U Ba hesitated. Then he shook his head very slowly without taking his eyes off me.
I wasn’t sure whether he was telling me the truth.
“But I know where our search must begin.”
Chapter 1
U BA WAS deep in thought. All bounce had faded from his step. He strode swiftly through Kalaw, almost as if hunted, paying little attention to anyone who greeted us and answering my questions so brusquely that I stopped asking.
We walked past the teahouse, past the mosque and the monastery where our father had lived as a novice. We turned left at the big banyan tree and followed the road until we struck a well-beaten path that led us up a hill to the other end of the city.
We came to a halt before the overgrown, dilapidated remains of a garden gate. With one arm my brother pushed the branches aside, and we stepped into the yard where, beside a hut, banana, papaya, and several palms were growing. The little house with walls of dried grass stood on bamboo poles just about three feet off the ground. A few steps led up to a tiny porch where a red longyi and a white blouse hung over the railing to dry in the sun.
U Ba called out a name and waited. He called it a second time.
Khin Khin was a woman whose age I could not guess. She might have been fifty, or maybe eighty. Her dark eyes were small and narrow. Deep wrinkles creased her cheeks and forehead. A wide scar divided her chin into two asymmetrical halves.
An entire life in a face.
Around her head she had wrapped a pink cloth. In her hand she held a billowing cigar.
Why had my brother brought me here? What bound my fate and hers?
She greeted U Ba with a surprised smile and gestured encouragingly for us to come in. Her hut consisted of a single room. In one corner lay rolled-up blankets and a few clothes, above them a little altar with a recumbent Buddha, in front of that some rice and a vase with a wilted flower. A kettle of boiling water hung over a little heap of wooden coals. We sat down on a straw mat. Without letting me out of her sight, she set out three cups and served tea from a thermos. I suppose she was asking herself the same question: Why did U Ba bring this strange woman into my house?
My brother began to tell a story in a rhythmic singsong. We both listened attentively. She understood the lyrics, I only the melody and his voice. It sounded like a passionate, well-constructed plea. Sometimes urgent, almost demanding, then beseeching again, and in between cheerful and light.
She wagged her head in disbelief from time to time, puffed on her cigar, made brief comments, smiled or gazed at me in astonishment. When his song was finished, she shook her head deliberately and laughed.
My brother was not to be distracted. He continued to speak, as if it were the second movement, the adagio, of some grand composition. He spoke softly, leaning over, letting his words ring out, whispering. Their gazes met often, and neither avoided the other.
She had become thoughtful, furrowing her brow, letting her cigar burn out, and looking at me for a long time. When U Ba fell silent, she sipped at her tea. A look at him. A look at me. A quick nod.
My brother leaned over to me. “She is prepared to tell us of her departed sister’s life,” he said quietly. “I will translate for you.”
“What makes you think that her sister, of all people, has anything to do with the voice inside my head?” I whispered back, amazed.
“You will understand once you have heard her story.”
Chapter 2
A SMALL FARMER’S wife. A big heart with surprisingly little room to spare. But it was the only one she had.
Two young boys and their mother. A vast love that nevertheless brought happiness to no one. But it was the only one they had.
Or perhaps the story began much earlier. Perhaps it began in that first week, when Nu Nu encountered death for the first time in her life. Her father had woken with a piercing headache and a high fever. Just the day before, he had suffered from minor diarrhea. The herbs recommended by the local medicine man, brewed by Nu Nu’s mother into a foul-smelling concoction, had no observable effect. Similarly ineffective were the stones warmed in the fire that she laid on her husband’s stomach, and the tincture that she massaged for hours at a time into his feet and calves.
The fever rose. Regardless of what he ate or drank, he could keep nothing in his steadily weakening body. Life flowed out of him. In a watery brown stream that eventually ran dry.
Nu Nu encountered death for the second time just two weeks later when her mother died under identical circumstances.
The neighbors say that she sat motionless beside her dying mother for three days and nights, holding her hand. Without a word. Afterward she looked as if she were carved in stone. A small, gaunt body, frozen, eyes open wide, gazing mutely straight ahead. Even when the men carried the body out of the hut she did not move. She stood beside the grave without shedding a single tear.
Nu Nu knew about these things only from hearsay. She had only vague memories of the weeks during which she first encountered death. A silence, quieter and quieter, was all she could recall. A fire that went out. So that a dying fire was ever after a sight she could not bear.
And a warm hand. Colder and colder.
Nu Nu had just turned two at the time.
Her father’s brothers and sisters did not want her. A child orphaned so young must have bad karma. A harbinger of misfortune who could bring only calamity. Not to mention the fact that they already had hungry mouths to feed at home.
In the end one of her mother’s brothers took her in. He was young, lived in the same village, and, having married only recently, he had as yet no children of his own. He was a hardworking, capable farmer whose luck with vegetables was often good. At the same time he was an extraordinarily unexcitable sort, who possessed one virtue in excess: patience.
Nu Nu marveled early at her uncle’s equanimity. How could he keep an even temper when rats had again plundered the family’s supply of rice? When the rains came too late, when the dry earth was cracking open and the entire harvest was at stake?
