Dr. Bethune's Children

by Xue Yiwei

  And she heard my silent call! She looked up and smiled at me shyly.

  My discomfiture made her blush. Almost twenty years had passed, and her blush was still so fresh and so charming. Yes, she knew that I was looking at her. Yes, she knew who I was. It was bittersweet. While I didn’t know how to react, I noticed her lips starting to move. She was saying something to me. Her lips were her lips. They were opening and closing just like Yinyin’s lips used to do, even though they were speaking a language Yinyin did not understand. “Bonsoir!” she said.

  After almost twenty years, I heard the voice of my dead wife again. My eyes were moist. My lips started to move, too. “Bonsoir!” For the first time, I greeted Yinyin in a language she learned posthumously.

  That evening, I reread Yinyin’s first story, and I tried to knit together her disastrous life with imagination and memory. At the same time, I was amazed at the miracle I had experienced. Why would it occur, this repetition across national lines? How could a French-Canadian woman look so much like Yinyin, my dead Chinese wife? And how could she be so aware of my amazement? I am unable to explain this. I do not know where this miracle will take me, and where it will take us. I worry that Yinyin’s reappearance, just like her life, will be as transient as the bloom of the cactus called the queen of the night. I vowed to approach her the next day. I had so many questions to ask. Like what happened to her after she left our home that night, that fateful night, that endless night.

  Standing in front of her the next evening, I saw that she was just as nervous as I was. She was blushing furiously, and I felt unbearably hot. But our gazes were as one. Almost simultaneously, we greeted each other with “Bonsoir!” The intertwining of our voices recalled the intimacy of our lovemaking the night I read Yinyin’s story that first time. I was so grateful to the city I was living in and to Dr. Bethune, who brought me here.

  In my nervousness, I forgot everything I wanted to ask her. Over the next two weeks, I passed by her every day. And I vowed every time, before I entered the supermarket, to start talking with her. But every time was like the first. I was too wound up to ask. There were too many things I wanted to understand, too many questions to ask. I wanted to ask her name, her birthday, her hobbies, her telephone number, her email address. Of course, I wanted to ask if she was an orphan, why she kept on blushing. And how old she was, whether she had opened her eyes before Yinyin’s closed. But as I said my nerves made me forget all my questions, every time.

  I never asked her. I missed every opportunity. Even in my strange dream, I did not ask her any questions. And that day, on the way back from the hospital, I didn’t see her. That was the first time in two weeks she had missed our “date.” I just had the impulse to write to you, dear Dr. Bethune, to tell you everything your children had experienced in that long period of four decades that passed like the blink of an eye. I believed that my reunion with Yinyin would only add to my passion and inspiration. But she wasn’t there. It was her shift, why wasn’t she there?

  She did not appear for the next three days. I was distraught. If I had not already started to write to you, I could never have borne her disappearance.

  The next day I suddenly realized that she would never appear again. The last time I saw her, two days before I got that terrible migraine, was in fact our last “date.” She was scanning the products on the supermarket shelves when I went in. She looked up at me twice, as though she had something to say to me. Her movements were extremely slow that day, abnormally so. There was a shyness in her face, but anxiety showed in her eyes. I was not especially concerned until I realized that this was the same as the anxiety I’d seen in Yinyin’s eyes when she said she wanted to get a breath of fresh air. I hadn’t been concerned at that, either, or else I would have stopped her. It was afterwards that I was struck by that wave of anxiety, that gesture of farewell. Almost twenty years too late. Now I missed the sign a second time.

  When I’d done my shopping and handed her the cash, I saw her lips quivering, thinking about whatever she had to say to me. I smiled at her, hoping that she would speak. But she hesitated and then pressed her lips together and turned to the next customer. Confused and disappointed, I walked to the exit, my heart filled with regret.

  Then something else happened that I still find incomprehensible. Just as I was about to walk out of the supermarket, I heard a terrible scream. My first reaction was that Yinyin had been attacked. My God, what had happened?

