A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

  The story the teacher told was essentially true, but with one major error. I wasn’t the real leader. That was our Chinese teacher, but he remained behind the scenes. I was on stage, performing each act, but he was the mastermind.

  When my father heard this, he exploded with anger. He closed the door and shouted at me, saying my family had saved money for me to study, not take to the streets.

  I retorted, “If the country is gone, what will I study? Might as well just study Japanese!”

  My father said, “Do you think you can carry the entire country’s burden on your own?”

  I replied, “Of course I can’t do it on my own, but if everyone works together, we can do it.”

  We continued to argue with raised voices. I had learned some new strategies at school, and my father could not match my logic. Embarrassed, he became angry and bolted the door, ready to hit me. My mother couldn’t bear for me to be beaten, so she put herself between us and bore the brunt of his wrath instead, then sat on the floor, in pain and crying.

  Ah Yan’s father couldn’t help hearing what was going on. At the time, we were living in the residential compound owned by Ah Yan’s family. We’d had a separate house about a hundred paces from theirs, but it was very small. My brother had gotten married and had two children, one right after the other, so there were seven of us in one house, making it very crowded. When Ah Yan’s father sent the second woman away, leaving empty rooms, he invited my parents to bring me and live there. He said having just a courtyard between the two families would make it easier to discuss the plantation’s business. But I knew he just wanted to make it easier to drink with my father.

  Ah Yan’s father pulled me out and said, “Son, do you think you alone will bear the consequences? Don’t you know they implicate everyone related to the guilty party? If you get yourself in trouble, do you want them to drag your parents to jail too? It’ll be good to hide from this attention at home for a while.”

  Then I stopped talking.

  When Ah Yan saw me reading that morning under the tree, she asked what book it was. I showed her the cover, and the three characters in the title. Ah Yan recognized the first, , and the last, , and said that the middle one was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t recall it.

  She’d gone to the Jesuit school in the neighboring village for a short time, so she could recognize basic characters for sun, moon, water, fire, mountain, rock, field, and earth. But her mother started having migraines and needed help managing the home, so she had to drop out of school. On the other hand, I went to school in the county seat, where we were encouraged to “bring word to the door,” so when I came home, I spent time teaching my two nephews to read. When Ah Yan heard about this, she brought her needlework and sat in on the lessons. She was a quick study and learned more characters in just a few lessons.

  “It’s Evolution and Ethics. It’s about ideas like survival and the competition of everything in the world,” I said.

  Her eyes widened so much they seemed about to swallow her face.

  “Yan Fu. Is he a teacher?” she asked, pointing at the name on the cover.

  “He was a great scholar. He went to Japan and the West, but he didn’t write the book, he just translated it into Chinese,” I said.

  I asked Ah Yan if she remembered the words I’d taught her before. She said she wrote them in the dirt with the fire tongs twenty times a day. She remembered all of them. I told her I’d bring her a notebook and pencil next time I came home and would make sure it had an eraser on the end.

  “Huwa, do you still want to go to school in the county seat? My father said your father would never allow you to leave again.”

  I snorted. “If I decide to go, who can stop me? But I won’t argue with him for now.”

  Ah Yan didn’t say anything. She wanted to, and I knew what it was. She wanted to say, “True, no one can stop you, but who will support you? Who will give you money to buy rice, or pickles, or books, or paper and pen?”

  But she said nothing.

  “But I’ll tell you, Ah Yan,” I said. “I’m not going back to school. I’m going to be a soldier.”

  She was stunned. Her voice cracked as she asked, “The . . . the village security group head has looked for you?”

  I laughed loudly and said those Nationalist government soldiers were nothing, scared to death before they ever touched a gun. I’d already made arrangements with some of my classmates. We were going to Xi’an. It wasn’t the whole truth. We were planning to go to Xi’an, but Xi’an wasn’t our final destination. We were going even farther than Xi’an, to Yan’an, the seat of Communist China, to join the Communist army.

