---
title: "Burmese Days"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 19 of 25
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-burmese-days-fp20180520/19/
cite: "George Orwell, Burmese Days, section 19. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-burmese-days-fp20180520/19/"
---

# Burmese Days

*George Orwell*

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> _Title:_ Burmese Days
_Date of first publication:_ 1934
_Author:_ Eric Blair (as George Orwell) (1903-1950)
_Date first posted:_ May 21, 2018
_Date last updated:_ May 21, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20180520

> This ebook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Cindy Beyer & the online
Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> [Cover Illustration]

> GEORGE  ORWELL

> Burmese  Days

> This desert inaccessible
               Under the shade of melancholy boughs.

> _As You Like It_

> First published in the USA by Harper & Brothers, New York 1934
           Published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1935

> Copyright 1934 by Eric Blair

> [Illustration: Map of Kyauktada]

> TRANSCRIBER NOTES

> Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

> Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

> [The end of _Burmese Days_ by Eric Blair (as George Orwell)]

## 19. XIX

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-burmese-days-fp20180520/19/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-burmese-days-fp20180520/19/#p-N

[¶0] The heat was growing worse and worse. April was nearly over, but there
was no hope of rain for another three weeks, five weeks it might be.
Even the lovely transient dawns were spoiled by the thought of the long,
blinding hours to come, when one’s head would ache and the glare would
penetrate through every covering and glue up one’s eyelids with restless
sleep. No one, Oriental or European, could keep awake in the heat of the
day without a struggle; at night, on the other hand, with the howling
dogs and the pools of sweat that collected and tormented one’s prickly
heat, no one could sleep. The mosquitoes at the Club were so bad that
sticks of incense had to be kept burning in all the corners, and the
women sat with their legs in pillow-slips. Only Verrall and Elizabeth
were indifferent to the heat. They were young and their blood was fresh,
and Verrall was too stoical and Elizabeth too happy to pay any attention
to the climate.

[¶1] There was much bickering and scandalmongering at the Club these days.
Verrall had put everyone’s nose out of joint. He had taken to coming to
the Club for an hour or two in the evenings, but he ignored the other
members, refused the drinks they offered him, and answered attempts at
conversation with surly monosyllables. He would sit under the punkah in
the chair that had once been sacred to Mrs Lackersteen, reading such of
the papers as interested him, until Elizabeth came, when he would dance
and talk with her for an hour or two and then make off without so much
as a good-night to anybody. Meanwhile Mr Lackersteen was alone in his
camp, and, according to the rumours which drifted back to Kyauktada,
consoling his loneliness with quite a miscellany of Burmese women.

[¶2] Elizabeth and Verrall went out riding together almost every evening now.
Verrall’s mornings, after parade, were sacred to polo practice, but he
had decided that it was worth while giving up the evenings to Elizabeth.
She took naturally to riding, just as she had to shooting; she even had
the assurance to tell Verrall that she had ‘hunted quite a lot’ at Home.
He saw at a glance that she was lying, but at least she did not ride so
badly as to be a nuisance to him.

[¶3] They used to ride up the red road into the jungle, ford the stream by
the big pyinkado tree covered with orchids, and then follow the narrow
cart-track, where the dust was soft and the horses could gallop. It was
stifling hot in the dusty jungle, and there were always mutterings of
far-away, rainless thunder. Small martins flitted round the horses,
keeping pace with them, to hawk for the flies their hooves turned up.
Elizabeth rode the bay pony, Verrall the white. On the way home they
would walk their sweat-dark horses abreast, so close that sometimes his
knee brushed against hers, and talk. Verrall could drop his offensive
manner and talk amicably enough when he chose, and he did choose with
Elizabeth.

[¶4] Ah, the joy of those rides together! The joy of being on horseback and
in the world of horses—the world of hunting and racing, polo and
pigsticking! If Elizabeth had loved Verrall for nothing else, she would
have loved him for bringing horses into her life. She tormented him to
talk about horses as once she had tormented Flory to talk about
shooting. Verrall was no talker, it was true. A few gruff, jerky
sentences about polo and pigsticking, and a catalogue of Indian stations
and the names of regiments, were the best he could do. And yet somehow
the little he said could thrill Elizabeth as all Flory’s talk had never
done. The mere sight of him on horseback was more evocative than any
words. An aura of horsemanship and soldiering surrounded him. In his
tanned face and his hard, straight body Elizabeth saw all the romance,
the splendid panache of a cavalryman’s life. She saw the North-West
Frontier and the Cavalry Club—she saw the polo grounds and the parched
barrack yards, and the brown squadrons of horsemen galloping with their
long lances poised and the trains of their _pagris_ streaming; she heard
the bugle-calls and the jingle of spurs, and the regimental bands
playing outside the messrooms while the officers sat at dinner in their
stiff, gorgeous uniforms. How splendid it was, that equestrian world,
how splendid! And it was _her_ world, she belonged to it, she had been
born for it. These days, she lived, thought, dreamed horses, almost like
Verrall himself. The time came when she not only _told_ her taradiddle
about having ‘hunted quite a lot’, she even came near believing it.

