A Well-tempered Heart (31 page)

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 slowly 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?

Something had happened to me without my noticing. Is it true that we can count the moments in which something really happens in our lives? Do we notice it right away, or only in hindsight?

One of my brother’s coughing spells interrupted my thoughts. I rose and hastened to his side.

He stirred from his sleep and gazed at me bleary-eyed, still somewhat groggy. As if he was not quite sure where he was.

I knelt beside him and stroked his hand. I was comforted by its warmth. “Did you sleep well?”

“Not too badly,” he answered softly.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, only thirsty.”

Thar Thar brought a cup of tea and a wooden bowl containing the dregs of a glistening ointment that smelled strongly of eucalyptus. “I found a bit of salve from our medicine man. You should rub it into his chest and back. It will help him.”

U Ba straightened up and slurped at the hot tea.

I hesitated a brief moment.

“Shall I do it?” asked Thar Thar.

“No, thank you,” I replied, surprised that he had immediately sensed my uncertainty.

Thar Thar removed himself discretely. I crouched behind U Ba, pushed his shirt up, dipped two fingers in the ointment, and spread it with circular motions between his shoulders. His skin was warm and soft, much softer than I had expected. Almost like a child’s. His back was speckled with tiny liver spots, the kind I remembered my father having. The kind I found on myself in the mirror.

When I was done, he lay back down and I applied the salve to his chest. He closed his eyes and breathed
peacefully. I could feel his heart beating beneath my hand. Slowly and evenly.

The fragility of bliss.

I wondered what my father would have likened the sound to. Drops from a leaky faucet? The ticking of a wall clock? Strings plucked on a violin?

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

I fetched water from the kitchen, but by the time I returned my brother had fallen asleep again.

THAR THAR HAD
peeled all the potatoes and put the rice on when he turned to help me with the tomatoes. I had never seen anyone cut vegetables so deftly.

“Tell me about your brother and yourself,” he asked. “Why does he live here and you in New York?”

“It’s a long and complicated story.”

“You have said that you’re in no hurry.”

“We have the same father. He’s from Kalaw. When he was a young man, before U Ba was even born, a rich relative brought him to Rangoon. Later that same relative sent him to college in the United States. That’s where he met my mother. They married, and he became a successful lawyer.”

“Is he still alive?”

“No. He returned to Kalaw decades later and died there.”

“He wanted to see his son again?”

“No. He did not even know he existed.”

“Are you certain?”

“Quite,” I said. “How could he have known about his son? My brother lived with his mother, and they had no contact.”

“Is she still alive?”

“No. They died together one day after my father’s return. They hadn’t seen each other for fifty years.”

“How beautiful!”

“What’s beautiful about it?”

“The fact that they got to see each other again. The fact that they did not die alone. Is it for her sake that he returned to Kalaw?”