City of Tranquil Light

by Bo Caldwell

  I went to bed that night bone weary, my back stiff, my arms and shoulders aching, my hands raw with blisters. I knew that much work lay ahead of us; as there was no sawmill, we would saw the trees ourselves, cutting the trunks and larger branches into boards, some thick for window and door frames, others less so for floor planks. But I was amazed at what we had done: we had dug up five trees, which now lay in the compound yard. The wood was perfect lumber, tough and hard, not prone to splitting, and a nice light brown in color. We could begin building in a few weeks. Despite my aches and pains and exhaustion, I was content; there was now one less thing I didn’t know.

  In Ch’eng An Fu, I found myself more and more smitten with Katherine. At dinner each night, sitting across the table, I could not keep my gaze from her, and soon I began to think that she was staring at me too, a development for which I was not prepared. When our eyes met, I quickly looked away, then hours later in the boys’ orphanage I would lie awake in my small bed, wondering how to approach her, for I had no experience in matters of the heart.

  Day after day I tried to muster the courage to arrange a situation whereby we might become better acquainted. Then, one night shortly after the tree digging, I came up with a plan. The next day when Edward said he did not need my help that morning, I casually walked to the front of the compound, where Katherine saw patients when the weather was fair. It was a fine spring day, clear and bright and breezy, and nearing time for lunch. As I came into the courtyard, her back was to me as she motioned to the next patient. A poor woman brought her daughter forward, a child who looked to be around seven years old. The woman said they had walked two hours to reach the compound, because they had heard there was a healer.

  Katherine asked, “What is your complaint?”

  The woman said the girl was lazy and would not do as she was asked, and that her laziness had caused a stomachache. Katherine looked at the girl and gently placed her hand on the girl’s greatly distended belly while the mother explained that as she had been unable to find any cockroach feces, the usual cure for such ailments, she had fed the girl rat feces, to no avail. Then she had gone to a native practitioner who had slashed the child’s wrists, the remedy for intestinal worms, still with no improvement.

  Katherine nodded as she listened, her mouth tight, and I saw the concern in her expression. “The child does have worms,” she said gently, stroking the girl’s hair as she talked. “But slashing her wrists is not the way to rid her of them. There is a medicine we can give that will cure her.”

  The mother was wary.

  Katherine said, “Leave her with us and return for her in three days. Or you can stay with her. You will see a great difference in her.”

  Seeing the woman was still reluctant, Katherine shrugged. “All right,” she said. “You can certainly try your methods again. But they won’t help.” Then Katherine stepped away from the woman and her daughter and motioned for the next patient.

  An elderly man began walking toward Katherine, but the mother blocked his way. “No,” she said, “we will try it. Give her your medicine so that she may be well.”

  I was impressed by Katherine’s bluff and at her calm demeanor and confidence. She smiled and called for her assistant, one of the older orphan girls, who would take the girl and her mother to the upstairs of the main house, where there was room for half a dozen patients to stay. As she did so, she caught sight of me watching her. She smiled again, and I saw the color in her cheeks deepen, causing a sudden shakiness inside me.

  “Is it lunchtime?” she asked.

  “No,” I said nervously, “I have a complaint. A medical complaint.”

  Katherine looked at me with raised eyebrows, and I sensed more amusement than surprise. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll see this gentleman, then I’ll see you,” and she turned back to her patient.

  I leaned against the wall in agony as Katherine worked, for I suddenly saw the foolishness of my scheme. But there was nothing to do now but go through with it, and I decided she might as well see me as I was.

  Fifteen minutes passed. There were still patients waiting, and Katherine looked at me. “I can wait until you finish,” I said, and she nodded and continued working. With each patient, she was gentle and determined. I could see her patients’ surprise when they saw her, this healer they had heard of, for she looked far younger than twenty-two. She was small, only five feet tall and perhaps one hundred pounds, with dark hair pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck and gentle gray eyes. She effortlessly engaged person after person in conversation.

