by Sean Wallace
“What happened?” I asked. No one answered me.
Then Xiaoyan tugged at my arm and pointed to the back of the Warrior. Attached to the Warrior’s spine was something that resembled a backpack, from which extended four arms. The top two arms held symmetrical turbines, each as wide as the Warrior itself, and the lower two arms ended in what appeared to be machine guns with grips suitable for the Warrior’s hands. The exhaust vents that were once mounted into the shoulders had been united and relocated to the bottom of the backpack-like attachment.
I looked up and surveyed the other Terracotta Warriors, still secure in their wall mounts. They all had identical attachments. There was no question what the turbines were supposed to do, or what was the cause of this Warrior’s crash.
“They taught them to fly,” Xiaoyan said with wonderment in her voice.
On the way back, Xiaoyan told me to stop the vehicle right on the edge of town, before we became visible under the burning sodium lights. I gladly obliged. From out of nowhere, she pulled out what looked like two folded paper bags with wire frames in the middle. I stared at them in confusion.
“What are these things?”
“Kongming lanterns,” she said, opening the door of the transport. “Come outside, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
She gave me a pen. “You write your wish on the outside, you see,” she explained. “Then you unfold the whole thing and light the burner at the bottom – careful not to burn yourself – then when the air inside is heated up enough, you let go of it, and it floats into the sky.”
I did as she said. I ran into some trouble trying to set the burner alight, but soon enough the fire was burning with a bright yellow flame. It took two of us to hold the lantern properly so it wouldn’t topple and catch fire.
After my lantern had taken off into the sky, we prepared hers next. I tried to see what she wished for, but she hid that surface away from me.
“No peeking,” she said playfully.
When we released her lantern into the air, it turned around, and I could see her simple wish written in plain characters: “To run away,” the words read.
Xiaoyan hugged my arm and rested her head against my shoulder as we watched the two lanterns drift off into the night, becoming little specks of orange in the distance, and then finally disappearing into the darkness.
I did not see Xiaoyan for a long time after that. Every Saturday, I would sit near the entrance, having cigarettes with Hou, waiting to see if she would appear, but she never showed up.
Meanwhile, the news that came to us got darker and darker with each passing day. The conflict that had started out as scattered embers in the Western world had, as the radio announcer predicted, escalated into an all-out war. Meanwhile, south of the Great Wall, the insurgency had bloomed into the people’s revolution, with pockets of resistance rising even from territories previously assumed to be free from Kuomintang influence.
Near the end of September, the word of the Emperor came to us, and our entire division was split in two. One half was to continue watching the northern border, and the other half was to march south to help quell the fires of revolution. Our company was part of the half that was to stay behind.
Zhihe all but said, “I told you so.”
Even Hou, who had been so gung-ho about being a part of the fighting, became solemn and, if I read him correctly, a little bit scared. He no longer talked about the glories of war and the trampling of foes beneath our feet, only listening in pained silence as the conflict beyond and within our borders grew in intensity.
Like that, fall passed and changed into winter.
I thought about Xiaoyan often, about where she was and what she was up to. I realized that in all the times we’d spent together, I had never found out anything about her: whether she supported the dynasty or the revolution; if she liked music or sports; or if she read books or watched the occasional opera. All our interactions had always been about me, my life, what I was doing, what were the things I liked. I resolved to devote the next time we met to find out everything I could about her life.
One morning in October, as the winter chill was just beginning to set in and we were still getting used to our winter uniforms, the alarm sounded. The sound was so unfamiliar that none of us recognized it at first. We exchanged glances: are you hearing what I’m hearing? Then, as a collective realization settled upon all of us, we pulled our boots on and sprinted out into the training area.
The space seemed larger now, with half of our numbers gone. Commander Long gave us a hurried briefing: Mongolian forces had crossed the northern border not too far in the east. So far, there hadn’t been any action yet, and General Zhou was being transported over with the fastest airship we had available; but in any case, it seemed like a conflict was imminent, and we were all to be on the standby.
That afternoon, the whole camp came alive like I’d never seen it before. We all had to be in full gear at all times, and all over the camp, the reserve firearms were being tested and vehicles being refueled. Over the next few days, as negotiations were carried out between the generals, we were drilled on battle formations and open combat situations. Out in the open plains, none of the quick-response, close-quarter techniques we were taught had any value. Shoot first, shoot accurately, don’t get shot. It was as simple as that.
Our weekends were taken away from us. Hou grumbled especially loud. I took this in stride – it wasn’t as though our enemies would cease fire just because it’s a Saturday. We had to be prepared.
For days, and then for weeks, nothing happened. Which, if anything, only served to put us all further on edge. In this period, we saw how each other reacted to pressure. Hou was still making stupid jokes and treating everything lightly, but you could tell that there was something profoundly disturbed beneath that façade of aloofness. Myself, I thought that I acted no different than usual, only a little bit twitchier than I was before.
