Chapter 19
THERE WASN’T MUCH to pack. Tin Win owned little more than a few undergarments, three longyis, four shirts, and a pullover, and he wouldn’t even need all of those. It was hot and humid all year round in the capital. Su Kyi packed the things in an old cloth bag she had found long ago outside one of the British clubs. For the journey she had made him rice and his favorite curry of dried fish. She put the food into a tin with a sealable lid and tucked it between the longyis. At the very bottom she put the tiger bone from Tin Win’s father. And the snail shell and the bird’s feather Mi Mi had given him a few months earlier. Su Kyi looked out the window. It had to be just after five-thirty. It was still dark, but the birds were already at it and dawn was coming. Tin Win had come home only a few minutes ago. He was sitting in front of the kitchen.
For the first time in a long while Su Kyi was worried again about Tin Win. Since the beginning of his friendship with Mi Mi he had changed in a way she would not have thought possible. He had discovered life, and when they ate together in the morning, she often had the feeling of sitting beside a child, he was so brimming with joy and energy. As if he was making up for all the lost years. She couldn’t imagine he’d find his way in a strange environment without Mi Mi’s help. She had never witnessed such a symbiosis between two people, and there were moments when the sight of them made her wonder whether, in the end, a person maybe wasn’t alone after all, whether in some cases, the smallest human unit was two rather than one. Perhaps the uncle really did have his nephew’s best interests at heart. Perhaps the doctors in the capital could cure him. Perhaps he’d be back in a matter of months.
She stepped out of the house and looked him full in the face. She’d seen people die, and she’d seen bereft mourners, but she couldn’t recall ever having seen a face so clouded with pain. She held him by the arm and he wept inconsolably. He wept until the two men stepped through the garden gate. She wiped his tears away and asked if she might see them to the train. Of course, one man said. The other took the bag.
They spoke not a word the entire way. Su Kyi took Tin Win’s hand. He was shivering. His gait was tentative and clumsy. He felt his way along, fearfully, stumbling more than walking as if only recently stricken blind. Su Kyi’s legs grew heavier with every step. She fell into a kind of trance, taking in only fragments of what was happening around her. She heard the wheezing of the locomotive that was already waiting at the station. She saw white clouds rising from a black tower. The place was crawling with people bellowing in her ears. A child screamed. A woman fell. Tomatoes rolled onto the track. Tin Win’s fingers slipped from hers. The men led him away. He disappeared behind a door.
The last image ran together in a blur of tears. Tin Win sat at an open window, his head buried in his hands. She called his name, but he did not react. With a shrill whistle blast, the engine started to move. Su Kyi walked along beside the window. The train picked up speed. The wheezing grew louder and stronger. She started to run. Stumbled. Bowled into a man, jumped over a basket of fruit. Then the platform came to an end. The two rear lights shone like tiger’s eyes in the night. Slowly they vanished behind a gentle curve. When Su Kyi turned around the platform was empty.
Chapter 20
U BA HAD been talking for hours without pause. His mouth hung half open. His eyes looked right through me. He was motionless but for the steady rise and fall of his chest. I heard my own breath, the bees. I was clutching the arms of the chair. Only in airplanes did I sit so tensely, and even then only when they strayed into turbulence or began their landing approach. Slowly I let go and sank back into the soft cushions.
As our silence persisted, so the house slowly filled with disturbing noises. The wood creaked. There was rustling at my feet. Something was cooing under the eaves. Somewhere the wind was rattling a shutter. The kitchen faucet was dripping—or was I imagining that I heard U Ba’s heart beating?
I tried to picture my father. The solitude in which he had lived, his deprivation, the darkness that had surrounded him until he met Mi Mi. How must he have felt at the prospect of losing everything she had given him? My eyes filled with tears. I strained to hold them back, but that only made everything worse. So I just wept—wept as if I myself had brought him to the train for Rangoon. U Ba rose and came over to me. He put a hand on my head. I was disconsolate. Perhaps this was the first time I had ever really cried about my father. There were days after his disappearance when I missed him terribly. I would be downcast, despondent. I suppose I even cried, yes. But I don’t remember for certain. Besides, whom would those tears have been for? For him? For myself because I had lost my father? Or were they tears of rage and disappointment because he had skipped out on us?
To be sure, he had never told us anything about those first twenty years and therefore had never given us the chance to mourn with or for him. But would I have wanted to hear it? Was I in any position to empathize with him? Do children want to know their parents as independent individuals? Can we see them as they were before we came into the world?
I took a handkerchief from my backpack and dried my face.
“Are you hungry?” asked U Ba.
I shook my head.
“Thirsty?”
“A little.”
He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a mug of cold tea. It tasted of ginger and lime and soothed me.
“Are you tired? Should I take you back to your hotel?”
I was exhausted, but I did not want to be alone. The mere thought of that room unsettled me. In my mind’s eye it loomed larger even than the empty dining hall, and the bed seemed wider than the hotel lawn. I saw myself lying on it, alone and lost. “I’d like to rest a bit. Would you mind terribly if I … just for a few minutes, if I …?”
