A Well-tempered Heart (15 page)

She spent her few waking hours in a fog, too exhausted to stand up or even to exchange a few words. In her nostrils the sickly-sweet smell of decay.

Maung Sein prepared the food. He boiled towels and clothes, changed her, washed her sweaty body, squatted beside her and talked at her in the hope that his voice might help her. Now and again, while his son was sleeping, he would lift her carefully and carry her in his arms into the
yard for a few minutes. He was taken aback to find how light she had become. Hardly heavier than a sack of rice. Although she opened her eyes only briefly and hardly responded, he would take her slowly around the house. She ought to see how the bougainvillea was blooming. The poppies. The yellow hibiscus, whose color she so loved. How the tomatoes he had planted for her were growing, the fruit on the banana plants.

She ought to see how life was waiting for her. How sorely he needed her. Death was a silent visitor to whom one addressed no questions.

Who took whomever he wished. But not Nu Nu. She mustn’t go. Not without him.

In the evening—the midwife had long since gone home—he would sit alone at the head of her bed, trying to meditate. Without success. Instead he would gaze in the candlelight at the faces of his sleeping wife and son. He recalled the words of the monks he had lived with for so many years. He had learned from them everything he knew about life: that every individual is the author of his own fate. Without exception.

But Maung Sein did not feel at all the master of his fate in these weeks. He was driven, not the driver. A slave to his fears.

What crime must he have committed that he deserved to lose his wife and child? He did not wish to blame anyone other than himself for his sorrows, but was it really his fault if he wound up a young widower? What mistake had he made?

Maung Sein knew the answer to his questions: He ought not to have married. He ought not to have lost his heart to Nu Nu. Had he not, then he would not now be suffering, he had to admit. Was that what the Buddha preached in his infinite wisdom? If he and Nu Nu had never conceived, he would not now need to fear for his child’s life. But what kind of existence would that be? A life without attachments. A life without people one feared to lose. The life of a monk. Not his. He feared nothing more than Nu Nu’s death.

The price of love.

He was no Buddha. Was not even on the right path, no matter how much he meditated. He was a human being. A simple, vulnerable human being, full of hopes and fears, full of desire and longing, whose happiness was fragile. He was sure he would eventually acquire a heart that he could not lose.

But not in this life. Not as long as there was Nu Nu.

Nu Nu was aware of almost nothing during all this time. She had the impression that Death still stood at the door, exuding his stench, on the verge of stepping in. Uncertain yet whom he would take. The mother or the child? Or both?

She was not afraid. She lacked the energy even for fear.

She perceived little more of her son than his lips sucking at her from time to time. His gentle breath on her skin. The short, pitiful cries that grew quieter and weaker rather than louder and stronger. His skin was wrinkled and limp. She could feel it as she dully stroked his tiny body.

The midwife did not give Maung Sein much cause for hope. She had seen too many mothers and newborns die.
Danger lurked everywhere after such a difficult birth. Nu Nu had lost far too much blood. She was too weakened, just like the baby, and the world was full of germs, bacteria, viruses, and parasites just waiting for an opportunity to infect them. Their fate would be decided in the coming days, perhaps weeks, and beyond the care she was already giving them there was not much she could do. To be safe she was bringing a small offering twice a week to the spirit who lived in the fig tree near the house. Rice. Bananas. Oranges. She did not know whether it was in his power to heal Nu Nu, but it could hardly be a mistake to incline him favorably.

Later, when Nu Nu and her son had gotten through it, she would call it a miracle. At one point during the birth and then one other time thereafter she had taken the child for dead and had given up on Nu Nu. There was no saving a woman with a lifeless child in her womb. And no saving a woman with so little blood, either. They were on their way to a new existence; she had never before seen a mother and child recover once so far gone.

One morning Nu Nu awoke and knew that Death had changed his mind. For the first time since the birth there was no stench of decay in her nostrils, only the sweet aroma of ripe mangoes. For the first time since the birth she could feel her body without freezing. She breathed deeply in and out and sniffed her son’s hair as he slumbered at her breast.

He smelled different. A hint of almonds and honey. The scent of life.

She looked around the hut. The doorframe was empty; she had a clear view of the papaya tree and the palms in the yard. Two butterflies danced in the sunbeams that fell through the windows. Maung Sein squatted by the smoldering fire, stirring a pot. Beside her were towels, a yellow hibiscus blossom in a vase, strewn in a circle beside it the petals of a red rose.

She tried to sit up but felt too weak. She called to him. He did not react. For a moment she thought it was all a dream. Perhaps this was not a return to life but the moment of final farewell. A terrible fear gripped Nu Nu. She did not want to die. Not yet. Not with her son in her arms. She mustered all her strength and called his name again. Loudly and clearly. He turned to her. Puzzled. As if not believing his ears.

“Nu Nu?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He stood up, walked over to her with careful steps, and bent over her.

“Nu Nu?”

She smiled faintly.

