Burmese Days 缅甸岁月 Chapter 10

But as a matter of fact, Ko S'la's alarm was premature ¹. After knowing Elizabeth for ten days, Flory was scarcely more intimate with her than on the day when he had first met her., ,As it happened, he had her almost to himself during these ten days, most of the Europeans being in the jungle. Flory himself had no right to be loitering in headquarters, for at this time of year the work of timber-extraction was in full swing, and in his absence everything went to pieces under the incompetent ² Eurasian overseer. But he had stayed--pretext, a touch of fever--while despairing letters came almost every day from the overseer, telling of disasters. One of the elephants was ill, the engine of the light railway that was used for carrying teak logs to the river had broken down, fifteen of the coolies had deserted ³. But Flory still lingered, unable to tear himself away from Kyauktada while Elizabeth was there, and continually seeking--never, as yet, to much purpose--to recapture that easy and delightful ⁵ friendship of their first meeting., ,They met every day, morning and evening, it was true. Each evening they played a single of tennis at the Club--Mrs Lackersteen was too limp and Mr Lackersteen too liverish for tennis at this time of year--and afterwards they would sit in the lounge, all four together, playing bridge and talking. But though Flory spent hours in Elizabeth's company, and often they were alone together, he was never for an instant at his ease with her. They talked--so long as they talked of trivialities--with the utmost freedom, yet they were distant, like strangers. He felt stiff in her presence, he could not forget his birthmark; his twice-scraped chin smarted, his body tortured him for whisky and tobacco--for he tried to cut down his drinking and smoking when he was with her. After ten days they seemed no nearer the relationship he wanted., , ,He was anything but tactful with her. Like all men who have lived much alone, he adjusted himself better to ideas than to people. And so, though all their talk was superficial, he began to irritate her sometimes; not by what he said but by what he implied. There was an uneasiness between them, ill-defined and yet often verging ¹³ upon quarrels. When two people, one of whom has lived long in the country while the other is a newcomer, are thrown together, it is inevitable ¹⁴ that the first should act as cicerone to the second. Elizabeth, during these days, was making her first acquaintance with Burma; it was Flory, naturally, who acted as her interpreter, explaining this, commenting upon that. And the things he said, or the way he said them, provoked in her a vague yet deep disagreement. For she perceived that Flory, when he spoke ¹⁵ of the 'natives', spoke nearly always IN FAVOUR of them. He was forever praising Burmese customs and the Burmese character; he even went so far as to contrast them favourably ¹⁶ with the English. It disquieted ¹⁷ her. After all, natives were natives--interesting, no doubt, but finally only a 'subject' people, an inferior people with black faces. His attitude was a little TOO tolerant. Nor had he grasped, yet, in what way he was antagonizing her. He so wanted her to love Burma as he loved it, not to look at it with the dull, incurious eyes of a memsahib! He had forgotten that most people can be at ease in a foreign country only when they are disparaging ¹⁸ the inhabitants., ,He was too eager in his attempts to interest her in things Oriental. He tried to induce her, for instance, to learn Burmese, but it came to nothing. (Her aunt had explained to her that only missionary-women spoke Burmese; nice women found kitchen Urdu quite as much as they needed.) There were countless ¹⁹ small disagreements like that. She was grasping, dimly, that his views were not the views an Englishman should hold. Much more clearly she grasped that he was asking her to be fond of the Burmese, even to admire them; to admire people with black faces, almost savages ²⁰, whose appearance still made her shudder ²¹!#p#分页标题#e#, ,The premature baby is doing well.那个早产的婴儿很健康
。,He is utterly incompetent at his job.他完全不能胜任他的工作。