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Authors: Jan-Philipp Sendker
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his uncle’s house in order until his mother’s return. Tin Win didnot object. Instead, he withdrew further, so that even the vigor and optimism of a woman like Su Kyi could not reach him. His mood fluctuated from day to day, sometimes from one hour to the next. He would go for days without uttering a word, spending most of his time alone in the garden or the nearby wood. On days like that, in the evening, when they sat at the fire in the kitchen eating their portions of rice, he would keep his head down and say nothing. When Su Kyi asked him about the games he had played in the wood, he would gaze at her through transparent eyes.
Nights were an entirely different story. In his sleep he would crawl over to her and cuddle into her round, soft body. Sometimes he would put his arm around her and squeeze so hard that it woke her up.
On other days he would take her along into the garden and the wood, reporting to her whatever his friends the trees told him. He had given each one a name. Or he would come to her with a handful of beetles, snails, or the most wonderful butterflies that had landed on his hands and flew off only when he stretched his arm high into the air. Animals were not afraid of him.
In the evening, before going to sleep, he would ask Su Kyi to tell him a bedtime story. He would lie motionless until the end, then say: “Sing another one.” And Su Kyi would laugh and say: “But I’m not singing at all.”
And Tin Win would answer: “But you are. It sounds like a song. Please, another one.”
Su Kyi would tell another and another, and she would keep on talking until he had fallen asleep.
She suspected that her words only ever reached him in that way, encoded, that he lived in a world closed to her, one she must approach gingerly and respectfully. She had experienced so much sorrow of her own, so much of life, that she knew better than to press for access to his places of refuge. She had witnessed herself how individuals became prisoners of these strongholds, of their loneliness, confined therein until their dying day. She hoped that Tin Win would learn what she had learned over the years: that there are wounds time does not heal, though it can reduce them to a manageable size.
Chapter 12
SU KYI COULD not remember the first time she noticed it. Was it on that morning standing in front of the house? Tin Win had been by the fence. She’d called to him, and he’d looked around, turning his head this way and that, as if looking for her. Or perhaps it was a few days later, at dinner, as they squatted on a wooden beam by the kitchen, eating their rice. She had pointed out a bird sitting a few yards in front of them on the lawn.
“Where?” he asked.
“There, beside the stone.”
“Oh,” he said, nodding in the wrong direction.
He always seemed to follow the same routes in the yard, in the house, or in the adjacent meadows and fields, and he often stumbled over sticks or stones when he deviated from his accustomed paths. When she offered him a bowl or cup he would reach out and feel the space between them for asplit second that seemed to her to last forever. He squinted slightly whenever he focused on anything more than a few yards away. As if he were peering through the thick mist that drifted through the valley on so many mornings.
Indeed, Tin Win himself did not know when it had started. Hadn’t the mountains and clouds on the horizon always been somewhat unclear?
The condition seemed to worsen after his mother disappeared. At some point he could no longer see the woods from the yard; the clean, dark lines of individual trees ran together and blurred into a distant brown-green sea. A gray mist slowly enveloped the teacher at school. He heard the voice plainly enough, as if they were sitting side by side, but he could no longer make out the visual image—no better than the trees or the fields or the house or Su Kyi from more than a few arms’ lengths away.
So Tin Win simply no longer
Nights were an entirely different story. In his sleep he would crawl over to her and cuddle into her round, soft body. Sometimes he would put his arm around her and squeeze so hard that it woke her up.
On other days he would take her along into the garden and the wood, reporting to her whatever his friends the trees told him. He had given each one a name. Or he would come to her with a handful of beetles, snails, or the most wonderful butterflies that had landed on his hands and flew off only when he stretched his arm high into the air. Animals were not afraid of him.
In the evening, before going to sleep, he would ask Su Kyi to tell him a bedtime story. He would lie motionless until the end, then say: “Sing another one.” And Su Kyi would laugh and say: “But I’m not singing at all.”
And Tin Win would answer: “But you are. It sounds like a song. Please, another one.”
Su Kyi would tell another and another, and she would keep on talking until he had fallen asleep.
She suspected that her words only ever reached him in that way, encoded, that he lived in a world closed to her, one she must approach gingerly and respectfully. She had experienced so much sorrow of her own, so much of life, that she knew better than to press for access to his places of refuge. She had witnessed herself how individuals became prisoners of these strongholds, of their loneliness, confined therein until their dying day. She hoped that Tin Win would learn what she had learned over the years: that there are wounds time does not heal, though it can reduce them to a manageable size.
Chapter 12
SU KYI COULD not remember the first time she noticed it. Was it on that morning standing in front of the house? Tin Win had been by the fence. She’d called to him, and he’d looked around, turning his head this way and that, as if looking for her. Or perhaps it was a few days later, at dinner, as they squatted on a wooden beam by the kitchen, eating their rice. She had pointed out a bird sitting a few yards in front of them on the lawn.
“Where?” he asked.
“There, beside the stone.”
“Oh,” he said, nodding in the wrong direction.
He always seemed to follow the same routes in the yard, in the house, or in the adjacent meadows and fields, and he often stumbled over sticks or stones when he deviated from his accustomed paths. When she offered him a bowl or cup he would reach out and feel the space between them for asplit second that seemed to her to last forever. He squinted slightly whenever he focused on anything more than a few yards away. As if he were peering through the thick mist that drifted through the valley on so many mornings.
Indeed, Tin Win himself did not know when it had started. Hadn’t the mountains and clouds on the horizon always been somewhat unclear?
The condition seemed to worsen after his mother disappeared. At some point he could no longer see the woods from the yard; the clean, dark lines of individual trees ran together and blurred into a distant brown-green sea. A gray mist slowly enveloped the teacher at school. He heard the voice plainly enough, as if they were sitting side by side, but he could no longer make out the visual image—no better than the trees or the fields or the house or Su Kyi from more than a few arms’ lengths away.
So Tin Win simply no longer
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