And waited.
Thar Thar, by contrast, driven by an inner unrest, was out and about from dawn till dusk.
He fetched water from the well, making sure that his mother and brother had enough to drink and that they ate at least once a day. He looked after the chickens. At regular intervals he would take a tub of laundry so heavy that he could barely carry it down to the river, where he would find a spot beside the women in the water. Then he would lug the wet things, now even heavier, back home, where he hung them on the porch to dry. He walked to the market and bought rice, and when their last kyat had been spent, he slipped through the hedge to the neighbors to ask for help. He tended and harvested the tomatoes and planted additional vegetables behind the house. He cooked every day. His curries tasted good. Better than hers.
Nu Nu could not figure out where her eight-year-old son found the energy. Sometimes she wondered if, with Maung Sein’s death, some of the father’s vigor, care, and love had passed into Thar Thar.
One afternoon more than two years after Maung Sein’s death she lay exhausted on her blanket and watched how he cleaned the vegetables carefully, keeping the fire ablaze, tending to wood and kindling. With a clumsy movement he accidentally knocked over a kettle that fell with a clatter into the flames. Thar Thar disappeared behind a cloud of white steam. The fire went out, hissing loudly. He regarded the mess, sighed once briefly, and started to separate the dry wood from the wet. He went to the yard to fetch wood chips and little twigs and calmly lit another fire to boil water for the rice. The big barrel in front of the house was empty and he had to walk to the well in the village.
Nu Nu marveled at his equanimity. She would doubtless have been upset at her clumsiness. Would have gotten annoyed. Would have retreated discouraged to her sleeping mat. What had happened to Thar Thar? Where was the impulsive, hot-tempered boy who spent all his time in the chicken coop?
What had the father’s accident done to the child’s spirit? What had the elder taught the younger?
She thought about Maung Sein. Her husband was dead. There was nothing she could do about that. But whether the loss led to despair, whether it broke her, that was up to her alone.
Nu Nu straightened up and tried to stand. She found it easier than expected. She put on a clean longyi and added a fresh log to the fire. She watched as it started to smolder and eventually caught fire. Nu Nu squatted beside it and hesitantly picked up the little knife, testing the blade. Someone must have sharpened it. She took a cutting board and somewhat clumsily cut up spring onions and tomatoes, sliced zucchini and carrots, peeled and diced the ginger. With every movement the work came more easily and she felt improved. The sharp smell of the fresh ginger rose into her nose. How long had it been since she smelled it?
Ko Gyi sat beside her. Watching her. Speechless.
Suddenly Thar Thar stood in the doorway behind her with a pail of water.
“What are you doing?” he asked in surprise.
“I’m helping you,” she replied.
He thanked her with a smile.
They put rice and vegetables on and then went, all three of them, into the yard to wash the tin plates and to fetch water for tea.
She noticed now for the first time that the roof in one corner of the hut had fallen in. The boards below, moist from the rain, had rotted. This part of the hut would not survive the next rainy season. Nu Nu looked around the yard. It was swept clean. Big tomatoes were thriving in the beds. Beside them Thar Thar had also planted carrots and eggplants, and he had skillfully weeded. The banana plants hung full of fruit, likewise the papaya and avocado trees. The bougainvillea, though, had utterly overgrown the gate, and she could see by a gap in the hedge what alternative exit her son was now using instead.
And she asked herself why she neither saw nor heard any sign of the chickens.
“Where are the chickens?”
Thar Thar swallowed and lowered his eyes. “In the coop.”
“Are you sure? They’re so quiet.”
He nodded without looking at her.
Nu Nu walked over to the coop and listened. Not hearing anything, she squatted down and peered in through the little door. In one corner she spotted three birds.
“Where are the others?” she asked, puzzled, as she stood back up.
“Gone,” whispered Thar Thar, turning aside.
“What do you mean, gone? Did they run away? Did dogs get a hold of them?” Nu Nu knew how much the chickens meant to her son and she couldn’t believe that he had not looked after them better.
Thar Thar shook his head mutely.
Nu Nu looked in doubt from one son to the other.
“He sold them,” said Ko Gyi in a muted voice. “One after another.”
“Sold them?”
Thar Thar, still silent, stared at the ground. She put a hand under his chin and cautiously lifted his head. Two tears ran down his cheeks. His lower lip quivered. He closed his eyes and the tears increased.
“Why?”
Silence.
“Why?”
A profound, almost unbearable silence was her answer.
“Because the neighbors were no longer willing to lend us money or rice,” murmured Ko Gyi.
“Because otherwise we would have starved,” said Thar Thar, turning away and running as fast as he could back into the house.
Nu Nu was still trying to understand what had happened. A thought crept up on her, so sad that she wanted to forget it again immediately. “But the neighbors have their own chickens,” she said, looking to Ko Gyi for an answer. “It doesn’t make sense. Can you explain it to me?”
He nodded. “It’s true. They didn’t want them, and they offered him a terrible price.” He paused awhile. Softly, very softly, he continued: “He slaughtered, plucked, and dressed them and sold them at the market.”
