He said, “You have darkness in your face.”
He reached across the table and held one of her hands palm up, flat and open to the gray sky.
He covered her hand with his and closed his eyes. A cluster of calluses grated against her skin.
“He’s alive,” he croaked.
My aunt gasped. My mother lifted her head and finally looked at the old man. In a loose cotton top and pajama pants, he dressed like a coolie: he was a specimen from the last dynasty. What could he know? He’d found a simple way to make money when a tender hip and weak shoulders no longer allowed him to work.
“Where is he?” she asked wearily.
The man looked at the sky. The city stank of death, a sudden breeze relaying from far off a reminder of unclaimed men. Or maybe the odor simply wafted out of the earth on warm days to deliver the message: This is not a dream.
“I don’t know.”
My mother nodded. Of course he didn’t. Thousands of husbands disappeared in those weeks. Sons as young as twelve. Brothers. Friends. What better way to remake society, my mother thought, than to eliminate the teachers and principals, the students, the lawyers and doctors—truly, anybody who had an opinion and a voice? Beyond the river, execution grounds, field after field irrigated with blood, waited to be discovered. Buildings would crush the bones.
—
Yet the fortune-teller was only my mother’s penultimate hope. The very last resort was the harbor at Keelung, which, rumors claimed, had become a watery graveyard.
No clouds marred the clear blue sky; there was nothing to diminish the strong March sun. Sweat ran down the channel of her spine. The stench of decay, like a ghost in the humid air, assaulted my mother before she even saw the water. The executions were supposed to be secret, but the tide had carried the bodies back toward land, where they clogged the port, wedged along the hulls of ships. The doors of the normally busy quayside warehouses were shut. The majestic cranes, long necked and gangly like prehistoric creatures, were still. Even the giant ships seemed to slumber. Enterprising fishermen offered their dinghies for a small fee. My mother beckoned one over and the boatman held her hand as she stepped in. He wore a peaked straw hat, like a farmer, which cast his face in shadow, and a bandanna masked everything below his eyes. She huddled in the boat, holding me to her chest and a handkerchief pressed to her nose and mouth. Her blouse was damp with milk.
With a long pole, the fisherman carefully negotiated their way around the bodies. Down here, drifting among the monstrous ships, the port seemed larger than it had the day she had sailed in on her return from university in Japan. That day, she had leaned on the deck railing and, with a bittersweet pain in her chest, waved at the waiting crowds. She had not yet spotted her family, but she knew they were there. Japan was behind her now, a phase of her life forever gone.
On that day, daydreaming of her future, she had not imagined this. My mother scanned the water as if one swollen corpse could be distinguished from another. She swallowed the nausea that rose up her throat. She ignored the faces, which, waterlogged, had become alike, and looked for a telling glow, a chain of gold revealed through the translucent wet seam of a shirt. She cried out a few times, and each time the fisherman stopped and nudged the body, but something would be wrong: the hair was too long, the watch had a square face not round, the pants were brown not black.
They searched all afternoon, until the fisherman finally said, “He’s not here.”
My mother curled over me and, in relief and fear, cried into my blanket.
6
AS MY FATHER STUMBLED alongside the three young soldiers, he realized he had misbuttoned his shirt. This upset him. He could not stop fingering the orphaned button at the bottom and the empty buttonhole at the top. He imagined the neighbors secretly watching and how they must have pitied him, taken so quickly and foolishly without time to properly dress. With a hand under each armpit, the soldiers hefted him into the waiting truck. There, finally, he could rebutton his shirt.
The canvas cover arcing over the truck bed hid four other men and two soldiers to watch them. Baba sat between one young soldier and an older man who wept into his hands, exposing the haphazard tufts of white hair atop his otherwise bald head. The man was even less prepared than my father—he wore only his pajamas, which consisted of a frayed white singlet and cheap hand-sewn cotton pants with a gaping fly. Mud flecked his bare feet.
