The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [488]
‘Well,’ sighed Ehrendorf, automatically falling into his old Oxford habits, ‘it all depends what you mean by …’
‘Progress? Or natives?’
‘Well, by both, I guess,’ Ehrendorf smiled faintly, ‘since there was massive immigration of Indians and their situation must have been different from that of the Burmese. Walter certainly exaggerates. Burma was a fertile and prosperous country before the British took over. But you mustn’t think that a barter economy is like Paradise before the Fall: a cash economy has more resources to survive floods, typhoons, and whatnot, even if it does introduce certain difficulties of its own which were not there before.’
‘Difficulties! Why, the rice merchants knocked Burma for six! The whole culture was destroyed. The old communal village life collapsed. Almost overnight it became every man for himself. People started fencing off grazing land which used to belong to the whole village and so forth. Profit took a grip on the country like some dreadful new virus against which nobody had any resistance. When the Burmese were reduced to becoming migrant seasonal workers in the paddy fields the old village life was finished off completely … and with it went everything that made life more than a pure money-grubbing exercise. At one time they used to hold elaborate cattle races, and water festivals, and village dances and theatricals and puppet shows. They all vanished. And what replaced them? A huge increase in the crime rate! To be happy people need to live in communities. If you don’t believe me you can read it in the government reports!’
‘Sure, I believe you,’ said Ehrendorf rather vaguely. ‘But still, this is a partial view. You must look at the whole picture.
‘By the way, just look at that Indian bloke over there in his striped tie and cricket blazer, modelled on some fatuous English tradition that has no real meaning for him at all. He’s borrowed a culture that doesn’t fit him any better than his jacket.’
Ehrendorf, while looking at the whole picture, had also had his eye on the Blacketts and Sinclair some way in front of them; perhaps he, too, was no longer as keen as he used to be on abstract discussions, or perhaps he was preoccupied with other matters. He had grown thinner since he and Matthew had last met in Europe and had developed one or two hesitations in his manner which had not been there before. Once or twice Matthew had been on the verge of that nightmare sensation when you suddenly find yourself thinking: ‘But I don’t know this person at all!’ and the person in question happens to be your closest friend. But now a glance at Ehrendorf reassured him: it was the same old Ehrendorf, except for the moustache; a little older, of course, and not quite so cheerful and self-confident as he had once been. But then, he himself had aged, too.
Ehrendorf’s fine eyes rested on Joan’s botttom as she walked some distance ahead between her brother and Sinclair; the light blue, neatly ironed cotton of her dress picked up the glow of naphtha lanterns as she passed each stall so that, from a distance, it seemed that her figure flared and died, flared and died, almost hypnotically. Very often a girl’s bottom begins to sag in her twenties (which does not matter particularly since few people notice or care whether a bottom has dropped or not) but Joan’s had not done so; from behind you might have thought that she was simply a mature adolescent. Nor had she developed those over-bulging cones of tissue at the top of the thigh which sometimes bestow even on a slender woman a saddle-bag effect. ‘Her bottom is too perfect,’ Ehrendorf might have been thinking as he stared ahead in a trance. ‘It’s too beautiful to get a purchase on, like everything else about her, it simply slips out of your hand.’
Matthew, however, could not be expected to notice this sort of thing. Besides, it was doubtful whether, even if he had been interested, he would have been able to see far enough without taking off his spectacles and polishing them: in the