Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  Love made the division commander turn his back on the life he had pursued for over thirty years. He took off his uniform and put on the homespun clothing such as the yokels wore. Every day he hung around the young widow. When she sold drink, he handled the receipts. When she cooked, he kept the kindling fired. When on those rare occasions he would return to division headquarters, he would sidle into the medical station, sit before the doctor like a patient, and vividly describe his love life. From the young widow the division commander learned to hum a few ditties of Anhui’s popular “Yellow Plum” operas. The story of the fairy lady coming down to earth for love was classic Yellow Plum: “The birds on the tree pair up / Conjugal affections are both bitter and sweet.” He sighed that the world still did have days that were good enough to bring envy to a fairy lady’s heart. He said, “Younger brother, pray for me, OK? Pray that the bullets and shells have eyes to see me so this insignificant life might be saved to enjoy a few days of a woman’s love.”

  The world gets drunk and only I stay sober. During those days, the isolation the doctor felt would have been hard to put into words. Thoughts of home bit at his nerves like locusts. He was never at ease for even a moment.

  This military force, held back from taking part in any action, was a chess piece intended for a decisive move on the generalissimo’s chessboard. But the Japanese had never once taken their eye off that piece, even before the generalissimo lifted it for the attack. There had not been the slightest warning sign of the combat that took place on the evening of that day. The North China Plain in deep autumn was at its most serene. The fifteenth day of the lunar month had just passed and the full moon shone extravagantly over the treetops. At night, it was even more peaceful, but the village dogs were the first to smell the gunpowder, and suddenly wild barking broke out, rising here and falling there.

  The doctor was just then reading the Bible by lamplight. He copied a section of Epistle to the Romans into his notebook: Tribulation engenders patience. Patience engenders experience. Experience gives birth to hope.

  Suddenly, there was a thumping sound. The division commander, his unbuttoned tunic hastily thrown about him, burst in. “The battle’s started.”

  The doctor quickly woke up Young Li and they got everything in readiness.

  The artillery fire moved closer and closer. By the time the eastern skies had lightened, groups of Japanese fighter planes came swarming at them. Again and again they circled tightly over the buildings. Probably they still didn’t have reliable enough intelligence to bomb the frontline command post, so countless bombs were dropped on the small town. Piece by piece the buildings collapsed. In the dense fog of dust and smoke, you couldn’t clearly make out anyone’s face beyond two steps away.

  The doctor heard the division commander call out for help. He didn’t know how this battle had started, but he supposed that, as the division commander said, the main attack had commenced. With no idea just how critical and perilous the situation was, he lost himself in a single-minded concentration on saving the wounded. With his battlefield training, this physician was already the match of expert surgeons. He could rapidly find shell or bullet fragments, sew up blood vessels and wounds, and accomplish neat and smooth stitching. During some fleeting moments, he let his mind wander to Second Sister and those two skilled hands of hers. When the war was over, he intended to surprise her with a flower embroidered by his own hand.

  Those of the ordinary civilians who could run, all headed for the rolling hill country to the south. The aged, weak, sick, or impaired couldn’t flee and so just waited to die. That young widow, with her agile body and long legs, also stayed behind in the town. When her little shop collapsed from the impact of the bombing, she crawled out from under all the rubble and ruin, her entire body covered in lacerations, and threaded her way on her hands and knees through the gun smoke to division headquarters. When she heard the division commander roaring and raging she was so frightened she just quietly hid in a corner.

  Line after line of forward defenses was attacked and destroyed. The final line was close by while reinforcements were still miles away. The senior division officers discussed the situation under showers of dirt and dust. Division Commander Zhang accepted his chief-of-staff’s suggestion that the unit should split up into two divisions and break out of their heavy encirclement. Then, after merging with the relief force, they would turn around and counterattack. They all knew the price of this would be many lives, but continuing their dogged resistance would only lead to the annihilation of the entire force.

  The doctor received the order to redeploy. With the help of the logistics company and taking the wounded with him, he withdrew in the direction of the fleeing civilians. His superior officer gave him only twenty minutes. The doctor didn’t ask many questions—military orders were like a falling mountain. By the time he had made simple dressings for two of the wounded, the medical station had already been cleaned out.

  The division commander walked to a little knoll at the entrance of the town to survey the battlefield. The young widow, shrouded in dirt, cautiously came forward. She wanted him to know that she had not abandoned him and run off by herself. This was to show him how much she loved him. But what she got instead was a roar.

  “What’re you doing here? Is this the place for a woman like you?”

  “I…” Her tears mixed with the dust on her face. “Get the hell out of here!”

  Holding the first aid case, the doctor stood off to the side, not daring to utter a single sound. He wanted to remind the division commander to take his medicine. This old pal of his had a stomach problem that was getting more and more serious. If it were not for the extraordinary times, he should have been under treatment in a hospital.

  The division commander turned his glance to the doctor and roared at him too. “Why’re you still here?”

  “You should take your medicine.”

  “Of all the times…still fussing like some woman. Get going and take her with you. The farther the better!”

