---
title: "Burmese Days"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 8 of 25
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-burmese-days-fp20180520/8/
cite: "George Orwell, Burmese Days, section 8. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-burmese-days-fp20180520/8/"
---

# 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)]

## 8. VIII

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-burmese-days-fp20180520/8/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-burmese-days-fp20180520/8/#p-N

[¶0] That evening Flory told Ko S’la to send for the barber—he was the only
barber in the town, an Indian, and he made a living by shaving the
Indian coolies at the rate of eight annas a month for a dry shave every
other day. The Europeans patronised him for lack of any other. The
barber was waiting on the veranda when Flory came back from tennis, and
Flory sterilised the scissors with boiling water and Condy’s fluid and
had his hair cut.

[¶1] ‘Lay out my best Palm Beach suit,’ he told Ko S’la, ‘and a silk shirt
and my _sambhur_-skin shoes. Also that new tie that came from Rangoon
last week.’

[¶2] ‘I have done so, _thakin_,’ said Ko S’la, meaning that he would do so.
When Flory came into the bedroom he found Ko S’la waiting beside the
clothes he had laid out, with a faintly sulky air. It was immediately
apparent that Ko S’la knew why Flory was dressing himself up (that is,
in hopes of meeting Elizabeth) and that he disapproved of it.

[¶3] ‘What are you waiting for?’ Flory said.

[¶4] ‘To help you dress, _thakin_.’

[¶5] ‘I shall dress myself this evening. You can go.’

[¶6] He was going to shave—the second time that day—and he did not want Ko
S’la to see him take his shaving things into the bathroom. It was
several years since he had shaved twice in one day. What providential
luck that he had sent for that new tie only last week, he thought. He
dressed himself very carefully, and spent nearly a quarter of an hour in
brushing his hair, which was stiff and would never lie down after it had
been cut.

[¶7] Almost the next moment, as it seemed, he was walking with Elizabeth down
the bazaar road. He had found her alone in the Club ‘library’, and with
a sudden burst of courage asked her to come out with him; and she had
come with a readiness that surprised him, not even stopping to say
anything to her uncle and aunt. He had lived so long in Burma, he had
forgotten English ways. It was very dark under the peepul trees of the
bazaar road, the foliage hiding the quarter moon, but the stars here and
there in a gap blazed white and low, like lamps hanging on invisible
threads. Successive waves of scent came rolling, first the cloying
sweetness of frangipani, then a cold putrid stench of dung or decay from
the huts opposite Dr Veraswami’s bungalow. Drums were throbbing a little
distance away.

[¶8] As he heard the drums Flory remembered that a _pwe_ was being acted a
little further down the road, opposite U Po Kyin’s house; in fact, it
was U Po Kyin who had made arrangements for the _pwe_, though someone
else had paid for it. A daring thought occurred to Flory. He would take
Elizabeth to the _pwe_! She would love it—she must; no one with eyes in
his head could resist a _pwe_-dance. Probably there would be a scandal
when they came back to the Club together after a long absence; but damn
it! what did it matter? She was different from that herd of fools at the
Club. And it would be such fun to go to the _pwe_ together! At this
moment the music burst out with a fearful pandemonium—a strident squeal
of pipes, a rattle like castanets and the hoarse thump of drums, above
which a man’s voice was brassily squalling.

[¶9] ‘Whatever is that noise?’ said Elizabeth, stopping. ‘It sounds just like
a jazz band!’

[¶10] ‘Native music. They’re having a _pwe_—that’s a kind of Burmese play; a
cross between a historical drama and a revue, if you can imagine that.
It’ll interest you, I think. Just round the bend of the road here.’

[¶11] ‘Oh,’ she said rather doubtfully.

[¶12] They came round the bend into a glare of light. The whole road for
thirty yards was blocked by the audience watching the _pwe_. At the back
there was a raised stage, under humming petrol lamps, with the orchestra
squalling and banging in front of it; on the stage two men dressed in
clothes that reminded Elizabeth of Chinese pagodas were posturing with
curved swords in their hands. All down the roadway it was a sea of white
muslin backs of women, pink scarves flung round their shoulders and
black hair-cylinders. A few sprawled on their mats, fast asleep. An old
Chinese with a tray of peanuts was threading his way through the crowd,
intoning mournfully, ‘_Myaypè! Myaypè!_’

[¶13] ‘We’ll stop and watch a few minutes if you like,’ Flory said.