Chapter 16
WHEN NU NU awoke near dawn she could hear someone already busy with the pots. It was barely light yet, but the birds were already atwitter. She rolled over. Beside her Ko Gyi was asleep. Soon afterward she heard the monks at the gate, and she wondered why they had not long since ceased to ask for alms where there was nothing to be had. Nu Nu saw Thar Thar hurry down the steps with the big rice bowl in his hands. Had he been making offerings? All those months? How could he have conjured up the rice when they had hardly enough for themselves? She was too exhausted to ponder the question for long, and she fell back asleep.
It was light when she awoke again, and the birds had fallen silent. She rose. Ko Gyi was still asleep. Beside the fire she found rice and a lukewarm curry.
There was no sign of Thar Thar. Alarmed, she ran into the yard and looked into the chicken coop. Three chickens ogled her as she stuck her head through the door.
All at once her son’s voice rang out from the neighbor’s yard. Nu Nu shoved her way through the hedge and saw him sitting in the shadow of a massive fig tree. Beside him, as tall as a man, stood a pile of dried bamboo leaves and grasses. In front of him a woven mat on which he was working.
“What are you doing there?” she asked in surprise.
“I’m helping U Zhaw,” he said softly. As if it made him uncomfortable.
“Your son is the most gifted weaver I’ve ever seen,” called the neighbor’s wife as she came out of the house. “And the most productive,” she added with a look at the mother that said as much as: hard to believe, given his mother. “He can make half a roof in less than three days.”
Nu Nu watched her son. Only now did she notice how nimbly his fingers moved, how deftly they intertwined the leaves and the tufts of grass. She saw the neighbor’s new roof and another already finished half of a roof leaning against a tree.
“Your house looks nice,” she said suspiciously, and gestured to Thar Thar’s work. “Who is that for?”
“We’ll sell that one.”
“Sell? To whom?”
“Whoever needs it.”
“For how much?”
“Two hundred kyat.”
“How much does my son get?”
“Twenty. He’s working off the money we’ve lent you.”
“Twenty kyat?” Nu Nu found it difficult to conceal her outrage. She tried to catch Thar Thar’s eye, but he kept his gaze lowered.
“How much longer?” she wanted to know.
The woman did some reckoning. “If he keeps up this pace, it won’t be more than four weeks.”
THAT EVENING SHE noticed her son’s callused hands. The nails were lacerated, the fingertips reddened and bloody in places. They crouched with Ko Gyi by the fire. Nu Nu had a lot of questions, but Thar Thar was loath to answer. How long had he been working for the neighbors? When exactly had the money that Maung Sein had saved as a lumberjack run out? Did they have other debts? Instead of answering he just poked around in the embers with a stick.
Nu Nu wondered how they would get by in the future. Even if all three started to weave roofs and walls, the paltry pay would not amount to much. Their few savings were spent. They had nothing to sell besides the last three chickens and Maung Sein’s rusty tools. Their field lay fallow. None of them had sufficient experience as a farmer. Any relatives that might have helped them lived too far away. They could not count on the support of the village. The family’s fate was her bad karma, earned through her numerous misdeeds, and now there was nothing to do for it. Helping them out of pity or sympathy was, in the eyes of others, entirely inappropriate. Nu Nu knew that. She would have behaved no differently.
“We have to cultivate our field,” said Thar Thar suddenly, as if he had been reading her mind.
Nu Nu nodded. “But how?”
“The same way everyone else does,” he replied. “How else?”
“It’s not so easy. Trust me.”
“I know. But I always watched how Papa did it.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“I still remember a bit.”
“That won’t be enough.”
“We’ve got to try,” interjected Ko Gyi.
Thar Thar agreed with his brother. “The field is big enough. If we do it right, it can feed us.”
Nu Nu looked from one to the other. Two children with sober faces who already knew much too much about life. Did they have any idea what they were saying? What challenges awaited them? Until now they had barely been able to manage sharing a meal. What business did they have in a neglected field?
THE PARCEL LOOKED worse than Nu Nu had feared. It was overgrown with weeds, a carpet that in sunlight shimmered in myriad shades of green. The intervening rainy seasons had abolished any trace of the irrigation system that Maung Sein had so painstakingly laid out. The sun burned in the sky. The shelter her husband built had collapsed. Nu Nu stood motionless, as if paralyzed, surveying the landscape from atop an embankment. How would she ever be able to make this piece of earth productive again? They had four weeks tops before it would be time to sow. Four weeks. It would take a dozen hands or more even to have a chance. How would she feed her children if they did not manage it? Gathering firewood and selling it? Weaving bamboo baskets? While she was busy wondering if it would be better to turn back and maybe rent the land for a small sum, her sons were setting to work. They knotted their longyis up and started ripping the weeds out of the earth and turning the soil with their bare hands. Within a short time Ko Gyi’s fingers were bloody from the unaccustomed work.
That evening a great pile of weeds stood by the side of the road. And yet their work had made little visible impact on the field. To Nu Nu it seemed that they had bailed a bucket of water out of a lake. There was no sense in what they were doing. No sense at all. She had to think of something else.
