The Third Son

by Julie Wu

  We stopped just past Jin-fu Temple in front of a small, glass-fronted pharmacy.

  “Hou,” Wen-shen said. “Time to get some aspirin. Foreign, you know.” He winked at me. “Should take her some time to find it.”

  They headed for the door. I hesitated. “I’ll watch your motorbike,” I said.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, I wished I had not offered to watch the motorcycle. Kazuo’s train would be coming in anytime now, and I needed to slip his book back on the shelf. Why hadn’t I done it last night? I did not normally cut it this close, but I was down to the last chapter of the book and had thought I could finish it on the train.

  I stood on the sidewalk, looking up and down the street at the throngs of bicycles. I couldn’t help feeling like a fool. I should have either gone in with my friends and had a good time or gone home. I glanced through the glass front of the pharmacy. Behind the counter, a girl with short styled hair, a plain white blouse, and a navy-blue skirt deftly counted out pills and then lifted her head to answer a question. Now I knew why my friends had taken the trouble to follow her home from Taipei. Her eyes sparkled, offset by skin whiter than ivory. When she smiled, she covered her mouth demurely, not obscuring dimples on either cheek. Though she wasn’t tall, she moved about the pharmacy with a proper, swift grace. She paused at times over the abacus, keeping her back straight and inclining her head gently over her flying hands like a Japanese koto player. She was not all sweetness; in moments when she was not directly talking to customers, her face drew quiet and sad. She plunked certain medication bottles down with an air of impatience, and at a word from a sullen young man unpacking boxes behind the counter beside her, she frowned. But her frankness only made it more breathtaking when she did smile. I watched, dazzled by the transparent display of emotions on her face. She dispensed medication to others, but her face alone was a balm for wounds. She was a woman, and any residual thoughts I had about the tiresome florist girl blew away like so many petals in the wind.

  “Here to gawk?”

  I whipped around at the sound of Kazuo’s voice. He stood facing me, his thick lips pressed together in a smirk. His belly swelled over the waistband of his dress pants. At his side, his pompous, plump-faced friend Li-wen caressed the leather collar of his jacket. Li-wen was a member of the Anti-Communist Youth Corps, an instrument of the Nationalists.

  “I’m waiting here for my friends,” I said.

  The pharmacy door opened, and Wen-shen and Yi-yang burst into the street, looking sheepish. Their smiles vanished as Kazuo brushed by them and took hold of the door.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Kazuo said to them. “You think a girl like that wants an electrician from a vocational school? You think she wants to help you sell radios?” He looked at me pointedly.

  I felt a surge of anger and helplessness. Because I knew he was right.

  “Hou lai tsao,” Yi-Yang said to me quietly. Let’s go.

  “Some girls don’t care about things like that,” I said.

  “Smart girls do,” Kazuo said. “And I happen to know, that girl is smart. All I had to do was tell her I was a student at the top medical school on Taiwan and the oldest son of the new mayor, and—”

  “What’s your business here?” The sullen-looking young man who had been behind the counter was now in the doorway. He looked around at us, his eyes sharp and unpleasant.

  “Who are you?” Kazuo said.

  “I’m ‘that girl’s’ brother. You all are clogging up our store.”

  “What a pleasure to meet you,” Kazuo said, his voice unctuous. “I’m Mayor Tong’s son. Li-hsiang answered my letter and asked me to meet her here. And this is my friend Li-wen, a high-ranking member of the Anti-Communist Youth Corps.”

  The girl’s brother looked shrewdly at Kazuo and Li-wen and stepped aside. The door closed after them.

  “I can’t believe it!” Yi-yang exclaimed. “No offense to you, Saburo, but that girl has poor taste. Your brother’s an ass.”

  “What happened when you went in?”

  They giggled. “Great plan!” Yi-yang said. “He asked for aspirin, and she put the bottle on the counter before he could finish his sentence.”

  “And then,” Wen-shen said incredulously, “she charged me a dollar!”

  “For one bottle of aspirin?” I said. “That’s about four times what it should be!”

  “I know,” said Wen-shen.

  “Look!” Yi-yang said. “Your brother’s talking to her.”

