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grotesque, it’s even ugly, with a sort of wilful ugliness. And there’s something sinister in it too.
There’s a touch of the diabolical in all Mongols. And yet when you look closely, what art, what
centuries of culture you can see behind it! Every movement that girl makes has been stuthed and
handed down through innumerable generations. Whenever you look closely at the art of these Eastern
peoples you can see that–a civilisation stretching back and back, practically the same, into times
when we were dressed in woad. In some way that I can’t define to you, the whole life and spirit of
Burma is summed up in the way that girl twists her arms. When you see her you can see the ricefields,
the villages under the teak trees, the pagodas, the priests in their yellow robes, the buffaloes
swithming the rivers in the early morning, Thibaw’s palace ——’
His voice stopped abruptly as the music stopped. There were certain things, and a pwe-dance was
one of them, that pricked him to talk discursively and incautiously; but now he realised that he had
only been talking like a character in a novel, and not a very good novel. He looked away. Elizabeth
had listened to him with a chill of discomfort. What was the man talking about? was her first thought.
Moreover, she had caught the hated word Art more than once. For the first time she remembered that
Flory was a total stranger and that it had been unwise to come out with him alone. She looked round
her, at the sea of dark faces and the lurid glare of the lamps; the strangeness of the scene almost
frightened her. What was she doing in this place? Surely it was not right to be sitting among the black
people like this, almost touching them, in the scent of their garlic and their sweat? Why was she not
back at the Club with the other white people? Why had he brought her here, among this horde of
natives, to watch this hideous and savage spectacle?
The music struck up, and the pwe-girl began dancing again. Her face was powdered so thickly that
it gleamed in the lamplight like a chalk mask with live eyes behind it. With that dead-white oval face
and those wooden gestures she was monstrous, like a demon. The music changed its tempo, and the
girl began to sing in a brassy voice. It was a song with a swift trochaic rhythm, gay yet fierce. The
crowd took it up, a hundred voices chanting the harsh syllables in unison. Still in that strange bent
posture the girl turned round and danced with her buttocks protruded towards the authence. Her silk
longyi gleamed like metal. With hands and elbows still rotating she wagged her posterior from side to
side. Then–astonishing feat, quite visible through the longyi–she began to wriggle her two buttocks
independently in time with the music.
There was a shout of applause from the authence. The three girls asleep on the mat woke up at the
same moment and began clapping their hands wildly. A clerk shouted nasally ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ in
English for the Europeans’ benefit. But U Po Kyin frowned and waved his hand. He knew all about
European women. Elizabeth, however, had already stood up.
‘I’m going. It’s time we were back,’ she said abruptly. She was looking away, but Flory could see
that her face was pink.
He stood up beside her, dismayed. ‘But, I say! Couldn’t you stay a few minutes longer? I know it’s
late, but–they brought this girl on two hours before she was due, in our honour. Just a few minutes?’
‘I can’t help it, I ought to have been back ages ago. I don’t know what my uncle and aunt will be
thinking.’