The heart remembers, p.2
The Heart Remembers, page 2
At the market most of the stands had tarps for shelter from the rain. Underneath the tarps it was always packed with people. You could smell the dried fish, the coriander, and the fresh-ground chili peppers. I gave the meat vendors a wide berth, though. I couldn’t stand the stench of disemboweled animals. It would cling to my nose even hours later.
Among all the people of various ages I felt as if I saw only mothers with their children. Some mothers had set their little ones on their bellies between piles of carrots and potatoes; others had strapped them to their backs or were carrying them in their arms. Women cuddling their children. Feeding them. Singing them songs or rocking them to sleep.
The sight of them made me sad again. I wandered aimlessly from stand to stand. More than anything, I just wanted to go back home to my uncle, to lie down on the couch with him, but he’d asked me yesterday to buy him some tea and a pack of cheroots. I also picked up some eggs and vegetables for our lunch, a bag of pastries, and two bunches of yellow and white chrysanthemums for our altar. I bought two pieces of milk cake for my uncle from a vendor who was selling sweets. He never asked for these, but I knew how much he liked them. I got back on my bike and rode over to Ko Aye Min’s.
His office is on a side street not far from the market. There’s a sign out front: “Adventure Tours with Aaron.” He goes by Aaron because he’s worried that his clients won’t be able to remember his Burmese name. He works as a tour guide, which is to say that he gets money for walking around with other people. I’ve asked him more than once what kind of a strange job that is, walking around with visitors, and how it is that he gets paid to do it. It seems like the kind of thing you ought to do just to be friendly, or to be helpful when someone is lost. He says it’s called “tourism” and maybe I am too young to understand it.
It’s a mystery to me what exactly is so adventurous about hiking around to the Pa-O, Karen, Danu, or Palong villages that surround the city, but loads of foreigners come to Kalaw during the dry season, and Ko Aye Min is very busy. Sometimes he’s away every day for weeks at a time, and I don’t see very much of him. In the rainy season, on the other hand, we don’t get many visitors. He doesn’t have much to do then but sit in his office, and he has plenty of time for me. We play chess or talk about soccer. He’s not married and he doesn’t have kids. Until recently he had a girlfriend, but she lived near Mandalay. She didn’t want to introduce him to her parents, so they didn’t see much of each other. Whenever she was in town, Ko Aye Min wouldn’t have much time for me. But that was fine. She never stayed long, and at some point she stopped coming at all.
Ko Aye Min is like a brother to me, even if he is somewhat older. I guess about thirty. It doesn’t matter. We’ve got plenty to talk about, and if we aren’t in the mood for conversation, like today, then we’ve got plenty to say nothing about.
He knows exactly what he can and can’t ask me. I think there are some people who just know more than others, even without being told.
He’s never once asked me about my mother.
He’s never once mentioned my scar.
Not like the kids or the teachers at school. My scar is dark red, as wide as a matchstick, and it stretches from the left corner of my mouth nearly up to my ear. U Ba thinks that I don’t see it very often just because we don’t have any mirrors in the house. He’s wrong about that. I see it every time someone looks at my face.
Some days I feel a tugging in my scar. I know then that the weather is going to change.
Other days it hurts and burns. I know then that I’m going to have a rough patch.
Ko Aye Min was happy to see me. He was sitting at the back of his office reading a book. There were unopened letters on his desk, a few newspapers and maps. He held a half-empty bottle of Coke between his legs.
He put the book aside. “Hi, Sherlock.” He’s called me that ever since we watched a couple of Sherlock Holmes movies together. He claims I remind him of the detective because I’m always asking questions and have a sharp intellect. “Nice to see you. How’s it going?”
“All right. You?”
“All right.”
That was a lie. He was feeling blue, and not just a little. He couldn’t fool me because I have a gift, one that’s a little creepy even for me. Whatever a person is feeling, I can see it in their eyes.