U Ba interrupted me: “By all means, Julia. Lie down on the sofa. I’ll bring a blanket.”
I could hardly lift myself out of the armchair, I was so weak. The couch was more comfortable than it looked. I curled up on the cushions and was only vaguely aware of U Ba spreading a light blanket over me. I fell almost immediately into a half sleep. I heard the bees. Their unvarying drone lulled me. U Ba passed through the room. Dogs barked. A rooster crowed. Pigs grunted. Saliva ran out of the corner of my mouth.
When I woke again it was dark and still. It took a few moments for me to realize where I was. It was cool. U Ba had draped a second, heavier blanket over me and tucked a pillow under my head. On the table in front of me were a glass of tea, a plate of pastries, and a vase with fresh jasmine blossoms. I heard a heavy old wooden door clicking shut, turned on my side, pulled my knees very close to my body, the blankets up to my chin, and fell back asleep.
Chapter 21
IT WAS LIGHT when I opened my eyes. In front of me hot steam rose from a glass of water. Beside it a packet of Nescafé, a sugar cube, condensed milk, and fresh pastries. Sunbeams fell through one of the two windows, and from the couch I could see a bit of sky. Its blue was darker and more intense than I had known it in New York. It smelled like morning, and suddenly I couldn’t help but think of our summer weekends in the Hamptons, when I would lie awake in bed in the early morning, a little girl listening to the roar of the sea through open windows, smelling the cool air in the room, air which—in spite of the cold—already foreshadowed the heat of the day.
I rose and stretched. Astonishingly, I had none of the back pain I usually suffered after spending the night in a strange bed. I must have slept well on that old couch with its threadbare upholstery. I walked over to one of the windows. A thick hedge of bougainvillea grew around the house. The courtyard was swept clean. Firewood was piled neatly between two trees, a stack of kindling beside it. A dog of indeterminate breed was roaming about, and the pig was wallowing below me.
I went into the kitchen. A small fire smoldered in one corner, above it a kettle. The smoke drafted straight upward and disappeared through a hole in the roof. Still, my eyes burned. Against the wall stood an open cupboard with a pair of white enameled
tin bowls and plates, glasses, and sooty pots. On the lowest shelf were eggs, tomatoes, a huge bunch of scallions, ginger root, and limes.
“Julia?” His voice came from the next room.
U Ba sat at a table, surrounded by books. The whole room was full of them. It looked like a library gone to seed. The books filled shelves from floor to ceiling. They lay in piles on the wooden floorboards and in an armchair. They towered on a second table. Some were finger-thin, others the size of dictionaries. There were paperbacks among them, but most were hardcovers, a few even bound in leather. U Ba sat hunched over an open book whose yellowed pages resembled a punch card. Beside it an assemblage of various tweezers and scissors, and a jar of viscous white glue. Two oil lamps on the table offered additional light. U Ba looked at me over the rim of his thick glasses.
“What are you working on, U Ba?”
“Just passing the time.”
“Doing what?”
He picked up a tiny scrap of paper with a long, thin pair of tweezers, dipped it briefly in the glue, then positioned it over one of the tiny holes in the book. With a fine black pen he then inked in the upper half of an o. I tried to read the text to which the letter belonged.
We s al not cease fr m exp orati n
and t e end of al our expl ring
wi l b to a rive w er we starte
and kno the pl ce fo he fir t im.
U Ba looked at me and recited the complete lines by heart.
“From a collection of Eliot poems,” he said. “T. S. Eliot. I hold him in high regard.” He smiled, satisfied, and showed me the first pages of the book. They were studded with bits of glued-on paper. “Not as good as new, perhaps, but at least it is legible once again.”
I looked from him to the book and back. Was he serious? That volume must have contained at least two hundred hole-ridden pages. “How long does a book like that take you?”
“These days, a few months. I used to be faster. Now my eyes no longer fully cooperate, and my back objects after only a few hours of hunching over. On other days my hands tremble too severely.” He leafed through the remaining pages and sighed. “This particular book is in a truly pitiful state. Even the worms seem to fancy Eliot.”
“But surely there’s some more efficient method of restoring books. You’ll never manage it like this.”
“No method within my power, I fear.”
“I could send you new editions from New York of the ones that mean the most to you,” I suggested.
“Don’t go to the trouble. I read the most important ones while they were still in better condition.”
“Then why are you restoring them?”
He smiled.
Neither of us spoke, and I looked around. Here I stood, in a wooden house without electricity or running water, surrounded by thousands of books. “Where did you get them all?” I asked.
“From the English. I was enamored of books even as a boy. Many of the British never returned after the war, and after independence more of them left every year. Whatever books they did not wish to take they left to me.” He rose, walked over to a bookcase, pulled out a leather-bound tome, and leafed through it. The pages looked perforated. “You see, many have shared the same sad fate as the Eliot volume. The climate. The worms and insects.” U Ba walked over to a little cupboard behind his desk. “These are the ones I’ve finished.” He pointed to a couple of dozen books, took one of them, and handed it to me. It had a sturdy leather binding and a lovely feel. I opened it. Even the title page was dotted with paper bits. THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE, it read in a large font. London, 1902.
