“If anyone tries to steal this pedicab from us, beat them away!” she shouted. “You have to do this, understand? Beat them away!”
“Beat them away,” I repeated. My heart was pumping fast. I looked to the sides, behind me, raising the stick at a man who was eyeing me.
It was not until we were almost home that I thought to ask her how she had found the pedicab.
“What a bad world,” she said. “When we ran into the boulevard, I could finally breathe and see again. Right away I saw the same man who robbed the pedicab from the driver who was standing next to us. He was pedaling by, just a few feet away. I didn’t even think. I just ran over and pushed him off the seat as hard as I could. When he fell, I jumped on and pedaled away to get you. I saw your green coat, saw you were looking for me as well. But right before I called out to you, at that same moment, someone ran up to me. Wah! He was waving a stick, ready to strike me down and steal this pedicab, the same as I had done, and the man before me had done. But I was ready. When he swung, I grabbed the stick, then used it to beat him away.”
She waved her hand at me. One of her fingers looked broken. “You see how bad the world has become,” she said. “Now I’m that way too.”
That day we left Nanking.
So you see, in some ways I have been lucky in my life. I was never really taonan, only the next level before that happens.
Of course, I was scared enough to forget all about the telegram I sent Peanut. I forgot all about my four hundred yuan, until it was too late.
13
HEAVEN’S BREATH
A few years ago, I was talking to Helen about this same thing, what happened in Nanking. She was complaining about her finger, that’s what reminded me.
I said, “Remember how you stole a pedicab the day the paper warnings fell from the sky?” You see, I had never thanked her for saving my life. We were so rushed back then, so anxious to leave, there was no time to be polite. And then fifty years went by, and I still had not thanked her. So I was going to thank her now.
Helen laughed. “I don’t remember this,” she said. “Anyway, how can you accuse me of stealing something? I never stole anything!”
I said, “But this was wartime. You pushed a man off and broke your finger, the same finger that now gives you arthritis problems. And then you found me and took me home. I was six months pregnant.”
But Helen still didn’t remember. She remembers only a little bit about living in Nanking, about duck kidneys she ate there once and has never had since, about a table she never wanted to leave behind. And of course, she remembers Wan Betty. She thinks Betty was her friend.
Isn’t that strange? We were at the same place, at the same time. For me, this was one of the worst moments of my life. I remember everything. For Helen, except for those duck kidneys, it was nothing worthwhile to keep in her mind.
Why do you think this is? My happiest times, my worst times—they are things only I remember, nobody else remembers them. A very lonely feeling.
Anyway, when Helen complained about her arthritis that day, I told her I would finish twisting the wire on the wreaths. I didn’t say this was to thank her for saving my life in Nanking. She wouldn’t have understood. But I knew what I was doing.
And now I will tell you how we escaped with our lives and didn’t even know it.
Only one suitcase each, that’s all we could bring. And only one hour until we had to leave Nanking. That’s how it was—we had to decide what we needed to survive, what we could not bear to leave behind, all in one hour. No time to sell anything. The whole city was taonan-crazy. I was scared.
But Wen Fu did not know how to comfort me. When I started to tell him what had happened in the marketplace, he waved me away.
“Don’t you have eyes?” my husband shouted. “I have more important things to do than talk about your shopping.” And then he walked over to speak to a man in a truck. He lit a cigarette, smoked two puffs, then looked at his watch and stamped the cigarette out before lighting another. So that’s how I knew he was scared too.
Jiaguo was the one who told Hulan and me that we could pack only one suitcase each. “What about my new table? What about my two chairs?” Hulan cried. A few days after we arrived in Nanking, we had both bought a few extra pieces of furniture, thinking we would stay longer in the capital city. And while Hulan’s table and chairs were cheap, not very good quality, they must have been fancier than anything she had ever owned.
“Don’t worry about those things,” Jiaguo said, and then he took Hulan to the side and whispered something to her. I could not hear, but I saw Hulan’s face was like that of a little girl, pouting one moment, beaming the next.
