The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker

Author:Jan-Philipp Sendker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781590514641
Publisher: Random House Inc Clients
Published: 2012-01-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

MI MI SAT out of the way, beside a heap of potatoes. In her left hand she held a small round parasol to protect her from the sun. It was the dark red, nearly brown shade of monks’ robes. She was wearing her most beautiful longyi, red with a green pattern. She had finished weaving it only the previous evening. She wore her black hair in a braid. That morning she had asked her mother to paint two round yellow circles on her cheeks. All the older girls and women made themselves up this way, but Mi Mi had always put it off until now. Her mother smiled and asked no questions. Once Mi Mi was settled on her brother’s back, Yadana sent her daughter off with a kiss on the forehead. True, she did the same thing every time they parted, but this kiss had been different. Mi Mi sensed it, though she would have been hard pressed to articulate the distinction.

Now she was sitting on her handmade blanket and waiting. Indeed, she had done nothing else for the past four days. Whether crawling across the yard to gather chicken eggs or picking strawberries behind the house, whether helping her mother with the cooking, sorting potatoes, or weaving, she was waiting. For market day. For Tin Win.

She never minded the waiting. She had learned early on that it was a natural part of life for anyone who couldn’t walk, who depended on the help of others. Waiting was so interwoven with the rhythm of her life that it almost disturbed her when anything happened right away. She was mystified by people who were always hurrying things along. A time of waiting offered moments, minutes, sometimes even hours of peace, of rest, during which, as a rule, she was alone with herself. And she needed these breaks to prepare herself for anything new, for any kind of change. Be it a visit to her aunt on the other side of the village or a day in the fields. Or the market. She could not understand why it did not overtax her brothers to hurry with quick steps from place to place, from person to person. If ever she chanced to be carried unexpectedly and without waiting to see friends on the next hilltop, it always took some time before she really arrived. She would sit silently during the first few minutes in the new place. As if her soul were following more slowly across the valley. She felt that each and every thing required a certain amount of time. Just as the earth needed its twenty-four hours to turn once about its axis, or three hundred sixty-five days to orbit the sun, she felt that each and every thing required a certain amount of time. Her brothers nicknamed her Little Snail.

Worst of all were the trains and cars in which some of the British would travel through Kalaw, reportedly even as far as the capital. She was not frightened

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