‘Do look at those
women’s
feet!
Orwell - Burmese Days
‘Such extraordinary
creatures! They were in church on Sunday. One of them looks almost white. Surely he
isn’t an Englishman? ’
‘No, they’re Eurasians — sons of white fathers and native mothers. Yellow-bellies is our
friendly nickname for them. ’
‘But what are they doing here? Where do they live? Do they do any work? ’
‘They exist somehow or other in the bazaar. I believe Francis acts as clerk to an Indian
money-lender, and Samuel to some of the pleaders. But they’d probably starve now and
then if it weren’t for the charity of the natives. ’
‘The natives! Do you mean to say — sort of CADGE from the natives? ’
‘I fancy so. It would be a very easy thing to do, if one cared to. The Burmese won’t let
anyone starve. ’
Elizabeth had never heard of anything of this kind before. The notion of men who were at
least partly white living in poverty among ‘natives’ so shocked her that she stopped short
on the path, and the game of tennis was postponed for a few minutes.
‘But how awful! I mean, it’s such a bad example! It’s almost as bad as if one of US was
like that. Couldn’t something be done for those two? Get up a subscription and send them
away from here, or something? ’
‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t help much. Wherever they went they’d be in the same position. ’
‘But couldn’t they get some proper work to do? ’
‘I doubt it. You see, Eurasians of that type — men who’ve been brought up in the bazaar
and had no education — are done for from the start. The Europeans won’t touch them with
a stick, and they’re cut off from entering the lower-grade Government services. There’s
nothing they can do except cadge, unless they chuck all pretension to being Europeans.
And really you can’t expect the poor devils to do that. Their drop of white blood is the
sole asset they’ve got. Poor Francis, I never meet him but he begins telling me about his
prickly heat. Natives, you see, are supposed not to suffer from prickly heat — bosh, of
course, but people believe it. It’s the same with sunstroke. They wear those huge topis to
remind you that they’ve got European skulls. A kind of coat of arms. The bend sinister,
you might say. ’
This did not satisfy Elizabeth. She perceived that Flory, as usual, had a sneaking
sympathy with the Eurasians. And the appearance of the two men had excited a peculiar
dislike in her. She had placed their type now. They looked like dagoes. Like those
Mexicans and Italians and other dago people who play the mauvais role in so many a
film.
‘They looked awfully degenerate types, didn’t they? So thin and weedy and cringing; and
they haven’t got at all HONEST faces. I suppose these Eurasians ARE very degenerate?
I’ve heard that half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races. Is that true? ’
‘I don’t know that it’s true. Most Eurasians aren’t very good specimens, and it’s hard to
see how they could be, with their upbringing. But our attitude towards them is rather
beastly. We always talk of them as though they’d sprung up from the ground like
mushrooms, with all their faults ready-made. But when all’s said and done, we’re
responsible for their existence. ’
‘Responsible for their existence? ’
‘Well, they’ve all got fathers, you see. ’
‘Oh . . . Of course there’s that. . . . But after all, YOU aren’t responsible. I mean, only a
very low kind of man would — er — have anything to do with native women, wouldn’t
he? ’
‘Oh, quite. But the fathers of both those two were clergymen in holy orders, I believe. ’
He thought of Rosa McFee, the Eurasian girl he had seduced in Mandalay in 1913. The
way he used to sneak down to the house in a gharry with the shutters down; Rosa’s
corkscrew curls; her withered old Burmese mother, giving him tea in the dark living-
room with the fern pots and the wicker divan. And afterwards, when he had chucked
Rosa, those dreadful, imploring letters on scented note-paper, which, in the end, he had
ceased opening.
Elizabeth reverted to the subject of Francis and Samuel after tennis.
‘Those two Eurasians — does anyone here have anything to do with them? Invite them to
their houses or anything? ’
‘Good gracious, no. They’re complete outcasts. It’s not considered quite the thing to talk
to them, in fact. Most of us say good morning to them — Ellis won’t even do that. ’
‘But YOU talked to them. ’
‘Oh well, I break the rules occasionally. I meant that a pukka sahib probably wouldn’t be
seen talking to them. But you see, I try — just sometimes, when I have the pluck — NOT to
be a pukka sahib. ’
It was an unwise remark. She knew very well by this time the meaning of the phrase
‘pukka sahib’ and all it stood for. His remark had made the difference in their viewpoint a
little clearer. The glance she gave him was almost hostile, and curiously hard; for her face
could look hard sometimes, in spite of its youth and its flower-like skin. Those modish
tortoise-shell spectacles gave her a very self-possessed look. Spectacles are queerly
expressive things — almost more expressive, indeed, than eyes.
As yet he had neither understood her nor quite won her trust. Yet on the surface, at least,
things had not gone ill between them. He had fretted her sometimes, but the good
impression that he had made that first morning was not yet effaced. It was a curious fact
that she scarcely noticed his birthmark at this time. And there were some subjects on
which she was glad to hear him talk. Shooting, for example — she seemed to have an
enthusiasm for shooting that was remarkable in a girl. Horses, also; but he was less
knowledgeable about horses. He had arranged to take her out for a day’s shooting, later,
when he could make preparations. Both of them were looking forward to the expedition
with some eagerness, though not entirely for the same reason.
CHAPTER 11
Flory and Elizabeth walked down the bazaar road. It was morning, but the air was so hot
that to walk in it was like wading through a torrid sea. Strings of Burmans passed,
coming from the bazaar, on scraping sandals, and knots of girls who hurried by four and
five abreast, with short quick steps, chattering, their burnished hair gleaming. By the
roadside, just before you got to the jail, the fragments of a stone pagoda were littered,
cracked and overthrown by the strong roots of a peepul tree. The angry carved faces of
demons looked up from the grass where they had fallen. Near by another peepul tree had
twined itself round a palm, uprooting it and bending it backwards in a wrestle that had
lasted a decade.
They walked on and came to the jail, a vast square block, two hundred yards each way,
with shiny concrete walls twenty feet high. A peacock, pet of the jail, was mincing
pigeon-toed along the parapet. Six convicts came by, head down, dragging two heavy
handcarts piled with earth, under the guard of Indian warders. They were long-sentence
men, with heavy limbs, dressed in uniforms of coarse white cloth with small dunces’ caps
perched on their shaven crowns. Their faces were greyish, cowed and curiously flattened.
Their leg-irons jingled with a clear ring. A woman came past carrying a basket of fish on
her head. Two crows were circling round it and making darts at it, and the woman was
flapping one hand negligently to keep them away.
