A Well-tempered Heart (13 page)

Above the door Nu Nu had hung an old clock whose hands had frozen at six o’clock long ago. On the opposite wall hung the altar with the wooden Buddha. Between the wooden beams her husband had installed two bamboo poles where they could hang their few things. A towel for each, a
longyi, a shirt, some T-shirts and underwear. That was all they owned.

In the yard grew two lanky papaya trees, bananas, bamboo, and palms. Behind the hut there was room for tomatoes and other vegetables.

Out of Maung Sein, the lumberjack, her father had made a farmer whose enthusiasm compensated somewhat for his lack of native ability. He was often among the first in the field, and he had made a point of helping his father-in-law in order to learn from him. With modest results. His vegetables never really flourished. The cabbage was skimpy, and the tomatoes didn’t taste right. The yields from his rice field, too, fell far short of what the neighbors harvested.

Some days they were so hungry that Maung Sein doubted whether he would ever be able to provide for a family. He thought about working as a lumberjack, but there were not many of the mighty teak trees left in their region. He would have had to travel to more distant provinces and would have been away for several months of the year. Neither he nor Nu Nu wanted that. Every hour they spent apart was an hour wasted.

A life of privation did not matter to them; it was the only one they knew.

Together they had discovered something entirely different: their bodies.

The first shy touches had given way to an almost unquenchable longing.

Nu Nu’s desire had driven out her unfathomable sorrow. During the first months there had still been a few days when it crept up on her, and Nu Nu had done her best to stave it off and hide it from her husband. But Maung Sein had an impeccable sense for his wife’s moods. One look into her eyes was enough. When he saw how much energy it took for her simply to get out of bed in the morning, how much trouble she had preparing a meal, chatting with a neighbor, or going to the market, he would redouble his care for her without peppering her with questions or chastising her. As if it was the most natural thing in the world that a person should suffer from time to time a sadness so great that it exhausted and discouraged her.

Now she could not even remember the last time she felt heavyhearted.

A serene spirit and a troubled one gradually finding peace.

Since meeting her husband Nu Nu had been firmly convinced that certain people belonged to one another.

Kindred spirits. Soul mates.

Later, much later, she sometimes wondered if she had used up most of her happiness during the first two years of living together with Maung Sein. Was that possible? Was there such a thing as a limited supply of lucky breaks? Did people come into the world with an allotment of good fortune that they could enjoy during their lives, some earlier, others later? Ought they to have been more sparing with their intimacy? But how can a person guard her happiness? Or was everything that happened mere caprice and
chance? Were we balls to be kicked around by forces that followed no rules, that did with us as they pleased, like a raging river with a little branch that eventually is crushed in the flood?

In that case nothing in life would make any sense or have any meaning. But one look at her sleeping husband—and later into her son Ko Gyi’s eyes—was enough to reassure her that it could not be so. A token of love, a gesture of compassion, a helpful deed—regardless how big or small—was all it took to let Nu Nu know that her doubts were unjustified, that there was a power that lent each and every one of us our particular value.

Nothing was futile. Nothing was in vain.

Maung Sein and his love had convinced her of that to the very core of her soul. Until those things happened that caused her again to have doubts. Forever. About everything.

Sapped her life of meaning the way salt draws liquid from a body until it destroys it.

But that was later. Much later.

Now the curry and the steaming rice stood before her. She filled a mug with tea and squatted again in the doorframe, waiting for the procession of monks or for her husband to wake up, to stretch and turn to her, to look at her through drowsy eyes until a smile swept across her face.

The rain was gradually slackening, and Nu Nu noticed a few dry leaves falling from a tree into a puddle at the bottom of the stairs. Tiny messengers, rocking in a storm, hounded by bean-sized raindrops that sank one leaf after another.
Only one refused to go under, no matter how often it was hit. Nu Nu closed her eyes and counted to ten. Should it—against all likelihood—still be afloat when she opened her eyes, she would know it was not mere chance, but a sign.

She intentionally counted slowly. At five she started to feel nervous. At eight she contemplated what it might mean. When Nu Nu opened her eyes there was the grayish-brown leaf still floating in the middle of the puddle. She walked down the steps, plucked it from the water, and thoroughly examined its form and patterning. At first glance she did not make out anything remarkable. She flipped it over. On the back were two black spots staring at her like little eyes. The stem continued into the middle of the leaf. It resembled a spinal column. She held it up to the gray sky, and against the light she could clearly see the branching stems running like veins through the leaf.

Eyes. Spinal column. Veins.

Did this dry leaf presage a child? Why not? It was meant to be discovered and deciphered by her; why else did it refuse to go to the bottom like the others?

Nu Nu wanted some confirmation of her suspicion. She examined the leaf one more time and then leaned over and let it slip from her hand. Should it fall in the puddle and there weather a second bout of rain, that would end all doubt. The normal trajectory of the leaf ought to have carried it somewhere under the steps, but the wind changed direction. It sailed right back to the puddle, in which a further handful of new leaves now floated. Nu Nu
closed her eyes and counted to twenty-eight, just to be sure. Eight was her lucky number. The two in front of it doubled her luck.

When she reopened her eyes all the leaves but one had vanished. She recognized it at once.

The world was full of signs. One needed only to know how to see and interpret them.

For two years Nu Nu had been waiting for a child, a son, to be precise. She had imagined that after the wedding, pregnancy would be a matter of weeks or at most a few months. After six months, when she still could detect no changes in her body, she asked her mother, who urged her to be patient.

