The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (14 page)

Su Kyi shook her head, because in his life outside of books he was apparently quite incapable of making friends. Whatever else the school might have done for him, he remained aloof and shy. And in spite of his engagement with the lessons, he had only superficial and sporadic contact with the other boys. He was courteous to the monks but maintained his distance, and Su Kyi worried increasingly that no one could really get through to him. No one, perhaps, but herself and U May, and even there she was not so sure. No, Tin Win lived in his own world, and sometimes she caught herself foolishly wondering whether he was sufficient unto himself, whether he had any need at all for companionship.

Su Kyi stood at the bottom of the stairs clicking her tongue, but Tin Win was so engrossed in his book that he failed to notice. She watched him and realized for the first time that there was nothing more of the child about him. He had shot up over the heads of the other monks. He had the powerful upper arms and broad shoulders of a farmer but the delicate hands of a goldsmith. In his features she could recognize the young man he was soon to be.

“Tin Win,” she said.

He turned his head in her direction.

“I still have to get something at the market before we go home. Do you want to come with me or wait here?”

“I’ll stay.” He dreaded the crowds that jostled among the booths. Too many people. Too many unfamiliar sounds and strange scents that might bewilder him and make him stumble.

“I’ll hurry,” Su Kyi promised.

Tin Win stood up. He tugged at the new green longyi he had tied with a strong knot about his waist, then walked across the veranda into the monastery hall. He was on his way to the fire pit in the kitchen when he heard a sound he did not recognize. At first he imagined that someone was striking a piece of wood to the beat of a clock, but it was neither dull enough nor hard enough for that. An entirely distinctive monotone rhythm. Tin Win stood still. He knew every room, every corner, every beam of the monastery, and such a sound he had never yet heard. Neither here, nor anywhere else. Where did it come from? The middle of the hall?

He listened hard. He took one step and froze. Listening. There it was again, louder and clearer than before. It sounded like a knocking, like a quiet, gentle knocking. A few seconds later it was joined by the shuffling steps of the monks, their belching and farting from the kitchen, the creaking of the floorboards and the jarring of the shutters. The doves under the eaves. Above him there was rustling: a cockroach or a beetle crawling across the roof. What kind of chirping was that at the wall? Flies rubbing their hind legs together? Something drifted down from above. A feather. Wood worms gnawed the beams beneath him. A breath of wind in the courtyard lifted grains of sand into the air and set them down again. From afar came the snorting of oxen in the fields and the din of voices at the market. It seemed to him as if a curtain drew slowly back to reveal again the
world he had briefly encountered once before, then lost. The hidden realm of the senses for which he had so longed. Here it was again.

And through all that crackling, through the creaking, whispering, and cooing, the dripping, trickling, and cheeping, came that unmistakable soft knocking. Slow, calm, and even. Somehow the source of all sounds, tones, and voices in the world. It was at once strong and delicate. Tin Win turned toward it and hesitated. Did he dare approach it? What if he frightened it off? Carefully he lifted one foot. Held his breath. Listened hard. It was still there. He ventured a single step, then a second. He set one foot in front of the other, cautiously, as if he might otherwise tread on the thing. After each movement, he paused momentarily, making sure he had not lost it. It grew clearer with every step. Then he stood still. It had to be right in front of him.

“Is someone there?” he whispered.

“Yes. Right at your feet. You’re about to trip over me.”

It was a girl’s voice. One he did not recognize. He tried in vain to call up her image.

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Mi Mi.”

“Do you hear that thumping noise?”

“No.”

“It must be here somewhere.” Tin Win knelt down. Now it was nearly next to his ear. “I hear it more and more distinctly. A soft pulsing. You really don’t hear it?”

“No.”

“Close your eyes.”

Mi Mi closed her eyes. “Nothing,” she said, and laughed. Tin Win leaned over and felt her breath on his face. “I think it’s coming from you.” He crept closer to her and held his head just in front of her chest.

There it was. Her heartbeat.

His own heart began to race. He felt almost as if he was eavesdropping, as if he had no right to the information to which he was now privy. He felt fear rising in him, until she laid her hand on his cheek. Its warmth flowed through his body, and he wished she would never take it away. He sat up straight. “Your heart. It’s your heartbeat I’m hearing.”

“From such a great distance?” She laughed again, but she was not mocking him. He heard it in her voice. It was a laugh he could trust.

“You don’t believe me?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. How does it sound, then?”

“Wonderful. No, more beautiful than that. It sounds like …” Tin Win stammered, searching for words. “I can’t describe it.”

“You must have good ears.”

He might have thought she was having a laugh at his expense. Her tone revealed to him that she was not.

“Yes. No. I’m not sure if it’s our ears that we hear with.”

For a few moments, neither said a word. He did not know what to say. He was afraid she might stand up and run off. Perhaps he ought to talk and talk and hope that his
voice would captivate her. Mi Mi might stay and listen as long as he kept talking.

“I’ve never …” He wondered how to put it. “Noticed you in the monastery,” he said finally.

“I’ve seen you many times already.”

A woman’s loud voice interrupted her. “Mi Mi, where are you hiding?”

“In the hall, Mama.”

“We have to go home.”

“I’m coming.”

Tin Win heard that she lifted herself but did not stand up. She extended her hand and quickly stroked his cheek once.

“I have to go. See you soon,” she said, and he heard her moving away, but she was not walking. She was crawling on all fours.