[¶5] In every possible way they got on so well together. He never bored her
and fretted her as Flory had done. (As a matter of fact, she had almost
forgotten Flory, these days; when she thought of him, it was for some
reason always his birthmark that she remembered.) It was a bond between
them that Verrall detested anything ‘highbrow’ even more than she did.
He told her once that he had not read a book since he was eighteen, and
that indeed he ‘loathed’ books; ‘except, of course, Jorrocks and all
that’. On the evening of their third or fourth ride they were parting at
the Lackersteens’ gate. Verrall had successfully resisted all Mrs
Lackersteen’s invitations to meals; he had not yet set foot inside the
Lackersteens’ house, and he did not intend to do so. As the _syce_ was
taking Elizabeth’s pony, Verrall said:

[¶6] ‘I tell you what. Next time we come out you shall ride Belinda. I’ll
ride the chestnut. I think you’ve got on well enough not to go and cut
Belinda’s mouth up.’

[¶7] Belinda was the Arab mare. Verrall had owned her two years, and till
this moment he had never once allowed anyone else to mount her, not even
the _syce_. It was the greatest favour that he could imagine. And so
perfectly did Elizabeth appreciate Verrall’s point of view that she
understood the greatness of the favour, and was thankful.

[¶8] The next evening, as they rode home side by side, Verrall put his arm
round Elizabeth’s shoulder, lifted her out of the saddle and pulled her
against him. He was very strong. He dropped the bridle, and, with his
free hand, lifted her face up to meet his; their mouths met. For a
moment he held her so, then lowered her to the ground and slipped from
his horse. They stood embraced, their thin, drenched shirts pressed
together, the two bridles held in the crook of his arm.

[¶9] It was about the same time that Flory, twenty miles away, decided to
come back to Kyauktada. He was standing at the jungle’s edge by the bank
of a dried-up stream, where he had walked to tire himself, watching some
tiny, nameless finches eating the seeds of the tall grasses. The cocks
were chrome-yellow, the hens like hen sparrows. Too tiny to bend the
stalks, they came whirring towards them, seized them in mid-flight and
bore them to the ground by their own weight. Flory watched the birds
incuriously, and almost hated them because they could light no spark of
interest in him. In his idleness he flung his _dah_ at them, scaring
them away. If she were here, if she were here! Everything—birds, trees,
flowers, everything—was deadly and meaningless because she was not
here. As the days passed the knowledge that he had lost her had grown
surer and more actual until it poisoned every moment.

[¶10] He loitered a little way into the jungle, flicking at creepers with his
_dah_. His limbs felt slack and leaden. He noticed a wild vanilla plant
trailing over a bush, and bent down to sniff at its slender, fragrant
pods. The scent brought him a feeling of staleness and deadly ennui.
Alone, alone, in the sea of life enisled! The pain was so great that he
struck his fist against a tree, jarring his arm and splitting two
knuckles. He must go back to Kyauktada. It was folly, for barely a
fortnight had passed since the scene between them, and his only chance
was to give her time to forget it. Still, he must go back. He could not
stay any longer in this deadly place, alone with his thoughts among the
endless, mindless leaves.

[¶11] A happy thought occurred to him. He could take Elizabeth the
leopard-skin that was being cured for her in the jail. It would be a
pretext for seeing her, and when one comes bearing gifts one is
generally listened to. This time he would not let her cut him short
without a word. He would explain, extenuate—make her realise that she
had been unjust to him. It was not right that she should condemn him
because of Ma Hla May, whom he had turned out of doors for Elizabeth’s
own sake. Surely she must forgive him when she heard the truth of the
story? And this time she _should_ hear it; he would force her to listen
to him if he had to hold her by the arms while he did it.