  By the time everyone was gone I had been waiting for nearly an hour, feeling more hopeless with every minute. She gathered her instruments and bottles of pills and ointments into a large bamboo basket then turned to me. “We can go to the dispensary,” she said, and she walked briskly toward the house. Following her, I felt some slight hope; perhaps I really could be alone with her, even briefly.

  What Katherine called her dispensary was a cramped room near the kitchen that held her supplies. She unlocked the door and opened it wide, then turned to me and said, “How may I help you?”

  Once again, I was certain I was making a terrible mistake. But it was too late; there was nothing to do now but forge ahead. “It’s my toe,” I started. “I have an ingrown toenail. It’s hereditary.”

  Katherine looked at my feet. “Hereditary ingrown toenails? That’s quite serious, but you are indeed fortunate. I happen to know how to treat such problems. Let me see the toe.”

  Speech had left me. I could only nod as I stooped down to take off my shoe and sock, convinced that I had ruined any chance I might have had at romance. My feet! What had I been thinking? I was going to show her my feet, and from that I hoped she would find me interesting and likable?

  Katherine tapped a low shelf against the wall and said, “Can you put your foot here?”

  My cheeks burning with embarrassment, I did as she asked and rested my bony old foot on the shelf. She leaned down to get a better look, and when I flinched at her careful touch, she laughed softly. “Well,” she said, “today is your lucky day. A doctor at the deaconess hospital taught me just how to take care of trouble of this kind.” She turned to her shelves of medicines and tonics, tapping the shelf with her fingertips. Her back to me, she said, “It’s easy. We just remove the toenail. If that doesn’t work, we cut off the toe.”

  Her tone was so matter-of-fact that for a moment I believed she was serious. Then she turned and smiled at me. She took a small bottle and held it up to the faint light. “Maybe that’s a bit drastic. We could try this. I think there’s just enough to do the trick.” She leaned close to me and put something on the side of the toenail. The stuff burned and I couldn’t help but pull away from her.

  “What is it?” I asked, still a little unsettled at the idea of parting with my toenail.

  “Iodine,” she said. “To clean it so I can trim it back. It will only hurt for a moment. Once I cut away the ingrown part of the nail, the pain will be gone.”

  I willed myself to relax as Katherine trimmed the nail. As she did, she talked about the patients she had seen that day, and I was so engrossed in listening to her that I was surprised when she said she was finished. She was right: the pain was gone. I awkwardly put on my sock and then my shoe as she watched. Finally I stood and faced her. “Thank you. It was good of you to help me.”

  She looked at me steadily, her gray eyes kind. “I’m glad to help you anytime I can,” she said.

  I heard myself blurt out, “In return I could help you with your language studies,” for I knew she was struggling, and it was the only way I could think of to have more time with her.

  She blushed, and I silently called myself an oaf for embarrassing her. But then she said, “Yes. I could use some help,” and because I was happy, my heart drumming in my chest as though she had declared her love, I grinned at her, despite my bashfulness and embarrassment. She smiled back, and I knew I had found heaven on earth in the North China Plain.r />
  The story of my ingrown toenail proved to be a delight to Edward and Naomi and the three other missionaries in Ch’eng An Fu, and for days afterward my amused coworkers asked about my health.

  A week or so later, Naomi took me aside after dinner. “You’re recovering well?” she asked.

  I smiled. “Very well,” I said. “I was in good hands.”

  She nodded. “You know, Will, if you’re truly interested in Katherine, you must make your feelings known. You must also be persistent.”

  I nodded, bluffing. “Of course.”

  “I know whereof I speak,” she said. “At the start I couldn’t stand the sight of Edward. Had he not been determined, I would never have come around.”

  This surprised me; I had assumed the two of them had been a match from the start.