[¶14] The blaze of lights and the appalling din of the orchestra had almost
dazed Elizabeth, but what startled her most of all was the sight of this
crowd of people sitting in the road as though it had been the pit of a
theatre.

[¶15] ‘Do they always have their plays in the middle of the road?’ she said.

[¶16] ‘As a rule. They put up a rough stage and take it down in the morning.
The show lasts all night.’

[¶17] ‘But are they _allowed_ to—blocking up the whole roadway?’

[¶18] ‘Oh yes. There are no traffic regulations here. No traffic to regulate,
you see.’

[¶19] It struck her as very queer. By this time almost the entire audience had
turned round on their mats to stare at the ‘Ingaleikma’. There were half
a dozen chairs in the middle of the crowd, where some clerks and
officials were sitting. U Po Kyin was among them, and he was making
efforts to twist his elephantine body round and greet the Europeans. As
the music stopped the pock-marked Ba Taik came hastening through the
crowd and shikoed low to Flory, with his timorous air.

[¶20] ‘Most holy one, my master U Po Kyin asks whether you and the young white
lady will not come and watch our _pwe_ for a few minutes. He has chairs
ready for you.’

[¶21] ‘They’re asking us to come and sit down,’ Flory said to Elizabeth.
‘Would you like to? It’s rather fun. Those two fellows will clear off in
a moment and there’ll be some dancing. If it wouldn’t bore you for a few
minutes?’

[¶22] Elizabeth felt very doubtful. Somehow it did not seem right or even safe
to go in among that smelly native crowd. However, she trusted Flory, who
presumably knew what was proper, and allowed him to lead her to the
chairs. The Burmans made way on their mats, gazing after her and
chattering; her shins brushed against warm muslin-clad bodies, there was
a feral reek of sweat. U Po Kyin leaned over towards her, bowing as well
as he could and saying nasally:

[¶23] ‘Kindly to sit down, madam! I am most honoured to make your
acquaintance. Good evening, Mr Flory, sir! A most unexpected pleasure.
Had we known that you were to honour us with your company, we would have
provided whiskies and other European refreshments. Ha ha!’

[¶24] He laughed, and his betel-reddened teeth gleamed in the lamplight like
red tinfoil. He was so vast and so hideous that Elizabeth could not help
shrinking from him. A slender youth in a purple _longyi_ was bowing to
her and holding out a tray with two glasses of yellow sherbet, iced. U
Po Kyin clapped his hands sharply, ‘_Hey kaung galay!_’ he called to a
boy beside him. He gave some instructions in Burmese, and the boy pushed
his way to the edge of the stage.

[¶25] ‘He’s telling them to bring on their best dancer in our honour,’ Flory
said. ‘Look, here she comes.’

[¶26] A girl who had been squatting at the back of the stage, smoking, stepped
forward into the lamplight. She was very young, slim-shouldered,
breastless, dressed in a pale blue satin _longyi_ that hid her feet. The
skirts of her _ingyi_ curved outwards above her hips in little panniers,
according to the ancient Burmese fashion. They were like the petals of a
downward-pointing flower. She threw her cigar languidly to one of the
men in the orchestra, and then, holding out one slender arm, writhed it
as though to shake the muscles loose.

[¶27] The orchestra burst into a sudden loud squalling. There were pipes like
bagpipes, a strange instrument consisting of plaques of bamboo which a
man struck with a little hammer, and in the middle there was a man
surrounded by twelve tall drums of different sizes. He reached rapidly
from one to another, thumping them with the heel of his hand. In a
moment the girl began to dance. But at first it was not a dance, it was
a rhythmic nodding, posturing and twisting of the elbows, like the
movements of one of those jointed wooden figures on an old-fashioned
roundabout. The way her neck and elbows rotated was precisely like a
jointed doll, and yet incredibly sinuous. Her hands, twisting like
snakeheads with the fingers close together, could lie back until they
were almost along her forearms. By degrees her movements quickened. She
began to leap from side to side, flinging herself down in a kind of
curtsy and springing up again with extraordinary agility, in spite of
the long _longyi_ that imprisoned her feet. Then she danced in a
grotesque posture as though sitting down, knees bent, body leaned
forward, with her arms extended and writhing, her head also moving to
the beat of the drums. The music quickened to a climax. The girl rose
upright and whirled round as swiftly as a top, the panniers of her
_ingyi_ flying out about her like the petals of a snowdrop. Then the
music stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and the girl sank again into
a curtsy, amid raucous shouting from the audience.