There was a din of voices a little distance away. ‘The bazaar’s just round the comer,’
Flory said. ‘I think this is a market morning. It’s rather fun to watch. ’
He had asked her to come down to the bazaar with him, telling her it would amuse her to
see it. They rounded the bend. The bazaar was an enclosure like a very large cattle pen,
with low stalls, mostly palm-thatched, round its edge. In the enclosure, a mob of people
seethed, shouting and jostling; the confusion of their multi-coloured clothes was like a
cascade of hundreds-and-thousands poured out of ajar. Beyond the bazaar one could see
the huge, miry river. Tree branches and long streaks of scum raced down it at seven miles
an hour. By the bank a fleet of sampans, with sharp beak-like bows on which eyes were
painted, rocked at their mooring -poles.
Flory and Elizabeth stood watching for a moment. Files of women passed balancing
vegetable baskets on their heads, and pop-eyed children who stared at the Europeans. An
old Chinese in dungarees faded to sky-blue hurried by, nursing some unrecognizable,
bloody fragment of a pig’s intestines.
‘Let’s go and poke around the stalls a bit, shall we? ’ Flory said.
‘Is it all right going in among the crowd? Everything’s so horribly dirty. ’
‘Oh, it’s all right, they’ll make way for us. It’ll interest you. ’
Elizabeth followed him doubtfully and even unwillingly. Why was it that he always
brought her to these places? Why was he forever dragging her in among the ‘natives’,
trying to get her to take an interest in them and watch their filthy, disgusting habits? It
was all wrong, somehow. However, she followed, not feeling able to explain her
reluctance. A wave of stifling air met them; there was a reek of garlic, dried fish, sweat,
dust, anise, cloves and turmeric. The crowd surged round them, swarms of stocky
peasants with cigar-brown faces, withered elders with their grey hair tied in a bun behind,
young mothers carrying naked babies astride the hip. Flo was trodden on and yelped.
Low, strong shoulders bumped against Elizabeth, as the peasants, too busy bargaining
even to stare at a white woman, struggled round the stalls.
‘Look! ’ Flory was pointing with his stick to a stall, and saying something, but it was
drowned by the yells of two women who were shaking their fists at each other over a
basket of pineapples. Elizabeth had recoiled from the stench and din, but he did not
notice it, and led her deeper into the crowd, pointing to this stall and that. The
merchandise was foreign-looking, queer and poor. There were vast pomelos hanging on
strings like green moons, red bananas, baskets of heliotrope-coloured prawns the size of
lobsters, brittle dried fish tied in bundles, crimson chilis, ducks split open and cured like
hams, green coco-nuts, the larvae of the rhinoceros beetle, sections of sugar-cane, dahs,
lacquered sandals, check silk longyis, aphrodisiacs in the fonn of large, soap-like pills,
glazed earthenware jars four feet high, Chinese sweetmeats made of garlic and sugar,
green and white cigars, purple prinjals, persimmon-seed necklaces, chickens cheeping in
wicker cages, brass Buddhas, heart-shaped betel leaves, bottles of Kruschen salts,
switches of false hair, red clay cooking-pots, steel shoes for bullocks, papier-mache
marionettes, strips of alligator hide with magical properties. Elizabeth’s head was
beginning to swim. At the other end of the bazaar the sun gleamed through a priest’s
umbrella, blood-red, as though through the ear of a giant. In front of a stall four
Dravidian women were pounding turmeric with heavy stakes in a large wooden mortar.
The hot-scented yellow powder flew up and tickled Elizabeth’s nostrils, making her
sneeze. She felt that she could not endure this place a moment longer. She touched
Flory’s arm.
‘This crowd — the heat is so dreadful. Do you think we could get into the shade? ’
He turned round. To tell the truth, he had been too busy talking — mostly inaudibly,
because of the din — to notice how the heat and stench were affecting her.
‘Oh, I say, I am sorry. Let’s get out of it at once. I tell you what, we’ll go along to old Li
Yeik’s shop — he’s the Chinese grocer — and he’ll get us a drink of something. It is rather
stifling here. ’
‘All these spices — they kind of take your breath away. And what is that dreadful smell
like fish? ’
‘Oh, only a kind of sauce they make out of prawns. They bury them and then dig them up
several weeks afterwards. ’
‘How absolutely horrible! ’
‘Quite wholesome, I believe. Come away from that! ’ he added to Flo, who was nosing at
a basket of small gudgeon-like fish with spines on their gills.
Li Yeik’s shop faced the farther end of the bazaar. What Elizabeth had really wanted was
to go straight back to the Club, but the European look of Li Yeik’s shop-front — it was
piled with Lancashire-made cotton shirts and almost incredibly cheap Gennan clocks —
comforted her somewhat after the barbarity of the bazaar. They were about to climb the
steps when a slim youth of twenty, damnably dressed in a longyi, blue cricket blazer and
bright yellow shoes, with his hair parted and greased ‘Ingaleik fashion’, detached himself
from the crowd and came after them. He greeted Flory with a small awkward movement
as though restraining himself from shikoing.
‘What is it? ’ Flory said.
‘Letter, sir. ’ He produced a grubby envelope.
‘Would you excuse me? ’ Flory said to Elizabeth, opening the letter. It was from Ma Hla
May — or rather, it had been written for her and she had signed it with a cross — and it
demanded fifty rupees, in a vaguely menacing manner.
Flory pulled the youth aside. ‘You speak English? Teh Ma Hla May ITl see about this
later. And tell her that if she tries blackmailing me she won’t get another pice. Do you
understand? ’
‘Yes, sir. ’
‘And now go away. Don’t follow me about, or there’ll be trouble. ’
‘Yes, sir. ’
‘A clerk wanting a job,’ Flory explained to Elizabeth as they went up the steps. ‘They
come bothering one at ah hours. ’ And he reflected that the tone of the letter was curious,
for he had not expected Ma Hla May to begin blackmailing him so soon; however, he had
not time at the moment to wonder what it might mean.
They went into the shop, which seemed dark after the outer air. Li Yeik, who was sitting
smoking among his baskets of merchandise — there was no counter — hobbled eagerly
forward when he saw who had come in. Flory was a friend of his. He was an old bent-
kneed man dressed in blue, wearing a pigtail, with a chinless yellow face, ah cheekbones,
like a benevolent skull. He greeted Flory with nasal honking noises which he intended for
Burmese, and at once hobbled to the back of the shop to call for refreshments. There was
a cool sweetish smell of opium. Long strips of red paper with black lettering were pasted
on the walls, and at one side there was a little altar with a portrait of two large, serene-
looking people in embroidered robes, and two sticks of incense smouldering in front of it.
Two Chinese women, one old, and a girl were sitting on a mat rolling cigarettes with
maize straw and tobacco like chopped horsehair. They wore black silk trousers, and their
feet, with bulging, swollen insteps, were crammed into red-heeled wooden slippers no
bigger than a doll’s. A naked child was crawling slowly about the floor like a large
yellow frog.