At the end of a year she called upon the advice of the local medicine man, who attempted to treat her with various herbs and teas, to no avail.

She consulted the astrologer, who made very careful calculations regarding the best days for her to conceive, days that she took full advantage of, with the sole result that Maung Sein had sore genitals.

She thought nothing of walking for a day to get to the nearest city to visit an astrologer renowned for his extraordinary abilities. He, too, consulted books and tables, reassuring her that she would bear a healthy son who would soon be followed by an equally healthy brother. He could not say when, exactly. The indications pointed in contradictory directions. It might be a while yet. Maybe even a few years.

Nu Nu returned to her village deeply disappointed. She wanted nothing as much as a son. The neighbors’ daughters and her friends were mostly mothers already. A few years, the astrologer had said. An almost unimaginably long time. Or perhaps he was mistaken, and she was one of those unfortunate women who could never have children, no matter what they tried?

There were days when she thought of little else: a person who would belong only to her. Who would need her like no other, who could not live without her. How would he look? Tall and lean like his mother? Or with his father’s muscular build, his light skin and curly hair?

Would she bring a serene or a troubled spirit into the world?

Maung Sein was nonplussed by his wife’s impatience. Whenever they had a child, be it a boy or a girl, they were not going to have much influence over whether it came into the world healthy or ill, whether it would live past its first birthday or, like so many other newborns, die before the age of one. The essential things in life were predestined. In his view, trying with all one’s might to influence them was dangerously presumptuous and could bring nothing but misfortune. He refused to drink the sundry concoctions his wife prepared according to the medicine man’s instructions, apparently in order to make both of them more fertile. He did not accompany her to the astrologer’s, because he did not wish to know anything about the future. He could not alter it anyway. Maung Sein implored his wife repeatedly
to exercise greater patience, to find the equanimity without which life was unbearable. And even if for some reason they never did have a child, it would not be a tragedy. It was just one existence. One among many.

She would agree with him, only to besiege him with questions again two days later. Why she wasn’t pregnant. Whether he would try a potion after all that some midwife had brewed for her. Or what he thought of a particular name.

For a long time it was the sole point of contention between them.

Nu Nu heard the wood creak and looked up. Her husband sat on the sleeping mat in the half light, rubbing his eyes and yawning. She admired his muscular torso, the powerful arms that could lift her into the air as if she were a child, the hands that caressed her so tenderly or held her so firmly that that contact alone was enough to arouse her. It took all of her self-control not to go to him.

“Have the monks been by yet?” inquired Maung Sein. As if he had guessed her thoughts.

“No.”

“Let me guess … still raining?”

“Yes, but it’s slowing down. Are you hungry?”

Her husband nodded. He stood up, retied his longyi, pulled on a fraying T-shirt, got two tin bowls, spoons, a mug, gave her a kiss on the forehead, stroked her face tenderly, and squatted down beside her.

Nu Nu’s heart was racing with excitement.

He poured himself a tea, gazed at the lead-gray sky, the low-hanging clouds, and the muddy yard full of puddles. “We’ve got a lot of time today.”

“A whole lot,” she replied as coyly as she could.

Maung Sein did not react. He filled the bowls with rice and vegetable curry, handed one to her, and began to eat in silence.

It was not long before they heard the monks asking for alms at the neighbor’s house.

Nu Nu took the large plate of rice and the curry, laid a cloth over them, descended the steps, and waded through the muck to the gate.

The rain was warm. The water ran down her face, neck, back, and breasts. In a matter of moments shirt and longyi clung to her skin. A long procession of young men filed past with their shaven heads and their soaking-wet dark-red robes. She devoutly deposited a small spoonful of rice and some vegetables in each wooden bowl. She accepted their grateful expressions and mumbled blessings, her thoughts all the while on Maung Sein’s body and the passion it aroused in her.

When she turned around her husband was gone and the curtain was across the door.

Her legs quivering with excitement, she stayed at the gate until the last monk was out of sight. She went back to the hut, climbed the stairs, and pushed the curtain aside.

Maung Sein was lying on the mat waiting for her.

SHE KNEW.

She knew immediately and beyond any shadow of a doubt.

As if she could sense something that for her body was imperceptible.

As if she could see what to her eyes was invisible.

A part of him would remain inside her. Implant itself. Grow.

Even if her husband would later smile indulgently and object that it was impossible. That no one was that sensitive.

What did he know of a woman’s body and feelings?

Something about this morning had been different. It was not the way he moved, although he had been especially ardent and passionate. Nor was it the way he had inflamed and then quenched her lust.

Her body had been saturated with a feeling she had no name for and could not describe.

When it was over they lay beside each other breathing heavily. Nu Nu was quivering, and tears were running down her face, though she did not notice it right away.

Maung Sein was worried and asked whether he might have hurt her in his abandon.

No, she said, not at all.

Why she was crying, then?

For joy, she explained. For joy.

He took her in his arms, and she only cried harder.

Later she would often reflect on this moment and ask herself whether those were truly tears of joy that morning. Or did she already have an inkling in her heart of hearts of how it would all end? That every great happiness entailed a correspondingly great sorrow. That every beginning already contained its own end, that there was no love without the pain of parting, that every hand eventually turned cold.

Had she, in spite of the many travails of her early years, only now fully understood what the Buddha taught? To live means to suffer. Nothing is permanent.