[¶28] Elizabeth watched the dance with a mixture of amazement, boredom and
something approaching horror. She had sipped her drink and found that it
tasted like hair oil. On a mat by her feet three Burmese girls lay fast
asleep with their heads on the same pillow, their small oval faces side
by side like the faces of kittens. Under cover of the music Flory was
speaking in a low voice into Elizabeth’s ear, commenting on the dance.

[¶29] ‘I knew this would interest you; that’s why I brought you here. You’ve
read books and been in civilised places, you’re not like the rest of us
miserable savages here. Don’t you think this is worth watching, in its
queer way? Just look at that girl’s movements—look at that strange,
bent-forward pose like a marionette, and the way her arms twist from the
elbow like a cobra rising to strike. It’s grotesque, it’s even ugly,
with a sort of wilful ugliness. And there’s something sinister in it
too. There’s a touch of the diabolical in all Mongols. And yet when you
look closely, what art, what centuries of culture you can see behind it!
Every movement that girl makes has been studied and handed down through
innumerable generations. Whenever you look closely at the art of these
Eastern peoples you can see that—a civilisation stretching back and
back, practically the same, into times when we were dressed in woad. In
some way that I can’t define to you, the whole life and spirit of Burma
is summed up in the way that girl twists her arms. When you see her you
can see the rice-fields, the villages under the teak trees, the pagodas,
the priests in their yellow robes, the buffaloes swimming the rivers in
the early morning, Thibaw’s palace——’

[¶30] His voice stopped abruptly as the music stopped. There were certain
things, and a _pwe_-dance was one of them, that pricked him to talk
discursively and incautiously; but now he realised that he had only been
talking like a character in a novel, and not a very good novel. He
looked away. Elizabeth had listened to him with a chill of discomfort.
What _was_ the man talking about? was her first thought. Moreover, she
had caught the hated word Art more than once. For the first time she
remembered that Flory was a total stranger and that it had been unwise
to come out with him alone. She looked round her, at the sea of dark
faces and the lurid glare of the lamps; the strangeness of the scene
almost frightened her. What was she doing in this place? Surely it was
not right to be sitting among the black people like this, almost
touching them, in the scent of their garlic and their sweat? Why was she
not back at the Club with the other white people? Why had he brought her
here, among this horde of natives, to watch this hideous and savage
spectacle?

[¶31] The music struck up, and the _pwe_-girl began dancing again. Her face
was powdered so thickly that it gleamed in the lamplight like a chalk
mask with live eyes behind it. With that dead-white oval face and those
wooden gestures she was monstrous, like a demon. The music changed its
tempo, and the girl began to sing in a brassy voice. It was a song with
a swift trochaic rhythm, gay yet fierce. The crowd took it up, a hundred
voices chanting the harsh syllables in unison. Still in that strange
bent posture the girl turned round and danced with her buttocks
protruded towards the audience. Her silk _longyi_ gleamed like metal.
With hands and elbows still rotating she wagged her posterior from side
to side. Then—astonishing feat, quite visible through the _longyi_—she
began to wriggle her two buttocks independently in time with the music.

[¶32] There was a shout of applause from the audience. The three girls asleep
on the mat woke up at the same moment and began clapping their hands
wildly. A clerk shouted nasally ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ in English for the
Europeans’ benefit. But U Po Kyin frowned and waved his hand. He knew
all about European women. Elizabeth, however, had already stood up.

[¶33] ‘I’m going. It’s time we were back,’ she said abruptly. She was looking
away, but Flory could see that her face was pink.

[¶34] He stood up beside her, dismayed. ‘But, I say! Couldn’t you stay a few
minutes longer? I know it’s late, but—they brought this girl on two
hours before she was due, in our honour. Just a few minutes?’

