Tin Win went to the door, passed down the veranda steps, and crossed the courtyard. He wanted to walk around, up and down the main street. He wanted to explore the town, to have a good listen. New, unfamiliar noises were rushing at him from all sides. The world was thumping, thudding, crackling, and rustling. He heard it hissing and gurgling, squeaking and croaking, and none of this deluge of impressions frightened him. He observed that ears functioned in much the same way as eyes. He remembered looking at the forest, seeing dozens of trees with their hundreds of branches and their thousands of needles and leaves simultaneously, not to mention the meadow in the foreground with its flowers and bushes, and he recalled that somehow none of it had confused him in the least. His eyes had focused on a few details of the scene. The rest was peripheral. And with each minute shift of his pupils he could change his focus and consider new details without losing sight of the others. That is what he was experiencing now. He was perceiving such a multitude of noises that he would not have been able to count them, yet they did not blend into one another. Just as previously he had directed his gaze to a blade of grass, a blossom, or a bird, so now he could train his ears on a particular sound, listen to it at leisure, and always detect new tones within it.
He walked along the monastery wall, stopping time and again to listen. He could not get enough of all the noises that filled the air. From a house on the far side of the street he heard a fire blazing. Someone was peeling and chopping garlic and ginger into little pieces, cutting scallions and tomatoes, pouring rice into boiling water. He recognized these sounds from home, from Su Kyi’s cooking, and he heard them distinctly, though the house must have been at least fifty yards away. In his mind an image arose—he could not have seen it more clearly with his eyes—of a young woman sweating in her kitchen. Beside him he heard a horse snuffling and a man spitting the juice of chewed betel nuts onto the street. And what of the many other noises he could detect? The melodic chirping, the gnashing, the croaking? Even when he recognized the sound, he did not know to whom or what it belonged. He heard the snapping of a twig, but was it the branch of a pine, an avocado, a fig, or a bougainvillea that was breaking? And the rustling at his feet? Beetle? Snake? Mouse? Something he could never even have imagined making a noise? By itself his extraordinary ability was of little use. He needed help. These sounds were the vocabulary of a new language, and he needed a translator. Someone upon whom he could rely, someone to whom he could entrust himself, someone who would tell him the truth and who would take no pleasure in leading him astray.
He had reached the main thoroughfare now, and the first thing he noticed was a perpetual thrumming on all sides. All the hearts of passersby. To his astonishment he observed that no two sounded alike, just as no two voices did. Some were clear and light, like children’s voices, while others beat wildly, hammering like a woodpecker. There were those that resembled the excited peeping of a young chick, and still others whose calm, even beats reminded him of the wall clock Su Kyi wound every evening in his uncle’s house.
“Tin Win, what are you doing on the main street by yourself?” It was Su Kyi, coming to collect him. She was shocked. He heard it in her voice.
“I thought I would go to the corner and wait for you there,” he replied.
She took his hand, and they walked down the street, past the teahouses and the mosque, turning off behind a small pagoda and slowly ascending the hill on which they lived. Su Kyi was telling him something, but Tin Win was not paying attention to her words. He was listening to her heart. At first it sounded strange. It beat so irregularly, a light tone following a dark one, and the contrast with the familiar voice confused him. After a few minutes, though, he grew accustomed to its rhythm and found that it suited Su Kyi, whose mood and temper, like her voice, sometimes changed abruptly.
At home he could hardly wait to ask Su Kyi for help. He sat down on a stool in the kitchen and listened. Su Kyi was chopping wood outside the door. Cackling hens were running all about her. Pines rocking in the wind. A few birds were singing. Noises that he could recognize and classify. Then he noticed a soft rustling, or was it more a buzzing, a curious tweeting? Was it a beetle or a bee? If Su Kyi could discover the source of this sound for him, he would have learned his first vocabulary word.
“Su Kyi, please come here,” he cried excitedly.
She set the ax aside and came into the kitchen. “What is it?”
“Do you hear that buzzing?”
Both paused and listened. He could hear from her heartbeat, quick and loud, how she strained and concentrated. It beat now much as it had a few minutes ago when they were walking uphill.
“I don’t hear any buzzing.”
“It’s coming from up there, above the door. Do you see anything there?”
Su Kyi went to the door and stared at the ceiling. “No.”
“Look closely. What’s there?”
“Nothing. Wooden slats and dust and dirt. What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know, but the noise is coming from there, from the corner I think, where the wall runs into the roof.”
Su Kyi looked more closely at the wall. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“Try standing on a stool. Maybe you’ll see better then?”
She climbed onto a stool and examined the wood. Admittedly, her eyes were not the best, and even objects right in front of her nose had begun to lose their clarity, but this much she could clearly see: In this dirty corner of her kitchen was nothing that by any stretch of the imagination buzzed—or made any other kind of noise, for that matter. A fat spider sat spinning her web. Nothing more.
“There’s nothing here. Trust me.”
Tin Win rose. He was discouraged.
“Will you come with me into the yard?” he asked her.
