rather wheezily:
‘Ba Taik! Hey, Ba Taik! ’
Ba Taik, U Po Kyin’s servant, appeared through the beaded curtain of the veranda. He
was an under-sized, pock-marked man with a timid and rather hungry expression. U Po
Kyin paid him no wages, for he was a convicted thief whom a word would send to prison.
As Ba Taik advanced he shikoed, so low as to give the impression that he was stepping
backwards.
‘Most holy god? ’ he said.
‘Is anyone waiting to see me, Ba Taik? ’
Ba Taik enumerated the visitors upon his fingers: ‘There is the headman of Thitpingyi
village, your honour, who has brought presents, and two villagers who have an assault
case that is to be tried by your honour, and they too have brought presents. Ko Ba Sein,
the head clerk of the Deputy Commissioner s office, wishes to see you, and there is Ah
Shah, the police constable, and a dacoit whose name I do not know. I think they have
quarrelled about some gold bangles they have stolen. And there is also a young village
girl with a baby. ’
‘What does she want? ’ said U Po Kyin.
‘She says that the baby is yours, most holy one. ’
‘Ah. And how much has the headman brought? ’
Ba Taik thought it was only ten rupees and a basket of mangoes.
‘Tell the headman,’ said U Po Kyin, ‘that it should be twenty rupees, and there will be
trouble for him and his village if the money is not here tomorrow. I will see the others
presently. Ask Ko Ba Sein to come to me here. ’
Ba Sein appeared in a moment. He was an erect, narrow-shouldered man, very tall for a
Burman, with a curiously smooth face that recalled a coffee blancmange. U Po Kyin
found him a useful tool. Unimaginative and hardworking, he was an excellent clerk, and
Mr Macgregor, the Deputy Commissioner, trusted him with most of his official secrets. U
Po Kyin, put in a good temper by his thoughts, greeted Ba Sein with a laugh and waved
to the betel box.
‘Well, Ko Ba Sein, how does our affair progress? I hope that, as dear Mr Macgregor
would say’ — U Po Kyin broke into English — ’“eet ees making perceptible progress”? ’
Ba Sein did not smile at the small joke. Sitting down stiff and long-backed in the vacant
chair, he answered:
‘Excellently, sir. Our copy of the paper arrived this morning. Kindly observe. ’
He produced a copy of a bilingual paper called the Bunnese Patriot. It was a miserable
eight-page rag, villainously printed on paper as bad as blotting paper, and composed
partly of news stolen from the Rangoon Gazette, partly of weak Nationalist heroics. On
the last page the type had slipped and left the entire sheet jet black, as though in
mourning for the smallness of the paper’s circulation. The article to which U Po Kyin
turned was of a rather different stamp from the rest. It ran:
In these happy times, when we poor blacks are being uplifted by the mighty western
civilization, with its manifold blessings such as the cinematograph, machine-guns,
syphilis, etc. , what subject could be more inspiring than the private lives of our European
benefactors? We think therefore that it may interest our readers to hear something of
events in the up-country district of Kyauktada. And especially of Mr Macgregor,
honoured Deputy Commissioner of said district.
Mr Macgregor is of the type of the Fine Old English Gentleman, such as, in these happy
days, we have so many examples before our eyes. He is ‘a family man’ as our dear
English cousins say. Very much a family man is Mr Macgregor. So much so that he has
already three children in the district of Kyauktada, where he has been a year, and in his
last district of Shwemyo he left six young progenies behind him. Perhaps it is an
oversight on Mr Macgregor’s part that he has left these young infants quite unprovided
for, and that some of their mothers are in danger of starvation, etc. , etc. , etc.
There was a column of similar stuff, and wretched as it was, it was well above the level
of the rest of the paper. U Po Kyin read the article carefully through, holding it at ann’s
length — he was long-sighted — and drawing his lips meditatively back, exposing great
numbers of small, perfect teeth, blood-red from betel juice.
‘The editor will get six months’ imprisonment for this,’ he said finally.
‘He does not mind. He says that the only time when his creditors leave him alone is when
he is in prison. ’
‘And you say that your little apprentice clerk Hla Pe wrote this article ah by himself?
That is a very clever boy — a most promising boy! Never tell me again that these
Government High Schools are a waste of time. Hla Pe shah certainly have his clerkship. ’
‘You think then, sir, that this article will be enough? ’
U Po Kyin did not answer immediately. A puffing, labouring noise began to proceed
from him; he was trying to rise from his chair. Ba Taik was familiar with this sound. He
appeared from behind the beaded curtain, and he and Ba Sein put a hand under each of U
Po Kyin’s armpits and hoisted him to his feet. U Po Kyin stood for a moment balancing
the weight of his belly upon his legs, with the movement of a fish porter adjusting his
load. Then he waved Ba Taik away.
‘Not enough,’ he said, answering Ba Sein’s question, ‘not enough by any means. There is
a lot to be done yet. But this is the right beginning. Listen. ’
He went to the rail to spit out a scarlet mouthful of betel, and then began to quarter the
veranda with short steps, his hands behind his back. The friction of his vast thighs made
him waddle slightly. As he walked he talked, in the base jargon of the Government
offices — a patchwork of Burmese verbs and English abstract phrases:
‘Now, let us go into this affair from the beginning. We are going to make a concerted
attack on Dr Veraswami, who is the Civil Surgeon and Superintendent of the jail. We are
going to slander him, destroy his reputation and finally ruin him for ever. It will be rather
a delicate operation. ’
‘Yes, sir. ’
‘There will be no risk, but we have got to go slowly. We are not proceeding against a
miserable clerk or police constable. We are proceeding against a high official, and with a
high official, even when he is an Indian, it is not the same as with a clerk. How does one
ruin a clerk? Easy; an accusation, two dozen witnesses, dismissal and imprisonment. But
that will not do here. Softly, softly, softly is my way. No scandal, and above all no
official inquiry. There must be no accusations that can be answered, and yet within three
months I must fix it in the head of every European in Kyauktada that the doctor is a
villain. What shall I accuse him of? Bribes will not do, a doctor does not get bribes to any
extent. What then? ’
‘We could perhaps arrange a mutiny in the jail,’ said Ba Sein. ‘As superintendent, the
doctor would be blamed. ’
‘No, it is too dangerous. I do not want the jail warders firing their rifles in all directions.
Besides, it would be expensive. Clearly, then, it must be disloyalty — Nationalism,
seditious propaganda. We must persuade the Europeans that the doctor holds disloyal,
anti-British opinions. That is far worse than bribery; they expect a native official to take
bribes. But let them suspect his loyalty even for a moment, and he is ruined. ’
‘It would be a hard thing to prove,’ objected Ba Sein. ‘The doctor is very loyal to the
Europeans. He grows angry when anything is said against them. They will know that, do
you not think? ’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said U Po Kyin comfortably. ‘No European cares anything about
proofs. When a man has a black face, suspicion IS proof. A few anonymous letters will
work wonders. It is only a question of persisting; accuse, accuse, go on accusing — that is
the way with Europeans. One anonymous letter after another, to every European in turn.
