A Well-Tempered Heart

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  “Yes,” he said calmly.

  “How?” I asked skeptically.

  Thar Thar thought about it for a long time, all the while stroking his shaven head slowly with both hands, as if petting himself. “It depends. In some eyes you see the fear of death. A last flicker, very desperate and alone. Life has already drained partially out of others. In them you catch a glimpse of the emptiness to follow. In your brother’s eyes is nothing to indicate the approach of death.”

  “The doctor was not so sure.”

  “Doctors don’t look into your eyes.”

  I didn’t want to talk any more about it, so I asked him again about the Italian priest.

  “That really is a long story,” he replied.

  “No matter. I have time.”

  “Then you’re the first Westerner I’ve met who does,” he laughed.

  “Do you know many?”

  “What does ‘many’ mean? We get visitors from time to time. Father Angelo also frequently played host to tourists. They were always in a hurry. Even on holiday.”

  “Not me,” I claimed.

  He looked at me, sizing me up. “How long are you staying?”

  “We’ll see. We have no plans.”

  “No plans? Things are getting more and more unusual,” he said, grimacing. “A few days?”

  “Why not?”

  “But whoever lives with us has also to pitch in with the daily work.”

  “Which means …?”

  “Cooking. Cleaning. Laundry. Gathering eggs. Feeding chickens.”

  “Of course. If you tell me how you found your way to the priest.”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  I thought briefly of telling him the truth now. But I was afraid that if I told him now we wouldn’t talk about anything else, and I definitely wanted to learn what happened since the time he had walked downstream along the riverbank with Ko Bo Bo in his arms.

  Thar Thar was a riddle to me. He was in no way the man I expected to find, even if I would not have been able to say what kind of picture of him I had formed based on the tales of Khin Khin and Maung Tun. I had imagined an embittered soul. A troubled spirit. Raging. Haggard. Suspicious. A sullen man, perhaps deeply depressed, who hated the world.

  “It must be an unusual story. I’m curious about it.” That was not a lie.

  He accepted that answer, refilled our teacups, and sat quietly.

  In the silence a rooster crowed. Another answered.

  I watched him out of the corner of my eye in the flickering candlelight. He radiated a profound, soothing calm. His features were relaxed. He sat bolt upright, as if meditating.

  “I was,” he began after a long pause, “how should I say it, I was in distress. I had lost my family and I was searching.”

  “For what?”

  He grinned. “See how little patience you have?”

  I had to laugh at myself and nodded as a sign that I had understood.

  “In a teahouse,” Thar Thar continued, “I heard of Father Angelo and learned that he helped people like me. He had lived here for a long time. He had come as a missionary back when it was still officially called Burma and the English were in charge. During colonial times many clergymen came from America, England, Spain, and Italy in order to convert us. Some of them spent the rest of their lives here. Father Angelo was one of those. He took me in without my having to plead with him. I kept house for him, cleaned, went to market, cooked, did laundry. In return he gave me a place to stay, and he instructed me. He taught me reading and writing and a bit of arithmetic. Mathematics was not his strong suit. He preferred to teach me English, and sometimes a bit of Italian, too. He was the first person ever to put a proper book in my hands. I learned from him what power words possess. He had a small library in his house. I had a lot of time, and I devoured just about every book I could get my hands on. I know who Robinson Crusoe is.”

  He savored the astonishment in my face.

  “Moby Dick. Oliver Twist. Even Cain and Abel. The good Father and I studied the Old and New Testaments together. I assisted him at burials, baptisms, and weddings. We celebrated Christmas together, and Easter. He held services in an old church, and there was a small but growing Christian congregation in the town. In eight years I never missed a single sermon of his.”

  “As I see, though, he was never able to convert you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The monastery. The Buddhas, your robe …”

  “Those are superficial. Don’t let them fool you. The children who come to me grow up in Buddhist families. They feel safer when the Buddha has an eye on them. You are right, but then not really. Father Angelo did manage to convert me. But not to Christianity.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am not a sinner.” He smiled at these words.

  “What did he convert you to, then?”

  Thar Thar hesitated. “That’s another story.”

  “I have time …”

  He shook his head. “It’s not a subject for this evening. I’m not sure I could tell it at all. It’s not a story I have ever put into words.”

  He gave me a look I could not interpret. Was it full of tenderness, or was that just my imagination?

  “Why did you leave Father Angelo?”

  “He was old and fell ill. I took care of him for almost a year after he had a stroke. One day after his ninetieth birthday his heart ceased to beat. I was sitting on his bed. He took my hand and laid it on his chest. I could feel it beating slower and slower. Eventually it just stopped.”

  We looked in silence into the dwindling darkness that was gradually surrendering the grounds and the trees and the bushes: above the bamboo the moon was rising and casting its wan light.

  I was reminded of the village where Dread sat in the trees making faces and casting abhorrent shadows.

  Where hearts turned to stone.

  Of a hut with a hole in the roof.

  Of shiny black leather boots.

  Of a powerful body and a frail body that shivered. Not with arousal.

  Of spittle running drop by drop out of a mouth with bloodred teeth.