Zhihe, on the other hand, seemed to have gained some kind of transcendental clarity. Like he was suddenly enlightened, and was on his way to Nirvana.
“Personal gain, selfish ambition,” he said as he drew lines in the sand with one hand and held a cigarette with the other, “All extensions of self is what perpetuates the cycle of samsara. Realize that the self, in itself, is suffering; and when you eliminate the self, you will also eliminate suffering. Only then there is freedom from the endless cycle. Amitabha.”
All I could offer in response to his divine insight was a thoughtful “Hmm” before I drew another long puff.
“It’s okay, you know,” he said, coming back to earth. “If you want to be a poet.”
I gave a laugh. “I never said I wanted to be one,” I said. “Even if I did, I don’t need you to tell me that it’s okay to be one.”
“That’s exactly it,” he said. “You don’t need to care what I think. You don’t need to care what anyone thinks. The only person who needs to be in agreement is yourself.”
I wondered if this contradicted with what he just said about the elimination of self and all, but the matter proved to be too much mental work, and I shoved it aside. “I don’t want to be a poet,” I said.
“Really? Then what do you want to be?”
“No one.” The cigarette was down to the filter now. I crushed it into the hard soil with my boot.
“Very good. If that is all you aspire to be, then you’re already there. You’re already living the dream.”
But that wasn’t true. No one was no one. Even the most mundane person on earth was significant, in the way that he is the absolutely most boring person on earth. That in itself was something. As long as there was someone who knew you, recognized you, you were someone to that person; and being someone to somebody carried with it expectations and unwritten contracts and unspoken agreements. The only way you could be absolutely no one was to be a ghost, always traveling to new places and leaving before anyone got to know you.
“War,” Zhihe said suddenly, lapsing into another on
e of his philosophical episodes, “It’s all so pointless.
I thought again about what I said to Xiaoyan, about wandering the earth endlessly, and wondered if it wasn’t what I really wanted after all.
I tried writing letters. In the minutes – sometimes five, sometimes thirty – between one activity and the next, while the others gathered in groups to discuss what was really happening to the negotiations between General Zhou and the Mongolian general, I sat with my journal and attempted to write letters to Xiaoyan.
It was cathartic, if nothing else. Even if I did write a letter that I was happy with, it wasn’t as though I had the guts to mail it. Not that it stopped me from trying.
I miss you, I’d write. You should come and visit again. I want to know more about you, and your life. All I know is your name. But even if you don’t want to talk about yourself, I’m also fine with just spending time with you. I hope to see you again soon. I miss you.
And then I would tear the whole thing up and flush the pieces down the toilet.
Putting one’s feelings into words is a tedious task. When it came to writing poems, even shitty ones, one could hide behind all sorts of fancy words and euphemisms. But when it came to articulating my feelings in plain terms, I found myself at a complete loss.
“Hey, Hou,” I asked one night, as we were washing up before going to bed, “How do you be honest about your feelings?”
He looked at me, water still clinging to his face in droplets. Then as he wiped his face, he said, “What do you mean? You just be honest. There’s no trick to it.”
I realized then that I had asked the wrong person and left it there. But once you got Hou’s curiosity, you were in for the long run. “What’s this about?” he pressed. “Are you still seeing that girl? I haven’t seen her around lately.”
“No,” I said as simply as I could, “But I want to see her again.”
“That’s just it then,” he said. “Just tell her that. When it comes to being honest, the fewer words you use, the better.”
That night, before the lights went out in the dormitory, I finally wrote a letter that I was happy with. It simply read, “Let’s run away.” Then despite my fragile courage, I sent it off that Saturday.
The war began on the first day of November, and even more of us left. In the future, when students reach the chapter about the war that began at the Great Wall, they will be happy to find that it began on such an easy date to remember, I thought.
At the same time, an unexpected stormy weather hit the Great Wall, giving us the coldest winter we ever had. All day and all night the blinding snow fell from the sky, forming dirty piles of slush everywhere. We took to wearing our winter uniforms to sleep, and even then the cold bit. Some of us went to sleep with our boots on.
Many fell sick then, especially those who were on the night watch. Hou, Zhihe, and I were called upon to replace the men who were now burning with fever in the infirmary.
From the ground level, the idea of watching the border from a hot air balloon sounded simple, if a little bit silly. I thought I was doing so well, too, when I first stepped onto the gondola and successfully balanced myself. But that was when it was floating barely two feet off the ground.
At a hundred feet in the air, the winds were wicked. The balloon and gondola both swayed and shook so violently that, at several points, I was convinced that the balloon was going to snap free of the wall and get carried off into the dark unknown. But the tethers were secure; and somehow I managed to make it through the night. Over time, I managed to overcome the vertigo, but there was no helping the cold winds.
The radio signal grew strangely weak in those cold, cold days. The only way we could receive news on the outside world was through the words of people who came delivering supplies and the weekly newspapers. The Kuomintang was rapidly gaining traction, and with the imminent threat coming from the north, the dynasty was at Morton’s Fork: give in to the revolution and be dismantled, or focus so much on quelling the revolution that it left itself wide open to an invasion.
