A Well-Tempered Heart

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  I saw him sitting before me, flanked by oil lamps, hunched low over his desk, surrounded by books. They filled shelves that reached from floor to ceiling. They lay in piles on the planks of the wooden floor and rose in towers on a second couch. Their pages resembled punch cards. On the table was spread an array of tweezers, scissors, two little jars among them, one with a stiff white glue, the other filled with tiny bits of paper. I had watched for hours as he grasped bit after bit of paper with the tweezers, dipped them in the glue, and positioned them over the holes. Then, as soon as the glue had set, he would retrace the missing letters with a pen. In this way, over the years, he had restored dozens of books.

  My brother’s life. It bore so little resemblance to my own, and yet it had touched me so deeply.

  My eyes lit on the shelf with the souvenirs of my trip to Burma, half obscured by books and newspapers. A carved wooden Buddha, a gift from my brother. A dusty little lacquer box adorned with elephants and monkeys. A picture of U Ba and me that we took shortly before my departure from Kalaw. I was a full head taller than him. He was wearing his new green and black longyi, freshly laundered only the night before so that it would be clean. He had wrapped a pink cloth around his head, as had previously been the custom among the older Shan. He gazed into the camera seriously and solemnly.

  I could hardly recognize myself in that picture. Flush with joy from the most exhilarating days of my life, uplifted by the most beautiful love story I would ever hear, the story of my father, I beamed without a care—maybe slightly enraptured—at the camera. When I showed the picture to friends they couldn’t believe it was me. When Michael saw it for the first time he wanted to know if I was standing there stoned out of my mind with my guru in India. Later he frequently made fun of my expression, claiming that I must have inhaled too deeply on a Burmese opium pipe before the shot.

  Ten years had passed since then. Ten years during which I had time and again resolved to return, to visit my father’s grave, to spend time with U Ba. I put the journey off from one year to the next. Twice I had booked a flight only to cancel it at the last minute when some other more pressing matter arose. Something so pressing that I could no longer even say what it had been. Eventually mundane routines took the shine off my memories; desire lost its urgency and gave way to a vague intention for some unspecified future occasion.

  I could not remember when I had last written to U Ba. He begged my pardon for his long silence. It was I who owed him an answer to his last letter. And probably to the one before that. I couldn’t recall. We corresponded regularly during the first few years after my return, but gradually the frequency of our exchanges decreased. He sent me one of his restored books every other year, but I have to confess that I had never yet gotten all the way through a single one. They were, in spite of his efforts, much the worse for wear: faded, dusty, soiled. I always washed my hands after handling them. He had graced them with affectionate dedications, and every one of them had lain initially by my bedside, migrating quickly to the living room and landing ultimately in some carton or other.

  On a couple of occasions I had sent him money through a contact at the American embassy in Rangoon, maybe ten thousand dollars all told. He would invariably confirm receipt in a subsequent letter, casually, without putting his gratitude into so many words or even explaining what he was doing with what by Burmese standards was a tidy sum of money, which left me thinking that my financial gifts must be awkward for him. At some point I dropped the practice, and neither of us ever said another word about it. I had often invited him to come visit me in New York, explaining that I would of course attend to all the formalities and cover all the expenses. At first he demurred. Later, for reasons that were never clear to me, he declined outright, politely but very firmly, time after time.

  I wondered why in all those years I had never managed to see him again, though I had promised both of us when I left that I would return within a few months. How is it that he, to whom I owed so much, had disappeared again from my life? Why do we so often put off the things that matter most to us? I had no answer. I would have to write to him at length in the next few days.

  The memories of Burma had distracted and calmed me. From the taxi I had e-mailed Mulligan, blamed the problem on severe light-headedness, and promised to explain the whole thing on Monday. I considered taking the afternoon to straighten up my apartment. It was looking pretty dire. The cleaning lady had been sick for two weeks, and dust had piled up in the corners. The bedroom was still cluttered with unopened boxes; pictures waiting to be hung leaned against the walls, even though four months had passed since Michael and I had parted ways and I had moved back into my old apartment. My friend Amy claimed that the state of my apartment reflected my reluctance to accept the separation from Michael. That was nonsense. If the disarray betrayed anything, it was my disappointment with the fact that I was living in the same apartment at thirty-eight that I had lived in at twenty-eight. It felt to me like a step backward. I had moved out four years ago because I preferred living with Michael over being on my own. The apartment reminded me each day afresh that the attempt had failed.

  WHY ARE YOU ALONE?

  That voice again. No longer a whisper, but still muted. It reverberated throughout my entire body, made me shiver.

  Why are you alone?

  It sounded closer, more immediate than in the office. As if someone had stepped nearer to me.

  Why don’t you answer me?

  I felt hot. My heart started to race again. Sweaty palms. The same symptoms as this morning. I couldn’t sit still; I stood up and paced back and forth in my little living room.