I’m not talking about knowing that someone is sad because their eyes are full of tears. Anybody can do that. I can tell that a person is sad even when they’re laughing.
I can tell that someone is getting angry, even if they pretend that everything is fine.
I can tell when rage is a mask for fear.
I can sense the uneasiness behind a friendly voice.
Your eyes will give you away. They can’t pretend. They can’t lie, even when they want to. Often they tell me more than I really want to know, and that can be unpleasant. It’s hard to watch somebody lie.
That’s why I tend never to look anyone in the eye for too long. Better to look away.
If there’s no getting around it, I’ve found that I can look without seeing. It’s like when you listen to a person without really hearing them.
My uncle is the only one who knows about my gift. When I told him about it, he sank deep into thought, puffing absently on his extinguished cheroot, shaking his head now and then as if he could hardly believe his ears. And yet I could tell that he did not doubt me.
One time he interrupted me to ask whether I might by chance also have exceptional hearing. I have no idea where that came from. In the end he wanted to know how I could recognize the various emotions. I wasn’t able to answer. I can just tell. For me eyes will flicker or twinkle or glow like embers in a fire. They’ll shine or quiver, shrouded one moment in shadows only to be nearly transparent the next. Sometimes a person’s eyes are as empty as a dead bird’s. Or they practically pop with fear, the way a chicken’s do before the slaughter. Eyes can be dull like the water in a mud puddle, or they can blaze like the sun. Every expression has infinitely many gradations, and each one has its own particular meaning.
My uncle claims that infants have a similar ability in the first few months of their lives. They can read their mother’s eyes. Maybe I just never unlearned it. We only talked about it that one time, but I get the sense that there are times now when he would rather not let me look him in the eye.
U Ba says there are one or two people in Kalaw who can read minds. The old astrologer, for instance. Probably also the old gray monk in the monastery on the hill above the city. I don’t know if it’s true. I can’t read people’s thoughts, at any rate. Even when they come out and tell me what they’re thinking, I often find it difficult to understand what they mean.
I could see in Ko Aye Min’s eyes that something was weighing him down. Now I just had to figure out what it was. That’s the problem I run into all the time. I can tell when a person is down or happy or worried, but I have no idea why. Sometimes they’ll claim that they’re doing well even while I can see that they’re not. I used to put more stock in their words than in their eyes, but I know better now.
Ko Aye Min was quiet for a while, then took a sip of soda. “Would you like something to drink?”
“No thanks.” I stared for a while at the big map of Burma that hung behind him on the wall. “Do you have anything new for me to read?”
He stood up and went to the cabinet where he kept his books. The people he hiked with were always leaving books behind when they were through with them. Of course the Finnish, Korean, and French editions weren’t much use to us. But that just made us happier to get our hands on the English ones. You wouldn’t find them anywhere else in Kalaw, and we were both big readers. He tilted his head and examined the spines carefully. At last he pulled one out and handed it to me.
“International bestseller,” proclaimed the bold print on the cover. By John Green. Not someone I’d ever heard of. I glanced at the title: The Fault in Our Stars. “No thanks,” I said, handing it back to him. “I’m not interested in astrology.”
“That’s not what it’s about. Really, it’s good. I promise.”
I tucked it into the bag with the groceries. “Thanks.”
“Do you want to mess around on the computer?”
I shook my head.
He’s got a computer that he lets me use when he doesn’t need it. We don’t even have a television at home, never mind a computer. Our telephone is very old. You can’t do anything with it but make calls.
Nobody ever calls anyway, and there’s only one number in the contact list.
U Ba says we don’t need a modern phone. His heart is not big enough to let the whole world in. And my heart is too young.
“How about a game of chess?” I asked.
Ko Aye Min nodded. He took the pieces out of a display case along with the new board I had given him a few weeks earlier. I made it out of teak with U Ba’s help. I cut the pieces and then glued them together and painted the squares on it. His old board had been made out of plastic, and rats had chewed through it one night. He put the timer on the table while I set up the pieces. We played two quick games. He won both easily.