  We pressed in at the window. Kazuo stood at the counter, bumping it nervously with his stomach as he spoke, gesticulating with his hands. The girl watched him, head inclined slightly, looking up at him with a wary expression. Her gaze flickered over to where we watched. In a shaft of sunlight from the window her eyes sparkled, flecked with gold.

  It was Yoshiko! A flush of excitement rushed through me. I had wondered what she might look like grown and thought she might be friendly and pretty, but I would never have imagined that she would be like this, a beauty. But it couldn’t be. Yoshiko had been so happy, and her brother, laughing and handsome, full of love. This girl seemed angry somehow, and her brother’s face quite twisted and ugly as he argued with a customer. With a look of impatience, the girl broke away from Kazuo and reached over her brother’s arm to click a few beads on his abacus and hand change to his customer.

  Yi-yang and Wen-shen laughed. “She’s a feisty one,” Wen-shen said.

  “Too bad her brother’s an imbecile.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Lo Li-hsiang. That lumberyard family, you know, the Chengs and the Los.”

  The girl had returned to her customers. Kazuo stood to the side, writing something down on a piece of paper.

  “Do you know her Japanese name?” I asked.

  “Of course not. Why?”

  “She looks like someone I met once. Does she have another brother?”

  “No, just two sisters,” Wen-shen replied immediately, and Yi-yang and I looked at him in surprise.

  “They came to my cousin’s wedding!” he said. “I haven’t been stalking her any more than usual.”

  Yi-yang slapped him on the back. “Well, if you had been, I’d be very impressed.”

  “Are you sure it was her?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Wen-shen said. “Her, her nasty brother, and two sisters—one very dumpy and one very sour looking like this guy. Mom was weird looking, wore an old dress, must have been a hundred years old.”

  “And her father? Was he dressed well?”

  Wen-shen gave me a look. “It was a wedding. All the men were dressed the same—”

  The pharmacy door opened, and Kazuo emerged, smirking, with his friend Li-wen. “Well, children,” Kazuo said, “she’s coming with me to the meet tomorrow. How do you like that?”

  He strutted down the street, slapping Li-wen on the back and laughing.

  I looked at the girl through the window. She was frowning as she poured powder into a paper bag and didn’t look at all excited about having just arranged a date.

  “I’m going to talk to her,” I said.

  “Forget it,” Yi-yang said, grabbing my arm. “She’s a gold digger. Come on. You said you had to get home.”

  I hesitated, looking through the window, seeing not the pharmacy but the girl on the bicycle, smiling contentedly in her brother’s arms. The girl standing before me today was not Yoshiko. Yoshiko wouldn’t have behaved like this, wouldn’t have agreed to go out on a date with a man she didn’t like, just because he was going to be a doctor.

  “Hou,” I said. “Kianh.”

  And we got on the motorcycle and sped away.

  9

  ALL NIGHT I LAY awake on my futon, listening to Jiro’s snores on the futon next to mine. I twisted and turned, worrying about Fundamentals of the English Language for Foreigners, which was still in my bag, as the maid had been tidying up Kazuo’s room until he came home.

  It must have been Yoshiko. I had
seen the gold shimmer in her eyes in that shaft of sunlight. But that wasn’t her brother. And Wen-shen’s description of her family didn’t sound at all like what I remembered seeing. I went over and over the same arguments in my mind. I saw the girl’s wary look at Kazuo, and Kazuo’s smug face. I should have said something, should have told him I knew she didn’t even like him, that I admired her less for saying yes to someone like him.

  AS SOON AS the sun rose, I got up and dressed in my track clothes. I took the first train into Taipei for my meet.

  Normally I liked to arrive just after the flag-raising ceremony—I generally avoided these as much as possible—but today I had plenty of time to warm up.

  “Horse! Last meet of the year! You ready?” our school coach called to me from the field as I lay my jacket down on an aisle seat in our school’s section of the bleachers. “Go stretch.”