“Hurry,” Hulan said to me in her new bossy voice. “No time to sit around and feel sorry for ourselves.”
I wanted to tell her, “I was not the one complaining.” But we had no time to argue.
As we packed, our air force servant went in and out of the room, carrying in the things we asked him to find: Wen Fu’s other air force uniform; my sewing basket, so I could take just the needles; two bowls and two pairs of chopsticks, a set each for Wen Fu and myself.
The servant chatted nervously to us the whole time. “If you listen to the radio, if you read the newspapers, you would know nothing about the Japanese coming, nothing,” he said. “But all you have to do is look at people’s faces in the city.”
The more he talked the more urgent our packing became. He said that runaway soldiers were robbing, even killing people to steal their clothes and disguise themselves as civilians before the Japanese came into the capital. Anyone with money or connections was running away. Even the mayor—the one Chiang Kai-shek appointed because he promised he would protect Nanking forever—he was running away too, and with lots of money.
“We are not running away,” Hulan said sharply to the servant. “The second and third class have a new assignment in Kunming, very important business there. That’s why we’re going.”
I wondered if she really believed this. Is that what Jiaguo had told her? And what kind of important assignment was in Kunming? Long time ago Kunming used to be a place where they sent officials who fell into disgrace. If they didn’t chop your head off, they sent you to Kunming, almost to the edge of China, a place filled with tribal people. Of course, that was not the case anymore, but still, I thought about an expression Uncle once used: kunjing Kunming- “stuck in a tight corner, just like living in Kunming,” meaning you had been pushed out of the real world. Living in Kunming would be like hiding in a secret spot where no one could find us, a safe place. I was glad to go.
After I finished packing Wen Fu’s clothes, I started to fill my own suitcase. At the bottom, under the lining, I could still feel the ten pairs of silver chopsticks I got from my wedding dowry. On top of this, I put a small biscuit tin containing all my jewelry and a little blue perfume bottle my mother had given me long ago. I covered these things up with some good clothes. And then I saw I had packed only winter clothes—as if I would not live through more than one season. What bad-luck thinking! So at the last minute, I took out a sweater and put in two summer dresses.
The pots and pans and some old shoes—those were given to the cook and her daughter. As to the other things I could not take, I saw immediately who I should give those to. Wan Betty was walking down the road and I called to her to stop a few minutes.
“Where will you go?” I asked her. “Back to Nanchang, to your husband’s parents?”
She shook her head quickly. “They don’t want me, I don’t want them,” she said, so strong, so brave. “I’m staying here.”
“Help me take a few things, then,” I said. And I called to the servant to bring over the rest of my clothes, Wen Fu’s radio, and my little black sewing machine. I instructed him to put these things into the pedicab, still sitting in front of our house.
“You take those things home,” I told Wan Betty. And then I saw Hulan biting her lips, watching the servant carrying out the sewing mach
ine. I saw how much she wanted that machine for herself, even though we had no room for it.
Wan Betty started to protest, and I stopped her: “We have no time for this kind of polite argument.”
So she smiled and said, “Fine, then. I will use the sewing machine to make a good living for myself and my baby.” She took my hands and squeezed them. “This is a debt I will always owe you,” she said. “Even if I can return ten times all this, I still have to repay you forever.”
I knew this was her good-luck wish that both of us would be alive to meet again. And then she quickly pulled something out of her purse. It was a picture of herself as a bride, a cheap photograph. She was dressed in a wrinkled long white satin gown, her pilot husband in black pants, a white dinner jacket, and a crooked bow tie. They were the same clothes every couple borrowed from the photographer who did the Western wedding pictures.
I thanked her for the photograph. I thought she was very brave to stay, because I think she could have argued with the air force to take her along.
And now Jiaguo shouted, “We’re going!” Then Wen Fu shouted the same thing, and the servants hurried us along. We threw our suitcases into the back of an open military truck, then climbed in after them. The back of the truck was so high Wen Fu had to pull me in as Hulan pushed me from behind.
