A Well-tempered Heart (12 page)

Nor did the second suitor stand any chance. He was the son of the richest rice farmer in the province. He came because he had heard of Nu Nu’s beauty. He was handsome, and his manners impressed her parents, but she knew within minutes that he understood neither groundless sorrow nor groundless joy. How could her love grow where it had no place to take root?

She might almost have overlooked Maung Sein.

Not because he was small of stature. On the contrary, he must have had some English ancestry; how else could one explain his light skin, or, more than anything, his athletic frame? Maung Sein had a broad chest, extraordinarily muscular biceps, and hands so big that her head nearly vanished in them.

Nu Nu was partial to tall men, but on that market day she had been thoroughly preoccupied with her little sister. Khin Khin had a high fever and lay wearily beside her under the umbrella. Before them, stacked in orderly piles, were the fruits of her father’s labor: tomatoes, eggplants, ginger, cauliflower, and potatoes. It was hot. Nu Nu dipped a cloth in a bowl of tepid water every couple of minutes, wrung it out, and laid it on her sister’s brow. While her sister was dozing, she thought she would seize the chance to bring an order of tomatoes, several pounds, to a nearby restaurant. In her haste she stumbled, lost her balance for a moment, felt the basket of vegetables slip from her head, and watched as they spilled in every direction. Across the road, into the tall grass, and deep under the bushes. She crawled after
them on all fours. When she got back to the basket it was full again. Beside it stood a young man, smiling bashfully. He looked first at her and then shyly at the ground.

It was a smile she would never forget. Warm and sincere, but tempered by the realization that not every sadness needed a justification.

Caught up as she was in concern for her sister, she might even then have thanked him perfunctorily and thought no more of him. As it was, she had observed several unusual things in the preceding days.

Nu Nu wondered how people could live under the delusion that there was nothing real other than what we could perceive directly with our senses. She was convinced there were powers beyond our knowledge that nevertheless had an effect on us and that occasionally left signs for us. One needed only know how to notice and interpret them. Nu Nu studied extensively the silhouettes of the banana and papaya trees at dusk, the outlines of the smoke rising from the fire, and the configuration of the clouds. She spent many hours gazing at the sky, observing and reading their formations. She was fascinated by their fleeting existence. They were constantly shifting form, shaped by an unseen hand, only to disappear one or two moments later into the infinite expanse out of which they had arisen.

She pitied anyone who saw in all of that only clouds, portents of nothing more than fair weather or foul. In them Nu Nu could make out monkeys and tigers, ravenous maws, broken hearts, tearful faces.

Over the past weeks she had spotted several elephants in the sky, tokens of energy and strength. A few days earlier a white cloud had transformed itself suddenly and directly above her into a bird. She had taken it for an owl, a symbol of luck, stretching its wings. To Nu Nu it was a clear sign that someone or something was approaching her from a great distance.

Yesterday in the field she had uncovered a fist-sized stone with a highly unusual shape. She had turned it this way and that, and depending on how she held it, it had reminded her of one thing or another. It could be a funnel. A stupa. Or, with some imagination, a heart. She was not sure what it really represented.

Today, there was Maung Sein standing before her.

He had come from a far-off province to spend a few months helping an uncle clear a field.

She asked if he might be able to bring the tomatoes to the restaurant, since she needed to be looking after her feverish sister, described to him the location of the vegetable stand, and asked him to deliver the money there.

He shouldered the basket without a word.

A short time later, when he stood in front of her for the second time, she noticed his large hands.

He held out a kyat note and a few coins for her and asked whether he could assist her in any other way.

Yes, she said, without missing a beat. Her little sister was sick. If he could help bring her home in a couple of
hours she would be much obliged. Perhaps he would not mind returning near the end of the day?

It would be no trouble at all for him just to wait there, replied Maung Sein. Provided, of course, that she would permit it. He did not wish to be in the way.

Nu Nu nodded, surprised.

He hunched beneath the sunshade at her sleeping sister’s feet while she held Khin Khin’s head in her lap.

Maung Sein offered to fetch fresh, cold water. She gratefully declined; it would only warm up quickly. She did not want him to leave.

People walked past them, many of them exchanging knowing looks at the sight of the athletic young man sitting by her side. Again and again customers would stop, buy tomatoes, ginger, or eggplants, eyeing the stranger critically all the while.

Maung Sein was only peripherally aware of all the interest he was arousing. He sat up straight, as if meditating, eyes lowered most of the time, hardly believing what he had done. He, who was otherwise so shy that he clammed up the moment a girl was in the room or even in the vicinity, he had suddenly had the audacity to ask this young woman, the most beautiful he had ever seen, if he might sit with her. He did not know where the source of his newfound courage lay. It had simply been there. As if bravery needed only a suitable occasion to make an appearance. Who knew, thought Maung Sein, what he was really capable of.

From time to time Nu Nu would ask him a question, which he would answer courteously, though he found he had to repeat every second sentence, so quietly did the words pass from his lips.

Maung Sein was an unusually quiet individual who on many days uttered little more than a couple of sentences. Not because he was rude, morose, or disaffected, but because he felt the world was better explained through actions than through words.

And because he treasured silence.

He had spent his youth as a novice in a monastery. There the monks had taught him not to attribute too much meaning to this, his life. It was, after all, but one in an infinite chain. The justice and happiness that eluded an individual in one life would be granted him in the next, if he deserved it. Or in the one after that. The exact details were beside the point.

