(2001) The Bonesetter's Daughter

by Amy Tan

  “Fu Nan will think firecrackers have exploded in his chest,” said GaoLing. She and Sister Yu squealed like schoolgirls.

  “But won’t Mother and Father be in agony when they hear you’re missing?”

  “I’ll go see them next week if the roads are safe.”

  And that’s what GaoLing did, went to Immortal Heart, where she discovered that Fu Nan had told no one about the letter. About a month later, she returned to the school as Sister Yu’s helper. “Mother and Father knew only what the Chang father told him,” she reported. “‘That husband of yours,’ Father said to me. ‘I thought he was all boast and no backbone. And then we hear he’s joined the army—didn’t even wait to be forced to go.’”

  “I also told Mother and Father that I ran into you at the railway station at the Mouth of the Mountain,” GaoLing said. “I bragged you were an intellectual, working side by side with the scientists—and you’d soon be married to one.”

  I was glad she had said this. “Were they sorry about what they did to me?”

  “Ha! They were proud,” GaoLing said. “Mother said, ‘I always knew we did well by her. Now you see the result.’”

  The dew turned to frost, and that winter we had two kinds of weddings, American and Chinese. For the American part, Miss Grutoff gave me a long white dress she had made for her own wedding but never wore. Her sweetheart died in the Great War, so it was a bad-luck dress. But she had such happy tears when she gave me the gown, how could I refuse? For the Chinese banquet, I wore a red wedding skirt and head scarf that GaoLing had embroidered.

  Since GaoLing had already told Mother and Father I was to be married, I invited them out of politeness. I hoped they would use the convenient excuse of war to not come. But Mother and Father did come, as did the aunts and uncles, big and little cousins, nephews and nieces. No one talked of the great embarrassment of what we all knew. It was very awkward. I introduced Mother and Father as my aunt and uncle, which would have been a true fact if I had not been a love child without proper claim to any family. And most everyone at the school acted politely toward them. Sister Yu, however, gave them critical stares. She muttered to GaoLing, loud enough for Mother to hear: “They threw her away, and now they stuff their mouths at her table.” All day long, I felt confused—happy in love, angry with my family, yet strangely glad that they were there. And I was also worried about the white wedding dress, thinking this was a sign that my happiness would not last for long.

  Only two of the scientists, Dong and Chao, came to our party. Because of the war, it was too dangerous for anyone to work in the quarry anymore. Most of the scientists had fled for Peking, leaving behind almost everything except the relics of the past. Twenty-six of the local workers stayed, as did Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao, who also lived on the former monastery grounds. Someone needed to keep an eye on the quarry, Kai Jing reasoned. What if the Japanese decided to blow up the hill? What if the Communists used the quarry as a machine-gun trench? “Even if they used it as an open pit toilet,” I said to him, “how can you stop them?” I was not arguing that he and I should run to Peking as well. I knew he would never separate from his old father, and his old father would never separate from the school and the orphan girls. But I did not want my husband to go into the quarry as hero and come out as martyr. So much was uncertain. So many had already gone away. And many of us felt left behind. As a result, our wedding banquet was like the celebration of a sad victory.

  After the banquet, the students and friends carried us to our bedchamber. It was the same storeroom where Kai Jing and I had gone for that disaster of a first night. But now the place was clean: no rats, no urine, no ticks or straw. The week before, the students had painted the walls yellow, the beams red. They had pushed the statues to one side. And to keep the Three Wise Men from watching us, I had made a partition of ropes and cloth. On our wedding night, the students remained outside our door for many hours, joking and teasing, laughing and setting off firecrackers. Finally they tired and left, and for the first time Kai Jing and I were alone as husband and wife. That night, nothing was forbidden, and our joy was effortless.