  I turned back to look, but the supermarket was the same as ever. I did not see Yinyin in a pool of blood, just the cashier turning to look at me. Had she heard the same scream? Each filled with surprise, we were once more as one.

  The next detail was even stranger. As I prepared to leave, she raised her arm and waved. This unexpected gesture was the final word of our peculiar dialogue of the past couple of weeks, an ephemeral reunion between Yinyin and me. I did not know what to do. I was carrying two full grocery bags. Hesitantly, awkwardly, I raised my right hand and shook the bag. She nodded, as if she had let me know what she wanted to say. And as if I had understood.

  So that was farewell. The cashier knew she was leaving, and she knew her leaving would cause me sorrow. But Yinyin did not know. She had said she would be back soon, and she did not wave.

  Dear Dr. Bethune, on the day when I realized she would never appear again, I had been writing to you about Yinyin. Now I know that this wasn’t a coincidence. It was a matter of must. I was so teary-eyed by the time I finished writing that I couldn’t see the words on the screen. Otherwise I might have told you about the miracle then. Yinyin was making me wait—and making you wait, too. She wanted me to tell you about her demise before letting you know about the miracle.

  But why did this miracle come to an end? I can’t understand it. I regret the time I wasted and all the opportunities I missed. In addition to the questions I failed to ask, I now have even more questions. Have you found another job? Have you left for another city? Have you gone home, returned home to China, a place you’ve never been?

  She hasn’t appeared again. I don’t believe she ever will.

  Dear Dr. Bethune, Yangyang became my best friend because of you. And because of you he became the first one to leave me, the first one to die. His death brought Yinyin into my life via his family. I had a happy marriage, also because of you, though it was very brief. And in the end, the brief happiness has become a wound, a wound that would not heal. Because of you, too, I came to Montreal, the final home you had before you went to China and the only home I have had since leaving China. Is this what Yangyang’s father meant by yuanfen? I don’t know. I really don’t know. And now, this miracle and this loss. What role did you play here? Why would Yinyin vanish just when I was starting to tell you our story?

  Now I have even more questions. I vow that if she ever appears again I will not waste a minute, I will immediately take her hand and lead her into my room. I will ask her to live with me, once again. I will tell her that it is the predestined affinity of yuanfen that has decided all of this.

  The only trace of this miracle is the lottery ticket that I bought from her before she disappeared. I have put that lottery ticket with Yinyin’s manuscript in Yangyang’s notebook. Immersing myself in work over the past few months, I often feel a painful solitude. This is in fact a syndrome caused by nostalgia and writing. To overcome solitude, I sometimes get out that lottery ticket and the manuscript and hold them fondly. Sometimes I can almost hear the first word Yinyin uttered, after a silence of almost twenty years. And I reply to it with the same word, “Bonsoir!” On those solitary winter evenings in Montreal, lost in reveries, I hope against hope that a simple “Good evening” will bring Yinyin back.

  A Lottery Ticket

  Dear Dr. Bethune, Last night, I was wakened by a telephone call at three a.m. I picked up the receiver and heard my mother’s voice. “You shouldn’t call me so late,” I complained. “I mean, it’s too early.”
/>   “Is it early or is it late?” she said.

  I did not respond. I had barely slept two hours.

  “I have something important to tell you,” my mother said.

  “Everything you have to tell me is important,” I said. “Whatever it is, you call me at this hour of night.”

  “Why have you, my son, become so selfish?” my mother said. Then she asked me what time it was. She had never gotten her head around the time difference.

  “Your day is my night. We are twelve hours apart,” I said.

  My mother’s brief silence expressed that she had noticed how simple the conversion was and how inappropriate the time she had chosen for her call. “I just wanted to tell you something important,” she said apologetically.

  I was almost certain that this “something important” had to with Yangyang’s mother, who I knew was dying of liver cancer.