[¶12] He went back the same evening. It was a twenty-mile journey, by rutted
cart-tracks, but Flory decided to march by night, giving the reason that
it was cooler. The servants almost mutinied at the idea of a
night-march, and at the very last moment old Sammy collapsed in a
semi-genuine fit and had to be plied with gin before he could start. It
was a moonless night. They made their way by the light of lanterns, in
which Flo’s eyes gleamed like emeralds and the bullocks’ eyes like
moonstones. When the sun was up the servants halted to gather sticks and
cook breakfast, but Flory was in a fever to be at Kyauktada, and he
hurried ahead. He had no feeling of tiredness. The thought of the
leopard-skin had filled him with extravagant hopes. He crossed the
glittering river by sampan and went straight to Dr Veraswami’s bungalow,
getting there about ten.

[¶13] The doctor invited him to breakfast, and—having shooed the women into
some suitable hiding-place—took him into his own bathroom so that he
could wash and shave. At breakfast the doctor was very excited and full
of denunciations of ‘the crocodile’; for it appeared that the
pseudo-rebellion was now on the point of breaking out. It was not till
after breakfast that Flory had an opportunity to mention the
leopard-skin.

[¶14] ‘Oh, by the way, doctor. What about that skin I sent to the jail to be
cured? Is it done yet?’

[¶15] ‘Ah——’ said the doctor in a slightly disconcerted manner, rubbing his
nose. He went inside the house—they were breakfasting on the veranda,
for the doctor’s wife had protested violently against Flory being
brought indoors—and came back in a moment with the skin rolled up in a
bundle.

[¶16] ‘Ass a matter of fact——’ he began, unrolling it.

[¶17] ‘Oh, doctor!’

[¶18] The skin had been utterly ruined. It was as stiff as cardboard, with the
leather cracked and the fur discoloured and even rubbed off in patches.
It also stank abominably. Instead of being cured, it had been converted
into a piece of rubbish.

[¶19] ‘Oh, doctor! What a mess they’ve made of it! How the devil did it
happen?’

[¶20] ‘I am so sorry, my friend! I wass about to apologise. It wass the best
we could do. There iss no one at the jail who knows how to cure skins
now.’

[¶21] ‘But, damn it, that convict used to cure them so beautifully!’

[¶22] ‘Ah, yes. But he iss gone from us these three weeks, alas.’

[¶23] ‘Gone? I thought he was doing seven years?’

[¶24] ‘What? Did you not hear, my friend? I thought you knew who it wass that
used to cure the skins. It wass Nga Shwe O.’

[¶25] ‘Nga Shwe O?’

[¶26] ‘The dacoit who escaped with U Po Kyin’s assistance.’

[¶27] ‘Oh, hell!’

[¶28] The mishap had daunted him dreadfully. Nevertheless, in the afternoon,
having bathed and put on a clean suit, he went up to the Lackersteens’
house, at about four. It was very early to call, but he wanted to make
sure of catching Elizabeth before she went down to the Club. Mrs
Lackersteen, who had been asleep and was not prepared for visitors,
received him with an ill grace, not even asking him to sit down.

[¶29] ‘I’m afraid Elizabeth isn’t down yet. She’s dressing to go out riding.
Wouldn’t it be better if you left a message?’

[¶30] ‘I’d like to see her, if you don’t mind. I’ve brought her the skin of
that leopard we shot together.’

[¶31] Mrs Lackersteen left him standing up in the drawing-room, feeling
lumpish and abnormally large as one does at such times. However, she
fetched Elizabeth, taking the opportunity of whispering to her outside
the door: ‘Get rid of that dreadful man as soon as you can, dear. I
can’t bear him about the house at this time of day.’

[¶32] As Elizabeth entered the room Flory’s heart pounded so violently that a
reddish mist passed behind his eyes. She was wearing a silk shirt and
jodhpurs, and she was a little sunburned. Even in his memory she had
never been so beautiful. He quailed; on the instant he was lost—every
scrap of his screwed-up courage had fled. Instead of stepping forward to
meet her he actually backed away. There was a fearful crash behind him;
he had upset an occasional table and sent a bowl of zinnias hurtling
across the floor.

[¶33] ‘I’m so sorry!’ he exclaimed in horror.

[¶34] ‘Oh, not at _all_! _Please_ don’t worry about it!’

[¶35] She helped him to pick up the table, chattering all the while as gaily
and easily as though nothing had happened: ‘You _have_ been away a long
time, Mr Flory! You’re quite a _stranger_! We’ve _so_ missed you at the
Club!’ etc. etc. She was italicising every other word, with that deadly,
glittering brightness that a woman puts on when she is dodging a moral
obligation. He was terrified of her. He could not even look her in the
face. She took up a box of cigarettes and offered him one, but he
refused it. His hand was shaking too much to take it.

