A Well-tempered Heart (19 page)

“I’m leaving again tomorrow,” Maung Sein said finally.

His son stared mutely at the ceiling.

“Tomorrow, before sunrise. You’ll still be asleep.”

“I want to go with you,” said Thar Thar suddenly.

A second hen came up and nibbled at his bare feet. Now it was Maung Sein’s turn to be silent. He wondered whether there was any possibility of bringing him along, but a lumber camp was no place for children. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m on the road so much, and I have to work the whole time.”

“I can help you.”

Maung Sein smiled. “That would be nice. But felling trees is not easy and also a bit dangerous.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“I know. You can come with me when you’re a little bigger. Promise.”

Thar Thar did not reply. Maung Sein watched him in silence, and the longer he looked at him the sadder he felt. In the light of the candle his son’s face lost all its youthful aspect. His lips were thin like the tail of a field mouse. He pressed them together the way he often used to do. His eyes looked tired. Was it just his imagination, or were those early wrinkles at the corners? It was not the weariness of a child after a long day that Maung Sein beheld; it was the exhaustion of a sad, lonely adult.

“Besides, Mama needs your help when I’m not there.”

“She doesn’t need me.”

“Sure she does,” contradicted Maung Sein. “You’re wrong about that. She told me how industrious you are and how much you help her. That’s very kind of you.”

“Mama has Ko Gyi. She. Doesn’t. Need. Me.”

Maung Sein had to swallow twice. He wanted to give some answer, but nothing occurred to him. It was the way he said it that most alarmed Maung Sein. Grave and cool.

If only it had been a complaint.

SHE WANTED TO
surprise him. A little treat for him and the children. That was all. For his sons who always found it hard to see him go. Especially Thar Thar, whose most sincere wish was to go along when his father took to the road. Now he would have a chance to see what a difficult and dangerous trade Maung Sein practiced.

One of the last tall trees in the village needed to be cut down. It stood at the main intersection. Beetles had eaten away at its trunk. It was old and unsound, and it threatened to fall on the nearby houses in the next storm. Before it could be cut down, someone had to prune the crown. Otherwise it would fall on huts at the end of the street.

Maung Sein was the most experienced lumberjack in the village. He gladly volunteered.

The men were amazed at how deftly he scaled the tree with a saw over his shoulder. He shinnied right up to the top. They closed the street, he started to saw, and no one could say afterward exactly what happened then. A first
branch came whooshing down. Then a second. All at once they heard a creaking and rustling, quietly at first, then louder and louder. Everyone looked up, many held their breath, out of a few mouths came short, high cries. The dull thud of the impact. No one who was there would ever forget it.

Most of the villagers were convinced that the spirit who lived in the tree had cast him from the crown out of vengeance. Others thought he must have stepped on a rotten branch. Several claimed to have seen him leaning too far forward to give a final kick to a branch that did not want to fall. A small number insisted that he had carelessly neglected to hold fast and then lost his balance. Or maybe for a moment he had let his guard down.

Everyone agreed there was nothing anyone could do about it. A tragic mishap. A twist of fate. Everyone has the karma he deserves.

Nu Nu knew better.

It was her fault. She had distracted him. She had seen him from a distance sitting in the crown of the mighty tree. Thirty, maybe forty yards off the ground. He had already lopped off two big branches. A black spot amid the green leaves.

She pointed him out to her sons, marking his position with her finger until they could discover him. They looked up at him full of pride and wanted nothing so much as to run right to him.

When they came to the barriers all three of them looked up and recognized him clearly among the branches and
called his name in unison. He had not noticed them approaching and looked down in surprise.

They waved to him.

He waved back.

The children hopped and waved and clapped for joy.

He leaned forward to see them better. Waved. With both hands.

There was a creaking and a rustling in the crown of the tree.

IT LASTED TWO
years. Two years after which Nu Nu could not say how she had survived. Two years during which hardly a day passed when she did not fear that she would fall into madness. Not a single day on which she did not ask herself why this tragedy had stricken her of all people. What had she done to deserve the fate of a young widow? Why not the village leader’s stingy wife? Or the greedy, cantankerous wife of the rice merchant? Why her with her two little children? Why was life so unjust?

There were many weeks during which she never left the hut and hardly ever got out of bed. Neglecting the laundry. Cooking nothing for her sons. Not even preparing alms for the monks. She was wakeful all night and slept the whole day. At times, believing it was all just a dream, she would go to look for her husband. Ko Gyi in hand, she would wander the village with empty gaze, grimy longyi, and disheveled hair. Her ramble ended every time at the stump of the
beetle-ridden tree at the crossroads. There she would squat in the dust and remember.

See him waving.

With both hands.

Eventually Thar Thar would arrive, take her by the hand, and lead them both back home in silence.

The brothers responded completely differently to their father’s death. Ko Gyi clung to his mother. He slept next to her. By day he would not let her out of his sight. He begged her to get up when she simply lay there. He entreated her to say something when she was silent for days. He followed her every step the moment she left the house. As if, having lost his father, he feared now also to lose his mother. Most of the time, though, he simply crouched beside her and waited.

And waited.

Thar Thar, by contrast, driven by an inner unrest, was out and about from dawn till dusk.

