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XIV
Like long curved needles threading through embroidery, the two canoes that carried Flory and
Elizabeth threaded their way up the creek that led inland from the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy. It
was the day of the shooting trip–a short afternoon trip, for they could not stay a night in the jungle
together. They were to shoot for a couple of hours in the comparative cool of the evening, and be back
at Kyauktada in time for dinner.
The canoes, each hollowed out of a single tree-trunk, glided swiftly, hardly rippling the dark brown
water. Water hyacinth with profuse spongy foliage and blue flowers had choked the stream so that the
channel was only a winding ribbon four feet wide. The light filtered, greenish, through interlacing
boughs. Sometimes one could hear parrots scream overhead, but no wild creatures showed
themselves, except once a snake that swam hurriedly away and disappeared among the water
hyacinth.
‘How long before we get to the village?’ Elizabeth called back to Flory. He was in a larger canoe
behind, together with Ho and Ko S’la, paddled by a wrinkly old woman dressed in rags.
‘How far, grandmama?’ Flory asked the canoewoman.
The old woman took her cigar out of her mouth and rested her paddle on her knees to think. ‘The
distance a man can shout,’ she said after reflection.
‘About half a mile,’ Flory translated.
They had come two miles. Elizabeth’s back was aching. The canoes were liable to upset at a
careless movement, and you had to sit bolt upright on the narrow backless seat, keeping your feet as
well as possible out of the bilge, with dead prawns in it, that sagged to and fro at the bottom. The
Burman who paddled Elizabeth was sixty years old, half naked, leaf-brown, with a body as perfect as
that of a young man. His face was battered, gentle and humorous. His black cloud of hair, finer than
that of most Burmans, was knotted loosely over one ear, with a wisp or two tumbling across his
cheek. Elizabeth was nursing her uncle’s gun across her knees. Flory had offered to take it, but she
had refused; in reality, the feel of it delighted her so much that she could not bring herself to give it
up. She had never had a gun in her hand until today. She was wearing a rough skirt with brogue shoes
and a silk shirt like a man’s, and she knew that with her Terai hat they looked well on her. She was
very happy, in spite of her aching back and the hot sweat that tickled her face, and the large, speckled
mosquitoes that hummed round her ankles.
The stream narrowed and the beds of water hyacinth gave place to steep banks of glistening mud,
like chocolate. Rickety matched huts leaned far out over the stream, their piles driven into its bed. A