Burmese Days 缅甸岁月 Chapter 25

It was lucky that the padre should have been at Kyauktada, for he was able, before catching¹ the train on the following evening, to read the burial service in due form and even to deliver a short address on the virtues² of the dead man. All Englishmen are virtuous³ when they are dead. 'Accidental death' was the official verdict (Dr Veraswami had proved with all his medico-legal skill that the circumstances pointed⁴ to accident) and it was duly inscribed⁵ upon the tombstone. Not that anyone believed it, of course. Flory's real epitaph was the remark, very occasionally uttered--for an Englishman who dies in Burma is so soon forgotten-- 'Flory? Oh yes, he was a dark chap, with a birthmark. He shot himself in Kyauktada in 1926. Over a girl, people said. Bloody⁶ fool.' Probably no one, except Elizabeth, was much surprised at what had happened. There is a rather large number of suicides among the Europeans in Burma, and they occasion very little surprise.

 

Flory's death had several results. The first and most important of them was that Dr Veraswami was ruined, even as he had foreseen. The glory of being a white man's friend--the one thing that had saved him before--had vanished. Flory's standing⁷ with the other Europeans had never been good, it is true; but he was after all a white man, and his friendship conferred a certain prestige. Once he was dead, the doctor's ruin was assured. U Po Kyin waited the necessary time, and then struck again, harder than ever. It was barely three months before he had fixed⁸ it in the head of every European in Kyauktada that the doctor was an unmitigated scoundrel. No public accusation⁹ was ever made against him--U Po Kyin was most careful of that. Even Ellis would have been puzzled to say just what scoundrelism the doctor had been guilty of; but still, it was agreed that he was a scoundrel. By degrees, the general suspicion of him crystallized in a single Burmese phrase--'shok de'. Veraswami, it was said, was quite a clever little chap in his way-- quite a good doctor for a native--but he was THOROUGHLY¹⁰ shok de. Shok de means, approximately, untrustworthy, and when a 'native' official comes to be known as shok de, there is an end of him.

 

The dreaded¹¹ nod and wink¹² passed somewhere in high places, and the doctor was reverted¹³ to the rank of Assistant Surgeon and transferred to Mandalay General Hospital. He is still there, and is likely to remain. Mandalay is rather a disagreeable town--it is dusty and intolerably hot, and it is said to have five main products all beginning with P, namely, pagodas¹⁴, pariahs¹⁵, pigs, priests and prostitutes--and the routine-work of the hospital is a dreary¹⁶ business. The doctor lives just outside the hospital grounds in a little bake-house of a bungalow¹⁷ with a corrugated¹⁸ iron fence round its tiny compound, and in the evenings he runs a private clinic to supplement his reduced pay. He has joined a second-rate club frequented by Indian pleaders. Its chief glory is a single European member--a Glasgow electrician named Macdougall, sacked from the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company for drunkenness, and now making a precarious²⁰ living out of a garage. Macdougall is a dull lout²¹, only interested in whisky and magnetos. The doctor, who will never believe that a white man can be a fool, tries almost every night to engage him in what he still calls 'cultured conversation'; but the results are very unsatisfying.

 

Ko S'la inherited four hundred rupees under Flory's will, and with his family he set up a tea-shop in the bazaar²². But the shop failed, as it was bound to do with the two women fighting in it at all hours, and Ko S'la and Ba Pe were obliged to go back to service. Ko S'la was an accomplished²³ servant. Besides the useful arts of pimping, dealing²⁴ with money-lenders, carrying master to bed when drunk and making pick-me-ups known as prairie oysters²⁵ on the following morning, he could sew, darn, refill cartridges²⁶, attend to a horse, press a suit, and decorate a dinner-table with wonderful, intricate patterns of chopped leaves and dyed rice-grains. He was worth fifty rupees a month. But he and Ba Pe had fallen into lazy ways in Flory's service, and, they were sacked from one job after another. They had a bad year of poverty, and little Ba Shin developed a cough, and finally coughed himself to death one stifling²⁷ hot-weather night. Ko S'la is now a second boy to a Rangoon rice-broker with a neurotic²⁸ wife who makes unending kit²⁹- kit, and Ba Pe is pani-wallah in the same house at sixteen rupees a month. Ma Hla May is in a brothel in Mandalay. Her good looks are all but gone, and her clients pay her only four annas and sometimes kick her and beat her. Perhaps more bitterly than any of the others, she regrets the good time when Flory was alive, and when she had not the wisdom to put aside any of the money she extracted from him.