  “Division Commander…”

  The division commander’s hand went to his holster and with the other he pointed at the doctor. “Keep up your blather, and I’ll shoot you for disobeying military orders!” And then he pointed to the young widow. “And the same goes for you too. Stay one minute more, and I’ll shoot you!”

  By this time, the doctor had some faint inkling of how bad things were. He observed this good “elder brother” of his searchingly, and then said to the young widow, “Let’s go.”

  On the battlefield, the division commander was a ferocious lion. No matter how careful the doctor was, he could never avoid the other’s rage. Whenever the fighting was over, the division commander would always make up for it with him. Once, the division commander had let fly with some really foul language. Even though the doctor had not forgotten Jesus’ teaching that you had to be patient and magnanimous, afterward, he could not maintain the same intimate rapport with the division commander as before and he had refused their daily chow time, buddy-to-buddy gab sessions. When chow time came, he took his mess tin and buried himself in a corner of the room to sit facing the wall. The division commander came up to him bursting with good spirits. “I’m not used to you not joining me at chow.” The two men looked at each other and with a laugh all grudges vanished. From then on, the lion’s fury no longer intimidated the doctor.

  The doctor and the young widow reached the hilly countryside to the south. Line after line of the wounded waited there. He soon was busy with his endless surgery and was unable to look after the division commander’s woman. Five days on, the fighting came to an end.

  The newspaper and radio reports of that time all called this campaign a great and total victory, though, unfortunately, Division Commander Zhang had fallen in battle courageously defending the country. While the top military command in Chongqing had already heard the reports, the doctor and the young widow still had no idea of this death.

  After the firing had died down
, the medical station reopened in the same market town. This time there wasn’t a single continuous stretch of the city wall left. It was scorched earth as far as the eye could see and corpses were lying everywhere. The doctor hung a tent between two withered trees to treat the seriously wounded. The battlefield was being cleaned up and there in a pile of the dead they found soldiers who were still faintly breathing and these they sent to the station. The officers and men who had fallen for good were taken to an empty space nearby.

  The young widow made her way through the smoking ruins in search of her lover. She had no idea what his rank was. She just called out his name as she went along, and moved and shifted the terribly mangled corpses one by one. The division commander’s orderly recognized her and took her to the open space where bodies had been laid out. When he lifted away the blanket covering Division Commander Zhang, she let out an agonized shriek and burst into a storm of weeping.

  The doctor had finished with one of the wounded when he heard a woman’s terrible cry. Only then did he remember that the division commander had entrusted the young widow to his care and he hadn’t seen her at all for many days now. He lifted the flap of the tent and looked out. Immediately he knew what had happened.

  “Young Li, Young Li…” The doctor’s voice went hoarse.

  Young Li was over on the side lighting a fire to sterilize the surgical instruments. Looking up and following the doctor’s gaze, he was so dumbfounded for a moment that he dropped the top of the pot he had been holding and in tears rushed outside.

  The doctor thought of saying a prayer for the division commander, to ask the Lord to have mercy and forgive him for all the sins he had committed in this world and to receive him back into his heavenly home. He had opened his mouth and said, “O Lord,” when everything within him fell apart and he sobbed and wept bitterly. He told himself not to cry, that Christians see death as a going home, that he shouldn’t say good-bye to the division commander in tears, but no matter what, he couldn’t contain his grief.

  CHAPTER FIVE – WHEN THE LOQUATS RIPEN

  1.

  GRANDMA SAID THAT when the Japanese planes appeared in the sky above Old Town, the streets were covered with ripe, golden-yellow loquats. Our Old Town was in one of those regions abounding in rice, fish, and fruit, and the Old Town folk were very particular about what they ate. Fruit, vegetables, and seafood were consumed only if fresh and in season. Oranges, bananas, loquats, “dragon eyes,” and litchis—each of these fruits spelled a season of the year. Farmers and their wives shouldered pole after pole of fresh and plump fruit along the streets and through the alleyways. They all had their own piece of territory and could bring their baskets right under the sky wells of the homes of old customers. The friendships between some of these buyers and sellers had continued for generations.

  When the loquats ripen, early summer has arrived. Three generations of my grandmother’s Guo family all ate the fruits sold by Ah Shui. He was still a little boy way back when he and his father did their trade at West Street. By now, he himself had become a grandpa. Because Second Sister Guo married into the Lin home on Officials Lane, Ah Shui brought his trade there too. Second Sister, being the good-hearted person she was, would often give him clothes for his children. And Second Sister’s husband—Ah Shui called him Uncle—had treated his little boy without charging a single fen. Every time Ah Shui came back into town, the fruit he would give Second Sister was the very pick of the crop, the very best of all.

  Ah Shui asked Second Sister, “Is Uncle doing all right up north there?”

  “He’s fine, very fine. Only, he’s thinking of home and his three children.”

  Second Sister was again packing up some clothing to give to Ah Shui’s children, and she stuffed in a few copper coins. The last time Ah Shui had brought home such coins he got a good scolding from his old lady. He removed the coins from the cloth bundle.

