The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (21 page)

“Only if you look. For me it’s nothing.”

He felt his way to the trunk and set one foot on it. His sole arched over the wood. Mi Mi tried to direct him with his shoulders, but he shook his head. “Trust my feet.”

He had turned a bit to the side, one foot in front of the other. He was not taking proper steps but sliding the front foot forward a few inches at a time, feeling the wood until he had got the shape of it, then shifting his weight and dragging the other foot along. He could hear Mi Mi’s heart, pounding. At the same time, the rushing of the water was loud and clear now. They must be right above the river. Creaking ominously, the slender trunk bent under their weight.

Tin Win moved slowly, but he never faltered. Not once. She felt dizzy and closed her eyes. He was right. It was easier that way. She just had to forget where she was.

Tin Win inched along until the river once again sounded a notch quieter. They had reached the other side. Mi Mi rocked with relief on his back and kissed his cheeks and neck. His knees buckled with the excitement. He stumbled and only with difficulty regained his balance. A few steps farther on they heard a mighty thunderclap close at hand. He was frightened. Thunderstorms still made him uneasy.

“There’s a shack a bit farther down the valley,” Mi Mi called out. “Maybe we can get there before it really opens up. Let’s run alongside the river.”

Tin Win moved as quickly as he could. Whenever he strayed too near the river or too far from the bank she would tug on the appropriate shoulder. The rain came. The
water was pleasantly warm. It ran over their faces, dripped from their noses, and ran down their necks and bellies. Mi Mi snuggled into him, and he became aware of her breasts moving against his wet back.

The shack, a windowless shelter of wooden beams and boards, was no bigger than two or three sleeping mats and the floor was strewn with several layers of dried grass. Rain hammered on the tin roof like a thousand drumming fists. It fell so heavily that Mi Mi could barely see the river only a few yards away. The tempest was raging right above them now, and Tin Win shuddered with each thunderclap, but for the first time during a storm he did not feel ill at ease. It thundered so loudly that Mi Mi covered her ears. Tin Win flinched but wasn’t afraid.

Inside the hut it was hotter and even more humid than outside. Mi Mi stretched out on the strewn grass. Tin Win sat cross-legged with her head between his thighs. He ran his hands through her hair, across her forehead, feeling her eyebrows, nose, and mouth, caressing her cheeks and throat.

His fingertips electrified her. With every movement her heart fluttered more rapidly. He bent down, kissed her forehead, her nose. His tongue ran across her throat and her ears. Mi Mi could hardly believe how she was enjoying her body, every place that Tin Win touched. His hands brushed her face, her temples, the ridge of her nose. They traced her
lips, stroked her eyes and mouth. She opened it a little, and it was as if he had never touched her before.

He nestled her head on a bed of grass and took off his shirt. Mi Mi closed her eyes and breathed deeply in and out. He caressed her feet. His fingers explored her toes, brushed across her nails and the little bones beneath the taut skin, across the ankles. Up her calves to her longyi, then back again. Once. Twice. Mi Mi lifted her hips and pulled her shirt up a little, took his hand and laid it on her bare belly. His heart pounded, not quickly, but loudly and vigorously.

He sensed her breath quickening. His fingers flitted over her body, barely touching her. Between fingertips and skin there arose a tension that was more exhilarating than any contact. He gradually worked his way along, lower and lower beneath her longyi until he felt the edge of her pubic hair. He knelt beside her. She saw his longyi stretched to a small tent around his hips and was shocked—not by the sight, not by his fingers, but by her desire, by her breath and her heartbeat, ever quicker and fiercer. Cautiously he withdrew his hand. She wanted more and caught hold of him, but he lay his head on her breast and did not move. He waited. Her heartbeat did not settle for a long time.

It was a sound he would never take for granted. The reverence and respect he felt for every beat made him shudder. There it was, just inches from his ear. He felt as if he were peering through a chink into the lap of the world.

NEARLY FOUR YEARS
passed this way between Mi Mi and Tin Win. After those first few weeks they had not let a day go by without seeing each other. She waited for him after school, or he went to the market after his lessons. On weekends he would collect her at home first thing in the morning. You’re quite inseparable, her mother had said once, half in jest.
Inseparable
. In her usual fashion, Mi Mi had reflected on that word for a long time. She had turned it this way and that in her mind to see whether the sound of it appealed to her, whether it fit, and after a few days had come to the conclusion that there was no better description. They were inseparable. Her heart would flutter at the mere sight of him, and some part of her was missing when he was not around. As if the world stopped turning in his absence. She felt the lack of him in her entire body. Her head would ache. Her legs and arms would grow heavy and
lame. Pangs shot through her belly and breast. Even breathing was laborious without him.

During their third summer together, Mi Mi guided Tin Win to the lakes, to swim, and it became their favorite retreat. They always went to the smallest of the four ponds. It lay off the beaten track behind a small stand of pines. Other young people avoided it because it was reputed to host the greatest concentration of water snakes. She had seen two herself. When she asked Tin Win if he was afraid of them, he laughed and said that he had never seen any.

