Free The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker Page B

you there tomorrow after breakfast and show you my home. We would be undisturbed there. I could show you a few photographs.”
    He departed with a bow.
    I had turned to walk down the street when I suddenly heard his voice again, behind me. He was whispering. “And your father, Julia, he is here—very near. Do you see him?”
    I spun around, but U Ba had disappeared into the darkness.

Chapter 15
     
    BACK IN MY hotel I lay on the bed. I am four or five years old again. My father is sitting on the edge of my bed. The room is painted a light pink. A mobile hangs from the high ceiling—striped bees, black and white. Beside my bed two cases filled with books, puzzles, and games. Across the room a baby carriage in which three dolls lie sleeping. My bed is full of stuffed animals: Hopsy, the yellow rabbit, who brings me chocolate eggs once a year. Dodo, the giraffe, whose long neck I somehow envy. Arika, the chimpanzee who I know, when no one else is around, can walk. Two Dalmatians, a cat, an elephant, three bears, and Winnie-the-Pooh.
    Dolores, my favorite doll, is lying in my arms with her scraggly black hair. She’s missing one hand. My brother cut it off to get even with me for something. It’s warm, a mild summer’s evening in New York. My father has openedthe window, and from outside a light breeze blows into the room, setting the bees dancing overhead.
    My father has black hair, dark eyes, cinnamon skin, and a prominent nose on which his thick glasses rest. They are round, with black frames; years later I would discover a picture of Gandhi and marvel at the resemblance.
    He leans over me, smiles, and takes a deep breath. I hear his voice, a voice that is more than a voice. It sounds like a musical instrument, a violin, a harp. He was never, ever loud. I never heard him yell. His voice could carry and comfort me. It could protect me and put me to sleep. And when it woke me, I woke with a smile. It could calm me like nothing and no one else in the world, even today.
    Take the day I lost my balance on my new bicycle in Central Park and cracked my head on a rock. Blood poured from two gaping cuts as if from open faucets. An ambulance took me to the hospital on Seventieth Street. A paramedic bandaged me up, but the blood was leaking through the gauze onto my face and down my neck. I remember the sirens, my mother’s worried expression, and a young doctor with bushy eyebrows. He stitched the cuts, but still the bleeding wouldn’t stop.
    Next thing I knew, my father was by my side. I’d heard his voice from the waiting room. He took my hand, stroked my hair, and told me a story. Not a minute had passed before the red stream from my head stopped. As if his voice had settled gently on my wounds, covering and stanching them.
    These stories my father told seldom had happy endings. My mother hated them. Cruel and brutal, she said. Aren’t all fairy tales that way? my father asked. Yes, my mother conceded, but yours are confused and bizarre and without any moral and completely unsuitable for children.
    But how I loved them—precisely because they were so peculiar, so completely different from any other stories or fables I had heard or read. They were all Burmese, these stories he told, and gave me a rare glimpse into his old life and mysterious past. Maybe that’s why they fascinated me so.
    “The Tale of the Prince, the Princess, and the Crocodile” was my favorite. My father told and retold it until I knew every sentence, every word, every pause, every inflection by heart.
    Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. The princess lived on the bank of a great river. She lived with her mother and her father, the queen and the king, in an old palace. It had thick, high walls behind which everything was cold and dark and quiet. She had neither brothers nor sisters and was very lonely at court. Her parents spoke nary a word with their daughter. Her servants only ever said “Yes, Your Majesty” or “No, Your Majesty.”