[¶36] ‘I’ve brought you that skin,’ he said flatly.

[¶37] He unrolled it on the table they had just picked up. It looked so shabby
and miserable that he wished he had never brought it. She came close to
him to examine the skin, so close that her flowerlike cheek was not a
foot from his own, and he could feel the warmth of her body. So great
was his fear of her that he stepped hurriedly away. And in the same
moment she too stepped back with a wince of disgust, having caught the
foul odour of the skin. It shamed him terribly. It was almost as though
it had been himself and not the skin that stank.

[¶38] ‘Thank you _ever_ so much, Mr Flory!’ She had put another yard between
herself and the skin. ‘Such a _lovely_ big skin, isn’t it?’

[¶39] ‘It was, but they’ve spoiled it, I’m afraid.’

[¶40] ‘Oh no! I shall love having it! Are you back in Kyauktada for long? How
dreadfully hot it must have been in camp!’

[¶41] ‘Yes, it’s been very hot.’

[¶42] For three minutes they actually talked of the weather. He was helpless.
All that he had promised himself to say, all his arguments and
pleadings, had withered in his throat. ‘You fool, you fool,’ he thought,
‘what are you doing? Did you come twenty miles for this? Go on, say what
you came to say! Seize her in your arms; make her listen, kick her, beat
her—anything sooner than let her choke you with this drivel!’ But it
was hopeless, hopeless. Not a word could his tongue utter except futile
trivialities. How could he plead or argue, when that bright easy air of
hers, that dragged every word to the level of Club-chatter, silenced him
before he spoke? Where do they learn it, that dreadful tee-heeing
brightness? In these brisk modern girls’ schools, no doubt. The piece of
carrion on the table made him more ashamed every moment. He stood there
almost voiceless, lumpishly ugly with his face yellow and creased after
the sleepless night, and his birthmark like a smear of dirt.

[¶43] She got rid of him after a very few minutes. ‘And now, Mr Flory, if you
_don’t_ mind, I ought really——’

[¶44] He mumbled rather than said, ‘Won’t you come out with me again some
time? Walking, shooting—something?’

[¶45] ‘I have so _little_ time nowadays! _All_ my evenings seem to be full.
This evening I’m going out riding. With Mr Verrall,’ she added.

[¶46] It was possible that she added that in order to wound him. This was the
first that he had heard of her friendship with Verrall. He could not
keep the dead, flat tone of envy out of his voice as he said:

[¶47] ‘Do you go out riding much with Verrall?’

[¶48] ‘Almost every evening. He’s such a wonderful horseman! And he has
absolute _strings_ of polo ponies!’

[¶49] ‘Ah. And of course I have no polo ponies.’

[¶50] It was the first thing he had said that even approached seriousness, and
it did no more than offend her. However, she answered him with the same
gay easy air as before, and then showed him out. Mrs Lackersteen came
back to the drawing-room, sniffed the air, and immediately ordered the
servants to take the reeking leopard-skin outside and burn it.

[¶51] Flory lounged at his garden gate, pretending to feed the pigeons. He
could not deny himself the pain of seeing Elizabeth and Verrall start
out on their ride. How vulgarly, how cruelly she had behaved to him! It
is dreadful when people will not even have the decency to quarrel.
Presently Verrall rode up to the Lackersteens’ house on the white pony,
with a _syce_ riding the chestnut, then there was a pause, then they
emerged together, Verrall on the chestnut pony, Elizabeth on the white,
and trotted quickly up the hill. They were chattering and laughing, her
silk-shirted shoulder very close to his. Neither looked towards Flory.

[¶52] When they had disappeared into the jungle, Flory still loafed in the
garden. The glare was waning to yellow. The _mali_ was at work grubbing
up the English flowers, most of which had died, slain by too much
sunshine, and planting balsams, cockscombs, and more zinnias. An hour
passed, and a melancholy, earth-coloured Indian loitered up the drive,
dressed in a loincloth and a salmon-pink _pagri_ on which a
washing-basket was balanced. He laid down his basket and salaamed to
Flory.

[¶53] ‘Who are you?’

[¶54] ‘Book-wallah, sahib.’

[¶55] The book-wallah was an itinerant pedlar of books who wandered from
station to station throughout Upper Burma. His system of exchange was
that for any book in his bundle you gave him four annas, and any other
book. Not quite _any_ book, however, for the book-wallah, though
analphabetic, had learned to recognise and refuse a Bible.

