A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

  One of Stella’s braids was blown free by the wind, and her hair fanned out like a black palm leaf. Her clothes, soaked by the waves, clung tightly to her body. The wind not only hid in her hair and clothes but also in her eyes. They were filled with the power of the wind, its freedom and its rage. At that moment, it seemed she had mastered the wind and tamed it. No, at that moment, she herself was the wind. Looking at her in a daze, I almost forgot my fear. The way she looked at that moment is seared into my memory, and time cannot blur or erase it. I had a strange thought then. I wanted to give her a new name, one that only I could speak. I didn’t want to call her Stella—that was Pastor Billy’s version of her, not mine. I wanted to call her Wende, a Chinese transliteration of the English word, “wind.” Many years later, when all the dust had settled, I began to see clearly the nature of each of our feelings for this girl. Girl—yes, in my mind she’s forever a girl. When I met her, she was fifteen, and when I left her, she was barely seventeen. I didn’t have the chance to see her become a woman.

  For her, we were three very different men. Liu Zhaohu, you were her past. When I met her, she had already turned that page. And Pastor Billy, though you lived alongside her, you were always concerned about her future. It was only me who ignored both her past and future, capturing her present. I was the only one of us who knew how to sit in the moment, admiring her blooming youth, not allowing either her past or future to destroy her perfection at that moment. Perhaps that’s why Wende was drawn to me.

  Liu Zhaohu: Death Is Such a Difficult Thing After All

  When I saw Ah Yan at Yuehu, I’d been away from home for a year. On the seventh day after our fathers’ deaths, I was shot by the Japanese, passed out on the sampan, and was rescued by a kind-hearted soul from another village. I rested in her house for a period of time. The classmates I’d arranged to meet in Zhuji went on without me, then wrote to ask about me when they arrived in Yan’an four months later. Yan’an was the starting point for the rest of their lives. From there, the long, treacherous journey of life stretched before them, leading each to their own fate. One returned to his old hometown after liberation and became an important county official. When I fell into the deepest, darkest pit, on account of our old friendship, he reached out a hand to help me. But that, of course, was much later.

  As soon as I could walk again, I returned home. When I arrived, it was dinnertime there, and the road was quiet. At the entrance to the village, I met a neighbor’s child, who turned and ran, as if seeing a ghost. I wasn’t surprised. I’d been gone about a month, so they must have thought I’d died somewhere. I had only taken a few more steps when the child returned with my mother. She pulled me to a quiet spot, sat down, and said, “Son, where have you been?” She then began to sob. I told her what had happened to me, and she cried nonstop. At first, I thought they were tears of joy, but after a while, I felt something was odd. Even when my mother’s tears had stopped, sobs continued to heave in her throat. I suddenly thought of Ah Yan. The Japanese soldiers who shot me that day were only a few paces away from her and her mother. It was impossible to hope that they hadn’t seen the two women.

  “How’s Ah Yan?” I asked with fear.

  My mother’s sobs stopped for a moment, then new tears began to flow. The new tears overran the trails made by the old ones, forming new paths on her face. Finally, she managed to tell me what happened to Ah Yan and her mother.

  I felt strange in that moment, neither sad nor angry. I simply blamed the gods for allowing Ah Yan and me to live. If that shot had killed me, I would have never known. If that knife had killed Ah Yan as well as her mother, she would never have suffered such shame. In troubled times, death was a sort of mercy. But not everyone who asks for death can die. Heaven treats death as a gift, and God gave me no such gift, nor Ah Yan either, so we had to bear the cruelty of living.

  “How is she now?” I asked.

  “Poor girl,” my mother said, “you don’t know how cruel the villagers are.”

  “I want to see her.” I stood up, but my mother desperately held me back.

  “You can’t go. She’s clear for a while, then confused. She always says you joined the Communist army to kill the Japanese. If you come back now, you’ll give her hope. Don’t give her hope.”

  I was confused. “What hope?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  She sighed and said, “Have you forgotten? If you return now, you have to acknowledge her as your wife.”

