A Single Swallow

by Ling Zhang

  I wanted to duck out of sight, but it was too late. They’d already seen me.

  I heard a whizzing sound, and then my shoulder went numb.

  After that, I heard vague laughter.

  Then I saw the oar in my hand change color. It took some time before I realized it was my blood.

  “Ah Yan, run . . .”

  That was my last clear thought before I passed out. I drifted some distance on the sampan, fifty or sixty li, maybe even seventy or eighty. Just before dark, a woman washing clothes in the river saw me and pulled me ashore. I was unconscious for a week due to blood loss. When I could finally move, a month had passed.

  Pastor Billy should have a clearer idea of what happened next.

  Pastor Billy: Okamura Yasuji’s Wolf

  This story is difficult, both telling it and hearing it. Each word claws its way from the narrator’s heart, through the throat, over the tongue, into the listeners’ ears, and along the auditory nerve. When it finally reaches the brain, how much flesh will it have torn along the way, and how many bloody wounds will it leave behind? But we can’t skip this story. Haven’t we waited seventy years for this reunion just so we could recall those years filled with the flames of war? The girl, she’s in the foreground, center, and background of this story, so no matter what direction we take, we can’t escape her.

  This happened seventy-two years ago. Fortunately, I didn’t tell this story seventy-two years ago, or fifty-two, or even thirty-two. If I had, it would have brought great rage, sorrow, and compassion. Time is a miraculous thing. It can wear down the thorns of emotion, gradually eroding them to dust, and from this dust, a new sprout grows. That sprout is the power of life. Telling this story now, those old emotions are still present, but they are just paving the way. Now, what rises in my heart and moves me is a silent emotion. Isn’t that girl the sprout? The weight of a mountain pressed down upon her, but she could still poke the tip of a living shoot up from under the rocks. Never mind that the sprout is disproportionately small compared to the mountain. You might ask, Did it really take seventy-two years for this tiny sprout to emerge? Then how many centuries will it take to grow into a tree? But let me tell you, this sprout will live for hundreds of thousands of centuries.

  Liu Zhaohu, in your story, her name is Yao Guiyan, and she goes by Ah Yan, meaning “swallow.” Ian, in your story, she is Wende, which to you meant “wind.” In my story, she is Stella. Stella means “star,” and it’s the name I asked God to give her. My God, please give her a star, even if it is the smallest one, I said to God. And use this star to guide her, so that she will not be lost. God granted my request. He gave a star, but not to her. I gradually realized he’d given the star to me. She was my star. She lit my path, showing me the way. I was the one who was lost. Ah Yan, Wende, Stella. Swallow, Wind, Star. Those were her three names, or rather, three sides of her person. If you separated them, they were three entirely different parts, and it’s hard to imagine that they were all of one body. But together, you could hardly see the seams between them. They blended as naturally as water and milk.

  Even if you were given a thousand or ten thousand chances, you could never imagine the first time I met Stella. It transcended the boundaries of human imagination. Such cruel scenes are generally seen only in the animal world.

  It was a spring morning seventy-two years ago. The Qingming Festival had just passed, and it was warm. If I remember correctly, that day was the most beautiful day of the year. The color of the sky had never been seen before or ever again. Everything in nature seemed to be singing. The sun sang of its power to nourish all things, the mountains and plains sang of the cleansing verdure brought by the rains, the trees sang their delight in the blossoming of their branches, and the flowers sang of desire stoked by the wings of bees and butterflies. Who would have thought when there were thousands of ordinary days to choose from, brutality would visit on a day of such rare beauty? On that day, I finally grasped something I had read, but never understood. I caught the meaning of T. S. Eliot’s incomprehensible poem, “The Waste Land.”

  April is the cruelest month, breeding

  Lilacs out of dead land . . .

