Will of a Tiger

by Iris Yang

  Through a maze of narrow back streets they found the house at the edge of town. Even though Birch was prepared, he was still stunned.

  The low, one-story dwelling before them looked shabby and neglected. After a recent downpour, water overflowed from the drainage and formed murky puddles along the base of the mud-brick wall. The foul-smelling air from trash assailed his nostrils.

  A dull-eyed man opened the door, his hunched figure lurking in the doorway. Unsteady and weak, he appeared to be in his seventies. Hard living had etched deep lines into his leathery face. “Whom are you looking for?”

  “Is this Ding Fang’s home?” asked Birch, using Mr. Ding’s full name.

  “Yes,” the old man answered. He narrowed his eyes with suspicion. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Bai Hua. Ding Fang was my friend.”

  A look of fear spread across the old man’s face. Quickly, he glanced up and down the street. Seizing Birch’s arm, he pulled him inside. “Come inside.” He signaled the other young men to follow.

  The room was primitive and dilapidated. Except for a narrow bed, a timeworn wooden table, and a bamboo stool, there wasn’t any furniture. In one corner stood a clay stove, and nearby several pots and pans lay scattered on the floor. The walls were covered with dust, and cobwebs dangled from the low ceiling. A musty smell permeated the air. Only a ray of daylight filtered through a soot-covered window.

  The room was so small that there was hardly enough space for all five visitors. Birch took the only stool available, and the young villagers crowded around him. The host apologized as he sat on the edge of the bed next to an old woman.

  “Did you say that you are a friend of my son?” she asked.

  The word “son” rendered Birch speechless. Mr. Ding had been in his late twenties, and Birch had assumed that his parents would be in their late forties or early fifties. But this woman seemed much older. Everything about her was sunken and shriveled—her hair was thin and white, and her skin had a gray pallor.

  “Are you a communist?” asked the old man. His age-spotted hands rested on his lap, fingers laced. “You shouldn’t come here. If anyone finds out, we’ll all be in trouble.”

  “No, I’m not a communist. Ding Fang and I were in prison together. We were friends.”

  “Good heavens!” The man stood up, his thin limbs shaking. “You and my son were in the same prison?”

  Birch rose quickly and took the father’s hands. “Yes, we were locked up in the same cell.” He spent the next half hour telling them the story, but he skipped the beating and the torture Mr. Ding had endured. No one interrupted except to utter spontaneous exclamations of dismay and disbelief.

  “Your son was strong,” Birch assured them. “He’s a hero.”

  Tears poured down the old man’s face. It took several minutes for him to stop weeping, and after wiping away tears with his knuckles, he said, “No one has ever told us anything…after the Japs took him. It’s been three years, and he never came home. We guessed that he was gone. But we had no idea how.” He pumped Birch’s hands. “Thank you for coming to tell us.”

  “Your son was a great man. He was brave and kind. I’m sorry for your loss.” Birch leaned forward to bridge the gap between them. Then he steered the conversation in another direction. “When will his wife return home? I have a personal message—”

  “You don’t know?” The old man’s voice trailed in a fragile moan. “His wife…long gone.”

  “Thank God he didn’t know!” Hugging her arms around her skinny frame, the old woman looked heartbroken, yet she hadn’t shed a tear.

  Birch was baffled. “What happened?”

  “The Japs… We went to the market that morning. When we came back…our neighbor grabbed us and hid us…” His voice was barely audible.

  “We heard her scream. There was blood everywhere,” she said in a strangled sob.

  Through their incoherent ramblings, Birch pieced the story together:

  The Japanese had captured Mr. Ding’s wife before they found him. They didn’t bother to take her to the prison because she wasn’t a target. Right in their home, they threw her on the table and took turns raping her. After they found out she was four months pregnant, they threatened to kill her baby. When she refused to talk, they sliced her stomach open and cut out the fetus.

  Was she a communist like Mr. Ding? Maybe she didn’t know anything as she wailed and begged for her life and for her child’s life. No one knew the truth.