  After a short silence, my mother said: “That madwoman was taken to Emergency yesterday.” From her tone of voice, she was excited by the news, not saddened.

  I waited.

  “Last night she was discovered by a janitor slumped on the bedroom floor,” she said. “She took an entire bottle of sleeping pills. She tried to kill herself.”

  I once again recalled how Yangyang’s mother had behaved on the afternoon when your great friend’s death was announced, and I met Yinyin for the first time. That crazed look, those ravings, that disconcerting touch.

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” my mother said. “You go back to sleep now.”

  Unable to get back to sleep, I got up and sat in the swivel chair by the desk. The lottery ticket was in front of me.

  I hadn’t needed anything that evening—this was a couple of days before the farewell. The draw was coming up in a few minutes and I just wanted to see her, so I decided to buy a lottery ticket. I hadn’t bought one since splitting up with my ex. And I had never won anything in the lottery. It felt strange to buy a lottery ticket from the hand of my late wife.

  She didn’t find it strange. She seemed to know that I was there to see her. But when our gazes met, she was just as worked up and anxious as I was. I wanted to take her to a quiet corner, sit down with her and talk about our almost twenty years of separation by life and death. And I wanted to know about that night in Beijing in 1989.

  But her smile stopped me short. In that smile, I saw a tranquillity that belonged to another world. I did not want to disturb her tranquillity, to awaken her from death. I extended the coins that I was holding. She opened her hands, which I could tell at a glance also belonged to Yinyin: in shape and touch and gesture, they were so familiar. Solemnly, I put the coins in her tender palms, the palms that had once caressed me body and soul. When I let go of the coins, my fingertips lightly touched her palms. This was the first time in almost twenty years that she and I had had any bodily contact. I did not know at the time it would be her final touch. I trembled like the first time I had accidentally touched her hand on the train to Beijing. “One Lotto 649,” I said awkwardly.

  She was sharing my rapture, I was certain of it. She raised her hand a bit to draw out the contact as long as possible. Her gesture not only took more time, but also gave more pleasure. In doing so she was telling me that she knew how I felt and what I wanted, and moreover, who I was and who she was. She turned our mysterious contact into a dialogue, extending an instant into an eternity in which all of the loneliness that had built up over all these years of separation was resolved.

  I was not paying attention when she turned, printed out the ticket, and put it in my hand. I did not know what to do. I just wanted to hurry up and leave and find some quiet corner to relive the miracle.

  At the entrance to the supermarket I took a deep breath of fresh air to calm my nerves. Then I looked back through the glass window. She lifted her arms to stretch, and she, too, took a deep breath. “No, don’t breathe like that,” I whispered despairingly. “There is no fresh air there.” I wanted to dissuade Yinyin from going out into the Beijing evening. Somehow my voice penetrated the glass, because she turned and looked at me. I knew that she couldn’t see me, only the glare of the window. She could not see my despairing body fringed with night.

  When passing by Place du 6-décembre-1989, I sat down on the bench, exhausted. The air there was even fresher. I noticed a young couple about twenty metres away. The woman was sitting on a bench, her head tucked between her knees, not moving. The man standing beside her was gesticulating and talking fast. I leaned back and stared at the silent starry sky, gulping the cool air. When my parents were visiting, the night sky was the only thing my father liked better here than in China, where there’s now too much construction to see the stars.

  “Why?” I asked the deep blue sky. “Why would I be blessed with such a miracle?”

  I took another look at the couple. The young man threw up his right hand and walked quickly away. The woman called him twice, in a quiet voice, but he did not look back. He walked to the intersection and down the lane by the launderette. The woman watched the empty intersection, and then buried her face again between her knees.