  That day, I was going to visit an herbalist in another village. I had several such friends in this area. “Herbalist” is something of a formal name. He was more rightly known as a witch doctor. I was not visiting him to preach the Gospel (God forgive me), because people like him had heads of granite, making it hard even for God to find the smallest crack leading in. I was visiting him to ask about the growing environment of a certain type of herb and how it could be distinguished from other similar plants. Herbalists are often reluctant to pass along such advanced knowledge to others, especially their peers, but I had a way in. My stepping-stone was very simple: a few pieces of American candy or a printed handkerchief like those that women in the city loved. Having lived in the area for years, I knew that the people most willing to open the door to me were children and women. I wanted to get to know these people because my own medical supplies were dwindling. The medical supplies that had required six porters to carry when I’d disembarked in Shanghai had been used up over the years. Though my parent organization in America used various channels to transport a new batch of donated medicines to me each year, the friends I had in the area also helped me source medicines that were in short supply on the black market, replenishing my stores. Even so, relative to the massive demand, this supply was merely a drop in the bucket, so I saved the limited Western medicines to use in emergencies. For patients with colds or bumps and bruises, I used herbs and their variants, such as powders, ointments, and so forth. As taught in the book of Matthew, I learned to be “as shrewd as a serpent” over the years.

  It was about forty-five li from my place to the village I was visiting. Such distances were not very far but also not close. People had a variety of ways to travel, according to the level of wealth—sedan, by horse or mule, wheelbarrow, walking, and so on. I had a form of transportation that was rare in the area: a bicycle. It had been left to me by a missionary who was returning home. I couldn’t accurately discern its age or origin, and the only silent thing about it was the bell. It had no brakes, a few spokes were broken, and the tires had been patched on numerous occasions with a variety of innovative materials. Even so, it was the most efficient and convenient means of transportation on these rural trails. I had tended to many emergencies on that bike.

  I had grown tired as I approached my destination, so I stopped the bike, found a rock to sit on, and took a drink of the tea I’d brought from home. A breeze started to blow, gradually drying my sweat so that the fabric no longer clung to my back. The grass on the side of the road bent in the wind. It rose and fell, sounding like the babble of running water. I suddenly noticed that a large patch of grass beside me was flattened. It wasn’t a mule’s hoofprint or the footprint of a person hurrying by. Neither human nor animal feet could have trampled such a large area. It looked as if a heavy object had been dragged over the ground. As I was trying to understand what could have made it, I heard a rustling noise. Turning, I saw a person stand up in a shallow ditch behind me, crying out. The light was behind her, throwing her face into shadow, but I could see it was a woman. She was stooping over, holding something. She tried to move toward me, stumbled, then stopped, her body swaying. It looked like she was about to fall. I put down the tea and ran toward her. When she saw me, she was stunned. I guessed that in the sunlight, she could tell that my eyes were blue, that I was a foreigner. After a moment’s hesitation, her knees buckled, and she knelt involuntarily. As she fell, she leaned forward, and her arms stretched slightly forward, as if showing me the thing she held in her hands. I finally realized what it was. It looked like a loosely coiled snake. Half of it was stuck in her belly, and the other half scattered over her palms. It was red and glistening faintly purple, with uneven lines snaking over it.

  God! It was intestines. She was holding her own intestines.

  I noticed that she was
missing three fingers, and there was a long gash across her belly. The black blouse she wore was stiff with dried blood. Her neck jerked strenuously, as if she were indicating something farther up on the slope, and her lips twitched for a moment. She said, “My . . . daughter . . .” Then she fell like a sack. I slapped her cheeks, hoping to keep her alert, but the blue sky and mountains reflected in her eyes had become murky. I rushed to get the medicine box tied to the back of my bicycle. It was an automatic response, despite the fact that I had nothing in the box that could save her. By the time I got back, she had no pulse. Of course, she’d actually died much earlier. She was just holding on to her final breath until she saw me.

  Recalling her final words, I ran in the direction she’d indicated. On the slope only twenty paces away, there was a bundle of white like a rock protruding from the grass. Approaching, I saw that it was a white blouse—or more accurately, it was the tattered remains of a blouse. Beneath it, a body lay in a huddle. I turned it over. It was a young girl, and she was unconscious. She looked about twelve, maybe a little older. She was almost completely naked. There were no visible injuries to her, but there was sticky, wet blood on her thighs. It was still flowing. Pulling her legs apart, I found a thick wooden stick jammed into her, stained purple with blood.