‘Do look at those women’s feet! ’ Elizabeth whispered as soon as Li Yeik’s back was
turned. ‘Isn’t it simply dreadful! How do they get them like that? Surely it isn’t natural? ’
‘No, they deform them artificially. It’s going out in China, I believe, but the people here
are behind the times. Old Li Yeik’s pigtail is another anachronism. Those small feet are
beautiful according to Chinese ideas. ’
‘Beautiful! They’re so horrible I can hardly look at them. These people must be absolute
savages! ’
‘Oh no! They’re highly civilized; more civilized than we are, in my opinion. Beauty’s all
a matter of taste. There are a people in this country called the Palaungs who admire long
necks in women. The girls wear broad brass rings to stretch their necks, and they put on
more and more of them until in the end they have necks like giraffes. It’s no queerer than
bustles or crinolines. ’
At this moment Li Yeik came back with two fat, round-faced Burmese girls, evidently
sisters, giggling and carrying between them two chairs and a blue Chinese teapot holding
half a gallon. The two girls were or had been Li Yeik’s concubines. The old man had
produced a tin of chocolates and was prising off the lid and smiling in a fatherly way,
exposing three long, tobacco-blackened teeth. Elizabeth sat down in a very
uncomfortable frame of mind. She was perfectly certain that it could not be right to
accept these people’s hospitality. One of the Burmese girls had at once gone behind the
chairs and begun fanning Llory and Elizabeth, while the other knelt at their feet and
poured out cups of tea. Elizabeth felt very foolish with the girl fanning the back of her
neck and the Chinaman grinning in front of her. Llory always seemed to get her into these
uncomfortable situations. She took a chocolate from the tin Li Yeik offered her, but she
could not bring herself to say ‘thank you’.
‘Is this ALL RIGHT? ’ she whispered to Llory.
‘All right? ’
‘I mean, ought we to be sitting down in these people’s house? Isn’t it sort of — sort of
infra dig? ’
‘It’s all right with a Chinaman. They’re a favoured race in this country. And they’re very
democratic in their ideas. It’s best to treat them more or less as equals. ’
‘This tea looks absolutely beastly. It’s quite green. You’d think they’d have the sense to
put milk in it, wouldn’t you? ’
‘It’s not bad. It’s a special kind of tea old Li Yeik gets from China. It has orange
blossoms in it, I believe. ’
‘Ugh! It tastes exactly like earth,’ she said, having tasted it.
Li Yeik stood holding his pipe, which was two feet long with a metal bowl the size of an
acorn, and watching the Europeans to see whether they enjoyed his tea. The girl behind
the chair said something in Burmese, at which both of them burst out giggling again. The
one kneeling on the floor looked up and gazed in a naive admiring way at Elizabeth.
Then she turned to Flory and asked him whether the English lady wore stays. She
pronounced it s’tays.
‘Ch! ’ said Li Yeik in a scandalized manner, stirring the girl with his toe to silence her.
‘I should hardly care to ask her,’ Flory said.
‘Oh, thakin, please do ask her! We are so anxious to know! ’
There was an argument, and the girl behind the chair forgot fanning and joined in. Both
of them, it appeared, had been pining all their lives to see a veritable pair of s’tays. They
had heard so many tales about them; they were made of steel on the principle of a strait
waistcoat, and they compressed a woman so tightly that she had no breasts, absolutely no
breasts at all! The girls pressed their hands against their fat ribs in illustration. Would not
Flory be so kind as to ask the English lady? There was a room behind the shop where she
could come with them and undress. They had been so hoping to see a pair of s’tays.
Then the conversation lapsed suddenly. Elizabeth was sitting stiffly, holding her tiny cup
of tea, which she could not bring herself to taste again, and wearing a rather hard smile. A
chill fell upon the Orientals; they realized that the English girl, who could not join in their
conversation, was not at her ease. Her elegance and her foreign beauty, which had
charmed them a moment earlier, began to awe them a little. Even Flory was conscious of
the same feeling. There came one of those dreadful moments that one has with Orientals,
when everyone avoids everyone else’s eyes, trying vainly to think of something to say.
Then the naked child, which had been exploring some baskets at the back of the shop,
crawled across to where the European sat. It examined their shoes and stockings with
great curiosity, and then, looking up, saw their white faces and was seized with terror. It
let out a desolate wail, and began making water on the floor.
The old Chinese woman looked up, clicked her tongue and went on rolling cigarettes. No
one else took the smallest notice. A pool began to form on the floor. Elizabeth was so
horrified that she set her cup down hastily, and spilled the tea. She plucked at Flory’s
arm.
‘That child! Do look what it’s doing! Really, can’t someone — it’s too awful! ’ For a
moment everyone gazed in astonishment, and then they all grasped what was the matter.
There was a flurry and a general clicking of tongues. No one had paid any attention to the
child — the incident was too nonnal to be noticed — and now they all felt horribly
ashamed. Everyone began putting the blame on the child. There were exclamations of
‘What a disgraceful child! What a disgusting child! ’ The old Chinese woman carried the
child, still howling, to the door, and held it out over the step as though wringing out a
bath sponge. And in the same moment, as it seemed, Flory and Elizabeth were outside the
shop, and he was following her back to the road with Li Yeik and the others looking after
them in dismay.
‘If THAT’S what you call civilized people — ! ’ she was exclaiming.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said feebly. ‘I never expected — ’
‘What absolutely DISGUSTING people! ’
She was bitterly angry. Her face had flushed a wonderful delicate pink, like a poppy bud
opened a day too soon. It was the deepest colour of which it was capable. He followed
her past the bazaar and back to the main road, and they had gone fifty yards before he
ventured to speak again.
‘I’m so sorry that this should have happened! Li Yeik is such a decent old chap. He’d
hate to think that he’d offended you. Really it would have been better to stay a few
minutes. Just to thank him for the tea. ’
‘Thank him! After THAT! ’
‘But honestly, you oughtn’t to mind that sort of thing. Not in this country. These people’s
whole outlook is so different from ours. One has to adjust oneself. Suppose, for instance,
you were back in the Middle Ages — ’
‘I think I’d rather not discuss it any longer. ’
It was the first time they had definitely quarrelled. He was too miserable even to ask
himself how it was that he offended her. He did not realize that this constant striving to
interest her in Oriental things struck her only as perverse, ungentlemanly, a deliberate
seeking after the squalid and the ‘beastly’. He had not grasped even now with what eyes
she saw the ‘natives’. He only knew that at each attempt to make her share his life, his
thoughts, his sense of beauty, she shied away from him like a frightened horse.