  Several months later Ding Fang’s mother lost her eyesight; she’d cried too much. His father had also become ill and couldn’t hold a job. He picked trash for a living. Soon both of them looked much older than their age.

  Because they were family members of a communist, the government evicted the parents from the school housing. It was a year after the war with Japan ended, and Yunnan was under Nationalist control. The Nationalists and the Communists were fighting a ferocious civil war.

  “We had to sell most of our belongings to buy food,” the old man said. “If it weren’t for the money we found under a flower pot, we wouldn’t even have a roof over our heads.”

  Birch went pale. He knew that money belonged to the Communist Party—Mr. Ding had told them so on the night before his death, and he wanted his wife to return it to the Party. But Birch decided on the spot not to relay that message. The Communists could go on without the money. To the old couple, it was a lifeline.

  Sympathy and compassion exploded in Birch’s chest. He couldn’t stand to watch the old couple suffer another day. Without thinking, he gave them all his money and decided to stay in Dashan for just one night. He would come back later to search for Danny. And he was certain that Danny would agree with him.

  As the father accepted the money, he dropped to his wobbly knees. “Thank you!” he murmured, his lips trembling.

  Kneeling showed the highest reverence and gratitude but was almost always done by someone of a younger generation, or at least younger age, and rarely the other way around. But the old man’s stick-dry body bowed all the way to the floor.

  Birch stood and pulled the old man to his feet.

  That night at the inn, sleep eluded Birch for hours. When he finally dozed off, a familiar nightmare returned and tormented him in the early hours of the morning. Mr. Ding pleaded in his croaky voice, “Take my son. Let him fight the Japs.” He was holding a bloody baby high above his head. Then Captain Zhang barked, “Nationalists are fucking animals, just like the Japs.” His fingers curled into fists and waved wildly in the air. Before Birch could react, a woman’s bloodcurdling wail jerked him upright. He had to take large gulps of air to break the fierce grip of his nightmare.

  The sky was a dull gray as they started on their way home. The leaden sky mirrored their mood. Birch was still shaken. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard of Japanese atrocities, but his heart always ached over such viciousness.

  The reality that he couldn’t have children heightened his sensitivity to violence against them. Birch was grateful that the teacher had never learned the truth about what had happened to his wife and unborn baby. He understood why the mother had cried out, “Thank God he didn’t know!”

  “Mr. Ding had wanted his son to fight the Japs when he grew up,” said Birch in a despondent tone to the young villagers. He sat upon the bamboo-pole sedan chair and clutched his hands together between his knees. “Both he and his wife died for China. He’s a hero. It doesn’t matter if he was a Communist or a Nationalist. He fought the Japs. He died for our country.”

  “But I’m confused,” Linzi said as he walked. The bouncy and creaky bamboo poles rested on his shoulders. “Mr. Ding is a hero, but…” Perplexed and still in shock, he lifted his right arm and pressed his fingers against his skull as if to drag an answer from within. “…but look at the life his parents have? What happens to Yi? Does the concept apply only to individuals, but not to the country?”

  Birch had no answer. He was troubled by the same questions. For t
he first time in his life, he began to doubt the concept of Yi. Morality, duty, loyalty, decency—those were the values he’d grown up with and had taught the villagers. If an individual is supposed to practice these beliefs, why shouldn’t the country do the same? China should treat all soldiers’ families with dignity and respect. Not abandon them!

  The visit to Dashan had traumatized Birch in many ways but would not keep him from returning very soon to the city.

  Chapter 37

  On his third visit to Mr. Ding’s family, several men stopped Birch and the villagers on the street. They were young and hard-muscled, dressed in black suits, with guns slung on their hips.

  “Who are you?” asked a sharp-faced man. He was about thirty with an air of self-importance. “Why are you here? Don’t you know Ding Fang was a communist?” He gave Birch a mean once-over. “I heard you came here several times. You must be one of them.”

  He pulled a revolver out of his holster and said to one of his gang. “What do you say? He looks like a communist to me. Let’s check him out.” He sneered, revealing a row of crooked front teeth. His demeanor matched a malicious snake tattoo coiled on the left side of his neck. “What do you think he’ll do if we throw him in the torture chamber and test a couple of new devices on him?”