“Hurry!” Jiaguo shouted in a higher-pitched voice. And suddenly my heart started to beat hard, thinking we were not escaping fast enough, that just as we started to leave, the Japanese would arrive. Everybody seemed to have the same fear.
“Hurry, we’re going!” people were now shouting together. “Hurry, get in. Don’t waste time!”
The back of the truck was quickly filled with nine people, all of us elbow-to-elbow crowded. Hulan and I were the only women. Besides us and our husbands, there were two pilots from the third class, two officials, one who acted much more important than the other, an old man who paid a lot of money to ride in the truck, and of course, the driver, a man we called “Old Mr. Ma.” He wasn’t really old. That was a term of respect. He was in charge of taking us all the way to Kunming.
And then Old Mr. Ma shouted a curse in his hoarse voice, the truck started with a big roar, and we were going down the street, past other houses that had lost their elegance like the one we had just left. We turned down another road and then drove out the West Wall Gate.
We made many turns, traveled down the small roads hidden on the sides by tall trees. And as we left the city, we passed Sorrowfree Lake. Even in the wintertime it was beautiful, calm and quiet, with willow trees hanging down, sweeping the banks. It looked as if it had not changed one leaf since the first emperor. I was sorry I had not come there for a walk to feel that kind of unchanging peace in my heart.
And then I saw a boy standing next to the lake. He was very far away but we could see him waving. He jumped up and down, shouted something. We thought he had seen the pilots’ uniforms and was now cheering us as heroes, so we waved back. He started running toward us, then jumped up and down, waved both arms, crossing them above his head. He wanted us to stop. Of course, we could not stop. As we drove past him, he stamped his feet. And then we saw him pick up some rocks along the edge of the shore. He threw them into the still lake, and the water broke and shivered. He threw his arms up in the air, wide like an explosion. “Poom!” he shouted. “Poom! Poom!” And then that bad boy picked up another rock and threw it at our truck. Although he didn’t hit us, we now heard what he shouted. “Runaways! Cowards!”
We drove to the Yangtze River harbor just outside the city. We were told that once we were there we would catch a boat to our halfway stop, Hankow-Wuchang, in the central part of the country, a place nicknamed “Demon’s Furnace”—so hot that people joked a native from this area would think bathing in a vat of boiling oil was a good way to escape the heat. But of course, it would not be that way now; this was wintertime, this was wartime, no joking around.
We were on the boat for maybe a few days, maybe as long as a week. I don’t remember now how long it was, because I have taken other boat rides since then, and sometimes I confuse them all.
Anyway, after we got off the boat in Hankow-Wuchang, we rested one night in a hotel. The next morning, we found Old Mr. Ma had already loaded our suitcases into the back of an army-style truck, the same kind we jumped into when we were in Nanking. This one, however, had a big tank on wheels attached to the back for carrying gasoline. That was the only way to get to Kunming back then. We didn’t have gas stations every ten miles, no such thing. And we did not travel on big highways, with seventy-mile-an-hour speed limits. When we left Hankow, we drove on narrow dirt roads, two lanes, sometimes only one. We went twenty miles an hour, because that’s how fast that truck could go. So if there had been any Japanese along the road, all they would have had to do was run by our truck and pull us out.
The first day, I was worried we weren’t escaping fast enough. The second day, I was still a little worried. But after that, I forgot about my fears. I was bored. We traveled inward, away from the fighting. It was like going backward, to another world, a place from long time ago, before the war. And none of us minded. We would be safe.
On the way west to Changsha, we drove alongside the river and through villages with lots of narrow streams running through. In one place we saw the water was thick with fish—Hulan said it looked like some kind of rich soup.
