No More Learning

Because of ‘the Ingaleikma with dyed hair’, as Ma Hla May called her.

Ma Hla May made no violent scene at first. She stood sullenly listening while he wrote
her a cheque for a hundred rupees — Li Yeik or the Indian chetty in the bazaar would cash
cheques — and told her that she was dismissed. He was more ashamed than she; he could
not look her in the face, and his voice went flat and guilty. When the bullock cart came
for her belongings, he shut himself in the bedroom skulking till the scene should be over.

Cartwheels grated on the drive, there was the sound of men shouting; then suddenly there
was a fearful uproar of screams. Flory went outside. They were all struggling round the
gate in the sunlight. Ma Hla May was clinging to the gatepost and Ko S’la was trying to



bundle her out. She turned a face full of fury and despair towards Flory, screaming over
and over, ‘Thakin! Thakin! Thakin! Thakin! Thakin! ’ It hurt him to the heart that she
should still call him thakin after he had dismissed her.

‘What is it? ’ he said.

It appeared that there was a switch of false hair that Ma Hla May and Ma Yi both
claimed. Flory gave the switch to Ma Yi and gave Ma Hla May two rupees to compensate
her. Then the cart jolted away, with Ma Hla May sitting beside her two wicker baskets,
straight-backed and sullen, and nursing a kitten on her knees. It was only two months
since he had given her the kitten as a present.

Ko STa, who had long wished for Ma Hla May’s removal, was not altogether pleased
now that it had happened. He was even less pleased when he saw his master going to
church — or as he called it, to the ‘English pagoda’ — for Flory was still in Kyauktada on
the Sunday of the padre’s arrival, and he went to church with the others. There was a
congregation of twelve, including Mr Francis, Mr Samuel and six native Christians, with
Mrs Lackersteen playing ‘Abide with Me’ on the tiny harmonium with one game pedal. It
was the first time in ten years that Flory had been to church, except to funerals. Ko S’la’s
notions of what went on in the ‘English pagoda’ were vague in the extreme; but he did
know that church-going signified respectability — a quality which, like all bachelors’
servants, he hated in his bones.

‘There is trouble coming,’ he said despondently to the other servants. ‘I have been
watching him (he meant Flory) these ten days past. He has cut down his cigarettes to
fifteen a day, he has stopped drinking gin before breakfast, he shaves himself every
evening — though he thinks I do not know it, the fool. And he has ordered half a dozen
new silk shirts! I had to stand over the dirzi calling him bahinchut to get them finished in
time. Evil omens! I give him three months longer, and then good-bye to the peace in this
house! ’

‘What, is he going to get married? ’ said Ba Pe.


‘I am certain of it. When a white man begins going to the English pagoda, it is, as you
might say, the beginning of the end. ’



‘I have had many masters in my life,’ old Sammy said. ‘The worst was Colonel Wimpole
sahib, who used to make his orderly hold me down over the table while he came running
from behind and kicked me with very thick boots for serving banana fritters too
frequently. At other times, when he was drunk, he would fire his revolver through the
roof of the servants’ quarters, just above our heads. But I would sooner serve ten years
under Colonel Wimpole sahib than a week under a memsahib with her kit-kit. If our
master marries I shall leave the same day. ’

‘I shall not leave, for I have been his servant fifteen years. But I know what is in store for
us when that woman comes. She will shout at us because of spots of dust on the furniture,
and wake us up to bring cups of tea in the afternoon when we are asleep, and come
poking into the cookhouse at all hours and complain over dirty saucepans and
cockroaches in the flour bin. It is my belief that these women lie awake at nights thinking
of new ways to torment their servants. ’

‘They keep a little red book,’ said Sammy, ‘in which they enter the bazaar-money, two
annas for this, four annas for that, so that a man cannot earn a pice. They make more kit-
kit over the price of an onion than a sahib over five rupees. ’

‘Ah, do I not know it! She will be worse than Ma Hla May. Women! ’ he added
comprehensively, with a kind of sigh.

The sigh was echoed by the others, even by Ma Pu and Ma Yi. Neither took Ko S’la’s
remarks as a stricture upon her own sex, Englishwomen being considered a race apart,
possibly not even human, and so dreadful that an Englishman’s marriage is usually the
signal for the flight of every servant in his house, even those who have been with him for
years.


CHAPTER 10



But as a matter of fact, Ko S’ la’s alarm was premature. After knowing Elizabeth for ten
days, Flory was scarcely more intimate with her than on the day when he had first met
her.

