Oh, that was always very sad. Jiaguo was the one who had to gather the belongings of any pilot who had died. He would wrap them carefully in a soft cloth, then write a long note, explaining how this son or that husband had died a true hero’s death. I would see the wrapped belongings sitting on Hulan’s sewing table, waiting to be sent out. And I always wondered whose happy hands would open a package, thinking it was a gift, whose sad eyes would cry to see what was inside.
So our dinners became smaller each time. And I may have imagined this, but it seemed to me, when one pilot died, another took over his appetite. Those pilots ate as though they would never taste such good food again.
I remember one night each man ate thirty dumplings, loosened his belt and sighed, then ate thirty more. I was running back and forth, carrying big platters to them, also to Hulan, who knew how to eat plenty. And after more talking and laughing, the men loosened their belts once again, ate more and more—until one man finally said in a funny voice, “To pay any more respects to the cook, I have to drop my pants!”
The man who made that joke was a tall, thin man named Gan. He always laughed, but in a quiet way. And what he said was coarse, but I was not angry, not even embarrassed. He made good jokes, never pushing anyone else down to make somebody laugh. With his jokes, he was the foolish-looking one, the one we laughed at.
In fact, he reminded me of an American movie star. Not a loud, big hero kind like John Wayne. More like Danny Kaye, a quiet man everyone liked, someone who made people laugh without showing off.
Gan was that same way. When he smiled his mouth grew wider than most people’s and one of his dogteeth stuck out. He walked in an awkward manner, like a boy who had grown too tall too fast. So when he rushed over to help me move a chair or carry a pot, he would stumble and fall before he had taken three steps forward. That’s how he was—without even trying, he made people feel better about themselves.
When he was not laughing or talking with the others, he acted shy with me. I often felt him watching me, trying to think of what to say. And once, after thinking a long time, he told me with a quiet, sincere voice, “This dish—even my mother could not make it better.”
I scolded him. “You can never say such things about your own mother!” His face turned red. “Sister,” he said, “excuse my bad manners.” Then he ate two more dumplings and said in the same quiet voice, “Better than my own mother’s.”
I remember when he said that, Wen Fu laughed out loud and said, “Is that why you are as skinny as a bamboo reed?” I could not tell whether this was an insult to his mother or to me. I thought to myself, Why couldn’t my husband be more like Gan? And that put another thought in my mind: I could have married a good man. They were not all like Wen Fu. Why didn’t I know I had a choice?
I saw that the other pilots were kind men, all nice. They treated me well. They never mentioned out loud that I was carrying a baby, but they knew. They rushed to help me carry my groceries when they saw my arms were full. One man, who had the use of an air force truck, offered to drive me anyplace I needed to go. And Gan, the shy man who liked my dumplings so much, played chicken-feather ball with me, while Wen Fu and the others played cards or mah jong in the evening.
I remember those nights. We played using only the moonlight and the glow from the nearby window, batting the feather ball back and forth over the net, laughing as we tried to hit each other. When I missed, Gan would insist on picking up the feather ball, so I would not give my full stomach “indigestion.” Sometimes, when Wen Fu was out of town, Gan would invite me to eat with him, just a bowl of noodles. Maybe we would go to some cheap place for wonton, nothing too special. And then he would walk me home, always acting just like a proper family friend or a brother, apologizing if he accidentally bumped my elbow.
One time Hulan saw us talking at the kitchen table. And after Gan went home, she teased me: “Oyo! Be careful.”
“What is your meaning?” I said.
“No meaning,” said Hulan. “I am telling you to be careful now so there is no meaning later.”
“What nonsense,” I said, and she laughed.
It is so strange, remembering this now. I have not thought about Gan for over fifty years. So finding this memory is like accidentally discovering a hidden piece of my heart again, the happiness I could not show anyone, the sorrow I later could not tell anyone. How could I tell Hulan? I was the one who said we should not be carried away by happiness during the war. I said that before I knew what happiness could be.