And then, when their suspicions are thoroughly aroused — ’ U Po Kyin brought one short
arm from behind his back and clicked his thumb and linger. He added: ‘We begin with
this article in the Bunnese Patriot. The Europeans will shout with rage when they see it.
Well, the next move is to persuade them that it was the doctor who wrote it. ’
‘It will be difficult while he has friends among the Europeans. All of them go to him
when they are ill. He cured Mr Macgregor of his flatulence this cold weather. They
consider him a very clever doctor, I believe. ’
‘How little you understand the European mind, Ko Ba Sein! If the Europeans go to
Veraswami it is only because there is no other doctor in Kyauktada. No European has any
faith in a man with a black face. No, with anonymous letters it is only a question of
sending enough. I shall soon see to it that he has no friends left. ’
‘There is Mr Flory, the timber merchant,’ said Ba Sein. (He pronounced it ‘Mr Porley’. )
‘He is a close friend of the doctor. I see him go to his house every morning when he is in
Kyauktada. Twice he has even invited the doctor to dinner. ’
‘Ah, now there you are right. If Flory were a friend of the doctor it could do us harm.
You cannot hurt an Indian when he has a European friend. It gives him — what is that
word they are so fond of? — prestige. But Flory will desert his friend quickly enough
when the trouble begins. These people have no feeling of loyalty towards a native.
Besides, I happen to know that Flory is a coward. I can deal with him. Your part, Ko Ba
Sein, is to watch Mr Macgregor’s movements. Has he written to the Commissioner
lately — written confidentially, I mean? ’
‘He wrote two days ago, but when we steamed the letter open we found it was nothing of
importance. ’
‘Ah well, we will give him something to write about. And as soon as he suspects the
doctor, then is the time for that other affair I spoke to you of. Thus we shall — what does
Mr Macgregor say? Ah yes, “kill two birds with one stone”. A whole flock of birds — ha,
ha! ’
U Po Kyin’s laugh was a disgusting bubbling sound deep down in his belly, like the
preparation for a cough; yet it was merry, even childlike. He did not say any more about
the ‘other affair’, which was too private to be discussed even upon the veranda. Ba Sein,
seeing the interview at an end, stood up and bowed, angular as a jointed ruler.
‘Is there anything else your honour wishes done? ’ he said.
‘Make sure that Mr Macgregor has his copy of the Bunnese Patriot. You had better tell
Hla Pe to have an attack of dysentery and stay away from the office. I shall want him for
the writing of the anonymous letters. That is all for the present. ’
‘Then I may go, sir? ’
‘God go with you,’ said U Po Kyin rather abstractedly, and at once shouted again for Ba
Taik. He never wasted a moment of his day. It did not take him long to deal with the
other visitors and to send the village girl away unrewarded, having examined her face and
said that he did not recognize her.
It was now his breakfast time. Violent pangs of hunger,
which attacked him punctually at this hour every morning, began to tonnent his belly. He
shouted urgently:
‘Ba Taik! Hey, Ba Taik! Kin Kin! My breakfast! Be quick, I am starving. ’
In the living-room behind the curtain a table was already set out with a huge bowl of rice
and a dozen plates containing curries, dried prawns and sliced green mangoes. U Po Kyin
waddled to the table, sat down with a grunt and at once threw himself on the food. Ma
Kin, his wife, stood behind him and served him. She was a thin woman of five and forty,
with a kindly, pale brown, simian face. U Po Kyin took no notice of her while he was
eating. With the bowl close to his nose he stuffed the food into himself with swift, greasy
fingers, breathing fast. All his meals were swift, passionate and enormous; they were not
meals so much as orgies, debauches of curry and rice. When he had finished he sat back,
belched several times and told Ma Kin to fetch him a green Burmese cigar. He never
smoked English tobacco, which he declared had no taste in it.
Presently, with Ba Taik’s help, U Po Kyin dressed in his office clothes, and stood for a
while admiring himself in the long mirror in the living-room. It was a wooden-walled
room with two pillars, still recognizable as teak-trunks, supporting the roof-tree, and it
was dark and sluttish as all Burmese rooms are, though U Po Kyin had furnished it
‘Ingaleik fashion’ with a veneered sideboard and chairs, some lithographs of the Royal
Family and a fire-extinguisher. The floor was covered with bamboo mats, much splashed
by lime and betel juice.
Ma Kin was sitting on a mat in the comer, stitching an ingyi. U Po Kyin turned slowly
before the mirror, trying to get a glimpse of his back view. He was dressed in a
gaungbaung of pale pink silk, an ingyi of starched muslin, and a paso of Mandalay silk, a
gorgeous salmon-pink brocaded with yellow. With an effort he turned his head round and
looked, pleased, at the paso tight and shining on his enormous buttocks. He was proud of
his fatness, because he saw the accumulated flesh as the symbol of his greatness. He who
had once been obscure and hungry was now fat, rich and feared. He was swollen with the
bodies of his enemies; a thought from which he extracted something very near poetry.
‘My new paso was cheap at twenty-two rupees, hey, Kin Kin? ’ he said.
Ma Kin bent her head over her sewing. She was a simple, old-fashioned woman, who had
learned even less of European habits than U Po Kyin. She could not sit on a chair without
discomfort. Every morning she went to the bazaar with a basket on her head, like a
village woman, and in the evenings she could be seen kneeling in the garden, praying to
the white spire of the pagoda that crowned the town. She had been the confidante of El Po
Kyin’s intrigues for twenty years and more.
‘Ko Po Kyin,’ she said, ‘you have done very much evil in your life. ’
El Po Kyin waved his hand. ‘What does it matter? My pagodas will atone for everything.
There is plenty of time. ’
Ma Kin bent her head over her sewing again, in an obstinate way she had when she
disapproved of something that El Po Kyin was doing.
‘But, Ko Po Kyin, where is the need for all this scheming and intriguing? I heard you
talking with Ko Ba Sein on the veranda. You are planning some evil against Dr
Veraswami. Why do you wish to hann that Indian doctor? He is a good man. ’
‘What do you know of these official matters, woman? The doctor stands in my way. In
the first place he refuses to take bribes, which makes it difficult for the rest of us. And
besides — well, there is something else which you would never have the brains to
understand. ’
‘Ko Po Kyin, you have grown rich and powerful, and what good has it ever done you?
