A Well-tempered Heart (8 page)

The pilot had powered down the engines, and I heard nothing beyond the rushing of the wind. The other passengers, a tour group from Italy, a few Burmese, and two monks, had gone ahead and were gradually disappearing into the little arrivals area. Three men were pulling a baggage car behind them loaded with suitcases, bags, and backpacks. A gust of wind stirred up a thin light-brown dust devil and chased it across the airfield. I picked up my bag and hesitantly followed the men. Again and again I stopped and looked around. As if reassuring myself where I had landed.

I had spent the days since my conversation with the monk in a kind of trance. My decision to follow his advice. Amy’s encouragement, as if she feared I might reconsider. My hasty travel preparations. The long flight to Bangkok, the delayed arrival, the missed connection to Rangoon. Waiting for hours in a lounge. I had drowsed my way through a large part of the trip.

Now I was shedding stress with every step. My exhaustion and weariness were falling away. The anticipation was too intense. I could hardly wait another minute to see my brother again. With his help I would be able to sort out the fate of the voice inside me.

There was nothing at all going on in front of the airport. One old, dented Toyota waited with rolled-down windows on a patch of sand in front of a shack. The driver sat sleeping behind the wheel. Someone had painted the word “Taxi” in black paint on the door. I knocked hesitantly on the hood. The driver didn’t move. A second knock, more assertive. He lifted his head and looked at me through groggy eyes.

“Can you take me to Kalaw?”

The man smiled cheerfully, yawned and stretched. He stepped out, retied his longyi, opened the trunk with a screwdriver, stowed my backpack, and tried, in spite of the broken lock, to close the trunk. When that didn’t work, he enlisted the help of a bit of wire that he wrapped around the fender and passed through a hole eaten into the metal by rust. He reached through the window to open the door for me from the inside. The springs had worn deep circles
in the shabby upholstery. Up front there were no controls and no dashboard, just a wild chaos of black, yellow, and red cables and wires. I hesitated.

He nodded encouragingly, and I got it. Soon we were stopping at a stand by the side of the road. The driver bought a bag of betel nuts and a freshly woven garland of white jasmine, which he hung from the rearview mirror. For a moment, the fragrance filled the car.

The wind on the road was cool and dry. I tried to roll up a window, but the handles were missing on both sides.

I felt how the driver was watching me in the mirror.

“Are you cold, Miss?”

“A little,” I replied.

He nodded. For a few seconds he reduced his speed, only to pick it up again around the next bend.

“Where may I take you in Kalaw, Miss?”

“Is the Kalaw Hotel still there?”

“Of course.”

“That will do, then.”

Our eyes met in the mirror. He wagged his head slightly and smiled. His teeth were stained bloodred from chewing betel nuts. “If Miss would like, I can recommend other hotels.”

“What’s wrong with the Kalaw Hotel?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Nothing, Miss. It’s just that we natives would not like to stay there.”

“Why not?”

“Word is there are ghosts there.”

I might have known. “What kind of ghosts?” I asked, sighing slightly.

“Oh, it is a very sad story. The hotel served as a hospital during the war. Unfortunately several English died there. Their ghosts still roam about the house, it is said.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts. Have you ever seen one?”

“No, of course not.”

“You see?”

“But I do not stay in the Kalaw Hotel.” He wagged his head again and smiled.

“Have you ever spoken with anyone who has seen one?”

“No, Miss. My passengers do not sleep there.”

“I have already stayed once at that hotel, for two weeks, and I did not meet a single ghost.”

I suspected he was getting a higher kickback from other hotels and left it at that.

We drove through a hilly landscape where farming could not have been easy. Not far from the road a man with a water buffalo was plowing a field. It must have rained not long before. The ground was slippery; man and beast were covered with mud. The emaciated buffalo plodded through the mire; the farmer, clad only in a drenched longyi, drove the plow with all his strength. Both looked as if they might collapse at any moment.

A couple of hundred yards away a golden stupa sparkled in the sun. Hidden among the hills and fields, between the trees or in bamboo groves, I glimpsed pagodas, monasteries, and temples.

