George Orwell's novels

3-2

‘Ah, no, Mr Flory, alas! That mighty master-mind, your inspired Bernard Shaw has called him. It is a pleasure to come. But, my friend, what you do not see is that your civilization at its very worst is for us an advance. Gramophones, billycock hats, the News of the World, all is better than the horrible sloth of the Oriental. I see the British, even the least inspired of them, as, as, ’ the doctor searched for a phrase, and found one that probably came from Stevenson ‘as torchbearers upon the path of progress.’

‘I don’t. I see them as a kind of up-to-date, hygienic, self-satisfied louse. Creeping round the world building prisons. They build a prison and call it progress,’ he added rather regretfully, for the doctor would not recognize the allusion.

‘My friend, positively you are harping upon the subject of prisons! Consider that there are also other achievements of your countrymen. They construct roads, they irrigate deserts, they conquer famines, they build schools, they set up hospitals, they combat plague, cholera, leprosy, smallpox, venereal disease.’

‘Having brought it themselves,’ put in Flory.

‘No, sir!’ returned the doctor, eager to claim this distinction for his own countrymen.

‘No, sir, it was the Indians who introduced venereal disease into this country. The Indians introduce diseases, and the English cure them. There is the answer to all your pessimism and seditiousness.’

‘Well, doctor, we shall never agree. The fact is that you like all this modern progress business, whereas I’d rather see things a little bit septic. Burma in the days of Thibaw would have suited me better, I think. And as I said before, if we are a civilizing influence, it’s only to grab on a larger scale. We should chuck it quickly enough if it didn’t pay.’

‘My friend, you do not think that. If truly you disapprove of the British Empire, you would not be talking of it privately here. You would be proclaiming from the house-tops.

I know your character, Mr Flory, better than you know it yourself.’

‘Sorry, doctor; I don’t go in for proclaiming from the housetops. I haven’t the guts. I “counsel ignoble ease”, like old Belial in Paradise Lost. It’s safer. You’ve got to be a pukka sahib or die, in this country. In fifteen years I’ve never talked honestly to anyone except you. My talks here are a safety-valve; a little Black Mass on the sly, if you understand me.’

At this moment there was a desolate wailing noise outside. Old Mattu, the Hindu durwan who looked after the European church, was standing in the sunlight below the veranda.

He was an old fever-stricken creature, more like a grasshopper than a human being, and dressed in a few square inches of dingy rag. He lived near the church in a hut made of flattened kerosene tins, from which he would sometimes hurry forth at the appearance of a European, to salaam deeply and wail something about his ‘talab’, which was eighteen rupees a month. Looking piteously up at the veranda, he massaged the earth-coloured skin of his belly with one hand, and with the other made the motion of putting food into his mouth. The doctor felt in his pocket and dropped a four-anna piece over the veranda rail. He was notorious for his soft-heartedness, and all the beggars in Kyauktada made him their target.

‘Behold there the degeneracy of the East,’ said the doctor, pointing to Mattu, who was doubling himself up like a caterpillar and uttering grateful whines. ‘Look at the wretchedness of his limbs. The calves of his legs are not so thick as an Englishman’s wrists. Look at his abjectness and servility. Look at his ignorance, such ignorance as is not known in Europe outside a home for mental defectives. Once I asked Mattu to tell me his age. “Sahib,” he said, “I believe that I am ten years old.” How can you pretend, Mr Flory, that you are not the natural superior of such creatures?’

‘Poor old Mattu, the uprush of modern progress seems to have missed him somehow,’

Flory said, throwing another four-anna piece over the rail. ‘Go on, Mattu, spend that on booze. Be as degenerate as you can. It all postpones Utopia.’

‘Aha, Mr Flory, sometimes I think that all you say is but too, what is the expression? pull my leg. The English sense of humour. We Orientals have no humour, as is well known.’

‘Lucky devils. It’s been the ruin of us, our bloody sense of humour.’ He yawned with his hands behind his head. Mattu had shambled away after further grateful noises. ‘I suppose I ought to be going before this cursed sun gets too high. The heat’s going to be devilish this year, I feel it in my bones. Well, doctor, we’ve been arguing so much that I haven’t asked for your news. I only got in from the jungle yesterday. I ought to go back the day after tomorrow, don’t know whether I shall. Has anything been happening in Kyauktada? Any scandals?’

The doctor looked suddenly serious. He had taken off his spectacles, and his face, with dark liquid eyes, recalled that of a black retriever dog. He looked away, and spoke in a slightly more hesitant tone than before.

‘That fact is, my friend, there is a most unpleasant business afoot. You will perhaps laugh, it sounds nothing, but I am in serious trouble. Or rather, I am in danger of trouble. It is an underground business. You Europeans will never hear of it directly. In this place’ he waved a hand towards the bazaar ‘there is perpetual conspiracies and plotting of which you do not hear. But to us they mean much.’

‘What’s been happening, then?’

‘It is this. An intrigue is brewing against me. A most serious intrigue which is intended to blacken my character and ruin my official career. As an Englishman you will not understand these things. I have incurred the enmity of a man you probably do not know, U Po Kyin, the Sub-divisional Magistrate. He is a most dangerous man. The damage that he can do to me is incalculable.’

‘U Po Kyin? Which one is that?’

‘The great fat man with many teeth. His house is down the road there, a hundred yards away.’