We were happier when we were poor. Ah, I remember so well when you were only a
Township Officer, the first time we had a house of our own. How proud we were of our
new wicker furniture, and your fountain-pen with the gold clip! And when the young
English police-officer came to our house and sat in the best chair and drank a bottle of
beer, how honoured we thought ourselves! Happiness is not in money. What can you
want with more money now? ’
‘Nonsense, woman, nonsense! Attend to your cooking and sewing and leave official
matters to those who understand them. ’
‘Well, I do not know. I am your wife and have always obeyed you. But at least it is never
too soon to acquire merit. Strive to acquire more merit, Ko Po Kyin! Will you not, for
instance, buy some live fish and set them free in the river? One can acquire much merit in
that way. Also, this morning when the priests came for their rice they told me that there
are two new priests at the monastery, and they are hungry. Will you not give them
something, Ko Po Kyin? I did not give them anything myself, so that you might acquire
the merit of doing it. ’
U Po Kyin turned away from the mirror. The appeal touched him a little. He never, when
it could be done without inconvenience, missed a chance of acquiring merit. In his eyes
his pile of merit was a kind of bank deposit, everlastingly growing. Every fish set free in
the river, every gift to a priest, was a step nearer Nirvana. It was a reassuring thought. He
directed that the basket of mangoes brought by the village headman should be sent down
to the monastery.
Presently he left the house and started down the road, with Ba Taik behind him carrying a
file of papers. He walked slowly, very upright to balance his vast belly, and holding a
yellow silk umbrella over his head. His pink paso glittered in the sun like a satin praline.
He was going to the court, to try his day’s cases.
CHAPTER 2
At about the time when U Po Kyin began his morning’s business, ‘Mr Porley’ the timber
merchant and friend of Dr Veraswami, was leaving his house for the Club.
Flory was a man of about thirty-five, of middle height, not ill made. He had very black,
stiff hair growing low on his head, and a cropped black moustache, and his skin, naturally
sallow, was discoloured by the sun. Not having grown fat or bald he did not look older
than his age, but his face was very haggard in spite of the sunburn, with lank cheeks and a
sunken, withered look round the eyes. He had obviously not shaved this morning. He was
dressed in the usual white shirt, khaki drill shorts and stockings, but instead of a topi he
wore a battered Terai hat, cocked over one eye. He carried a bamboo stick with a wrist-
thong, and a black cocker spaniel named Flo was ambling after him.
All these were secondary expressions, however. The first thing that one noticed in Flory
was a hideous birthmark stretching in a ragged crescent down his left cheek, from the eye
to the corner of the mouth. Seen from the left side his face had a battered, woebegone
look, as though the birthmark had been a bruise — for it was a dark blue in colour. He was
quite aware of its hideousness. And at all times, when he was not alone, there was a
sidelongness about his movements, as he manoeuvred constantly to keep the birthmark
out of sight.
Flory’s house was at the top of the maidan, close to the edge of the jungle. From the gate
the maidan sloped sharply down, scorched and khaki-coloured, with half a dozen
dazzling white bungalows scattered round it. All quaked, shivered in the hot air. There
was an English cemetery within a white wall half-way down the hill, and near by a tiny
tin-roofed church. Beyond that was the European Club, and when one looked at the
Club — a dumpy one-storey wooden building — one looked at the real centre of the town.
In any town in India the European Club is the spiritual citadel, the real seat of the British
power, the Nirvana for which native officials and millionaires pine in vain. It was doubly
so in this case, for it was the proud boast of Kyauktada Club that, almost alone of Clubs
in Burma, it had never admitted an Oriental to membership. Beyond the Club, the
Irrawaddy flowed huge and ochreous glittering like diamonds in the patches that caught
the sun; and beyond the river stretched great wastes of paddy fields, ending at the horizon
in a range of blackish hills.
The native town, and the courts and the jail, were over to the right, mostly hidden in
green groves of peepul trees. The spire of the pagoda rose from the trees like a slender
spear tipped with gold. Kyauktada was a fairly typical Upper Burma town, that had not
changed greatly between the days of Marco Polo and 1910, and might have slept in the
Middle Ages for a century more if it had not proved a convenient spot for a railway
tenninus. In 1910 the Government made it the headquarters of a district and a seat of
Progress — interpretable as a block of law courts, with their army of fat but ravenous
pleaders, a hospital, a school and one of those huge, durable jails which the English have
built everywhere between Gibraltar and Hong Kong. The population was about four
thousand, including a couple of hundred Indians, a few score Chinese and seven
Europeans. There were also two Eurasians named Mr Francis and Mr Samuel, the sons of
an American Baptist missionary and a Roman Catholic missionary respectively. The
town contained no curiosities of any kind, except an Indian fakir who had lived for
twenty years in a tree near the bazaar, drawing his food up in a basket every morning.
Flory yawned as he came out of the gate. He had been half drunk the night before, and
the glare made him feel liverish. ‘Bloody, bloody hole! ’ he thought, looking down the
hill. And, no one except the dog being near, he began to sing aloud, ‘Bloody, bloody,
bloody, oh, how thou art bloody’ to the tune of ‘Holy, holy, holy, oh how Thou art holy ‘
as he walked down the hot red road, swishing at the dried-up grasses with his stick. It was
nearly nine o’clock and the sun was fiercer every minute. The heat throbbed down on
one’s head with a steady, rhythmic thumping, like blows from an enormous bolster. Flory
stopped at the Club gate, wondering whether to go in or to go farther down the road and
see Dr Veraswami. Then he remembered that it was ‘English mail day’ and the
newspapers would have arrived. He went in, past the big tennis screen, which was
overgrown by a creeper with starlike mauve flowers.
In the borders beside the path swaths of English flowers — phlox and larkspur, hollyhock
and petunia — not yet slain by the sun, rioted in vast size and richness. The petunias were
huge, like trees almost. There was no lawn, but instead a shrubbery of native trees and
bushes — gold mohur trees like vast umbrellas of blood-red bloom, frangipanis with
creamy, stalkless flowers, purple bougainvillea, scarlet hibiscus and the pink Chinese
rose, bilious-green crotons, feathery fronds of tamarind. The clash of colours hurt one’s
eyes in the glare. A nearly naked mali, watering-can in hand, was moving in the jungle of
flowers like some large nectar-sucking bird.
On the Club steps a sandy-haired Englishman, with a prickly moustache, pale grey eyes
too far apart, and abnormally thin calves to his legs, was standing with his hands in the
pockets of his shorts. This was Mr Westfield, the District Superintendent of Police. With
a very bored air he was rocking himself backwards and forwards on his heels and pouting
his upper lip so that his moustache tickled his nose. He greeted Flory with a slight
sideways movement of his head. His way of speaking was clipped and soldierly, missing
out every word that well could be missed out. Nearly everything he said was intended for
a joke, but the tone of his voice was hollow and melancholy.
‘Hullo, Flory me lad. Bloody awful morning, what? ’
‘We must expect it at this time of year, I suppose,’ Flory said. He had turned himself a
little sideways, so that his birthmarked cheek was away from Westfield.
