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longyi. Flory thought he had never noticed before how dark Ma Hla May’s face was, and how outandish her tiny, stiff body, straight as a solther’s, with not a curve in it except the vase-like curve of her hips. He stood against the veranda rail and watched the two girls, quite disregarded. For the best part of a minute neither of them could take her eyes from the other; but which found the spectacle more grotesque, more incredible, there is no saying. Ma Hla May turned her face round to Flory, with her black brows, thin as pencil lines, drawn together. ‘Who is this woman?’ she demanded sullenly. He answered casually, as though giving an order to a servant: ‘Go away this instant. If you make any trouble I will afterwards take a bamboo and beat you till not one of your ribs is whole.’ Ma Hla May hesitated, shrugged her small shoulders and disappeared. And the other, gazing after her, said curiously: ‘Was that a man or a woman?’ ‘A woman,’ he said. ‘One of the servants’ wives, I believe. She came to ask about the laundry, that was all.’ ‘Oh, is that what Burmese women are like? They are queer little creatures! I saw a lot of them on my way up here in the train, but do you know, I thought they were all boys. They’re just like a kind of Dutch doll, aren’t they?’ She had begun to move towards the veranda steps, having lost interest in Ma Hla May now that she had disappeared. He did not stop her, for he thought Ma Hla May quite capable of coming back and making a scene. Not that it mattered much, for neither girl knew a word of the other’s language. He called to Ko S’la, and Ko S’la came running with a big oiled-silk umbrella with bamboo ribs. He opened it respectfully at the foot of the steps and held it over the girl’s head as she came down. Flory went with them as far as the gate. They stopped to shake hands, he turning a little sideways in the strong sunlight, hiding his birthmark. ‘My fellow here will see you home. It was ever so kind of you to come in. I can’t tell you how glad I am to have met you. You’ll make such a difference to us here in Kyauktada.’ ‘Good-bye, Mr–oh, how funny! I don’t even know your name.’ ‘Flory, John Flory. And yours–Miss Lackersteen, is it?’ ‘Yes. Elizabeth. Good-bye, Mr Flory. And thank you ever so much. That awful buffalo. You quite saved my life.’ ‘It was nothing. I hope I shall see you at the Club this evening? I expect your uncle and aunt will be coming down. Good-bye for the time being, then.’ He stood at the gate, watching them as they went. Elizabeth–lovely name, too rare nowadays. He hoped she spelt it with a ‘z’. Ko S’la trotted after her at a queer uncomfortable gait, reaching the umbrella over her head and keeping his body as far away from her as possible. A cool breath of wind blew up the hill. It was one of those momentary winds that blow sometimes in the cold weather in Burma, coming from nowhere, filling one with thst and with nostalgia for cold sea-pools, embraces of mermaids, waterfalls, caves of ice. It rustled through the wide domes of the gold mohur trees, and fluttered the fragments of the anonymous letter that Flory had thrown over the gate half an hour earlier.