So maybe I can confess this to you now. Gan had a special meaning to me. We did not know each other for very long. Yet I knew his heart better than my own husband’s. And that made me feel less lonely.
He once told me how much he enjoyed walking with me in the evening. And before I could ask why, he answered me. He said he was afraid of being alone at night. And again, before I could ask him to explain, he explained: “You know how it is, how you can see things at night that you cannot see in the day.” I nodded and told him I had always felt this way too.
And then he told me more about his nighttime fright. “I have never told this story to anyone else,” he began, “what happened when I was a young boy, the last time it was a Tiger year. That’s when I saw a ghost shining in the dark.”
And I started to tell Gan how I had seen the same thing, many times as a child. A ghost that turned out to be the moon against a window. Or a ghost who was really Old Aunt getting up at night to cure her indigestion. Or a ghost that was really a dead plant stuck against the greenhouse window.
Gan said, “I’ve seen ghosts like that too, just bad imagination. But this ghost was different. This ghost said he would come back and get me before I reached the next Tiger year—before I reached the age of twenty-four.”
“So much nonsense comes from dreams,” I said. But Gan kept talking as if he were still in that bad dream.
“ ‘Don’t worry too much,’ the ghost said. ‘Your death will be painless, it won’t hurt. But when you see my ghost face calling to you in the dark, you must come with me and not argue, not even one word.’ Of course, I didn’t believe him. I shouted to him, ‘You are only a bad dream. Go away!’ ”
“Then you woke up,” I said, trying to calm him, or perhaps myself. “You were still frightened, but you never forgot that memory.”
“Much worse,” said Gan, his voice now very dry. “I woke up, this is true. I got up to convince myself I was no longer asleep. And when I stood at the door, I saw the ghost was still there. He said, ‘You don’t believe this is your fate? I have proof that it will be.’ And the ghost named nine bad fates that would happen to me before my life was through. Nine, the number of completion. When the ghost left, I was still standing at the door.”
“Ai, Gan, this is a terrible story!” I said.
“For these past eleven years, I have tried to forget that dream. But now eight of those fates have already happened, come true, exactly as the ghost described them. Now I think the ninth is coming. In four months, the new Tiger year comes.” He laughed nervously. “So much pain to wait for a painless death.”
After Gan told me this story, he was trembling hard, as if it were winter-cold outside, and not the wet warmth of autumn. I could see he believed the story. Even I was scared. I was too frightened even to ask him, What were the eight fates that have already happened? I could only laugh and say, “What a bad dream you had in your little-boy days!”
At the time I did not know why I said that. That was not the feeling I had inside me. Just the opposite. Inside, I wanted to hold poor Gan against my heart and cry, My boy, my beautiful little boy! Are you sure about the eight bad fates? What were they? What is the ninth? Hurry, tell me!
But now that I remember my feelings, I know why I did not say this to Gan. I was afraid, not because of the ghost, but for another reason. I was a married woman, yet I had never felt love from a man, or for a man. And that night I almost did. I felt the danger, that this was how you love someone, one perso
n letting out fears, the other drawing closer to soothe the pain. And then more would pour out, everything that has been hidden, more and more—sorrow, shame, loneliness, all the old aches, so much released until you overflowed with joy to be rid of it, until it was too late to stop this new joy from taking over your heart.
But I stopped myself. I kept myself hidden. I only laughed at Gan and made fun of his ghost dream to comfort him, to comfort myself. And perhaps I also did not pay more attention to his dream because we all felt something bad was coming. We just didn’t talk about it openly the way Gan did.
If a pilot joked, “This is the last time I lose all my wages playing cards with you,” the others would shout, “Wah! Don’t say ‘last time,’ what bad luck! Now you have to keep playing to cancel out the meaning.”