The next morning Thar Thar shook her shoulder gently. He had already gotten everything ready to go. Packed provisions, brewed tea, fetched water, cleaned the tools, a job they had been too weary to do the previous evening. Nu Nu hesitated. Why prolong their agony? They didn’t stand a chance. But for lack of any better idea, she followed her children to the field.
By midday her sons’ hands were so swollen that they grimaced at every touch. Still they would not stop. The two of them would pause only when she compelled them to. They returned to their hut with agonizing headaches.
By the third day Nu Nu’s arms and legs hurt so badly that she could hardly move. Every muscle in her body ached. Ko Gyi, too, was noticeably slower than he had been at first.
Walking at dawn to their field after a week, they could spy the pile of weeds from a long way off, so much had it grown. Nu Nu gazed across the land, and for the first time she could detect a significant change: one corner of the field gleamed dark black in the rising sun.
After two weeks they made some provisional repairs to the shelter and decided to sleep there for the next few days in order not to lose any time on the long walk back and forth. Nu Nu still doubted whether they would manage it, but her sons’ optimism and zeal had left their marks on her. Whenever she watched Ko Gyi and Thar Thar working hand in hand in the field she had the growing feeling that anything was possible. They had only to keep their courage up.
And she discovered tokens whose significance she could not ignore. The thinnest and weakest of their three hens had hatched a chick on the very day they had started to work. It was so small, Nu Nu was certain it would not survive its first day. Yet it grew and throve.
The banana plants had sprouted an exceptional number of shoots for this time of year.
The incident with the snake was especially suggestive. It lay right in their path one morning as they made their way to the field. That was already remarkable for these shy animals. It let Thar Thar approach to within a few yards without taking flight. That was more remarkable still. It raised its head, staring at Nu Nu and her sons, and rather than disappearing into the brush, it turned around and wound its way through the grass as if showing them the way. They followed the animal. Just before they got to the field it turned around again, paused, and then disappeared into the tall grass.
Nor did the omens disappoint. After four weeks there was nothing left of the green carpet. They stood together in the field, arms black to their elbows, longyis stained with grime and sweat. They looked around in silence, as if themselves unable to believe it. The air was redolent of fresh, humid, fertile soil. Nu Nu knelt down and dug into it with both hands. She handed a clod to Thar Thar. He smelled it, smiled, and crumbled it slowly between his fingers. It almost seemed to her that he was caressing the earth.
What had the midwife said that time? A child’s soul knows all. Whether it forgives she did not say.
But there was no time to lose. They had borrowed money and bought cauliflower, potato, and soybean seeds that needed to get into the ground as soon as possible. When they returned the next day rats and birds had stolen half the seed. They spent the night at the field again, driving off the vermin, working as long as the sun allowed. Planting seed beside seed, seedling beside seedling. Plowing furrows. To mollify the spirits of the field they built a little altar, where they made daily offerings of a banana and a small mound of tea.
Nature and the spirits smiled upon them. The rains came on schedule that year and in moderate quantities. The other farmers could not remember the last time they had brought in such a rich harvest. Nu Nu even borrowed a water buffalo and cart to bring the vegetables from the field to the village. Ko Gyi sat proudly on the back of the beast, directing it with a switch as if he had been doing so all his life.
When she saw him with all those vegetables Nu Nu recalled the words of her late husband. Time had borne them out. He had told her, and she had not wanted to believe it: We have the power to change ourselves. We are not condemned to remain who we are. No one can help us do this but ourselves.
Fate had asked the three of them a question. The cultivated field and the abundant harvest were their answer.
The copious crops helped them through the dry season. During the hot months, when there was nothing to do in the field, they sat in their yard weaving roofs, walls, baskets, and bags
. The money allowed them to restore their own roof and to replace a few rotten beams.
The second year, too, there was no shortage of food. What nature denied them by way of rain they made up for through hard work and skill.
The third year they were confident enough to plant rice, and Nu Nu discovered that Thar Thar had inherited not only his father’s powerful build, but also his great uncle’s agrarian talents. While the neighbors lamented the poor harvest, their field was more productive than ever.
The thing that did not change was his need for solitude. As before, there were days when he withdrew from them. He would work alone in another part of the field, speaking not a word, ignoring mother and brother. Or he sat on a bank and played with his slingshot. She had never seen a better aim. He shot mangoes from trees, put pinpoint holes in leaves, drove birds from the field without injuring a single one.
These moods would disappear as quickly as they came, and after a few hours he would be available to them again as if nothing had happened. Nu Nu found it a strange mixture, her son’s temperament. He could be taciturn, composed, and caring like Maung Sein or volatile and melancholy, as she herself had once been.
In the fourth year, too, they increased their yield, and Nu Nu began to wonder if she had been mistaken. Maybe we did not come into the world with a limited allotment of luck that would eventually run dry. Perhaps there was some power that could renew our supply at opportune moments.
All the same, not a day passed on which she did not miss her husband, especially at night as she lay awake and the children slept. She would hear his breath, feel it on her skin. She would turn to lay her arm across his chest. The emptiness she felt at these moments made every part of her body ache.