Not Out of Hate. Ma Ma Lay

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СКАЧАТЬ is involved in anti-British nationalist politics.

      Than Than. Wife of Ko Nay U.

      Daw Mya Thet. Way Way’s mother, who has become a Buddhist nun in Upper Burma. She also is known by the ecclestiastical name Thila Sari.

      Meh Aye. A servant girl in the household of U Po Thein.

      U Saw Han. An Anglophile Burmese bachelor, 37 years old, who works for Bullock Brothers, a British rice-trading firm.

      Maung Mya. U Saw Han’s butler.

       1

      Way Way stood looking intently at the house next door. From her upstairs window she could look directly into the front room on the ground floor. It was different from anything she had ever seen. The house was being prepared for the new tenant’s arrival. She could see that a smoke-colored carpet had been laid on the floor, and a greyish blue sofa and matching chairs had been arranged around it. Alongside the sofa and each chair were small low tables holding ashtrays. The tables were polished to a shine and were the reddish brown color of ripe thabyei fruit. In the middle of the carpet stood a rectangular coffee table that had no legs but seemed to be held up by solid piece of wood. Its black, polished surface gleamed with points of light. On the table sat a red porcelain vase shaped like a monk’s begging bowl filled with a profusion of small, white kalamet flowers, like lilies of the valley, spraying out from all sides onto the table.

      Way Way was delighted at the sight. The white of the flowers in the cherry-red bowl made an arresting picture on the dark, glass-like surface of the coffee table. She thought to herself, How lovely! … I could go on looking at it forever. She shifted her gaze to the upper end of the room, and against the wall she saw a piece of furniture that looked like a couch with six legs and a woven cane seat and back. It was the size of a single bed and rose a little at one end to form a kind of headrest. It had dark blue cushions of brand-new Mandalay Shwedaung silk arranged on it. At the lower end of the room, two crossed Burmese swords hung on the wall, red tassels dangling from their handles. A small Shan bag with seashells sewn on it was placed decoratively beneath the swords. Not a sound came from the house. The whole place was quiet and orderly, with an air of elegance and distinction.

      Way Way looked over the room and was pleased with everything she saw. Glancing at the ceiling, she was enchanted with the pretty lampshade made from a small painted parasol from Bassein. Then she began to compare what she had seen with her own front sitting room downstairs.

      Way Way lived in an old half-brick, half-timbered house built during her grandfather’s time. Because he had become prosperous only after the house was built, it was very ordinary. Quite a public figure in his time, he had set up a rice mill on the river bank opposite Moulmein-gyun. He had been well known for buying a two-deck passenger steamboat and setting up a service between Moulmein-gyun and Rangoon in competition with the British-owned Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. The boat was called Maekala.¹ After her grandfather died, business declined and the rice mill and steamboat were lost, but about 500 acres of paddy lands remained. Way Way’s father, U Po Thein, became the rice broker in Moulmeingyun who dealt with foreign firms. He lived his entire life in the same house his father had built.

      Only when Way Way started comparing the two front rooms did she realize how very different they were. In her own sitting room downstairs there was a round marble-topped table with chairs around it. White cotton cloth covers were slipped over the backs of the chairs. These were decorated with multicolored parrots and peacocks, machine embroidered by Way Way herself. When she made them she had admired her handiwork lovingly and had looked at the room again and again, thinking it very elegant … until she saw the room next door.

      Now, all of a sudden, the large betel box of woven bamboo, with its set of little silver bowls,² looked so provincial sitting on the marble-topped table. The plate-sized clay ashtray with painted flowers, kept handy nearby, looked common and ugly. The aluminum spittoon under the table, with its dark red betel stains, suddenly seemed almost revolting. The old long wooden settle near the table now was an awful eyesore.

      As she stood there she recalled the floor of the room downstairs, always soiled with the footprints of the farmers who came from dawn till dusk to do business, and the desire to live in the elegant style of the house next door welled up powerfully inside her. That house appealed to her so much that it was becoming an obsession. It was to be occupied by an agent of Bullock Brothers, a British trading company in Rangoon that did business with U Po Thein. The news that a white man was going to live in the small town had spread excitedly all over the place.

      It had started when Bullock Brothers had asked U Po Thein to help them locate a suitable house for their agent, who would open a rice-trading center for their company in Moulmeingyun. U Po Thein had looked all over town but had not found a suitable house; finally he had to ask his son, Ko Nay U, who lived next door, to give up his house for the Englishman.

      The house had been duly cleaned and painted. Carpenters had been called in and renovations made. The bathroom had been made over to include an indoor toilet of the Western type. Way Way had teasingly said to her father, busy supervising the finishing touches on the house, “And you still don’t even know when your Englishman is coming, Daddy.”

      “Yes, that’s true, daughter. I guess when he hears from me that the preparations have been completed, he will show up,” replied U Po Thein, trying to imagine what the white man looked like.

      Way Way had never in her life seen an Englishman up close. Walking on the street during an occasional visit to Rangoon she had seen English men and women, but only from a distance. As she recalled their blue eyes, pointed noses, and reddish complexions, her heart palpitated with fear, just from the thought that one of them was going to be living so close.

      A telegram arrived ahead of the Englishman. Because U Po Thein did not know English, Way Way had to read it to him. She had studied up to the seventh standard³ at Moulmeingyun Middle School. Her brother, Ko Nay U, and her sister, Hta Hta, had completed high school. Her brother had gone to college, but quit in the first year because he got married. Soon after finishing high school, her sister had married a doctor who worked for the government; she now lived wherever her husband was posted, moving from one town to another. Way Way’s mother had gone on a pilgrimage to a religious center in the Sagaing hills⁴ when Way Way was just a child and had not returned. She had, at the time, dutifully written for and received permission from her husband, U Po Thein, to remain there and become a nun. From then on, Way Way had been brought up by her father’s older sister, Daw Thet.

      Although Way Way had wanted to go on to high school at Myaungmya, she had been obliged to end her schooling in order to look after her father, who was alone, since her older brother and sister had by then left home. She helped her father take care of the family business, keeping the records and accounts and handling the money.

      It had now been about five years since she had studied English, so she read the telegram carefully to grasp its meaning. “The telegram is from Bullock Brothers in Rangoon, Daddy. They are asking you to meet the boat tomorrow morning when the servants and household furniture of their agent arrive.”

      U Po Thein pulled the telegram from Way Way’s hands and looked at it with a frown, as though at a loss to know what to think. “No, daughter, … Isn’t the agent coming as well? You’d better go ask your brother to read it … what does it mean?” he puzzled.

      Way Way took the telegram from her father’s hands and after reading it over again said, “There is no mention of the agent’s СКАЧАТЬ