  The next day, we were supposed to visit the houses of our in-laws. So we went to the two rooms at the other end of the corridor, where Teacher Pan lived. I bowed and served him tea, calling him “Baba,” and we all laughed over this formality. Then Kai Jing and I went to a little altar I had made with the picture of Precious Auntie in a frame. We poured tea for her as well, then lighted the incense, and Kai Jing called her “Mama” and promised he would take care of my entire family, including the ancestors who had come before me. “I am your family now, too,” he said.

  All at once, a cold breath poured down my neck. Why? I thought of our ancestor who died in the Monkey’s Jaw. Was that the reason? I remembered the bones that were never brought back, the curse. What was the meaning of this memory?

  “There are no such things as curses,” Kai Jing later told me. “Those are superstitions, and a superstition is a needless fear. The only curses are worries you can’t get rid of.”

  “But Precious Auntie told me this, and she was very smart.”

  “She was self-taught, exposed to only the old ideas. She had no chance to learn about science, to go to a university like me.”

  “Then why did my father die? Why did Precious Auntie die?”

  “Your father died because of an accident. Precious Auntie killed herself. You said so yourself.”

  “But why did the way of heaven lead to these things?”

  “It’s not the way of heaven. There is no reason.”

  Because I loved my husband very much, I tried to abide by the new ideas: no curses, no bad luck, no good luck, either. When I worried over dark clouds, I said there was no reason. When wind and water changed places, I tried to convince myself that there was no reason for this as well. For a while, I had a happy life, not too many worries.

  Every evening after dinner, Kai Jing and I paid a visit to his father. I loved to sit in his rooms, knowing this was my family home, too. The furnishings were plain, old, and honest, and everything had its place and purpose. Against the west wall, Teacher Pan had placed a cushioned bench that was his bed, and above that, he had hung three scrolls of calligraphy, one hundred characters each, as if done in one breath, one inspiration. By the south-facing window, he kept a pot of flowers in season, bright color that drew the eye away from shadows. Against the east wall were a simple desk and a chair of dark polished wood, a good place for thought. And on the desk were precious scholar-objects arranged like a still-life painting: a lacquered leather box, ivory brush holders, and an inkstone of duan, the best kind of stone, his most valuable possession, a gift from an old missionary who had taught him in his boyhood.

  One night Teacher Pan gave me that duan inkstone. I was about to protest, but then I realized that he was my father now, and I could accept it openly with my heart. I held that circle of duan and ran my ringers over its silky smoothness. I had admired that inkstone since the days when I first came to the school as his helper. He had brought it to class once to show to the students. “When you grind ink against stone you change its character, from ungiving to giving, from a single hard form to many flowing forms. But once you put the ink to paper, it becomes unforgiving again. You can’t change it back. If you make a mistake, the only remedy is to throw away the whole thing.” Precious Auntie had once said words that were similar. You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again. She said that when I first learned to grind ink. She also said this when she was angry with me, during the last days we were together. And when I heard Teacher Pan talking about this same thing, I promised myself I would change and become a better daughter.

  Much had changed, and I wished Precious Auntie could see how good my life was. I was a teacher and a married woman. I had both a husband and a father. And they were good people, unlike GaoLing’s in-laws, the Changs. My new family was genuine and sinc
ere to others, the same inside as they showed outside. Precious Auntie had taught me that was important. Good manners are not enough, she had said, they are not the same as a good heart. Though Precious Auntie had been gone for all these years, I still heard her words, in happy and sad times, when it was important.

  After the Japanese attacked the Mouth of the Mountain, GaoLing and I climbed to the hilltop whenever we heard distant gunfire. We looked for the direction of the puffs of smoke. We noticed which way the carts and trucks were moving along the roads. GaoLing joked that we brought news faster than the ham radio that Kai Jing and Miss Grutoff sat in front of for half the day, hoping to hear a word from the scientists who had gone to Peking. I did not understand why they wanted the radio to talk back to them. It spoke only about bad things—which port city was taken, how nearly everyone in this or that town was killed to teach the dead people a lesson not to fight against the Japanese.