They stood in front of the hut. He took her hand and tried to concentrate on a single sound that was unfamiliar to him: a sucking, slurping noise.
“Do you hear the slurping, Su Kyi?”
She knew how important it was to him that she hear it, too. But she didn’t hear anyone drinking or slurping anything.
“We’re alone, Tin Win. No one’s drinking anything in our yard.”
“I’m not saying anyone is. I hear a noise that sounds like sucking or slurping. It’s not far from us.”
Su Kyi took a few steps.
“Farther, a little farther yet,” he directed her.
She went farther, nearly to the garden fence, knelt on the ground and said nothing.
“Can you hear it now?” It was not a question, but a request, and she would have given her life to oblige. But she couldn’t hear a thing.
“No.”
“What do you see?”
“Our fence. Grass. Dirt. Flowers. Nothing that could make a slurping noise.” She looked at the yellow orchids and at the bee crawling out of one of its blossoms and stood up again.
Chapter 6
SAND COVERED HIS face. He felt it on his lips and between his teeth. Tin Win lay in the dust of the road, feeling as helpless as a beetle on its back. He was on the brink of tears. Not because he had really hurt himself, but out of shame and rage. He had asked Su Kyi not to pick him up that day, telling her that for once he intended to walk home alone from the monastery. He had been certain he could find his own way, after all those years.
He didn’t know whether he had stumbled over a stone, a root, or a rut cut into the earth by the rain. He knew only that he had committed the most foolhardy of blunders: overconfidence. He had ceased to be attentive. He had set one foot in front of the other without concentrating, absentmindedly. He did not know whether the sighted could really pay due attention to several things at once or they merely claimed they could. He knew only that he could not. On top of that, he had been angry, and that particular emotion had always wrought havoc in his world. U May was right. Rage and anger confounded his senses every time, making him stumble or walk into trees or walls. Tin Win pulled himself up, wiped the dirt off his face
with his longyi, and went on. His steps were uncertain. He paused after each one, probing the path with his staff as if he were crossing enemy territory.
He wanted to get home as quickly as possible. Initially he had intended to follow his ears, to explore the area further, to discover new noises and to investigate them; indeed, perhaps even to venture into the market Su Kyi had spoken of so often. Now, though, he felt only fearful of the veil of noise surrounding him. Chirping, hissing, gnawing, and chattering … every individual sound frightened him. He was in retreat and would most have liked to flee as quickly as possible. Instead he had to grope his way forward, creeping step by step along the wall, stealing down the main street, clinging all the while to his staff like a castaway to a plank. He turned to the right and noticed that the incline began. A stranger called his name.
“Tin Win. Tin Win.”
He took a deep breath.
“Tin Win.”
Now he recognized the voice.
“Mi Mi?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m sitting by the little white pagoda waiting for my brother.”
“Where is he?”
“We sell potatoes at the market every week. Now he’s taking rice and a chicken to a sick aunt who lives on the hill. He’ll come back for me after that.”
Tin Win felt his way cautiously to the pagoda. He had stumbled so often that someone might as well have been setting stones and sticks directly in his path. He could only hope he would be spared the humiliation of falling in the dirt right before Mi Mi’s eyes. He heard by the sound of his staff that he had reached the pagoda, and he sat down beside her. Then he heard her heart beating, and with each pulse he grew calmer. He could not imagine a more beautiful sound. Her heart was different from the others—softer, more melodic. It didn’t beat; it sang.
“Your shirt and longyi are filthy. Did you fall?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s not bad.”
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“No.”
Tin Win was regaining his confidence. Each noise was returning to its accustomed volume. Mi Mi nudged closer to him. Her scent reminded him of pines after the first shower of the rainy season. Sweet, but not heavy, very fine, multiple whisper-thin layers. For a while they said nothing, and Tin Win ventured again to listen hard. He heard a kind of soft drumming or dripping. It came from the other side of the pagoda. Ought he to ask Mi Mi whether she could hear it, too? And if she could, whether she would look to see what it was so that he would know how to classify it in the future? He hesitated. What if she heard and saw nothing? Then he would feel still lonelier than he had yesterday with Su Kyi. Besides, he did not want to make a fool of himself in front of Mi Mi. Better not to ask. But the temptation was too great. In the end, he decided to lead up to it question by question, depending on how she reacted.
“Do you hear that dripping sound?” he asked tentatively.
“No.”
“It might not be dripping, exactly. It sounds more like a delicate hammering.” He tapped very quickly with his fingernail on his staff. “Something like that.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Could you take a quick look behind the pagoda?”
“There’s nothing there but shrubs.”
“And in the shrubs?” Tin Win was finding it difficult to mask his excitement. If only she could help him, at least to solve this one riddle.
Mi Mi turned around and crept behind the little temple. The undergrowth was thick and the sharp twigs scratched her face. She couldn’t find anything that made the kind of noise Tin Win had described. A bird’s nest was all she saw. “There’s nothing here.”
“Tell me exactly what you see,” asked Tin Win.
“Branches. Leaves. An old bird’s nest.”
