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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 modern 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 civilising influence it’s only in order 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 disapproved of the British Empire, you would not be
talking of it privately here. You would be proclaiming it from the housetops. 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 the, 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