They walked up the road, he to the left of her and a little behind. He watched her averted
cheek and the tiny gold hairs on her nape beneath the brim of her Terai hat. How he loved
her, how he loved her! It was as though he had never truly loved her till this moment,
when he walked behind her in disgrace, not even daring to show his disfigured face. He
made to speak several times, and stopped himself. His voice was not quite ready, and he
did not know what he could say that did not risk offending her somehow. At last he said,
flatly, with a feeble pretence that nothing was the matter:
‘It’s getting beastly hot, isn’t it? ’
With the temperature at 90 degrees in the shade it was not a brilliant remark. To his
surprise she seized on it with a kind of eagerness. She turned to face him, and she was
smiling again.
‘Isn’t it simply BAKING! ’
With that they were at peace. The silly, banal remark, bringing with it the reassuring
atmosphere of Club-chatter, had soothed her like a charm. Flo, who had lagged behind,
came puffing up to them dribbling saliva; in an instant they were talking, quite as usual,
about dogs. They talked about dogs for the rest of the way home, almost without a pause.
Dogs are an inexhaustible subject. Dogs, dogs! thought Flory as they climbed the hot
hillside, with the mounting sun scorching their shoulders through their thin clothes, like
the breath of fire — were they never to talk of anything except dogs? Or failing dogs,
gramophone records and tennis racquets? And yet, when they kept to trash like this, how
easily, how amicably they could talk!
They passed the glittering white wall of the cemetery and came to the Lackersteens’ gate.
Old mohur trees grew round it, and a clump of hollyhocks eight feet high, with round red
flowers like blowsy girls’ faces. Flory took off his hat in the shade and fanned his face.
‘Well, we’re back before the worst of the heat comes. I’m afraid our trip to the bazaar
wasn’t altogether a success. ’
‘Oh, not at all! I enjoyed it, really I did. ’
‘No — I don’t know, something unfortunate always seems to happen. — Oh, by the way!
You haven’t forgotten that we’re going out shooting the day after tomorrow? I hope that
day will be all right for you? ’
‘Yes, and my uncle’s going to lend me his gun. Such awful fun! You’ll have to teach me
all about shooting. I AM so looking forward to it. ’
‘So am I. It’s a rotten time of year for shooting, but we’ll do our best. Goodbye for the
present, then. ’
‘Good-bye, Mr Flory. ’
She still called him Mr Flory though he called her Elizabeth. They parted and went their
ways, each thinking of the shooting trip, which, both of them felt, would in some way put
things right between them.
CHAPTER 12
In the sticky, sleepy heat of the living-room, almost dark because of the beaded curtain, U
Po Kyin was marching slowly up and down, boasting. From time to time he would put a
hand under his singlet and scratch his sweating breasts, huge as a woman’s with fat. Ma
Kin was sitting on her mat, smoking slender white cigars. Through the open door of the
bedroom one could see the corner of U Po Kyin’s huge square bed, with carved teak
posts, like a catafalque, on which he had committed many and many a rape.
Ma Kin was now hearing for the first time of the ‘other affair’ which underlay U Po
Kyin’s attack on Dr Veraswami. Much as he despised her intelligence, U Po Kyin usually
let Ma Kin into his secrets sooner or later. She was the only person in his immediate
circle who was not afraid of him, and there was therefore a pleasure in impressing her.
‘Well, Kin Kin,’ he said, ‘you see how it has all gone according to plan! Eighteen
anonymous letters already, and every one of them a masterpiece. I would repeat some of
them to you if I thought you were capable of appreciating them. ’
‘But supposing the Europeans take no notice of your anonymous letters? What then? ’
‘Take no notice? Aha, no fear of that! I think I know something about the European
mentality. Let me tell you, Kin Kin, that if there is one thing I CAN do, it is to write an
anonymous letter. ’
This was true. U Po Kyin’s letters had already taken effect, and especially on their chief
target, Mr Macgregor.
Only two days earlier than this, Mr Macgregor had spent a very troubled evening in
trying to make up his mind whether Dr Veraswami was or was not guilty of disloyalty to
the Government. Of course, it was not a question of any overt act of disloyalty — that was
quite irrelevant. The point was, was the doctor the KIND of man who would hold
seditious opinions? In India you are not judged for what you do, but for what you ARE.
The merest breath of suspicion against his loyalty can ruin an Oriental official. Mr
Macgregor had too just a nature to condemn even an Oriental out of hand. He had
puzzled as late as midnight over a whole pile of confidential papers, including the five
anonymous letters he had received, besides two others that had been forwarded to him by
Westfield, pinned together with a cactus thorn.
It was not only the letters. Rumours about the doctor had been pouring in from every
side. U Po Kyin fully grasped that to call the doctor a traitor was not enough in itself; it
was necessary to attack his reputation from every possible angle. The doctor was charged
not only with sedition, but also with extortion, rape, torture, performing illegal
operations, perfonning operations while blind drunk, murder by poison, murder by
sympathetic magic, eating beef, selling death certificates to murderers, wearing his shoes
in the precincts of the pagoda and making homosexual attempts on the Military Police
drummer boy. To hear what was said of him, anyone would have imagined the doctor a
compound of Machiavelli, Sweeny Todd and the Marquis de Sade. Mr Macgregor had
not paid much attention at first. He was too accustomed to this kind of thing. But with the
last of the anonymous letters U Po Kyin had brought off a stroke that was brilliant even
for him.
It concerned the escape of Nga Shwe O, the dacoit, from Kyauktada jail. Nga Shwe O,
who was in the middle of a well-earned seven years, had been preparing his escape for
several months past, and as a start his friends outside had bribed one of the Indian
warders. The warder received his hundred rupees in advance, applied for leave to visit the
death-bed of a relative and spent several busy days in the Mandalay brothels. Time
passed, and the day of the escape was postponed several times — the warder, meanwhile,
growing more and more homesick for the brothels. Finally he decided to earn a further
reward by betraying the plot to U Po Kyin. But U Po Kyin, as usual, saw his chance. He
told the warder on dire penalties to hold his tongue, and then, on the very night of the
escape, when it was too late to do anything, sent another anonymous letter to Mr
Macgregor, warning him that an escape was being attempted. The letter added, needless
to say, that Dr Veraswami, the superintendent of the jail, had been bribed for his
connivance.
In the morning there was a hullabaloo and a rushing to and fro of warders and, policemen
at the jail, for Nga Shwe O had escaped. (He was a long way down the river, in a sampan
provided by U Po Kyin. ) This time Mr Macgregor was taken aback. Whoever had written
the letter must have been privy to the plot, and was probably telling the truth about the
doctor’s connivance. It was a very serious matter. A jail superintendent who will take
bribes to let a prisoner escape is capable of anything. And therefore — perhaps the logical
sequence was not quite clear, but it was clear enough to Mr Macgregor — therefore the
charge of sedition, which was the main charge against the doctor, became much more
credible.