 

U Po Kyin realized all his dreams except one. After the doctor's disgrace, it was inevitable³⁰ that U Po Kyin should be elected to the Club, and elected he was, in spite of bitter protests from Ellis. In the end the other Europeans came to be rather glad that they had elected him, for he was a bearable addition to the Club. He did not come too often, was ingratiating in his manner, stood drinks freely, and developed almost at once into a brilliant bridge- player. A few months later he was transferred from Kyauktada and promoted. For a whole year, before his retirement³¹, he officiated as Deputy Commissioner³², and during that year alone he made twenty thousand rupees in bribes³³. A month after his retirement he was summoned to a durbar in Rangoon, to receive the decoration that had been awarded to him by the Indian Government.

 

It was an impressive scene, that durbar. On the platform, hung with flags and flowers, sat the Governor, frock-coated, upon a species of throne, with a bevy³⁴ of aides-de-camp and secretaries behind him. All round the hall, like glittering waxworks³⁵, stood the tall, bearded sowars of the Governor's bodyguard³⁶, with pennoned lances in their hands. Outside, a band was blaring at intervals³⁸. The gallery was gay with the white ingyis and pink scarves of Burmese ladies, and in the body of the hall a hundred men or more were waiting to receive their decorations. There were Burmese officials in blazing Mandalay pasos, and Indians in cloth-of-gold pagris, and British officers in full-dress uniform with clanking sword-scabbards, and old thugyis with their grey hair knotted behind their heads and silver-hilted dahs slung³⁹ from their shoulders. In a high, clear voice a secretary was reading out the list of awards, which varied⁴⁰ from the C.I.E. to certificates of honour in embossed silver cases. Presently U Po Kyin's turn came and the secretary read from his scroll⁴¹:

 

'To U Po Kyin, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, retired⁴², for long and loyal service and especially for his timely aid in crushing a most dangerous rebellion in Kyauktada district'--and so on and so on.

 

Then two henchmen, placed there for the purpose hoisted⁴³ U Po Kyin upright, and he waddled⁴⁴ to the platform, bowed as low as his belly⁴⁵ would permit, and was duly decorated and felicitated, while Ma Kin¹⁹ and other supporters clapped wildly and fluttered their scarves from the gallery.

 

U Po Kyin had done all that mortal man could do. It was time now to be making ready for the next world--in short, to begin building pagodas. But unfortunately, this was the very point at which his plans went wrong. Only three days after the Governor's durbar, before so much as a brick of those atoning⁴⁶ pagodas had been laid, U Po Kyin was stricken with apoplexy and died without speaking again. There is no armour⁴⁷ against fate. Ma Kin was heartbroken at the disaster. Even if she had built the pagodas herself, it would have availed U Po Kyin nothing; no merit can be acquired save by one's own act. She suffers greatly to think of U Po Kyin where he must be now--wandering in God knows what dreadful subterranean⁴⁸ hell of fire, and darkness, and serpents, and genii. Or even if he has escaped the worst, his other fear has been realized, and he has returned to the earth in the shape of a rat or a frog. Perhaps at this very moment a snake is devouring⁴⁹ him.

 

As to Elizabeth, things fell out better than she had expected. After Flory's death Mrs Lackersteen, dropping all pretences⁵⁰ for once, said openly that there were no men in this dreadful place and the only hope was to go and stay several months in Rangoon or Maymyo. But she could not very well send Elizabeth to Rangoon or Maymyo alone, and to go with her practically meant condemning⁵¹ Mr Lackersteen to death from delirium⁵² tremens. Months passed, and the rains reached their climax⁵³, and Elizabeth had just made up her mind that she must go home after all, penniless and unmarried, when--Mr Macgregor proposed to her. He had had it in his mind for a long time; indeed, he had only been waiting for a decent interval³⁷ to elapse after Flory's death.

 

Elizabeth accepted him gladly. He was rather old, perhaps, but a Deputy Commissioner is not to be despised--certainly he was a far better match than Flory. They are very happy. Mr Macgregor was always a good-hearted man, but he has grown more human and likeable since his marriage. His voice booms less, and he has given up his morning exercises. Elizabeth has grown mature surprisingly quickly, and a certain hardness of manner that always belonged to her has become accentuated⁵⁴. Her servants live in terror of her, though she speaks no Burmese. She has an exhaustive knowledge of the Civil List, gives charming little dinner-parties and knows how to put the wives of subordinate officials in their places--in short, she fills with complete success the position for which Nature had designed her from the first, that of a burra memsahib.

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