  Only then did I remember that they’d come to draft me into the Nationalist army and that I’d married into the Yao family. It had only taken place about a month earlier, but it felt like a whole lifetime had passed since then.

  “If you want to acknowledge her as your wife, I can’t stop you. But think about it—will our family have any respect left?” She started weeping again.

  I knew I could avenge Ah Yan, walking ten thousand miles, crossing barefoot through a thousand fiery pits, and killing hundreds of Japanese soldiers, all for her. I wouldn’t hesitate to give up my own life for hers. But to acknowledge her as my wife for as long as I lived . . . could I do that? My mother saw the hesitation.

  “Go to a friend’s house. We’ll discuss it later. Hurry. Don’t let anyone see you here.”

  My mother shoved all the money in her pocket into my hand, then pushed me away. I walked away from Sishiyi Bu in a daze. It was only then that I realized I had nowhere to go. My classmates were already on the road, and I had no idea where to find them. I couldn’t go back to school, because I’d already been expelled for troublemaking and unexcused absence. In desperation, I thought of my Chinese teacher and walked all night to his house. He wrote a letter of introduction for me, then sent me to the Jinhua branch of the Anti-Japanese Student Propaganda Team, where I was to wait for the right time to make arrangements for me to go to Yan’an. That’s how I came to join the propaganda troupe in Jinhua. We performed in several cities and villages nearby, sleeping somewhere new almost every day. Most of the time, we slept in the open with half-filled stomachs, but I didn’t mind. The difficult travel schedule left me no time to think of the things that had happened at home. But singing and acting had never been my ambition. My ambition was to fight in the war, and my ultimate destination was Yan’an. Everything else was just for expediency.

  Later, I received word from my Chinese teacher, asking me to meet him in a cloth shop in a certain market town three days later. When he arrived, he would have two students with him, and we would all travel north to Shaanxi together. The market town wasn’t far from Sishiyi Bu, so I decided to go home before I left. I could finally tell Ah Yan confidently, “I’m going to join the army and fight the Japanese, and I won’t come back.” I would use my life’s blood to wash away her shame. And not only that—I would use my death as a way to escape from the dilemma of our marriage.

  I went home along the waterway that day. When I’d climbed the thirty-nine steps, as I reached the big tree where I read when I was home from school, I heard rustling in the grass nearby. As I approached, I saw a man holding a woman down on the ground. He was tearing her clothes, and she was desperately fighting, kicking with both legs. Though she seemed strong, in the end, she was no match for a man. I saw her strength gradually give out. Just as the man was about to win, she suddenly mustered a venomous force, freed one of her legs, and kicked it at the man’s most vulnerable spot. He howled in pain. Furious, he slapped the woman’s face.

  “Whore! How many men have already had you? Yet you act like some untouched virgin.”

  I recognized the voice as the village’s professional mourner, Scabby.

  “Let her go!” I shouted, surprising them both. It was only then that I realized that the woman Scabby had pressed beneath him was Ah Yan. I hardly recognized her. She’d shaved her head, and her cheeks were sunken, leaving almost nothing to her face but a pair of eyes. Those eyes were dry wells, filled with nothing but terror. They were knives piercing my heart.

  I pulled Scabby up and threw hi
m against the tree trunk. Bang! Bang! Bang! One blow after another. His body was like a sack that was full of rice slamming against the tree trunk. Bark broke apart, the pieces scattering over his shirt.

  “Pig! Dog! Animal!” I shouted.

  My mind was a blank, and my spirit momentarily escaped from my body, floating midair and observing my hand’s movements from a distance.

  Scabby was stunned by the beating. After a moment, he realized that if he didn’t get away, he might be killed. Twisting around, he found an angle that gave him some leverage. He threw a knee up at me violently. Unprepared, I fell to the ground, and he staggered away. When he’d gotten to where he knew I couldn’t catch him, he spat out a mouthful of blood and shouted, “Don’t sing your moral songs to me. You used the Yao name to escape enlistment, then when you heard she’d been fucked by the Japanese, you disowned her. Everyone in the village knows. You came home but didn’t see her, because you knew she was filthy.”