U Po Kyin had attacked the other Europeans at the same time.
creatures! They were in church on Sunday. One of them looks almost white. Surely he
isn’t an Englishman? ’
‘No, they’re Eurasians — sons of white fathers and native mothers. Yellow-bellies is our
friendly nickname for them. ’
‘But what are they doing here? Where do they live? Do they do any work? ’
‘They exist somehow or other in the bazaar. I believe Francis acts as clerk to an Indian
money-lender, and Samuel to some of the pleaders. But they’d probably starve now and
then if it weren’t for the charity of the natives. ’
‘The natives! Do you mean to say — sort of CADGE from the natives? ’
‘I fancy so. It would be a very easy thing to do, if one cared to. The Burmese won’t let
anyone starve. ’
Elizabeth had never heard of anything of this kind before. The notion of men who were at
least partly white living in poverty among ‘natives’ so shocked her that she stopped short
on the path, and the game of tennis was postponed for a few minutes.
‘But how awful! I mean, it’s such a bad example! It’s almost as bad as if one of US was
like that. Couldn’t something be done for those two? Get up a subscription and send them
away from here, or something? ’
‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t help much. Wherever they went they’d be in the same position. ’
‘But couldn’t they get some proper work to do? ’
‘I doubt it. You see, Eurasians of that type — men who’ve been brought up in the bazaar
and had no education — are done for from the start. The Europeans won’t touch them with
a stick, and they’re cut off from entering the lower-grade Government services. There’s
nothing they can do except cadge, unless they chuck all pretension to being Europeans.
And really you can’t expect the poor devils to do that. Their drop of white blood is the
sole asset they’ve got. Poor Francis, I never meet him but he begins telling me about his
prickly heat. Natives, you see, are supposed not to suffer from prickly heat — bosh, of
course, but people believe it. It’s the same with sunstroke. They wear those huge topis to
remind you that they’ve got European skulls. A kind of coat of arms. The bend sinister,
you might say. ’
This did not satisfy Elizabeth. She perceived that Flory, as usual, had a sneaking
sympathy with the Eurasians. And the appearance of the two men had excited a peculiar
dislike in her. She had placed their type now. They looked like dagoes. Like those
Mexicans and Italians and other dago people who play the mauvais role in so many a
film.
‘They looked awfully degenerate types, didn’t they? So thin and weedy and cringing; and
they haven’t got at all HONEST faces. I suppose these Eurasians ARE very degenerate?
I’ve heard that half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races. Is that true? ’
‘I don’t know that it’s true. Most Eurasians aren’t very good specimens, and it’s hard to
see how they could be, with their upbringing. But our attitude towards them is rather
beastly. We always talk of them as though they’d sprung up from the ground like
mushrooms, with all their faults ready-made. But when all’s said and done, we’re
responsible for their existence. ’
‘Responsible for their existence? ’
‘Well, they’ve all got fathers, you see. ’
‘Oh . . . Of course there’s that. . . . But after all, YOU aren’t responsible. I mean, only a
very low kind of man would — er — have anything to do with native women, wouldn’t
he? ’
‘Oh, quite. But the fathers of both those two were clergymen in holy orders, I believe. ’
He thought of Rosa McFee, the Eurasian girl he had seduced in Mandalay in 1913. The
way he used to sneak down to the house in a gharry with the shutters down; Rosa’s
corkscrew curls; her withered old Burmese mother, giving him tea in the dark living-
room with the fern pots and the wicker divan. And afterwards, when he had chucked
Rosa, those dreadful, imploring letters on scented note-paper, which, in the end, he had
ceased opening.
Elizabeth reverted to the subject of Francis and Samuel after tennis.
‘Those two Eurasians — does anyone here have anything to do with them? Invite them to
their houses or anything? ’
‘Good gracious, no. They’re complete outcasts. It’s not considered quite the thing to talk
to them, in fact. Most of us say good morning to them — Ellis won’t even do that. ’
‘But YOU talked to them. ’
‘Oh well, I break the rules occasionally. I meant that a pukka sahib probably wouldn’t be
seen talking to them. But you see, I try — just sometimes, when I have the pluck — NOT to
be a pukka sahib. ’
It was an unwise remark. She knew very well by this time the meaning of the phrase
‘pukka sahib’ and all it stood for. His remark had made the difference in their viewpoint a
little clearer. The glance she gave him was almost hostile, and curiously hard; for her face
could look hard sometimes, in spite of its youth and its flower-like skin. Those modish
tortoise-shell spectacles gave her a very self-possessed look. Spectacles are queerly
expressive things — almost more expressive, indeed, than eyes.
As yet he had neither understood her nor quite won her trust. Yet on the surface, at least,
things had not gone ill between them. He had fretted her sometimes, but the good
impression that he had made that first morning was not yet effaced. It was a curious fact
that she scarcely noticed his birthmark at this time. And there were some subjects on
which she was glad to hear him talk. Shooting, for example — she seemed to have an
enthusiasm for shooting that was remarkable in a girl. Horses, also; but he was less
knowledgeable about horses. He had arranged to take her out for a day’s shooting, later,
when he could make preparations. Both of them were looking forward to the expedition
with some eagerness, though not entirely for the same reason.
CHAPTER 11
Flory and Elizabeth walked down the bazaar road. It was morning, but the air was so hot
that to walk in it was like wading through a torrid sea. Strings of Burmans passed,
coming from the bazaar, on scraping sandals, and knots of girls who hurried by four and
five abreast, with short quick steps, chattering, their burnished hair gleaming. By the
roadside, just before you got to the jail, the fragments of a stone pagoda were littered,
cracked and overthrown by the strong roots of a peepul tree. The angry carved faces of
demons looked up from the grass where they had fallen. Near by another peepul tree had
twined itself round a palm, uprooting it and bending it backwards in a wrestle that had
lasted a decade.
They walked on and came to the jail, a vast square block, two hundred yards each way,
with shiny concrete walls twenty feet high. A peacock, pet of the jail, was mincing
pigeon-toed along the parapet. Six convicts came by, head down, dragging two heavy
handcarts piled with earth, under the guard of Indian warders. They were long-sentence
men, with heavy limbs, dressed in uniforms of coarse white cloth with small dunces’ caps
perched on their shaven crowns. Their faces were greyish, cowed and curiously flattened.
Their leg-irons jingled with a clear ring. A woman came past carrying a basket of fish on
her head. Two crows were circling round it and making darts at it, and the woman was
flapping one hand negligently to keep them away.