[¶35] ‘I can’t help it, I ought to have been back ages ago. I don’t know
_what_ my uncle and aunt will be thinking.’

[¶36] She began at once to pick her way through the crowd, and he followed
her, with not even time to thank the _pwe_-people for their trouble. The
Burmans made way with a sulky air. How like these English people, to
upset everything by sending for the best dancer and then go away almost
before she had started! There was a fearful row as soon as Flory and
Elizabeth had gone, the _pwe_-girl refusing to go on with her dance and
the audience demanding that she should continue. However, peace was
restored when two clowns hurried onto the stage and began letting off
crackers and making obscene jokes.

[¶37] Flory followed the girl abjectly up the road. She was walking quickly,
her head turned away, and for some moments she would not speak. What a
thing to happen, when they had been getting on so well together! He kept
trying to apologise.

[¶38] ‘I’m so sorry! I’d no idea you’d mind—’

[¶39] ‘It’s nothing. What is there to be sorry about? I only said it was time
to go back, that’s all.’

[¶40] ‘I ought to have thought. One gets not to notice that kind of thing in
this country. These people’s sense of decency isn’t the same as
ours—it’s stricter in some ways—but——’

[¶41] ‘It’s not that! It’s not that!’ she exclaimed quite angrily.

[¶42] He saw that he was only making it worse. They walked on in silence, he
behind. He was miserable. What a bloody fool he had been! And yet all
the while he had no inkling of the real reason why she was angry with
him. It was not the _pwe_-girl’s behaviour, in itself, that had offended
her; it had only brought things to a head. But the whole expedition—the
very notion of _wanting_ to rub shoulders with all those smelly
natives—had impressed her badly. She was perfectly certain that that
was not how white men ought to behave. And that extraordinary rambling
speech that he had begun, with all those long words—almost, she thought
bitterly, as though he were quoting poetry! It was how those beastly
artists that you met sometimes in Paris used to talk. She had thought
him a manly man till this evening. Then her mind went back to the
morning’s adventure, and how he had faced the buffalo barehanded, and
some of her anger evaporated. By the time they reached the Club gate she
felt inclined to forgive him. Flory had by now plucked up courage to
speak again. He stopped, and she stopped too, in a patch where the
boughs let through some starlight and he could see her face dimly.

[¶43] ‘I say. I say, I do hope you’re not really angry about this?’

[¶44] ‘No, of course I’m not. I told you I wasn’t.’

[¶45] ‘I oughtn’t to have taken you there. Please forgive me.——Do you know,
I don’t think I’d tell the others where you’ve been. Perhaps it would be
better to say you’ve just been out for a stroll, out in the
garden—something like that. They might think it queer, a white girl
going to a _pwe_. I don’t think I’d tell them.’

[¶46] ‘Oh, of course I won’t!’ she agreed with a warmness that surprised him.
After that he knew that he was forgiven. But what it was that he was
forgiven, he had not yet grasped.

[¶47] They went into the Club separately, by tacit consent. The expedition had
been a failure, decidedly. There was a gala air about the Club lounge
tonight. The entire European community were waiting to greet Elizabeth,
and the butler and the six _chokras_, in their best starched white
suits, were drawn up on either side of the door, smiling and salaaming.
When the Europeans had finished their greetings the butler came forward
with a vast garland of flowers that the servants had prepared for the
‘missie-sahib’. Mr Macgregor made a very humorous speech of welcome,
introducing everybody. He introduced Maxwell as ‘our local arboreal
specialist’, Westfield as ‘the guardian of law and order and—ah—terror
of the local banditti’, and so on and so forth. There was much laughter.
The sight of a pretty girl’s face had put everyone in such a good humour
that they could even enjoy Mr Macgregor’s speech—which, to tell the
truth, he had spent most of the evening in preparing.

[¶48] At the first possible moment Ellis, with a sly air, took Flory and
Westfield by the arm and drew them away into the card-room. He was in a
much better mood than usual. He pinched Flory’s arm with his small, hard
fingers, painfully but quite amiably.

[¶49] ‘Well, my lad, everyone’s been looking for you. Where have you been all
this time?’

