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VIII
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.
‘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.’
‘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 Hory was dressing himself up (that is, in hopes of
meeting Elizabeth) and that he disapproved of it.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Flory said.
‘To help you dress, thakin.’
‘I shall dress myself this evening. You can go.’
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 badiroom. 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.
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, men a cold putrid stench of dung or
decay from the huts opposite Dr Veraswami’s bungalow. Drums were throbbing a little distance away.
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