by Virginia Pye
“Konbanwa,” he replied with a nod, correcting her with “good evening,” not “good day,” in Japanese. Behind him appeared his two grown daughters and several granddaughters, all in traditional Japanese dress. Continuing in the local Chinese dialect, he said, “My family is here to serve you.”
“Excuse me?” Shirley asked.
“My daughter and her daughters will serve you. You give us roof, we serve you.”
“They will serve me what?”
“Supper. We cook food for you. Help with patients in medical rooms, too,” he said and pointed toward the front of the house.
“Very kind of you to offer. I don’t think the Chinese would cotton to a Japanese nurse, but we can ask Captain Hsu in the morning.”
“My family and I have been here thirty years,” the fishmonger continued. “We do not approve of war.” He made a face. “Japanese soldiers behave very badly.”
“I’m very glad to hear that you are not like them and thank you for offering to help in the clinic, but many of the wounded Chinese are not from here. And even the ones who do come from our own town may not like you very much—not because you are a barbarian but because your prices were always too high.” She added with a slight smile, “You can’t deny it.”
The fishmonger studied her face for a long moment before he got the joke and laughed. “Ah, yes,” he said, “prices too high! Very good! Very true!”
Shirley handed him the pan. “You may cook for me and my son until our own cook returns. Thank you again for offering.”
She left the kitchen and wondered how she was going to explain this to Captain Hsu. Not only could she not cook for herself, but she seemed to have engaged the enemy in doing so for her. She was too tired to even consider the problem. When she reached the front hall, she sat down on the piano bench and let her head droop onto her folded arms as they rested on the keyboard. A moment later, she opened her eyes again and looked past her lap and recognized the pair of size eleven Jack Purcell sneakers covered in yellow dust. She bolted upright and threw her arms around her son. For once, he didn’t flinch or pull away but let her hold him there, his head tipped onto her shoulder.
“Oh, Mother.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s all so terrible.” She wanted to hold him and rock him to sleep as she had when he was small. Reluctantly she let him slip out of her arms but kept hold of his hand. “Supper will be ready soon,” she said and caressed his thick red hair. “You must be starved.”
Charles nodded but then started to pull her after him across the front hall.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked. “Be careful, now, step around these people.” She had no choice but to follow as Charles maneuvered through the sleeping Chinese. “What is it, darling?” she whispered. “Is something bothering you?”
He stopped midstride and looked back at her. “Yes, Mother,” he said with a smirk, “something is bothering me.”
She felt strangely grateful for his quintessential teenaged tone. “Sorry, silly question,” she said. “It has been such a day in such a week.”
As they rounded the corner to the former dining room, Dao-Ming popped out and scampered away. Shirley let out a gasp and whispered to Charles, “That girl is constantly underfoot and everywhere at once. Whenever I come upon her, my heart skips a beat. It can’t be good for my health.”
“Oh, Mother, of all the things to complain about,” he said. “That’s the least of our problems. Now, follow me.” He continued to weave through the cots. “I was down in the cellar earlier today, looking for that special sweeping tool Father used on our chimney last fall.”
“What tool?”
“A long broom with lots of bristles at the end. I need it to fix something.”
“What on earth are you up to?” she asked and stopped at the center of the clinic. “Come, now, Charles, that’s enough for one night. Can’t this wait until morning?”
“No, it can’t.”
As stubborn as he had been as a toddler, she thought as she untied her filthy apron, took it off, and balled it up. But since no laundry would be washed anytime soon, she carried it to the coat tree beside the front door. She tried not to notice her husband’s crumpled fedora tipped jauntily on a brass hook. If she did, she might start to weep.
Charles opened the cellar door, took the kerosene lamp off its hook at the top of the steps, and lit it. As with the kitchen, Shirley had been downstairs only once or twice. From Lian, she had heard that snakes enjoyed the cool damp down there, but she wasn’t going to mention that now. The steps creaked, and when they reached the bottom, Charles started across the mud floor, his footsteps squishing loudly.
