A Single Swallow
Page 36
I’m sorry. I don’t want to give you the impression—if you can even have impressions—that we took a long journey, traveling day and night by land and river, like trainees at the camp walking endlessly on an overnight mission. In fact, for ghosts, a difficult journey is only in our minds. We are no longer affected by our soles, shoes, rusty bicycle wheels, lofty mountains, high ranges, rivers, marshes, or the merciless rain, sun, or snow. Wherever we wish to go, we are there. So when I say we rushed here, it is only to indicate our eagerness to see you, so many decades later.
The private room you’re in is the most spacious and brightest suite in the hospital, with air-conditioning and an attached bath. You can stay here safely as long as you want, not only because your grandson is head of this hospital but also because your son-in-law, Yang Jianguo, is paying your medical expenses. His paintings are now sold by the foot, just like the silk in the old Yuehu market. Of course, the prices are quite different. According to Liu Zhaohu, at the Christie’s auction last fall, his ink and wash painting Mother sold for $1.3 million, and the breastfeeding woman in the painting looks a bit like you. The rice you spared him from your own bowl back then didn’t turn him into an ungrateful, selfish person.
Stella. Oh, my Stella. Today, after the first sight of you, it took me a long time to look again. I can’t bear it. In my memory, you’re the little star who could brighten others even with her tears. How can I reconcile that with this old woman’s body that looks like an empty sack?
Who emptied this sack?
It was the war.
How much I wish I could go on saying that. Unfortunately, there is no truly innocent person in the world. War is a black cloth that blocks heaven’s light, preventing it from shining on the earth, and under its cover, no one can see their own conscience. The war put the first evil hand into your full and fruitful bag of life, and we followed behind it and stretched out our hands too. This “we” includes not just me, Ian, and Liu Zhaohu but also Ah May, Yang Jianguo, Scabby, Snot, the cook who spread rumors on her pillow, and the sentry who pointed a gun at you in front of the camp. “We” includes everyone who ever passed through your life. Each of us has guilt on our hands. Each of us reached into your heart and stole something from you.
My sinner.
I hear God calling me.
Tell me, please, what have you taken from this poor woman? he asks.
Not much, I answer. A little trust, patience, comfort, courage, goodwill, and at the most, you might add a good set of teeth, a bright forehead, and two full breasts.
Then what did you leave with her? God asks.
Quite a lot, Lord, like a worn-out bicycle, a dirty metal button, a disintegrating copy of Evolution and Ethics, and some humiliation that was not recorded on bamboo slips, silk rolls, ink on paper, or within any national law, town management law, marriage law, family law, or even law of public security, but which walked around on tongues and in whispers for centuries.
We took so little, and we left so much. Really, I say to God.
Stella, on the wall above your bed, there’s a newspaper clipping from the East American Chinese Herald. There are three columns, beneath an old black-and-white photo with blurred edges. In the photo are two people, Ian and Liu Zhaohu. Of course, at the time, Liu Zhaohu had no name, but was just 635. They probably just returned from training. There’s sweat on their foreheads and shoulders. The military dog Ghost stands between them, his front paws on Ian’s arm. From the photo, I can even hear his ecstatic bark when he sees his master. From three thousand miles away, he can smell Ian’s sweat.
That was a cruel time, but also so simple and innocent. Ian didn’t know Liu Zhaohu’s past. Liu Zhaohu didn’t know Ian’s past. Neither of them knew my past. And no one knew Ghost’s past. The war erased everyone’s history, and we only spoke in the present tense, which required no modifications.
There is a basket of flowers on your bedside table, large white lilies mixed with large pink ones. They’re a few days old, and the petals are somewhat wilted. The signature on the red ribbon, in Chinese, is The Anti-Japanese War Veterans Volunteer Service Team.
Who dug six feet underground and discovered Liu Zhaohu, dead now for so many years? Who leaked a seventy-year-old secret? Was it the registration list, left behind somewhere again? Was it a key to a filing cabinet that was misplaced? Someone with loose lips? They—I mean the media and the wallets behind the media—found Ian and Liu Zhaohu after all. If they found these two men, did they follow the vine to the melon and discover the secrets between three men and a woman?
If there’d been no war, I probably would never have met you. You probably would’ve been Liu Zhaohu’s Ah Yan forever, never my Stella or Ian’s Wende. You make things difficult for me. I don’t know if I can say I’d rather I had never known you than to have gone through the war or if I should instead say that I’d happily endure the war just for the sake of knowing you. You were a source of warmth and light put on my path by God, my whole little universe. Having you meant I had the world. So, if I can face myself with complete honesty (which presumably only a spirit can do), I would rather have known you, even if it means the earth crumbles and the map is torn to pieces by war.
War? My sinner, whose war was it? I hear God ask.
Yes, whose war? I ask myself. The emperor’s? Tōjō Hideki’s? Yasuji Okamura’s? Roosevelt’s? Chongqing’s? Yan’an’s?
All of these, and none of these. It was your war, God says.
It’s true. It was my war, when I tucked my tunic into my waistband and rode my worn-out bicycle back and forth to camp with covert intel obtained from the black market.
It was also Liu Zhaohu’s war, when he took the recruitment announcement from the tree trunk and wore through a pair of cloth shoes as he hurried to Yuehu.