  She shook her head. “I had a great dislike of him. I didn’t like his mannerisms or his sense of humor. I thought him clumsy, and his hands and feet too big. But he was persistent. He tried to sit next to me, and if some other girl or boy sat between us, he just talked over them as if they weren’t there.” She looked down and wiped her hands on her apron. “Even when he first proposed, I said no. But I desperately wanted to know and follow God’s will for my life, so I prayed that if it was His will for us to marry, Edward would propose to me again. A few days later, I found Edward weeping. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, ‘You don’t love me.’ My heart broke to see how I had hurt him. I saw how proud I had been, and I asked his forgiveness, and from that moment I began to see him differently. I saw that although he didn’t have a formal education, he was wise in faith; that although he could be impetuous and stubborn, he was far more often considerate and unselfish. I opened myself to him, and soon I began to love him.”

  She looked at me evenly. “So,” she said, “are you concocting other ailments that will allow you to spend time with Katherine, or do you need help?”

  I laughed. “I have another plan,” I said, and I took Naomi’s questioning as a good sign and an indication that she and Edward would not be averse to my attentions to Katherine.

  That night I lingered after dinner as Katherine and Naomi cleared the table, waiting for a moment to speak to Katherine in private. Edward was in another room reading, and when Naomi left the kitchen to put their children to bed, I seized my chance and casually asked, “Would you like help with your studies?”

  She looked shocked for a moment, and I realized that while I had been thinking all week about our studying together, she probably hadn’t. “In return for your medical services,” I said.

  She laughed. “Oh, yes. My payment.” Amazingly, she motioned to the large dining table and said, “Shall we?”

  It was as simple as that. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and the two of us sat down at the table.

  Thus began the most enjoyable studying I’ve ever known. Once Edward and Naomi had gone to bed we got to work, sharing a lamp because of the high cost of kerosene, an advantage, I decided, as it forced us to sit close together.

  At the start I sat across the table from her, but each night the distance between us diminished and soon we were sitting side by side, talking about our lessons in low voices so as not to disturb anyone. One evening she surprised me by saying she had heard me speaking to the gatekeeper and that I was becoming more natural and comfortable with the language.

  “You’ll make a good preacher, Will.”

  I stared at her, unconvinced.

  “I think you have a gift.”

  I was too startled by her confidence to answer.

  May 12, 1907

  Today it has been five and a half months since we arrived in Ch’eng An Fu, and what that means nags at me: in two weeks we take the dreaded language exam. I have studied night after night, sitting late into the evening, my lessons spread out in front of me and Will patiently tutoring me. The language comes much more easily to him than it does to me but he is also diligent, and I am the beneficiary of his hard work. He has a gentle spirit that I admire, probably all the more so because of my own impetuousness and impatience. At times I see my opposite in him, and being with him is like taking a cool drink of water. He calms me, and when I am with him I feel hopeful and refreshed.

  Late in the evening our conversation meanders away from Mandarin, and we talk about all sorts of things. Last night Will spoke of his time in Ta Ts’ai Chou and of what happened there—of his loneliness and isolation and of the horror of witnessing an execution. As he talked of the condemned men’s tortured expressions and their pleas for mercy and of the pain and helplessness he felt as he watched them, I saw his anguish and felt the tenderness of his heart.

  I also see his commitment to the work here. He does everything and anything Edward asks of him—digging up trees, overseeing unruly orphan boys, crossing and recrossing the plain by foot, bicycle, wheelbarrow, and cart to do this errand or that. He never complains or questions Edward, even when Edward sends him right back to a place he just came from. Traveling across this harsh, flat landscape is far from pleasurable, but Will says yes to Edward’s requests without question. I see a new humility in him and I realize he’s not the person I thought he was. I thought at first I had misjudged him, but it’s not that. The qualities I so admire in him now weren’t there before; he has changed.

