The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  This villa had that same eerie quality. Why wasn’t anyone maintaining it? Its former grandeur was still plain to see. Anyone could have kept it up without much effort. Could have.

  What might have been, if? What lurked within? Phantoms? Two unlived lives?

  Somewhat below the house was the ruined shack in which Su Kyi and my father must have lived. It was smaller than our living room in New York. I could see no window and only one empty doorframe. The brown corrugated tin roof was destroyed by rust, the clay crumbling out of the walls. I spotted the fire pit, a stack of weathered kindling, and the wooden bench. Two young women were sitting on it with babies on their laps. They looked at me and smiled. Beside the hut, four longyis hung in the sun. Two young dogs roamed about the yard. A third arched its back to shit, then cast me a mournful expression.

  I drew two deep, even breaths and stepped through the gate. Ahead of me on the lawn was the tree stump. It must have come from a very old and large pine. Ants streamed over its thick bark. The wood was soft and eaten away in several places, but the heartwood was still sound, even after all the years. I climbed onto it without difficulty. It was damp and firm. The view into the valley was obstructed by several large bushes. I knew now why I had wanted to see this place at all costs and yet had dreaded it. Here was the key to U Ba’s narrative. Ever since I had heard the children singing in the monastery this morning, his story had ceased to be a fable. It reverberated in my ears, and I could smell it and touch it with my hands. This was the tree stump where my father had waited in vain for his mother, my grandmother. Where he had nearly starved himself to death. In this yard he had lost his eyesight, and he had lived in this odd town where little had changed over the past fifty years. He and Mi Mi. U Ba was leading me to them. I heard their whispering. Their voices. Just a few steps more.

  What if the next thing I knew they were standing right in front of me? I was panic-stricken at the thought. Perhaps Mi Mi and my father were holed up in this derelict villa. Might they already have spotted me from a window? Would they hide from me, run away, or come out of the house and approach me? What would I say? Hi, Dad? Why’d you ditch us? How come you never told me about Mi Mi? I missed you?

  How would he react? Would he be angry with me for seeking him out and for finding him when he had so obviously intended to disappear without a trace? Ought I not to have respected his wishes and stayed in New York? Would he take me in his arms in spite of it all? Would I see that light in his eyes, the light I so missed? It hurt to be so uncertain of his reaction. Why did I doubt that he would be happy to see me?

  “Mi Mi and your father don’t live here.” It was U Ba. I hadn’t seen him coming.

  “U Ba, you frightened me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  “What else would you be thinking?”

  He smiled and bent his head to one side. It was an affectionate look he gave me then, a look that inspired daring. I wanted to reach out my hand to him. He ought to shepherd me past this haunted house, take me home. To safety.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You would have no reason to worry. You are his daughter. Why do you doubt his love?”

  “He left us.”

  “Does one thing exclude the other?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Love has so many different faces that our imagination is not prepared to see them all.”

  “Why does it have to be so difficult?”

  “Because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities—for good as well as evil—onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize. I hope you will understand what I mean once I have finished my story.”

  I didn’t understand. But I trusted him.

  “I bought some fruit at the market. If you like, we could sit under the avocado tree, and I could go on with our tale.” He hastened ahead with his brisk steps, over to the two young women, who apparently knew him well. They laughed together, looked over at me, nodded, and stood up. U Ba took the wooden bench under his arm and brought it to the tree in whose shadow I stood waiting.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, it was your grandfather who built this. Teak. It will last a hundred years, at least. We only ever had to repair it once.” He drew a thermos and two little glasses from a bag and poured tea.

  I closed my eyes. My father was on his way to Rangoon, and I sensed it would turn out to be a harrowing trip.

  Chapter 2

  PLAY DEAD. DON’T move. Hope the time will pass. Don’t make a sound. Refuse food and drink. Take shallow breaths. Hope it’s not real.