‘Yes, dammit. Couple of months of this coming. Last year we didn’t have a spot of rain
till June. Look at that bloody sky, not a cloud in it. Like one of those damned great blue
enamel saucepans. God! What’d you give to be in Piccadilly now, eh? ’
‘Have the English papers come? ’
‘Yes. Dear old Punch, Pink’un and Vie Parisienne. Makes you homesick to read ‘em,
what? Let’s come in and have a drink before the ice all goes. Old Lackersteen’s been
fairly bathing in it. Half pickled already. ’
They went in, Westfield remarking in his gloomy voice, ‘Lead on, Macduff. ’ Inside, the
Club was a teak-walled place smelling of earth-oil, and consisting of only four rooms,
one of which contained a forlorn ‘library’ of five hundred mildewed novels, and another
an old and mangy billiard-table — this, however, seldom used, for during most of the year
hordes of flying beetles came buzzing round the lamps and littered themselves over the
cloth. There were also a card-room and a ‘lounge’ which looked towards the river, over a
wide veranda; but at this time of day all the verandas were curtained with green bamboo
chicks. The lounge was an unhomelike room, with coco-nut matting on the floor, and
wicker chairs and tables which were littered with shiny illustrated papers. For ornament
there were a number of ‘Bonzo’ pictures, and the dusty skulls of sambhur. A punkah,
lazily flapping, shook dust into the tepid air.
There were three men in the room. Under the punkah a florid, fine-looking, slightly
bloated man of forty was sprawling across the table with his head in his hands, groaning
in pain. This was Mr Lackersteen, the local manager of a timber firm. He had been badly
drunk the night before, and he was suffering for it. Ellis, local manager of yet another
company, was standing before the notice-board studying some notice with a look of bitter
concentration. He was a tiny wiry-haired fellow with a pale, sharp-featured face and
restless movements. Maxwell, the acting Divisional Forest Officer, was lying in one of
the long chairs reading the Field, and invisible except for two large-boned legs and thick
downy forearms.
‘Look at this naughty old man,’ said Westfield, taking Mr Lackersteen half affectionately
by the shoulders and shaking him. ‘Example to the young, what? There but for the grace
of God and all that. Gives you an idea what you’ll be like at forty. ’
Mr Lackersteen gave a groan which sounded like ‘brandy’.
‘Poor old chap,’ said Westfield, ‘regular martyr to booze, eh? Look at it oozing out of his
pores. Reminds me of the old colonel who used to sleep without a mosquito net. They
asked his servant why and the servant said: “At night, master too drunk to notice
mosquitoes; in the morning, mosquitoes too drunk to notice master. ” Look at him —
boozed last night and then asking for more. Got a little niece coming to stay with him,
too. Due tonight, isn’t she, Lackersteen? ’
‘Oh, leave that drunken sot alone,’ said Ellis without turning round. He had a spiteful
Cockney voice. Mr Lackersteen groaned again, ‘ the niece! Get me some brandy, for
Christ’s sake. ’
‘Good education for the niece, eh? Seeing uncle under the table seven times a week. Hey,
butler! Bringing brandy for Lackersteen master! ’
The butler, a dark, stout Dravidian with liquid, yellow-irised eyes like those of a dog,
brought the brandy on a brass tray. Flory and Westfield ordered gin. Mr Lackersteen
swallowed a few spoonfuls of brandy and sat back in his chair, groaning in a more
resigned way. He had a beefy, ingenuous face, with a toothbrush moustache. He was
really a very simple-minded man, with no ambitions beyond having what he called ‘a
good time’. His wife governed him by the only possible method, namely, by never letting
him out of her sight for more than an hour or two. Only once, a year after they were
married, she had left him for a fortnight, and had returned unexpectedly a day before her
time, to find Mr Lackersteen, drunk, supported on either side by a naked Burmese girl,
while a third up-ended a whisky bottle into his mouth. Since then she had watched him,
as he used to complain, Tike a cat over a bloody mousehole’. However, he managed to
enjoy quite a number of ‘good times’, though they were usually rather hurried ones.
‘My Christ, what a head I’ve got on me this morning,’ he said. ‘Call that butler again,
Westfield. I’ve got to have another brandy before my missus gets here. She says she’s
going to cut my booze down to four pegs a day when our niece gets here. God rot them
both! ’ he added gloomily.
‘Stop playing the fool, all of you, and listen to this,’ said Ellis sourly. He had a queer
wounding way of speaking, hardly ever opening his mouth without insulting somebody.
He deliberately exaggerated his Cockney accent, because of the sardonic tone it gave to
his words. ‘Have you seen this notice of old Macgregor’s? A little nosegay for everyone.
Maxwell, wake up and listen! ’
Maxwell lowered the Field. He was a fresh-coloured blond youth of not more than
twenty-five or six — very young for the post he held. With his heavy limbs and thick
white eyelashes he reminded one of a cart-horse colt. Ellis nipped the notice from the
board with a neat, spiteful little movement and began reading it aloud.
seeming cool by contrast, stirred the newly drenched orchids that hung from the eaves.
Beyond the orchids one could see the dusty, curved trunk of a palm tree, and then the
blazing ultramarine sky. Up in the zenith, so high that it dazzled one to look at them, a
few vultures circled without the quiver of a wing.
Unblinking, rather like a great porcelain idol, U Po Kyin gazed out into the fierce
sunlight. He was a man of fifty, so fat that for years he had not risen from his chair
without help, and yet shapely and even beautiful in his grossness; for the Burmese do not
sag and bulge like white men, but grow fat symmetrically, like fruits swelling. His face
was vast, yellow and quite unwrinkled, and his eyes were tawny. His feet — squat, high-
arched feet with the toes all the same length — were bare, and so was his cropped head,
and he wore one of those vivid Arakanese longyis with green and magenta checks which
the Burmese wear on infonnal occasions. He was chewing betel from a lacquered box on
the table, and thinking about his past life.
It had been a brilliantly successful life. U Po Kyin’s earliest memory, back in the eighties,
was of standing, a naked pot-bellied child, watching the British troops march victorious
into Mandalay. He remembered the terror he had felt of those columns of great beef-fed
men, red-faced and red-coated; and the long rifles over their shoulders, and the heavy,
rhythmic tramp of their boots. He had taken to his heels after watching them for a few
minutes. In his childish way he had grasped that his own people were no match for this
race of giants. To fight on the side of the British, to become a parasite upon them, had
been his ruling ambition, even as a child.
At seventeen he had tried for a Government appointment, but he had failed to get it, being
poor and friendless, and for three years he had worked in the stinking labyrinth of the
Mandalay bazaars, clerking for the rice merchants and sometimes stealing. Then when he
was twenty a lucky stroke of blackmail put him in possession of four hundred rupees, and
he went at once to Rangoon and bought his way into a Government clerkship. The job
was a lucrative one though the salary was small. At that time a ring of clerks were
making a steady income by misappropriating Government stores, and Po Kyin (he was
plain Po Kyin then: the honorific U came years later) took naturally to this kind of thing.
However, he had too much talent to spend his life in a clerkship, stealing miserably in
annas and pice. One day he discovered that the Government, being short of minor
officials, were going to make some appointments from among the clerks. The news
would have become public in another week, but it was one of Po Kyin’s qualities that his
information was always a week ahead of everyone else’s. He saw his chance and
denounced all his confederates before they could take alarm. Most of them were sent to
prison, and Po Kyin was made an Assistant Township Officer as the reward of his
honesty. Since then he had risen steadily. Now, at fifty-six, he was a Sub-divisional
Magistrate, and he would probably be promoted still further and made an acting Deputy
Commissioner, with Englishmen as his equals and even his subordinates.
