Burmese Days 缅甸岁月 Chapter 25

It was lucky that the padre should have been at Kyauktada, for he was able, before catching ¹ the train on the following evening, to read the burial service in due form and even to deliver a short address on the virtues ² of the dead man. All Englishmen are virtuous ³ when they are dead. 'Accidental death' was the official verdict (Dr Veraswami had proved with all his medico-legal skill that the circumstances pointed ⁴ to accident) and it was duly inscribed ⁵ 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 ⁶ 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 ⁷ 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 ⁸ it in the head of every European in Kyauktada that the doctor was an unmitigated scoundrel. No public accusation ⁹ was ever made against him--U Po Kyin was most careful of that. Even Ellis would have been puzzled to say just what scoundrelism the doctor had been guilty of; but still, it was agreed that he was a scoundrel. By degrees, the general suspicion of him crystallized in a single Burmese phrase--'shok de'. Veraswami, it was said, was quite a clever little chap in his way-- quite a good doctor for a native--but he was THOROUGHLY ¹⁰ shok de. Shok de means, approximately, untrustworthy, and when a 'native' official comes to be known as shok de, there is an end of him., ,The dreaded ¹¹ nod and wink ¹² passed somewhere in high places, and the doctor was reverted ¹³ to the rank of Assistant Surgeon and transferred to Mandalay General Hospital. He is still there, and is likely to remain. Mandalay is rather a disagreeable town--it is dusty and intolerably hot, and it is said to have five main products all beginning with P, namely, pagodas ¹⁴, pariahs ¹⁵, pigs, priests and prostitutes--and the routine-work of the hospital is a dreary ¹⁶ business. The doctor lives just outside the hospital grounds in a little bake-house of a bungalow ¹⁷ with a corrugated ¹⁸ iron fence round its tiny compound, and in the evenings he runs a private clinic to supplement his reduced pay. He has joined a second-rate club frequented by Indian pleaders. Its chief glory is a single European member--a Glasgow electrician named Macdougall, sacked from the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company for drunkenness, and now making a precarious ²⁰ living out of a garage. Macdougall is a dull lout ²¹, only interested in whisky and magnetos. The doctor, who will never believe that a white man can be a fool, tries almost every night to engage him in what he still calls 'cultured conversation'; but the results are very unsatisfying., , ,U Po Kyin realized all his dreams except one. After the doctor's disgrace, it was inevitable ³⁰ that U Po Kyin should be elected to the Club, and elected he was, in spite of bitter protests from Ellis. In the end the other Europeans came to be rather glad that they had elected him, for he was a bearable addition to the Club. He did not come too often, was ingratiating in his manner, stood drinks freely, and developed almost at once into a brilliant bridge- player. A few months later he was transferred from Kyauktada and promoted. For a whole year, before his retirement ³¹, he officiated as Deputy Commissioner ³², and during that year alone he made twenty thousand rupees in bribes ³³. A month after his retirement he was summoned to a durbar in Rangoon, to receive the decoration that had been awarded to him by the Indian Government.#p#分页标题#e#, ,It was an impressive scene, that durbar. On the platform, hung with flags and flowers, sat the Governor, frock-coated, upon a species of throne, with a bevy ³⁴ of aides-de-camp and secretaries behind him. All round the hall, like glittering waxworks ³⁵, stood the tall, bearded sowars of the Governor's bodyguard ³⁶, with pennoned lances in their hands. Outside, a band was blaring at intervals ³⁸. The gallery was gay with the white ingyis and pink scarves of Burmese ladies, and in the body of the hall a hundred men or more were waiting to receive their decorations. There were Burmese officials in blazing Mandalay pasos, and Indians in cloth-of-gold pagris, and British officers in full-dress uniform with clanking sword-scabbards, and old thugyis with their grey hair knotted behind their heads and silver-hilted dahs slung ³⁹ from their shoulders. In a high, clear voice a secretary was reading out the list of awards, which varied ⁴⁰ from the C.I.E. to certificates of honour in embossed silver cases. Presently U Po Kyin's turn came and the secretary read from his scroll ⁴¹:, ,Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力 。,Doctors often extol the virtues of eating less fat. 医生常常宣扬少吃脂肪的好处。