A Well-tempered Heart (22 page)

She might still have a chance.

He was her first man since Maung Sein’s death.

She made every effort. Her hands and her mouth. Her tongue and her fingertips.

His skin was raw, his thrusts course and arrhythmic, the second time, too.

Her lean body quivered. Not with excitement.

He lay on top of her, arms tensed. Saliva ran out of his mouth, tinted red from the juice of betel nut. Drop by drop he drenched her features with the colors of death. And of life.

When he pulled away from her he was satisfied. She heard it in his quiet breathing. She sensed it in the way his body relaxed.

“Please.” Sometimes one word is sufficient. Six letters enough to depict a world.

He lit a cigarette. It glowed brighter with every drag.

Please.

Please.

Please.

“How many sons do you have?”

“Two.”

“Healthy?”

“Yes.”

“How old?”

“Sixteen and fifteen.”

He thought about it. Seconds with life and death in the balance.

“You keep one. We’ll take the other.”

“Which one?” It slipped out.

“I don’t care. You pick.”

And so he rent her in two.

On that clear, moonlit night. A small farmer’s wife. A big heart with surprisingly little room to spare. But it was the only one she had.

You keep one.

We’ll take the other.

Ko Gyi and Thar Thar. Fated to die. Or live.

She had given them life—now she would have to take it from them.

From one of them.

KHIN KHIN HAD
ceased talking a while ago. Now U Ba, too, fell silent. Softly he had spoken, ever softer all the while, until the final sentence was but a whisper, and his voice failed utterly.

I regarded Khin Khin out of the corner of my eye. The wrinkles on her cheeks and brow had deepened; her dark eyes had narrowed to small buttons. I noticed unusually thick veins in her neck through which her blood pulsed vigorously.

My brother crouched beside me, slumped over, head down. He glanced my way, tears in his eyes. I felt as if I might burst. A pressure had been building in me over the past few hours until I could hardly bear it. How long had we been listening? Three hours? Four? It was still light out. Hens cackled in the next yard. Somewhere a dog was barking.

The smell of a spent fire. Khin Khin poured cold tea, rose and fetched a plate of roasted melon seeds, rice cakes,
and a packet of crackers. She opened the plastic wrapper and offered me one. In her eyes was such desperation that I could not even manage a “No, thanks.”

What had become of Nu Nu? Had she found a way to save both sons? Surely she hadn’t …? How had she lived through this nightmare? Although nothing interested me more than the answers to these questions, I did not dare to ask. We sat together in silence. I waited for U Ba or Khin Khin to say something. Minutes passed.

I needed to get outside. The confines of the hut had become unbearable to me. The suffering and sorrow that dwelt therein. The chasms that yawned all around me.

Before me I saw Nu Nu. For the first time I had a picture of her in my mind. Her lanky, quivering body beneath the lieutenant. The red juice of the betel nut on her face. The fear for her sons’ lives.

You keep one.

We’ll take the other.

I wanted to vomit. I took deep breaths to keep from throwing up. I felt short of breath and had a stabbing pain in my breast.

Eventually I tried to get up and nearly fell on my brother in the process. My legs had gone to sleep and would not support me.

“I need to go into the yard,” I whispered.

He coughed and nodded slightly. “Wait for me there.”

I crawled on all fours to the porch, stretched, and sat for a few minutes until the tingling in my legs dissipated. I
climbed down the steps and squatted on the ground in the shadow of the hut. What had they done to Nu Nu? How had she decided? I felt the tears running down my cheeks.

Above me I heard U Ba and Khin Khin whispering, her story punctuated from time to time by his burning cough. By her tone I could tell that her sorrow had been far from over.

AT SOME POINT
my brother, too, climbed down the steps. He kept a firm grip on the railing. I had the impression that his entire body was quivering. With a nod he signaled me to follow him.

We walked in silence along a path so narrow that we had to go single file. In the distance I saw columns of smoke rising into the air. It was late afternoon, and we met many farmers who greeted us amiably on their way home from their fields.

Behind them a boy riding atop a water buffalo smiled at me with white teeth. I nodded to him.

We turned right on the road at the banyan tree, soon after which we were overtaken by a military Jeep. Their brakes squealed as they stopped and then backed up until they were level with us.

I went weak at the knees. What did they want with my brother and me? Had they been following us without our noticing? Had we put ourselves into danger? Would the voice prove right in the end?

They’ll come to get you. No one can protect you from them.

In the Jeep sat four soldiers. Curious looks. Red teeth. Green uniforms. Shiny black boots.

She had warned me.
When they come, don’t look them in the eye. Don’t look them in the boots. They have magical powers. In them is reflected all of the cruelty, all of the evil we are capable of.

Bloodred saliva dripping onto a face.

The soldiers pointed at me and asked my brother a question. He laughed mechanically. They laughed back. I turned away, unable to bear the sight of them.

The exchange was brief, punctuated by laughter and surprised faces, and then they drove on.

“What did they want?” I asked, breathless, as the Jeep drove out of sight.

“To know who you were and where we were going,” he answered in strained tones.

“Why?”

“Just because.” U Ba hesitated briefly. “One doesn’t often see a Western visitor walking about with a native around here. They were curious.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The truth. That you are my sister and that we are on our way back home. They offered to give us a lift. They speculated that you were not accustomed to hiking in a hilly landscape. I respectfully declined.”

“That was all?” I wondered.

“Yes,” he replied a touch too curtly. Too loudly. It was not his style.

When we got to the teahouse my brother suddenly stopped in his tracks and coughed so violently that it interfered with his breathing.