As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the vastest bribe he would never sell
the decision of a case, because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgments is
caught sooner or later. His practice, a much safer one, was to take bribes from both sides
and then decide the case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for
impartiality. Besides his revenue from litigants, U Po Kyin levied a ceaseless toll, a sort
of private taxation scheme, from all the villages under his jurisdiction. If any village
failed in its tribute U Po Kyin took punitive measures — gangs of dacoits attacked the
village, leading villagers were arrested on false charges, and so forth — and it was never
long before the amount was paid up. He also shared the proceeds of all the larger-sized
robberies that took place in the district. Most of this, of course, was known to everyone
except U Po Kyin’s official superiors (no British officer will ever believe anything
against his own men) but the attempts to expose him invariably failed; his supporters,
kept loyal by their share of the loot, were too numerous. When any accusation was
brought against him, U Po Kyin simply discredited it with strings of suborned witnesses,
following this up by counter-accusations which left him in a stronger position than ever.
He was practically invulnerable, because he was too fine a judge of men ever to choose a
wrong instrument, and also because he was too absorbed in intrigue ever to fail through
carelessness or ignorance. One could say with practical certainty that he would never be
found out, that he would go from success to success, and would finally die full of honour,
worth several lakhs of rupees.
And even beyond the grave his success would continue. According to Buddhist belief,
those who have done evil in their lives will spend the next incarnation in the shape of a
rat, a frog or some other low animal. U Po Kyin was a good Buddhist and intended to
provide against this danger. He would devote his closing years to good works, which
would pile up enough merit to outweigh the rest of his life. Probably his good works
would take the form of building pagodas. Four pagodas, five, six, seven — the priests
would tell him how many — with carved stonework, gilt umbrellas and little bells that
tinkled in the wind, every tinkle a prayer. And he would return to the earth in male
human shape — for a woman ranks at about the same level as a rat or a frog — or at best as
some dignified beast such as an elephant.
All these thoughts flowed through U Po Kyin’s mind swiftly and for the most part in
pictures. His brain, though cunning, was quite barbaric, and it never worked except for
some definite end; mere meditation was beyond him. He had now reached the point to
which his thoughts had been tending. Putting his smallish, triangular hands on the arms of
his chair, he turned himself a little way round and called, rather wheezily:
‘Ba Taik! Hey, Ba Taik! ’
Ba Taik, U Po Kyin’s servant, appeared through the beaded curtain of the veranda. He
was an under-sized, pock-marked man with a timid and rather hungry expression. U Po
Kyin paid him no wages, for he was a convicted thief whom a word would send to prison.
As Ba Taik advanced he shikoed, so low as to give the impression that he was stepping
backwards.
‘Most holy god? ’ he said.
‘Is anyone waiting to see me, Ba Taik? ’
Ba Taik enumerated the visitors upon his fingers: ‘There is the headman of Thitpingyi
village, your honour, who has brought presents, and two villagers who have an assault
case that is to be tried by your honour, and they too have brought presents. Ko Ba Sein,
the head clerk of the Deputy Commissioner s office, wishes to see you, and there is Ah
Shah, the police constable, and a dacoit whose name I do not know. I think they have
quarrelled about some gold bangles they have stolen. And there is also a young village
girl with a baby. ’
‘What does she want? ’ said U Po Kyin.
‘She says that the baby is yours, most holy one. ’
‘Ah. And how much has the headman brought? ’
Ba Taik thought it was only ten rupees and a basket of mangoes.
‘Tell the headman,’ said U Po Kyin, ‘that it should be twenty rupees, and there will be
trouble for him and his village if the money is not here tomorrow. I will see the others
presently. Ask Ko Ba Sein to come to me here. ’
Ba Sein appeared in a moment. He was an erect, narrow-shouldered man, very tall for a
Burman, with a curiously smooth face that recalled a coffee blancmange. U Po Kyin
found him a useful tool. Unimaginative and hardworking, he was an excellent clerk, and
Mr Macgregor, the Deputy Commissioner, trusted him with most of his official secrets. U
Po Kyin, put in a good temper by his thoughts, greeted Ba Sein with a laugh and waved
to the betel box.
‘Well, Ko Ba Sein, how does our affair progress? I hope that, as dear Mr Macgregor
would say’ — U Po Kyin broke into English — ’“eet ees making perceptible progress”? ’
Ba Sein did not smile at the small joke. Sitting down stiff and long-backed in the vacant
chair, he answered:
‘Excellently, sir. Our copy of the paper arrived this morning. Kindly observe. ’
He produced a copy of a bilingual paper called the Bunnese Patriot. It was a miserable
eight-page rag, villainously printed on paper as bad as blotting paper, and composed
partly of news stolen from the Rangoon Gazette, partly of weak Nationalist heroics. On
the last page the type had slipped and left the entire sheet jet black, as though in
mourning for the smallness of the paper’s circulation. The article to which U Po Kyin
turned was of a rather different stamp from the rest. It ran:
In these happy times, when we poor blacks are being uplifted by the mighty western
civilization, with its manifold blessings such as the cinematograph, machine-guns,
syphilis, etc. , what subject could be more inspiring than the private lives of our European
benefactors? We think therefore that it may interest our readers to hear something of
events in the up-country district of Kyauktada. And especially of Mr Macgregor,
honoured Deputy Commissioner of said district.
Mr Macgregor is of the type of the Fine Old English Gentleman, such as, in these happy
days, we have so many examples before our eyes. He is ‘a family man’ as our dear
English cousins say. Very much a family man is Mr Macgregor. So much so that he has
already three children in the district of Kyauktada, where he has been a year, and in his
last district of Shwemyo he left six young progenies behind him. Perhaps it is an
oversight on Mr Macgregor’s part that he has left these young infants quite unprovided
for, and that some of their mothers are in danger of starvation, etc. , etc. , etc.
There was a column of similar stuff, and wretched as it was, it was well above the level
of the rest of the paper. U Po Kyin read the article carefully through, holding it at ann’s
length — he was long-sighted — and drawing his lips meditatively back, exposing great
numbers of small, perfect teeth, blood-red from betel juice.
‘The editor will get six months’ imprisonment for this,’ he said finally.
‘He does not mind. He says that the only time when his creditors leave him alone is when
he is in prison. ’
‘And you say that your little apprentice clerk Hla Pe wrote this article ah by himself?
That is a very clever boy — a most promising boy! Never tell me again that these
Government High Schools are a waste of time. Hla Pe shah certainly have his clerkship. ’
‘You think then, sir, that this article will be enough? ’
U Po Kyin did not answer immediately. A puffing, labouring noise began to proceed
from him; he was trying to rise from his chair. Ba Taik was familiar with this sound. He
appeared from behind the beaded curtain, and he and Ba Sein put a hand under each of U
Po Kyin’s armpits and hoisted him to his feet. U Po Kyin stood for a moment balancing
the weight of his belly upon his legs, with the movement of a fish porter adjusting his
load. Then he waved Ba Taik away.