“What’s gotten into you?” he wondered. Usually I was a good player but today my mind was elsewhere.
How gracefully did a dancer move?
How beautifully can a person’s eyes flash?
What kind of laugh would warm a person’s heart?
“Nothing,” I replied. “Nothing.”
Chapter 3
“SCARFACE. You ugly scarface.”
I turned around. It was Soe Aung. He disliked me as much as I disliked him. He was a loudmouth, and everyone was afraid of him because he had two older brothers who were just as bad as he was. Now he was furious with me because I didn’t let him cheat off me for the English test.
“Scarface.”
“Say it again and I’ll smack you.” For just one moment I thought of U Ba and his rules: be friendly toward unfriendly people, he always said; they need it most of all. So much for that.
“Scarface.” He made a nasty face.
I struck faster than he could duck. That slap of my hand on his cheek felt good. You could hear it halfway across the schoolyard. He tried to grab me and throw me to the ground, but I was stronger and got him in a headlock. The other boys swarmed around us. He moved in and tried to bite me and scratch me and pull my hair. We’d scuffled before, but this was more intense. Unfortunately, whenever we fought, it was only a matter of time before someone called in the aforementioned older brothers. I felt their powerful hands on my shoulders now. They yanked me away from him and punched me in the stomach and chest and pushed me around until I fell lengthwise into the mud and cut my lip.
One of the teachers broke it up. The three of them got off with a warning, as usual, while I had to go to the headmistress.
She was an old woman, not much bigger than me, with a cold, sharp voice. Things weren’t looking good for me. I saw it in her eyes: they smoldered with rage.
“You again,” she spat.
She expected me to bow my head, but I couldn’t do it. I stood right up, back straight, eyes fixed on the wall in front of me.
She got her cane from the corner. I had to raise my longyi up over my hips. I closed my eyes and pictured a mango tree. Silently I counted the fruit.
One.
Two. Three.
I winced at the first blow. Also at the second. After that I hardly felt them.
U Ba was sitting on the top step behind a curtain of water that spilled out of the overflowing gutters. Next to him was our radio. He had taken to letting the wide world into his heart once a day after all. He listened to the news from the BBC. His expression darkened every time. I wondered why he would do something every day that invariably put him in a bad mood.
He saw my wet, muddy things, my torn shirt splotched with blood, and he knew right away what had happened.
I slunk past him into the house, changed quickly into a clean longyi and a dry T-shirt, and went back out to sit with him.
My uncle turned off the radio, put his hand on my knee, and said nothing. A gecko scurried past us, followed by another. They were going into the house to get out of the rain.
“Are you hungry? Should I make us something to eat?” He didn’t understand my questions. I leaned over and repeated them a little more loudly.
“No, thank you,” said U Ba. “I am fine.”
Fat drops splattered on the corrugated tin roof and on the leaves of the banana trees in the yard. It was hard to have a conversation above the din. That was fine by me.
“Was there trouble at school?” he asked after a long silence.
“Yeah, Soe Aung, that…” I bit my tongue and quickly added: “He called me an ugly scarface.”
“Is that a reason to fight?”
“No. But if I always just put up with it, then…,” I replied softly.
“Then what?”
“Then, then…” Yeah, what then? I didn’t know, either. I knew only that I had been filled with rage and that I couldn’t even claim to be sorry about it.
“Must I now go to the headmistress?”
“I think so. This time it’s serious.”
“Just as I thought,” he sighed. Not another word. He pressed my knee gently, rested his head in his hands, and gazed mournfully at our saturated yard. His shoulders were stooped, his torso bent. I realized for the first time that I was bigger and stronger than he was. It had probably been that way for a while already, just without my noticing. I glanced at the withered skin on his thin upper arms, saw how his spine stood out through his T-shirt. I felt ashamed at the thought that I was stronger than the uncle who had taken care of me for as long as I could remember, who had kept me from harm. Of course I knew it wasn’t my fault, that it was just the natural way of things. Still, I didn’t like it.