As it happened, he had her almost to himself during these ten days, most of the
Europeans being in the jungle. Flory himself had no right to be loitering in headquarters,
for at this time of year the work of timber-extraction was in full swing, and in his absence
everything went to pieces under the incompetent Eurasian overseer. But he had stayed —
pretext, a touch of fever — while despairing letters came almost every day from the
overseer, telling of disasters. One of the elephants was ill, the engine of the light railway
that was used for carrying teak logs to the river had broken down, fifteen of the coolies
had deserted. But Flory still lingered, unable to tear himself away from Kyauktada while
Elizabeth was there, and continually seeking — never, as yet, to much purpose — to
recapture that easy and delightful friendship of their first meeting.

They met every day, morning and evening, it was true. Each evening they played a single
of tennis at the Club — Mrs Lackersteen was too limp and Mr Lackersteen too liverish for
tennis at this time of year — and afterwards they would sit in the lounge, all four together,
playing bridge and talking. But though Flory spent hours in Elizabeth’s company, and
often they were alone together, he was never for an instant at his ease with her. They
talked — so long as they talked of trivialities — with the utmost freedom, yet they were
distant, like strangers. He felt stiff in her presence, he could not forget his birthmark; his
twice-scraped chin smarted, his body tortured him for whisky and tobacco — for he tried
to cut down his drinking and smoking when he was with her. After ten days they seemed
no nearer the relationship he wanted.

For somehow, he had never been able to talk to her as he longed to talk. To talk, simply
to talk! It sounds so little, and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink of
middle age in bitter loneliness, among people to whom your true opinion on every subject
on earth is blasphemy, the need to talk is the greatest of ah needs. Yet with Elizabeth
serious talk seemed impossible. It was as though there had been a spell upon them that
made ah their conversation lapse into banality; gramophone records, dogs, tennis
racquets — ah that desolating Club-chatter. She seemed not to WANT to talk of anything
but that. He had only to touch upon a subject of any conceivable interest to hear the



evasion, the ‘I shan’t play’, coming into her voice. Her taste in books appalled him when
he discovered it. Yet she was young, he reminded himself, and had she not drunk white
wine and talked of Marcel Proust under the Paris plane trees? Later, no doubt, she would
understand him and give him the companionship he needed. Perhaps it was only that he
had not won her confidence yet.

He was anything but tactful with her. Like all men who have lived much alone, he
adjusted himself better to ideas than to people. And so, though all their talk was
superficial, he began to irritate her sometimes; not by what he said but by what he
implied. There was an uneasiness between them, ill-defined and yet often verging upon
quarrels. When two people, one of whom has lived long in the country while the other is
a newcomer, are thrown together, it is inevitable that the first should act as cicerone to the
second. Elizabeth, during these days, was making her first acquaintance with Burma; it
was Flory, naturally, who acted as her interpreter, explaining this, commenting upon that.
And the things he said, or the way he said them, provoked in her a vague yet deep
disagreement. For she perceived that Flory, when he spoke of the ‘natives’, spoke nearly
always IN FAVOUR of them. He was forever praising Burmese customs and the
Burmese character; he even went so far as to contrast them favourably with the English.
It disquieted her. After all, natives were natives — interesting, no doubt, but finally only a
‘subject’ people, an inferior people with black faces. His attitude was a little TOO
tolerant. Nor had he grasped, yet, in what way he was antagonizing her. He so wanted her
to love Bunna as he loved it, not to look at it with the dull, incurious eyes of a memsahib!
He had forgotten that most people can be at ease in a foreign country only when they are
disparaging the inhabitants.

He was too eager in his attempts to interest her in things Oriental. He tried to induce her,
for instance, to leam Burmese, but it came to nothing. (Her aunt had explained to her that
only missionary-women spoke Burmese; nice women found kitchen Urdu quite as much
as they needed. ) There were countless small disagreements like that. She was grasping,
dimly, that his views were not the views an Englishman should hold. Much more clearly
she grasped that he was asking her to be fond of the Burmese, even to admire them; to
admire people with black faces, almost savages, whose appearance still made her
shudder!



The subject cropped up in a hundred ways. A knot of Burmans would pass them on the
road. She, with her still fresh eyes, would gaze after them, half curious and half repelled;
and she would say to Flory, as she would have said to anybody:

‘How REVOLTINGLY ugly these people are, aren’t they? ’

‘ARE they? I always think they’re rather charming-looking, the Burmese. They have
such splendid bodies! Look at that fellow’s shoulders — like a bronze statue. Just think
what sights you’d see in England if people went about half naked as they do here! ’

‘But they have such hideous-shaped heads! Their skulls kind of slope up behind like a
tom-cat’s. And then the way their foreheads slant back — it makes them look so
WICKED. I remember reading something in a magazine about the shape of people’s
heads; it said that a person with a sloping forehead is a CRIMINAL TYPE. ’

‘Oh, come, that’s a bit sweeping! Round about half the people in the world have that kind
of forehead. ’

‘Oh, well, if you count COLOURED people, of course — ! ’

Or perhaps a string of women would pass, going to the well: heavy-set peasant-girls,
copper-brown, erect under their water-pots with strong marelike buttocks protruded. The
Burmese women repelled Elizabeth more than the men; she felt her kinship with them,
and the hatefulness of being kin to creatures with black faces.