“Should you care to learn more about our country, this is a good place to start.”
“It’s not exactly current,” I said, slightly irritated.
“The soul of a people does not change overnight.”
U Ba pulled at his earlobes and glanced around, looking for something. He took a few books from a lower shelf. He had shelved them one row behind the other. Taking a key from a red lacquer box on his desk, he opened a drawer. “Just as I thought—I’ve locked it away,” he said, taking a book out. “It’s in Braille. Su Kyi gave it to me just before she died. It’s the first volume of one of Tin Win’s favorites. She forgot to pack it when he set off for Rangoon.”
It was heavy and awkward. Several pieces of tape just barely held the spine together. “You should sit down. Come with me. We’ll have a cup of coffee, and you can examine it at your leisure.”
We moved into the living room. U Ba poured hot water from a thermos into a glass and made me a coffee. I set the book on my lap and opened it. The pages were as riddled with holes as those of the other books. I brushed my index finger across one page, casually, as if inspecting my cleaning lady’s attention to detail on a dusty shelf. The book unsettled me. I snapped it shut and put it on the table. In the distance I heard singing. Several voices, faint and barely audible, so soft that they threatened to fade away before reaching my ear. A wave melting into the sand before ever washing over my feet.
I listened hard into the silence, but heard nothing, picked up the song again, then lost it, held my breath and sat stock still until I heard the notes again, somewhat louder now. Loud enough that I would not lose track of them again. It could only be a children’s choir untiringly repeating a melodic mantra.
“Is it the children from the monastery?” I asked.
“Not the ones from the monastery in the town, though. There’s another in the mountains, and when the wind is right, their song drifts down to us in the morning. You are hearing what Tin Win and Mi Mi heard. It sounded no different fifty years ago.”
I closed my eyes and shuddered. The children’s voices seemed to pass through my ears into my body and to touch me where no word, no thought, and no person had ever done before.
Whence this magic? I could not understand a single word they sang. What was it that affected me so? How can a person be moved to tears by something she can neither see, understand, nor hold on to, a mere sound that vanishes almost the moment it comes into being?
Music, my father often said, was the only reason he could sometimes believe in a god or in any heavenly power.
Every evening before going to bed he would sit in the living room, eyes closed, listening to music on headphones. How else will my soul find rest for the night, he had said quietly.
I cannot remember a single concert or opera at which he did not weep. Tears poured down his face like water from a lake silently but forcefully spilling over its banks. He would smile the whole time.
Once I asked him which he would take to a desert island, given the choice between music and books.
I wished the children’s chanting might never end. It should accompany me through my day. Through my life. And after that. Had I ever felt so close to my father? Perhaps U Ba was right. Perhaps he was nearby, and I had only to look for him.
Chapter 1
I WANTED TO see the house where my father spent his childhood and youth. Maybe he and Mi Mi were hiding there? U Ba hesitated.
“The buildings are in dismal condition. You will need a lot of imagination to find traces of his childhood there,” he warned me.
But already I could hear my father’s breath just a few yards ahead of me. He was panting from lugging her up the mountain. She was heavier, and he was older. I heard them whispering. Their voices. A few steps more and I would overtake them.
Just a few steps more.
“There’s something I need to take care of,” U Ba told me. “Will you go on ahead?” He pointed out the way and said he would catch up with me.
So I trudged over the mountain ridge alone. U Ba had described it in precise detail, the mud path with the deep pits and ruts. It was oddly familiar to me. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my father walking along the road. I was startled by the many and varied noises I suddenly heard. Birds. Grasshoppers. Cicadas. An unpleasantly loud buzzing of flies, the distant barking of a dog. My feet got mired in the holes and ruts in the earth. I stumbled but
did not fall. It smelled of eucalyptus and jasmine. An oxcart overtook me. The animals were truly wretched. The skin clung to their ribs, and their eyes protruded from their skulls as if they were about to burst from the strain.
Beyond the summit I saw the house. I slackened my pace. At the garden gate I halted, dispirited.
The gate hung askew, its lower hinge broken off. Grass grew out of cracks in the masonry pillars. The wooden fence was overgrown with shrubbery. Every second or third slat was missing. The grass in the yard was grayish brown, scorched by the sun. The main building, a yellow two-story Tudor villa, had a grand balcony on the second floor from which one must have had a view of the town and the mountains. Its supports, the eaves, and the window frames were ornamented with wood carving. There was a conservatory, and several bay windows. A tree was growing out of the chimney. The thin framing of the roof was partly exposed where several tiles were missing. The balcony railing had lost nearly half its uprights, and the rain had bleached the color of the façade. Most of the windows were broken in.
Vacant buildings depressed me, even in New York. As a child I had always given them a wide berth, crossing the street whenever I came upon one. They were haunted. Behind their boarded-up windows ghosts lay in wait just for me. I dared to walk past them only when my father was with me, and even then I had to take the street side.
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats Page 16