What’s more, they had taught him to be friendly and helpful to others. Not because he owed it to them. Because he owed it to himself.

These were two of the maxims by which he sought to lead his life. The rest would follow.

Or else it was not important.

Maung Sein cast about for something he would like to tell the young woman beside him.

About his work as a lumberjack? He could not imagine it would interest her. About his uncle who had just fathered a child with the neighbor’s daughter, thirty years younger
than himself? No, he would be hard-pressed to find a topic more ill-suited to the occasion.

About himself? His family at home, where Death was a frequent guest. A silent visitor to whom one addressed no questions, who took whomever he wished. To his youngest brother he had appeared in the guise of a snake. The boy had reached innocently to pull that stick out of the underbrush. What does a four-year-old understand of the art of natural camouflage, of the secrets of mimicry?

Death had jostled his eldest brother out of the crown of a eucalyptus tree. An eight-year-old boy who wanted to know what the world looked like from above.

Only wings could have saved him.

No, he would rather talk of Happiness. She was no stranger to him, even if she was a less frequent visitor than Death, more fleeting. He would see her at regular intervals as long as he kept a sharp eye out for her.

Today she had come to him in the form of a tomato rolling across his path, along a trajectory that led him back to an overturned basket.

He might also have chosen to pass by. One must not be deceived by the many disguises of Happiness.

The more he thought about it, the more clearly he recognized that he did not wish to say anything at all. It was enough simply to sit there. To be near her. To be able to glance at her from time to time, and to get a response.

Nu Nu enjoyed his silence, even though it cost her considerable effort to keep her curiosity in check. She was
convinced that she would learn all that mattered when the time was ripe.

She could see during the brief moments when their eyes met that he would not be startled by tears for a dead butterfly; he would make sure there was always a log on the fire.

As the market drew to a close Nu Nu packed the remaining vegetables in a basket. It was heavy, and she asked Maung Sein to set it on her head. He raised it with an effort and declared that she would never be able to carry such a burden by herself. The way he said it made clear to her that he would sooner make the trip two or three times than let her carry the basket. He would be able to provide for her. In every respect.

They took the basket between them, one on each side. He set her sister gingerly on his shoulder, which Khin Khin accepted without complaint. And thus they set out.

When they parted he asked permission to see her again the next day.

That evening Nu Nu lay awake for a long time. She remembered the stone from earlier in the day. She knew now what shape it had been.

NU NU LAY
beside her sleeping husband, listening to the rain. She could tell by the sound what it was pattering on. The thick leaves of a banana tree rang out deep and powerful. The small, thin bamboo leaves were bright and gentle. The puddles in the yard gurgled. Her old roof swallowed the drops with a dull sound only to spit them out again as a burbling rivulet into the gutters. The mats of dried grasses and palm leaves that covered her house leaked in several places. Nu Nu heard the appalling splashing on the floorboards. There was no money to repair them. They would have to serve for another year. At least.

From a neighbor’s house the tones of a tin roof, loud and furious. She would never be able to sleep under that, she thought, no matter how practical it might be.

It had started to rain the previous afternoon and had not stopped since. That was unusual. At this time of year the rains generally pelted from the heavens in bursts that lasted one, maybe two hours, making the air heavy and humid.
The ground soaked up the moisture, and the sun devoured whatever was left with its merciless rays. In a short time the ground would again be dry, waiting impatiently for the next downpour.

Outside, dawn was gradually approaching. The first beams of light were falling through the cracks in the wall. Nu Nu snuggled again against her husband, throwing her arm across his chest. For a few minutes she savored the warmth of his body, the even rhythm of his heart beating beneath her hand, his breath on her skin. Then she got up, fanned the smoldering fire, hung a kettle over the flames, sat down in the open doorway, and watched the water turning their yard into a growing pool of mud.

She loved the rainy season. She loved these months clad in silver-gray when the earth awoke, when life throve in the unlikeliest places and nature, uninhibited, covered everything in a veil of green. It was also a time when she need not rise before the sun just to get to the fields on time. When she and Maung Sein had a few hours to themselves because there was nothing to do but listen to the sound of the rain. Or to weave a basket.

Or to follow one’s passion.

She felt desire kindling within her and briefly considered lying down with her husband again and seducing him the moment he woke, but she decided against it. The way things looked, they would have the whole day for that, and the novices would be standing in front of their hut expecting their daily offerings in one hour at the latest. She stood
up, went to the hearth, put rice on, and picked out a handful of especially large tomatoes and eggplants for a vegetable curry. Only the best for the monks, even though food was in short supply in their house at times and Maung Sein occasionally grumbled about her generosity.

Nu Nu felt a deep sense of gratitude and humility when she thought about the past two years and she wanted to show her appreciation however she could within the modest means at her disposal. She wondered what she had done to deserve such joy. What good deed might she have performed in a previous life to warrant such a rich reward in this one?

Thanks to a loan from Maung Sein’s uncle when they got married, they had been able to buy this old hut, the attached property, and a field. It lay in a village two days on foot from her birthplace. The hut offered sufficient space, and there was a room with a cooking pit in one corner. On a wooden shelf behind the fire stood bowls, tin plates, cups, and a few sooty, dented pots. The cutlery and two cooking spoons were stuck into the wall of woven palm fronds. Beside the shelf sat their few supplies: half a sack of rice, tomatoes, ginger, eggplants, and one jar of fish sauce.