On one occasion we stopped abruptly for two stubborn oxen whose cart was blocking the way.

A good hour later we pulled into the driveway of the Kalaw Hotel. The driver stopped before the entrance, fetched my backpack from the trunk, gave me a card with his name and address, in case I reconsidered and wanted other accommodations, wished me a pleasant stay in Kalaw, and went on his way. Hotel employees were so far nowhere to be seen.

The door stood wide open, so I climbed the few steps and entered the building with a pounding heart. One glance at the reception area was all it took for the memories to come flooding back. The clocks on the wall showing the local times in Bangkok, Paris, Tokyo, New York, and Myanmar, all of them incorrect. The plaster flaking off the walls like skin after a sunburn. The key cabinets, in which I had never seen a single key. Not during my previous stay, and not now, either. The cold neon light. Highly polished floors. Yellow drapes billowing sedately in the breeze.

A sense of returning home. As if I had spent years of my life in this hotel.

“Hello,” I called, but got no answer.

In an adjacent room a television was playing, a young man sleeping on the bench in front of it.

“Hello,” I called again loudly, knocking on the door frame. The young man woke and looked at me in surprise. A guest was apparently the last thing he had been expecting.

My room, 101, had not changed.

Large with a high ceiling, whitewashed walls, two beds, a little nightstand between them, a table and two armchairs in front of the window, even the Korean mini-fridge still occupied its former location. Still out of order.

The young woman at the reception desk was very friendly. She knew a few English phrases. She did not know U Ba.

I set out to find the teahouse where I had met my brother for the first time. Someone there would certainly know where he lived. I walked down the street that led from the hotel to the middle of the town. It was bordered by poinsettia, oleander, and elder bushes, and it was in better condition than what I remembered. Leisurely pedestrians ambled along, most hand in hand or arm in arm. Almost everyone greeted me with a smile. A young boy on a bike that was much too big for him rode toward me and called out: “How are you?”

Before I could answer he had disappeared around the next corner.

I came to a fork in the road. I stopped and tried to get my bearings. On the right was a park populated by the overgrown remains of a mini-golf course. At the entrance two horse-drawn carriages waited in the shadow of a pine. On the left the main artery led to the city center. I followed it and walked past a school with children’s voices spilling out the open windows.

And then I discovered U Ba. I recognized him from a distance. I knew him by his gait, by the slight spring in
his step. By the way he held up his longyi a little with his right hand in order to be able to walk more quickly. He was walking in the street and coming right toward me. I felt my heart race. Every ounce of me remembered.

My eyes welled up with tears. I swallowed, pressed my lips firmly together. Where had I been so long? Why had I never given in to my longing for U Ba, for Kalaw? How hard it is to follow one’s heart. Whose life had I been leading these past ten years?

He looked up and spotted me. We both slowed our steps. Paused briefly, then continued on until we stood face-to-face.

One of us tall, the other short. One of us not so young anymore, the other not yet so old. Brother and sister.

I wanted to hug him, to press him to me, but my body would not obey. It was U Ba who broke the tension. He took one small last step toward me, stretched out his arms, took my face gingerly in his hands. Looked at me out of tired, exhausted eyes. I saw how they turned wet. How they filled, drop by drop, until they overflowed.

His lips were quivering.

“I took my time,” I whispered.

“You did. Forgive me for not meeting you at the airport.”

“U Ba! You didn’t even know I was coming.”

“No?” A smile, just a brief one.

I put my arms around him. He stood on tiptoes and put his head on my shoulder for a moment.

Some dreams are big. Some small.

“Where are your things?”

“At the hotel.”

“Then we must fetch them later. You’ll stay with me, won’t you?”

I thought of his hut. I thought of the swarm of bees, of the sagging couch, of the pig under the house. “I don’t know. I would hate to be a burden.”

“A burden? Julia, it would be an honor.” He faltered briefly and then continued quietly and with a wink: “Aside from the fact that the people of Kalaw would never speak to me again if they heard that I made my sister stay in a hotel after she had traveled around the world to visit me. Out of the question.”

