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| * [[Burmese Days/24|24]] | | * [[Burmese Days/24|24]] |
| * [[Burmese Days/25|25]] | | * [[Burmese Days/25|25]] |
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| == 25 ==
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| It was lucky that the padre should have been at Kyauktada, for he
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| was able, before catching the train on the following evening, to
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| read the burial service in due form and even to deliver a short
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| address on the virtues of the dead man. All Englishmen are
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| virtuous when they are dead. 'Accidental death' was the official
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| verdict (Dr Veraswami had proved with all his medico-legal skill
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| that the circumstances pointed to accident) and it was duly
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| inscribed upon the tombstone. Not that anyone believed it, of
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| course. Flory's real epitaph was the remark, very occasionally
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| uttered--for an Englishman who dies in Burma is so soon forgotten--
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| 'Flory? Oh yes, he was a dark chap, with a birthmark. He shot
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| himself in Kyauktada in 1926. Over a girl, people said. Bloody
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| fool.' Probably no one, except Elizabeth, was much surprised at
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| what had happened. There is a rather large number of suicides
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| among the Europeans in Burma, and they occasion very little
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| surprise.
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|
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| Flory's death had several results. The first and most important of
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| them was that Dr Veraswami was ruined, even as he had foreseen.
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| The glory of being a white man's friend--the one thing that had
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| saved him before--had vanished. Flory's standing with the other
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| Europeans had never been good, it is true; but he was after all a
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| white man, and his friendship conferred a certain prestige. Once
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| he was dead, the doctor's ruin was assured. U Po Kyin waited the
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| necessary time, and then struck again, harder than ever. It was
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| barely three months before he had fixed it in the head of every
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| European in Kyauktada that the doctor was an unmitigated scoundrel.
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| No public accusation was ever made against him--U Po Kyin was most
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| careful of that. Even Ellis would have been puzzled to say just
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| what scoundrelism the doctor had been guilty of; but still, it was
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| agreed that he was a scoundrel. By degrees, the general suspicion
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| of him crystallized in a single Burmese phrase--'shok de'.
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| Veraswami, it was said, was quite a clever little chap in his way--
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| quite a good doctor for a native--but he was THOROUGHLY shok de.
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| Shok de means, approximately, untrustworthy, and when a 'native'
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| official comes to be known as shok de, there is an end of him.
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| The dreaded nod and wink passed somewhere in high places, and
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| the doctor was reverted to the rank of Assistant Surgeon and
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| transferred to Mandalay General Hospital. He is still there, and
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| is likely to remain. Mandalay is rather a disagreeable town--it
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| is dusty and intolerably hot, and it is said to have five main
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| products all beginning with P, namely, pagodas, pariahs, pigs,
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| priests and prostitutes--and the routine-work of the hospital is a
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| dreary business. The doctor lives just outside the hospital
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| grounds in a little bake-house of a bungalow with a corrugated iron
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| fence round its tiny compound, and in the evenings he runs a
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| private clinic to supplement his reduced pay. He has joined a
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| second-rate club frequented by Indian pleaders. Its chief glory is
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| a single European member--a Glasgow electrician named Macdougall,
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| sacked from the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company for drunkenness, and now
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| making a precarious living out of a garage. Macdougall is a dull
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| lout, only interested in whisky and magnetos. The doctor, who will
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| never believe that a white man can be a fool, tries almost every
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| night to engage him in what he still calls 'cultured conversation';
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| but the results are very unsatisfying.
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|
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| Ko S'la inherited four hundred rupees under Flory's will, and with
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| his family he set up a tea-shop in the bazaar. But the shop
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| failed, as it was bound to do with the two women fighting in it at
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| all hours, and Ko S'la and Ba Pe were obliged to go back to
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| service. Ko S'la was an accomplished servant. Besides the useful
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| arts of pimping, dealing with money-lenders, carrying master to bed
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| when drunk and making pick-me-ups known as prairie oysters on the
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| following morning, he could sew, darn, refill cartridges, attend to
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| a horse, press a suit, and decorate a dinner-table with wonderful,
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| intricate patterns of chopped leaves and dyed rice-grains. He was
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| worth fifty rupees a month. But he and Ba Pe had fallen into lazy
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| ways in Flory's service, and, they were sacked from one job after
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| another. They had a bad year of poverty, and little Ba Shin
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| developed a cough, and finally coughed himself to death one
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| stifling hot-weather night. Ko S'la is now a second boy to a
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| Rangoon rice-broker with a neurotic wife who makes unending kit-
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| kit, and Ba Pe is pani-wallah in the same house at sixteen rupees a
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| month. Ma Hla May is in a brothel in Mandalay. Her good looks are
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| all but gone, and her clients pay her only four annas and sometimes
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| kick her and beat her. Perhaps more bitterly than any of the
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| others, she regrets the good time when Flory was alive, and when
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| she had not the wisdom to put aside any of the money she extracted
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| from him.