  Ah Yan didn’t know where Xi’an was, but she could tell it was far away, someplace the sampan couldn’t reach. She couldn’t manage to say anything before tears started to fall on the back of her hand. She was ashamed. She knew the tears were shameful, but she couldn’t hold them back.

  “Why are you crying, silly girl? We’re going to join a field propaganda team. We don’t have to carry weapons. We won’t die. The devils are taking over China’s territory. If you were a man, you would step up and be a soldier too.”

  “But isn’t Sishiyi Bu at peace?” she asked, confused.

  “One, maybe two hundred miles to the east, it’s already under Japanese control. The Japanese flag flies over the city, and people must remove their hats in deference. Otherwise, they’ll be shot. Tell me, is that the Chinese people at peace?” I said.

  “One or two hundred miles is far away. How long does it take to row a sampan there? Aren’t there men there? Why can’t they protect themselves?” she asked.

  I wanted to say that the whole country had to come together in hard times, but after thinking for a moment, I didn’t say that either. To a fourteen-year-old girl from the village, this was all alien.

  “You’ll understand one day,” I said.

  “Do your parents know you’re going?” she asked.

  “I’ll send them a letter once I’m gone,” I said.

  “Must you go?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Yao Guiyan, I’m going to ask you for something,” I said, looking at her and saying each word very carefully.

  She was surprised. Yao Guiyan was her full name, but no one ever used it, except when she had registered for school. The name had a literary quality to it, as if chosen by old Yang Deshun, the village scribe, but in fact, her mother had chosen the name. During the pregnancy, her father had constantly hoped for a son, burning incense and praying to his ancestors, consulting his ancestral scrolls for a suitable name. When he saw she was a girl, her father ceased to care, not bothering to name her at all. Her father only began to care when he realized he would never have a son. After giving birth, her mother looked up and saw the swallows from the previous year returning to build nests under the eaves. So she gave her the name Guiyan, meaning “swallows that have come home.” Everyone in the village, old or young, just called her Ah Yan. She had almost forgotten her full name. When I spoke it, she thought I was addressing someone else. Then she realized I had something really important to say.

  “You’re the only one I’ve told. Please look after my parents while I’m away,” I said.

  Ah Yan tried to nod, but couldn’t. She knew the tears would return if she nodded. Those tears had already humiliated her once, she didn’t want to let them do so again. She choked back a sob.

  I said, “OK, OK. Let me go away happily. If I come back alive, I’ll teach you to read and turn you into a teacher.”

  Ah Yan sniffled and started down toward the river. Removing her shoes, she tied their laces together and hung them on a branch, then went barefoot down the stone steps. The slate was wet and slippery with dew. From the top of those forty-one steps, the river seemed like an abyss steaming with white smoke, and in a daze, she nearly lost her footing. Normally, Ah Yan could walk that path with her eyes closed. She’d been going there since she was a month old, carried on her mother’s back. Once
she could walk, she followed her mother, and later began to go on her own. She washed rice, vegetables, and clothes and rinsed the chamber pot there—there was no telling how many times she had traveled this path. Her feet knew every stone. She’d even named the stones. The third from the top, with the winding crack, was Crooked Mouth, and the twelfth, uneven and full of pits, was Pock-Marked Face. As she descended, she saw a sickly stalk of grass growing from the third rock from the river, so she called that step Yellow Hair.

  She knew not only the stones but also the water. Each season when the tea was ready, our fathers would row a sampan to the county seat to sell the leaves, and they sometimes brought her along. When their arms grew weary, she took over rowing. She knew where the river turned, at which bend the sampan would meet the first whirlpool, and where the water seemed calm but had dangerous rocks hiding beneath. But today, she seemed flustered by the stones and water. She had only gone a few steps when there was a whooshing sound, and the basket on her back shook. Turning, she saw a ball of blue cloth had been added to the pile of clothes in her basket. She shook it loose to discover a short tunic.

