A Well-tempered Heart (9 page)

U Ba coughed again. A dry, piercing cough.

“Do you have a cold?”

He shook his head and took me by the arm. We strolled along the main street toward the hotel. I thought I could
feel my brother gently holding me back every time I started to walk faster.

The sun was casting long shadows and would soon dip behind the mountains. The air was noticeably cooler.

In the hotel U Ba waited at the desk while I went to the second floor and got my things together. As a courtesy I paid for two nights.

U Ba, deaf to all objections, shouldered my backpack and sped on ahead.

I WAS DYING
to see whether my brother had renovated or modified his house. With the money I sent him he ought to have been able to rebuild it completely.

We followed a narrow path down to the river, which was lined by papaya and banana trees. U Ba stopped frequently to catch his breath, but still he would not let me carry my own pack. A wooden bridge crossed the water. We climbed a steep bank, passing huts that looked as if the next cloudburst would carry them off. Their crooked walls and roofs were woven out of dried palm leaves, bamboo, and grasses. In many yards there was a fire; white columns of smoke rose unswerving into the evening sky. There were children playing everywhere who fell silent and watched us curiously as soon as they spotted us.

My brother’s house lay hidden behind a gigantic bougainvillea hedge covered completely with red blossoms that had laid claim even to the gate. We forged our way with difficulty through his garden. His house stood on stilts
five feet off the ground. Black teak with a corrugated tin roof and a small porch. A pig wallowed below. True to my memory.

We climbed the steps to the porch. At first glance, the interior had not changed much, either. The brown leather chair was still there, the two couches with their tattered upholstery, a little coffee table, the dark cabinet, even the oil painting of the Tower of London. The red altar on the wall was new, with a picture of Mi Mi and another of Tin Win in New York that I had sent to U Ba. In front of the photos lay red hibiscus blossoms and some rice. Unless I was mistaken, a Buddha had occupied this location on my last visit. I wondered in which unopened moving carton my own framed picture of our father might lie hidden.

I noticed several plastic buckets distributed without a discernible pattern around the house. I looked in vain for the beehive.

“Where are the bees?”

“Alas, they have flown on and taken up residence elsewhere,” my brother explained as he set my pack down.

I sighed with relief.

“In their stead two snakes moved in.”

I froze. “Two what?”

“Two cobras.”

“You’re not serious.”

He looked at me, surprised. “We divvied up the house.”

“U Ba! Cobras are extremely poisonous snakes. One bite and you’re dead.”

“They have done me no harm,” he replied calmly, apparently surprised that I was so upset.

“Where are they now?” I wanted to jump onto the table in front of the couch.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I was on the verge of hysteria.

“One day they just disappeared.”

“Disappeared? What does that mean? When did you see them last? Last week? A month ago?”

U Ba thought hard. “I’m not sure. As you know, time does not play much of a role in my life. It must have been a year ago. Maybe two.”

“So you mean they’re not here anymore?” I wanted to confirm.

He was visibly baffled by my questions. “Yes, that’s what I mean. What else?”

I breathed a little easier. “Weren’t you afraid?”

“Of what?”

My brother was not teasing me. He truly did not understand my fear. I saw it in his eyes. Small, brown, I-wish-I-knew-what-she-was-talking-about eyes.

“Of what? Of being bitten. Of dying.”

He gave his answer long and careful consideration. “No,” he said at last. “No, I was not afraid of that.”

I believe I envied him.

“Of course you will sleep in my bed.” He drew a faded green curtain aside to reveal a small room with a wooden shelf, a nightstand, a chair. From the ceiling hung a flickering
bare lightbulb. “I even have a mattress,” he declared proudly. “My greatest luxury.”

He let the curtain fall back into place. “Now I shall make us some tea.”

He went into the kitchen; I followed. In an open cupboard stood a pair of white enameled tin bowls and plates. On the bottom shelf were eggs, a few moldy tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and potatoes. In one corner some smoldering logs. Above them hung a sooty kettle. U Ba knelt down, piled a bit of kindling on the embers, and blew forcefully a couple of times until the dry wood ignited. The smoke exited through a hole in the roof.

What had I gotten myself into? Was I really going to manage living in this hut? Using a latrine, bathing at the well in the yard. I was wondering what excuse I could offer my brother for the move back to the Kalaw Hotel.

On a tray he set a thermos of tea, two mugs, and a plate of roasted sunflower seeds, and then we went together into the living room.

It had cooled off. I dug a fleece out of my pack and put it on. In the process I accidentally kicked one of the pails. “Why do you have so many plastic buckets scattered about?”

He looked around as if noticing them for the first time. “Oh yes, the buckets. My house is old; the roof leaks in several places. But don’t worry, the bedroom stays dry.”

“Why don’t you have a new roof put on?”

“It’s very expensive; the price of wood has exploded …”

“But with the money I sent you,” I interrupted, “you ought to have been able to build a brand-new house.”

He tilted his head to one side and looked at me thoughtfully. “That is true.”

“So why didn’t you? What did you do with the money?”

The question just slipped out. In a tone that immediately made me squirm. As if he had to justify himself. I wasn’t looking for him to give me an account of himself. The money had been a gift.

All the same.

“Of course it’s your own business, but I expected …”

U Ba furrowed his brow in thought. “You are completely correct, little sister. It is a good question: Whatever did I do with all that money? Let me think. Some of it I gave to the owner of the teahouse so that he could afford the new establishment. My neighbor’s wife was very ill. She had to go to a hospital in the capital and needed money. The son of a friend was studying in Taunggyi; some of it went to him.”