Tin Win considered. “What’s in the nest?”
“I don’t know, but it looks abandoned.”
“The noise is definitely coming from the nest. Can you look more closely?”
“It won’t work. It’s too high. I can’t stand up here.”
Why couldn’t she just get up and look in the nest? It was right in front of her. A glimpse would suffice—just a quick glance and he would know for sure whether he could trust his ears.
She crept back around the corner. “What do you expect is in there?”
He paused. Would she believe him? Would she scoff at him? Did he have any choice?
“An egg. I think the drumming is the heartbeat of an unhatched chick.”
Mi Mi laughed. “You’re joking. No one can hear that clearly.”
Tin Win said nothing. What could he say to that?
“If you help me, I can check whether you are right,” said Mi Mi after a pause. “Can you carry me on your back?”
Tin Win squatted down, and Mi Mi put her arms around his neck. Tin Win straightened up slowly. He stood uneasily, swaying from side to side.
“Am I too heavy?” she asked.
“No, not at all.” It wasn’t the weight that unsettled him. It was the unaccustomed sensation of having a person on his back. She swung her legs around his hips, and he folded both arms behind his back to brace her. Now he had no free hand for his staff, and he did not know the ground in front of him. He went weak in the knees.
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll guide you.” Tin Win took one small step. “Good. And another. Careful, there’s a stone just ahead. Don’t be startled.”
Tin Win felt for the stone with his left foot, examined it, and set his foot on the earth beyond it. Mi Mi directed him behind the little temple. With one hand she tried to keep the branches out of his face.
“There it is. One more step. One more.” He felt her supporting herself with her hands on his shoulders, stretching up and leaning forward. His heart raced, and only with great effort could he maintain his balance.
“One. Not big.”
“Are you sure?”
Tin Win took no pains to hide his jubilation. They were squatting again by the side of the street, and he could hardly keep still. Mi Mi had opened the door a crack. She had let a shaft of light into his darkness. He would have liked nothing better than to run off with her then and there. To investigate every tone, every sound, every noise he could find. He had learned his first word. Now he knew the heartbeat of a chick in the egg, and eventually he would discover how to recognize the wing beats of a butterfly, why there was gurgling all around him—even when there was no water in the vicinity—and why even in a dead calm he still could hear a rustling. With Mi Mi’s help he would solve one riddle after another, and in the end, perhaps, a world would emerge.
“Mi Mi,” asked Tin Win, “why didn’t you want to look into that nest by yourself?”
She took his hands and laid them on her calves. Tin Win had never felt skin so soft. Softer even than the moss in the woods that he had previously so loved to stroke his cheeks against. His fingers moved slowly down her legs to her ankles, which were slender, but then oddly misshapen. Her feet were immovable. They were stiff and turned inward.
Chapter 7
YADANA OFTEN REFERRED to the birth of her daughter as the most beautiful moment of her life, intending no offense to her five older sons. Perhaps it was because she had already thought herself too old for a further pregnancy but had always wished for a little girl. Or because now, at thirty-eight, she appreciated the birth and her child for what they were: a singular and incomparable gift. Perhaps it was because during the nine months the child was growing within her, she experienced no physical discomfort. Not a day passed when she had not stood straight up in the field to pause, close her eyes, stroke her belly, and rejoice. At night she often lay awake feeling the child flourish inside her, twisting or turning or kicking and knocking on the wall of her womb. No moment was more beautiful. Had she been prone to sentimentality, she would have wept. Or was it that she could not forget the first look from her daughter, out of those big deep-brown, nearly black eyes? How beautiful s
he was! Her brown skin was much softer than that of Yadana’s other children. Her little head was round, not at all distorted by the exertions of birth, and her face was well proportioned. Even the midwife said she had never held such a beautiful newborn in her hands. So Mi Mi lay in Yadana’s arms, the daughter gazing at the mother, who at that moment felt even more at one with her child than at any time during the previous nine months. And then the child smiled. A smile like none Yadana had seen before or since. And thus it was Moe, her husband, who first noticed the defective appendages. He let out a brief cry of shock and showed his wife the tiny, crippled feet.
“Every child is different,” she answered him. And for Yadana that was the end of the story. Nor did the rumors that circulated through the village in the following weeks do anything to alter her position. People suggested her daughter was the reincarnation of a Scotsman’s donkey, one that had broken both forelegs a few months earlier and had been shot. People supposed the child was not long for this world. The neighbors reckoned the poor girl was a comeuppance for the good harvests the family had enjoyed in recent years, the profits of which had enabled them to build a wooden house on stilts with a tin roof. So much good fortune did not come without a price. Others were sure the girl would bring calamity on the community, and there were even those who privately advocated that she be abandoned in the woods. Her husband’s family pressed Yadana to seek the counsel of the astrologer. An astrologer could tell for certain what suffering lay in store for the child and whether it might not be more merciful to consign her to her fate. Yadana would not hear of it. She had always relied more on her instincts than on the stars, and her instincts left no room for doubt: She had borne a very special child with extraordinary capacities.