Read Online A Well-tempered Heart by Jan-Philipp Sendker - Free Book Online Page B

Ten years had passed. Why were the words not bubbling out of us?
How are you? What are you doing?
Didn’t we have anything to say to each other after all that time?
    I was ready to break the silence between us, but he intimated with his eyes that I should wait a moment yet. The waitress brought two steaming bowls of noodle soup.
    “ ‘Defy ephemerality. Wander not always ahead of yourself in thought, but neither dawdle in the past. It is the artof arrival. Of being in one, only one, place at one time. Of absorbing it with all of your senses. Its beauty, its ugliness, its singularity. Of allowing oneself to be overwhelmed, fearlessly. The art of being where you are.’ I read that once in a book I was restoring. I think it was called
On Travel.
Do you like it?”
    I nodded, even if I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.
    He tipped his head to one side and smiled at me. “You are lovely. Even lovelier than my memory of you.”
    I laughed, embarrassed.
    “Today is the fifteenth. Quite a coincidence,” I said, hoping he would understand the allusion.
    “I know. How could I forget?” A shadow passed across his face.
    “Do they still hold the procession to honor Mi Mi and our father?”
    U Ba shook his head gravely and glanced uncomfortably around the establishment. He leaned over to me and whispered: “The military has forbidden it.”
    “What!?” I said. Loudly. Much too loudly. “Why?”
    He suppressed a wince. The soldiers at the next table got up and looked at us with curiosity on their way out. In front of the teahouse they climbed into an army Jeep and drove off. They left behind a cloud of dust that drifted our way and then settled drearily among the stools and tables. I gave a short cough.
    My brother, by contrast, was breathing easier. “The army does not like demonstrations.”
    “Not even when they commemorate two lovers?” I wondered.
    “Then least of all.” He sipped at his tea. “What are people with guns most afraid of? Other people with guns? No! What do violent individuals fear most? Violence? I should say not! By what do the cruel and selfish feel most threatened? All of them fear nothing as much as they fear love.”
    “But people were just bringing flowers to Mi Mi’s house. What was so dangerous about that?”
    “People who love are dangerous. They know no fear. They obey other laws.”
    U Ba wanted to pay. The waitress said something I didn’t understand in Burmese; my brother said a few sentences back, and they both laughed.
    “They don’t want our money. It’s on the house.”
    “Thank you.”
    “She is thanking
you.
”
    “What for?”
    “For allowing her to show you a kindness.”
    I was too exhausted to follow that logic. I nodded amiably and stood up.
    “Shall we hire a carriage to take us to the hotel? I’m sure you are tired after your exertions.”
    “No, that’s all right. It’s not far. I can make it.”
    U Ba coughed again. A dry, piercing cough.
    “Do you have a cold?”
    He shook his head and took me by the arm. We strolled along the main street toward the hotel. I thought I couldfeel my brother gently holding me back every time I started to walk faster.
    The sun was casting long shadows and would soon dip behind the mountains. The air was noticeably cooler.
    In the hotel U Ba waited at the desk while I went to the second floor and got my things together. As a courtesy I paid for two nights.
    U Ba, deaf to all objections, shouldered my backpack and sped on ahead.

Chapter 9
    I WAS DYING to see whether my brother had renovated or modified his house. With the money I sent him he ought to have been able to rebuild it completely.
    We followed a narrow path down to the river, which was lined by papaya and banana trees. U Ba stopped frequently to catch his breath, but still he would not let me carry my own pack. A wooden bridge crossed the water. We climbed a steep bank, passing huts that looked as if the next cloudburst would carry them off. Their crooked walls and