Every time you are seen to enter my house the mercury rises half a degree.’
‘Well, we must try and keep it at “Set Fair”. That’s about all I can do for you, I’m afraid.’
‘Even that iss much, my friend. And for that, there iss another thing of which I would warn you, though you will laugh, I fear. It iss that you yourself should beware of U Po Kyin. Beware of the crocodile! For sure he will strike at you when he knows that you are befriending me.’
‘All right, doctor, I’ll beware of the crocodile. I don’t fancy he can do me much harm, though.’
‘At least he will try. I know him. It will be hiss policy to detach my friends from me. Possibly he would even dare to spread hiss libels about you also.’
‘About me? Good gracious, no one would believe anything against me. Civis Romanus sum. I’m an Englishman—quite above suspicion.’
‘Nevertheless, beware of hiss calumnies, my friend. Do not underrate him. He will know how to strike at you. He iss a crocodile. And like the crocodile’—the doctor nipped his thumb and finger impressively; his images became mixed sometimes—‘like the crocodile, he strikes always at the weakest spot!’
‘Do crocodiles always strike at the weakest spot, doctor?’
Both men laughed. They were intimate enough to laugh over the doctor’s queer English occasionally. Perhaps, at the bottom of his heart, the doctor was a little disappointed that Flory had not promised to propose him for the Club, but he would have perished rather than say so. And Flory was glad to drop the subject, an uncomfortable one which he wished had never been raised.
‘Well, I really must be going, doctor. Good-bye in case I don’t see you again. I hope it’ll be all right at the general meeting. Macgregor’s not a bad old stick. I dare say he’ll insist on their electing you.’
‘Let us hope so, my friend. With that I can defy a hundred U Po Kyins. A thousand! Good-bye, my friend, good-bye.’
Then Flory settled his Terai hat on his head and went home across the glaring maidan, to his breakfast, for which the long morning of drinking, smoking and talking had left him no appetite.
IV
Flory lay asleep, naked except for black Shan trousers, upon his sweat-damp bed. He had been idling all day. He spent approximately three weeks of every month in camp, coming into Kyauktada for a few days at a time, chiefly in order to idle, for he had very little clerical work to do.
The bedroom was a large square room with white plaster walls, open doorways and no ceiling, but only rafters in which sparrows nested. There was no furniture except the big four-poster bed, with its furled mosquito net like a canopy, and a wicker table and chair and a small mirror; also some rough bookshelves containing several hundred books, all mildewed by many rainy seasons and riddled by silver fish. A tuktoo clung to the wall, flat and motionless like a heraldic dragon. Beyond the veranda eaves the light rained down like glistening white oil. Some doves in a bamboo thicket kept up a dull droning noise, curiously appropriate to the heat—a sleepy sound, but with the sleepiness of chloroform rather than a lullaby.
Down at Mr Macgregor’s bungalow, two hundred yards away, a durwan, like a living clock, hammered four strokes on a section of iron rail. Ko S’la, Flory’s servant, awakened by the sound, went into the cookhouse, blew up the embers of the wood fire and boiled the kettle for tea. Then he put on his pink gaungbaung and muslin ingyi and brought the tea-tray to his master’s bedside.
Ko S’la (his real name was Maung San Hla; Ko S’la was an abbreviation) was a short, square-shouldered, rustic-looking Burman with a very dark skin and a harassed expression. He wore a black moustache which curved downwards round his mouth, but like most Burmans he was quite beardless. He had been Flory’s servant since his first day in Burma. The two men were within a month of one another’s age. They had been boys together, had tramped side by side after snipe and duck, sat together in machans waiting for tigers that never came, shared the discomforts of a thousand camps and marches; and Ko S’la had pimped for Flory and borrowed money for him from the Chinese moneylenders, carried him to bed when he was drunk, tended him through bouts of fever. In Ko S’la’s eyes Flory, because a bachelor, was a boy still; whereas Ko S’la had married, begotten five children, married again and become one of the obscure martyrs of bigamy. Like all bachelors’ servants Ko S’la was lazy and dirty, and yet he was devoted to Flory. He would never let anyone else serve Flory at table, or carry his gun or hold his pony’s head while he mounted. On the march, if they came to a stream, he would carry Flory across on his back. He was inclined to pity Flory, partly because he thought him childish and easily deceived, and partly because of the birthmark, which he considered a dreadful thing.
Ko S’la put the tea-tray down on the table very quietly, and then went round to the end of the bed and tickled Flory’s toes. He knew by experience that this was the only way of waking Flory without putting him in a bad temper. Flory rolled over, swore, and pressed his forehead into the pillow.
‘Four o’clock has struck, most holy god,’ Ko S’la said. ‘I have brought two teacups, because the woman said that she was coming.’
The woman was Ma Hla May, Flory’s mistress. Ko S’la always called her the woman, to show his disapproval—not that he disapproved of Flory for keeping a mistress, but he was jealous of Ma Hla May’s influence in the house.
‘Will the holy one play tinnis this evening?’ Ko S’la asked.
‘No, it’s too hot,’ said Flory in English. ‘I don’t want anything to eat. Take this muck away and bring some whisky.’
Ko S’la understood English very well, though he could not speak it. He brought a bottle of whisky, and also Flory’s tennis racquet, which he laid in a meaning manner against the wall opposite the bed. Tennis, according to his notions, was a mysterious ritual incumbent on all Englishmen, and he did not like to see his master idling in the evenings.
Flory pushed away in disgust the toast and butter that Ko S’la had brought, but he mixed some whisky in a cup of tea and felt better after drinking it. He had slept since noon, and his head and all his bones ached, and there was a taste like burnt paper in his mouth. It was years since he had enjoyed a meal. All European food in Burma is more or less disgusting—the bread is spongy stuff leavened with palm-toddy and tasting like a penny bun gone wrong, the butter comes out of a tin, and so does the milk, unless it is the grey watery catlap of the dudh-wallah. As Ko S’la left the room there was a scraping of sandals outside, and a Burmese girl’s high-pitched voice said, ‘Is my master awake?’
‘Come in,’ said Flory rather bad-temperedly.
Ma Hla May came in kicking off red-lacquered sandals in the doorway. She was allowed to come to tea, as a special privilege, but not to other meals, nor to wear her sandals in her master’s presence.
Ma Hla May was a woman of twenty-two or -three, and perhaps five feet tall. She was dressed in a longyi of pale blue embroidered Chinese satin, and a starched white muslin ingyi on which several gold lockets hung. Her hair was coiled in a tight black cylinder like ebony, and decorated with jasmine flowers. Her tiny, straight, slender body was as contourless as a bas-relief carved upon a tree. She was like a doll, with her oval, still face the colour of new copper, and her narrow eyes; an outlandish doll and yet a grotesquely beautiful one. A scent of sandalwood and coco-nut oil came into the room with her.
