The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (16 page)

Nearly a year passed before her husband came around to a similar point of view. At first he hardly dared touch his daughter, preferring instead to hold her at arm’s length and forbidding his sons to approach her. Until one evening his wife snapped at him: “Crippled feet are not contagious.”

He attempted to appease her. “I know, I know.”

“Why then have you not even looked at your daughter in nearly a year?” She tore the blankets from Mi Mi’s body with a few swift hand movements.

Moe looked from his daughter to his wife and back. Mi Mi lay naked in front of him. It was cold, and a shiver ran over her, but she did not cry. She just looked at him expectantly.

“Why?” repeated Yadana.

He reached out his arms and touched the little belly. He brushed his fingers along the slender thighs, the knees, gliding downward until he held the little feet in his hands. Mi Mi smiled at him.

Her eyes reminded him of his wife’s gaze when they first met. Her smile, too, had that magic that even today he could not resist. Moe was ashamed.

Yadana wrapped the child back in its blankets, bared her breast, and nursed Mi Mi.

Soon it was clear to Moe that his daughter had inherited not only her mother’s beautiful eyes but also her satisfied, even-tempered, and cheerful disposition. She never cried, rarely screamed, slept through the night, and gave the impression of an individual in tune with herself and her surroundings.

Nor did any of this change when, after more than a year, she tried for the first time to pull herself up. She had scrambled to the railing of the little porch at the front of the house. Moe and Yadana, who were standing in the yard feeding the chickens and the sow, watched their daughter hoist herself onto the uprights of the railing. She tested her weight on her twisted feet, and for one short moment she stood, staring terrified at her parents, and then she fell. She tried it again and yet again, and Moe wanted to rush to her, to help her, though he didn’t know how. Yadana held him firmly back. “Her feet will not support her. She needs to learn that,” she said, knowing that no one could alter that fact.

Mi Mi did not cry. She rubbed her eyes and examined the railing, as if there were something wrong with the wood. She tried it again, struggling to keep her balance. On her sixth try, though, after landing on the planks again, she gave up, crawled to the staircase, sat herself up, looked at her parents, and smiled. It was the first and only time she tried to stand and walk. From that point on she laid
her claim to the house and the yard on all fours. She would scramble along the porch steps so quickly that her parents could hardly keep up. She ran after the chickens, and on hot summer days, when rain had softened the ground in the yard, she loved to wallow in the mud. She would play hide-and-seek with her brothers, crawling into the remotest corners of the yard, where it was rare that anyone found her.

By all appearances, Mi Mi retained her equanimity even later, when she came to understand more clearly how useful feet could be. When she would sit on the porch watching the neighbor children frolicking across the yard or climbing in the massive eucalyptus trees that separated the properties. Yadana sensed that her daughter accepted the constraints nature had imposed on her, which did not, however, mean that she turned away or withdrew from life. On the contrary, her freedom of movement might have been limited, but her curiosity and her talents in other aspects of life seldom knew any bounds.

Most remarkable of all was her voice. As an infant Mi Mi spent most of her time firmly tied to her mother’s back, and Yadana had made a habit of singing to her daughter while working in the fields. Soon Mi Mi knew most of the songs by heart, and mother and daughter would sing in chorus. Mi Mi’s voice grew ever lovelier, and when the seven-year-old sang in the evening while helping her mother cook, the neighbors would gather to sit in rapt silence on the ground in front of the house. From week to week their numbers increased. Soon they filled the whole yard, standing even
on the path that passed by the house or sitting in the tops of trees bordering the property. The more superstitious among them even asserted that Mi Mi’s voice possessed magical powers. They loved to tell of the sick old widow living within earshot who had not left her hut for two years, until one day in the twilight she had mingled with the crowd and begun to dance. Then there was the boy living in a shack across the way, whom everyone called the Fish. His skin was dry and covered everywhere with white eczema and scales. Not six months after Mi Mi’s song rang for the first time through the dusk, every last pustule had vanished.

At the market where she bought potatoes and rice with her mother, her songs drew such a concourse of people that two police officers came and asked her to desist, in the interest of public security and order. An Irish drunkard—who had nevertheless achieved the rank of major in Her Majesty’s Army and who was now spending the twilight of his life in Kalaw—requested that she sing at his deathbed. Mi Mi was invited to weddings and births, and in return her family was richly rewarded with tea, chickens, and rice. Just when Moe was seriously considering leasing his fields, though, Mi Mi announced to her parents that she would not be singing any longer.

They were sitting on a plank in the yard. It was not yet dusk, but the cool of the evening had already asserted itself. Yadana draped a heavy jacket around her daughter’s shoulders. Mi Mi was grinding the bark of a thanakha tree
in a mortar, and her mother was washing tomatoes and scallions. The pig was grunting under the house, and the water buffalo was defecating in front of the garden gate. They could smell the stench from where they sat. Moe assumed she was joking.

“Why would you want to stop singing?”

“It’s no fun anymore.”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“But your voice sounds more beautiful every day.”

“I can’t stand to hear it anymore.”

“You mean you never want to sing again?”

“I want to save my voice.”

“Save it? What for?” Moe was doubtful.

“I’m not sure.”

Moe knew there was no point arguing with his daughter. She had her mother’s obstinacy. She rarely insisted on anything, but once she had made up her mind, it was impossible to talk her out of it. Privately, he admired that in her.

