It was a gay and sunny morning when the ship that I had taken at Colombo steamed up the Irrawaddy. They pointed out to me the tall chimneys of the Burmah Oil Company and the air was grey and misty with their smoke. But behind the smoke rose the golden spire of the Shwe Dagon. And now I found that my recollections were entirely pleasing, but nebulous; a cordial welcome, a drive in an American car through busy streets of business houses, concrete and iron like the streets, good heavens! of Honolulu, Shanghai, Singapore or Alexandria, and then a spacious, shady house in a garden; an agreeable life, luncheon at this club or that, drives along trim, wide roads, bridge after dark at that club or this, gin prahits, a great many men in white drill or pongee silk, laughter, pleasant conversation; and then back through the night to dress for dinner and out again to dine with this hospitable host of the other, cocktails, a substantial mean, dancing to a gramophone, or a game of billiards and then back once more to the large cool silent house. It was very attractive, easy, comfortable and gay; but was this Rangoon? Down by the harbour and along the river were narrow streets, a rabbit warren of intersecting alleys; and here, multitudinous, lived the Chinese, and there the Burmans: I looked with curious eyes as I passed in my motor-car and wondered what strange things I should discover and what secrets they had to tell me if I could plunge into that enigmatic life and lose myself in it as a cup of water thrown overboard is lost in the Irrawaddy. Rangoon. And now I found that in my recollections, so vague and uncertain, the Shwe Dagon rose superb as on that first morning it had risen, glistening with tis gold, like a sudden hope in the dark night of the soul of which the mystics write, glistening against the fog and smoke of the thriving city.
A Burmese gentleman having asked me to dine with him, I went to his office whither I was bidden. It was gaily decorated with streamers of paper flowers. A large round table stood in the middle. I was introduced to a number of his friends and we sat down. There were a great many courses, most of which were rather cold, and the food, served in little bowls of Chinese tea, but champagne flowed freely, too freely, and after dinner liqueurs of all kinds were passed round. We were all very jolly. Then the table was taken away and the chairs were put against the wall. My amiable host asked for permission to bring in his wife, and she came with a friend, two pretty little women with large, smiling eyes, and sat down shyly; but they soon found the position on European chairs uncomfortable and so sat with their legs under them as though they were sitting on the floor. An entertainment had been provided for my diversion and the performers made their entrance. Two clowns, an orchestra and half a dozen dancers. One of them, they told me, was an artist celebrated through all Burmah. The dancers wore silk shirts and tight jackets, and they had flowers in their dark hair. They sang in a loud, forced voice so that the veins of their necks swelled with the effort, and they danced not together, but in turn, and their gestures were like the gestures of marionettes. Meanwhile the clowns uttered their merry quips; back and forth went the dialogue between them and the dancers, and it was evidently of a facetious character, for my host and his guests laughed loudly.
For some time I had been watching the star. She certainly had an air. She stood with her companions but with an effect of being apart from them, and on her face she wore a good-humoured, but faintly supercilious smile, as though she belonged to another sphere. When the clowns attacked her with their gibes she answered them with a smiling detachment; she was playing her part in a rite as became her, but she proposed to give nothing of herself. She had the aloofness of complete self-confidence. Then her moment came. She stepped forward. She forgot that she was a star and became an actress.
But I had been expressing regret to my neighbours that I must leave Rangoon without seeing the Shwe Dagon; for the Burmese had made certain regulations, which the Buddhist faith did not demand, but to comply with which was humiliating to the occidental; and to humiliate the occidental was the object of the regulations. No Europeans any longer went into the wathouses. But it is a stately pile and the most venerable place of worship in the country. It enshrines eight hairs from the head of the Buddha. My Burmese friends offered now to take me and I put my Western pride in my pocket. It was midnight. Arriving at the temple we went up a long stairway on each side of which were booths; but the people who lived in them to sell the devout what they might require had finished their work and some were sitting about, half naked, chatting in undertones, smoking or eating a final meal, while many in all attitudes of abandonment were asleep, some on low native beds and some on the bare stones. Here and there, left over from the day before, were masses of dying flowers, lotus and jasmine and marigold; they scented the air heavily with a perfume in which was already an acrid decay. At last we reached the great terrace. All about shrines and pagodas were jumbled pell-mell with the confusion with which trees grow in the jungle. They had been built without design or symmetry, but in the darkness, their gold and marble faintly gleaming, they had a fantastic richness. And then, emerging from among them like a great ship surrounded by lighters, rose dim, severe and splendid, the Shwe Dagon. Lamps illumined with a sober glow the gilt with which it was covered. It towered, aloof, impressive and mysterious against the night. A guardian walked noiselessly on his naked feet, an old man was lighting a row of candles before an image of the Buddha; they gave an emphasis to the solitude. Here and there a yellow-robed monk muttered a husky invocation; his droning punctuated the silence.
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