‘Not enough,’ he said, answering Ba Sein’s question, ‘not enough by any means. There is
a lot to be done yet. But this is the right beginning. Listen. ’
He went to the rail to spit out a scarlet mouthful of betel, and then began to quarter the
veranda with short steps, his hands behind his back. The friction of his vast thighs made
him waddle slightly. As he walked he talked, in the base jargon of the Government
offices — a patchwork of Burmese verbs and English abstract phrases:
‘Now, let us go into this affair from the beginning. We are going to make a concerted
attack on Dr Veraswami, who is the Civil Surgeon and Superintendent of the jail. We are
going to slander him, destroy his reputation and finally ruin him for ever. It will be rather
a delicate operation. ’
‘Yes, sir. ’
‘There will be no risk, but we have got to go slowly. We are not proceeding against a
miserable clerk or police constable. We are proceeding against a high official, and with a
high official, even when he is an Indian, it is not the same as with a clerk. How does one
ruin a clerk? Easy; an accusation, two dozen witnesses, dismissal and imprisonment. But
that will not do here. Softly, softly, softly is my way. No scandal, and above all no
official inquiry. There must be no accusations that can be answered, and yet within three
months I must fix it in the head of every European in Kyauktada that the doctor is a
villain. What shall I accuse him of? Bribes will not do, a doctor does not get bribes to any
extent. What then? ’
‘We could perhaps arrange a mutiny in the jail,’ said Ba Sein. ‘As superintendent, the
doctor would be blamed. ’
‘No, it is too dangerous. I do not want the jail warders firing their rifles in all directions.
Besides, it would be expensive. Clearly, then, it must be disloyalty — Nationalism,
seditious propaganda. We must persuade the Europeans that the doctor holds disloyal,
anti-British opinions. That is far worse than bribery; they expect a native official to take
bribes. But let them suspect his loyalty even for a moment, and he is ruined. ’
‘It would be a hard thing to prove,’ objected Ba Sein. ‘The doctor is very loyal to the
Europeans. He grows angry when anything is said against them. They will know that, do
you not think? ’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said U Po Kyin comfortably. ‘No European cares anything about
proofs. When a man has a black face, suspicion IS proof. A few anonymous letters will
work wonders. It is only a question of persisting; accuse, accuse, go on accusing — that is
the way with Europeans. One anonymous letter after another, to every European in turn.
And then, when their suspicions are thoroughly aroused — ’ U Po Kyin brought one short
arm from behind his back and clicked his thumb and linger. He added: ‘We begin with
this article in the Bunnese Patriot. The Europeans will shout with rage when they see it.
Well, the next move is to persuade them that it was the doctor who wrote it. ’
‘It will be difficult while he has friends among the Europeans. All of them go to him
when they are ill. He cured Mr Macgregor of his flatulence this cold weather. They
consider him a very clever doctor, I believe. ’
‘How little you understand the European mind, Ko Ba Sein! If the Europeans go to
Veraswami it is only because there is no other doctor in Kyauktada. No European has any
faith in a man with a black face. No, with anonymous letters it is only a question of
sending enough. I shall soon see to it that he has no friends left. ’
‘There is Mr Flory, the timber merchant,’ said Ba Sein. (He pronounced it ‘Mr Porley’. )
‘He is a close friend of the doctor. I see him go to his house every morning when he is in
Kyauktada. Twice he has even invited the doctor to dinner. ’
‘Ah, now there you are right. If Flory were a friend of the doctor it could do us harm.
You cannot hurt an Indian when he has a European friend. It gives him — what is that
word they are so fond of? — prestige. But Flory will desert his friend quickly enough
when the trouble begins. These people have no feeling of loyalty towards a native.
Besides, I happen to know that Flory is a coward. I can deal with him. Your part, Ko Ba
Sein, is to watch Mr Macgregor’s movements. Has he written to the Commissioner
lately — written confidentially, I mean? ’
‘He wrote two days ago, but when we steamed the letter open we found it was nothing of
importance. ’
‘Ah well, we will give him something to write about. And as soon as he suspects the
doctor, then is the time for that other affair I spoke to you of. Thus we shall — what does
Mr Macgregor say? Ah yes, “kill two birds with one stone”. A whole flock of birds — ha,
ha! ’
U Po Kyin’s laugh was a disgusting bubbling sound deep down in his belly, like the
preparation for a cough; yet it was merry, even childlike. He did not say any more about
the ‘other affair’, which was too private to be discussed even upon the veranda. Ba Sein,
seeing the interview at an end, stood up and bowed, angular as a jointed ruler.
‘Is there anything else your honour wishes done? ’ he said.
‘Make sure that Mr Macgregor has his copy of the Bunnese Patriot. You had better tell
Hla Pe to have an attack of dysentery and stay away from the office. I shall want him for
the writing of the anonymous letters. That is all for the present. ’
‘Then I may go, sir? ’
‘God go with you,’ said U Po Kyin rather abstractedly, and at once shouted again for Ba
Taik. He never wasted a moment of his day. It did not take him long to deal with the
other visitors and to send the village girl away unrewarded, having examined her face and
said that he did not recognize her.
It was now his breakfast time. Violent pangs of hunger,
which attacked him punctually at this hour every morning, began to tonnent his belly. He
shouted urgently:
‘Ba Taik! Hey, Ba Taik! Kin Kin! My breakfast! Be quick, I am starving. ’
In the living-room behind the curtain a table was already set out with a huge bowl of rice
and a dozen plates containing curries, dried prawns and sliced green mangoes. U Po Kyin
waddled to the table, sat down with a grunt and at once threw himself on the food. Ma
Kin, his wife, stood behind him and served him. She was a thin woman of five and forty,
with a kindly, pale brown, simian face. U Po Kyin took no notice of her while he was
eating. With the bowl close to his nose he stuffed the food into himself with swift, greasy
fingers, breathing fast. All his meals were swift, passionate and enormous; they were not
meals so much as orgies, debauches of curry and rice. When he had finished he sat back,
belched several times and told Ma Kin to fetch him a green Burmese cigar. He never
smoked English tobacco, which he declared had no taste in it.
Presently, with Ba Taik’s help, U Po Kyin dressed in his office clothes, and stood for a
while admiring himself in the long mirror in the living-room. It was a wooden-walled
room with two pillars, still recognizable as teak-trunks, supporting the roof-tree, and it
was dark and sluttish as all Burmese rooms are, though U Po Kyin had furnished it
‘Ingaleik fashion’ with a veneered sideboard and chairs, some lithographs of the Royal
Family and a fire-extinguisher. The floor was covered with bamboo mats, much splashed
by lime and betel juice.
