Burp

He saw a boy in the third row propping his chin on one hand and staring at him, though his mind was elsewhere. He also saw a girl by the window, looking down to take notes for a while, glancing up at him, then lowering her eyes again. After twenty years of teaching, he had developed a keen eye. He had a general idea of who was listening, who was pretending, and who was lost in thought. He didn’t interfere much. Just making it into this classroom was no small feat.

Halfway through the lesson, he paused for a moment to take a drink of water, then suddenly burped. It was a very faint burp, caught in his throat: “Hic.”

These burps had indeed been coming more often lately, and he could tell something was wrong. But he refused to dwell on it. Once you get older, if you investigate every little thing your body does, you can’t get on with your life. He had a way of handling it: keep the body’s accounts separate from the heart’s, and pretend not to notice what was going on with his body.

The burps had been frequent lately. He burped when he got up in the morning, after meals, even while sitting and reading. One night, he burped while lying in bed and startled himself awake. He stared at the ceiling for a long time. He hadn’t told his children or gone to the hospital. He had spent his whole life studying things outside the body; when it came to these little things happening inside it, he couldn’t be bothered. Let it be. The stomach is the stomach, and a person is a person.

He unscrewed his thermos and took a sip. His daughter had sent it the previous year. It was stainless steel, with a line of English printed on it. He didn’t recognize the words and had always used it to drink tea. The water was lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, just right.

He had asked his daughter about the English words. She read them aloud. It was an advertising slogan. He forgot it as soon as he heard it, remembering only that it contained the word “happiness.”