“We’ve got to get you to a doctor,” I said, horrified.

He raised both hands dismissively without managing to get out a sound.

“U Ba! There must be a doctor here who could take a look at you. You need a lung X-ray.”

“There’s no one. Besides, it’s not so bad, and it will soon pass. Trust me. Or did you think we should go to a military hospital?”

I said nothing.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“Do you mind if I stop here for a quick noodle soup?”

“Of course not.”

There were only a few guests left at the teahouse. We picked an out-of-the-way table.

The waitress shuffled over to us. U Ba ordered two glasses of Burmese tea and a soup.

I was waiting for him to report on what Khin Khin had told him, but my brother said nothing, and I dared not ask.

The waitress brought the tea and soup. He bent low over his bowl and started to eat in silence.

I stirred my tea.

“U Ba?”

He looked at me.

“What did Nu Nu do?”

He spooned up more soup. “After the lieutenant had gone back to his troops?”

I nodded.

“She wanted to kill herself. But then the military would have taken both her sons. She had the opportunity to save one of their lives. Ought she to have passed it by simply because she lacked the strength or the courage to make a decision?”

He looked at me inquiringly, paused for a moment without expecting an answer, and then continued: “No. That same night she went to the prisoners’ camp and got one of her sons out of there.”

“Who?”

“Ko Gyi.”

I closed my eyes and felt dizzy. I held on to the table with both hands.

“She told herself that even though he was older, he was also smaller and weaker. He would never have stood a chance among the soldiers. They would have found little use in him and quickly sent him to his death. Thar Thar was bigger and stronger. If anyone could survive, it was he. She had
no
choice. She
had
to keep Ko Gyi. So she told her sister. Sometimes three times a day. ‘I had
no
choice. I
had
to keep Ko Gyi.’ ”

“And Thar Thar?” I asked in a whisper.

“The soldiers took him the next morning.”

I searched for the words, but there was no language to express how I felt.

I sipped at my tea. U Ba downed his in one vigorous gulp. His hands were shaking.

“No mother can … survive that,” I managed to say.

“No,” he repeated softly, “no mother can survive that.”

“Why did she …? I mean, couldn’t she …?” I never finished these sentences. How did I know what she could or could not have done. I tried to imagine the scene that night. The two brothers taking leave of each other. How Ko Gyi took his things and left Thar Thar behind. What must he have thought or felt? A child with a piece of bark around his neck. What had become of him?

“Do you think he came out of it alive?”

“His mother spent years afterward consulting with all the astrologers and fortune tellers. One claimed that Thar Thar had gone over to the rebels. Another declared that he was roaming the country as a wandering monk. A third disclosed that the stars had shown him plainly that Thar Thar had fled to Thailand, where he had married into money. All agreed that he would send word soon. At some point, Nu Nu lost hope.”

“Perhaps he became a soldier and is still alive?”

“In that case he would certainly have gotten word to his mother or brother, don’t you think? It has been nearly twenty years now since they hauled him away, and that was the last she heard of him. Besides, the army has enough soldiers. They prefer to deploy these young men as mine detectors.”

“Mine detectors?” I did not understand what my brother meant and looked at him, puzzled.

“Well, we’re in the midst of a decades-long civil war. Not everywhere, as you can see, but in several provinces. Ethnic minorities are fighting in the jungle for their independence. Most regions are mountainous. There are no streets, not even paths where the army can drive their trucks and Jeeps. They need men to carry provisions, ammunition, and weapons. Khin Khin hinted at it, but did not tell the whole story. The rebels frequently mine the area. The soldiers then send the porters ahead and follow them at some distance.”

“Why don’t they just run the detection equipment themselves?”

U Ba shook his head and said, so quietly that I could barely hear: “They don’t have any detection equipment.”

“How are the porters supposed to find the mines?”

He leaned far over the table to me: “By stepping on them.”

It took a few seconds for me to process what he had said.

“You mean the army uses them as …” I left the sentence unfinished. “How … how do you know that?”

“Now and then someone comes back alive.”

I leaned back, eyes scanning the teahouse, as if I might here find some confirmation of the atrocities I was hearing about. At the far end three men were deep in a lively conversation. From time to time one of them spat red betel nut juice into the grass. I shuddered every time. Beside them sat a young couple, whispering, shy, in love. The waitress,
deep in thought, swept the floor between the empty tables. Below the altar with the gilded Buddha and the flowers, the cook sat sleeping with her head on the table. Did they know what I knew? Probably.

Perhaps they even had a brother, a brother-in-law, a nephew, an uncle who had been forced to look for mines in the jungle. And found one.

Or did their brothers, brothers-in-law, nephews, or uncles wear shiny black boots?

I suddenly realized how little I knew about my father’s native country. How strange it was to me. How little I could read in the laughing faces of its people.

“What are you thinking?” U Ba wanted to know.

“How little I understand about this country.”

“You are mistaken,” he contradicted. “You know everything anyone needs to know.”

“What do you mean?” I replied in surprise.

“Later.”

He made a curious noise with his lips, like blowing a drawn-out kiss. The waitress immediately looked our way. My brother tucked a worn thousand-kyat note under one of the tea glasses and stood up.

Darkness had fallen. We walked down the street in silence. In front of one teahouse stood a large television. Two dozen young men sat in front of it cheering along to a soccer game. I couldn’t help but think of Nu Nu and her sons.

“U Ba?” I thought I might tell by the tone of his voice whether or not he was ready to tell me more.