  “The Japanese won’t win here,” GaoLing would say in the evenings. “They may be fast in the sea, but here in the mountains they’re like fish flopping on the sand. Our men, on the other hand, are like goats.” Every night she said this to convince herself it was true. And for a while, it was true. The Japanese soldiers could not push their way up the mountain.

  While water couldn’t run uphill, money did. All kinds of vendors from down below sneaked past the barricades and brought their goods up the mountain so that people from the hill towns could spend their money before they were killed. GaoLing, Kai Jing, and I would walk along the ridge road to buy luxuries. Sometimes I filled my tin with shaoping, the savory flaky buns coated with sesame seeds that I knew Teacher Pan loved so much. Other days I bought fried peanuts, dried mushrooms, or candied melon. There were many shortages during wartime, so any delicacies we could find were always an excuse for little parties.

  We held them in Teacher Pan’s sitting room. GaoLing and Sister Yu always joined us, as did the scientists—Dong, the older man with a gentle smile, and Chao, the tall young one whose thick hair hung in front of his face. When we were pouring the tea, Teacher Pan would wind his phonograph. And as we savored our treats, we listened to a song by Rachmaninoff called “Oriental Dance.” I can still see Teacher Pan, waving his hand like a conductor, telling the invisible pianist and cello players where to quiet down, where to come back with full feeling. At the end of the party, he would lie on the cushioned bench, close his eyes, and sigh, grateful for the food, Rachmaninoff, his son, his daughter-in-law, his dear old friends. “This is the truest meaning of happiness,” he would tell us. Then Kai Jing and I would go for an evening stroll before we returned to our own room, grateful ourselves for the joy that exists only between two people.

  Those were the small rituals we had, what comforted us, what we loved, what we could look forward to, what we could be thankful for and remember afterward.

  Even in wartime and poverty, people must have plays and opera. “They are the speech and music of the soul,” Kai Jing told me. Every Sunday afternoon, the students performed for us, and they were very enthusiastic. But to be honest, the acting and music were not very good, painful sometimes to listen to and see, and we had to be very good actors ourselves to pretend this was enjoyment beyond compare. Teacher Pan told me that the plays were just as bad when I was a student and performed in them. How long ago that seemed. Now Miss Towler was bent over with old age, almost as short as Sister Yu. When she played the piano, her nose nearly touched the keys. Teacher Pan had cataracts and worried that soon he would not be able to paint anymore.

  When winter came, we heard that many of the Communist soldiers were falling sick and dying of diseases before they had a chance to fire a single bullet. The Japanese had more medicine, warmer clothes, and they took food and supplies from whatever villages they occupied. With fewer Communist troops to defend the hills, the Japanese were crawling up, and with each step, they chopped down trees so no one could hide and escape. Because they were coming closer, we could no longer safely walk the ridge road to buy food.

  Yet Kai Jing and his colleagues still went to the quarry, and this made me crazy with anxiety. “Don’t go,” I always begged him. “Those old bones have been there for a million years. They can wait until after the war.” That quarry was the only reason we had arguments, and sometimes when I remember this, I think I should have argued more, argued until he stopped going. Then I think, no, I should have argued less, or not at all. Then maybe his last memories of me would not have been those of a complaining wife.

  When Kai Jing was not at the quarry, he taught the girls in my class about geology. He told them stories about ancient earth and ancient man, and I listened, too. He drew pictures on the chalkboard of icy floods and fiery explosions from underneath, of the skull of Peking Man and how it was different from a monkey’s, higher in the forehead, more room for his changing brain. If Miss Towler or Miss Grutoff were listening, Kai Jing did not draw the monkey or talk about the ages of the earth. He knew that his ideas about life before and everlasting were different from theirs.