  “Ah Yan, would you wash that for me while you’re at it?”

  She must have been amazed that from such a distance I could toss my shirt into the basket. All the boys in the village carried a slingshot, and I was no exception. But while they shot sparrows perched on branches, I shot birds midflight. One stone for one sparrow, and I rarely missed the target. My father had boasted, “If my son entered the ranks, he’d definitely be a sharpshooter.”

  My father’s casual remark was spot on, and I never escaped the life of a soldier.

  Ah Yan picked up my shirt and sniffed it. There was a strange touch of shyness in her expression. My heart tugged. I’d never seen Ah Yan like this before. Did she know about our fathers’ conversation?

  The day before, after they’d seen my teacher off, our fathers went into the house, where their wives were waiting, closed the door, and discussed things. The village security group head had just informed them that the army of the official Nationalist government was drafting men. For families with two sons, one would be taken, and he asked my father to be prepared. My elder brother had two young children, so it was going to be me.

  Ah Yan’s father said, “Didn’t it used to be three sons? When did the rules change?”

  My father answered, “Right now, the war is critical. The population can’t keep up, so who enforces the rules?”

  Ah Yan’s father replied, “War isn’t opera, and bullets don’t have eyes. Why not send Huwa to Ah Yan’s uncle’s house to hide?”

  My father said, “He said if the younger son fled, they would take the older, and if the older son escaped, they would take the father. Every name on the household registration is required. It’s etched in stone. He himself has three sons, and one of them must go.”

  Ah Yan’s father said, “Could we pay someone a little money to serve as a replacement?”

  My father answered, “It wouldn’t be just a little money. It would take at least two hundred silver pieces. Real silver.”

  Ah Yan’s father said nothing. The tea was not yet harvested, so who had that kind of money? They fell silent, except for the tapping of pipes. After a while, Ah Yan’s father cleared his throat and said he had an idea. He lowered his voice, indicating he had something important to say. I pressed my ear hard against the crack between the door and its frame.

  “Perhaps you could give Huwa to my family and change his household registration . . .”

  Ah Yan’s father’s voice became blurred and indistinct, but my ears had already picked up that kernel wrapped in an echo. In the dark, my brain seemed to shatter inside my head, like a porcelain bowl that had been dropped.

  “But it’ll be hard for Ah Yan. She’s so young . . .” My mother hesitated. Her words dragged like a tail, as if waiting for someone to pick them up.

  Ah Yan’s mother replied. Her voice was as faint as Ah Yan’s father’s, and I only caught a few words. “No period . . . yet . . .”

  The pipes tapped again. After a long while, I heard Ah Yan’s father’s voice again.

  “Just don’t make them consummate the marriage, and it will be fine. Let them live in different houses.”

  His words were like a knife falling to the ground, and everyone was relieved. I wanted to burst into the room. I wanted to shout, “Ah Yan is just a child. Leave her alone.” I wanted to say that war would not accommodate a peaceful marital bed. Please, don’t create a child widow. I wanted to say that my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather all carried the name Liu, and I could have no other name. But I soon calmed down, remembering my plan. Before their scheme of adopting me as a son-in-law came to fruition, I would have left home, maybe just for a while, and maybe for good. I didn’t need to start a new fight.

  So I stood outside the door, listening, and did nothing. I got up the next morning, as if nothing had happened, and went to the river to read, just like every morning when I was home. The chaos of these troubled times couldn’t reach me. I’d found my own port in the storm. Where I was going . . . oh, as long as I could silently say the name of the place, an ember seemed to burn in my heart. Nothing could stop me. As long as the first step was taken, my feet would know the path ahead. I didn’t know a disastrous time in my life was about to begin. It would destroy not only my feet but also my path.

  I looked up from my book and saw that Ah Yan had already gone into the river. She soaked the clothes in the water, laid them on the rocks, scrubbed them with saponin, then picked up her wooden club and started to beat them. The mist swirled around her, blurring her figure. Her rhythmic pounding was saturated by it. That mountain, that water, that scene, that figure—they made a soft, quiet ink painting completely oblivious to the terrible war raging outside.