‘Aren’t they too simply dreadful? So COARSE-LOOKING; like some kind of animal.
Do you think ANYONE could think those women attractive? ’

‘Their own men do, I believe. ’

‘I suppose they would. But that black skin — I don’t know how anyone could bear it! ’

‘But, you know, one gets used to the brown skin in time. In fact they say — I believe it’s
true — that after a few years in these countries a brown skin seems more natural than a
white one. And after all, it IS more natural. Take the world as a whole, it’s an eccentricity
to be white. ’



‘You DO have some funny ideas! ’


And so on and so on. She felt all the while an unsatisfactoriness, an unsoundness in the
things he said. It was particularly so on the evening when Flory allowed Mr Francis and
Mr Samuel, the two derelict Eurasians, to entrap him in conversation at the Club gate.

Elizabeth, as it happened, had reached the Club a few minutes before Flory, and when she
heard his voice at the gate she came round the tennis-screen to meet him. The two
Eurasians had sidled up to Flory and cornered him like a pair of dogs asking for a game.
Francis was doing most of the talking. He was a meagre, excitable man, and as brown as
a cigar-leaf, being the son of a South Indian woman; Samuel, whose mother had been a
Karen, was pale yellow with dull red hair. Both were dressed in shabby drill suits, with
vast topis beneath which their slender bodies looked like the stalks of toadstools.

Elizabeth came down the path in time to hear fragments of an enormous and complicated
autobiography. Talking to white men — talking, for choice, about himself — was the great
joy of Francis’s life. When, at intervals of months, he found a European to listen to him,
his life-history would pour out of him in unquenchable torrents. He was talking in a
nasal, sing-song voice of incredible rapidity:

‘Of my father, sir, I remember little, but he was very choleric man and many whackings
with big bamboo stick all knobs on both for self, little half-brother and two mothers. Also
how on occasion of bishop’s visit little half-brother and I dress in longyis and sent among
the Bunnese children to preserve incognito. My father never rose to be bishop, sir. Four
converts only in twenty-eight years, and also too great fondness for Chinese rice-spirit
very fiery noised abroad and spoil sales of my father’s booklet entitled The Scourge of
Alcohol, published with the Rangoon Baptist Press, one rupee eight annas. My little half-
brother die one hot weather, always coughing, coughing,’ etc. , etc.

The two Eurasians perceived the presence of Elizabeth. Both doffed their topis with bows
and brilliant displays of teeth. It was probably several years since either of them had had
a chance of talking to an Englishwoman. Francis burst out more effusively than ever. He
was chattering in evident dread that he would be interrupted and the conversation cut
short.



‘Good evening to you, madam, good evening, good evening! Most honoured to make
your acquaintance, madam! Very sweltering is the weather these days, is not? But
seasonable for April. Not too much you are suffering from prickly heat, I trust? Pounded
tamarind applied to the afflicted spot is infallible. Myself I suffer torments each night.
Very prevalent disease among we Europeans. ’

He pronounced it Europian, like Mr Chollop in Martin Chuzzlewit. Elizabeth did not
answer. She was looking at the Eurasians somewhat coldly. She had only a dim idea as to
who or what they were, and it struck her as impertinent that they should speak to her.

‘Thanks, I’ll remember about the tamarind,’ Flory said.

‘Specific of renowned Chinese doctor, sir. Also, sir-madam, may I advise to you, wearing
only Terai hat is not judicious in April, sir. For the natives all well, their skulls are
adamant. But for us sunstroke ever menaces. Very deadly is the sun upon European skull.
But is it that I detain you, madam? ’

This was said in a disappointed tone. Elizabeth had, in fact, decided to snub the
Eurasians. She did not know why Flory was allowing them to hold him in conversation.
As she turned away to stroll back to the tennis court, she made a practice stroke in the air
with her racquet, to remind Flory that the game was overdue. He saw it and followed her,
rather reluctantly, for he did not like snubbing the wretched Francis, bore though he was.

‘I must be off,’ he said. ‘Good evening, Francis. Good evening, Samuel. ’

‘Good evening, sir! Good evening, madam! Good evening, good evening! ’ They receded
with more hat flourishes.

‘Who ARE those two? ’ said Elizabeth as Flory came up with her. ‘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.