  “Second Miss, I can’t accept your money.”

  They were both going back and forth over this when suddenly the air raid siren sounded. Ah Shui practically died from fright, and as he trembled and shivered, some of the coins fell clattering onto the flagstones.

  Second Sister said, “Don’t be scared. It’s only a drill.”

  Starting the year before, from time to time the constables and the heads of several household groups would come to people’s homes to provide instructions on how to protect against air raids. They ordered the residents to paste strips of white paper on the glass windows of their houses. Now, more than a year later, the white paper had all turned yellow. Second Sister had just decided to do a big cleanup and scrape away all those depressing paper strips.

  The ear-piercing shriek of the siren sounded more and more urgent. Now the slack and easygoing folk of Old Town couldn’t help feeling ill at ease. People dropped whatever work they were doing and ran into the streets, flustered and whispering rumors to each other. What’s this all about? Are the Japanese really coming? Many of them were looking into the skies, using their hands to shield their eyes from the sun’s glare. They still didn’t know what it meant for airplanes to be flying about. Someone said airplanes were as big as eagles. Another had it that they were bigger than buildings, and these two, each sure he was right, went on and on about this.

  Right then, the skies resounded with something the people of Old Town had never heard before—the thunderous roar of engines. These were just like floodwaters or wild beasts surging and raging everywhere. The siren’s sound now sounded weak and ineffective in this great deluge.

  The wolves had come—the wolves had really come! The Old Town folk stared dumbstruck at the planes over their heads. Is this for real? Would Old Town, which for hundreds of years had never seen soldiers or weapons, now really be plunged into war?

  This wasn’t just one or two planes; it was a whole swarm of them. They circled about in a dense mass, like some flock of crows gone mad. And from the crows’ bellies fell black eggs of iron, one after the other, making the earth shake and the skies quiver!

  Ah Shui said, “Second Miss, bring your children and come with me to hide in the countryside for a few days. My old lady’ll fix up a clean room for you.”

  Second Sister thought about her three children. If they had to die, she wanted to die with them. She pushed past Ah Shui and dashed off to South Street. That was where the children’s school was. She had to find them. As she ran, she murmured, “O heaven! O God! It’s not life or death we care about. Either we all survive, or none of us do, and we all die!”

  The people who had been milling about out of curiosity in an instant all vanished and the streets were now deserted. My grandma ran on wildly like a terrified doe, her hair bun all disheveled and her qipao flapping. She had no idea of how desperate she looked, nor did she care in the slightest. There was only one thought that kept her going—to die together with her children!

  The contingent of people running in the same direction grew larger. Mothers converging from all directions raced toward South Street. They had the very same feeling as Second Sister—if anything had happened to their children, they just wouldn’t go on living.

  She saw the school now. The old banyan tree by the school entrance still stood there, calm and serene as always, and to her ears came the sound of children reading. She didn’t realize this was a hallucination. Her pace slowed as her legs weakened under her. Nothing’s happened. I’m just too worried and upset. Since Ninth Brother had gone, she was always seeing a snake’s shadow in the reflection of a bow, as the saying goes, and always imagining the worst of any situation. Pastor Chen admonished her, saying that this was wrong. The pain and suffering God gives you will in no way be more than you can bear. Jesus said, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

  She pressed her violently heaving breast, and gasped for breath through her open mouth. Nothing had actually happened anywhere…just foolish me creating problems for myself. And if nothing happened, that was good.

  A bomb glanced off the banyan tree as it fe
ll into the school and exploded with an enormous roar. Then it was as if some giant’s iron hand just swept away Second Sister and many of the other parents. As she lay flat on the ground she thought that she had been hit squarely in the bombing and was dead, for sure, and her children gone as well. But she felt strangely at peace. God in heaven had granted her prayer to let her die together with her children, and so there was nothing more to regret. She would take her three little angels back to heaven and wait for Ninth Brother there.

  Everywhere parents were crawling up from the ground, keening and howling like wraiths or wild beasts. Second Sister raised her head and discovered that she was alive and in one piece. She rolled over, sprang up, and flung herself in the direction of the school, now in a fog of thick smoke. “Baoqing! Baosheng! Baohua! You can’t leave your ma all alone!”

  The explosion had smashed all the doors and windows of the classrooms, and bits and pieces of shattered glass covered the ground. Desks and chairs were strewn about every which way. The old fellow who rang the school bell told them that the students had all been moved into the cave on Stony Mountain beyond South Gate. Second Sister turned and went rushing off there with the rest of the crowd.

  The air raid alert had been lifted and several hundred children emerged from the cave. The fathers and mothers waiting there frantically searched for their own children among all the others. And, as if finally reuniting with the survivors of some calamity, they wept from the depths of grief and the heights of exultation.

  Baoqing was the first to rush into his ma’s embrace, with Baosheng and Baohua right behind him. Second Sister squatted down, and pinched first this one and then rubbed that one to make sure that not a single strand of hair on their heads had suffered mishap. Only then did she break down in tears. “My children, my little dears, your ma will never let you go even one step away again.”