A Well-tempered Heart by Jan-Philipp Sendker

Author:Jan-Philipp Sendker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781590516416
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2014-01-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

WHEN NU NU awoke near dawn she could hear someone already busy with the pots. It was barely light yet, but the birds were already atwitter. She rolled over. Beside her Ko Gyi was asleep. Soon afterward she heard the monks at the gate, and she wondered why they had not long since ceased to ask for alms where there was nothing to be had. Nu Nu saw Thar Thar hurry down the steps with the big rice bowl in his hands. Had he been making offerings? All those months? How could he have conjured up the rice when they had hardly enough for themselves? She was too exhausted to ponder the question for long, and she fell back asleep.

It was light when she awoke again, and the birds had fallen silent. She rose. Ko Gyi was still asleep. Beside the fire she found rice and a lukewarm curry.

There was no sign of Thar Thar. Alarmed, she ran into the yard and looked into the chicken coop. Three chickens ogled her as she stuck her head through the door.

All at once her son’s voice rang out from the neighbor’s yard. Nu Nu shoved her way through the hedge and saw him sitting in the shadow of a massive fig tree. Beside him, as tall as a man, stood a pile of dried bamboo leaves and grasses. In front of him a woven mat on which he was working.

“What are you doing there?” she asked in surprise.

“I’m helping U Zhaw,” he said softly. As if it made him uncomfortable.

“Your son is the most gifted weaver I’ve ever seen,” called the neighbor’s wife as she came out of the house. “And the most productive,” she added with a look at the mother that said as much as: hard to believe, given his mother. “He can make half a roof in less than three days.”

Nu Nu watched her son. Only now did she notice how nimbly his fingers moved, how deftly they intertwined the leaves and the tufts of grass. She saw the neighbor’s new roof and another already finished half of a roof leaning against a tree.

“Your house looks nice,” she said suspiciously, and gestured to Thar Thar’s work. “Who is that for?”

“We’ll sell that one.”

“Sell? To whom?”

“Whoever needs it.”

“For how much?”

“Two hundred kyat.”

“How much does my son get?”

“Twenty. He’s working off the money we’ve lent you.”

“Twenty kyat?” Nu Nu found it difficult to conceal her outrage. She tried to catch Thar Thar’s eye, but he kept his gaze lowered.

“How much longer?” she wanted to know.

The woman did some reckoning. “If he keeps up this pace, it won’t be more than four weeks.”

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