VII Elizabeth lay on the sofa in the Lackersteens’ drawing-room, with her feet up and a cushion behind her head, reading Michael Arlen’s These Charming People. In a general way Michael Arlen was her favourite author, but she was inclined to prefer William J. Locke when she wanted something serious. The drawing-room was a cool, light-coloured room with lime-washed walls a yard thick; it was large, but seemed smaller than it was, because of a Utter of occasional tables and Benares brassware ornaments. It smelt of chintz and dying flowers. Mrs Lackersteen was upstairs, sleeping. Outside, the servants lay silent in their quarters, their heads tethered to their wooden pillows by the death-like sleep of midday. Mr Lackersteen, in his small wooden office down the road, was probably sleeping too. No one stirred except Elizabeth, and the chokra who pulled the punkah outside Mrs Lackersteen’s bedroom, lying on his back with one heel in the loop of the rope. Elizabeth was just turned twenty-two, and was an orphan. Her father had been less of a drunkard than his brother Tom, but he was a man of similar stamp. He was a tea-broker, and his fortunes fluctuated greatly, but he was by nature too optimistic to put money aside in prosperous phases. Elizabeth’s mother had been an incapable, halfbaked, vapouring self-pitying woman who shirked all the normal duties of life on the strength of sensibilities which she did not possess. After messing about for years with such things as Women’s Suffrage and Higher Thought, and making many abortive attempts at literature, she had finally taken up with painting. Painting is the only art that can be practised without either talent or hard work. Mrs Lackersteen’s pose was that of an artist exiled among ‘the Philistines’–these, needless to say, included her husband–and it was a pose that gave her almost unlimited scope for making a nuisance of herself. In the last year of the War Mr Lackersteen, who had managed to avoid service, made a great deal of money, and just after the Armistice they moved into a huge, new, rather bleak house in Highgate, with quantities of greenhouses, shrubberies, stables and tennis courts. Mr Lackersteen had engaged a horde of servants, even, so great was his optimism, a buder. Elizabedi was sent for two terms to a very expensive boarding-school. Oh, the joy, the joy, the unforgettable joy of those two terms! Four of the girls at the school were ‘the Honourable’; nearly all of them had ponies of their own, on which they were allowed to go riding on Saturday afternoons. There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed for ever; with Elizabeth, it was those two terms during which she rubbed shoulders with the rich. Thereafter her whole code of living was summed up in one belief, and that a simple one. It was that the Good (‘lovely’ was her name for it) is synonymous with the expensive, the elegant, the aristocratic; and the Bad (‘beastly’) is the cheap, the low, the shabby, the laborious.
- Page 13 and 14: A Note on the Text Burmese Days pos
- Page 15 and 16: I U Po Kyin, Sub-divisional Magistr
- Page 17 and 18: wages, for he was a convicted thief
- Page 19 and 20: than bribery; they expect a native
- Page 21 and 22: Ma Kin bent her head over her sewin
- Page 23 and 24: if it had not proved a convenient s
- Page 25 and 26: married, she had left him for a for
- Page 27 and 28: you, Westfield, proud as Punch of y
- Page 29 and 30: Mrs Lackersteen, unequal to the qua
- Page 31 and 32: ‘Our burra sahib at Mandalay alwa
- Page 33 and 34: glare sent a weariness through one
- Page 35 and 36: It was a joke between the two men t
- Page 37 and 38: various industries. Where are the I
- Page 39 and 40: efore this cursed sun gets too high
- Page 41 and 42: ‘Yes, I heard that. We hear all t
- Page 43 and 44: Ko S’la put the tea-tray down on
- Page 45 and 46: her, because of its strangeness and
- Page 47 and 48: Flory got out of the water, put on
- Page 49 and 50: V In spite of the whisky he had dru
- Page 51 and 52: school. In his last term he and ano
- Page 53 and 54: imperialism in which he lived. For
- Page 55 and 56: streaming egrets-were more native t
- Page 57 and 58: ‘No.’ ‘You have been in priso
- Page 59 and 60: (Signed) A FRIEND. The letter was w
- Page 61 and 62: did not think she could be much pas
- Page 63: ‘What it means to meet somebody w
- Page 67 and 68: ‘school’ where she produced gre
- Page 69 and 70: of the bow was like a moving arrowh
- Page 71 and 72: ‘And oh, aunt, such an interestin