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|
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| U Po Kyin realized all his dreams except one. After the doctor's
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| disgrace, it was inevitable that U Po Kyin should be elected to the
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| Club, and elected he was, in spite of bitter protests from Ellis.
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| In the end the other Europeans came to be rather glad that they had
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| elected him, for he was a bearable addition to the Club. He did
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| not come too often, was ingratiating in his manner, stood drinks
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| freely, and developed almost at once into a brilliant bridge-
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| player. A few months later he was transferred from Kyauktada and
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| promoted. For a whole year, before his retirement, he officiated
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| as Deputy Commissioner, and during that year alone he made twenty
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| thousand rupees in bribes. A month after his retirement he was
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| summoned to a durbar in Rangoon, to receive the decoration that had
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| been awarded to him by the Indian Government.
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|
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| It was an impressive scene, that durbar. On the platform, hung
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| with flags and flowers, sat the Governor, frock-coated, upon a
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| species of throne, with a bevy of aides-de-camp and secretaries
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| behind him. All round the hall, like glittering waxworks, stood
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| the tall, bearded sowars of the Governor's bodyguard, with pennoned
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| lances in their hands. Outside, a band was blaring at intervals.
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| The gallery was gay with the white ingyis and pink scarves of
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| Burmese ladies, and in the body of the hall a hundred men or more
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| were waiting to receive their decorations. There were Burmese
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| officials in blazing Mandalay pasos, and Indians in cloth-of-gold
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| pagris, and British officers in full-dress uniform with clanking
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| sword-scabbards, and old thugyis with their grey hair knotted
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| behind their heads and silver-hilted dahs slung from their
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| shoulders. In a high, clear voice a secretary was reading out the
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| list of awards, which varied from the C.I.E. to certificates of
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| honour in embossed silver cases. Presently U Po Kyin's turn came
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| and the secretary read from his scroll:
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| 'To U Po Kyin, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, retired, for long and
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| loyal service and especially for his timely aid in crushing a most
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| dangerous rebellion in Kyauktada district'--and so on and so on.
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|
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| Then two henchmen, placed there for the purpose hoisted U Po Kyin
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| upright, and he waddled to the platform, bowed as low as his belly
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| would permit, and was duly decorated and felicitated, while Ma Kin
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| and other supporters clapped wildly and fluttered their scarves
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| from the gallery.
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|
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| U Po Kyin had done all that mortal man could do. It was time now
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| to be making ready for the next world--in short, to begin building
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| pagodas. But unfortunately, this was the very point at which his
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| plans went wrong. Only three days after the Governor's durbar,
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| before so much as a brick of those atoning pagodas had been laid, U
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| Po Kyin was stricken with apoplexy and died without speaking again.
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| There is no armour against fate. Ma Kin was heartbroken at the
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| disaster. Even if she had built the pagodas herself, it would have
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| availed U Po Kyin nothing; no merit can be acquired save by one's
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| own act. She suffers greatly to think of U Po Kyin where he must
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| be now--wandering in God knows what dreadful subterranean hell of
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| fire, and darkness, and serpents, and genii. Or even if he has
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| escaped the worst, his other fear has been realized, and he has
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| returned to the earth in the shape of a rat or a frog. Perhaps at
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| this very moment a snake is devouring him.
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|
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| As to Elizabeth, things fell out better than she had expected.
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| After Flory's death Mrs Lackersteen, dropping all pretences for
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| once, said openly that there were no men in this dreadful place and
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| the only hope was to go and stay several months in Rangoon or
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| Maymyo. But she could not very well send Elizabeth to Rangoon or
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| Maymyo alone, and to go with her practically meant condemning Mr
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| Lackersteen to death from delirium tremens. Months passed, and the
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| rains reached their climax, and Elizabeth had just made up her mind
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| that she must go home after all, penniless and unmarried, when--Mr
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| Macgregor proposed to her. He had had it in his mind for a long
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| time; indeed, he had only been waiting for a decent interval to
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| elapse after Flory's death.
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|
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| Elizabeth accepted him gladly. He was rather old, perhaps, but a
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| Deputy Commissioner is not to be despised--certainly he was a far
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| better match than Flory. They are very happy. Mr Macgregor was
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| always a good-hearted man, but he has grown more human and likeable
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| since his marriage. His voice booms less, and he has given up his
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| morning exercises. Elizabeth has grown mature surprisingly
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| quickly, and a certain hardness of manner that always belonged to
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| her has become accentuated. Her servants live in terror of her,
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| though she speaks no Burmese. She has an exhaustive knowledge of
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| the Civil List, gives charming little dinner-parties and knows how
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| to put the wives of subordinate officials in their places--in
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| short, she fills with complete success the position for which
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| Nature had designed her from the first, that of a burra memsahib.
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| THE END
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