He fetched water from the well, making sure that his mother and brother had enough to drink and that they ate at least once a day. He looked after the chickens. At regular intervals he would take a tub of laundry so heavy that he could barely carry it down to the river, where he would find a spot beside the women in the water. Then he would lug the wet things, now even heavier, back home, where he hung them on the porch to dry. He walked to the market and bought rice, and when their last kyat had been spent, he slipped through the hedge to the neighbors to ask for help. He tended and harvested the tomatoes and planted
additional vegetables behind the house. He cooked every day. His curries tasted good. Better than hers.

Nu Nu could not figure out where her eight-year-old son found the energy. Sometimes she wondered if, with Maung Sein’s death, some of the father’s vigor, care, and love had passed into Thar Thar.

One afternoon more than two years after Maung Sein’s death she lay exhausted on her blanket and watched how he cleaned the vegetables carefully, keeping the fire ablaze, tending to wood and kindling. With a clumsy movement he accidentally knocked over a kettle that fell with a clatter into the flames. Thar Thar disappeared behind a cloud of white steam. The fire went out, hissing loudly. He regarded the mess, sighed once briefly, and started to separate the dry wood from the wet. He went to the yard to fetch wood chips and little twigs and calmly lit another fire to boil water for the rice. The big barrel in front of the house was empty and he had to walk to the well in the village.

Nu Nu marveled at his equanimity. She would doubtless have been upset at her clumsiness. Would have gotten annoyed. Would have retreated discouraged to her sleeping mat. What had happened to Thar Thar? Where was the impulsive, hot-tempered boy who spent all his time in the chicken coop?

What had the father’s accident done to the child’s spirit? What had the elder taught the younger?

She thought about Maung Sein. Her husband was dead. There was nothing she could do about that. But whether
the loss led to despair, whether it broke her, that was up to her alone.

Nu Nu straightened up and tried to stand. She found it easier than expected. She put on a clean longyi and added a fresh log to the fire. She watched as it started to smolder and eventually caught fire. Nu Nu squatted beside it and hesitantly picked up the little knife, testing the blade. Someone must have sharpened it. She took a cutting board and somewhat clumsily cut up spring onions and tomatoes, sliced zucchini and carrots, peeled and diced the ginger. With every movement the work came more easily and she felt improved. The sharp smell of the fresh ginger rose into her nose. How long had it been since she smelled it?

Ko Gyi sat beside her. Watching her. Speechless.

Suddenly Thar Thar stood in the doorway behind her with a pail of water.

“What are you doing?” he asked in surprise.

“I’m helping you,” she replied.

He thanked her with a smile.

They put rice and vegetables on and then went, all three of them, into the yard to wash the tin plates and to fetch water for tea.

She noticed now for the first time that the roof in one corner of the hut had fallen in. The boards below, moist from the rain, had rotted. This part of the hut would not survive the next rainy season. Nu Nu looked around the yard. It was swept clean. Big tomatoes were thriving in the
beds. Beside them Thar Thar had also planted carrots and eggplants, and he had skillfully weeded. The banana plants hung full of fruit, likewise the papaya and avocado trees. The bougainvillea, though, had utterly overgrown the gate, and she could see by a gap in the hedge what alternative exit her son was now using instead.

And she asked herself why she neither saw nor heard any sign of the chickens.

“Where are the chickens?”

Thar Thar swallowed and lowered his eyes. “In the coop.”

“Are you sure? They’re so quiet.”

He nodded without looking at her.

Nu Nu walked over to the coop and listened. Not hearing anything, she squatted down and peered in through the little door. In one corner she spotted three birds.

“Where are the others?” she asked, puzzled, as she stood back up.

“Gone,” whispered Thar Thar, turning aside.

“What do you mean, gone? Did they run away? Did dogs get a hold of them?” Nu Nu knew how much the chickens meant to her son and she couldn’t believe that he had not looked after them better.

Thar Thar shook his head mutely.

Nu Nu looked in doubt from one son to the other.

“He sold them,” said Ko Gyi in a muted voice. “One after another.”

“Sold them?”

Thar Thar, still silent, stared at the ground. She put a hand under his chin and cautiously lifted his head. Two tears ran down his cheeks. His lower lip quivered. He closed his eyes and the tears increased.

“Why?”

Silence.

“Why?”

A profound, almost unbearable silence was her answer.

“Because the neighbors were no longer willing to lend us money or rice,” murmured Ko Gyi.

“Because otherwise we would have starved,” said Thar Thar, turning away and running as fast as he could back into the house.

Nu Nu was still trying to understand what had happened. A thought crept up on her, so sad that she wanted to forget it again immediately. “But the neighbors have their own chickens,” she said, looking to Ko Gyi for an answer. “It doesn’t make sense. Can you explain it to me?”

He nodded. “It’s true. They didn’t want them, and they offered him a terrible price.” He paused awhile. Softly, very softly, he continued: “He slaughtered, plucked, and dressed them and sold them at the market.”

WHEN NU NU
awoke near dawn she could hear someone already busy with the pots. It was barely light yet, but the birds were already atwitter. She rolled over. Beside her Ko Gyi was asleep. Soon afterward she heard the monks at the gate, and she wondered why they had not long since ceased to ask for alms where there was nothing to be had. Nu Nu saw Thar Thar hurry down the steps with the big rice bowl in his hands. Had he been making offerings? All those months? How could he have conjured up the rice when they had hardly enough for themselves? She was too exhausted to ponder the question for long, and she fell back asleep.