  “He’ll crack in no time,” laughed a moon-faced man. “Remember that hard nut—the one we caught a month ago? All clamped up and tough, but once we used the electric shock, he cracked before he shit.”

  “It was after,” retorted the third one, hair growing out of a mole on his chin. “You pig head, it was after he shit.”

  The man in charge pointed his gun at Birch. “I bet you’ll lead us to other communists.”

  Birch was livid. His eyes widened in revulsion. He’d guessed who they were—the secret police of the Nationalists. The words “torture chamber” released a flood of memories. His mind sprang back three years to the beating that he and Danny had endured.

  Danny fainted after the last lashing in that windowless torture chamber, and Birch rushed to his side as soon as they were released from the wooden pole. As he held Danny in his arms, Jackal splashed cold water on the American’s face to jolt him back to consciousness.

  “Cold water will do you good on a hot day,” Jackal said with a sneer. The savagery of his tone and the sinister look in his beady eyes had rendered Birch speechless. All he felt was hatred, pure hatred.

  When he carried Danny back to the cell, Mr. Ding was the first who hurried to their sides, as if they were his responsibility. Yet the young communist had no way to help them.

  At dinner that night, and for several days afterward, Mr. Ding, along with Zhou Ming, the Nationalist army officer, skipped his meals and gave his rations to the wounded men. “At least you’ll have a full stomach to go to sleep,” he’d murmured.

  The past rushed forward to Birch in seconds. A relentless assault of sound and vision stirred his soul. All the grief, rage, and frustration he’d experienced since his first visit to Mr. Ding’s parents erupted like hot lava.

  He let his cane drop, and in one fluid motion, he wrenched the pistol from the policeman’s hand. He pointed the gun between the man’s eyes and shouted, “Do you know how Ding Fang died? Don’t you know the Japs killed him? Haven’t you heard the Japs killed his wife and his unborn child?”

  “But…but…” the man gasped. He was tall, close to Birch’s height, yet his confidence was ebbing fast. Cringing, he raised his hands to his face as if to defend himself from a blow.

  His gang took out their guns and aimed at Birch’s temples. “Lower the weapon. I’ll shoot if you don’t,” barked one of them.

  But Birch stood his ground, tall and strong. His undaunted posture identified him as a proud officer. His penetrating gaze swept the three men in a single glance. “The Japs shot me more than half a dozen times without killing me.” A bitter laugh rumbled from deep within his gut. “Let’s see how many bullets it’ll take you.”

  He jabbed the muzzle even harder into the man’s forehead, and his fingers caressed the trigger’s smooth slope. The gun fitted snugly into his palm. “I’m a damn good gunman,” he added.

  The last time I used a gun was in that meadow. Surrounded by several dozen Japanese soldiers, he’d raced toward Danny’s crashed airplane, hoping to reach his brother. His expression darkened as he ratcheted his finger a notch. The trigger passed its first safety, and in the silence, the click was audible. Both men flinched and their hands trembled, but they held onto their guns.

  Linzi and other young villagers stepped forward and seized the men’s arms and shoulders.

  “Take a good look at who you’re talking to,” said Linzi. “This is Bai Hua, Major Bai Hua of the Air Force. He’s a decorated hero. How dare you to point a gun at a hero of our country?”

  The moon-faced man leaned over to the leader and whispered something in his ear. He probably recognized Birch from the military reports. It was true, the fighter pilot was well-known.

  “You’ll be in serious trouble if you dare to harm a hair of Bai Hua Ge,” persisted Linzi. “His father is a general. Sure as hell, he’ll skin you alive.”

  The leader slowly lifted his arms in surrender and signaled his men to lower their guns. He muttered a curse, and then apologized: “Sorry, I didn’t know.” In the class-ridden society, he was several ranks below a major, let alone a general.

  Birch handed the weapon back to him. “Keep your gun and your ugly face away from me. Get the hell out of my way. I’m ashamed I worked for the same government as you.” He had to unclench his teeth to spit out the words, and his face was flush with contempt.