  Little by little, I came to know her. Her parents, like mine, had been born and raised in Polish Russia, emigrated to America two years earlier than mine, then settled in South Dakota, where they raised wheat. Katherine was the second girl of twelve children, with her sister Naomi being the eldest; their mother had died while giving birth to the youngest when Katherine was fourteen. Shortly before their mother’s death, Naomi had left home to study nursing at a deaconess orphanage and hospital in Cleveland, and soon Katherine began to feel called there as well. But when she told her father of her desire, he said he could not agree to it; he depended on her to care for her younger siblings. But a few months later he remarried, and because Katherine held a special place in his heart, he said yes to her request and gave her his blessing. She left home a few weeks after she turned sixteen and joined her sister at the orphanage to begin her training.

  At the start she worked in the printing press and learned how to set German type; later she became a teacher for the older girls. But her greatest love was nursing; she had known all along that what she most wanted was to care for the sick, and she began her training as soon as the deaconess in charge would allow it. From the time she was seventeen she spent any spare time she had at the hospital, talking with patients, accompanying physicians, observing procedures, assisting the nurses, and learning everything she could about medicine.

  When she had been at the hospital for five years, Edward, her brother-in-law by then, visited the hospital and spoke about his work in China. That night Katherine had a dream in which a map was spread out before her. Though she saw no one in the dream, it seemed as though someone was pointing to China, and when she awoke, she felt certain she was being called to join her sister and brother-in-law in their work.

  When she found Edward that morning to tell him of her desire, she matter-of-factly listed her health problems, her inexperience as a missionary, and her lack of funds for travel. Edward did not hesitate; he was returning to China in three months and said she was welcome to join him. Regarding her inexperience, he said she would learn, and that a desire to serve God was the most important qualification. Regarding her health, he said that was between her and God; if she felt this was her calling, he suspected God would take care of her. Regarding money, he was unable to offer her any help, as he had barely enough for his own travel. They would just have to pray about it. Which they did, and within a few weeks a group of Katherine’s former patients, hearing of her desire, contributed over thirty dollars toward her transportation, enough for her to travel by train from Cleveland to her family’s home in South Dakota.

  She arrived home a month later, and there she told her father of her plans. The thought o
f his daughter going to such an unknown and faraway land without a husband pained him, but she did not back down, and in the end, tears running down his cheeks, he gave her his blessing and said goodbye. From there Katherine traveled to Winnipeg where two of her brothers lived. She gave her testimony at their church, and when a collection was taken, the amount contributed was enough to cover the remainder of her travel expenses.

  “The rest you know,” she said. “I came to China, and here I am.”

  May 26, 1907

  The exam was difficult; just thinking about it gives me a headache. Edward conducted the written portion, in which we were to translate fifteen sentences from Chinese to English and fifteen sentences from English to Chinese. Next was the geography portion, which asked for the Chinese names of the eighteen provinces, their capitals, the larger rivers, and the treaty ports. There were also comprehension questions on our required reading. The oral exam consisted of conversation with Li Lao Shih, who asked whether my parents enjoy good health, and how long I’ve been in China, how long it took me to travel here from my home, which countries I have visited, my likes and dislikes. I was then to question him similarly, according to Chinese etiquette, asking him about such matters as his honorable parents, his wife, family, education, and place of birth.

  I’m not surprised that I didn’t do well on the written portion. I’m disappointed, but it’s not a catastrophe. It just means I’ll need to keep studying and take the exam again in a few months. At least I passed the conversational part, which I’m certain is due to the patience of my patients with my well-meaning but flawed Mandarin. Because my pride didn’t want Will to know of my failure I avoided him this afternoon, hoping not to tell him, so after dinner tonight when he asked me when I would retake the exam, I assumed Edward had told him. I shrugged and said, “In a month or so, I suppose,” hoping to sound as casual as he had and leave it at that. His amused smile told me a moment too late that he hadn’t known I’d failed—he’d tricked me into telling him. But before I had time to resent him for it, the affection in his eyes and the warmth in his smile made me forgive him. He said, “You’ll be all right. We’ll just work a little harder.” I saw that my poor performance had brought with it a gift, for I most certainly need to be tutored for another few months by handsome Will Kiehn. And I’m suddenly eager to learn.