Ma Kin was sitting on a mat in the comer, stitching an ingyi. U Po Kyin turned slowly
before the mirror, trying to get a glimpse of his back view. He was dressed in a
gaungbaung of pale pink silk, an ingyi of starched muslin, and a paso of Mandalay silk, a
gorgeous salmon-pink brocaded with yellow. With an effort he turned his head round and
looked, pleased, at the paso tight and shining on his enormous buttocks. He was proud of
his fatness, because he saw the accumulated flesh as the symbol of his greatness. He who
had once been obscure and hungry was now fat, rich and feared. He was swollen with the
bodies of his enemies; a thought from which he extracted something very near poetry.
‘My new paso was cheap at twenty-two rupees, hey, Kin Kin? ’ he said.
Ma Kin bent her head over her sewing. She was a simple, old-fashioned woman, who had
learned even less of European habits than U Po Kyin. She could not sit on a chair without
discomfort. Every morning she went to the bazaar with a basket on her head, like a
village woman, and in the evenings she could be seen kneeling in the garden, praying to
the white spire of the pagoda that crowned the town. She had been the confidante of El Po
Kyin’s intrigues for twenty years and more.
‘Ko Po Kyin,’ she said, ‘you have done very much evil in your life. ’
El Po Kyin waved his hand. ‘What does it matter? My pagodas will atone for everything.
There is plenty of time. ’
Ma Kin bent her head over her sewing again, in an obstinate way she had when she
disapproved of something that El Po Kyin was doing.
‘But, Ko Po Kyin, where is the need for all this scheming and intriguing? I heard you
talking with Ko Ba Sein on the veranda. You are planning some evil against Dr
Veraswami. Why do you wish to hann that Indian doctor? He is a good man. ’
‘What do you know of these official matters, woman? The doctor stands in my way. In
the first place he refuses to take bribes, which makes it difficult for the rest of us. And
besides — well, there is something else which you would never have the brains to
understand. ’
‘Ko Po Kyin, you have grown rich and powerful, and what good has it ever done you?
We were happier when we were poor. Ah, I remember so well when you were only a
Township Officer, the first time we had a house of our own. How proud we were of our
new wicker furniture, and your fountain-pen with the gold clip! And when the young
English police-officer came to our house and sat in the best chair and drank a bottle of
beer, how honoured we thought ourselves! Happiness is not in money. What can you
want with more money now? ’
‘Nonsense, woman, nonsense! Attend to your cooking and sewing and leave official
matters to those who understand them. ’
‘Well, I do not know. I am your wife and have always obeyed you. But at least it is never
too soon to acquire merit. Strive to acquire more merit, Ko Po Kyin! Will you not, for
instance, buy some live fish and set them free in the river? One can acquire much merit in
that way. Also, this morning when the priests came for their rice they told me that there
are two new priests at the monastery, and they are hungry. Will you not give them
something, Ko Po Kyin? I did not give them anything myself, so that you might acquire
the merit of doing it. ’
U Po Kyin turned away from the mirror. The appeal touched him a little. He never, when
it could be done without inconvenience, missed a chance of acquiring merit. In his eyes
his pile of merit was a kind of bank deposit, everlastingly growing. Every fish set free in
the river, every gift to a priest, was a step nearer Nirvana. It was a reassuring thought. He
directed that the basket of mangoes brought by the village headman should be sent down
to the monastery.
Presently he left the house and started down the road, with Ba Taik behind him carrying a
file of papers. He walked slowly, very upright to balance his vast belly, and holding a
yellow silk umbrella over his head. His pink paso glittered in the sun like a satin praline.
He was going to the court, to try his day’s cases.
CHAPTER 2
At about the time when U Po Kyin began his morning’s business, ‘Mr Porley’ the timber
merchant and friend of Dr Veraswami, was leaving his house for the Club.
Flory was a man of about thirty-five, of middle height, not ill made. He had very black,
stiff hair growing low on his head, and a cropped black moustache, and his skin, naturally
sallow, was discoloured by the sun. Not having grown fat or bald he did not look older
than his age, but his face was very haggard in spite of the sunburn, with lank cheeks and a
sunken, withered look round the eyes. He had obviously not shaved this morning. He was
dressed in the usual white shirt, khaki drill shorts and stockings, but instead of a topi he
wore a battered Terai hat, cocked over one eye. He carried a bamboo stick with a wrist-
thong, and a black cocker spaniel named Flo was ambling after him.
All these were secondary expressions, however. The first thing that one noticed in Flory
was a hideous birthmark stretching in a ragged crescent down his left cheek, from the eye
to the corner of the mouth. Seen from the left side his face had a battered, woebegone
look, as though the birthmark had been a bruise — for it was a dark blue in colour. He was
quite aware of its hideousness. And at all times, when he was not alone, there was a
sidelongness about his movements, as he manoeuvred constantly to keep the birthmark
out of sight.
Flory’s house was at the top of the maidan, close to the edge of the jungle. From the gate
the maidan sloped sharply down, scorched and khaki-coloured, with half a dozen
dazzling white bungalows scattered round it. All quaked, shivered in the hot air. There
was an English cemetery within a white wall half-way down the hill, and near by a tiny
tin-roofed church. Beyond that was the European Club, and when one looked at the
Club — a dumpy one-storey wooden building — one looked at the real centre of the town.
In any town in India the European Club is the spiritual citadel, the real seat of the British
power, the Nirvana for which native officials and millionaires pine in vain. It was doubly
so in this case, for it was the proud boast of Kyauktada Club that, almost alone of Clubs
in Burma, it had never admitted an Oriental to membership. Beyond the Club, the
Irrawaddy flowed huge and ochreous glittering like diamonds in the patches that caught
the sun; and beyond the river stretched great wastes of paddy fields, ending at the horizon
in a range of blackish hills.
The native town, and the courts and the jail, were over to the right, mostly hidden in
green groves of peepul trees. The spire of the pagoda rose from the trees like a slender
spear tipped with gold. Kyauktada was a fairly typical Upper Burma town, that had not
changed greatly between the days of Marco Polo and 1910, and might have slept in the
Middle Ages for a century more if it had not proved a convenient spot for a railway
tenninus. In 1910 the Government made it the headquarters of a district and a seat of
Progress — interpretable as a block of law courts, with their army of fat but ravenous
pleaders, a hospital, a school and one of those huge, durable jails which the English have
built everywhere between Gibraltar and Hong Kong. The population was about four
thousand, including a couple of hundred Indians, a few score Chinese and seven
Europeans. There were also two Eurasians named Mr Francis and Mr Samuel, the sons of
an American Baptist missionary and a Roman Catholic missionary respectively. The
town contained no curiosities of any kind, except an Indian fakir who had lived for
twenty years in a tree near the bazaar, drawing his food up in a basket every morning.