On this day, Mi Mi watched Tin Win carefully. The wind picked up. It rippled the water, and Mi Mi heard tiny waves lapping at the stones at her feet. She was crouching on the bank of the little lake, her eyes upon him. He was no mean swimmer. He had developed a style all his own, lying sideways in the water and always keeping one hand in front of his body so that he would feel any obstacles. He was cautious and preferred to stay near the shore, where his feet could still touch bottom. But he had endurance, and he could dive very well.

Mi Mi loved the water. Even as a little girl she had gone with her brothers to the four lakes about an hour’s hike from Kalaw. They had taken turns carrying her and quickly taught her to swim. These excursions were among Mi Mi’s fondest memories. In the water she could vie with her brothers and play with the other children. She was quick and adroit, the best diver of them all. Feet were irrelevant in the water.

Tin Win had swum to the middle of the lake, where a stone large enough to sit on rose out of the water. He climbed atop and let the wind and sun dry him off. Mi Mi felt desire stealing over her. These afflictions vanished only when she found herself on his back again, putting her hands about his neck and feeling his shoulders. There was no place she felt safer or happier.

Mi Mi could not help but think of that afternoon when the storm raged over them and they had taken shelter in the shack. He had really touched her for the first time then, and that touch had awakened a desire in her that was sometimes stronger than all of her other emotions combined. She wondered whether everything she felt in such moments had been slumbering within her. Had Tin Win merely brought it to life? Or had it come from some other place? Was he enchanting her? What was it he had woken with his kiss? Whenever his lips touched her skin? Every time his fingers brushed across her neck, her breasts, her belly, her thighs, she felt as if he were revealing her own body to her for the first time. Tin Win reacted no differently to her hands, to her lips. She could arouse his body, caressing him and stroking him until he twitched and chafed with uninhibited desire. At moments like this she felt so alive that she did not know where to keep all her happiness. She seemed to float on the wind, and she was light and weightless as otherwise only in the water. She sensed a power she had never thought herself capable of. A power that only Tin Win could call to life.

He had taught her to trust, had given her the space to be weak. When she was with him, she had nothing to prove. He was the first and only one to whom she confessed that she found it humiliating to crawl on all fours. That she sometimes dreamed of walking through Kalaw on two sound feet and of jumping as high as she could into the air. Just because. He did not try to console her at such moments. He took her in his arms, said nothing. Mi Mi knew that he understood what she meant and how she felt. The more she spoke of her desire to walk on her own feet, the less frequently it tormented her. And she believed him when he said there was no more beautiful body in the world than hers.

There was no step that she would not venture with him.

Mi Mi looked over at him, and although he was little more than fifteen yards away, she could not bear the distance. She took off her shirt and her longyi, slipped into the water, and swam a few vigorous strokes. The sun had warmed the lake, but the water was still cool enough to refresh her. There would be room enough for both of them on the rock if she sat between his legs and leaned against him. She swam over to him. He reached out a hand and helped her out of the water. She leaned on him. He put his arms around her waist and held her tightly.

“I couldn’t bear to be without you,” she whispered.

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

“I wanted to feel you. And I was sad.”

“Why?”

“Because you were so far away, because I couldn’t touch you,” she answered, astonished at her own words. “Every hour we spend apart saddens me. Every place I go without you. Every step you take without me on your back. Every night that we don’t fall asleep in each other’s arms and every morning that we don’t wake up side by side.”

She turned around and knelt in front of him. She took his head in her hands, and he could hear the tears running down her cheeks. She kissed his brow and his eyes. She kissed his mouth and his neck. Her lips were soft and moist. She covered him with kisses. He drew her to himself, and she wrapped her legs around his hips. He held her tightly, very tightly. Otherwise she might fly away.

THE BEATS REMINDED
him of a downspout’s steady dripping. In recent days the silences between beats had grown ever longer. It was a wellspring that was gradually drying up.

Tin Win had heard it coming. Weeks ago. U May’s heart had always sounded tired and weary to his ears, but recently the beats had been fainter even than usual. For the past two weeks a young monk had been instructing U May’s pupils single-handedly while U May lay in his bed, too weak to lift himself. He ate nothing and drank little, in spite of the tropical temperatures.

Mi Mi and Tin Win had spent the past few days and nights by his bedside. Tin Win had read to him until his fingertips were sore. Mi Mi offered to sing for him, but U May declined. He said that he knew of her voice’s magical
powers and that he did not wish to lengthen his life by any artificial means. A brief smile graced his lips.

Now, having granted themselves a respite, the two were sitting in a teahouse on the main thoroughfare, drinking fresh sugarcane juice. It was hot. For the past two weeks Kalaw had been beleaguered by a heat wave that showed no signs of relenting. The air stood still. Neither said a word. Even the flies were suffering in this heat, thought Tin Win. Their buzzing sounded more sluggish and listless than usual. Beside them sat merchants and vendors; everyone was complaining continuously about the weather. To Tin Win it was incomprehensible. U May lay dying not two hundred yards away, and the people were just drinking their tea. Going about their business. Chatting about trivialities like weather.

He recognized the approaching monk immediately by his uneven gait. It was Zhaw, whose left leg was a hair shorter than his right and who limped because of it, though not visibly—no one besides Tin Win had ever noticed it. Zhaw had bad news—his heart sounded nearly as wretched as that of the wounded calf Mi Mi had found not long before and who had died in her hands.