Those pilots knew their airplanes were not fast enough before they even left the ground. They knew they did not have enough training, enough clever tricks to avoid Japanese fighter planes, which were newer and faster. They used to stand around in a big circle before they had to fly off, shouting slogans as they spit onto a rock for a target. That’s how they laughed about becoming heroes. That’s how we knew they were brave. That’s how we knew they were scared. How could they be true heroes when they had no choice? How could they not be when they knew they had no chance?
Two months later, half the pilots at that dinner were dead. The way we heard it, they all died as heroes, all of them shot and killed inside their fighter planes. But the way those planes fell from the sky—it was awful! You could not even find a body to bury. You didn’t have to be religious to feel bad about that.
One pilot I knew, his airplane flew into the Henan city gate, ran right into an opening, and was stuck-crushed inside there. Meili’s husband, his plane crashed on a high mountaintop. The pilot who used to drive me in a truck?—he burned up before his plane even hit the ground.
As for Wen Fu, he was not even wounded. Do you know why? He was a coward! Each time the fighting began, Wen Fu turned his plane around and flew the other way. “Oh,” he would explain to Jiaguo, “I was chasing a Japanese fighter that ran off another way. You didn’t see it. Too bad I didn’t catch him.” Hulan told me this, how Jiaguo was thinking he would have to court-martial my husband. You think she wouldn’t find an opportunity to tell me this?
I learned this around the same time I found out Gan’s plane had been shot down outside Nanking. They took him to a hospital, still alive. We all hurried to go see him, Wen Fu, Jiaguo, Hulan, the other pilots who had not yet died.
Oh, I saw! Gan’s eyes were pointed to the ceiling, laughing and crying. “So, ghost, where are you?” he was shouting. “I am not refusing to die!”
“He’s crazy,” Wen Fu said. “His mind is already gone. Lucky for him, there’s nothing left to feel the pain.”
I remember the pain I felt. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t put my hand on Gan’s forehead. But I wanted to cry and shout, He’s not crazy! That ghost promised him: “Your death won’t hurt. You just come when I call you at night.”
And that ghost lied. Because Gan suffered hard, so hard, all his intestines fallen out. Two days, two nights, he had to live with so much pain before he could finally leave and chase after that ghost himself.
I grieved so much, and yet I could not show anything. My heart hurt the same way as when I lost my mother. Only, I was not aching for a love I once had. I was regretting I never took it.
So after Gan died, that’s when I claimed his love. He became like a ghost lover. Whenever Wen Fu shouted at me, I would remember the last time Gan came to my house for dinner. He had watched me all evening, the way Wen Fu treated me. And when my husband went out of the room, Gan looked at me, then quietly said, “You see yourself only in a mirror. But I see you the way you can never see yourself, all the pure things, neither good nor bad.”
I would recall this many times. When my husband had exhausted himself on top of me, after he had fallen asleep, I would get up quietly and look in the mirror. I would turn my face back and forth, trying to imagine Gan’s eyes looking at me. I would cry to myself, “What did he see? What did he see?”
And sometimes when things were worse than that, when I wondered what I had done to deserve such a terrible life, I would remember our walks at night, the story Gan told me. And although I never knew what the eight bad fates were, I knew the ninth. I was the ninth.
12
TAONAN MONEY
By the time winter came there were few planes left. So the only thing falling from the sky was rain. And then, one day, it grew so cold it snowed.
This was the week we moved from Yangchow to Nanking, which was only a few hours’ ride by truck. And that day in Nanking was the first time I saw snow. It reminded me of little feathers, the ones that flew through the air when Gan and I used to play chicken-feather ball. That’s how it felt to me.
In Nanking, we also had an air force servant, different from the one in Yangchow, not so crazy. And he was saying, “Don’t worry, ladies. This won’t last long. In Nanking, snow is like a high-level official—doesn’t come too often, doesn’t stay too long.”