  Later, when I recalled that scene, I could never quite conjure the emotions I felt at the time. I could only recall the pain. It stands to reason that the pain started in the eyes, then perhaps moved to the heart and belly. But at the time, my eyes, heart, and belly were all numb. It was only my ears that hurt. It seemed that ten thousand planes flew into my ears all at once. A wild roar hijacked my ability to think, and my mind was nothing but a blank. I just kept repeating a single word: “animals.”

  If this girl didn’t get immediate debridement and treatment, she would die from blood loss or infection. But I didn’t have the necessary equipment in my box. I would have to go home right away. The rational doctor inside me overcame the shocked pastor. I calmed down, took off my tunic, and twisted it into a cord. I lifted the girl and tied her across the handlebars of my bicycle with the makeshift rope. As I rode, I leaned forward as much as possible, hiding the girl’s naked body. If anyone had seen this foreigner dressed in an unseasonably light undershirt riding wildly against the wind with his back hunched over the handlebars, they would have thought me a madman. But I didn’t care. Halfway home, I remembered the dead woman I’d left in the ditch, but there was nothing more I could do for her. I prayed some good Samaritan would come along, like the gentile in the Bible who stopped to help the Jew in trouble. A dead person’s dignity was never as important as a living life.

  My bike caused me no trouble that day, and I made the journey faster than usual. When I dismounted from the bicycle, I saw blood on the seat. It was my blood. I hadn’t even noticed that my thighs had been rubbed raw as I rode. That old bike, whose age and origin I could not determine, performed great military acts in that time of war. If it were a soldier, or even a dog, it would have been given a distinguished medal. But it was just a bike. Still, if I had the right to confer honors, the medal I would give it wouldn’t have anything to do with military efforts during war. In all its service, I’m most proud of how it performed in saving Stella’s life that day. Of course, she wasn’t yet called by that name then.

  I took the girl into my house, put her on my bed, and immediately began debridement. I had no anesthetic, so I could only give her a sedative. I tried to be gentle, but she was still woken by pain in the middle of the procedure. She screamed and tried to get up, but with no strength left, she just leaned against the wall. It wasn’t horror that came into her eyes when she saw me. That terror came later. It was a look of uncertainty about where she was.

  “Don’t be afraid. I’m a doctor. American,” I said as gently as possible. “You’ve been injured, and I’m trying to treat you.”

  My words seemed to remind her of the nightmare she had endured not long before. She was suddenly aware of her nakedness. She wrapped her arms around her chest and tried to curl her body up, but couldn’t cover her whole body. Her sense of shame made her start shaking. I put my coat over her, and she calmed down a little, then recalled a matter of urgency.

  “My mother. Where’s my mother?” she asked with a hoarse whisper.

  I hesitated. I couldn’t be sure how much she’d seen. Finally, I settled on a vague lie.

  “She’s home already. Don’t worry.”

  Her mouth twitched, like she was trying to smile but didn’t have the strength. She believed me. This was the first and only lie I ever told her. I would tell her the truth, but not then. I wanted to wait until she had recovered enough resilience to bear such grievous news. Though she was calmer, she wouldn’t cooperate. She refused to allow me to unwrap the coat covering her body. I couldn’t help but be amazed that one so badly injured still had such willpower.

  I told her, “Your injury is serious. If we don’t deal with it as soon as possible, it will cause an infection.”

  She looked at me blankly, and I realized she didn’t understand the word “infection,” so I said, “It will become inflamed.” She still didn’t understand. I tried “rot and decay,” and she finally understood. I watched in her eyes as two things battled in her mind. One was shame, and the other was putrefaction. Finally, shame won out, and her hands clasped the corner of the coat tightly.

  “Child, do you understand that if I don’t treat it quickly, you could die?” I said.