[¶50] ‘Oh, only for a stroll.’

[¶51] ‘For a stroll! And who with?’

[¶52] ‘With Miss Lackersteen.’

[¶53] ‘I knew it! So _you’re_ the bloody fool who’s fallen into the trap, are
you? _You_ swallowed the bait before anyone else had time to look at it.
I thought you were too old a bird for that, by God I did!’

[¶54] ‘What do you mean?’

[¶55] ‘Mean! Look at him pretending he doesn’t know what I mean! Why, I mean
that Ma Lackersteen’s marked you down for her beloved nephew-in-law, of
course. That is, if you aren’t bloody careful. Eh, Westfield?’

[¶56] ‘Quite right, ol’ boy. Eligible young bachelor. Marriage halter and all
that. They’ve got their eye on him.’

[¶57] ‘I don’t know where you’re getting this idea from. The girl’s hardly
been here twenty-four hours.’

[¶58] ‘Long enough for you to take her up the garden path, anyway. You watch
your step. Tom Lackersteen may be a drunken sot, but he’s not such a
bloody fool that he wants a niece hanging round his neck for the rest of
his life. And of course _she_ knows which side her bread’s buttered. So
you take care and don’t go putting your head into the noose.’

[¶59] ‘Damn it, you’ve no right to talk about people like that. After all, the
girl’s only a kid——’

[¶60] ‘My dear old ass’—Ellis, almost affectionate now that he had a new
subject for scandal, took Flory by the coat lapel—‘my dear, dear old
ass, don’t you go filling yourself up with moonshine. You think that
girl’s easy fruit: she’s not. These girls out from Home are all the
same. “Anything in trousers but nothing this side the altar”—that’s
their motto, every one of them. Why do you think the girl’s come out
here?’

[¶61] ‘Why? I don’t know. Because she wanted to, I suppose.’

[¶62] ‘My good fool! She’s come out to lay her claws into a husband, of
course. As if it wasn’t well known! When a girl’s failed everywhere else
she tries India, where every man’s pining for the sight of a white
woman. The Indian marriage-market, they call it. Meat market it ought to
be. Shiploads of ’em coming out every year like carcases of frozen
mutton, to be pawed over by nasty old bachelors like you. Cold storage.
Juicy joints straight from the ice.’

[¶63] ‘You do say some repulsive things.’

[¶64] ‘Best pasture-fed English meat,’ said Ellis with a pleased air. ‘Fresh
consignments. Warranted prime condition.’

[¶65] He went through a pantomime of examining a joint of meat, with goatish
sniffs. This joke was likely to last Ellis a long time; his jokes
usually did; and there was nothing that gave him quite so keen a
pleasure as dragging a woman’s name through mud.

[¶66] Flory did not see much more of Elizabeth that evening. Everyone was in
the lounge together, and there was the silly clattering chatter about
nothing that there is on these occasions. Flory could never keep up that
kind of conversation for long. But as for Elizabeth, the civilised
atmosphere of the Club, with the white faces all round her and the
friendly look of the illustrated papers and the ‘Bonzo’ pictures,
reassured her after that doubtful interlude at the _pwe_.

[¶67] When the Lackersteens left the Club at nine, it was not Flory but Mr
Macgregor who walked home with them, ambling beside Elizabeth like some
friendly saurian monster, among the faint crooked shadows of the gold
mohur stems. The Prome anecdote, and many another, found a new home. Any
newcomer to Kyauktada was apt to come in for rather a large share of Mr
Macgregor’s conversation, for the others looked on him as an
unparalleled bore, and it was a tradition at the Club to interrupt his
stories. But Elizabeth was by nature a good listener. Mr Macgregor
thought he had seldom met so intelligent a girl.

[¶68] Flory stayed a little longer at the Club, drinking with the others.
There was much smutty talk about Elizabeth. The quarrel about Dr
Veraswami’s election had been shelved for the time being. Also, the
notice that Ellis had put up on the previous evening had been taken
down. Mr Macgregor had seen it during his morning visit to the Club, and
in his fair-minded way he had at once insisted on its removal. So the
notice had been suppressed; not, however, before it had achieved its
object.