There was a din of voices a little distance away. ‘The bazaar’s just round the comer,’
Flory said. ‘I think this is a market morning. It’s rather fun to watch. ’
He had asked her to come down to the bazaar with him, telling her it would amuse her to
see it. They rounded the bend. The bazaar was an enclosure like a very large cattle pen,
with low stalls, mostly palm-thatched, round its edge. In the enclosure, a mob of people
seethed, shouting and jostling; the confusion of their multi-coloured clothes was like a
cascade of hundreds-and-thousands poured out of ajar. Beyond the bazaar one could see
the huge, miry river. Tree branches and long streaks of scum raced down it at seven miles
an hour. By the bank a fleet of sampans, with sharp beak-like bows on which eyes were
painted, rocked at their mooring -poles.
Flory and Elizabeth stood watching for a moment. Files of women passed balancing
vegetable baskets on their heads, and pop-eyed children who stared at the Europeans. An
old Chinese in dungarees faded to sky-blue hurried by, nursing some unrecognizable,
bloody fragment of a pig’s intestines.
‘Let’s go and poke around the stalls a bit, shall we? ’ Flory said.
‘Is it all right going in among the crowd? Everything’s so horribly dirty. ’
‘Oh, it’s all right, they’ll make way for us. It’ll interest you. ’
Elizabeth followed him doubtfully and even unwillingly. Why was it that he always
brought her to these places? Why was he forever dragging her in among the ‘natives’,
trying to get her to take an interest in them and watch their filthy, disgusting habits? It
was all wrong, somehow. However, she followed, not feeling able to explain her
reluctance. A wave of stifling air met them; there was a reek of garlic, dried fish, sweat,
dust, anise, cloves and turmeric. The crowd surged round them, swarms of stocky
peasants with cigar-brown faces, withered elders with their grey hair tied in a bun behind,
young mothers carrying naked babies astride the hip. Flo was trodden on and yelped.
Low, strong shoulders bumped against Elizabeth, as the peasants, too busy bargaining
even to stare at a white woman, struggled round the stalls.
‘Look! ’ Flory was pointing with his stick to a stall, and saying something, but it was
drowned by the yells of two women who were shaking their fists at each other over a
basket of pineapples. Elizabeth had recoiled from the stench and din, but he did not
notice it, and led her deeper into the crowd, pointing to this stall and that. The
merchandise was foreign-looking, queer and poor. There were vast pomelos hanging on
strings like green moons, red bananas, baskets of heliotrope-coloured prawns the size of
lobsters, brittle dried fish tied in bundles, crimson chilis, ducks split open and cured like
hams, green coco-nuts, the larvae of the rhinoceros beetle, sections of sugar-cane, dahs,
lacquered sandals, check silk longyis, aphrodisiacs in the fonn of large, soap-like pills,
glazed earthenware jars four feet high, Chinese sweetmeats made of garlic and sugar,
green and white cigars, purple prinjals, persimmon-seed necklaces, chickens cheeping in
wicker cages, brass Buddhas, heart-shaped betel leaves, bottles of Kruschen salts,
switches of false hair, red clay cooking-pots, steel shoes for bullocks, papier-mache
marionettes, strips of alligator hide with magical properties. Elizabeth’s head was
beginning to swim. At the other end of the bazaar the sun gleamed through a priest’s
umbrella, blood-red, as though through the ear of a giant. In front of a stall four
Dravidian women were pounding turmeric with heavy stakes in a large wooden mortar.
The hot-scented yellow powder flew up and tickled Elizabeth’s nostrils, making her
sneeze. She felt that she could not endure this place a moment longer. She touched
Flory’s arm.
‘This crowd — the heat is so dreadful. Do you think we could get into the shade? ’
He turned round. To tell the truth, he had been too busy talking — mostly inaudibly,
because of the din — to notice how the heat and stench were affecting her.
‘Oh, I say, I am sorry. Let’s get out of it at once. I tell you what, we’ll go along to old Li
Yeik’s shop — he’s the Chinese grocer — and he’ll get us a drink of something. It is rather
stifling here. ’
‘All these spices — they kind of take your breath away. And what is that dreadful smell
like fish? ’
‘Oh, only a kind of sauce they make out of prawns. They bury them and then dig them up
several weeks afterwards. ’
‘How absolutely horrible! ’
‘Quite wholesome, I believe. Come away from that! ’ he added to Flo, who was nosing at
a basket of small gudgeon-like fish with spines on their gills.
Li Yeik’s shop faced the farther end of the bazaar. What Elizabeth had really wanted was
to go straight back to the Club, but the European look of Li Yeik’s shop-front — it was
piled with Lancashire-made cotton shirts and almost incredibly cheap Gennan clocks —
comforted her somewhat after the barbarity of the bazaar. They were about to climb the
steps when a slim youth of twenty, damnably dressed in a longyi, blue cricket blazer and
bright yellow shoes, with his hair parted and greased ‘Ingaleik fashion’, detached himself
from the crowd and came after them. He greeted Flory with a small awkward movement
as though restraining himself from shikoing.
‘What is it? ’ Flory said.
‘Letter, sir. ’ He produced a grubby envelope.
‘Would you excuse me? ’ Flory said to Elizabeth, opening the letter. It was from Ma Hla
May — or rather, it had been written for her and she had signed it with a cross — and it
demanded fifty rupees, in a vaguely menacing manner.
Flory pulled the youth aside. ‘You speak English? Teh Ma Hla May ITl see about this
later. And tell her that if she tries blackmailing me she won’t get another pice. Do you
understand? ’
‘Yes, sir. ’
‘And now go away. Don’t follow me about, or there’ll be trouble. ’
‘Yes, sir. ’
‘A clerk wanting a job,’ Flory explained to Elizabeth as they went up the steps. ‘They
come bothering one at ah hours. ’ And he reflected that the tone of the letter was curious,
for he had not expected Ma Hla May to begin blackmailing him so soon; however, he had
not time at the moment to wonder what it might mean.
They went into the shop, which seemed dark after the outer air. Li Yeik, who was sitting
smoking among his baskets of merchandise — there was no counter — hobbled eagerly
forward when he saw who had come in. Flory was a friend of his. He was an old bent-
kneed man dressed in blue, wearing a pigtail, with a chinless yellow face, ah cheekbones,
like a benevolent skull. He greeted Flory with nasal honking noises which he intended for
Burmese, and at once hobbled to the back of the shop to call for refreshments. There was
a cool sweetish smell of opium. Long strips of red paper with black lettering were pasted
on the walls, and at one side there was a little altar with a portrait of two large, serene-
looking people in embroidered robes, and two sticks of incense smouldering in front of it.
Two Chinese women, one old, and a girl were sitting on a mat rolling cigarettes with
maize straw and tobacco like chopped horsehair. They wore black silk trousers, and their
feet, with bulging, swollen insteps, were crammed into red-heeled wooden slippers no
bigger than a doll’s. A naked child was crawling slowly about the floor like a large
yellow frog.