  Of seconds that pass with life and death in the balance.

  You keep one.

  We’ll take the other.

  He sat there next to me, beaming at me. How could eyes that had gazed so deeply into the heart of evil, that had seen so many people die, that had seen a man they so loved fall from the top of a tree, how could such eyes shine like that?

  What was their secret?

  I felt truly as if I had landed on an island. It was not the Isle of the Dead. Nor the Isle of the Lonely.

  It was a different island.

  An island no one had ever told me about.

  Chapter 5

  MORNING CAME EARLY. I heard the novices whispering. Laughter at the crack of dawn. Rolling up their mats. Thar Thar’s voice, singing. He was leading them in a mantra. The tiny bells on the gables tinkling in a gentle breeze. Hens clucking. The babbling of a brook I had failed to notice the day before.

  I stretched. The invigorating sensation of a well-rested body.

  My brother was still asleep. He lay on his back, lips parted slightly, cheeks sunken. His nose looking thinner and sharper than usual. A hint of a pause in the rhythm of his breath. I sat up terrified, listening. His wheezing put me at ease.

  Don’t let U Ba die.

  Please, no.

  Please, please, no.

  I caught myself doing something I had not done since I was a child: I was seeking the aid of a higher power. Back then I would sometimes lie awake in bed asking “Dear God” for help. When my best friend, Ruth, moved to Washington. When my guinea pig lay dying. When my mother holed herself up in her darkened room for nearly a week.

  Who should I turn to now? Fate? The stars? The local spirit known as Nats? The Buddha?

  My prayer was not directed at anyone in particular. Let anyone answer it who had the power to help me!

 
After one fervent recitation I listened to the sounds of the morning. Heard the rattling in the kitchen, subdued voices, a crackling fire. After some time I heard the others descending the steps on their way to the fields.

  I crawled out of my sleeping bag. It was colder than I had anticipated.

  Two girls had stayed behind in the monastery. They lay on their mats covered with old blankets in the middle of the great hall. They looked miserable. One of them was the one-armed Moe Moe. Thar Thar squatted beside her.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I asked. “They were healthy only yesterday.”

  “They are feverish with colds,” he said.

  “Do you have any medicines?” I thought I knew the answer.

  He shook his head.

  “None at all?”

  “Sometimes tourists leave fever and headache pills. But the children cannot tolerate them. They get stomachaches from them. If there’s no improvement, we’ll fetch a medicine man from Hsipaw. He has herbs and salves that generally help. At least they do no harm, unlike the Chinese pills.”

  “I could put cold compresses on their calves.”

  “What does that do?”

  “It lowers a fever.”

  He brought me a bowl of water and a couple of cloths. I dipped them in the water and wrung them out, pulled back the covers and gasped. The girl next to Moe Moe—I think it was Ei Ei—had a rigid leg. It peeked out from under the covers, scrawny and hard as a stick, without muscles, without contours. Would it ease a fever to wrap a crippled leg? Was there any point to cooling only one of them? The two girls raised their heads and gazed at me skeptically. I sensed that the situation was as awkward for them as it was for me.

  They shuddered briefly as I lay the cold cloths on their calves, pulled them snug, and wrapped them in towels. When was the last time I had made cold compresses for anyone? Probably Amy, when she had a bad cold a few years back.

  I pulled the covers back over the two girls. They shivered a bit. Moe Moe rewarded me with a feverish smile.

  THAR THAR WAS waiting for me in the kitchen. He was kneeling in front of the oven, fanning the flames. In one corner stood several bowls, pots, and baskets with potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, carrots, and ginger. Beside them hung strands of garlic and dried chili peppers. On a wooden beam were arrayed a handful of cans and bottles containing brown and black liquids.

  Breakfast was the same as dinner the evening before but with two eggs on the rice, sunny side up, and strong black tea that left a fuzzy feeling on the roof of one’s mouth.

  “I keep the cooking mild for the children. Would you care for something spicier?”

  “I would.”

  He picked up a plastic jar of ground chili pepper and sprinkled a teaspoon of it over my curry.

  It was a pleasant spiciness that spread immediately throughout my mouth. After the second spoonful my lips were burning, but not so that it hurt.

  In the meantime Thar Thar peeled ginger and cut it into thin slices.

  When I finished eating he said, “Your choice: sweeping, cooking, or washing?”

  “Cooking.”

  “Good. We can do that together. First we have to gather eggs.” He gave me a basket, and we went into the courtyard. The chickens made straight for him and ran clucking about his feet as if they had been waiting for him.

  “How many chickens do you have?”

  “I don’t know. More and more all the time. I’ve stopped counting.”

  “Do they have names?” I inquired without thinking.

  He turned sharply on his heel. “Who names chickens?”

  “Kids,” I replied hastily and with embarrassment.

  Thar Thar smiled. “Some of them have names, others don’t. There are too many of them.”

  He gave a short whistle, and out of the bushes strolled a dark-brown, slightly ruffled hen. “This is Koko. It all started with her.”

  He bent down, and the bird hopped onto his outstretched arm. She sat there like a parrot, tipping her head to one side and staring at me the whole time.