  Why are you alone?

  —Who says I’m alone?

  Would she leave me in peace if I answered her?

  Where are the others?

  —What others?

  Your husband.

  —I’m not married.

  Don’t you have any children?

  —No.

  Oh.

  —What’s “oh” supposed to mean?

  Nothing. It’s only … no kids … that’s sad.

  —No. Not at all.

  Where’s your father?

  —He’s dead.

  And your mother?

  —She lives in San Francisco.

  Don’t you have any brothers or sisters?

  —Sure, a brother.

  Why isn’t he here?

  —He lives in San Francisco, too.

  Did you stay behind with your aunts and uncles?

  — I don’t have any aunts or uncles.

  No aunts or uncles?

  —No.

  So why don’t you live with your family?

  —Because it’s actually not a bad thing to have a continent between us.

  So you are alone.

  —No. I’m not alone. I just live alone.

  Why?

  —Why? Why? Because I like it better that way.

  Why?

  —You’re getting on my nerves with that “why” thing.

  Why do you live alone?

  —Because I hate to be woken in the night by a man’s snoring. Because I’d rather read my morning paper in peace. Because I don’t like whiskers in the sink. Because I don’t want to have to justify myself when I come home from work at midnight. Because I love not having to explain anything to anyone. Can you understand that?

  Silence.

  —Hello? Can you understand that?

  Not a sound.

  —Hello? Why aren’t you talking anymore?

  I stood there waiting. The sonorous hum of the refrigerator, voices in the hall, a door clicking shut.

  —Where are you?

  The phone rang. Amy. She could tell by my tone that I was out of joint.

  “Aren’t you feeling well?”

  “Sure I am.”

  Why are you lying again?

  Like a sharp blow from behind. I stumbled and nearly lost my balance.

  “It … it’s just that …” I muttered,
bewildered.

  “Julia, what’s wrong?” she asked, alarmed. “Do you want to meet? Should I come to your place?”

  I was dying to get out of my apartment.

  “I … I’d rather meet at your place. When would be an okay time?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  Chapter 3

  AMY LEE LIVED in two adjacent studios on the top floor of a three-story building on the Lower East Side. She lived in one of the apartments and used the other for her art. For the past several years there had been no place where I felt better cared for. We spent entire weekends on her couch, watching Sex and the City, eating ice cream, drinking red wine, laughing about men or consoling each other when we suffered from heartaches.

  Amy and I had met right at the beginning of law school, Columbia, emphasis on corporate law. While filling out some form or other we noticed by chance that we had been born on exactly the same day, she in Hong Kong, I in New York. She had spent the first nineteen years of her life in Hong Kong, until her parents sent her to college in America. Amy claimed that an astrologer back home had predicted she would meet someone with the same birthday who would prove to be a lifelong companion, and so it seemed that we had no choice but to become friends.

  I didn’t believe in astrology at the time, but I liked Amy from the start. We complemented each other in a way I had never experienced with a friend.

  She was in many ways my exact opposite: a head shorter, stockier. She dyed her black hair bright colors, didn’t like to make plans, loved surprises, was quick on her feet and even-tempered. She meditated, was a Buddhist, and yet regularly consulted astrologers and was so superstitious that it sometimes made me crazy. She always wore something red. Never got out of an elevator on the ninth floor. Refused to take any taxi whose license plate ended in a seven.

  She was the only person I had shared my father’s story with. And she believed it. Every word, without question. As if it were the most natural thing in the world for there to be people who could hear heartbeats.

  In contrast to my mother and brother, who preferred to be left in the dark about my trip. They wanted to know only whether our father was still alive. When I told them he wasn’t and tried to report what I had experienced in Burma and why he had returned to the land of his birth in order to die, they refused to listen to me. It was the beginning of our estrangement. My search for my father had torn the family in two. My mother and brother on one side, my father and I on the other. Amy was convinced that this split had been there all along, that I was slow to notice it or had previously been in denial about it. She was probably right. Five years ago my mother moved to San Francisco to be closer to my brother, and now we saw each other once, maybe twice a year.

  Amy, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough of it. When was I finally going to visit U Ba, she always wanted to know. And what of my father’s inheritance: faith in the magical power of love? Had I lost it again in New York? Why had I not looked after it properly? Shouldn’t I be looking for it? Questions I dodged because I had no answers, which only encouraged her to ask them at regular intervals.

  Amy’s heart, unlike mine, was not really in her studies. Her real ambition had been to paint, and she had gone into law only under pressure from—or out of love for—her parents, the justification changing according to her mood. Still, she was one of the best in our class. When Amy’s father died in a plane crash four weeks before our last exams, Amy just jetted off to Hong Kong for two months. Back in New York she announced that her studies were over. She wouldn’t spend another day at the university. Life was too short for detours. If you had a dream, you ought to live it.

