Not Out of Hate. Ma Ma Lay
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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 coming, Daddy. It just asks you to meet the boat for the things and the servants.”
“Who sent the telegram?” queried her father.
Looking down at the telegram again, Way Way said, “There isn’t any name. It is a message from the office. There is only the name of the firm.”
The next day U Po Thein rose early, before it was light, and went down to the dock to wait. The Rangoon Express steamer drew up at exactly 6 A.M. Way Way was at home, spending the morning looking in the direction of the road that led from the dock. Her heart had jumped at the sound of the boat from Rangoon’s steam whistle. She was very excited. It was not the excited anticipation one felt waiting for family members one has not seen for a long time, but a vague, restless feeling that made her keep straining her neck towards the road. Because of her burning curiosity to see the Englishman’s household things and servants, now and then she stood at the front of the house to look down the street.
It was fully two hours after the sound of the steamer’s arrival that the belongings began to appear in front of the house next door. There was an unbelievable amount of furniture. Indian coolies were pushing handcarts stacked high, and more coolies, strung out in a long line over the length of the main paved road, were carrying loads on their heads and on their shoulders.
Way Way stood watching the coolies take crates and boxes of all sizes into the house, wondering what on earth could be in them and feeling quite overwhelmed at how much of it there was. She noticed that household furniture such as dressers and chairs had been carefully wrapped and stitched in gunny sacking. Then Way Way saw a refrigerator for the first time in her life. She cried out to her aunt, “Auntie, Auntie Thet, look, look; come out and look at this huge white box thing!”
Daw Thet came running to the front door. She was startled. “Oh my goodness, what in the world is that extraordinary thing! So huge and so white!” she said as she stared at it.
Way Way’s aunt was one of those people who thought very highly of the British and only just fell short of worshipping them. As befitted a British colonial subject, she had a servile attitude; she thought that everything English was superior and every English person her better. “That lot in the bazaar are all asking whether the Englishman next door has arrived yet,” she said to Way Way. Daw Thet thought that an Englishman coming to live next door would enhance her importance in the eyes of the world.
Way Way listened on and off to her aunt’s chatter but devoted her real attention to what was happening next door. Not only did she find the household effects amazing, but the two servants were even more astonishing. One was a short, dark-complexioned Burman about thirty years of age, and the other an older Indian man of about fifty who wore gold rimmed spectacles and a dhoti.
“The servants of the English house are Burmese and Indian,” announced Daw Thet, tapping