I thought about the chess game we played last week. He had been careless and lost a knight early on. Then a pawn. The longer we played, the more clearly I could see what an effort it was for him to understand my moves. I lured him into a trap; we were just seven or eight moves from mate, and suddenly something inside me revolted. I had never beaten him. I started to make intentional mistakes. I sacrificed a bishop, then a pawn. U Ba was happy enough to take advantage. In the end I wasn’t sure what bothered me more: the fact that I could have beaten him because he was getting old and forgetful or the fact that I let him win and he didn’t even notice.
Now I find myself looking for excuses whenever he suggests a game.
I scooted two steps down and took his feet in my hands. The skin was rough and hard. Like the bark of a tree. His feet hurt often, and that makes it hard for him to walk. He’ll just sit on the couch, then, or on the top step, and I’ll massage them.
I pressed hard with my knuckles into his soles.
“That feels good.”
It wasn’t hard to make my uncle happy. There are many keys to happiness, he always said. Modesty is one. Gratitude is another.
His toenails were too long. I got the clipper and trimmed them for him.
U Ba lifted his head and looked me right in the eye. I got the feeling that he wanted to tell me something. I could see in his eyes that something was on his mind. They looked uneasy. A profound discomfort. They flickered slightly. There was no shine. They were flat, dark, blunt. They reminded me a little of the calluses on his feet. I could read U Ba’s eyes better than anyone else’s.
I felt a sense of foreboding.
“Are you going away?” I asked as casually as I could.
He pursed his lips, then nodded silently.
Once a year my uncle would visit his sister. He would be gone for several weeks, usually at the start of the dry season in the fall.
I knew he found it difficult to leave me. I didn’t want to make things harder on him, so I always did my best to hide the fact that I was sad, too.
But there was also a silver lining: Whenever U Ba went away my father would come to visit.
Chapter 4
EVEN BEFORE SUNRISE I could hear my uncle banging about with pots and dishes in the kitchen. Soon enough the first twigs were crackling and the scent of burning wood was wafting through the house. He hadn’t gotten up this early in months.
When I came into the living room he was cutting fresh flowers for the altar and filling a small bowl with rice as an offering for our Buddha. Next to it he put two bananas. I knew his routines inside out.
My uncle always traveled light. Everything he needed for the next few weeks fit into a green satchel of artificial leather: a spare longyi, some underwear, three shirts, and a notebook. At home he would read for several hours a day, even with his failing eyesight, but he wasn’t bringing any books. That surprised me. A life without books would be pretty empty for him. He found comfort in them when he needed it, or distraction, as the case may be. He explained to me once that some of them were like compasses for him. Without them he would not be able to find his way in the world or in his own life.
We didn’t talk much while he was getting ready to leave. He’s like that. Even when he goes to the provincial capital, Taunggyi, for a day he gets very quiet before he leaves. He always says that the soul can travel no faster than a person can walk. It’s much slower than a train or a bus. I get the feeling that he likes to give his soul a head start, maybe so that he can be a whole person when he gets to wherever he’s going.
I fetched water from the barrel in the yard and heated it in a kettle over the fire so that I could wash his hair. My mind was whirling with all the things I wanted to say and ask before he left, but my mouth felt as if it had been sealed shut. In the end I said nothing.
Just before we got to the station a military jeep drove past, slammed on the brakes, and then backed up until it was even with us. In the passenger seat I recognized a soldier who had often come to our place during the past few months. The first time I saw him standing in our yard I wanted to crawl under the house and hide with the pig. He was bigger and tougher than any other man I knew, and he had an ominous look. His uniform was decorated with colorful badges and his epaulets were embroidered with three stars and two leaves each. He was no ordinary soldier but a some-kind-of-colonel-or-other, U Ba later told me.