“Dinner will be ready any minute,” Shirley said as she ducked under the stairwell and followed Charles. “Aren’t you starved for a bowl of mien? I never thought I’d say that with such relish, but here we are, aren’t we?”
She knew she was prattling on. If Caleb had been here, he’d have turned and kissed her on the lips to get her to shut up. Her husband would have known she was frightened. But she couldn’t show that to her son, who seemed oblivious to the dangers all around.
Charles stopped and lifted the lamp. Before them was a small door held closed by a rusted metal hook. “Have you ever noticed this cabinet?” he asked her.
Shirley shook her head and let out a high, worried sound. She couldn’t bear another tragedy, especially if it involved her precious boy. But instead of a bed of snakes, a Japanese soldier in waiting, or another dead and bloodied body, when Charles raised the hook and opened the door, Shirley saw before them Caleb’s ham-operated radio transmitter. The clumsy old thing sat on a tidy little shelf. Headphones hung beside it from a nail. The inked image of a Chinese mystical phoenix had been stamped in red on the wall, a signature of sorts, Shirley guessed. And a microphone was positioned in front of a single stool on which sat a rosy pink pillow with lovely embroidered chrysanthemums. At least a year before, the pillow had gone missing from the wicker sofa in the parlor, and Shirley had accused a day laborer of taking it. But here it was, no worse for wear. Upon it, to Shirley’s amazement, sat her husband’s driving cap. She would have recognized Caleb’s cap anywhere, and apparently so had her son.
“Father, must have—” Charles began.
But she hushed him. “Not a word,” she whispered and pressed a finger to her lips. Then she gestured for him to close the door and return upstairs. She took her boy firmly by the wrist and pulled him after her. When they reached the steps, Shirley pushed Charles before her, and up he went. She stepped lightly after him, trying to make as little noise as possible.
Part Two
Ten
The Reverend Caleb Carson gazed up at the scudding clouds and counted his blessings in seeing another day. He had always thought of himself as a man of simple pleasures, and one of them was to be out-of-doors on a fine summer morning like this one. To breathe in crisp mountain air that reminded him of his boyhood in New Hampshire, though little else about this rugged setting was the same. The cedar trees here were spindlier, the scrub brush more spiked, the rocks more jagged than those in the mountains of his youth.
Even when he had crossed this range in North China as a healthy man, he had felt it blanket his spirit with barrenness and gloom. At dangerous bends in the trail, the Chinese had placed simple altars to their ancestors and gods. Over his five years of expeditions to the outlying churches, Caleb had come to understand that stopping to pray in any fashion was entirely the right idea. Otherwise the setting felt altogether too godless and the poor traveler abandoned to his fate.
Yet the sky overhead now on this summer morning struck him as promising. With some effort, he turned his head to his good side and gazed over the cliff toward the long valley below and the town too far in the distance to see. That he suspected he would die before ever returning to his home in that distance caused a literal dull ache in his heart, while the rest of his body was shot through with a simpler, more searing pain.
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sp; Eight weeks before, during a break in the spring rains, the clouds had lifted and sunlight had caught on every shining pale green bud. Caleb’s heart had felt as it always did in springtime: as if the Lord himself had scrubbed clean the earth, and he, too, needed ablution. A garbled message arrived just then on his two-way radio. American marines on a reconnaissance mission were cornered in the North. Now was the moment, he thought, to purify his heart and his goals by assisting in the communication between the brilliant, though somewhat naive and isolated, Communist leaders and the outside world.
Caleb told his wife he must visit the outlying churches. It was a matter of urgency, he said, and as he expected, she did not inquire further, preoccupied as she was with her own affairs. He left at dawn, before Shirley and their son awoke. He took Cook with him, since the older man had proven himself an excellent companion on previous trips. Captain Hsu tried to dissuade them from departing by reporting that the road was more dangerous than ever—slick underfoot and overrun with not just the usual bandits hoping to make up for profits lost during the rains but the Japanese invaders as well. Caleb would hear nothing of it.