Hulan and I were watching from the first-floor window of a large house. The place had once been a fine-looking mansion, built for a foreign businessman, now used as temporary quarters for all kinds of people. It was two stories, with four pillars and tall windows running across the front. And all around the house were trees—the servant said they came from France. But the leaves had fallen off, so French or Chinese, you couldn’t tell any difference. The house was in a good part of town, near the old West Wall, walking distance from Sorrowfree Lake. So it was not too far from the center, but also not too close.
But then if you looked at the inside of the house—that was a different matter. As you walked in, you could see right away: the sofas had been worn down by many people’s bottoms, the rugs scraped thin by feet going in and out year after year. And in every room, the wallpaper was cracked and peeling. The kitchen had a leak coming from two corners. You could tell this house was like an orphan, no family to love it.
The same afternoon I first saw snow, I was showing the servant how to clean out the coal stove so it would not smoke so much the next time. At that moment, Wen Fu came home and said, “If you clean that, it is only for somebody else.” And then he told us what the air force had announced. We would leave Nanking soon, maybe in two weeks, maybe less.
“We have not been here even one week,” I started to say. Wen Fu was not smiling, and I knew his meaning: The Japanese were coming.
That day I went to the air force post office to send two telegrams to Shanghai, one to my bank instructing them to withdraw four hundred Chinese dollars and give it to Wen Fu’s sister, the other to Wen Fu’s sister telling her where to send the money. The telegraph operator girl helped me pick the right number of urgent words. At the end of the telegram to Wen Fu’s sister, I added, “Hurry. We are soon taonan.”
I added the word taonan myself to make my sister-in-law hurry, to take my request seriously. Perhaps I was exaggerating, maybe not. Anyway, I put it there because that was a word that made everyone jump.
This word, taonan? Oh, there is no American word I can think of that means the same thing. But in Chinese, we have lots of different words to describe all kinds of troubles. No, “refugee” is not the meaning, not exactly. Refugee is what you are after you have been taonan and are still alive. And if you are alive, you would never want to talk about what made you taonan.
You’re lucky you have never had to experience this. It means terrible danger is coming, not just to you but to many people, so everyone is watching out only for himself. It is a fear that chases you, a sickness, exactly like a hot fever in your brain. So your only thoughts are, “Escape! Escape!”—nothing else, day and night. And the hair on your head stands straight up, because it’s as though you can feel a knife pointed at your neck, and someone’s hateful breath just two steps away. And if you hear a shout, or see someone’s e
yes grow big, that would be enough. The fever turns into a chill and runs down your back and into your legs, and you are running and stumbling, running and stumbling.
You are lucky you don’t know what this means. But I will tell you what it’s like, how it almost happened to me.
After I wrote my telegram, the operator girl said to me, “Do you really think we are soon taonan?”
I did not want to alarm her, so I said, “I only put that down because my sister-in-law is absentminded. This will make her hurry before she forgets.”
The girl laughed and congratulated me for being so clever. I liked her very much. I didn’t know her real Chinese name, but she was nicknamed Wan Betty, “Beautiful Betty,” because she looked like that actress Bette Davis that everyone liked so much. She combed her black hair in the same style, her voice was husky, and her eyes were big—droopy down below, swollen on top—although I think she had some kind of thyroid or kidney disease that made her look this way.
She was a typical Nanking girl, who had caught a “lightning marriage”—met a pilot, then married him right away, that fast. The pilot was someone from Wen Fu’s class, I didn’t know him too well. He died maybe only two or three weeks after the marriage, but it was enough time for him to leave behind the start of a baby.
Four days later I went back to the post office. My sister-in-law—she was so bad—she sent the money immediately, two days later, not to me, but to Wen Fu! That’s what Wan Betty said. Wen Fu had already come in to pick it up, and what could she do? His name was on the banknote.
“That was my money, money from my dowry!” I told Wan Betty. “And that was supposed to be our running-away money, money just in case we needed it to save our lives.”