[¶56] ‘No, sahib,’ he would say plaintively, ‘no. This book’ (he would turn it
over disapprovingly in his flat brown hands) ‘this book with a black
cover and gold letters—this one I cannot take. I know not how it is,
but all sahibs are offering me this book, and none are taking it. What
can it be that is in this black book? Some evil, undoubtedly.’

[¶57] ‘Turn out your trash,’ Flory said.

[¶58] He hunted among them for a good thriller—Edgar Wallace or Agatha
Christie or something; anything to still the deadly restlessness that
was at his heart. As he bent over the books he saw that both Indians
were exclaiming and pointing towards the edge of the jungle.

[¶59] ‘_Dekho!_’ said the _mali_ in his plum-in-the-mouth voice.

[¶60] The two ponies were emerging from the jungle. But they were riderless.
They came trotting down the hill with the silly guilty air of a horse
that has escaped from its master, with the stirrups swinging and
clashing under their bellies.

[¶61] Flory remained unconsciously clasping one of the books against his
chest. Verrall and Elizabeth had _dismounted_. It was not an accident;
by no effort of the mind could one imagine Verrall falling off his
horse. They had dismounted, and the ponies had escaped.

[¶62] They had dismounted—for what? Ah, but he knew for what! It was not a
question of suspecting; he _knew_. He could see the whole thing
happening, in one of those hallucinations that are so perfect in detail,
so vilely obscene, that they are past bearing. He threw the book
violently down and made for the house, leaving the book-wallah
disappointed. The servants heard him moving about indoors, and presently
he called for a bottle of whisky. He had a drink and it did him no good.
Then he filled a tumbler two-thirds full, added enough water to make it
drinkable, and swallowed it. The filthy, nauseous dose was no sooner
down his throat than he repeated it. He had done the same thing in camp
once, years ago, when he was tortured by toothache and three hundred
miles from a dentist. At seven Ko S’la came in as usual to say that the
bathwater was hot. Flory was lying in one of the long chairs, with his
coat off and his shirt torn open at the throat.

[¶63] ‘Your bath, _thakin_,’ said Ko S’la.

[¶64] Flory did not answer, and Ko S’la touched his arm, thinking him asleep.
Flory was much too drunk to move. The empty bottle had rolled across the
floor, leaving a trail of whisky-drops behind it. Ko S’la called for Ba
Pe and picked up the bottle, clicking his tongue.

[¶65] ‘Just look at this! He has drunk more than three-quarters of a bottle!’

[¶66] ‘What, again? I thought he had given up drinking?’

[¶67] ‘It is that accursed woman, I suppose. Now we must carry him carefully.
You take his heels, I’ll take his head. That’s right. Hoist him up!’

[¶68] They carried Flory into the other room and laid him gently on the bed.

[¶69] ‘Is he really going to marry this “Ingaleikma”?’ said Ba Pe.

[¶70] ‘Heaven knows. She is the mistress of the young police officer at
present, so I was told. Their ways are not our ways. I think I know what
he will be wanting tonight,’ he added as he undid Flory’s braces—for Ko
S’la had the art, so necessary in a bachelor’s servant, of undressing
his master without waking him.

[¶71] The servants were rather more pleased than not to see this return to
bachelor habits. Flory woke about midnight, naked in a pool of sweat.
His head felt as though some large, sharp-cornered metal object were
bumping about inside it. The mosquito net was up, and a young woman was
sitting beside the bed fanning him with a wicker fan. She had an
agreeable negroid face, bronze-gold in the candlelight. She explained
that she was a prostitute, and that Ko S’la had engaged her on his own
responsibility for a fee of ten rupees.

[¶72] Flory’s head was splitting. ‘For God’s sake get me something to drink,’
he said feebly to the woman. She brought him some soda-water which Ko
S’la had cooled in readiness, and soaked a towel and put a wet compress
round his forehead. She was a fat, good-tempered creature. She told him
that her name was Ma Sein Galay, and that besides plying her other trade
she sold paddy baskets in the bazaar near Li Yeik’s shop. Flory’s head
felt better presently, and he asked for a cigarette; whereupon Ma Sein
Galay, having fetched the cigarette, said naïvely, ‘Shall I take my
clothes off now, _thakin_?’

[¶73] Why not? he thought dimly. He made room for her in the bed. But when he
smelled the familiar scent of garlic and coco-nut oil, something painful
happened within him, and with his head pillowed on Ma Sein Galay’s fat
shoulder he actually wept, a thing he had not done since he was fifteen
years old.