How could he look on calmly while his wife put their money again and again on the elephant in a game of chance at a pagoda festival? While mouse, tiger, and monkey kept coming up until she had gambled away their last kyat, at which point the elephant appeared three times in a row?
Such spiritual serenity was unthinkable to her. Hers was the soul of a child who knew too much. Of life. Of death. Of warm hands, and how quickly they can grow cold.
Her moods were as variable as the weather during the rainy season. One moment she was stubborn and contrary, and the next moment she was anxious and insecure.
She was temperamental, her sorrow flaring up as easily as her joy. A spilled plate of rice might lead to bitter tears. A false assertion, or a thoughtless, casual insult uttered by the child next door might occupy her for days. Even her skin reacted impulsively. At the slightest excitement red splotches would develop on her arms and legs, often on her stomach and chest, too, red splotches that itched as if all the mosquitoes in the Shan States were attacking her at once. Nu Nu would scratch herself raw and wake up in the night covered in blood. No medicine man knew what to do; salves and incantations were useless. After a while the rash would just disappear on its own.
When Nu Nu was playing with other children in the woods and was stricken from one breath to the next by disproportional grief, she would not be able to identify any rhyme or reason. Deep black clouds would gather over her during the next few hours; the world would go dark for her more swiftly than in the minutes before a severe storm. A dead butterfly by the side of the road was enough to bring her to tears. At which point she would desire above all to be alone. Any activity required too much energy: playing, lighting a fire, chopping vegetables, even looking the other children or her aunt in the eye. On days like this she wanted only to lie on her thin straw mat and speak to no one.
The next morning the clouds would have cleared as quickly as they came.
On other days, by contrast, she
was filled with an almost unbearable lightness, and she would dispatch without ado even wearisome chores, such as weeding the vegetable beds, or hauling the heavy water bucket.
Nu Nu had no explanation for this.
She was troublesome, her exhausted uncle would say from time to time. What did that mean, she wanted to know one time. He thought for a while and answered gravely: that her spirit had some troubles.
Later she sometimes imagined that was the reason she had always felt out of place in the family. Not undesired. Not at all. But different. Kin, but not kindred.
She would often lie awake late into the night listening to the soothing crackle of the fire, her aunt’s and uncle’s dampened voices and later the measured breathing of their sleep. She did not doubt that her relatives loved her. They were very caring. Never demanded more of her than she was capable of. Were never cross. Aunt and uncle had long since become mother and father.
And yet.
As if there were some invisible wall dividing them.
Nu Nu had a recurring dream in which, as a young girl, she was walking beside a lazy river. Her parents were waiting on the opposite bank. She was afraid, felt lonely, and longed above all to cross the waters. Yet she feared the current and the crocodiles that lay in wait for her. As her distress mounted she ran up and down the bank looking for a shallow spot. She called and waved, but her parents barely acknowledged her. When they turned away and made to leave, Nu Nu forgot her fear and leapt into the river. She immediately felt an uncanny power pulling her into the depths. Nu Nu resisted, swimming with short, powerful strokes, just as her father had taught her. When she reached the middle of the stream she saw the predators approaching from behind. She swam faster and faster, but still they closed in on her. Five strokes away from the shore and salvation. And nearer. Four more. And nearer. Three more. Just as the crocodile, maw agape, was about to swallow her up, she would wake up. Sweating. Breathless with fear.
Her aunt and uncle laughed when she told them about it. Silly girl. There are no more crocodiles in the Shan States. For a long time Nu Nu dreaded sleep for fear of the dream.
Nor did her sense of estrangement diminish as over the years two brothers and sisters came into the picture. They had inherited their parents’ even temperament.
Five serene spirits and one troubled one. With red splotches.
Maybe that was the reason why Nu Nu yearned early on to start a family of her own. Her dream was not a house of stone. Not a well-sealed roof. Not a journey to the provincial capital. Her only wish was to find a husband and have a child with him. Her child. She would carry it inside her for nine months. She would give birth. She would nurture and protect it. A part of her even after the birth.
A kindred spirit.
Chapter 3
NU NU WAS seventeen when the first young suitor sought her hand in marriage. She had grown into a beautiful young woman, turning the heads of the men from other villages at the market. Catching the shy but desirous eyes of the young men in the fields. She was slender and tall, and despite her size, she always stood up straight, even when balancing a heavy burden on her head. Her features were pleasing: an unusually high forehead, full red lips, and large, very lively, very brown eyes.
The young man did not make it an easy decision for her. Besides being polite and modest, he also had the most beautiful and, at the same time, the saddest eyes she had ever seen. They had grown up together in the village and had liked each other even as children. He was half a head shorter than she was, and because his left leg was somewhat shorter than his right, he limped. He, too, was frequently alone. When the young men came back at twilight from working in the fields, he inevitably lagged a good ways behind. When they played soccer, he would wait patiently until the teams had been selected. And if no one picked him, he would sit on the sidelines hoping that someone would lose interest and that he might be allowed to jump in for them.