  I felt the lottery ticket and looked back up into the heavens. I could not explain why Yinyin would reappear, after twenty years, on the other side of the globe, a deep gratitude pulsed through my heart. Gratitude towards you, gratitude towards life. Dear Dr. Bethune, the solitude that had lacerated me for almost two decades became an impulse to revisit the past. That, I realized, was the original impulse behind writing the stories of the children of Dr. Bethune. “Yinyin,” I said to the starry heavens. “I want to go back to the past. Go back to you.” The sky blurred, tracked by my tears like veins in a frozen leaf.

  The lottery ticket won the second-to-last prize: $10. It was the first time I had ever bought a winning lottery ticket, and this seemed part of the miracle, not an accident. In fact, on the way home from Place du 6-décembre-1989, I had hoped I would not win the prize, because I wanted to keep the ticket as proof that Yinyin and I had reunited. The second-to-last prize was ideal. It bore witness to the miracle, but I didn’t have to consider whether or not to cash it in. I put the lottery ticket in Yangyang’s notebook, with Yinyin’s manuscript. I knew this was the last lottery ticket I would ever buy.

  It has been fifty days since the mysterious cashier waved goodbye. Dear Dr. Bethune, all this time I’ve been writing you letters, telling you about our lives, your children’s lives. But have I ever told you who it was who discovered that our lives were rooted in your fate, in the fact that you must go to China? This is a secret you should know. This is the secret you must know.

  At ten o’clock in the evening, Montreal time, nineteen hours after I heard that Yangyang’s mother had been sent to the hospital, I called my mother. “Will you go to the hospital to see her?” I asked.

  “You should be sleeping,” my mother reminded me, in a retaliatory tone. She had finally figured out the time difference.

  I repeated my question and, as expected, my mother said no without even thinking about it.

  “Could you go once, for me?” I begged.

  “No, absolutely not,” she said. “It’s a matter of principle.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “This is absurd,” my mother said. “I haven’t spoken to her since she tried to break down my door with a brick. It’s been almost twenty years.”

  “I beg you.”

  “It would be pointless. She’s in a coma,” my mother said. She sounded like her mind was made up. “If you’re curious, I can keep you updated.”

  “I’m not curious,” I said firmly. “I am concerned.”

  “You should be more concerned about yourself,” my mother said.

  “I’ll manage, Mom,” I said. It was years since I had called her Mom, and I don’t know why I did so now. Then I reminded her half-jokingly: “Have you forgotten what you always taught us? You always told u
s we should emulate Dr. Bethune, in his utter devotion to others without any thought of self.”

  After a long silence, my mother started crying. “You still remember who I am,” she said.

  “Can you go to see her at the hospital for us?” I begged her again—and immediately regretted that I’d said “us.”

  The word evidently provoked my mother. “Who is ‘us’?” she asked.

  “Dr. Bethune’s children,” I said after a moment’s hesitation.

  My mother did not respond.

  “You must remember,” I added calmly. “She’s the one who came up with that phrase.”

  Little did I expect that this would send my mother over the edge. “That’s the craziest thing of all! That ruined you. She ruined you, all of you—you damned children of Dr. Bethune,” she yelled into the receiver. “She wasn’t driven mad by her son’s death. She was mad long before that. She’s always been a madwoman.” Then she slammed the receiver down.

  A Long-Distance Call

  Dear Dr. Bethune, it was just after ten a.m. when I awakened from a fitful sleep. I stared at the ceiling, wondering if there was anything I could do for Yangyang’s mother. I was still exhausted. And I had some migraine pain on the right side of my head and was worried that symptoms of depression might follow. I should get up and go outside, I told myself. For almost two months, I’d been spending most of my time remembering and writing. I was so tired of living this way.

  I decided to go to the coffee shop across from Place du 6-décembre-1989. I wanted to see if I could make a small change and write to you there. And not on the “typewriter”—my computer—but with a pencil, as your children did back in the early 1970s. This may be the last letter I write you, because Yangyang’s mother is dying. She’s the one who first understood our relationship with you. She’s the one who identified us as the children of Dr. Bethune.