In those poor, backward places, you would not think China was in any kind of war with outsiders. People there did not get newspapers. They could not read. And in any case, it was the beginning of the war and those people did not think their one mu of land was worth fighting over. They had no time to worry about anything except the price of grain at the market, the cost of seed for next year’s crops, and how they would eat when no money was left over.
Along the way, we did not run into any Japanese. Our only enemies were a fallen-down tree blocking our way, a big hole in a tire that slowed us down, things like that.
One time it was a pig who would not get out of the way. Old Mr. Ma honked many times, drove forward very slowly, and nudged the pig with the truck bumper. And the pig just turned around and butted his head on the truck, attacking it as if it were another pig. Wah! We laughed so hard. But then Wen Fu said he knew how to solve our problem. He jumped out and pulled a gun from the holster strapped across his chest.
“Don’t shoot him!” I shouted. “He’ll move away soon.” But Wen Fu was not listening to me. He walked over to the animal, who was now snorting around the truck’s tires. Hulan closed her eyes. Jiaguo said, “He’s only joking.” And then Wen Fu pointed his gun at the pig. We all stood still, just like that pig, his ears now twitching, his tail stiff and pointed, watching Wen Fu with a wary eye.
Suddenly an old man came running up the side of the road, shouting, “So that’s where you are, you stinky old thing!” Wen Fu turned to look. The old man was waving a little tassel for a whip. “Bad pig!” he cooed. “Come here, you bad thing.”
I was so relieved! We all started to laugh. Just then, Wen Fu turned back to the pig and fired his gun, only once, hitting the pig in his stomach. And that poor pig was screaming, blood streaming out. He stumbled to the side of the road before falling into a ditch, his four legs pointed into the air.
The old man’s mouth dropped wide open. He ran over and looked at his pig. He began to curse, slapping the tassel on the ground, before shaking it at Wen Fu. “Are you some kind of crazy demon?” the old man shouted. Wen Fu frowned, then pointed his gun at the old man, whose eyes grew big as coins.
This time Jiaguo stood up and shouted: “Stop!”
Wen Fu put his gun down, then smiled at Jiaguo. “Of course I was only joking,” he said. He put his gun away, then quickly climbed back into the truck. But I could see how nervous everyone around me looked. We were quiet for the rest of the day.
Just beyond Changsha, we drove past hills with rice terraces cut into them. This is the kind of China you Americans always see in the movies—the p
oor countryside, people wearing big hats to protect themselves from the sun. No, I never wore a hat like that! I was from Shanghai. That’s like thinking someone from San Francisco wears a cowboy hat and rides a horse. Ridiculous!
In any case, the people in those places were simple, also very honest and friendly. During the day, we would stop at little villages, and children would crowd around us, only staring, never touching or asking questions. The air force servant would buy things for us to eat at the food stands. It was all local food, already made: a bowl of spicy dan-dan noodles or fatty pork with cabbage. Once it was a bean curd fried with chili peppers—oh, very tasty, the best dish we ate in two hundred miles.
When nighttime came, we had to quickly find a place to stay. The roads were too dark to see, and a sleepy driver could easily drive into a field—the same way Wen Fu did with his little car in the cemetery. So when the sun stopped, we stopped. And that’s when we learned what kind of luck we had.
One time it was a pleasant place, a simple hotel, with clean beds and a common bathroom. Another time it was a roof over our heads in a school or a hospital dug into a hill. And once, it was a plank of wood in a pig shed, and at night the animals would be grunting at us from the outside, trying to get back in.
We didn’t complain too much. Chinese people know how to adapt to almost anything. It didn’t matter what your background was, rich or poor. We always knew: Our situation could change any minute. You’re lucky you were born in this country. You never had to think this way.
On our journey, we passed all kinds of places filled with tribal people, dirty hats on their heads. They ran to the truck and tried to sell us things, cigarettes and matches, a cup made out of a tin can, that kind of junk. And when they gave us their best food, their highest quality, all you could do was stare at the two pieces of dried-out meat lying on top of watery rice and wonder what kind of animal this meal had once been.