Ma Sein Galay
The prostitute Ko S'la engages for ten rupees, on his own responsibility, and installs by John Flory's bed on the night Flory drinks three-quarters of a bottle of whisky and has to be carried in unconscious. Flory wakes at midnight with a splitting head to find her fanning him with a wicker fan; she fetches him soda water and puts a wet compress round his forehead. She sells paddy baskets in the bazaar near Li Yeik's shop, is good-tempered about the whole arrangement, and asks whether she should take her clothes off now.
The book
At a glance
- The woman Ko S'la hires for Flory the night he is carried to bed drunk
- Ten rupees, paid by Ko S'la
- Selling rice baskets in the bazaar near Li Yeik's shop
- The end of chapter 19
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeMa Sein Galay appears once, at the end of chapter 19, and the scene lasts about a page. John Flory, the English timber merchant at the centre of the novel, has drunk three-quarters of a bottle of whisky in an afternoon after being cut dead by the woman he wants to marry. His servants carry him to bed. Ko S'la, who has looked after him for fifteen years, decides he knows what his master will want when he comes round, and goes out and hires somebody.
Flory wakes about midnight, naked and soaked in sweat, with a head like a metal object banging about inside his skull. There is a young woman sitting beside the bed fanning him with a wicker fan. She tells him that she is a prostitute and that his own servant engaged her on his own responsibility for ten rupees.
She then looks after him competently and without any fuss. She brings him soda water that Ko S'la had already put out to cool, soaks a towel and lays a cold compress across his forehead, and fetches him a cigarette when he asks. In between she tells him her name and mentions that besides this work she sells rice baskets in the bazaar near the shop of Li Yeik, the Chinese grocer.
Then she asks whether she should take her clothes off now. George Orwell describes the question as naive. Flory thinks why not, and makes room for her. What happens next is not what either of them expected: he catches the smell of garlic and coconut oil, which is the smell of Ma Hla May, the woman he kept for years and turned out of the house, and lying with his head on Ma Sein Galay's shoulder he cries for the first time since he was fifteen years old.
How the book draws them
- How the book draws herYoung, fat and good-tempered, her face lit bronze-gold by the candle beside the bed. Orwell also reaches for a racial term for her features, which this page does not repeat.
- How she came to be thereKo S'la hired her for ten rupees while Flory was unconscious, on his own initiative and without being asked. She explains the arrangement to Flory herself when he wakes up and finds her fanning him.
- Her two tradesShe is a prostitute, and she also sells rice baskets in the Kyauktada bazaar, near Li Yeik's grocery.
- What she does for himFans him with a wicker fan, brings the soda water Ko S'la had left cooling, soaks a towel and puts a cold compress round his forehead, and gets him a cigarette. His headache goes off while she works.
- The question"Shall I take my clothes off now, thakin?" — asked plainly, once the cigarette has been fetched. Thakin is the word Burmese servants use for a European employer, roughly master.
- The smell of garlic and coconut oilThat is what Ma Hla May smelled of. Flory catches it on Ma Sein Galay's shoulder and starts crying, which he has not done since he was fifteen. He has spent the whole book telling himself he was right to turn Ma Hla May out.