  The stadium gradually filled. Kazuo brushed past me, wearing a neat button-down shirt smoothed flat over his belly, and sat in the section behind mine with his classmates. The seat next to his was empty. At last, the red-and-blue flag rose against the clear blue sky, and we all stood, keeping the irony to ourselves. In an autocracy, brainwashing was just one more part of the day.

  San Min Chu-i

  Our aim shall be

  To found a free land

  World peace be our stand . . .

  I had developed the habit of experimenting with my voice as a way of occupying my mind in all the flag-raising ceremonies we had endured over the years. I sang now, my voice, a clear baritone, ringing out into the spring air, and thought happily that perhaps the girl would stand Kazuo up.

  The song ended and we were urged to take our seats. And at that moment, in the general bustle as people sat down and the fifty- and one-hundred-meter runners from my school scooted past me to get to the field, I saw her stepping up the stairs toward me in high heels, her eyes down, her face melancholy.

  The sun shone on the sophisticated wave of her hair, and the wind blew the silky fabric of her dress, with its brown stripes making an inverted V at her waist, the fabric sliding against the soft white of her arms. As she drew closer, I noted the delicacy of her upturned nose, the gentle curve of her cheek.

  “Yoshiko!” I said.

  She turned her face quickly to me, her gold-flecked eyes sparkling with surprise, the early morning light gliding over the luminescent skin of her face.

  I felt a jolt as her eyes met mine. “It is you!” I said, and I searched her face for traces of the girl I had thought about so many times—the wide eyes, the dimple in her cheek. I had found her at last.

  She blinked. “Do I know you from school?”

  The announcement came over the megaphone: One-hundred-meter dash.

  “No! The war. The air raid. Remember? I saved your life! Your brother picked you up on his bicycle . . .”

  It was her turn to stare at me, her eyes flickering back and forth across my face, her foot paused midstep, her hand gracefully holding the skirt of her dress. Her expression softened, and then, to my alarm, her eyes filled with tears.

  At that moment, Kazuo’s buttoned-down belly appeared in my peripheral vision. “Ah, I see you know my little brother.”

  Yoshiko hastily looked away, blinking, and nodded her head.

  “He’s sitting with his school. We’ll sit with mine. They’re calling your event, Saburo,” Kazuo said to me. “It’s time to run in circles.”

  Yoshiko turned and followed Kazuo up the stairs. I felt a draining sensation in my chest and arms as Kazuo, who had everything—from my mother’s love, to the best chunks of meat, to my book—now took from me the one girl I had thought about all these years. He would sap me dry. The blood surged to my face and I began to shake with fury—at Kazuo for taking Yoshiko away, and at Yoshiko for allowing herself to be treated as a trophy.

  But then Yoshiko turned back to look down at me. She met my gaze openly, her eyes full of sadness and confusion and longing, and, heart still pounding, I held my breath. The wind rippled her dress and blew her hair across her forehead, and still her eyes, rimmed with the remnants of her tears, looked into mine. I heard the applause of the crowd, and my coach calling my name from the field below, but I could not bear to break Yoshiko’s gaze.

  Then, to my despair, she turned again and climbed up the stairs after my brother.

  I rushed down to the track, my legs trembling. I ran my race in a rage, hardly noticing who ran in the lanes beside me, and won. But even my win brought me no joy, for I knew that Kazuo was right. All I was good at was running in circles on the ground. He was the one with the way out.

  ON MY WAY home from the meet, I was more alive than I had ever been; I felt the blood coursing through me, the muscles of my body contracting and relaxing as I walked, their movements smooth and coordinated as an animal’s. I felt, as though for the first time, the warmth of the sun on my hair and the back of my neck, the coolness of the wind blowing through the woven cotton of my clothes. And yet, awakened as I was to the physical world, I was so consumed by replaying, over and over in my mind, those moments when Yoshiko had looked into my eyes, that a motorcyclist nearly ran me over in front of the Taoyuan Train Station.

  But she was Kazuo’s. Kazuo’s, I reminded myself bitterly, as I waved to the motorcyclist, who exclaimed and shook his fist at me. Kazuo was the one with the future. And fury so overcame me that once I got home, seeing that Kazuo was in the kitchen having lunch, I boldly stepped right into his room and plunked his book onto his shelf.