Yadana in particular was aware how much Mi Mi had changed recently. She had just turned fourteen, and her body was gradually assuming womanly contours. It was not only her voice that grew lovelier from day to day. True, her eyes no longer dominated her face, but they were still as radiant as ever. Her skin was the color of ground tamarind, and her hands, though she used them to prop herself up and to move about, were not stout, hard, or callused but long
and slender. Her fingers were so nimble that Yadana could hardly follow them when Mi Mi helped her cook, peeling a ginger root and finely slicing or chopping it. Two years ago she had taught her to weave, and it hadn’t been long before Mi Mi had surpassed her mother in that art. Most of all, though, Yadana admired the confidence with which her daughter moved. In the past Yadana had had nightmares. She would see Mi Mi crawling like an animal through the filth or across the marketplace while onlookers ridiculed her. Sometimes she would still dream that Mi Mi wanted to take the train to Thazi and was crawling along the platform to her car when the steam engine would start rolling. Mi Mi would try to crawl faster and faster. She never caught the train.

Even during the day Yadana would catch herself worrying how Mi Mi, the grown woman, would welcome guests into her home. Crawling to them on all fours? How mortifying!

And now she could hardly believe how much poise her daughter commanded and with what self-assurance she moved about. There was nothing bestial or humiliating in the way she crawled. She wore only the most beautiful self-woven longyis, and although she slid across the filthy floor in them, they were never unpresentable. When she moved, gingerly placing one hand, one knee in front of the other, she radiated such dignity that people at the market would step aside and treat her with great respect.

THE JULIA THAT
I had known until now—and with whom I considered myself on intimate terms—would have leapt up at this point. She would have been outraged. She would have cast U Ba a disdainful, piercing glance and grabbed her little backpack without a word. Or she would have laughed in his face and declared the whole thing a lot of sappy nonsense. She would have left.

But I did not move a muscle. Though I felt an impulse to stand up, it was a powerless one, like a reflex from another time. I didn’t know what to think of U Ba’s tale. It was too much for me. Was I supposed to believe that my father had not only been blind as a young man, but had lost his heart to a cripple? Was this woman supposed to be the reason he left us, his family, high and dry after nearly thirty-five years? After fifty years of separation? It seemed absurd to me. At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking of something
my father had said: There is nothing, for good or for evil, of which a person is incapable. That was his response when we learned that one of my mother’s cousins, a pious Catholic, had had an affair with the sixteen-year-old babysitter. My mother couldn’t get over it: That’s just not like Walter, she said again and again. My father thought that was a mistake. He seemed to think anyone was capable of anything, or at least he wouldn’t exclude the possibility just because he thought he knew the person. And he insisted that this did not represent the worldview of an embittered pessimist. On the contrary, he had said. It would be much worse to expect good from other people, only to be disappointed when they didn’t measure up to our high expectations. That would lead to resentment and contempt for humanity.

In many of the traits and mannerisms U Ba described, I was beginning to discern the outlines of my father. I felt as if I was eavesdropping on a quarrel between opposing, internal voices. One voice was the attorney. She remained skeptical. She wanted facts. She was looking for guilty parties, a judge who could pass sentence or who would, by dint of his authority, put an end to the charade. The other was a voice I’d never heard before. Wait, it cried, don’t run away. Don’t be afraid.

“You must be hungry.” U Ba interrupted my thoughts. “I took the liberty of having a little something prepared for us.” He called a name I didn’t understand, and almost immediately a young woman came out of the kitchen with a tray. She bowed with just the hint of a curtsy. U Ba rose
and handed me two chipped plates. On one lay three thin, round flatbreads. The other held rice, brown sauce, and pieces of meat. With it he gave me a frayed white napkin and a thin bent spoon.

“Burmese chicken curry. Very mild. We eat it with Indian flatbread. I hope it’s to your liking.”

I must have looked doubtful. U Ba laughed and tried to reassure me. “I have asked my neighbor to pay special attention to cleanliness in the preparation of this meal. I know that our food does not always agree with our guests. But even we are not immune. Believe me, I, too, have spent countless hours of my life chained to a toilet.”

“That’s not exactly a comfort,” I ventured, biting into one of the breads. I had read in my travel guide that one ought to be wary especially of salads, raw fruit, untreated water, and ice. Bread and rice, by contrast, were thought to be comparatively unproblematic. I tried some rice with sauce. It was a little bitter, almost earthy, but not bad. The chicken was so tough I could hardly chew it.

“Where’s my father?” I asked after we had eaten for a while in silence. It sounded more severe and demanding than I’d meant it to. The voice of the attorney.

U Ba regarded me for a long time. With the last piece of flatbread, he wiped his plate clean. “You are getting closer to him all the time. Can’t you feel it?” he said, and wiped his mouth with the old napkin. He took a sip of tea and leaned back in his armchair. “I could tell you in one sentence where he is. But now that you have waited so long,
more than four years, what difference will a few hours more or less make? You will never again have the chance to learn so much about your father. Wouldn’t you like to know how he and Mi Mi fared? How she changed his life? Why she meant so much to him? Why she will change your life, too?”

U Ba did not wait for my response.

SU KYI NOTICED
at once that something extraordinary had happened to Tin Win. She was sitting in front of the garden gate waiting for him and had just begun to worry. The road was in a wretched state. Continued heavy rains two days earlier had softened the ground, and the oxcarts had subsequently cut deep tracks in the muck. The sun had dried the mud, and now the surface was hard and crusted over and riddled with depressions and ruts—tricky enough even for a sighted person. Had it been a good idea to let him walk alone, today of all days? Then she recognized his red and green longyi and his white shirt coming up the hill. But his gait was different. Was that really Tin Win?