A Well-tempered Heart (30 page)

“I believe your companion is exhausted. I’ll make us some fresh tea,” said Thar Thar, disappearing into a room at the end of the hall.

I sat down beside U Ba.

“I’m sorry. I need a little rest,” he said.

“Did you see the Christian crucifixes?” I whispered.

He nodded. “Surely presents from the Italian priest.”

“But why would they be hanging in a Buddhist monastery?”

U Ba shrugged his shoulders and smiled wearily.

Thar Thar returned with a tray, a thermos, and three small cups. He fetched a flat table and a pillow for me.

The tea was hot and bitter.

“I would be grateful for an opportunity to rest, if it’s not an imposition,” U Ba said softly.

Thar Thar rose immediately, fetched a mat, and draped a blanket over my brother.

“Do you have a hotel in Hsipaw?”

“No,” I said.

“You are welcome to stay with us.”

Skeptical, I looked around for beds or anything that resembled a place to sleep. “Do you have room for us?”

He laughed again. “Ample. We roll out mats in the evening. If you want your privacy, I can set up a sleeping area in the corner for you. There’s a curtain. Sometimes tourists stay overnight. That’s where they sleep. We even have two sleeping bags that someone left here for us. I think it would do your companion good.”

“He is my brother.”

He faltered briefly. “I don’t see any resemblance.”

“My half brother. I live in New York and am visiting him here.”

Thar Thar nodded, accepting my explanation without further questions.

Dusk was falling outside. I heard voices under the building. Rustling. Rattling. Cheerful, rollicking laughter, as only children can produce, I thought.

Soon afterward they came up the stairs. Ko Aung and Ko Lwin I knew already. They were followed by two young men, both hobbling. A girl with a staff that served as a crutch. She was missing a leg. A girl with only one hand. Another girl accompanied by a boy, neither of whom bore any physical injury that I could discern at first glance. All of them greeted me earnestly but warmly and disappeared into the kitchen. Soon enough I could hear the crackle of a roaring fire, the clatter of crockery.

“How many are you altogether?” I asked.

“Thirteen.”

“And you are the abbot of the monastery?”

“No. Strictly speaking we are not a Buddhist monastery.”

“What then?”

He pondered. “A family. We live together. My twelve children and I. All of them have, how should I say it … all of them are different from other children. Ko Aung is blind, Ko Maung deaf. Ko Lwin has a cleft lip and a hunchback. Ko Htoo limps, Soe Soe lost a foot. Moe Moe is missing an arm, Toe Toe has seizures, Ei Ei a rigid leg. Whatever the difficulty, their families could no longer care for them, and the other monasteries in the vicinity would not accept them.”

“Why not?” I wondered.

“Many Buddhist monasteries are loath to take in novices with disabilities. The monks believe they have bad karma. Only physically and spiritually unblemished individuals can become monks. That is why these children have come to me.”

“And what do you do with them?”

He refilled my tea and regarded me, puzzled. My question seemed not to make sense to him. “What families do: caring for one another, no? I instruct them as well as I can. We grow vegetables, weave baskets, roofs, and walls that we sell. We pray and meditate together. We cook and eat together. Don’t you have a family?”

I swallowed and gestured to the sleeping U Ba. “Of course I do. My brother.”

“And in America?”

“No one I live with.”

“No husband?”

“No.”

“No children?”

I took a deep breath.

“None.”

“You live utterly alone?”

Not since I was a little girl had anyone looked on me with such pity.

I cleared my throat. “Yes, and I like it that way.”

He tilted his head to one side and rocked his upper body slightly without making any reply.

A girl’s voice called us to the table.

We sat around the fire on three wooden beams, twelve children, Thar Thar, and I. Each of us got a bowl of rice with some vegetable curry and a fried egg on top. Some of them stole furtive glances at me over the tops of their bowls; others were too hungry to give much thought to me. The curry tasted somewhat bitter, but good. The rice had not been cleaned thoroughly. Now and then I felt a bit of sand or a small stone between my teeth.

A satisfied silence spread throughout the room. The crackle of the fire, the rustling of the bamboo outside.

Only now did I notice that one of the girls trembled as if she had Parkinson’s. She raised the spoon to her lips, but before it got halfway there it was empty. She tried again, and again some of her food fell off. She held her hand, but that failed, too, which only aggravated the trembling.

Beside her sat the one-armed Moe Moe. She was clenching
her bowl between her knees. She put it aside, took a spoon, and started to feed her neighbor, who at once felt calmer. Moe Moe and I exchanged looks. She was the only one who did not avert her eyes. With a gesture I indicated that I would help her. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. A smile flashed across her face, and she thanked me with her eyes. Hers was the most beautiful, the saddest smile I have ever seen.

I brought my brother a bowl of rice, but he had no appetite and wanted to go on resting.

We decided to spend the night.

Thar Thar arranged our sleeping area. He swept the floor, dug several mats out of a chest along with several blankets and the two sleeping bags. He spread them out in the corner behind the curtain. He made my bed doubly thick because I, he suspected, was not accustomed to sleeping on a hard floor. He took the bowl with the rose blossoms from the altar and placed it between our mats. They would drive off bad dreams and ensure a sound sleep, he claimed.

The thoughtfulness of this gesture touched me.

I went to my brother and sat down beside him. He smiled, exhausted, took my hand, and fell asleep within minutes.

I went outside and sat on the steps. Darkness had fallen over the yard. Above me stars were twinkling. So many that it took my breath away. From inside I could hear U Ba coughing in his sleep.

After a short while Thar Thar joined me on the steps. I was struck by his broad, powerful feet, which did not seem
to match his long, slender fingers. He had brought a candle, tea, and two cups.

“Care for some tea?”

“I’d love some.”

“Your brother has a terrible cold,” he remarked while pouring for us.

“I hope that’s all it is.”

“What else would it be?”

I told him about a doctor with sad eyes. About a dark spot on a lung. About medicines that do not heal.

“Are you blaming yourself?”

“Mostly I’m just worried.”

“I understand, but it is not necessary. Your brother is not dying yet.”

“That’s what he says, too. What makes you so sure?” I countered uncertainly. “Are you soothsayers? Astrologers?”

“No. But I recognize his cough. It sounds familiar. Many people here cough that way when the cold weather sets in. And in his eyes, in his face, there is no sign of death.”

“You believe you can recognize impending death in a person’s eyes?”

“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.

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.