  A trace of horror flashed across her eyes. But it was too small. It was just a spark and was quickly snuffed out by shame. She clutched the coat even tighter.

  “If you don’t let me treat you, later you might not be able”—I chewed over the end of the sentence in my mind, changing versions several times, then finally settled—“to have little ones.”

  Saying such a thing to such a young girl felt cruel, but it was the only thing I could try now. In a rural, reclusive village, the threat of barrenness could be worse than death. I saw that the fingers clutching the coat moved a little. I took a handkerchief from my pocket and covered her eyes.

  “Imagine we’re in a dark forest, too dark for either of us to see. You’re not wearing clothes, and neither am I. You can’t see me, and I can’t see you. We each can’t even see ourselves. OK?”

  She finally lay back, allowing me to remove the coat. The debridement was very painful, and I knew she wanted to scream, but shame sealed her lips. She clamped her mouth shut tightly. The impression her teeth made in her lips deepened, and her lips turned blue, while her teeth turned red, covered in blood. I put a towel into her mouth so she could bite it. Finally she screamed, allowing the towel to absorb the sharp edges of her voice, leaving only a few blurred chirps. Even though I feared infection, I didn’t want to give her antibiotics. Instead, I fed her rice porridge and chicken soup to restore the nutrients she needed. I hoped she carried enough antibodies in her young body to battle the bacteria without assistance. But I lost. Her wound became infected. She came down with a high fever and slept a great deal, muttering a string of words that I couldn’t understand. The only word I caught was “Ma,” and something about a brother whose name was indistinct. I gave her water and wiped her body with alcohol, using well water to make a cold compress, but none of the cooling methods worked. Finally, I had no choice but to give her the last of my antibiotics. She probably never had any Western medicine before—perhaps no medicine of any kind—so she was especially sensitive to it.

  The next morning when I came to check on her, in the guest room I kept for traveling missionaries, she was awake and sitting at the foot of the bed. Her back was toward me, and she was looking out the window at the branches full of oleander blossoms. She had no clothes, so she wore one of my old tunics, with the sleeves rolled up. If she’d stood up, it would’ve completely covered her feet. I asked my cook, a local Christian woman I’d hired, to see if there were any suitable old clothes for the girl in her house. I told the cook what had h
appened to the girl because I knew she could keep the secret. Luckily, no one in Yuehu knew her. Not only could she recover quietly, but she could also avoid anyone finding out what happened. I knew from my experience that nothing could cleanse the shame of a girl who met such a disaster, save death.

  I felt her forehead, then said, “Child, your fever has subsided. That’s very good.”

  She pulled back and trembled involuntarily. For a long time after that, whenever someone came near her, she would tremble.

  “You can call me Pastor Mai or Pastor Billy,” I told her.

  I spoke carefully, quietly, as if she were made of porcelain and might break at the slightest touch. She didn’t speak, but just nodded.

  “What about you? I don’t know your name,” I said.

  She hesitated for a long time, as if that were a difficult test question.

  “My name is San . . . Sanmei,” she said timidly, after a long pause.

  A generic name, meaning “third girl.” She was probably not used to lying. The way she kept blinking showed her discomfort. I could tell this wasn’t her real name. Why didn’t she want to tell me her real name? In that name, there must have been a number of relatives and family members or perhaps a matchmaker. She didn’t want me to get involved with those relations, because I knew the secret they must never know. It was only then that I really saw her face. She was a pretty girl, though her eyes seemed slightly mismatched to her face. After a while, I realized it was because she had the face of a teenager but the eyes of an adult who’d seen the world. I couldn’t look directly at such sad eyes.

  In the little wooden box I always had with me, there was a thick book of prayers. It held prayers for weddings, funerals, christenings, baptisms, confirmations, graduations, loss of job, illnesses, loss of loved ones, and even the loss of a pet. But I couldn’t find a word in God’s whole lexicon to comfort a girl who’d lost her innocence at a time when she did not even know what it meant. I racked my brain, only to see just how impoverished my diction was.