The other three men were just as pathetic, startled too quickly out of sleep into an entirely new world. Two wore formal coats as if apprehended en route to an early-morning appointment. A folded piece of paper poked out of one man’s sock, supporting my father’s suspicion that the “early-morning appointment” was only an alibi for their getaway. The third man huddled against the cab, his face completely concealed by his upturned coat collar and lowered hat brim. He could have been crying, sleeping, or dead.
The young soldiers didn’t bother to hide their boredom. Their heads nodded along as the truck rattled over the lumpy road.
“No breakfast again,” one complained. He coughed free something from his throat, lifted the canvas panel, and spit.
“Why ruin your appetite when we’ll be having cabbage again tonight?”
“Cabbage. Shit.”
One of the prisoners pulled a leaf-wrapped rice dumpling from his pocket and held it out. “Mister,” he said in heavily accented Mandarin. My father snickered at the useless gesture. They were being carted to the gallows—why be kind?
The soldier glanced at his friend. Was it a ploy? Poison? He grabbed it, tore off the twine, and peeled the leaves back as if it were a banana. The aroma of pork and rice made Baba’s stomach cry. The soldier took a bite, then held it out for his friend. They took turns and finished it with boiled egg yolk, the dumpling’s savory center, powdered across their mouths. Like a little rat, the first soldier gnawed across the open leaves, cleaning off the remaining bits of rice.
Perhaps bribery was not a bad strategy. Perhaps it would buy time, freedom, life. Baba felt the hem of his shirt, where my mother had sewn in the gold necklace. He was often surprised at the treasures she pulled from her jewelry box. Most of it had been given to her at their wedding. She told him that she really did not own much, but each time she wore earrings or a necklace to dinner or another wedding banquet, he swore he had never seen it before. This gold chain too, weighing down the edge of his shirt and resting heavily on his thigh, had been seemingly conjured, just the right thing for the moment. If a dumpling could buy kindness, what would gold buy? They could let him out right here. He wouldn’t say a word. But if it didn’t work—if they kept the gold and kept him—he would feel he had wasted his wife’s gesture. It was too risky. He would wait for a more powerful man to bribe.
The commanders held the soldiers on the edge of hunger to keep them angry and sharp, like dogs snapping at the ends of their chains; the food offering had subdued them, lulled them into sated puppies ready for a nap. One of them closed his eyes and rested against the tarp’s hard frame and his teeth rattled as the truck jittered along.
—
Finally, the truck stopped. The crying old man had fallen asleep and, with a grunt, he jerked his head up. Baba had not slept. Every minute on the road had worried him more. Any thoughts of a proper arrest were gone. The farther from the city that they went, the more likely death was. No police station or courthouse lay out here.
Brighter and brighter threads of light had pierced through the seams and tears in the canvas as they had gone on, but Baba was still startled when the soldiers threw back the flaps. The sun was high. Half a day had passed. The soldiers ordered them out and Baba leaped to the ground on stiff legs. The older man needed help from the truck. Like a child, he clambered down in the arms of the soldiers.
Baba was surprised to see the curled-up man, with the high collar and hat, stir. He was not dead, feeble, or sad. He sprang from the truck without hesitation. As he came toward the waiting group, he lifted his head and glanced at
my father from under the brim of his hat, raising an eyebrow to acknowledge him. It was Kai Hsiang, a fisherman whose children Baba had treated. My father offered a barely perceptible nod in return. He knew better than to say anything.
“I need to…relieve myself.” The old man pleaded in such polite, pathetic terms that Baba cringed.
“Shit,” the first soldier, the hungry one who hated cabbage, said. “Hold it.”
“Let him go,” the second one said. “I gotta go too. Anybody else?”
At the question, the urge suddenly struck my father.
“Over there.” The second soldier waved his gun at the wall of sugarcane that ran alongside the road. On one side, the hill rose up in a tangle of brush; on the other, the sugarcane extended down the hill as far as they could see. A small gutter of mud ran between the field and the road. How naive would they have to be to line up, all together, with their backs to the road in the perfect formation for execution? Baba declined. He waited beside the truck as the rest of them arranged themselves before the cane.