He was the only one with whom she had spoken of unseen walls. Of darknesses that sprang up suddenly. Of dead butterflies by the roadside. Of her fear of dying fires.
She could tell by the way he looked at her, listened to her, asked a question now and then, that he was not unacquainted with troubled spirits.
With warm hands. Slowly growing cold.
That he knew what affinity meant.
And how important it was.
Exchanging only a glance, they could often tell what the other was feeling.
She broke out in tears when he asked her to be his wife.
She sensed that if she refused him, he would never have the courage to ask another woman. She hesitated. Asked for some time to consider. Until the next morning. Spent a sleepless night sitting by the fire trying to bring order to her heart.
Beside her slept five serene spirits. There was not one among them she could ask for advice.
By the time the birds announced the new day she had decided.
Love knew many foes. Among them pity.
He was a friend. She would never find a better one. A lover he was not.
Nor did the second suitor stand any chance. He was the son of the richest rice farmer in the province. He came because he had heard of Nu Nu’s beauty. He was handsome, and his manners impressed her parents, but she knew within minutes that he understood neither groundless sorrow nor groundless joy. How could her love grow where it had no place to take root?
She might almost have overlooked Maung Sein.
Not because he was small of stature. On the contrary, he must have had some English ancestry; how else could one explain his light skin, or, more than anything, his athletic frame? Maung Sein had a broad chest, extraordinarily muscular biceps, and hands so big that her head nearly vanished in them.
Nu Nu was partial to tall men, but on that market day she had been thoroughly preoccupied with her little sister. Khin Khin had a high fever and lay wearily beside her under the umbrella. Before them, stacked in orderly piles, were the fruits of her father’s labor: tomatoes, eggplants, ginger, cauliflower, and potatoes. It was hot. Nu Nu dipped a cloth in a bowl of tepid water every couple of minutes, wrung it out, and laid it on her sister’s brow. While her sister was dozing, she thought she would seize the chance to bring an order of tomatoes, several pounds, to a nearby restaurant. In her haste she stumbled, lost her balance for a moment, felt the basket of vegetables slip from her head, and watched as they spilled in every direction. Across the road, into the tall grass, and deep under the bushes. She crawled after them on all fours. When she got back to the basket it was full again. Beside it stood a young man, smiling bashfully. He looked first at her and then shyly at the ground.
It was a smile she would never forget. Warm and sincere, but tempered by the realization that not every sadness needed a justification.
Caught up as she was in concern for her sister, she might even then have thanked him perfunctorily and thought no more of him. As it was, she had observed several unusual things in the preceding days.
Nu Nu wondered how people could live under the delusion that there was nothing real other than what we could perceive directly with our senses. She was convinced there were powers beyond our knowledge that nevertheless had an effect on us and that occasionally left signs for us. One needed only know how to notice and interpret them. Nu Nu studied extensively the silhouettes of the banana and papaya trees at dusk, the outlines of the smoke rising from the fire, and the configuration of the clouds. She spent many hours gazing at the sky, observing and reading their formations. She was fascinated by their fleeting existence. They were constantly shifting form, shaped by an unseen hand, only to disappear one or two moments later into the infinite expanse out of which they had arisen.
She pitied anyone who saw in all of that only clouds, portents of nothing more than fair weather or foul. In them Nu Nu could make out monkeys and tigers, ravenous maws, broken hearts, tearful faces.
Over the past weeks she had spotted several elephants in the sky, tokens of energy and strength. A few days earlier a
white cloud had transformed itself suddenly and directly above her into a bird. She had taken it for an owl, a symbol of luck, stretching its wings. To Nu Nu it was a clear sign that someone or something was approaching her from a great distance.
Yesterday in the field she had uncovered a fist-sized stone with a highly unusual shape. She had turned it this way and that, and depending on how she held it, it had reminded her of one thing or another. It could be a funnel. A stupa. Or, with some imagination, a heart. She was not sure what it really represented.
Today, there was Maung Sein standing before her.
He had come from a far-off province to spend a few months helping an uncle clear a field.
She asked if he might be able to bring the tomatoes to the restaurant, since she needed to be looking after her feverish sister, described to him the location of the vegetable stand, and asked him to deliver the money there.
He shouldered the basket without a word.
A short time later, when he stood in front of her for the second time, she noticed his large hands.
He held out a kyat note and a few coins for her and asked whether he could assist her in any other way.
Yes, she said, without missing a beat. Her little sister was sick. If he could help bring her home in a couple of hours she would be much obliged. Perhaps he would not mind returning near the end of the day?
It would be no trouble at all for him just to wait there, replied Maung Sein. Provided, of course, that she would permit it. He did not wish to be in the way.
Nu Nu nodded, surprised.
He hunched beneath the sunshade at her sleeping sister’s feet while she held Khin Khin’s head in her lap.
Maung Sein offered to fetch fresh, cold water. She gratefully declined; it would only warm up quickly. She did not want him to leave.
People walked past them, many of them exchanging knowing looks at the sight of the athletic young man sitting by her side. Again and again customers would stop, buy tomatoes, ginger, or eggplants, eyeing the stranger critically all the while.