‘Do look at those women’s feet! ’ Elizabeth whispered as soon as Li Yeik’s back was
turned. ‘Isn’t it simply dreadful! How do they get them like that? Surely it isn’t natural? ’
‘No, they deform them artificially. It’s going out in China, I believe, but the people here
are behind the times. Old Li Yeik’s pigtail is another anachronism. Those small feet are
beautiful according to Chinese ideas. ’
‘Beautiful! They’re so horrible I can hardly look at them. These people must be absolute
savages! ’
‘Oh no! They’re highly civilized; more civilized than we are, in my opinion. Beauty’s all
a matter of taste. There are a people in this country called the Palaungs who admire long
necks in women. The girls wear broad brass rings to stretch their necks, and they put on
more and more of them until in the end they have necks like giraffes. It’s no queerer than
bustles or crinolines. ’
At this moment Li Yeik came back with two fat, round-faced Burmese girls, evidently
sisters, giggling and carrying between them two chairs and a blue Chinese teapot holding
half a gallon. The two girls were or had been Li Yeik’s concubines. The old man had
produced a tin of chocolates and was prising off the lid and smiling in a fatherly way,
exposing three long, tobacco-blackened teeth. Elizabeth sat down in a very
uncomfortable frame of mind. She was perfectly certain that it could not be right to
accept these people’s hospitality. One of the Burmese girls had at once gone behind the
chairs and begun fanning Llory and Elizabeth, while the other knelt at their feet and
poured out cups of tea. Elizabeth felt very foolish with the girl fanning the back of her
neck and the Chinaman grinning in front of her. Llory always seemed to get her into these
uncomfortable situations. She took a chocolate from the tin Li Yeik offered her, but she
could not bring herself to say ‘thank you’.
‘Is this ALL RIGHT? ’ she whispered to Llory.
‘All right? ’
‘I mean, ought we to be sitting down in these people’s house? Isn’t it sort of — sort of
infra dig? ’
‘It’s all right with a Chinaman. They’re a favoured race in this country. And they’re very
democratic in their ideas. It’s best to treat them more or less as equals. ’
‘This tea looks absolutely beastly. It’s quite green. You’d think they’d have the sense to
put milk in it, wouldn’t you? ’
‘It’s not bad. It’s a special kind of tea old Li Yeik gets from China. It has orange
blossoms in it, I believe. ’
‘Ugh! It tastes exactly like earth,’ she said, having tasted it.
Li Yeik stood holding his pipe, which was two feet long with a metal bowl the size of an
acorn, and watching the Europeans to see whether they enjoyed his tea. The girl behind
the chair said something in Burmese, at which both of them burst out giggling again. The
one kneeling on the floor looked up and gazed in a naive admiring way at Elizabeth.
Then she turned to Flory and asked him whether the English lady wore stays. She
pronounced it s’tays.
‘Ch! ’ said Li Yeik in a scandalized manner, stirring the girl with his toe to silence her.
‘I should hardly care to ask her,’ Flory said.
‘Oh, thakin, please do ask her! We are so anxious to know! ’
There was an argument, and the girl behind the chair forgot fanning and joined in. Both
of them, it appeared, had been pining all their lives to see a veritable pair of s’tays. They
had heard so many tales about them; they were made of steel on the principle of a strait
waistcoat, and they compressed a woman so tightly that she had no breasts, absolutely no
breasts at all! The girls pressed their hands against their fat ribs in illustration. Would not
Flory be so kind as to ask the English lady? There was a room behind the shop where she
could come with them and undress. They had been so hoping to see a pair of s’tays.
Then the conversation lapsed suddenly. Elizabeth was sitting stiffly, holding her tiny cup
of tea, which she could not bring herself to taste again, and wearing a rather hard smile. A
chill fell upon the Orientals; they realized that the English girl, who could not join in their
conversation, was not at her ease. Her elegance and her foreign beauty, which had
charmed them a moment earlier, began to awe them a little. Even Flory was conscious of
the same feeling. There came one of those dreadful moments that one has with Orientals,
when everyone avoids everyone else’s eyes, trying vainly to think of something to say.
Then the naked child, which had been exploring some baskets at the back of the shop,
crawled across to where the European sat. It examined their shoes and stockings with
great curiosity, and then, looking up, saw their white faces and was seized with terror. It
let out a desolate wail, and began making water on the floor.
The old Chinese woman looked up, clicked her tongue and went on rolling cigarettes. No
one else took the smallest notice. A pool began to form on the floor. Elizabeth was so
horrified that she set her cup down hastily, and spilled the tea. She plucked at Flory’s
arm.
‘That child! Do look what it’s doing! Really, can’t someone — it’s too awful! ’ For a
moment everyone gazed in astonishment, and then they all grasped what was the matter.
There was a flurry and a general clicking of tongues. No one had paid any attention to the
child — the incident was too nonnal to be noticed — and now they all felt horribly
ashamed. Everyone began putting the blame on the child. There were exclamations of
‘What a disgraceful child! What a disgusting child! ’ The old Chinese woman carried the
child, still howling, to the door, and held it out over the step as though wringing out a
bath sponge. And in the same moment, as it seemed, Flory and Elizabeth were outside the
shop, and he was following her back to the road with Li Yeik and the others looking after
them in dismay.
‘If THAT’S what you call civilized people — ! ’ she was exclaiming.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said feebly. ‘I never expected — ’
‘What absolutely DISGUSTING people! ’
She was bitterly angry. Her face had flushed a wonderful delicate pink, like a poppy bud
opened a day too soon. It was the deepest colour of which it was capable. He followed
her past the bazaar and back to the main road, and they had gone fifty yards before he
ventured to speak again.
‘I’m so sorry that this should have happened! Li Yeik is such a decent old chap. He’d
hate to think that he’d offended you. Really it would have been better to stay a few
minutes. Just to thank him for the tea. ’
‘Thank him! After THAT! ’
‘But honestly, you oughtn’t to mind that sort of thing. Not in this country. These people’s
whole outlook is so different from ours. One has to adjust oneself. Suppose, for instance,
you were back in the Middle Ages — ’
‘I think I’d rather not discuss it any longer. ’
It was the first time they had definitely quarrelled. He was too miserable even to ask
himself how it was that he offended her. He did not realize that this constant striving to
interest her in Oriental things struck her only as perverse, ungentlemanly, a deliberate
seeking after the squalid and the ‘beastly’. He had not grasped even now with what eyes
she saw the ‘natives’. He only knew that at each attempt to make her share his life, his
thoughts, his sense of beauty, she shied away from him like a frightened horse.