TIN WIN SAT
on the floor, his legs pulled up to his chest, his head on his knees. He would have liked nothing better than to sit there the rest of the day and the night and the next day, too. As if any movement might destroy what he had experienced. Mi Mi was gone, but the beating of her heart had stayed with him. He remembered it, heard it, as if she were sitting next to him. And what of the other tones and sounds? He lifted his head, turned it from one side to the other, and listened around. The rustling continued quietly on the roof. The cheeping at the wall and the gnawing in the wood were still there. The snorting of the water buffalo in the fields, the laughter of the patrons in the teahouses—Tin Win was certain he heard them clearly. He stood up carefully and could hardly believe it. This intense hearing had stayed with him. The noises, whether familiar or strange, were still there. Some
were louder, others quieter, but their power and intensity were undiminished. Would they help him find his way in the world?

Tin Win went to the door, passed down the veranda steps, and crossed the courtyard. He wanted to walk around, up and down the main street. He wanted to explore the town, to have a good listen. New, unfamiliar noises were rushing at him from all sides. The world was thumping, thudding, crackling, and rustling. He heard it hissing and gurgling, squeaking and croaking, and none of this deluge of impressions frightened him. He observed that ears functioned in much the same way as eyes. He remembered looking at the forest, seeing dozens of trees with their hundreds of branches and their thousands of needles and leaves simultaneously, not to mention the meadow in the foreground with its flowers and bushes, and he recalled that somehow none of it had confused him in the least. His eyes had focused on a few details of the scene. The rest was peripheral. And with each minute shift of his pupils he could change his focus and consider new details without losing sight of the others. That is what he was experiencing now. He was perceiving such a multitude of noises that he would not have been able to count them, yet they did not blend into one another. Just as previously he had directed his gaze to a blade of grass, a blossom, or a bird, so now he could train his ears on a particular sound, listen to it at leisure, and always detect new tones within it.

He walked along the monastery wall, stopping time and again to listen. He could not get enough of all the noises that
filled the air. From a house on the far side of the street he heard a fire blazing. Someone was peeling and chopping garlic and ginger into little pieces, cutting scallions and tomatoes, pouring rice into boiling water. He recognized these sounds from home, from Su Kyi’s cooking, and he heard them distinctly, though the house must have been at least fifty yards away. In his mind an image arose—he could not have seen it more clearly with his eyes—of a young woman sweating in her kitchen. Beside him he heard a horse snuffling and a man spitting the juice of chewed betel nuts onto the street. And what of the many other noises he could detect? The melodic chirping, the gnashing, the croaking? Even when he recognized the sound, he did not know to whom or what it belonged. He heard the snapping of a twig, but was it the branch of a pine, an avocado, a fig, or a bougainvillea that was breaking? And the rustling at his feet? Beetle? Snake? Mouse? Something he could never even have imagined making a noise? By itself his extraordinary ability was of little use. He needed help. These sounds were the vocabulary of a new language, and he needed a translator. Someone upon whom he could rely, someone to whom he could entrust himself, someone who would tell him the truth and who would take no pleasure in leading him astray.

He had reached the main thoroughfare now, and the first thing he noticed was a perpetual thrumming on all sides. All the hearts of passersby. To his astonishment he observed that no two sounded alike, just as no two voices did. Some were clear and light, like children’s voices, while others beat
wildly, hammering like a woodpecker. There were those that resembled the excited peeping of a young chick, and still others whose calm, even beats reminded him of the wall clock Su Kyi wound every evening in his uncle’s house.

“Tin Win, what are you doing on the main street by yourself?” It was Su Kyi, coming to collect him. She was shocked. He heard it in her voice.

“I thought I would go to the corner and wait for you there,” he replied.

She took his hand, and they walked down the street, past the teahouses and the mosque, turning off behind a small pagoda and slowly ascending the hill on which they lived. Su Kyi was telling him something, but Tin Win was not paying attention to her words. He was listening to her heart. At first it sounded strange. It beat so irregularly, a light tone following a dark one, and the contrast with the familiar voice confused him. After a few minutes, though, he grew accustomed to its rhythm and found that it suited Su Kyi, whose mood and temper, like her voice, sometimes changed abruptly.

A
t home he could hardly wait to ask Su Kyi for help. He sat down on a stool in the kitchen and listened. Su Kyi was chopping wood outside the door. Cackling hens were running all about her. Pines rocking in the wind. A few birds were singing. Noises that he could recognize and classify. Then he noticed a soft rustling, or was it more a
buzzing, a curious tweeting? Was it a beetle or a bee? If Su Kyi could discover the source of this sound for him, he would have learned his first vocabulary word.

“Su Kyi, please come here,” he cried excitedly.

She set the ax aside and came into the kitchen. “What is it?”

“Do you hear that buzzing?”

Both paused and listened. He could hear from her heartbeat, quick and loud, how she strained and concentrated. It beat now much as it had a few minutes ago when they were walking uphill.

“I don’t hear any buzzing.”

“It’s coming from up there, above the door. Do you see anything there?”

Su Kyi went to the door and stared at the ceiling. “No.”

“Look closely. What’s there?”

“Nothing. Wooden slats and dust and dirt. What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know, but the noise is coming from there, from the corner I think, where the wall runs into the roof.”

Su Kyi looked more closely at the wall. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“Try standing on a stool. Maybe you’ll see better then?”

She climbed onto a stool and examined the wood. Admittedly, her eyes were not the best, and even objects right in front of her nose had begun to lose their clarity, but this much she could clearly see: In this dirty corner of her kitchen was nothing that by any stretch of the imagination
buzzed—or made any other kind of noise, for that matter. A fat spider sat spinning her web. Nothing more.