  Tin Win sat cowering in the train, unresponsive. He ignored the men’s questions until they gave up and left him in peace. The conversations, the heartbeats, of his fellow travelers flew past him unremarked, much as the night landscape flew past the eyes of the other passengers.

  The quiet atmosphere in his uncle’s house made things easier. No need to change trains or ignore questions. He was alone. He lay motionless on a bed, arms and legs spread wide.

  Play dead. He didn’t always manage it.

  He would weep. He would succumb to convulsions that lasted a few minutes, then slowly ebbed away. Like water draining through sand.

  “Please,” he said in a half whisper, as if to someone in the room, “please, let it not be so. Please, let me wake up.” He imagined himself lying on his straw mat in Kalaw with Su Kyi sleeping next to him. He stayed in bed while she rose. He heard her rattling about in the kitchen. He caught the bittersweet scent of fresh papayas. He heard Mi Mi sitting in front of him sucking on a mango pit. Rangoon was a bad dream. A misunderstanding. Far, far away, like thunderclouds on the horizon, moving in some other direction.

  He felt the immeasurable relief it would bring. But already it was gone, flown like smoke before the wind.

  There was a knock at the door. When Tin Win failed to answer, there came another. The door opened and someone entered. A boy, thought Tin Win. He could tell by the gait. Men and women walked differently. Men were clumsier, making louder entrances, landing flat on their feet, whereas women often stepped heel to toe, making softer sounds. They caressed the floor with their soles. The boy’s steps were very brisk. He set a tray on a table beside the bed. Aroma of rice and vegetables. From a pitcher the boy poured water into a glass. Tin Win ought to drink a lot, he said. After all, he came from the mountains and was unaccustomed to the heat of the capital. After a few weeks of acclimation, he would get along better. Tin Win ought to rest as much as he wished and to call if he needed anything. His uncle was out of the house but would be back for supper.

  Tin Win, alone again, sat up in bed and took the tray. He ate a few spoonfuls. The curry was tasty, but he had no appetite. The water refreshed him.

  A few weeks of acclimation. Those words, meant to reassure him, sounded instead like a curse. He could not imagine spending even one more day without Mi Mi.

  Something was buzzing overhead, a thoroughly and utterly objectionable noise with no rhythm at all, repulsively monotonous. It never relented, grew neither quieter nor louder, nor even weaker. At the same time he felt a faint draft from above. Only then did he notice how hot it was. The gentle breeze did not cool him. The air was too hot for that. Any hotter and it would have burned his skin.

  He stood up in order to explore his quarters. He held his breath and listened. A couple of ants were walking on the wall in front of him. Beneath the bed lurked a spider in whose web a fly had just become entangled. He heard it flailing, heard its desperate buzzing trailing off. The spider crept towa
rd its prey. Two geckos clung to the ceiling, flicking their tongues in turn. None of these noises was particularly edifying. He waved his arms and took a step.

  Chairs make no noise and have no scent. The back of his hand struck the edge of the wood, and he cried out briefly. The pain shot right up to his shoulder. He got down on his knees and crept through the room on all fours. Tables make no noise and have no scent. There’d be a nasty bruise on his forehead.

  Like a surveyor charting new terrain, Tin Win felt his way around every corner of the room, so that he would not injure himself again. Besides the table and chair, there was a large cupboard against the wall. Next to the bed stood two tables, high but small, a lamp on each. Above the table a picture. The two tall, half-opened windows reached nearly to the floor. The shutters were closed. Tin Win tapped on the floor. Seasoned teak. It had that unmistakable resonance. He considered exploring the entire house, but lay down instead to await his uncle’s return.

  A knocking at the door roused him. It was the same boy as at midday. His uncle was expecting him for supper.

  Tin Win set one foot hesitantly in front of the other as he descended the staircase that circled in a broad arc down to the first floor. The reverberation of his steps betrayed to him the dimensions of the room. It had to be vast, a kind of atrium that extended right up to the top of the house. Tin Win heard the boy walking beside him. On the last step he took Tin Win’s arm and led him through two more large rooms into the dining room.