  He ran off, and I just sat there, gasping. The grass rustled, and Ah Yan moved toward me.

  “You’re back. Are you leaving again, Huwa?” she asked timidly, sitting beside me.

  I could smell her body. I couldn’t exactly describe the complex smell—mud, sod, her breath, her body. Or, whose body? A Japanese? Scabby? Or . . . I felt suffocated. I was grateful for the dim light of night. It had fallen just in time to hide what I couldn’t in my eyes, my disgust.

  “I don’t believe what he said. I only believe you,” she went on.

  I remained quiet. I tried to think of something to say, something that wasn’t hurtful, but was still true. But I couldn’t think of anything. I knew that whatever came out of my mouth at this moment would wound like a knife.

  “Ah Yan, I’m no different from Scabby. I’m no more of a man than he is,” I said as calmly as possible. I knew she understood, not from my words, but my actions. I moved away from her.

  We didn’t speak further. For a long time, we sat, saying nothing, listening to the leaves as they rustled and the sparrows chirping as they returned to their nests. She stood up, shook the dust off, and slowly walked toward home. She was as thin as bamboo, as if she could break in the wind. After a moment’s hesitation, I caught up with her and grabbed her sleeve. “Ah Yan, wait. Let me explain.”

  She brushed my hand away and said gently but resolutely, “Don’t ever let me see you again.”

  She walked into the thick darkness without so much as a glance back. Dejected, I left Sishiyi Bu without even saying goodbye to my mother. The only thing that let me descend the entire forty-one-step stone path was the thought of my upcoming trip. One night. I just needed to get through one more night, then I could start on a path that was completely different from my past. A path lit by torches and stars.

  Early the next morning, I rushed to the market town that my Chinese teacher had mentioned, but I waited the whole day with no sign of him. I later learned that he’d been arrested and imprisoned. My plan to go north was dead yet again. I had no choice but to return to the Jinhua Anti-Japanese Student Propaganda Team and continue as a part of the traveling troupe. The desire for the battlefield grew stronger within me each day. I had lost my home and my family, and I now had nothing left in this life. My only wish was to die. I’d wanted to die before, but that was only for the sake of revenge. Now, I wanted to die not just for revenge, but for atonement. With my life I would repay the debt I owed Ah Yan.

  One day, in a town where we were performing, I saw a recruitment poster for the training camp. I knew that the moment I’d been waiting for had finally arrived.

  You both saw the look on my face the day I suddenly saw Ah Yan. I never dreamed I would see her again in this life, and certainly not at Yuehu. Yuehu was supposed to be the first step on my journey toward death. Ah Yan was likewise surprised to see me, but her shock disappeared in a flash. The expression that followed was like someone ready to eat rice, only to find that what her chopsticks picked up was a maggot instead. Or like a person with a brand-new pair of shoes, whose first step landed in a pile of shit.

  When I ran back into line that day, I completely forgot to convey Mr. Ferguson’s instructions to the captain. During drills, I heard the wrong command, and the captain slapped me in front of everyone. It was a ruthless slap, and my cheek was first burning hot, then numb, like it was covered with a layer of cloth. When the drills were over and we went to breakfast, Snot saw how distracted I was and stole a bite of pickled beans right out of my bowl. There were six Chinese students per table and just enough food to take the edge off our hunger. Anyone too slow wouldn’t get any food.

  “Damn, look at his notes. Those characters are so crooked, they can’t be deciphered. Who is he showing off for?” Snot said to me quietly.

  He was talking about the captain. He thought I was upset about the slap, but he had no way of knowing the slap was just a small piece of the humiliation I’d suffered in recent days. He had no idea how many layers were beneath it. The humiliation was so thick, it had formed a crust. Now, no matter how many more layers were added, it would never reach my flesh. Even more, he had no idea that I was thinking about Ah Yan. It seemed that Ah Yan was a different person than she’d been before. She seemed to have grown a new spine, making her walk taller. But more than growing new bones, she seemed to have shed her old skin. She had completely started over. Later, I heard someone in the squad say she was an orphan Pastor Billy had taken in and that he was training her to treat patients. It was several years before I learned how she had actually gotten to Yuehu.

