ENTERTAINING.
"Thou didst eat strange flesh
Which some did die to look on."
Entertaining is nervous work, as all the world knows. The anxiety is
considerably increased in a small country station like Remyo, because
one cannot be sure that the rats will not devour the food beforehand, or
that the cook will not take that opportunity of having "fever," a polite
synonym for getting drunk, much in use among Burman servants.
The dinner party is the most general form of entertainment in Remyo, but
not of very frequent occurrence; the reasons being, the limited number
of available guests and the restricted nature of the menu. No sane
person would dream of inviting another sane person to dine upon nothing
but Burmese chicken, even displayed in various disguises from soup to
savoury.
Once a week beef can be obtained, so dinner parties are usually given
on "beef days." Should an invitation arrive for another date, great
excitement prevails as to what special delicacy has been procured.
Once we were presented with a peacock, and gave a dinner party to
celebrate the event, the peacock itself being the chief item of the
celebration. Our guests arrived full of anticipation of some unknown
treat; we received them "big with pride."
But alas! the vanity of human hopes. During the early part of the
dinner, over the chicken entrées, the conversation turned upon the
relative merits as food of various kinds of fowl. One of our guests, a
man full of information on every subject, interesting and otherwise,
suddenly announced cheerfully:
"One bird I may tell you is not fit for human food, and that bird is a
peacock."
Thereupon ensued an awful pause, in the midst of which the servants
entered, carrying the peacock in all its glory.
Nothing could be done. The bird was shorn of its tail, so to relieve
our guest's mind we alluded to it as "goose," but no one could have been
for an instant deceived. And the worst of it was, our guest was quite
right, it was not fit for human food.
Another source of anxiety on giving a dinner party in Remyo is the
decoration of the table. A Burmese loogalay has his own ideas about
table decorations, and these ideas he will carry out, even if to do so
obliges him to leave all his other work undone. In vain we may try to
explain that we prefer to arrange the flowers ourselves, he looks
pained, waits till we have completed our arrangements and have retired
to dress, and then pounces upon the table and places his own elaborate
decorations on the top of what we fondly imagined a triumph of artistic
arrangement.
And his decorations are indeed elaborate; round every piece of glass,
china, or cutlery he weaves a marvellous pattern, sometimes in bits of
bracken, sometimes in coloured beads or rice, and occasionally in rose
petals. When all is finished, the table looks like a kaleidoscope, and
one is afraid to move a spoon or glass lest the design be destroyed.
On Christmas eve a large and important dinner party was given by some
old inhabitants of the station. All the Europeans were invited, and it
was intended that the evening should be spent in jovial and merry games
like a typical Christmas eve at home. But alas! never was an
entertainment beset with greater difficulties.
In the first place, nearly all the guests upon whom we most depended for
amusement sent word that they had fever. We suspected that fever at the
time, and suspected it still more next day, when we heard of a jovial
bachelor gathering that same evening in the house of one of the stricken
ones.
Then the weather was not cheering. It was a terribly cold night, and the
houses in Remyo, being mostly of Government design, consequently the
same for both hills and plains, are not calculated to keep out the
cold; there are large chinks in the unpapered walls, and few of the
doors and windows will shut. In this particular house there was no fire
place, only a small stove which gave out about as much warmth as a
spirit kettle. We all felt grateful to our host and hostess for their
hospitality, and did our best to be entertained and entertaining in our
turn, but it is hard to keep up a cheerful appearance and jovial
spirits, in evening dress, in a mat house, with no fire and the
temperature almost down to freezing point.
We played games such as "Kitchen Furniture" and "Family Post" which
necessitated plenty of movement, and gave every one in turn an
opportunity of occupying the chair by the stove.
That part of the evening which I enjoyed most was when I made the mulled
claret. I had no idea how to make it, but I should obtain uninterrupted
possession of the stove during the operation, so I volunteered for the
task. I put the claret, and anything suitable and "Christmassy," I could
think of, into a saucepan, and stirred it over the stove until the
other guests became suspicious, and I was forced to abandon my warm
post.
I did not like the result at all, and I noticed the other guests lost
interest in it as a drink after the first sip, though they clung to
their glasses, using them as impromptu hand warming pans.
But what proved the greatest check upon the enjoyment of the evening was
the great anxiety of the guests for the welfare of the furniture.
Our host and hostess were on the point of leaving the station, and as is
the custom, had sold their furniture to the other residents, though they
retained it in their house until departure. Now when one has just
bought, and paid for, say, a set of drawing room chairs, or china
ornaments, one does not enjoy seeing the former subjected to the rough
usage of a game of "Bumps" nor the latter endangered by a game of Ball.
Consequently, each and all were busily engaged during the evening in
protecting their prospective possessions, and had little opportunity of
abandoning themselves to enjoyment.
One very amusing instance of this was the behaviour of the new owners of
the carpet. It was a poor carpet, old, faded, and thread-bare, but it
was the only carpet in the station and the recent purchasers regarded it
with pride. They looked anxious all the evening, when chairs were
dragged about over weak spots, and peg glasses were placed in dangerous
proximity to restless feet.
But the climax of their concern was reached when "Snap dragon" was
proposed. The game was hailed with delight by every one (there really is
a little imaginary warmth in the flame), but the contempt of the
carpet-owners was unbounded. They said nothing, but looked volumes; they
did not join in the game, but crawled about the ground round the
revellers, busily engaged in picking up the numerous raisins scattered
on the floor, forcibly holding back feet which threatened to crush the
greasy fruit, and showing by all means in their power that they
considered "Snap dragon" a most foolish amusement.
Small wonder, considering all these disadvantageous circumstances, that
the Christmas party was not an unqualified success, and that the cold
and weary guests, plodding home in the early hours of Christmas morning,
mentally vowed that such wild dissipation was not good for them and
should never again be repeated.
Dances are necessarily unknown in such a small station as Remyo. An
energetic bachelor did once make an effort to give one, but as the only
available room was the ticket office at the railway station, the only
available music the bagpipes of the Goorkhas, and the only available
ladies five in number, he was reluctantly obliged to abandon the
project.
A much enduring form of entertainment in Remyo is the musical afternoon,
or evening party. The inhabitants assemble in turns at one of the three
houses which boast a piano; but the repertoire of the combined station
is limited, and as every one expects to sing on these occasions
(ignorance of time and tune being considered no drawback), and further,
intends to sing one or other of the few songs most popular in the
station, things are not in any sense as harmonious as they should be.
This great eagerness to perform entailed much manoeuvring to obtain
first possession of the piano, and it was amusing to watch the
expressions of mingled indignation and scorn on the faces of others less
fortunate, when they recognised the prelude to what they each claimed as
their own particular song.
The singer's triumph, however, was not without compensating
disadvantages, his efforts being assisted by a distinctly audible chorus
in undertone which would cling to him throughout the song in spite of
his endeavours to throw off the encumbrance by means of abrupt changes
of tempo, and variations in the air; and this professed appreciation of
the performance evoked from the singer such gratitude as one would
expect under the circumstances.
No! On the whole we did not "entertain" much in Remyo; we contented
ourselves with quiet, domestic lives, enlivened but occasionally by such
outbursts of wild revelry as I have described.
[Illustration: Decoration]