They left the mission in chilly darkness, but by the time they reached the foothills, the path reflected pink sunrise. As they rose up into the mountains, switchback after switchback, all seemed vivid and hopeful. Until, at a point where the trail narrowed because of a rockslide farther up the mountain, Caleb’s mule refused to go on. As he assessed the situation, he wondered if perhaps the animal was of the correct opinion. But his mission was imperative, so he tried coaxing the beast with words, then with his heels to its sides. He even climbed down off the animal and tried to yank it forward. Cook’s mule seemed prepared to cross the dangerous pass, but Caleb felt he should be the first to try terrain so extensively drenched and unstable.
As is so often described, the more he pulled, the more his mule dug in. Finally Caleb gave up and turned away, and in that moment, the contrary animal took one step forward—one fateful step that set off a series of mishaps. Still holding the reins, Caleb lost his balance and stumbled backward. The animal lurched forward, and their combined weight caused the ground beneath to give way. Down they fell into a rocky crevasse on a slide of mud.
The earth was the color of the purest honey, and Caleb had come to know it well. Yellow dust from the Gobi turned to paste in springtime and coated every surface. As he fell, he swam through it, slipping with increasing speed on its thick and sticky consistency. In retrospect, the descent took an awfully long time. Slowly he tumbled, aware of the animal rolling beside him. Tree limbs and rocks tore into him, inflicting punctures and lacerations. Even at the time, there was an endless quality to the incident, long enough for him to think over the error of his decision to force the animal where it did not want to go.
His fall came to an abrupt end, and Caleb found that he was covered in mud and unable to move. He passed out for a short time, and when he came to again, he tried to wriggle his arm, but the pain was too much. He shifted a single finger, and although that pain was also penetrating, he managed to create a pocket of air near his lips. He sputtered out foul dirt and realized that with each inhale, he was sucking it back in again. He heard muffled voices and sensed movement nearby. Before he blacked out for a second time, he heard his cook’s voice shouting and thought that if there was ever a man good enough to rescue him, Cook was that man.
Cook fashioned a stretcher from branches and green vines and dragged Caleb out of the crevasse. Passing Red Army soldiers then carried him the rest of the way to the their camp over exceedingly treacherous terrain. How Cook and the soldiers had managed it was a miracle of the type that only the Chinese can achieve, Caleb thought. A more industrious and ingenious people did not exist on the planet. Being in the care of such routinely heroic types gave him hope that he might survive to see his family again.
Since the morning of the accident, he had been on his back on a military cot in the cave at night; in the day, they brought him outside to take the air. His lungs were still lined with mud, and his breathing was badly impaired by internal ruptures. No doctor had seen him, but he had no complaints about his care.
“Reverend hungry?” Cook asked in his faulty English.
Out of courtesy, the good man had kindly switched over to a language he had never mastered. Since the accident, Caleb had been unable to understand the local dialect. He couldn’t even have managed the more refined Mandarin, not that Cook spoke it, either. Caleb’s mind simply did not work well enough any longer to accomplish it. He let out a slight sound in reply.
Words, English or otherwise, had become too great a challenge for him, although he knew he needed to keep trying. That was the thing—he had come to realize that life was one long series of tries. A nice summation, he thought, worthy of a sermon. Caleb wished he could dictate his ideas to someone for future lessons. He had never been a deep thinker, never the wise minister he had hoped to someday become. His mother’s brother, whom he had never met but had heard of as a boy, had come to North China over thirty years before, and the elders here still spoke of him in mythic terms, as someone not only comfortable with the natives but inspiring from the pulpit as well. Caleb, by contrast, simply helped people by seeing that tasks were accomplished in the name of the Lord. He was a minister of the trail and of duty, not of words.
The irony was that he had finally achieved the proper distance on life to be able to sum it up, and yet he could no longer speak. He had become the sage that the collar he wore was meant to suggest, and yet he had lost the words to convey his thoughts. And wasn’t that a lesson in and of itself, he thought: the maddening lesson known as life?