U Ba took my arm in his and led me back in the direction he had come from. “For a start, let’s go drink some tea and have a bite to eat. You must be hungry from your long trip, no? Do they give you anything at all to eat in those airplanes?”

We crossed the street and made for a restaurant. It had a large patio with umbrellas, low tables, and tiny stools, and it was very full. We sat under an umbrella at the last free table. My knees stuck up above the table.

Beside us sat two women in animated conversation, on the other side two soldiers in green uniforms. U Ba greeted them with a quick nod.

“This establishment belongs to the same people who owned the teahouse where we first met,” he said, coughing.

I thought of the shabby old shack with its dusty floor
and greasy display cases full of fly-ridden pastries and rice cakes. “It’s a big improvement.”

“You brought them luck,” replied U Ba, beaming at me.

My brother observed me for a long time without saying a word. The tea came in two espresso cups. There was a dead insect floating in mine. “Oh, so sorry,” said the waitress when I pointed it out to her. She took a little spoon, fished the creature out of the tea, and tossed it over the railing. I was too surprised to say anything, and she shuffled off.

“Would you like a new one?” asked U Ba.

I nodded.

He deftly swapped our cups.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, embarrassed.

The tea had a very distinctive flavor that I had only ever encountered in Burma. Very strong, a hint of bitterness, overlain by sweetened condensed milk.

U Ba sipped at his tea without taking his eyes off me. It was not a gaze intended to provoke. Not an evaluation, an analysis or examination. It simply rested on me. I found it unsettling all the same. Ten years had passed. Why were the words not bubbling out of us?
How are you? What are you doing?
Didn’t we have anything to say to each other after all that time?

I was ready to break the silence between us, but he intimated with his eyes that I should wait a moment yet. The waitress brought two steaming bowls of noodle soup.

“ ‘Defy ephemerality. Wander not always ahead of yourself in thought, but neither dawdle in the past. It is the art
of arrival. Of being in one, only one, place at one time. Of absorbing it with all of your senses. Its beauty, its ugliness, its singularity. Of allowing oneself to be overwhelmed, fearlessly. The art of being where you are.’ I read that once in a book I was restoring. I think it was called
On Travel.
Do you like it?”

I nodded, even if I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.

He tipped his head to one side and smiled at me. “You are lovely. Even lovelier than my memory of you.”

I laughed, embarrassed.

“Today is the fifteenth. Quite a coincidence,” I said, hoping he would understand the allusion.

“I know. How could I forget?” A shadow passed across his face.

“Do they still hold the procession to honor Mi Mi and our father?”

U Ba shook his head gravely and glanced uncomfortably around the establishment. He leaned over to me and whispered: “The military has forbidden it.”

“What!?” I said. Loudly. Much too loudly. “Why?”

He suppressed a wince. The soldiers at the next table got up and looked at us with curiosity on their way out. In front of the teahouse they climbed into an army Jeep and drove off. They left behind a cloud of dust that drifted our way and then settled drearily among the stools and tables. I gave a short cough.

My brother, by contrast, was breathing easier. “The army does not like demonstrations.”

“Not even when they commemorate two lovers?” I wondered.

“Then least of all.” He sipped at his tea. “What are people with guns most afraid of? Other people with guns? No! What do violent individuals fear most? Violence? I should say not! By what do the cruel and selfish feel most threatened? All of them fear nothing as much as they fear love.”

“But people were just bringing flowers to Mi Mi’s house. What was so dangerous about that?”

“People who love are dangerous. They know no fear. They obey other laws.”

U Ba wanted to pay. The waitress said something I didn’t understand in Burmese; my brother said a few sentences back, and they both laughed.

“They don’t want our money. It’s on the house.”

“Thank you.”

“She is thanking
you.
”

“What for?”

“For allowing her to show you a kindness.”

I was too exhausted to follow that logic. I nodded amiably and stood up.

“Shall we hire a carriage to take us to the hotel? I’m sure you are tired after your exertions.”

“No, that’s all right. It’s not far. I can make it.”