  I took a step back.

  “Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite,” said Thar Thar, putting her back down. “She’s very trusting. That’s unusual for a chicken.”

  We collected two dozen eggs from depressions in the ground, piles of leaves, nests of brushwood—Thar Thar knew all of their hiding places.

  In the kitchen he gave me a cutting board and a sharp knife, then produced a basket full of tomatoes for me to quarter.

  He himself was peeling a mountain of potatoes. His measured movements radiated an almost meditative serenity.

  “You know how I live, but I know nothing at all about you,” he said suddenly without looking up from his potatoes.

  “What would you like to know?” I asked, surprised by the degree to which his interest delighted me.

  “Whatever you want to tell me.”

  “Ask me a question; I’ll answer it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be very impolite. I can’t simply ask questions of a stranger.”

  “But it would be easier for me,” I countered. “If I ask you to do it, it’s not impolite.” I cast him a sidelong glance. Amy would have called it flirting, I suppose.

  Thar Thar answered with a playful laugh. “Okay.” He lowered his hands, put the knife down, and thought for a while. Then he said: “What is important to you?”

  I nearly cut myself. That was not the kind of question I had been anticipating. I was expecting the usual routine about my career. Where I live, family, age, income. Instead: What was important to me? I thought about how I might answer. My work? Of course. My friendship with Amy? U Ba, of course! My mother? My brother? Both in their own way. Is that what he wanted to know?

  Thar Thar sensed that he had embarrassed me. “Forgive me,” he said. “You see. I have no practice asking questions. That was a stupid question.”

  “No, no, not at all,” I protested. “It’s just not so easy to answer.”

  “Oh,” he said, surprised. “It was the simplest one I could think of.”

  “It’s a rather personal question.”

  “And one should not ask that kind?”

  His guileless candor reminded me of my brother. Both of them were free of malice. How was that possible after all he had been through?

  “No, it’s all right, but perhaps not so quickly …”

  “I see. Later?”

  “Later!”

  “For now, then, I would just like to know”—he was thinking hard about it—“how many rooms your house has.”

  I wanted to hug him.

  “Two. I live in New York City, in Manhattan, to be precise.” I looked at him inquiringly.

  “I know where Manhattan is,” he said. “I read it in a book.”

  “My apartment is on the thirty-fifth floor,” I continued. “It has two rooms, a bath, and an open kitchen where I also eat.”

  “Like here,” he remarked.

  I tried to read in Thar Thar’s face whether or not he was serious about the comparison. He was looking me straight in the eye, and I was caught off guard by the intensity as our eyes met.

  A subtle twitch of his lips suggested that he was probably joking.

  “Like here,” I confirmed. “Just like here.”

  He smiled. “I knew it. And what kind of work do you do?”

  “I am a lawyer at a high-end firm.”

  “A lawyer? Really? They don’t have a very good reputation here in this country,” said Thar Thar.

  “Not in ours, either,” I said. The allusion went over his head.

  “Who do you defend? Robbers? Thieves?”

  “No, I don’t do criminal defense. I’m a corporate lawyer specializing in intellectual property. Patents. Product piracy. Copyright infringements. That kind of thing. Do you know what I mean?” I wanted confirmation.

  He shook his head.

  “Product piracy,” I said again, enunciating slowl
y and carefully, hoping that a mere repetition would suffice. I did so want him to understand what I did.

  More head shaking. An apologetic expression because he couldn’t follow me and was disappointing me.

  “How can I explain it? Product piracy is when, for example, you’re producing a very expensive handbag, and …”

  “How expensive?”

  “Let’s say a thousand dollars …”

  “There are handbags that cost a thousand dollars?”

  “Sure, or much more, even, but that’s not the point,” I said somewhat impatiently. “It’s just an example. So you’re making these handbags, and someone comes along and just copies them and sells them for a tenth of the price.”

  “But that would be good.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s totally unacceptable. It’s robbery.”

  “I see. So they are stealing the handbags and reselling them?”

  “No!” I said. “Just the idea. They are stealing intellectual property. Which is just as bad. Companies have to protect themselves against it. That’s what they need lawyers for. In China, for instance, there’s loads of illegal copying. They even knock off entire shops …” I faltered. His furrowed brow betrayed his utter lack of comprehension.

  “It would be as if someone took …” I was looking for a practical example, a counterpart from his own world. I gazed around the kitchen to see if I could find something suitable. My eye wandered from the open fire to the sooty kettle to Thar Thar’s threadbare robe. The longer I thought about it, the more ridiculous I found myself. “Forget it,” I said in the end. “It’s not so important.”

  “Of course it is,” Thar Thar contradicted me. “Tell me more. If the pirates are important to you, then they are important. It’s that simple.”

  “I don’t really care that much about them,” I replied, almost crossly.

  “You cared about them a minute ago.”

  “I thought I cared about them a minute ago.”

  He rocked his upper body back and forth in silence, his left hand stroking his right hand all the while.

  What was important to me?

  A simple question, Thar Thar was right. Very broad, but I should not have found it difficult to answer. In New York I could have answered it without a moment’s hesitation. Why was it stumping me now?