  “What are you doing?” He appeared in the doorway behind me.

  “Putting this book back.”

  “I never said you could borrow it.”

  “You never even look at it.”

  “It’s mine nonetheless.”

  He walked past me, pulled The Earth neatly off its shelf, and strode out of the room.

  I followed him. “What are you doing with that?”

  “I’m going to burn it,” he said. “I know you’ve been looking at it. I should have done this a long time ago.”

  My stomach dropped. I caught his arm on its backswing and lunged for the book, but he dodged me and then jabbed me in the stomach with his elbow. I grabbed his shirt as he ran away, and it came untucked from his pants, one of its buttons rolling around on the dark floorboards. I felt like a schoolboy scuffling over a marble, but I could not let him destroy the one object I treasured.

  “Otosan!” he called.

  I heard my father’s lumbering step, and I released Kazuo.

  Kazuo sneered. “Try to get it from me now.”

  Five minutes later, The Earth flamed in a pit behind our house, along with some old Japanese newspapers. The smoke curled up into the sky.

  Kazuo watched, arms folded, a smug smile on his face

  “Why did you do that?” I said angrily. “It meant nothing to you.”

  “It’s caused us a lot of trouble,” he said. “And I don’t want you thinking you can take what’s mine, pretty boy.” He looked at me and cocked his head, eyes narrowed. “Stay away from Li-hsiang.”

  “Who?” I said.

  He glared at me. “The girl!” he said. “She’s mine.”

  10

  I SAT DOWN IN a chair facing Toru across his desk as he wrote something in a large notebook. He glanced at my twitching leg and then up at my face. “What’s the matter?” he said.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but there were so many thoughts swirling in my head that I closed my mouth again and looked at the floor.

  He watched me for a moment and then resumed writing. His hair was now shot through with strands of gray, and his face looked worn and tired. He took my military-service form from me. “Let’s take a look at you.”

  I followed him, towering now over his slight figure as he led me to the examining table. I sat, eyeing the cabinet that held the detested vitamin solution from Taikong. Toru peered into my eyes and mouth. “How is your father enjoying being mayor?” he asked.

 
; “He complains,” I said. “When he can. There are Nationalist agents crawling all over our house spying on him and telling him what to do. The security general’s son is his new best friend.”

  “I’ve never seen him.”

  “Just like his father. Big lips, square glasses, ugly suit.”

  “But your father didn’t run as a Nationalist.”

  “No.”

  “But I suppose all the parties are controlled by the Nationalists.”

  “Of course,” I said. “All this ‘reform’ is just for show.”

  He stood in front of me, holding his otoscope, blinking. “Your father’s not afraid?”

  “No. They want to look good for the Americans now. You know, after losing the Mainland and slaughtering—”

  Toru glanced toward the door and motioned for me to be quiet.

  I lowered my voice. “They need American support. They wouldn’t dare do anything overtly bad. It’s what my father thinks, anyway.”

  “He must be right. He’s a shrewd man, your father.” He picked up my wrist and began taking my pulse. “Your heart’s racing.”

  I felt a flush of resentment at Toru’s admiration of my father. Though, of course, he was right.

  “He burned the book you gave me,” I said.

  Toru looked up from his watch. “What?”

  “Kazuo.” I felt like a schoolboy, tattling on another boy. “With my father’s blessing. He burned my book.”

  Toru looked down at his watch again for a moment and then dropped my wrist, putting his hands on his hips. He fixed his eyes on mine. “Why did he burn it?”

  “Because of a girl,” I said.

  “You want the same girl?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The same girl I was trying to find when I was bitten by that snake.”

  “The snake? You were just a boy.”

  “I was.”

  He watched me for a moment, then walked over to the counter and absentmindedly stamped my military-service form with his signature. “Well, and now you’re a young man. Your service starts next week?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what will you do after that?”

  “My uncle’s lining me up a job at Taikong, doing the wiring for some new buildings they’re planning. It can’t take me more than a few months, and then I have no idea what I’ll do. I guess that’s why girls just want to marry a doctor,” I said bitterly, and then I stopped, suddenly wondering why Toru was not married.