The Great Railway Bazaar

Chapter Eighteen

Asia washes with spirited soapy violence in the l morning. The early train takes you past people discovered laundering like felons rehearsing – Pakistanis charging their sodden clothes with sticks, Indians trying to break rocks (this is Mark Twain's definition of a Hindu) by slapping them with wet dhotis, grimacing Ceylonese wringing out their lungis. In Upper Burma, women squat in conspiratorial groups at bubbly streams, whacking their laundry flat with broad wooden paddles, children totter knee-deep in rock pools, and small-breasted girls, chastely covered by sarongs to their armpits, dump buckets of water over their heads. It was dull and cloudy, starting to mist, as we left Mandalay, and the old man next to me with a neat cloth bundle on his knees watched one of these bathing girls.

Steeping tresses in the tank

Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,

– Can't I see his dead eye glow

Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?

(That is, if he'd let it show!)

Briefly, I thought of leaping from the train, proposing marriage, and throwing my life away on one of these nymphs. But I stayed in my seat.

The full streams, whitened by peaks of froth, told of heavy rains farther on; we had left the rancid heat and dusty palms of Mandalay and were climbing sideways through pine forests, where the gold-tipped pagodas, repeating the shape of pine tops, rose above the deep green trees. A dirigible of white cloud had settled against one station; we emerged from it to a view of hardier, muddier people carrying buckets on yokes. A light rain began to fall, and the train was moving so slowly I could hear the patter of raindrops on the leaves that grew beside the track.

At the early sloping stations, women with trays were selling breakfast to the passengers: oranges, sliced pawpaws, fried cakes, peanuts and bananas. One had a dark shining assortment of beady objects on her tray. I beckoned her over and had a look. They were fat insects skewered on sticks – fried locusts. I asked the old man next to me if he'd like some. He said politely that he had had breakfast already, and anyway he never ate insects. 'But the local people are quite fond of them.'

The sight of the locusts took away my appetite, but an hour later, in a thunderstorm, my hunger came back. I was standing near the door and struck up a conversation with a Burmese man on his way to Lashio to see his family. He was hungry too. He said we would be arriving at a station soon where we could buy food.

'I'd like some tea,' I said.

'It is a short stop – a few minutes, not more.'

'Look, why don't you get the food and I'll get something to drink? It'll save time.'

He agreed, accepted my three kyats, and when the train stopped we leaped out – he to the food stall, I t.o an enclosure where there were bottles on display. The hawker explained with apologetic smiles that I couldn't remove his teacups, so I had a cup of tea there and bought two bottles of soda water. Back on the train I couldn't find the Burmese man, and it was not until after the train pulled away that he appeared, out of breath, with two palm-leaf parcels, bound with a knotted vine. We uncapped the bottles on the door hinge, and, elbow to elbow at the end of the coach, opened the palm leaves. There was something familiar in the contents, a wooden skewer with three blackened things on it – lumps of burned meat. It wasn't that they were irregularly shaped, but rather that they were irregular in exactly the same way. The skewers lay half-buried in beds of rice.

'In Burmese we call them – ' He said the word.

I peered at them. 'Are those wings?'

'Yes, they are birds.'

Then I saw the little heads, the beaks and burned-out eyes, and dark singed claws on feeble feet.

'Maybe you call them sparrows,' he said.

Maybe we do, I thought, but they looked so tiny without their feathers. He slipped one off the skewer, put the whole thing into his mouth, and crunched it, head, feet, wings, the whole bird; he chewed it, smiling. I pinched a little meat from one of mine and ate it. It did not taste bad, but it is hard to eat a sparrow in Burma and not feel reproached by flights of darting birds. I risked the rice. I went back to my seat, so that the man would not see me throw the rest of the birds away.

The old man next to me said, 'How old do you think I am? Guess.'

I said sixty, thinking he was seventy.

He straightened up. 'Wrong! I am eighty. That is, I passed my seventy-ninth birthday, so I am in my eightieth year.'

The train switched back and forth on curves as sharp as those on the way to Simla and Landi Kotal. Occasionally, for no apparent reason, it ground to a halt, starting up without a warning whistle, and it was then that the Burmese who had jumped out to piss chased after the train, retying their sarongs as they ran along the track and being whooped at by their friends in the train. The mist, the rain, and cold low clouds gave the train a feel of early morning, a chill and predawn dimness that lasted until noon. I put a shirt over my jersey, then a sweater and a plastic raincoat, but I was still cold, the damp penetrating to my bones. It was the coldest I had been since leaving England.