  Since then she’d been making ends meet as a freelance set painter on Broadway, and she refused to so much as show her work to any gallery owners. Neither exhibits nor sales held any interest for her. She was painting for herself, not for anyone else. Amy was the freest person I knew.

  The door to her studio stood ajar. She loathed closed doors the same way she abhorred all locks, and she was firmly convinced that people who constantly worried about locking things up or away would eventually lock themselves out. She even refused to chain her bicycle. Curiously, she was the only one of my friends whose bicycle had never been stolen.

  She sat on a rolling stool in front of a canvas that she was painting a dark orange. She had put her hair, dyed red, into a ponytail. She wore faded gray sweatpants and an oversized white T-shirt covered with paint flecks. Her work clothes. The room smelled of fresh paint and varnish; the floor was lost beneath splotches of color, paintings rested against the walls or on easels, many of them in varying shades of red. Amy claimed that she had unfortunately gotten mired in her Barnett Newman phase. Instead of stripes she was painting circles, and if she didn’t bust out soon, I might as well start calling her Bernadette Newman. Jack Johnson was playing on her small stereo.

  Hearing my footsteps on the wooden floor, she turned to face me. Her dark brown, almost black eyes widened in surprise.

  “What’s got you looking like that?”

  I collapsed into an old armchair, my hands and feet ice cold. My eyes filled with tears. It was as if in these few seconds all of the stress of the past several hours was slipping away. She looked at me with a worried expression, gave her stool a vigorous push, and came rolling over to me.

  “What’s the problem?”

  I shrugged helplessly.

  “Let me guess: Mulligan gave you the boot.”

  I shook my head the slightest bit.

  “Your mother died.”

  I fought back the first tears.

  Amy sighed deeply. “Okay, it’s something serious!”

  Maybe it was her sense of humor that I liked best about her.

  “Out with it then, what happened?”

  “So what am I looking like?” I tried to dodge her question.

  “Like a frightened hen.”

  I was quiet for a while. Amy waited patiently for my answer.

  I found it difficult to say out loud the thought that had been haunting me incessantly for the past hour. “I’m afraid I’m losing my mind.”

  She studied me thoughtfully. “And what is it exactly, if I may ask, that is prompting this fear?”

  “I feel as if someone is following me.”

  “A stalker? Is he good-looking?”

  “Not a stalker. I’m hearing voices.” I cringed at the sound of it. I felt embarrassed telling even Amy.

  “Since when?” she asked, soberly now and without a trace of surprise in her voice.

  “Since this morning,” I answered, and told her what had happened at the office and back at home.

  Amy sat motionless on her stool listening to me. Occasionally she nodded, as if she knew just what I was talking about. When I was through she stood up, put down her brush, and paced up and down between her artworks. It’s what she did when she was thinking hard.

  “Is it the first time?” she asked, pausing.

  “Yes.”

  “Is she threatening you?”

  “No, why would she do that?”

  “Does she insult you?”

  “Insult me?”

  “Does she tell you that you’re a useless slut? A lousy lawyer? That it’s only a matter of time before everyone realizes what an idiot you really are?”

  I shook my head, confused. “No.”

  “Does she order you around?”

  I had no idea where she was heading with this line of inquiry.

  “Does she tell you to dash a cup of coffee in Mulligan’s face? Or to jump out the window?”

  “No. Where are you getting such nonsense?”

  Amy was thoughtful. “What does she say, then?”

  “Not much. In the office she was warning me about my colleagues. Otherwise she just asks questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Who are you? Why do you live alone? Why don’t you have any children?”

  A sm
ile of relief crossed her face. “Interesting questions.”

  “How so?”

  “I know someone else who would take an interest in your answers. Do our voices sound at all similar?”

  “Quit making fun of me,” I told her, disappointed. Couldn’t she tell how desperately I needed her reassurance?

  “I’m not making fun of you,” she said, coming over to me, crouching beside me, and stroking my hair. “But these questions don’t sound particularly dire. I feared something worse.”

  “How worse?”

  “Hearing voices is often a psychotic reaction. It’s a typical symptom of incipient schizophrenia. In that case the outlook is dim. Not easily cured. But in those cases the affected person feels threatened by the voices. The voices boss them around. Jump off a roof, stab your neighbor. Melancholics often hear insults. But none of that applies to you.”

  “How is it,” I wondered, “that you know so much about people who hear voices?”

  “Didn’t I ever tell you that my father heard voices, too?”

  I stared at her in surprise. “No.”

  “My mother told me about it a few years after he died. After that I read everything I could find on the subject.”

  “Was your father schizophrenic?”

  “No. I think that for him it was a relatively harmless phenomenon.”

  “What did he do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I suspect that he saw the voice as someone who offered him advice from time to time.” After a short pause she added: “Unfortunately, he didn’t always follow it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother says the voice told him on the day of the crash that he ought to turn back. That he shouldn’t get on that plane. He even called her from the airport.”