It was Ian’s too, when, on his twentieth birthday, he walked out of the Italian restaurant into the cold Chicago street in winter and decided to enlist.
And in fact, didn’t it become your war, Stella? When you rowed the sampan carrying Ian to the commissariat to get the mail or when you sewed Snot’s head, stitch by stitch, onto his body?
It was our war. If we dissected the immense body of that war, we’d find each of us holds a small part in our hands, and that is how it becomes a personal war.
It was our choice, and each of us must pay our dues for the small piece of it that we hold in our hands.
Ha ha.
I hear laughter.
My Lord, why are you laughing? Could it be that you have a prophecy for your servant?
Prophecy? I only give prophecies to a very few. Perhaps a parable, like the parables recorded in the Gospels, God says.
There was once a huge ocean liner, bigger than the Titanic, that sank in the frozen sea. It set out from Boston and sailed slowly toward Manchester. There were ten restaurants on board, each of which could accommodate a thousand guests. There were five ballrooms with professional bands, each of which could support the weight of three thousand pairs of dance shoes. There were four theaters, simultaneously staging the most fashionable plays, the most amazing magic shows, the most famous concerts, and the newest Hollywood blockbusters. Aside from the cabins, all public spaces on the ship were open and accessible twenty-four hours a day. There were twenty-five floors in total. Visiting each one, top to bottom, enjoying every salon, bar, café, pool, wave pool, casino, fitness center, and entertainment venue would take two full days. Every guest thinks they can go wherever they want and do whatever they please. But they forget that, no matter how many decks and no matter how much entertainment there is to choose from, the ship will always arrive at Manchester in the end.
Do you understand, my servant?
I remain silent for a long time.
“I understand, my God,” I finally say. “No matter how big a chessboard you give us, in the end, we are always just pieces in your hand. You have long ago set out a circle of action for us. My Lord, you also drew out such a circle for the war, and the war was just a che
ss piece in your hand.”
“Grandma, please have a bite.”
Stella, I see your grandson, the neurosurgeon who used the earnings from his father’s—your son-in-law’s—paintings to finish his studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He’s feeding you a liquid diet now, of purees and protein shakes. Those eyes looking at you glitter with light like crystals. They haven’t yet tasted the bitterness we have tasted.
You mumble something. After the blood vessels hardened, your tongue lost its elasticity, becoming more like a wooden board than a rubber band. He doesn’t understand, but I do. There’s one other possible explanation for a stroke, a strange pathological change that destroys the original sensory system and breaks down the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead.
I know that you are saying, “Wind. Wind.”
It’s the sound of our ghosts passing by your window. Your grandson can’t hear it, but you can.
Your eyes turn to the window, and they suddenly change.
You see us.
Epilogue
Shanghai Urban News Online
Headline: A Letter Lost in the Dust of the Centuries
While renovating his house in Jing’an District, a Shanghai homeowner found a letter hidden under the floorboards seventy years ago. The building served as a post office during the Republican era in China. The letter is stamped and postmarked, but was apparently never mailed. Perhaps a post office employee forgot it, and it was never found. The envelope was damaged by moisture, so the writing is partially illegible. The name of the sender is Ian Ferguson, and the address is Broadway Mansions (today a hotel by the same name). The name and address of the addressee are obscured. The postmark year is 1946, but the month and day are smudged. The letter itself was also damaged in many places, though it is still partly legible. Ferguson was apparently an American soldier sent to support the Chinese effort, and he was writing to a Chinese woman named Wende. The stationery is the rice paper common at that time, and the words are written in Mandarin with a brush, likely by a hired scribe. The letter is short, like a telegram. It reads:
Dear Wende,
If you are willing, when you receive this letter, please meet me at XX the address on this letter. I intend to apply for a XX license at the XXX Office. Recently, XXXXXX XX has increased dramatically, and the waiting period is XXXXX months. I’ll tell you specific details in person. Please quickly XX.
Yours,
Ian
The X’s mark the places where the text is illegible. The old letter, sealed for seventy years in the dust of history, is undoubtedly of interest to researchers of the anti-Japanese war. Our column hopes to locate the “Wende” and “Ian” mentioned in the letter. We ask anyone with information to please contact us immediately. Your help may allow us to restore a forgotten story to its owners.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2018 Li Zhou
Zhang Ling is the award-winning author of nine novels and numerous collections of novellas and short stories. Born in China, she moved to Canada in 1986. In the mid-1990s, she began to write and publish fiction in Chinese while working as a clinical audiologist. Since then she has won the Chinese Media Literature Award for Author of the Year, the Grand Prize of Overseas Chinese Literary Award, and Taiwan’s Open Book Award. Among Zhang Ling’s work are Gold Mountain Blues and Aftershock, adapted into China’s first IM AX movie with unprecedented box-office success.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © 2016 Susie Gordon
Shelly Bryant divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a poet, writer, and translator. She is the author of eleven volumes of poetry, a pair of travel guides for the cities of Suzhou and Shanghai, a book on classical Chinese gardens, and a short story collection. She has translated Chinese text for publishers such as Penguin Books and various organizations, including the National Library Board in Singapore and the Human Sciences Research Council. Her translation of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, and her translation of You Jin’s In Time, Out of Place was short-listed for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016. Shelly received a Distinguished Alumni award from Oklahoma Christian University in 2017.