'I was born in eighteen ninety-four in Rangoon,' said the old man suddenly. 'My father was an Indian, but a Catholic. That is why I am called Bernard. My father was a soldier in the Indian Army. He had been a soldier his whole life – I suppose he joined up in Madras in the eighteen seventies. He was in the Twenty-sixth Madras Infantry and he came to Rangoon with his regiment in eighteen eighty-eight. I used to have his picture, but when the Japanese occupied Burma – I'm sure you have heard of the Japanese war – all our possessions were scattered, and we lost so many things.'

He was eager to talk, glad to have a listener, and he didn't need prompting questions. He spoke carefully, plucking at the cloth bundle, as he remembered a clause, and I hugged myself in the cold, grateful that all that was required of me was an occasional nod to show I was interested.

'I don't remember much about Rangoon, and we moved to Mandalay when I was very young. I can remember practically everything from nineteen hundred onwards. Mr MacDowell, Mr Owen, Mr Stewart, Captain Taylor – I worked for them all. I was head cook in the Royal Artillery officers' mess, but I did more than cook – I did everything. I went all over Burma, in the camps when they were in the field. I have a good memory, I think. For example, I remember the day Queen Victoria died. I was in the second standard at Saint Xavier's School in Mandalay. The teacher said to us, "The Queen is dead, so there is no school today." I was – what? – seven years old. I was a good student. I did my lessons, but when I finished with school there was nothing to do. In nineteen ten I was sixteen and I thought I should get a job on the railways. I wanted to be an engine driver. I wanted to be in a loco, travelling to Upper Burma. But I was disappointed. They made us carry coal baskets on our heads. It was very hard work, you can't imagine – so hot – and the man in charge of us, one Mr Vander, was an Anglo-Indian. He shouted at us, of course, all the time, fifteen minutes for lunch and he still shouted. He was a fat man and not kind to us at all. There were a lot of Anglo-Indians on the railway then. I should say most of them were Anglo-Indians. I imagined I would be driving a loco and here I was carrying coal! The work was too much for me, so I ran away.

'I liked my next job very much. This was in the kitchen of the officers' mess in the Royal Artillery. I still have some of the certificates, with RA written on them. I helped the cook at first and later became a cook myself. The cook's name was Stewart and he showed me how to cut vegetables in various ways and how to make salad, fruit cup, the trifle, and all the different kinds of joints. It was nineteen twelve then, and that was the best time in Burma. It will never be nice like that again. There was plenty of food, things were cheap, and even after the First World War started things were still fine. We never knew about the First World War in Burma; we heard nothing – we didn't feel it. I knew a little bit about it because of my brother. He was fighting in Basra – I'm sure you know it – Basra, in Mesopotamia.

'At that time I was getting twenty-five rupees a month. It doesn't sound so much, does it? But, do you know, it only cost me ten rupees to live -1 saved the rest and later I bought a farm. When I went for my pay I collected one gold sovereign and a ten-rupee bank note. A gold sovereign was worth fifteen rupees. But to show you how cheap things were, a shirt cost four annas, food was plentiful, and life was very good. I married and had four children. I was at the officers' mess from nineteen twelve until nineteen forty-one, when the Japanese came. I loved doing the work. The officers all knew me and I believe they respected me. They only got cross if something was late. Everything had to be done on time, and of course if it wasn't – if there was a delay – they were very angry. But not a single one was cruel to me. After all, they were officers – British officers, you know – and they had a good standard of behaviour. Throughout that time, whenever they ate, they wore full-dress uniforms, and there were sometimes guests or wives in evening dress, black ties, and the ladies wore gowns. Beautiful as moths. I had a uniform, too, white jacket, black tie, and soft shoes – you know the kind of soft shoes. They make no noise. I could come into a room and no one could hear me. They don't make those shoes any more, the kind that are noiseless.

'Things went on this way for some years. I remember one night at the mess. General Slim was there. You know him. And Lady Slim. They came into the kitchen. General and Lady Slim and some others, officers and their wives.

'I stood to attention.

' "You are Bernard?" Lady Slim asked me.

'I said, "Yes, Madam."

'She said it was a good meal and very tasty. It was glazed chicken, vegetables, and trifle.

'I said, "I am glad you liked it."

'"That is Bernard," General Slim said, and they went out.

'Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang came as well. He was very tall and did not speak. I served them. They stayed for two days – one night and two days. And the viceroy came – that was Lord Curzon. So many people came – the Duke of Kent, people from India, and another general – I will think of his name.

