The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (23 page)

He took the last few yards more slowly and caught his breath for a moment behind the hibiscus hedge that sheltered the house from the road. He stepped into the yard.
The dog ran over and leapt on him. Tin Win patted and calmed him. The pig was snoring under the porch. All was quiet in the house. He climbed the steps slowly. The door was unlocked. It creaked when he opened it. He could tell by her heartbeat where Mi Mi lay sleeping, and he felt his way carefully through the room to her mat. He nearly fell over a tin pot sitting in the middle of the floor. He knelt beside her and laid a hand on her face.

She woke with a start. “Tin Win, what are you doing here?”

“There’s something I’ve got to tell you,” he whispered. Tin Win pushed one arm under her neck, the other under her knee, and lifted her. Their faces nearly touched. He had never carried her in his arms. They went to the stairs, down the steps, and across the yard.

She caressed his face and neck. “You’re sweating.”

“I ran the whole way. I had to see you.”

“Where should we go?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Somewhere we can be alone without waking anyone.”

Mi Mi thought a moment. The fields began a few houses down, and there was a rain shelter in one of them. She directed him there, and a few minutes later they reached the refuge and crawled inside. The walls were woven grass, and through the holes in the roof Mi Mi could see the sky. It was a clear night, full of stars, unusually warm. Mi Mi felt her heart beat quickly, expectantly. She took his hand and laid it on her belly.

“Mi Mi, I’m leaving for Rangoon tomorrow morning. An uncle of mine who lives there sent two men to take me there.”

Decades later that sentence would still ring in her ears. Only hours earlier, at the lake, she had been dreaming of their future, of a wedding. She had imagined herself and Tin Win living in a house with children in the yard, children with feet for walking and eyes for seeing. She had lain in his arms, describing the scene to him. They had determined to raise the issue of marriage with Mi Mi’s parents in the coming weeks. And now he would be going to the capital. Mi Mi knew what that meant. Rangoon was the other end of the world. Few people ever went there and even fewer returned. She wanted to ask what his uncle wanted with him and how long he would be away and why they had to be apart, but at the same time she sensed that words could not help her, not now, when she longed with her whole body for Tin Win. She took his hands and pulled him down to her. Their lips met. She pulled her shirt over her head, and he kissed her breasts. His warm breath on her skin. His mouth dancing downward along her body. He loosened her longyi. They were both naked. He kissed her legs and thighs. He teased her with his tongue. She felt him now as never before. And she felt herself. More and more deeply, more beautifully than ever. He was giving her a new body with every movement. She pictured herself flying over Kalaw, over the forests and mountains and valleys, from one peak to the next. The earth receded to a miniature ball on which
Rangoon and Kalaw and all the other cities and countries lay no more than a finger’s breadth apart. She lost all control over her body. It was as if every one of her emotions had suddenly exploded, the rage and the fear and the doubt, the longing, the tenderness, and the desire. For one moment, for the duration of a few heartbeats, every one of the world’s promises was fulfilled, and nothing could contain her.

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.

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.

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.