The Greatest Works of George Orwell. George Orwell

wind blew through the plantain trees, rattling the tattered leaves and bringing a scent of damp. It was going to rain again. Ko S’la had laid the dinner-table and was removing some flying beetles that had committed suicide against the petrol-lamp. Evidently he had not heard about the scene in church yet.

      ‘The holy one’s dinner is ready. Will the holy one dine now?’

      ‘No, not yet. Give me that lamp.’

      He took the lamp, went into the bedroom and shut the door. The stale scent of dust and cigarette-smoke met him, and in the white, unsteady glare of the lamp he could see the mildewed books and the lizards on the wall. So he was back again to this—to the old, secret life—after everything, back where he had been before.

      Was it not possible to endure it? He had endured it before. There were palliatives—books, his garden, drink, work, whoring, shooting, conversations with the doctor.

      No, it was not endurable any longer. Since Elizabeth’s coming the power to suffer and above all to hope, which he had thought dead in him, had sprung to new life. The half-comfortable lethargy in which he had lived was broken. And if he suffered now, there was far worse to come. In a little while someone else would marry her. How he could picture it—the moment when he heard the news!—‘Did you hear the Lackersteen kid’s got off at last? Poor old So-and-so—booked for the altar, God help him,’ etc. etc. And the casual question—‘Oh, really? When is it to be?’—stiffening one’s face, pretending to be uninterested. And then her wedding day approaching, her bridal night—ah, not that! Obscene, obscene. Keep your eyes fixed on that. Obscene. He dragged his tin uniform case from under the bed, took out his automatic pistol, slid a clip of cartridges into the magazine, and pulled one into the breech.

      Ko S’la was remembered in his will. There remained Flo. He laid his pistol on the table and went outside. Flo was playing with Ba Shin, Ko S’la’s youngest son, under the lee of the cookhouse, where the servants had left the remains of a wood fire. She was dancing round him with her small teeth bared, pretending to bite him, while the tiny boy, his belly red in the glow of the embers, smacked weakly at her, laughing and yet half frightened.

      ‘Flo! Come here, Flo!’

      She heard him and came obediently, and then stopped short at the bedroom door. She seemed to have grasped now that there was something wrong. She backed a little and stood looking timorously up at him, unwilling to enter the bedroom.

      ‘Come in here!’

      She wagged her tail, but did not move.

      ‘Come on, Flo! Good old Flo! Come on!’

      Flo was suddenly stricken with terror. She whined, her tail went down, and she shrank back. ‘Come here, blast you!’ he cried, and he took her by the collar and flung her into the room, shutting the door behind her. He went to the table for the pistol.

      ‘Now come here! Do as you’re told!’

      She crouched down and whined for forgiveness. It hurt him to hear it. ‘Come on, old girl! Dear old Flo! Master wouldn’t hurt you. Come here!’ She crawled very slowly towards his feet, flat on her belly, whining, her head down as though afraid to look at him. When she was a yard away he fired, blowing her skull to fragments.

      Her shattered brain looked like red velvet. Was that what he would look like? The heart, then, not the head. He could hear the servants running out of their quarters and shouting—they must have heard the sound of the shot. He hurriedly tore open his coat and pressed the muzzle of the pistol against his shirt. A tiny lizard, translucent like a creature of gelatine, was stalking a white moth along the edge of the table. Flory pulled the trigger with his thumb.

      As Ko S’la burst into the room, for a moment he saw nothing but the dead body of the dog. Then he saw his master’s feet, heels upwards, projecting from beyond the bed. He yelled to the others to keep the children out of the room, and all of them surged back from the doorway with screams. Ko S’la fell on his knees beside Flory’s body, at the same moment as Ba Pe came running through the veranda.

      ‘Has he shot himself?’

      ‘I think so. Turn him over on his back. Ah, look at that! Run for the Indian doctor! Run for your life!’

      There was a neat hole, no bigger than that made by a pencil passing through a sheet of blotting-paper, in Flory’s shirt. He was obviously quite dead. With great difficulty Ko S’la managed to drag him onto the bed, for the other servants refused to touch the body. It was only twenty minutes before the doctor arrived. He had heard only a vague report that Flory was hurt, and had bicycled up the hill at top speed through a storm of rain. He threw his bicycle down in the flower-bed and hurried in through the veranda. He was out of breath, and could not see through his spectacles. He took them off, peering myopically at the bed. ‘What iss it, my friend?’ he said anxiously. ‘Where are you hurt?’ Then, coming closer, he saw what was on the bed, and uttered a harsh sound.

      ‘Ach, what is this? What has happened to him?’

      ‘He has shot himself, sir.’

      The doctor fell on his knees, tore Flory’s shirt open and put his ear to his chest. An expression of agony came into his face, and he seized the dead man by the shoulders and shook him as though mere violence could bring him to life. One arm fell limply over the edge of the bed. The doctor lifted it back again, and then, with the dead hand between his own, suddenly burst into tears. Ko S’la was standing at the foot of the bed, his brown face full of lines. The doctor stood up, and then losing control of himself for a moment, leaned against the bedpost and wept noisily and grotesquely, his back turned on Ko S’la. His fat shoulders were quivering. Presently he recovered himself and turned round again.

      ‘How did this happen?’

      ‘We heard two shots. He did it himself, that is certain. I do not know why.’

      ‘How did you know that he did it on purpose? How do you know that it was not an accident?’

      For answer, Ko S’la pointed silently to Flo’s corpse. The doctor thought for a moment, and then, with gentle, practised hands, swathed the dead man in the sheet and knotted it at foot and head. With death, the birthmark had faded immediately, so that it was no more than a faint grey stain.

      ‘Bury the dog at once. I will tell Mr Macgregor that this happened accidentally while he was cleaning his revolver. Be sure that you bury the dog. Your master was my friend. It shall not be written on his tombstone that he committed suicide.’

XXV

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      It was lucky that the padre should have been at Kyauktada, for he was able, before catching the train on the following evening, to read the burial service in due form and even to deliver a short address on the virtues of the dead man. All Englishmen are virtuous when they are dead. ‘Accidental death’ was the official verdict (Dr Veraswami had proved with all his medico-legal skill that the circumstances pointed to accident) and it was duly inscribed upon the tombstone. Not that anyone believed it, of course. Flory’s real epitaph was the remark, very occasionally uttered—for an Englishman who dies in Burma is so soon forgotten—‘Flory? Oh yes, he was a dark chap, with a birthmark. He shot himself in Kyauktada in 1926. Over a girl, people said. Bloody fool.’ Probably no one, except Elizabeth, was much surprised at what had happened. There is a rather large number of suicides among the Europeans in Burma, and they occasion very little surprise.

      Flory’s death had several results. The first and most important of them was that Dr Veraswami was ruined, even as he had foreseen. The glory of being a white man’s friend—the one thing that had saved him before—had vanished. Flory’s standing with the other Europeans had never been good, it is true; but he was after all a white man, and his friendship conferred a certain prestige. Once he was dead, the doctor’s ruin was assured. U Po Kyin waited the necessary time, and then struck again, harder than ever. It was barely three months before he had fixed it in the head of every European in Kyauktada that the