  While waiting for his nephew, U Saw had mixed himself a soda water with lime juice and stepped onto the terrace to inspect the garden behind the house. A great brown leaf hung from one of the palms. One of the gardeners must have overlooked it, a carelessness that U Saw could not tolerate. He wondered if it was already time again to sack one of the servants. There was no surer way to cure the others of their indolence—at least for a few months. He stepped onto the lawn, bent over, and checked to see whether the grass was evenly mown. A few blades protruded noticeably above the others. He would make the necessary arrangements tomorrow.

  U Saw belonged to the few Burmese who had achieved more than modest affluence under British rule. If one counted his business ventures, his foreign real estate, and his disposable cash, he was one of the richest men in the country, aside—of course—from certain Englishmen and a few other Europeans who lived in a world apart, a world that had little to do with the rest of Burma and therefore did not invite comparison. His estate on Halpin Road could hold its own against the most splendid villas of the colonial lords. A house with more than two dozen rooms, a swimming pool, and a tennis court was not to be found on every street corner, not even in the white neighborhoods. Since U Saw himself didn’t play tennis, he insisted that his servants do so. Every morning just after sunrise, two of the five gardeners would hit the ball back and forth for an hour, creating the impression that the owner himself used the court regularly. Hence his neighbors and visitors considered him extraordinarily athletic. Besides the gardeners, U Saw employed two cooks, two drivers, several cleaning women, three night watchmen, a houseboy, a butler, and a kind of financial coordinator responsible for the shopping.

  Years ago there had been ample speculation about the source of his wealth, but the rumors had died down even as his fortune had increased. There is a certain social status that insulates one from idle speculation.

  Of his story, all anyone in the capital knew was that as a young man at the beginning of the century he had moved in Rangoon’s German circles. He spoke the language fluently and had risen early on to be manager of a large German-owned rice mill. The First World War had driven the owner and most of his compatriots to abandon the British colony. He had signed his business over to U Saw, ostensibly on the condition that it revert to his ownership upon his return at the end of the war. Two rice moguls had supposedly cast their lots with his, selling their enterprises to U Saw for the symbolic price of a few rupees. None of them was ever seen in Rangoon again. U Saw himself had never uttered a word about this felicitous turn of fate.

  U Saw’s business ventures expanded in the twenties, and he cleverly turned the Great Depression at the beginning of the thirties—even Southeast Asia felt its effects—to his own advantage. He bought up paddy fields and financially stricken mills, then took over the business of an Indian rice baron, so that he soon controlled the rice traffic from seed to export. He cultivated good relationships not only with his Indian competitors but also with the English and with the Chinese minority. He had learned early that connections hurt only the man who did not have them. As befit a personage of his stature, he made generous donations to the two largest monasteries in Rangoon. He had already commissioned three pagodas in his name, and in the entrance hall to his house stood an imposing Buddhist altar.

  In short, U Saw, at fifty, was more than satisfied with himself and his lot. Even the tragic death of his wife two years earlier had not detracted from that. For him, their childless marriage had been nothing more than a partnership of convenience. His wife was the daughter of a shipping magnate, and U Saw had expected the match to lower his transportation costs. How could he have known that the prestigious shipper was on the brink of bankruptcy? The marriage was official but seldom consummated.

  U Saw could not claim to have missed his wife particularly. More troubling to him were the circumstances under which she met her death. An astrologer had advised him fervently against a certain business trip to Calcutta. Were he to make the journey, a great calamity would befall his family. U Saw had gone anyway. Two days later, his wife was found in her bed. A cobra lay coiled and sleeping on the sheet. It must have crawled through the open window into the bedroom.

