Burmese Days

‘Of my father, sir, I remember little, but he was very choleric man and many whackings with big bamboo stick all knobs on both for self, little half-brother and two mothers. Also how on occasion of bishop’s visit little half-brother and I dress in longyis and sent among the Burmese children to preserve incognito. My father never rose to be bishop, sir. Four converts only in twenty-eight years, and also too great fondness for Chinese rice-spirit very fiery noised abroad and spoil sales of my father’s booklet entitled The Scourge of Alcohol, published with the Rangoon Baptist Press, one rupee eight annas. My little half-brother die one hot weather, always coughing, coughing,’ etc. etc.

The two Eurasians perceived the presence of Elizabeth. Both doffed their topis with bows and brilliant displays of teeth. It was probably several years since either of them had had a chance of talking to an Englishwoman. Francis burst out more effusively than ever. He was chattering in evident dread that he would be interrupted and the conversation cut short.

‘Good evening to you, madam, good evening, good evening! Most honoured to make your acquaintance, madam! Very sweltering is the weather these days, is not? But seasonable for April. Not too much you are suffering from prickly heat, I trust? Pounded tamarind applied to the afflicted spot is infallible. Myself I suffer torments each night. Very prevalent disease among we Europians.’

He pronounced it Europian, like Mr Chollop in Martin Chuzzlewit. Elizabeth did not answer. She was looking at the Eurasians somewhat coldly. She had only a dim idea as to who or what they were, and it struck her as impertinent that they should speak to her.

‘Thanks, I’ll remember about the tamarind,’ Flory said.

‘Specific of renowned Chinese doctor, sir. Also, sir-madam, may I advise to you, wearing only Terai hat is not judicious in April, sir. For the natives all well, their skulls are adamant. But for us sunstroke ever menaces. Very deadly is the sun upon Europian skull. But is it that I detain you, madam?’

This was said in a disappointed tone. Elizabeth had, in fact, decided to snub the Eurasians. She did not know why Flory was allowing them to hold him in conversation. As she turned away to stroll back to the tennis court, she made a practice stroke in the air with her racquet, to remind Flory that the game was overdue. He saw it and followed her, rather reluctantly, for he did not like snubbing the wretched Francis, bore though he was.

‘I must be off,’ he said. ‘Good evening, Francis. Good evening, Samuel.’

‘Good evening, sir! Good evening, madam! Good evening, good evening!’ They receded with more hat-flourishes.

‘Who are those two?’ said Elizabeth as Flory came up with her. ‘Such extraordinary creatures! They were in church on Sunday. One of them looks almost white. Surely he isn’t an Englishman?’

‘No, they’re Eurasians–sons of white fathers and native mothers. Yellow-bellies is our friendly nickname for them.’

‘But what are they doing here? Where do they live? Do they do any work?’

‘They exist somehow or other in the bazaar. I believe Francis acts as clerk to an Indian money-lender, and Samuel to some of the pleaders. But they’d probably starve now and then if it weren’t for the charity of the natives.’

‘The natives! Do you mean to say they–sort of cadge from the natives?’

‘I fancy so. It would be a very easy thing to do, if one cared to. The Burmese won’t let anyone starve.’

Elizabeth had never heard of anything of this kind before. The notion of men who were at least partly white living in poverty among ‘natives’ so shocked her that she stopped short on the path, and the game of tennis was postponed for a few minutes.

‘But how awful! I mean, it’s such a bad example! It’s almost as bad as if one of us was like that. Couldn’t something be done for those two? Get up a subscription and send them away from here, or something?’

‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t help much. Wherever they went they’d be in the same position.’

‘But couldn’t they get some proper work to do?’

‘I doubt it. You see, Eurasians of that type–men who’ve been brought up in the bazaar and had no education–are done for from the start. The Europeans won’t touch them with a stick, and they’re cut off from entering the lower-grade Government services. There’s nothing they can do except cadge, unless they chuck all pretension to being Europeans. And really you can’t expect the poor devils to do that. Their drop of white blood is the sole asset they’ve got. Poor Francis, I never meet him but he begins telling me about his prickly heat. Natives, you see, are supposed not to suffer from prickly heat–bosh, of course, but people believe it. It’s the same with sunstroke. They wear those huge topis to remind you that they’ve got European skulls. A kind of coat-of-arms. The bend sinister, you might say.’

This did not satisfy Elizabeth. She perceived that Flory, as usual, had a sneaking sympathy with the Eurasians. And the appearance of the two men had excited a peculiar dislike in her. She had placed their type now. They looked like Dagoes. Like those Mexicans and Italians and other Dago people who play the mauvais rôle in so many a film.

‘They looked awfully degenerate types, didn’t they? So thin and weedy and cringing; and they haven’t got at all honest faces. I suppose these Eurasians are very degenerate? I’ve heard that half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races. Is that true?’

‘I don’t know that it’s true. Most Eurasians aren’t very good specimens, and it’s hard to see how they could be, with their upbringing. But our attitude towards them is rather beasdy. We always talk of them as though they’d sprung up from the ground like mushrooms, with all their faults ready-made. But when all’s said and done, we’re responsible for their existence.’

‘Responsible for their existence?’

‘Well, they’ve all got fathers, you see.’

‘Oh… Of course there’s that… But after all, you aren’t responsible. I mean, only a very low kind of man would–er–have anything to do with native women, wouldn’t he?’

‘Oh, quite. But the fathers of both those two were clergymen in holy orders, I believe.’

He thought of Rosa McFee, the Eurasian girl he had seduced in Mandalay in 1913. The way he used to sneak down to the house in a gharry with the shutters drawn; Rosa’s corkscrew curls; her withered old Burmese mother, giving him tea in the dark living-room with the fern pots and the wicker divan. And afterwards, when he had chucked Rosa, those dreadful, imploring letters on scented notepaper, which, in the end, he had ceased opening.

Elizabeth reverted to the subject of Francis and Samuel after tennis.

‘Those two Eurasians–does anyone here have anything to do with them? Invite them to their houses or anything?’

‘Good gracious, no. They’re complete outcasts. It’s not considered quite the thing to talk to them, in fact. Most of us say good morning to them–Ellis won’t even do that.’

‘But you talked to them.’

‘Oh well, I break the rules occasionally. I meant that a pukka sahib probably wouldn’t be seen talking to them. But you see, I try–just sometimes, when I have the pluck–not to be a pukka sahib.’

It was an unwise remark. She knew very well by this time the meaning of the phrase ‘pukka sahib’ and all it stood for. His remark had made the difference in their viewpoint a little clearer. The glance she gave him was almost hostile, and curiously hard; for her face could look hard sometimes, in spite of its youth and its flower-like skin. Those modish tortoise-shell spectacles gave her a very self-possessed look. Spectacles are queerly expressive things–almost more expressive, indeed, than eyes.

As yet he had neither understood her nor quite won her trust. Yet on the surface, at least, things had not gone ill between them. He had fretted her sometimes, but the good impression that he had made that first morning was not yet effaced. It was a curious fact that she scarcely noticed his birthmark at this time. And there were some subjects on which she was glad to hear him talk. Shooting, for example–she seemed to have an enthusiasm for shooting that was remarkable in a girl. Horses, also; but he was less knowledgeable about horses. He had arranged to take her out for a day’s shooting, later, when he could make preparations. Both of them were looking forward to the expedition with some eagerness, though not entirely for the same reason.