The war in Europe, as far as I could tell, hadn’t made any progress in the past few months. It was just battle after battle, skirmish after skirmish, endless rounds of suffering and bloodshed all across the battlegrounds.
Round and round we go. Where does it end?
I sent in my resignation form to Captain Lee. He took one look at the document and then laid it face-down on his desk.
“Have you thought this through?” he asked.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“Once you opt out, there is no returning,” he said. “No matter how hard you try or who you know. You also won’t be able to get a job with the government anymore, and you’ll be surrendering your pension.”
“I know that.”
He stared at me for a good few seconds, saying nothing. His gaze pierced into my eyes, as though searching my soul, making sense of my motivations. Then he said, “I’m not going to ask you to stay. If you want to leave, that’s your choice to make. But you need to know what you’re sacrificing when you give up your uniform and walk out of these gates: security, a future, friends . . .”
“It’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
He nodded. “Very well, then,” he said. He turned my form face-up again, pounded his rubber stamp into an inkpad, and then stamped his office at the bottom of the document before signing it. “You will leave on December twenty-four,” he said. “Until then, you will assume all your roles and responsibilities as usual. I will tell you when your official statement of release is ready. It shouldn’t take more than two weeks.”
When I saw Xiaoyan again, she was positively beaming. In front of everyone, she held my face and gave me a good, long kiss.
“I got your letter,” she said.
Hou was distraught, to say the least, when he found out about my decision.
“What?” he all but shrieked when I told him over breakfast, drawing the attention of several people around us. He didn’t bother with their looks. “You’re just going to leave me here? Alone?”
“You won’t be alone,” I pointed out. “There’s Zhihe. Not to mention at least one thousand and nine hundred other people in camp.”
“You know that’s not what I mean, idiot! What . . . What happened to our pact? What about our brotherhood?” he looked to Zhihe beside him, who had been silently eating his breakfast this whole time. “You tell him, Zhihe – you tell him that he’s wrong! He’s making a big mistake!”
Zhihe said nothing. Neither did I. What was the use of words when there was nothing left to say?
“You’re not even going to say anything?” Hou shook. For a moment, I was afraid that he was going to cry. But then he just threw his half-eaten toasted bread at me and stormed off. I spent the better part of that morning picking out breadcrumbs from my hair.
“You should have said something,” Xiaoyan said when we were together again. “You could have at least dulled the pain. Make it easier on him.”
“Is there any easy way to say goodbye?” I asked.
She thought about this for a long while. “No,” she said at last. “I suppose not.”
Captain Lee shot me an incredulous look when I made my request known.
“Are you serious?” he asked. I told him I was. He gave a bemused expression and said, “This is most unusual. Why can’t you just take the damn transport like everyone else?”
“I’ve grown attached to it,” I said. “It seems like a good way to go. I’ll pay for it, if that’s the main concern.”
“Are you stupid?” Captain Lee growled. “We have no shortage of money. But we don’t make a habit of giving souvenirs to people, least of all military equipment. If you need a memento that badly, take a dead bullet, or something. You want to spend the rest of your life explaining to officials how you came into possession of a watchstation?”
But I wouldn’t let go of it. Finally he sighed and said that he would bring my request up.
“But don’t ge
t your hopes up,” he said. “Be prepared to be disappointed. I can almost imagine the look on the commander’s face.” He shook his head. “What has gotten into you, boy? Are you caught in some identity crisis?”
“Quite the opposite,” I said. I thanked him and went on my way.
When the dawn came to end the miserable, cold night I spent curled up in the gondola, I was jolted from my uneasy slumber when a burst of fire, like the sound of firecrackers, went off in the distance. The endlessly swirling snow was gone, and the plains were bathed in cold morning sunlight. The watchstation to my left completed its fire check, and it was my turn.
I turned the safety off and fired six rounds into the north. The gondola shook with each shot. When General Zhou thought this up, he obviously wasn’t thinking much about its practical applications in combat, I thought.
To my surprise, there was a celebration of sorts in the eating area when I went there for breakfast. Adding to it, it was a celebration for me, for my last day at camp. Someone had went through the trouble of getting a small fruitcake and lit a candle on top of it for me. Zhihe flashed me a thumbs-up from the fringe of the small crowd.
“Here’s a little bit of poetry I wrote for Mako, who is the dumbest person I know,” Hou said as he stood on a chair. There was laughter all around. Hou cleared his throat and read from a piece of paper. “Mako is a friend of mine, I know him very well,” he read. “He has rocks for ears and shit for brains, as far as I can tell . . .”
The poem went on more or less like that for about four stanzas. It was a terrible poem from start to end, but it wasn’t for me to criticize it. When it was done, I laughed and applauded him along with everyone else.
Hou stepped off his chair and gave me a hug. “I’ll never forgive you,” he said. “Be sure I don’t see you after this, or I promise you, I will shoot you.”