  He started to walk away, then twisted back and yanked the man by the collar. “You’re alive because someone like Mr. Ding died for you. Remember that. Do something useful with your sorry life.” Birch had no idea that the men would listen to him, but he couldn’t help himself. “I warn you—all of you—don’t hurt anyone like Ding Fang or his family.”

  Gasping for air, the man nodded and tried to escape Birch’s iron grip. Instead of letting go, Birch tightened his grasp. Their faces were so close he could smell garlic and alcohol on the man’s breath. “If I ever hear of you bothering Mr. Ding’s family, I swear to God, I’ll strangle you with my bare hands.” He released the man and poked a finger into his chest, making him stumble backward two steps. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Sir,” the man mumbled. He ran his tongue over his lips before fleeing.

  The incident did not keep Birch from going back to Dashan. On the contrary, it propelled him forward with more determination than ever. He had to visit Mr. Ding’s parents. If the Communist Party was in hiding and couldn’t bother to take care of their own, and if the Nationalist government was so cruel that it harassed its opponents, then it was his duty to step forward. He wouldn’t let the concept of Yi—morality, duty, loyalty, decency, and brotherhood—die so easily. Yi was his lifeline. He had to do the right thing.

  And he had to search for Danny.

  During their numerous visits, he and his helpers had interviewed many townsfolk. Several mentioned a secret prison used by the Japanese near a village about twenty miles northeast of Dashan. Birch planned to go there as soon as the thick blanket of snow melted from the pass.

  Chapter 38

  The spring of 1949 was uncharacteristically wet and cold in the mountains of Yunnan. Rain and snow fell non-stop. The new life and vibrant color that spring usually brought was delayed. To a world already bleak, the dreary weather was a bad omen.

  The Civil War was close to an end. Apparently, the Communists were winning. Once they took over, what would they do to the people who had worked for their opponent? While General Bai was a member of the Nationalist Party, Birch had never joined. He was a military professional and not interested in politics. Nevertheless, he’d worked for the Air Force, which was controlled by the Nationalists. Most of the high-ranking officials and military personnel were planning to leave for Taiwan.


  “I’m not leaving,” Birch insisted, sitting beside the ebony table in his room.

  “I don’t like the idea either,” admitted General Bai. The evening was damp and chilly. He folded his hands around a steaming cup of tea, trying to warm his fingers. “But the communists are ruthless.”

  Birch reached for a cigarette on the cluttered tabletop and lit it with an air of quiet frustration. Words like mercy, forgiveness, or compassion didn’t seem in Captain Zhang’s vocabulary. He thought about the communists he’d met in prison. Was he an exception? After all, Mr. Ding was very different from him.

  General Bai continued, “They’ll fight to the bitter end for what they believe. That makes them very dangerous. You haven’t paid much attention, Birch. There are all kinds of horrible stories.” He tapped stacks of newspapers. There was no mail service to their tiny village, so he often sent Linzi or other young villagers down the mountain to buy newspapers. “They—”

  “You can’t believe everything in the newspapers. They’re controlled by the government. We can’t trust their reports.”

  “Point taken. But you can read between the lines and get a good sense of the truth. They can’t make up everything. Besides, remember Auntie Liu? You know how she became a Buddhist, right?”

  Birch shifted in his chair and narrowed his eyes. A frail, middle-aged woman appeared in his mind, along with the tasteless dishes she’d made for him. Auntie Liu had been hired by his father as a part-time helper when he was in the coma. He’d heard her story after he woke up.

  Auntie Liu’s husband had been a freelance writer. Disappointed with the Nationalist government, he, along with other scholars, left Chungking for Yanan, the Communist base in northern China. Unfortunately, though, he became a victim during the Communist Rectification Movement of 1943. Aiming to purge any members who opposed or criticized the leadership, the movement initially engaged in study and self-criticism. But it soon developed into a witch hunt of falsely-accused spies and traitors, and ended up with thousands of innocent people being put in jail or to death. Labeled as a Nationalist spy, Mr. Liu was executed.