He let Cook lift his head so he might sip mild broth. Caleb suspected it was nothing more than stone soup, but he relished the taste. The turnip added a bittersweet tang to the water that, had he been healthy, he would hardly have noticed. So much in life is overlooked, he thought, while our minds are busy on other things. Under normal circumstances, he would have spit out this thin concoction and not noticed how even its smell suggested life itself—the rock-hard reality, the mineral quality, the very soil to which we all must return in time.
His mind tended to go down the path toward death with almost every thought now. After too many weeks in pain, he let it. At first, he had tried to rally. He had hopes that he would soon return home to see his wife and son. He would walk again. He would sit up. All grand ambitions, as it turned out. In reality, his energy was better spent on the simple acts of clearing his breathing passages and using his nostrils to their fullest extent. Air was what mattered. The taking in of air.
Cook set Caleb’s head back on the hard pillow. That the Chinese had not discovered feather pillows seemed a surprising oversight. Historically they had chosen instead lacquered blocks in the finer homes, but out here on the trail, it was a pile of pine needles pressed together and wrapped with string. Caleb shivered uncontrollably, and the wretched wool blanket was placed over him again. The damned thing was a curse that chafed the skin under his chin, but he did not complain. And wasn’t that how life revealed itself to us, with every ounce of comfort overshadowed by accompanying irritation? The miracle of the Lord on the cross was not as Caleb had once thought it to be, not only a higher lesson in salvation but also one of simple survival through everyday trials. The poor savior’s palms and feet where the nails had been stuck must have not just ached but also itched terribly.
When Caleb awoke again, he heard voices and commotion over at the heart of the Communist camp. He thought he detected Captain Hsu’s sincere and gravelly tones. Never so fine a man as that one, Caleb had come to realize. And the fellow had no higher education to speak of. No advanced degrees except those given out by life. That distinction, Caleb realized, was fodder for at least one Sunday morning’s lesson. How life’s school was all around us, there for the taking, if we only opened our eyes, which he accomplished now with some effort.
The missionaries here in China could stand to be reminded of tha
t, Caleb thought, not to mention certain parishioners back home who were overly preoccupied with the credentials of their minister and treated him like a boyish puppet. He had gone to great lengths at seminary to stand out, to be deemed as having promise. He had been rewarded with a small, established parish, where, unfortunately, perhaps because he was still so young, the stout ladies and bent deacons had continued to assess and hover and criticize until the Chinese hinterlands had sung to him of freedom. Tales of his uncle’s adventures in this distant land had risen to the surface of Caleb’s memory, and although that story had not ended well, he felt certain the world had changed sufficiently with modern times for him and his family to have a more successful outcome. But where had his newfound freedom taken him? he asked himself now. As far from civilization as imaginable and longing for a potluck supper of casseroles and Jell-O compotes under his congregants’ watchful eyes.
Caleb wished now that he had not learned so assiduously from books nor labored so painstakingly over the complexities of human foibles but had gathered wisdom instead only from the woods. Thoreau had had it right. Although, Caleb recalled, while at Walden Pond, the philosopher had lived just down the street from his dear mother, who continued to take in his laundry every week. Wouldn’t Shirley have gotten a kick out of that? Caleb thought. Then he promptly reminded himself not to let his mind wander to his beloved wife. It only made his body hurt more radiantly when he considered his brilliant, complicated, and often vexing partner. Hers were the human foibles he had tried most to parse, often without success. His son was a much simpler creature, but recalling him was entirely out of the question. For as many hours of the day as Caleb could manage, he kept his mind on anything but his boy.
Nighttime was another matter. During sleepless hours in the damp cave, his family haunted Caleb and caused him to cry as he hadn’t since he was a boy. He had always been a proponent of the school of life that believed in slogans such as Stiff upper lip! Pull up your socks! Carry on!—words that were now seared through with irony and even despair. How could one possibly have a stiff lip and dry eyes in a world so fraught with misery? How could one keep the chin tucked and the back stiff when it was literally broken?