- Page 73 and 74: there would be a scandal when they
- Page 75 and 76: grotesque, it’s even ugly, with a
- Page 77 and 78: sahib’. Mr Macgregor made a very
- Page 79 and 80: IX During the next fortnight a grea
- Page 81 and 82: S’la’s notions of what went on
- Page 83 and 84: He was anything but tactful with he
- Page 85 and 86: ‘Thanks, I’ll remember about th
- Page 87 and 88: example-she seemed to have an enthu
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- Page 91 and 92: girls wear broad brass rings to str
- Page 93 and 94: They walked up the road, he to the
- Page 95 and 96: murder by poison, murder by sympath
- Page 97 and 98: Thongwa to rebel, and then I arrest
- Page 99 and 100: ‘Do you not see, woman? Do you no
- Page 101 and 102: operations. ‘Belly-cutting’ was
- Page 103 and 104: ‘Ah, I have a few friends left. B
- Page 105 and 106: shoulder. Flory walked into the hou
- Page 107 and 108: Instantly she cried out in renewed
- Page 109 and 110: naked boy was standing between two
- Page 111 and 112: were tattooed with dark blue patter
- Page 113 and 114: As they were walking to the fifth b
longyi. Flory thought he had never noticed before how dark Ma Hla May’s face was, and how<br />
outandish her tiny, stiff body, straight as a solther’s, with not a curve in it except the vase-like curve<br />
of her hips. He stood against the veranda rail and watched the two girls, quite disregarded. For the<br />
best part of a minute neither of them could take her eyes from the other; but which found the spectacle<br />
more grotesque, more incredible, there is no saying.<br />
Ma Hla May turned her face round to Flory, with her black brows, thin as pencil lines, drawn<br />
together. ‘Who is this woman?’ she demanded sullenly.<br />
He answered casually, as though giving an order to a servant:<br />
‘Go away this instant. If you make any trouble I will afterwards take a bamboo and beat you till not<br />
one of your ribs is whole.’<br />
Ma Hla May hesitated, shrugged her small shoulders and disappeared. And the other, gazing after<br />
her, said curiously:<br />
‘Was that a man or a woman?’<br />
‘A woman,’ he said. ‘One of the servants’ wives, I believe. She came to ask about the laundry, that<br />
was all.’<br />
‘Oh, is that what Burmese women are like? They are queer little creatures! I saw a lot of them on<br />
my way up here in the train, but do you know, I thought they were all boys. They’re just like a kind of<br />
Dutch doll, aren’t they?’<br />
She had begun to move towards the veranda steps, having lost interest in Ma Hla May now that she<br />
had disappeared. He did not stop her, for he thought Ma Hla May quite capable of coming back and<br />
making a scene. Not that it mattered much, for neither girl knew a word of the other’s language. He<br />
called to Ko S’la, and Ko S’la came running with a big oiled-silk umbrella with bamboo ribs. He<br />
opened it respectfully at the foot of the steps and held it over the girl’s head as she came down. Flory<br />
went with them as far as the gate. They stopped to shake hands, he turning a little sideways in the<br />
strong sunlight, hiding his birthmark.<br />
‘My fellow here will see you home. It was ever so kind of you to come in. I can’t tell you how glad<br />
I am to have met you. You’ll make such a difference to us here in Kyauktada.’<br />
‘Good-bye, Mr–oh, how funny! I don’t even know your name.’<br />
‘Flory, John Flory. And yours–Miss Lackersteen, is it?’<br />
‘Yes. Elizabeth. Good-bye, Mr Flory. And thank you ever so much. That awful buffalo. You quite<br />
saved my life.’<br />
‘It was nothing. I hope I shall see you at the Club this evening? I expect your uncle and aunt will be<br />
coming down. Good-bye for the time being, then.’<br />
He stood at the gate, watching them as they went. Elizabeth–lovely name, too rare nowadays. He<br />
hoped she spelt it with a ‘z’. Ko S’la trotted after her at a queer uncomfortable gait, reaching the<br />
umbrella over her head and keeping his body as far away from her as possible. A cool breath of wind<br />
blew up the hill. It was one of those momentary winds that blow sometimes in the cold weather in<br />
Burma, coming from nowhere, filling one with thst and with nostalgia for cold sea-pools, embraces of<br />
mermaids, waterfalls, caves of ice. It rustled through the wide domes of the gold mohur trees, and<br />
fluttered the fragments of the anonymous letter that Flory had thrown over the gate half an hour earlier.
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