No More Learning

‘Maxwell, you lazy devil, don’t
you skulk out of it again. Down here with your racquet at four-thirty sharp. ’

‘Apres vous, madame,’ said Mr Macgregor gallantly, at the door.

‘Lead on, Macduff,’ said Westfield.

They went out into the glaring white sunlight. The heat rolled from the earth like the
breath of an oven. The flowers, oppressive to the eyes, blazed with not a petal stirring, in
a debauch of sun. The glare sent a weariness through one’s bones. There was something
horrible in it — horrible to think of that blue, blinding sky, stretching on and on over
Burma and India, over Siam, Cambodia, China, cloudless and intenninable. The plates of
Mr Macgregor’ s waiting car were too hot to touch. The evil time of day was beginning,
the time, as the Burmese say, ‘when feet are silent’. Hardly a living creature stirred,
except men, and the black columns of ants, stimulated by the heat, which marched
ribbon-like across the path, and the tail-less vultures which soared on the currents of the



CHAPTER 3


Flory turned to the left outside the Club gate and started down the bazaar road, under the
shade of the peepul trees. A hundred yards away there was a swirl of music, where a
squad of Military Policemen, lank Indians in greenish khaki, were marching back to their
lines with a Gurkha boy playing the bagpipes ahead of them. Flory was going to see Dr
Veraswami. The doctor’s house was a long bungalow of earth-oiled wood, standing on
piles, with a large unkempt garden which adjoined that of the Club. The back of the
house was towards the road, for it faced the hospital, which lay between it and the river.

As Flory entered the compound there was a frightened squawk of women and a scurrying
within the house. Evidently he had narrowly missed seeing the doctor’s wife. He went
round to the front of the house and called up to the veranda:

‘Doctor! Are you busy? May I come up? ’

The doctor, a little black and white figure, popped from within the house like a jack-in-
the-box. He hurried to the veranda rail, exclaimed effusively:

‘If you may come up! Of course, of course, come up this instant! Ah, Mr Flory, how very
delightful to see you! Come up, come up. What drink will you have? I have whisky, beer,
vennouth and other European liquors. Ah, my dear friend, how I have been pining for
some cultured conversation! ’

The doctor was a small, black, plump man with fuzzy hair and round, credulous eyes. He
wore steel-rimmed spectacles, and he was dressed in a badly fitting white drill suit, with
trousers bagging concertina-like over clumsy black boots. His voice was eager and
bubbling, with a hissing of the s’s. As Flory came up the steps the doctor popped back to
the end of the veranda and rummaged in a big tin ice-chest, rapidly pulling out bottles of
all descriptions. The veranda was wide and dark, with low eaves from which baskets of
fern hung, making it seem like a cave behind a waterfall of sunlight. It was furnished with
long, cane-bottomed chairs made in the jail, and at one end there was a book-case
containing a rather unappetizing little library, mainly books of essays, of the Emerson-
Carlyle-Stevenson type. The doctor, a great reader, liked his books to have what he called
a ‘moral meaning’.



‘Well, doctor,’ said Flory — the doctor had meanwhile thrust him into a long chair, pulled
out the leg-rests so that he could lie down, and put cigarettes and beer within reach.
‘Well, doctor, and how are things? How’s the British Empire? Sick of the palsy as
usual? ’

‘Aha, Mr Flory, she iss very low, very low! Grave complications setting in. Septicaemia,
peritonitis and paralysis of the ganglia. We shall have to call in the specialists, I fear.
Aha! ’

It was a joke between the two men to pretend that the British Empire was an aged female
patient of the doctor’s. The doctor had enjoyed this joke for two years without growing
tired of it.

‘Ah, doctor,’ said Flory, supine in the long chair, ‘what a joy to be here after that bloody
Club. When I come to your house I feel like a Nonconformist minister dodging up to
town and going home with a tart. Such a glorious holiday from THEM’ — he motioned
with one heel in the direction of the Club — ‘from my beloved fellow Empire-builders.
British prestige, the white man’s burden, the pukka sahib sans peur et sans reproche —
you know. Such a relief to be out of the stink of it for a little while. ’

‘My friend, my friend, now come, come, please! That iss outrageous. You must not say
such things of honourable English gentlemen! ’

‘You don’t have to listen to the honourable gentlemen talking, doctor. I stood it as long as
I could this morning. Ellis with his “dirty nigger”, Westfield with his jokes, Macgregor
with his Latin tags and please give the bearer fifteen lashes. But when they got on to that
story about the old havildar — you know, the dear old havildar who said that if the British
left India there wouldn’t be a rupee or a virgin between — you know; well, I couldn’t
stand it any longer. It’s time that old havildar was put on the retired list. He’s been saying
the same thing ever since the Jubilee in ‘eighty-seven. ’

The doctor grew agitated, as he always did when Flory criticized the Club members. He
was standing with his plump white-clad behind balanced against the veranda rail, and
sometimes gesticulating. When searching for a word he would nip his black thumb and
forefinger together, as though to capture an idea floating in the air.



‘But truly, truly, Mr Flory, you must not speak so! Why iss it that always you are abusing
the pukka sahibs, ass you call them? They are the salt of the earth. Consider the great
things they have done — consider the great administrators who have made British India
what it iss. Consider Clive, Warren Hastings, Dalhousie, Curzon. They were such men — I
quote your immortal Shakespeare — ass, take them for all in all, we shall not look upon
their like again! ’

‘Well, do you want to look upon their like again? I don’t. ’

‘And consider how noble a type iss the English gentleman! Their glorious loyalty to one
another! The public school spirit! Even those of them whose manner iss unfortunate —
some Englishmen are arrogant, I concede — have the great, sterling qualities that we
Orientals lack. Beneath their rough exterior, their hearts are of gold. ’

‘Of gilt, shall we say? There’s a kind of spurious good-fellowship between the English
and this country. It’s a tradition to booze together and swap meals and pretend to be
friends, though we all hate each other like poison. Hanging together, we call it. It’s a
political necessity. Of course drink is what keeps the machine going. We should all go
mad and kill one another in a week if it weren’t for that. There’s a subject for one of your
uplift essayists, doctor. Booze as the cement of empire. ’

The doctor shook his head. ‘Really, Mr Flory, I know not what it iss that hass made you
so cynical. It iss so most unsuitable! You — an English gentleman of high gifts and
character — to be uttering seditious opinions that are worthy of the Burmese Patriot! ’

‘Seditious? ’ Flory said. ‘I’M not seditious. I don’t want the Burmans to drive us out of
this country. God forbid! I’m here to make money, like everyone else. All I object to is
the slimy white man’s burden humbug. The pukka sahib pose. It’s so boring. Even those
bloody fools at the Club might be better company if we weren’t all of us living a lie the
whole time. ’

‘But, my dear friend, what lie are you living? ’


‘Why, of course, the lie that we’re here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob
them. I suppose it’s a natural enough lie. But it corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways you



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

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

‘Now, my dear doctor — ’

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

‘Having brought it themselves,’ put in Flory.


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



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


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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What’s been happening, then? ’

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



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


‘U Po Kyin? Which one is that? ’

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

‘What is a difficult business? ’

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

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

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

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



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


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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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


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