  From the way Ah Yan looked at me, I knew I was dead to her. But I couldn’t resign myself to it. I wanted to die—not in the way she imagined, but in the way I imagined. I had figured out how I wanted to die and had been planning it for a whole year. But there was a huge difference between a death in which Ah Yan was not present and one in which she was. Without Ah Yan, no matter how tragic or heroic my death was, it would be like walking in the dark wearing fine clothes. But with Ah Yan, my death would have an audience. Now that she was here, I had to consider the mode of my death more carefully. Using my life to take another was something any fool could do. But to use one life to take ten lives, that would be worthy of an audience like Ah Yan. I didn’t need to prove anything to the world, but I needed to prove one thing, just to Ah Yan—that I wasn’t an ungrateful, cowardly villain.

  After breakfast, we went to the classroom. This so-called classroom was just two rooms with the dividing wall knocked down. It had two doors and four cracked windows. When it was cold, the wind seeped in through the cracks, whistling. Three of the walls each held a map, one for the European war zone, one for the Chinese war zone, and one for the Pacific war zone. At the front of the room, behind where the instructor stood, there was a painting on the wall of two strong hands clasped tightly together. A flag with stars and stripes was painted on the left arm, and a flag with a blue sky and white sun was painted on the right. The instructors always stood in front of the hands when they were lecturing, and it looked like the two hands were grasping them.

  The first two classes in the morning were Outline of the Three People’s Principles for Saving the Nation and Analysis of the Situation of the War in Europe. The instructors were Chinese. I sat straight up, appearing to concentrate. Aside from the fact that I wasn’t taking notes, no one could tell that I was actually sleeping. This was a skill I’d learned in the propaganda troupe, where I had gotten used to living without enough food and traveling day and night. I’d learned to sleep while walking, sitting, or squatting. I didn’t have to close my eyes at all. I could tell the captain sitting a couple of chairs away was struggling to stay awake too, but he didn’t have my skill. When he dozed off, his body slouched down, and he even made a slight snoring sound, which earned him a warning from the lecturer’s stick.

  Although we were both dozing off, the reasons were very different. The captain struggled because he didn’t understand. The admission standard was that we had at least a middle school educat
ion, but the captain had only finished elementary school. He’d only been accepted because his brother was an influential figure in this area. The leaders of all the gangs at the wharfs called him Boss. Through our connection to him, we could get goods and people transported by sea more easily. The captain was a few years older than us, and he’d spent two years as a platoon leader in a contingent in the southern army. He was big and tall, with a coarse voice. The commanding officer of the camp had assigned him the job of disciplining the soldiers below him.

  I was dozing off because I was saving all my energy for the third lesson of the day. Though my mind slept, my ears were alert. Omaha Beach . . . Juno Beach . . . The Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive . . . Cairo . . . The words were like loose sand, not holding together to form anything. Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin . . . These people seemed to have nothing to do with me. The ultimate victory in the anti-Japanese war . . . that was something for commanding officers, or maybe the commanders of commanding officers, or maybe even the commanders of commanders of commanding officers, to consider. But I was sure to die far from any ultimate victory. And I was sure I wouldn’t die alone. There’d be a lot of people who would die with me.

  So I didn’t need to know the plans of Hitler or Mussolini, or Tōjō Hideki, or Yasuji Okamura, nor did I need to know what corner of the map the Carpathian Mountains occupied or the specific content of the Cairo Declaration. I only needed to know the operating procedures and the killing characteristics of the carbine, Thompson submachine gun, Colt pistol, and rocket artillery. In these few firearms classes, I acquired the skills to use those weapons with little effort. Standing, crouching, or crawling, I was first in the class in live target shooting, and my score was miles above the second place. When the instructor announced the results of target practice, you came over and shook my hand. “Call me Ian,” you said. I think that was the beginning of our personal friendship, the secret brotherhood between two soldiers. You said I had a third eye and that I was a natural sniper. You thought it would’ve been a waste if I hadn’t been born during war.