‘Oh, that fat scoundrel? I know him well.’

‘No, no, my friend, no, no!’ exclaimed the doctor quite eagerly; ‘it cannot be that you know him. Only an Oriental could know him. You, an English gentleman, cannot sink your mind to the depth of such as U Po Kyin. He is more than a scoundrel, he is, what shall I say? Words fail me. He recalls to me a crocodile in human shape. He has the cunning of the crocodile, it's cruelty, it’s b********y. If you knew the record of that man! The outrages he has committed! The extortions, the briberies! The girls he has ruined, raping them before the very eyes of their mothers! Ah, an English gentleman cannot imagine such a character. And this is the man who has taken his oath to ruin me.’

‘I’ve heard a good deal about U Po Kyin from various sources,’ Flory said. ‘He seems a fair sample of a Burmese magistrate. A Burman told me that during the war U Po Kyin was at work recruiting, and he raised a battalion from his own illegitimate sons. Is that true?’ ‘It could hardly be so,’ said the doctor, ‘for they would not have been old enough. But of hiss villainy there is no doubt. And now he is determined upon ruining me. In the first place he hates me because I know too much about him; and besides, he is the enemy of any reasonably honest man. He will proceed, such is the practice of such men, by calumny. He will spread reports about me, reports of the most appalling and untrue descriptions. Already he is beginning them.’

‘But would anyone believe a fellow like that against you? He’s only a lowdown magistrate. You’re a high official.’

‘Ah, Mr Flory, you do not understand Oriental cunning. U Po Kyin has ruined higher officials than I. He will know ways to make himself believed. And therefore, ah, it is a difficult business!’

The doctor took a step or two up and down the veranda, polishing his glasses with his handkerchief. It was clear that there was something more which delicacy prevented him from saying. For a moment his manner was so troubled that Flory would have liked to ask whether he could not help in some way, but he did not, for he knew the uselessness of interfering in Oriental quarrels. No European ever gets to the bottom of these quarrels; there is always something impervious to the European mind, a conspiracy behind the conspiracy, a plot within the plot. Besides, to keep out of ‘native’ quarrels is one of the Ten Precepts of the pukka sahib. He said doubtfully: ‘What is a difficult business?’

‘It is, if only, ah, my friend, you will laugh at me, I fear. But it is this: if only I were a member of your European Club! If only! How different would my position be!’

‘The Club? Why? How would that help you?’

‘My friend, in these matters prestige is everything. It is not that U Po Kyin will attack me openly; he would never dare; it is that he will libel me and backbite me. And whether he is believed or not depends entirely upon my standing with the Europeans. It is so that things happen in India. If our prestige is good, we rise; if bad, we fall. A nod and a wink will accomplish more than a thousand official reports. And you do not know what prestige it gives to an Indian to be a member of the European Club. In the Club, practically he is a European. No calumny can touch him. A Club member is sacrosanct.’

Flory looked away over the veranda rail. He had got up as though to go. It always made him ashamed and uncomfortable when it had to be admitted between them that the doctor, because of his black skin, could not be received in the Club. It is a disagreeable thing when one’s close friend is not one’s social equal; but it is a thing native to the very air of India.

‘They might elect you at the next general meeting,’ he said. ‘I don’t say they will, but it’s not impossible.’

‘I trust, Mr Flory, that you do not think I am asking you to propose me for the Club?

Heaven forbid! I know that that is impossible for you. Simply I was remarking that if I were a member of the Club, I should be forthwith invulnerable.’

Flory c****d his Terai hat loosely on his head and stirred Flo up with his stick. She was asleep under the chair. Flory felt very uncomfortable. He knew that in all probability, if he had the courage to face a few rows with Ellis, he could secure Dr Veraswami’s election to the Club. And the doctor, after all, was his friend, indeed, almost the sole friend he had in Burma. They had talked and argued together a hundred times, the doctor had dined at his house, he had even proposed to introduce Flory to his wife, but she, a pious Hindu, had refused with horror. They had made shooting trips together, the doctor, equipped with bandoliers and hunting knives, panting up hillsides slippery with bamboo leaves and blazing his gun at nothing. In common decency it was his duty to support the doctor. But he knew also that the doctor would never ask for any support, and that there would be an ugly row before an Oriental was got into the Club. No, he could not face that row! It was not worth it. He said:

‘To tell you the truth, there’s been talk about this already. They were discussing it this morning, and that little beast Ellis was preaching his usual “dirty n****r” sermon.

Macgregor has suggested electing one native member. He’s had orders to do so, I imagine.’

‘Yes, I heard that. We hear all these things. It was that that put the idea into my head.’

‘It’s to come up at the general meeting in June. I don’t know what’ll happen, it depends on Macgregor, I think. I’ll give you my vote, but I can’t do more than that. I’m sorry, but I simply can’t. You don’t know the row there’ll be. Very likely they will elect you, but they’ll do it as an unpleasant duty, under protest. They’ve made a perfect fetish of keeping this Club all-white, as they call it.’

‘Of course, of course, my friend! I understand perfectly. Heaven forbid that you should get into trouble with your European friends on my behalf. Please, please, never to embroil yourself! The mere fact that you are known to be my friend benefits me more than you can imagine. Prestige, Mr Flory, is like a barometer. 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 is much, my friend. And for that, there is another thing of which I would warn you, though you will laugh, I fear. It is 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.