The cicadas clicked incessantly like seeds in a rattle, and from somewhere deep in the field, birds cried. All of a sudden, someone yelled, “No!” Baba saw the second soldier disappearing into the shaking cane field. The old man was making his escape. The field swallowed up predator and prey and the outer stalks trembled to stillness, but the stunned audience tracked the path of pursuit by the birds bursting out of the cane. A shot rang out, followed by a final cloud of birds.
Saliva flooded my father’s mouth. So this was how the game would go.
“Line up!” shouted the first soldier. He thrust his rifle toward them as if he were herding an unruly group of pigs. The remaining men arranged themselves in front of the truck.
The second soldier returned. Sweat darkened his armpits and his face glistened. He was alone. Baba and Kai Hsiang exchanged glances. Show nothing, Baba told himself, and hoped Kai Hsiang was still alert enough to think the same. Do not blink, grimace, or nod. He thought of the old man’s body melting into the ground, changing the taste of the cane, and the only witnesses soon dead too.
7
THEY MARCHED UPHILL through the forest for another hour, passing a single brick farmhouse that appeared abandoned despite the plump chickens scratching through the courtyard and the carefully tended melon vines. Nobody dared ask for water or a break, even though their mouths had long gone dry and the only food had been sacrificed as a peace offering hours before. In any case, the soldiers carried no water bladder and shared their thirst. Baba had missed his usual morning tea and his head felt hollow. He unbuttoned his shirt down to his singlet, yet he was still hot.
Weariness depleted his fear. His shoes were made for city streets, not root-strewn mountain paths, and blisters erupted in three different places on his feet. Perhaps they planned to kill them via exhaustion.
Occasionally, however, panic reared up again and he forgot his discomfort. What would they charge him with? What would be his defense? Was it the man who had died in his clinic? Had he given succor to an enemy of the state—or, worse, a hero to the people? Or was his crime shaming the authorities with his critique? But they were just words from a simple, unknown doctor. He had not inspired a revolution. He had simply pointed out the hypocrisy of their rhetoric. He’d stated only facts, not opinions.
They seemed to be traversing a range of hills, no longer moving up now but sideways, and the path, lightly trampled, drifted in and out of sunlight. Fog covered the valley, and my father thought of his wife and children somewhere down there among the thousands of ignorant people. He realized he would not see his children’s faces harden into maturity. What childish habits would they drop and which would linger in adulthood? Would Ah Zhay—who had ventured out as his assistant after Taipei was bombed by the Americans, and had not flinched at the dead birds littering the ground and the body parts hanging in the trees—end up a brilliant doctor? And solemn Dua Hyan—what profession would suit him? Was Zhee Hyan’s scampering silliness simply a four-year-old’s innocence, or an inborn, everlasting trait? And, finally, his youngest daughter, just a couple of weeks old—what would be her first word—or even her name?
And his wife. He’d heard her screaming behind him as the soldiers dragged him away, and he had hoped for her to stop. He wanted to turn around and tell her that he would be fine, tell her that the children needed at least one parent to be safe, but one of the boys had growled, “You’re already dead. Just keep walking.” He could still hear the echo of her racing footsteps.
He fought the urge to throw himself down the hill.
—
Finally, the group came into a clearing of brick houses and meticulous gardens.
The soldiers ushered them into one of the homes and ordered them into a bedroom. A Japanese-style half-curtain hung in place of a door.
“Stay here. We’ll come back for you.”
The four men (unlucky four, Baba thought) arranged themselves around the room: two men on the bed, which was piled with blankets; Baba on a chair; and Kai Hsiang on the dirt floor.
No one spoke. Mind exhausted, Baba became entranced by his shirt. A long black strand of hair caught his eye. He pulled it off and examined it. He remembered a novel he had read at university in which a doctor recognizes his daughter because he has saved a strand of his wife’s hair throughout his imprisonment. What was the book’s name? He could not remember. Baba wrapped the hair around his finger like a ring. It went around six times. At the moment, it was his most precious possession.
After a while, he spoke. “Is it you?” he asked Kai Hsiang. He didn’t dare say his name aloud. The other two men could not pretend to not hear in the small room, so they watched with open interest.
The man straightened up and revealed his face.
