Marco Polo and Susan Munro's Marriage and Its Breakdown

Marco Polo and Susan Munro’s marriage is a relationship built first as refuge: he marries a singer whose prospects in Calcutta are constrained by her reputation, then takes her to Rangoon in the hope that they can begin again somewhere her past is unknown. War brings them back to the city they had tried to leave. There, financial pressure and Susan’s growing ambitions expose a deeper divide over how she should earn a living and what marriage requires of each of them. Their separation is presented not as a sudden loss of affection alone, but as the collapse of a shared plan under the weight of stigma, displacement, and conflicting definitions of respectability.

Meeting in Park Street

Byron’s account of the marriage begins with an ordinary reprieve from hotel work. Seeking a break from the bustle of his hotel, Marco enters a small restaurant on Park Street for dinner. Susan Munro happens to be singing there. Her appearance in the restaurant is itself precarious: she explains that she is allowed to sing because Lisa, the other singer, has broken her leg, and that her opportunity will end when Lisa recovers. The encounter therefore begins with Susan’s uncertain employment, not with a settled career or social position.

After apologizing for disturbing his dinner, Susan and Marco meet again at the restaurant. Marco tries to win her affection. He is drawn to the fact that she, like him, has no parents, and feels pity for her situation. The account stresses that she is not especially beautiful; her youth may have contributed to his attraction, but it is not presented as enough by itself to explain why he commits himself. The relationship takes shape as a decision by a man who has lived adrift to make a home with someone whose own prospects are insecure.

Marriage and the move to Rangoon

Marco brings Susan to the hotel as his wife. In Calcutta, however, her past as a singer on Park Street threatens the future he hopes she can have. He believes that the city’s familiarity with her history will prevent her from rising to the heights of Chowringhee. Rather than ask her to overcome that reputation in place, he accepts a hotel-management position in Rangoon, where the hotel’s owners do not know her past. The move is an attempt to give the marriage room to develop beyond the judgments of the city they leave behind.

For a time, the arrangement works. Susan’s dreams and Marco’s work keep them occupied, while his diligence wins the admiration of foreign guests at the hotel. Their life in Rangoon is described as good, though only temporarily so. Marco’s willingness to relocate marks an important expression of his commitment: he treats Susan’s prospects as a reason to change his own working life, even though he regards Calcutta as his city too and says the location of his work matters less to him than it does to her.

War, return, and mounting pressure

The Japanese invasion of Burma abruptly ends the couple’s relative stability. Rangoon fills with bombers, Burma must be evacuated, and the couple return to Calcutta without having anticipated the upheaval. Their return does not restore their former position. People who had once urged Marco to stay now turn away because of his connections with Burma; others distrust him because of his Italian connections. His Greek passport prevents what might otherwise have been imprisonment as an Italian, while the priests who had helped him earlier had changed his name but not his nationality. The war thus makes his identity a liability even as it forces the couple back into the city where Susan’s past limits her prospects.

Their finances deteriorate as Marco’s savings run out, while demand for Susan’s singing increases. Thousands of British and American soldiers are in Calcutta, looking for restaurants and music. Susan’s work expands accordingly: she tells Marco that the manager wants her to sing at lunchtime as well, for an additional three hundred rupees. The change brings in money but also intensifies the disagreement over what her work means. Marco objects to the direction her career is taking; Susan challenges his aversion to piety when it might help her improve her position. Their argument is not simply about the number of hours she sings, but about whether advancement through this world of restaurants and entertainment is a compromise to resist or an opportunity to use.

The proposal that ends the marriage

Susan eventually lays out a more ambitious plan. She intends to leave the restaurant because she considers it a waste of time, sing instead at Theatre Road, where she will also receive free sandwiches, and open a bar with a licence that Major Shannon has promised to obtain. She imagines a selective clientele and wants Marco to take responsibility for the practical arrangements so she can concentrate on music. Her proposal assigns them complementary roles in a business built around her performance and his hotel-management skills.

Marco cannot accept that arrangement. He sees the role she offers him not as an extension of his professional training but as making him the agent of a prostitute, and his disgust is physical as well as moral. He leaves before Major Shannon arrives, despite the man waiting with a bottle of beer. That night, Marco recognizes that the marriage is over. The next morning he says they should separate. Susan initially resists divorce because being married protects her: she says that undesirable men are deterred, and that the American military police prevent officers from coming to her home. She also insists that Marco’s opposition threatens a respectable profession she has worked to establish. Marco answers that they are already separated and need only a legal certificate.

The breakdown turns on a sharp difference in interpretation. Susan regards her singing and planned bar as a route to independence and a profession she can control; Marco regards the proposed business and his place in it as incompatible with his dignity and understanding of marriage. His earlier willingness to leave Calcutta for her sake therefore stands in contrast to his refusal to support her next ambition. The account leaves the relationship at the point of their announced separation, with the legal certificate still to come. Its decisive turn is the failure of the couple’s original refuge: a change of city could conceal Susan’s past for a while, but it could not settle what each expected the other to accept.