THE FIRST TIME
she left the house with her sleeping son in her arms, still unsteady on her legs, gripping the railing tightly, she surveyed the yard, astonished. It was at once familiar and strange. Something was different, though she could not immediately put her finger on it. The morning sun beamed through the bushes. The leaves of the banana plants seemed greener, their fruit larger and yellower. The hibiscus and the bougainvillea had never looked so beautiful. A warm breeze caressed her skin. Maung Sein was perched on a log below her, chopping kindling. Stroke by stroke he would split branches as thick as a fist. The uniformity of his movements radiated something infinitely reassuring.

Nu Nu looked at Ko Gyi in her arms. He had her nose. Her mouth. Her cinnamon skin. She cautiously took one of his little hands. It was warm. And would always remain so. Suddenly he opened one blinking eye, and then quickly the other. He had her eyes, too, without a doubt. Ko Gyi
regarded his mother earnestly, intently. She smiled. His deep brown eyes did not move. They looked for a long time at each other. Then a quiet smile drifted across his face. No one had ever smiled at her that way. No look had ever moved her so.

She was back.

In the weeks that followed she recovered more and more of her strength, and it was not long before she could assist her husband with simple chores. She would buy food at the market, balancing the big basket of rice and vegetables on her head all the way up to their hut with Ko Gyi wrapped firmly on her chest. In contrast to all the other young mothers in the village, she did not like to carry him on her back. She wanted to see him. She wanted to smell his hair. She wanted their hearts to hear each other.

She managed all of the work in the house with a single hand. She fanned the fire one-handed, cooked, swept the yard, pulled weeds out of the tomato beds, washed longyis and towels, and even developed a technique to wring them out one-handed—all because she did not want to put her son down. Not for one second. They had together been ordained to die, and together they had returned. It would be a long time before she was ready to let him out of her sight even for a few minutes.

The most beautiful part of Nu Nu’s day began when Maung Sein set off for the fields in the morning. If Ko Gyi was awake she would unwrap him and gaze at his small, perfect body. The most beautiful she had ever seen. A full head
of hair, a round face with strikingly large eyes and comely lips. She marveled at his soft skin, smelled him. Took his tiny hands and feet in her mouth, rubbing his belly again and again, seeing in his eyes how much he enjoyed every touch. His tiny fingers gripped hers tightly, as if they would never let go. She noticed changes every day, however small they might be. His grip was getting stronger. His eyes were bigger, his gaze more alert, his kicking more boisterous. The first rings of fat appeared on the thighs and little arms that had previously been so thin. His gaze began to stray from her, to wander. Fixating on shadows on the wall. Marveling at his own little hands that appeared suddenly like shooting stars sweeping across his field of vision only to disappear again mysteriously. Until he learned to control them and put them in his mouth. With each passing day his soul came a bit farther into the world, thought Nu Nu. A bud unfolding slowly.

Whenever he started to cry she would carry him all around the house and yard; the motion was soothing to him. All the while she would be telling him in detail about everything they saw. The gleaming yellow hibiscus and the ripe tomatoes. The plump insects. The singing birds.

In a matter of seconds Ko Gyi would settle down and listen attentively to his mother’s voice.

After she had seen and described everything for the second time she would think up stories of her own. It was a steady stream of talk that she hoped would envelop and transport her son, a melody to accompany him through life and to protect him in need.

While nursing she would often sit on the porch with a cup of tea, letting Ko Gyi drink until he fell asleep, holding him in her arms or on her lap and watching him while he drowsed. Taking delight in every smile that dreams might charm from his lips. Every sigh. Every breath.

As soon as Maung Sein got home he would join her, but he would grow impatient after only a few minutes. He did not understand how his wife could stare at someone just lying there motionless with his eyes closed.

“Don’t you ever get bored?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged.

“What do you see when you look at him?”

Nu Nu thought about it. “Everything.”

“What everything?”

“The Riddle of Life. And its solution.”

A disturbed expression was his only reaction.

She wondered what her son had done to her. Even her skin had settled down since his birth.

She examined her forearms again and again in disbelief. Her legs. Her neck. Her midriff. Nowhere did she find even the slightest hint of a red splotch.

Nu Nu felt so strong and confident that she no longer paid bad omens much heed. She attributed no special significance to the dead cat she found lying in the road with foam on its snout on her way to the market. When Maung
Sein injured himself carving a wooden fish for his son, she wrote it off as a mishap.

Nor was she distressed when the neighbor’s sow bore six piglets on her birthday, one of them with two heads. For a short time she felt herself immune to the threats and vagaries of life.

Until that evening.

Sometimes it is a matter of seconds.

SHE KNEW FROM
the very first moment.

Just as she had known the first time around. Beyond any shadow of a doubt. A part of him would remain inside her. Implant itself. Grow. Something about this night had been different. Her initial passion had given way to uneasiness. She was loathe to surrender herself to him. She did not wish to be touched. In any way.

Maung Sein did not seem to notice, or perhaps he believed that his own desire would ultimately excite her. He kissed her neck tenderly. He caressed her and touched her with his fingers, but everything that usually aroused her felt to her now increasingly unpleasant.

As if she sensed already that anything they did that night would come to a bad end.

She thought of asking him to stop but did not want to disappoint him. What did it matter if for once they did not share equally in the pleasure? If she went along with it just to please him?