“Doctor,” he said. So it was Kai Hsiang.
Kai Hsiang caught fish for a living. His hands were salt burned. He had seven children. What on earth could have been his transgression?
“Why are you here?” Baba asked.
“They say we’re communists.”
Baba looked at the other two men. They looked like bankers. Communists? He thought of the strident, ruddy-cheeked Chinese peasants he saw in the newspapers. These men had soft pale hands. If anything, they looked more like the “capitalist running dogs” whom the communists seemed determined to wipe out.
“You two—are you communists?”
“We’re just professors,” one of them protested.
“Someone lent me a copy of Marx, but I never read it. I tossed it on a shelf and forgot about it. I swear,” said the other.
“Shut up,” Kai Hsiang said. “You’re not on trial yet.”
“Communists? How do you know?” Baba asked Kai Hsiang. Since Ming Guo’s nephew’s warning, nothing had made sense. “Why you? You’re just a fisherman,” he blurted out.
“And you’re just a doctor.” Though Kai Hsiang’s tone was matter-of-fact, Baba flinched. “It’ll all come out in the trial. You’ll find out then what kind of criminal you are.”
Like the hero of some Russian epic, my father wanted to cry out, I’m innocent!
“Listen”—Kai Hsiang leaned forward and lowered his voice—“they have a plan and if you stand in the way…” He hissed as he drew his finger across his throat.
One of the professors stood up and paced the room. “We should be in Tamshui, on a boat heading to sea,” he muttered. He stopped at the window and peered out. “Not a soul. What is this place?”
“Tamshui? You should have kept your mouth shut,” Kai Hsiang said. “You should have been a good, docile subject.”
—
The day passed. The room turned dark. The four men did not speak. My father had not eaten since the night before. For a few hours, his stomach burned, then his hunger faded to something clean and light in his veins. A man could fast for days, weeks. He was not worried.
Eventually, they heard footsteps in the other room and an unfamiliar soldier poked his head in
.
“Eat,” he said in thickly accented Taiwanese.
In the front room, brightened by a lantern, a young woman scooped boiled mountain yams and cabbage into bowls and poured cups of lukewarm tea. All the men watched her flat and impassive face, wanting recognition: Did they still live? She did not look at them. She was feeding ghosts.
Baba’s fast had sharpened his tongue. He thought he could detect the faint saltiness of dried shrimp in the cabbage. The boiled yams were pale and slimy, but all of it was satisfyingly warm in his belly. The young woman stood off to the side while they ate. Baba wondered if there would be seconds, but she took their empty bowls and piled them into her aluminum pot with a clatter.
“Sleep now,” the soldier said in Mandarin. “Tomorrow will be important.” Carrying the lantern with him, he escorted the young woman out of the room.
After he left, Kai Hsiang asked what he had said.
“Tomorrow,” said one of the professors. “Tomorrow, they shoot us.”
—
In the dark, the four men arranged themselves around the room with the blankets. Baba curled up beside the empty wardrobe. The blanket was full of musty ghost odors. He wondered who else had lain beneath it, sweating anxiety. He thought of how much a single life could hold. The breathing of the others slowed as they finally slept. The blue moonlight in the window reminded him of the restless nights he had spent during the Pacific War.
The war. He had departed with soldiers, and the memory he had carried away from Taiwan as the ship set sail was the fading call of voices: Rippa ni shinde kudasai, rippa ni shinde kudasai, please die beautifully…
On the war front in Burma, among Japanese doctors, he once again was overcome by the childhood feeling that had chased him through his segregated elementary school education in Taipei, stalked him when he was questioned in the streets by Japanese police, and clung to him, hissing in his ear, when he had discovered that his favorite high school teacher, Mr. Sasaki, had served on a colonial policy committee dedicated to formulating a grisly plan for how to handle the island aborigines. Hundreds took the medical school entrance exams, but only dozens of Taiwanese were accepted. Sometimes, he could still conjure up the elation he felt the day that he found his name on the list of those who had passed. A kind of relief, as if he had escaped the grip of some banal destiny by the skin of his teeth.
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