Flory yawned as he came out of the gate. He had been half drunk the night before, and
the glare made him feel liverish. ‘Bloody, bloody hole! ’ he thought, looking down the
hill. And, no one except the dog being near, he began to sing aloud, ‘Bloody, bloody,
bloody, oh, how thou art bloody’ to the tune of ‘Holy, holy, holy, oh how Thou art holy ‘
as he walked down the hot red road, swishing at the dried-up grasses with his stick. It was
nearly nine o’clock and the sun was fiercer every minute. The heat throbbed down on
one’s head with a steady, rhythmic thumping, like blows from an enormous bolster. Flory
stopped at the Club gate, wondering whether to go in or to go farther down the road and
see Dr Veraswami. Then he remembered that it was ‘English mail day’ and the
newspapers would have arrived. He went in, past the big tennis screen, which was
overgrown by a creeper with starlike mauve flowers.
In the borders beside the path swaths of English flowers — phlox and larkspur, hollyhock
and petunia — not yet slain by the sun, rioted in vast size and richness. The petunias were
huge, like trees almost. There was no lawn, but instead a shrubbery of native trees and
bushes — gold mohur trees like vast umbrellas of blood-red bloom, frangipanis with
creamy, stalkless flowers, purple bougainvillea, scarlet hibiscus and the pink Chinese
rose, bilious-green crotons, feathery fronds of tamarind. The clash of colours hurt one’s
eyes in the glare. A nearly naked mali, watering-can in hand, was moving in the jungle of
flowers like some large nectar-sucking bird.
On the Club steps a sandy-haired Englishman, with a prickly moustache, pale grey eyes
too far apart, and abnormally thin calves to his legs, was standing with his hands in the
pockets of his shorts. This was Mr Westfield, the District Superintendent of Police. With
a very bored air he was rocking himself backwards and forwards on his heels and pouting
his upper lip so that his moustache tickled his nose. He greeted Flory with a slight
sideways movement of his head. His way of speaking was clipped and soldierly, missing
out every word that well could be missed out. Nearly everything he said was intended for
a joke, but the tone of his voice was hollow and melancholy.
‘Hullo, Flory me lad. Bloody awful morning, what? ’
‘We must expect it at this time of year, I suppose,’ Flory said. He had turned himself a
little sideways, so that his birthmarked cheek was away from Westfield.
‘Yes, dammit. Couple of months of this coming. Last year we didn’t have a spot of rain
till June. Look at that bloody sky, not a cloud in it. Like one of those damned great blue
enamel saucepans. God! What’d you give to be in Piccadilly now, eh? ’
‘Have the English papers come? ’
‘Yes. Dear old Punch, Pink’un and Vie Parisienne. Makes you homesick to read ‘em,
what? Let’s come in and have a drink before the ice all goes. Old Lackersteen’s been
fairly bathing in it. Half pickled already. ’
They went in, Westfield remarking in his gloomy voice, ‘Lead on, Macduff. ’ Inside, the
Club was a teak-walled place smelling of earth-oil, and consisting of only four rooms,
one of which contained a forlorn ‘library’ of five hundred mildewed novels, and another
an old and mangy billiard-table — this, however, seldom used, for during most of the year
hordes of flying beetles came buzzing round the lamps and littered themselves over the
cloth. There were also a card-room and a ‘lounge’ which looked towards the river, over a
wide veranda; but at this time of day all the verandas were curtained with green bamboo
chicks. The lounge was an unhomelike room, with coco-nut matting on the floor, and
wicker chairs and tables which were littered with shiny illustrated papers. For ornament
there were a number of ‘Bonzo’ pictures, and the dusty skulls of sambhur. A punkah,
lazily flapping, shook dust into the tepid air.
There were three men in the room. Under the punkah a florid, fine-looking, slightly
bloated man of forty was sprawling across the table with his head in his hands, groaning
in pain. This was Mr Lackersteen, the local manager of a timber firm. He had been badly
drunk the night before, and he was suffering for it. Ellis, local manager of yet another
company, was standing before the notice-board studying some notice with a look of bitter
concentration. He was a tiny wiry-haired fellow with a pale, sharp-featured face and
restless movements. Maxwell, the acting Divisional Forest Officer, was lying in one of
the long chairs reading the Field, and invisible except for two large-boned legs and thick
downy forearms.
‘Look at this naughty old man,’ said Westfield, taking Mr Lackersteen half affectionately
by the shoulders and shaking him. ‘Example to the young, what? There but for the grace
of God and all that. Gives you an idea what you’ll be like at forty. ’
Mr Lackersteen gave a groan which sounded like ‘brandy’.
‘Poor old chap,’ said Westfield, ‘regular martyr to booze, eh? Look at it oozing out of his
pores. Reminds me of the old colonel who used to sleep without a mosquito net. They
asked his servant why and the servant said: “At night, master too drunk to notice
mosquitoes; in the morning, mosquitoes too drunk to notice master. ” Look at him —
boozed last night and then asking for more. Got a little niece coming to stay with him,
too. Due tonight, isn’t she, Lackersteen? ’
‘Oh, leave that drunken sot alone,’ said Ellis without turning round. He had a spiteful
Cockney voice. Mr Lackersteen groaned again, ‘ the niece! Get me some brandy, for
Christ’s sake. ’
‘Good education for the niece, eh? Seeing uncle under the table seven times a week. Hey,
butler! Bringing brandy for Lackersteen master! ’
The butler, a dark, stout Dravidian with liquid, yellow-irised eyes like those of a dog,
brought the brandy on a brass tray. Flory and Westfield ordered gin. Mr Lackersteen
swallowed a few spoonfuls of brandy and sat back in his chair, groaning in a more
resigned way. He had a beefy, ingenuous face, with a toothbrush moustache. He was
really a very simple-minded man, with no ambitions beyond having what he called ‘a
good time’. His wife governed him by the only possible method, namely, by never letting
him out of her sight for more than an hour or two. Only once, a year after they were
married, she had left him for a fortnight, and had returned unexpectedly a day before her
time, to find Mr Lackersteen, drunk, supported on either side by a naked Burmese girl,
while a third up-ended a whisky bottle into his mouth. Since then she had watched him,
as he used to complain, Tike a cat over a bloody mousehole’. However, he managed to
enjoy quite a number of ‘good times’, though they were usually rather hurried ones.
‘My Christ, what a head I’ve got on me this morning,’ he said. ‘Call that butler again,
Westfield. I’ve got to have another brandy before my missus gets here. She says she’s
going to cut my booze down to four pegs a day when our niece gets here. God rot them
both! ’ he added gloomily.
‘Stop playing the fool, all of you, and listen to this,’ said Ellis sourly. He had a queer
wounding way of speaking, hardly ever opening his mouth without insulting somebody.
He deliberately exaggerated his Cockney accent, because of the sardonic tone it gave to
his words. ‘Have you seen this notice of old Macgregor’s? A little nosegay for everyone.
Maxwell, wake up and listen! ’
Maxwell lowered the Field. He was a fresh-coloured blond youth of not more than
twenty-five or six — very young for the post he held. With his heavy limbs and thick
white eyelashes he reminded one of a cart-horse colt. Ellis nipped the notice from the
board with a neat, spiteful little movement and began reading it aloud.