  Since then U Saw made no important decisions without first consulting astrologers or fortune tellers. Only two weeks earlier an astrologer had prophesied a personal and commercial catastrophe—U Saw had not really understood the difference, but neither had he asked the man to elaborate—that could be avoided only by assisting a family member in great distress. This admonition had cost him a few sleepless nights. He was unaware of any relations in particular distress. All of them were poor. They always wanted money—that’s why he had broken ties with them years ago. But great distress? Eventually he dimly recalled having heard the sad fate of one of his wife’s distant relatives, a boy whose father had died. The young man himself had lost his eyesight overnight and his mother had abandoned him. Rumor had it he was living with a neighbor woman who also looked after his, U Saw’s, villa in Kalaw. How better to appease the stars than to help a blind boy? He had tactfully inquired of the astrologer whether a donation to a monastery—a generous one, mind you—might not also forestall said catastrophe. It would have involved fewer complications. No? The erection of a further pagoda, perhaps? Or two? No. The stars were unequivocal.

  The very next day U Saw had dispatched two of his most trusted assistants to Kalaw.

  Hearing voices in the dining room, U Saw went back into the house. He stood thunderstruck at the sight of Tin Win. He had been expecting a cripple, a physically and mentally underdeveloped boy whose plight would evoke pity. But this nephew was a robust, good-looking young man at least two heads taller than his uncle and radiating a curious self-confidence. He wore a white shirt and a clean green longyi. He hardly appeared to be in need. U Saw was disappointed.

  “My dear nephew, welcome to Rangoon. It’s a pleasure to have you here with me at last.”

  U Saw’s voice irritated Tin Win from the very first sentence. He could not interpret it. It struck no chord in him. It was friendly, neither too loud nor too deep, but it was missing something that Tin Win could not quite put his finger on. It reminded him of the buzzing from his ceiling. And the beat of his uncle’s heart was odder yet—expressionless and monotonous, like the ticking of the clock on the wall in the corridor.

  “I trust the long journey was not too arduous,” U Saw continued.

  “No.”

  “How are your eyes?”

  “They�
�re fine.”

  “I thought you were blind.”

  Tin Win heard the confusion in his voice. He sensed that it was not the right moment to embark on a discussion of blindness and the capacity to see.

  “I only meant to say that they don’t hurt.”

  “That’s lovely. Alas, I learned of your affliction only recently, through an acquaintance in Kalaw. Naturally I would otherwise have tried to help you sooner. A good friend of mine, Dr. Stuart McCrae, is head physician at Rangoon’s biggest hospital. He directs the ophthalmology department. I have arranged for him to examine you in the coming weeks.”

  “I am humbled by your generosity,” said Tin Win. “I do not know how to thank you.”

  “Don’t give it a second thought. Medicine is making great strides. Perhaps spectacles or an operation can help you,” said U Saw, whose mood was improving perceptibly. He appreciated his nephew’s obsequious tone. Already it rang with fitting gratitude. “Would you care for something to drink?”

  “A bit of water, perhaps.”

  U Saw poured water into a glass and set it—uncertain how he ought to give it to his nephew—with a loud noise on the table standing beside them. Tin Win felt for the glass and drank a sip.

  “I have asked my cook to prepare chicken soup and fish curry with rice for you. I trust they will be to your liking.”

  “Most certainly.”

  “Do you require assistance to eat?”

  “No, thank you.”

  U Saw clapped his hands and called a name. The boy returned and led Tin Win to his chair. He sat down and felt the objects on the table in front of him—a flat plate with a deep bowl, beside it a napkin, a spoon, a knife, and a fork. At the monastery U May had once pressed these utensils into his hand and explained that the English ate with such things and not with their fingers. Having already sampled his noontime curry with a spoon, Tin Win had discovered to his astonishment how easy it was to use.

  U Saw observed with relief that Tin Win could handle cutlery and that his blindness did not prevent him from eating decorously. Not even the soup gave him any trouble. U Saw had imagined, full of dread, that his nephew might need to be fed every evening, that he might drool, perhaps, or spill his food on the table.