'Then the Japanese came. Oh, I remember that very well! It was like this. I was standing in the bush near my house – outside Maymyo, where the road forks. I wore a singlet and a longyi, as the Burmese do. The car was so huge, with a flag on the bonnet – the Japanese flag, rising sun, red and white. The car stopped at the fork. I didn't think they could see me. A man called me over. He said something to me in Burmese.

'I said, "I speak English."

'"You are Indian?" says this Japanese gentleman. I said yes. He put his hands together like this and said, "India-Japan. Friends!" I smiled at him. I had never been to India in my life.

'There was a very high official in the car. He said nothing, but the other man said, "Is this the road to Maymyo?"

'I said it was. They drove on, up the hill. That was how the Japanese entered Maymyo.

'My wife was dead. In nineteen forty-one I remarried and had three more sons, John Henry, Andrew Paul, and, in nineteen forty-five, Victor. Victor, you know, because the war was over. I tried to retire. I was getting old, but the Burmese government called me back whenever there was a dinner – to Mandalay. I have not been to Rangoon since nineteen twenty-four or twenty-five, though I have been to Mandalay many times. I am coming from there now. There was a dinner two nights back, a large joint, two vegetables. Not as fancy as the Victory Dinner. I had full charge of the Victory Dinner in nineteen forty-five – for two hundred people. We started off with cream vegetable soup, then salmon mayonnaise, and roast chicken, vegetables, potatoes roast and boiled, and sauce. To finish there was sundae trifle and savory. Well, a savory might be anything, but on that occasion it was "Devils on Horseback". You wrap bacon and cheese around a piece of toast and fix it with a toothpick. They were all happy at the Victory Dinner. I worked hard and they all enjoyed it. Ah, this is Maymyo.'

There were houses upraised on poles, splashed with red, like festival ribbons fluttering from branches – these were poinsettia bushes, some eight feet high. Then, after a temple and monastery, whose wood was so weathered it had the look of tarnished bronze, more buildings appeared, a row of shop houses, a theatre, a mosque on a wide muddy street. The station had a wide unpaved platform, and, as it was still drizzling, parts of it were underwater and the rest had been trampled into a porridge of muck.

Mr Bernard said, 'Where are you putting up?'

I said I didn't have the slightest idea.

'Then you should come to Candacraig,' he said. 'I am the manager – shall I book you in?'

'Yes,' I said. 'I'll be along later -1 have to buy a ticket to Gokteik.'

Looking for the ticket office, I stumbled into the radio operator's room where a bearded Eurasian with a yellow cravat and slicked-down hair was seated, listening to Morse code and scribbling on a pad. He looked at me and jumped up, reaching for my hand. 'Is there anything I can do for you?'

The Morse code continued. I said perhaps he'd better listen to it.

'It's not very important,' he said.

I noticed the pad, pencilled with Burmese characters.

'Are they sending you Burmese Morse code?'

'Why not?' He explained that there were thirty-six letters in Burmese, but that occasionally they used English Morse code.

'How do you know whether they're sending Burmese or English?'

'Say you're getting Burmese. It goes on for a while. Then you get twelve dots. That means English is coming. Then you get English. Twelve more dots means they're going back into Burmese. See, there's no word for "piston-rod" and "crankshaft" in Burmese. It's interesting.'

He spoke rapidly, with nervous gestures. He was as dark as a Burmese, but had the beaky features and lined face of an Italian peasant.

'Your English is very good.'

'It's my mother tongue!' He said his name was Tony. 'Actually I'm going crazy in this joint. I'm up at Hsipaw, but I came here because the May my o chap packed it up. They didn't have a relief, so I'll be here until the nineteenth. My family's at Hsipaw, and I should have been back weeks ago – I've got six kids and they're wondering when I'm coming back. Where are you headed for?'

I told him I wanted to take the train to Gokteik, but I had heard it was forbidden.

'No problem. When do you want to go? Tomorrow? There's a train at seven. Sure, I can get you on it. I suppose you want to see the bridge – it's a nice one. Funny, not many people come up here. About a year ago there was a chap – he was English – heading for Lashio. The soldiers stopped him and put him off the train at Hsipaw. He was in a terrible shape – all disconnected. I told him not to worry. The police came and made a little trouble, but the next day I put him on the train to Lashio and when the police came at nine o'clock I said, "He's in Lashio," so there wasn't anything they could do.'

'Is it against the law to go to Gokteik?'

'Maybe yes, maybe no. No one knows – but I'll get you on the train. Don't worry.'