They walked up the road, he to the left of her and a little behind. He watched her averted
cheek and the tiny gold hairs on her nape beneath the brim of her Terai hat. How he loved
her, how he loved her! It was as though he had never truly loved her till this moment,
when he walked behind her in disgrace, not even daring to show his disfigured face. He
made to speak several times, and stopped himself. His voice was not quite ready, and he
did not know what he could say that did not risk offending her somehow. At last he said,
flatly, with a feeble pretence that nothing was the matter:
‘It’s getting beastly hot, isn’t it? ’
With the temperature at 90 degrees in the shade it was not a brilliant remark. To his
surprise she seized on it with a kind of eagerness. She turned to face him, and she was
smiling again.
‘Isn’t it simply BAKING! ’
With that they were at peace. The silly, banal remark, bringing with it the reassuring
atmosphere of Club-chatter, had soothed her like a charm. Flo, who had lagged behind,
came puffing up to them dribbling saliva; in an instant they were talking, quite as usual,
about dogs. They talked about dogs for the rest of the way home, almost without a pause.
Dogs are an inexhaustible subject. Dogs, dogs! thought Flory as they climbed the hot
hillside, with the mounting sun scorching their shoulders through their thin clothes, like
the breath of fire — were they never to talk of anything except dogs? Or failing dogs,
gramophone records and tennis racquets? And yet, when they kept to trash like this, how
easily, how amicably they could talk!
They passed the glittering white wall of the cemetery and came to the Lackersteens’ gate.
Old mohur trees grew round it, and a clump of hollyhocks eight feet high, with round red
flowers like blowsy girls’ faces. Flory took off his hat in the shade and fanned his face.
‘Well, we’re back before the worst of the heat comes. I’m afraid our trip to the bazaar
wasn’t altogether a success. ’
‘Oh, not at all! I enjoyed it, really I did. ’
‘No — I don’t know, something unfortunate always seems to happen. — Oh, by the way!
You haven’t forgotten that we’re going out shooting the day after tomorrow? I hope that
day will be all right for you? ’
‘Yes, and my uncle’s going to lend me his gun. Such awful fun! You’ll have to teach me
all about shooting. I AM so looking forward to it. ’
‘So am I. It’s a rotten time of year for shooting, but we’ll do our best. Goodbye for the
present, then. ’
‘Good-bye, Mr Flory. ’
She still called him Mr Flory though he called her Elizabeth. They parted and went their
ways, each thinking of the shooting trip, which, both of them felt, would in some way put
things right between them.
CHAPTER 12
In the sticky, sleepy heat of the living-room, almost dark because of the beaded curtain, U
Po Kyin was marching slowly up and down, boasting. From time to time he would put a
hand under his singlet and scratch his sweating breasts, huge as a woman’s with fat. Ma
Kin was sitting on her mat, smoking slender white cigars. Through the open door of the
bedroom one could see the corner of U Po Kyin’s huge square bed, with carved teak
posts, like a catafalque, on which he had committed many and many a rape.
Ma Kin was now hearing for the first time of the ‘other affair’ which underlay U Po
Kyin’s attack on Dr Veraswami. Much as he despised her intelligence, U Po Kyin usually
let Ma Kin into his secrets sooner or later. She was the only person in his immediate
circle who was not afraid of him, and there was therefore a pleasure in impressing her.
‘Well, Kin Kin,’ he said, ‘you see how it has all gone according to plan! Eighteen
anonymous letters already, and every one of them a masterpiece. I would repeat some of
them to you if I thought you were capable of appreciating them. ’
‘But supposing the Europeans take no notice of your anonymous letters? What then? ’
‘Take no notice? Aha, no fear of that! I think I know something about the European
mentality. Let me tell you, Kin Kin, that if there is one thing I CAN do, it is to write an
anonymous letter. ’
This was true. U Po Kyin’s letters had already taken effect, and especially on their chief
target, Mr Macgregor.
Only two days earlier than this, Mr Macgregor had spent a very troubled evening in
trying to make up his mind whether Dr Veraswami was or was not guilty of disloyalty to
the Government. Of course, it was not a question of any overt act of disloyalty — that was
quite irrelevant. The point was, was the doctor the KIND of man who would hold
seditious opinions? In India you are not judged for what you do, but for what you ARE.
The merest breath of suspicion against his loyalty can ruin an Oriental official. Mr
Macgregor had too just a nature to condemn even an Oriental out of hand. He had
puzzled as late as midnight over a whole pile of confidential papers, including the five
anonymous letters he had received, besides two others that had been forwarded to him by
Westfield, pinned together with a cactus thorn.
It was not only the letters. Rumours about the doctor had been pouring in from every
side. U Po Kyin fully grasped that to call the doctor a traitor was not enough in itself; it
was necessary to attack his reputation from every possible angle. The doctor was charged
not only with sedition, but also with extortion, rape, torture, performing illegal
operations, perfonning operations while blind drunk, murder by poison, murder by
sympathetic magic, eating beef, selling death certificates to murderers, wearing his shoes
in the precincts of the pagoda and making homosexual attempts on the Military Police
drummer boy. To hear what was said of him, anyone would have imagined the doctor a
compound of Machiavelli, Sweeny Todd and the Marquis de Sade. Mr Macgregor had
not paid much attention at first. He was too accustomed to this kind of thing. But with the
last of the anonymous letters U Po Kyin had brought off a stroke that was brilliant even
for him.
It concerned the escape of Nga Shwe O, the dacoit, from Kyauktada jail. Nga Shwe O,
who was in the middle of a well-earned seven years, had been preparing his escape for
several months past, and as a start his friends outside had bribed one of the Indian
warders. The warder received his hundred rupees in advance, applied for leave to visit the
death-bed of a relative and spent several busy days in the Mandalay brothels. Time
passed, and the day of the escape was postponed several times — the warder, meanwhile,
growing more and more homesick for the brothels. Finally he decided to earn a further
reward by betraying the plot to U Po Kyin. But U Po Kyin, as usual, saw his chance. He
told the warder on dire penalties to hold his tongue, and then, on the very night of the
escape, when it was too late to do anything, sent another anonymous letter to Mr
Macgregor, warning him that an escape was being attempted. The letter added, needless
to say, that Dr Veraswami, the superintendent of the jail, had been bribed for his
connivance.
In the morning there was a hullabaloo and a rushing to and fro of warders and, policemen
at the jail, for Nga Shwe O had escaped. (He was a long way down the river, in a sampan
provided by U Po Kyin. ) This time Mr Macgregor was taken aback. Whoever had written
the letter must have been privy to the plot, and was probably telling the truth about the
doctor’s connivance. It was a very serious matter. A jail superintendent who will take
bribes to let a prisoner escape is capable of anything. And therefore — perhaps the logical
sequence was not quite clear, but it was clear enough to Mr Macgregor — therefore the
charge of sedition, which was the main charge against the doctor, became much more
credible.
U Po Kyin had attacked the other Europeans at the same time.
