Tap tap tap tap tap. Taptaptaptaptap. Tap.
Tap. Tap tap tap tap tap. I had heard it for days and couldn’t figure out why
there were women on typewriters at the back of the office. Granted, it was
Burma, but it was a sound I had not heard for a long time. The sound always
made me look up and peer across the crowded office at all the women in their
colourful clothes.
“To incorporate a foreign company, form 33
is from the Ministry, it must be typed
on the original form” explains My Le as we sit in the meeting room running
through a list. Heineken are trying to break into the Myanmar market and I am
leading the force through the tangled labyrinth of regulatory nonsense and documents from the
various Ministries to enable them to do so, despite never having done it
myself.
“Oh, that’s what the typewriters are all
about?”
“Yes!”
Tap tap tap tap tap.
I am taken back to another world, the taste
of butterscotch in my mouth, the smell of azaleas and earl grey tea in the
house. Tap tap tap tap tap. Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap. Tap tap tap tap tap.
He leans back and inspects the last
paragraph. “On the balance, whilst Galbraith’s thesis is hardly novel. Its
application to the context is original however and adds clarity and new insight
to a subject matter often curdled by layers of rigid and outdated discourse.”
He stops and looks at the words again.
“Is that fair, Estelle? He doesn’t pretend
that its novel or obfuscate the fact.”
“If that’s what you thought.”
“He just doesn’t state it expressly. Is it
for me to point this out?”
“It’s a fair point,”
He considers it another moment, pulls the
paper from the electric typewriter and places it neatly underneath another page
and into a folder marked ‘reviews.’
“Now, your books.” He turns to me. “first,
lets feed the birds.” He takes a big magical key from a special tin, the type
to unlock the gate to the secret garden or a magical parallel universe. We meander
through the garden to his shed and he lets me unlock it. “Don’t go near that
pink powder. Its poison. You would think that they would make it look a little
less fairy floss.” It is full of tools and wood and all sorts of useful things.
I am allowed to scoop out today’s cup of bird seed and we emerge into the
willowy garden. I pour it gently in the bird feeder.
We pick some oranges from the tree. There
is one I cant reach despite jumping as high as my little legs will let me, so
he pulls down the branch and I yank it off gleefully.
.
Inside it is all back to business.
“So, your books for the year. Let’ see…“ We
carefully cover my new exercise books with the brightly coloured wrapping paper
mum and I picked out. One is covered in shiny balloons of a thousand colours.
Another has blue umbrellas all over it.
“How shall we put your name on there?” His
brow furrow momentarily. “Ah ha!” He places a clean sheet of white paper in the
typewriter. Tap tap tap tap tap. Taptaptaptaptaptap. Tap. “Its important to be
neat and tidy.”
Caitlin Kelly
Year 2. Maths
He pulls it our, examines the two parallel lines of orderly text and hands
it to me. “What do you think?”
“I like it.”
He cuts out the words and applies some glue
to the back. “Grandma uses this special glue to arrange the Catholic Women’s’ Weekly
magazine.” He says. “You can move things around. Look.”
We finish covering the books and look in
satisfaction at out work. We drink coca cola spiders and wax lyrical about the glass
prism sitting on the bookshelf that I like to play with. “It splits the light”
he says as I try to transport myself into the secrets of the rainbow.
“Feel like a trip to the post box?” He takes the neat pages from the folder
that he typed earlier and puts then in a big envelope. He explains how the post office people sort
envelopes into those of certain size wigh them, and the cost depends on
where they are going. We weigh the
envelope to check that it is less than 5 grams. It turns out you couldn’t just
post a sheet of lead overseas for 60 cents. But paper, yes! “For the cost of an
ice cream. All the way around the world. Remarkable, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Can I put the stamp on?”
“Certainly”
I try my best but it is still somehow
wonky.
We walk to the post box stopping and
looking at flowers spilling out over comfortable porches, play equipment and
swings in the front of someone’s house, the jacaranda trees shedding their
purple fingers in the breeze, interesting chimneys. He holds my hand with his
and with the other I clutch the envelope. When we get to the post box I push it
through the slot and peer up with a little nose.’
‘Off to England!”
“It will be there in about ten days. ”
Back at the house Estelle has started
dinner. A production of La Boheme is on television, filling front room with
something sonorous and pleasant. The
alpenglow is settling outside the big windows. The kitchen is engulfed in warm
aromas and I become absorbed in a book with pictures of Pompeii. Looks like the
place is a mess to me. Like it just fell
down or something.
Taptaptap I hear from the other room.
Tap tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.
Taptaptaptaptap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap.
Years pass over and under me. I wish I was neater, that I could place my
hand in yours and you would explain how things work. Be not afraid, you used to
say. Through the turning of the years,
each decade feeling inchoate, you never
age. In a wild and primitive office in downtown Yangon there is craziness
erupting around me. In all of it, when I hear the sound of tap tap tap, I smell
azaleas and a the opera lends its score, a sotto voce harmony amid the chaos.
The sound of tap tap tap, tap tap tap, reminds me you are there.