I hoped that was the end of the list. My shame deepened with every example.

“A few years ago we had a decidedly dry year, and the harvests were bad. A few families needed a bit of help. What else?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Yes!” he suddenly cried out loudly. “I also bought something for myself. Something truly marvelous.”

U Ba went to the bookcase and pointed proudly to a cassette recorder. “I bought this for myself with your money,
and every time someone goes to Rangoon they come back with a new cassette for me. Half a moment.”

He loaded a cassette into the player, pressed “play,” and shot me a proud, expectant look.

Horns and strings started to play, something classical.

“Sometimes my neighbors come, and they bring their neighbors,” he said in a solemn tone, “until there are so many of us that we sit in tight rows on the floor listening to music together. All evening long.”

I concentrated on the piece and attempted to decipher what the orchestra was playing. It sounded simultaneously familiar and utterly bizarre. As if drunken musicians were attempting Beethoven or Brahms. It sounded like a Chinese-made tape recorder—tinny, shrill, and very uneven.

“I think the speed is fluctuating.”

U Ba was taken aback. “Really?”

I felt unsure and nodded cautiously. It hurt my ears.

“Do you really think so?”

I nodded again.

He was quiet for a long while. “It doesn’t matter. I find this music beautiful all the same.” My brother closed his eyes and followed the melody of a violin. “Besides, I have no point of comparison,” he declared, his eyes still closed. “That is the secret of a happy life.”

I saw how intensely the music moved him. He opened his eyes for a moment and cast me a grateful look, closed them again, and with every note the flutter and wow mattered less until I hardly noticed them myself. In the middle
of a delicate solo the violin dropped out suddenly. It was so dark that I could no longer even make out my brother’s silhouette. For one moment I heard nothing but the humming of the insects. Then the neighbors’ voices.

“The power,” sighed U Ba in the darkness. “It has failed frequently these past few weeks.” He stood up, and a moment later I saw his face illuminated by a flickering match. He lit several candles and distributed them throughout the house. Their glow bathed the room in a warm, soft light.

“Sometimes we have electricity again after a few minutes, sometimes not until the next day,” said U Ba, refilling my mug.

I sipped at my tea. The strains of the road were beginning to tell on me.

“Has life,” he asked, having again sat down, “have the stars smiled upon you in recent times?”

I’m fine, thanks. Dandy. Wonderful. No complaints. Could be worse. In my mind I ran through all the pat responses I would have called on to answer a similar question in New York. With my brother any one of them would have been an insult.

“A good question,” I replied evasively.

“A stupid question,” he contradicted. “Forgive me for posing it so thoughtlessly. We often discover only many years later whether life and the stars were smiling upon us or not. Life can take the most surprising turns. What seemed initially to be a misfortune can turn out later to be a blessing, and vice versa, no? I really wanted only to know
how you are faring? Whether you are happy? Whether you are loved. The rest is immaterial.”

I looked at him in the candlelight and fought back the tears. I didn’t know whether it was out of sadness that I couldn’t answer his question with a loud, resounding yes, or because my brother touched me so deeply.

Was I loved? By my mother, of course. In her way. By my other brother, I wasn’t sure.

By Amy.

Two people. Two very different forms of love. No one else came to mind.

Was that enough? For what? By how many people must we be loved in order to be happy? Two? Five? Ten? Or maybe only one? The one who gives us sight. Who takes away fear. Who breathes meaning into our existence.

There was no one like that for me.

When does love begin? When does it end?

U Ba’s gaze rested on me. He stole a look at my hands. My ring finger. I knew what he meant.

“Sir Michael is a long story,” I said. Sighing.

No lifelong love. But still a wish for it.

My brother sensed my discomfort. “Forgive me for asking. How presumptuous of me. How could I have asked so directly and carelessly when you have barely arrived at my house. As if there were no tomorrow. As if we did not have all the time in the world to tell each other whatever we have to tell. I am terribly sorry. It must be the excitement. And the delight finally to see you again. Of course, that does not
excuse my behavior, either. I can only hope for your indulgence.” He put a finger to his lips. “And not another word this evening about these intrusive questions.”

His way of expressing himself made me laugh. “Promise. But I think that I need to go to bed anyway.”

He jumped up. “Of course. Another oversight on my part. I will prepare your bed at once.”

I insisted that I sleep on the couch. After a bit of back and forth he accepted my decision, dug a warm blanket and pillow out of a chest and blew out one candle after another. He put a flashlight on the coffee table for me in case I needed to find my way to the latrine in the night. He asked repeatedly whether I was comfortable, whether I had everything I needed for a good night’s sleep, wished me a good night and stroked my face once gently in the light of the last candle.

I could still hear him doing something with water in front of the house, then coughing his way up the porch steps and climbing into his creaking bed. Moments later he blew out the candle.

The couch was more comfortable than I expected. I remembered now how well I had slept on it the first time around. Tonight, though, despite my exhaustion, I was finding it difficult to fall asleep.

I was thinking about my father, and for the first time in a long time I wished he were sitting next to me, holding my hand, talking to me in his soothing voice. I had left someone out of my tally. The love of a dead person counted, too. No one can take that away from us.

A reassuring thought, but still I could not sleep. I sensed that I would soon have company. It took a few minutes of lying quietly on the couch and listening to insects before I heard her.

Please, leave this place.

It was the first time she’d had anything to say since my departure. I knew what she wanted. She had warned me repeatedly in New York against this trip.

—Not a chance. I’m staying.

Don’t do it. Leave. Quickly. Before it’s too late.