He walked me out to the forecourt of the station where, in the rain, on that muddy open space, there were about thirty stagecoaches – wooden carriages with faded paint and split shutters, and drivers in wide-brimmed hats and plastic capes flicking stiff whips at blinkered ponies. The ponies were stamping, and many were straining to pull loaded coaches out of the mud – they were overloaded, with boxes and trunks roped to the roof and six faces at the windows. With the steam engine shunting bogies just behind them, the sight of these gharries - and the rain and mud, and Burmese bandaged in scarves against the cold – completed the picture of a frontier town. A driver clomped towards me in mud-spattered boots (others wore rubber sandals, and some were barefoot, although all wore heavy overcoats), and Tony told him to take me to Candacraig.

The old man hoisted my bag on to the roof and covered it with a stiff piece of canvas before tying it down. I got into the wooden box and we were away, rocking; I was sitting bolt upright, peering through the rain at the broad streets of Maymyo lined with eucalyptus trees. The crooked wood and brick houses looked ancient and frail in the rain, and at a corner of the main street, before a two-storey wooden house with a covered verandah, a stagecoach was turning, the man whipping the pony as he cantered sideways in the broken road – not a car in sight – whinnying in the rain-darkened town, in the storm's dull gleam on the wet street, before the Chinese shops, shanghai pinmen and charlie restaurant. It was like a sepia photograph of the Klondike, brown and noiseless, a century old and nothing moving except the blurred black horse wheeling in the foreground.

Candacraig was above the town, on East Ridge, nearly three miles from the station. Here the houses were huge, the bricks reddened in the rain, with slate roofs and towers, the former homes of British civil servants who came to Maymyo when the capital moved there for the summer months. We passed The Pines, Ridge House, and Forest View; Candacraig was at the top of a little hill, like a mansion in Newport or Eastbourne, with porches and gables and over the door a neatly pruned trellis arch of ivy.

I paid the driver and went inside to a central hall as high as the house. The rooms were ranged along the upper sides of this hall, in a gallery broken by a lyre-shaped double staircase that rose to the gallery's walkway. Beyond a fireplace faced in teak was a bare counter, and the walls were bare, too, the floors gleaming with polish, the bannisters shining; in this large wooden hall there was no ornament. It was empty. It smelled of wax. I rapped on the counter.

A man appeared. I had expected Mr Bernard, but this was a man in thick glasses, neither Burmese nor Indian, with prominent teeth and large fretting hands. (I found out later he was Ceylonese, but had been more or less marooned in Upper Burma for thirty years.) He said Mr Bernard had told him I was coming; I was wise to come to Candacraig – the other hotels in Maymyo had no facilities.

'What sort of facilities don't they have?'

'Soap, Uncle.'

'No soap?'

'None, Uncle. And blankets, sheets, towels, food sometimes. They have nothing. A place to lie down but nothing else. Uncle,' he said to Mr Bernard, who was just entering the room, 'I am putting this gentleman in Number Ten.'

Mr Bernard brought me to the room, and then got a shovelful of hot coals and started a fire in my fireplace, talking the whole time about Candacraig. The name was Scottish, the place was really a "chummery" for unmarried officers of the Bombay-Burma Trading Company, to keep the lads out of trouble in the hot season after months in remote timber estates: here they could take cold showers and play rugby, cricket, and polo. The British Empire operated on the theory that high altitudes improved morals. Mr Bernard went on talking. The rain hit the windows and I could hear it sweeping across the roof. But the fire was burning bright, and I was in an easy chair, toasting my feet, puffing on my pipe, opening my copy of Browning.

'Would you like a hot bath?' asked the gentle Mr Bernard. 'Very well then, I will send my son up with some buckets. What time would you like dinner? Eight o'clock. Thank you. Would you like a drink? I will find some beer. You see how warm the room is? It is a big room but the fire is nice. What a pity it is so rainy and cold outside. But tomorrow you will take the train to Gokteik. We used to camp there – the Royal Artillery.

There will be nothing to eat at Gokteik, but I will make you a good breakfast, and tea will be ready when you come back. Here it is pleasant, but it is only jungle there.' That night I dined alone, by candlelight, at an enormous table. Mr Bernard had laid my place near the hearth. He stood some distance away, saying nothing, gliding over from time to time to fill my glass or bring another course. I think I am as intrepid as the next man, but I have a side – and it may be the same side that is partial to trains – that enjoys the journey only because of the agreeable delays en route, a lazy vulgar sybarite searching Asia for comfort, justifying my pleasure by the distance travelled. So I had come 25,000 miles to be here, loafing in May my o, warming my bum at the fire, losing my place in 'Bishop Blougram's Apology' each time I was waited on: the only guest in the twenty-room Burmese mansion.