  One day, Kai Jing told the girls how humans grew to be different from monkeys: “Ancient Peking Man could stand up and walk. We see this by the way his bones are formed, the footprints he left in the mud. He used tools. We see this by the bones and rocks he shaped to cut and smash. And Peking Man probably also began to speak in words. At least his brain was capable of forming a language.”

  A girl asked, “What words? Were they Chinese?”

  “We don’t know for certain,” Kai Jing said, “because you cannot leave behind spoken words. There was no writing in those days. That happened only thousands of years ago. But if there was a language, it was an ancient one that likely existed only in that time. And we can only guess what Peking Man tried to say. What does a person need to say? What man, woman, or child does he need to say it to? What do you think was the very first sound to become a word, a meaning?”

  “I think a person should always say her prayers to God,” another girl said. “She should say thank you to those who are nice to her.”

  That night, when Kai Jing was already asleep, I was still thinking about these questions. I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that meant “storm.” The smell of fire that meant “Flee.” The sound of a tiger about to pounce. Who would worry about such things?

  And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother’s breast. For a long time, that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

  One spring afternoon, the students were performing a play. I remember it well, a scene from The Merchant of Venice, which Miss Towler had translated into Chinese. “Fall down on your knees and pray,” they were chanting. And right then, my life changed. Teacher Pan burst into the hall, panting and shouting, “They’ve seized them.”

  Between broken breaths, he told us that Kai Jing and his friends had gone to the quarry for their usual inspection. Teacher Pan had gone along for the fresh air and small talk. At the quarry they found soldiers waiting. They were Communists, and since they were not Japanese, the men were not concerned.

  The leader of the soldiers approached them. He asked Kai Jing, “Hey, why haven’t you joined us?”

  “We’re scientists not soldiers,” Kai Jing explained. He started to tell them about the work with Peking Man, but one of the soldiers cut him off: “No work has been going on here in months.”

  “If you’ve worked to preserve the past,” the leader said, trying to be more cordial, “surely you can work to create the future. Besides, what past will you save if the Japanese destroy China?”

  “It’s your duty to join us,” another soldier grumbled. “Here we are spilling our own blood to protect your damn village.”

  The leader waved f
or him to be quiet. He turned to Kai Jing. “We’re asking all men in the villages we defend to help us. You don’t need to fight. You can cook or clean or do repairs.” When no one said anything, he added in a less friendly voice: “This isn’t a request, it’s a requirement. Your village owes us this. We order you. If you don’t come along as patriots, we’ll take you as cowards.”

  It happened that quickly, Teacher Pan said. The soldiers would have taken him as well, but they decided an old man who was nearly blind was more trouble than help. As the soldiers led the men away, Teacher Pan called out, “How long will they be gone?”

  “You tell me, comrade,” the leader said. “How long will it take to drive out the Japanese?”

  Over the next two months, I grew thin. GaoLing had to force me to eat, and even then I could not taste anything. I could not stop thinking of the curse from the Monkey’s Jaw, and I told GaoLing this, though no one else. Sister Yu held Praying for a Miracle meetings, asking that the Communists defeat the Japanese soon, so that Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao could return to us quickly. And Teacher Pan wandered the courtyards, his eyes misty with cataracts. Miss Grutoff and Miss Towler would not allow the girls to go outside the compound anymore, even though the fighting took place in other areas of the hills. They had heard terrible stories of Japanese soldiers raping girls. They found a large American flag and hung this over the gateway, as if this were a charm that would protect them from evil.

  Two months after the men disappeared, Sister Yu’s prayers were half answered. Three men walked through the gateway early in the morning, and Miss Grutoff beat the gong of the Buddha’s Ear. Soon everyone was shouting that Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao had returned. I ran so fast across the courtyard I tripped and nearly broke my ankle. Kai Jing and I grabbed each other and gave in to happy sobs. His face was thinner and very brown; his hair and skin smelled of smoke. And his eyes—they were different. I remember thinking that at the time. They were faded, and I now think some part of his life force had already gone.