  If there were no war, this girl called Yao Guiyan would grow into a beautiful woman. I could see hints of that in her features. She would find a trustworthy, reliable man, hopefully one with a little learning and culture, and she would marry him, then bear a few children who would run around the tea plantation. That person could be me.

  Absolutely, it could have been me. I’d known her since she was born. I did not have to go to great lengths to get to know her. I already knew everything about her. I trusted her, and she trusted me. If not, why would I tell her about my plan to run away, when I had kept it from the rest of the world? Why entrust my parents’ care to her, rather than to my brother and sister-in-law?

  But with just one gesture, the hand of war wiped out the natural path of everything. We had no time. There wasn’t time for my love to grow or for her to grow up leisurely. I could only leave as quickly as possible, and she, child that she was, could only assume the burden of caring for two families. Poor Ah Yan, I sighed inwardly. She continued to beat the clothes with her club, and the fog began to break up. It seemed as if she drove the fog away. The sun sparkled clearly on the surface of the water. The river awoke, a shimmering pool of gold.

  She finished washing the clothes. Wringing them out, she put them back in the basket and slowly ascended the thirty-nine steps. There were a lot of clothes that day, and the basket sagged under their weight. She seemed without strength. Normally, she’d bound up the steps all at once, but today, she stopped twice to catch her breath.

  When she finally reached the top, she suddenly heard the wind. It was strange and loud, like long, rumbling thunder. The stones beneath her feet rumbled, but the trees didn’t sway. Shading her eyes with her hand, she looked up, trying to see where the wind was coming from. She couldn’t see the movements caused by the wind, but she did see a flock of birds. The birds were also strange. They all looked the same, with hard, sharp wings, but the wings didn’t flap, as if they were just for show. Ah Yan counted them. There were six. One was the leader, and the rest followed, arranged in a neat triangle.

  As she wondered what bird could fly so fast without flapping its wings, they had already reached the river.
When they drew nearer, she realized it was the birds that brought the wind. The trees on both banks of the river shook in mindless madness. The grass beside the river bent into the mud. Ah Yan saw that each bird had a round sun on it. Each sun was a horrible red. The six suns crowded together, making a perfectly blue sky suddenly dirty.

  “Get down, Ah Yan!” I shouted, jumping up from under the tree and pulling her.

  She just said, “Shoes,” then found herself pressed beneath me. I held her very tight. I could feel her smothered breathing in the dark space beneath me. She tried to move, but there was a series of loud sounds all around us. It may have been eight or ten, maybe more—it was too fast for me to count. The sound seemed to come from below, cracking the ground with thunder. Another sound emerged from the crack. A wail. It was very sharp. Sharper than the awl Ah Yan used to stitch the soles of her cloth shoes. It made hole after hole in my ears. I had never known that my ears could hurt and that the pain could sprout legs that kicked my heart so fiercely that it curled into a tight ball.

  I didn’t know how long it lasted, but the ground finally exhausted its trembling and stopped moving. I released Ah Yan, and we both sat up. She looked at me, then cried, “Your face!”

  Running my sleeve along my face, I found it was covered in sticky blood. I shook my hands and kicked my feet. I could move. I felt relieved, then said, “I was just hit by a rock. It’s nothing. Those evil dogs. An unarmed little village like this . . .”

  But my words caught in my throat. Behind Ah Yan, I saw a column of smoke rising. At first, it was faint and thin, almost like mist, but it turned thick and black. Then it exploded into flames. The flames grew as they reached the wind, reaching taller and taller, and quickly they licked the tops of the trees. The trees softened and made a crackling sound.

  “The plantation!” I shouted.

  We thought of it at the same time. That day, our fathers had gone to the garden together, saying they had to loosen the soil for a final time before harvest so that it could absorb the mist.