Dr. Bethune's Children Read online

  We didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying, but she kept on repeating it, over and over again. Her gravelly voice and persistent cough soon got on my nerves, so I was relieved when my name was called. My father and I followed the nurse to the doctor’s office and sat down. When handing my my chart to the doctor, the nurse covered her mouth with her hand and yawned a big yawn. Then she smiled awkwardly at us. I felt that a young woman’s yawn was a lot more pleasant than an old woman’s chattering.

  The doctor was really easy-going, meaning he wasn’t too focused on what he was doing. He had no sooner started checking my eyes than he began to talk to my father. He asked where my father was from and where he was working and what his monthly salary was. Then they changed topics. The doctor’s face was so close to me that I could not only smell his bad breath but also see spittle flying out of his mouth. I found the irregular opening and closing of his lips a bit scary.

  When my father mentioned that he was going to listen to “an important broadcast,” the doctor sighed deeply. He said that 1976 had really been a year of calamities. He mentioned our beloved Premier Zhou Enlai’s death in January, the counter-revolutionary gathering known as the Tiananmen Square Incident in April, the flooding of the Yellow River in June, the death of General Zhu De, once our army’s commander-in-chief, and the Tangshan earthquake, the most disastrous earthquake in Chinese history, in July. “How can a country withstand so many disasters in one year?” The doctor sighed.

  And Yangyang’s death, I said in my heart. That was the disaster that had had the biggest impact on me.

  Then the doctor mentioned the ironwood tree that had blossomed in the only park in the city, Hero Park, in December. In our culture, the rare blooming of such a tree is a bad sign, meaning that the following year would be unlucky. Many people went to see the tree, and worry about the future enveloped the entire city. “Who knows what’s going to happen next?” the doctor said, and again sighed deeply.

  My father looked back. Then he leaned down to the doctor, asking in a low voice whether he could guess at the content of the important broadcast.

  The doctor, too, nervously looked around. Then he put his head close to my father’s and said, “This is no time for wild speculation,” he said in a voice almost too quiet for me to hear.

  My father nodded thoughtfully. “The old woman in the waiting room said that her son had guessed,” he said pointing at the doorway. But he did not finish his sentence.

  “Guessed what?” the doctor asked.

  My father shook his head and sighed but did not reply.

  I’m sure the doctor understood what my father’s headshaking, sighing, and silence meant. When he was making notes on my chart, he was shaking his head and sighing, too. “This boy needs glasses,” he said.

  I was sad at the irreversible decline in my vision. I don’t know why it had happened so suddenly.

  My father was lost in thought and seemed not to have heard.

  “This boy needs glasses,” the doctor repeated in a louder voice.

  This time my father heard. “My vision and his mother’s vision are both good,” he complained. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “There are many mysteries in our lives,” the doctor said. He walked us to the door. When he shook my father’s hand to say goodbye, he once again reminded him to take me to get glasses as soon as possible. “The sooner the better,” he said.

  After leaving the doctor’s office, my father didn’t say anything. He wasn’t the way I expected, reprimanding me for my incorrect posture while reading or doing homework, causing my vision to deteriorate. He didn’t say anything until when we reached the entrance to the hospital. “Don’t hang around outside,” he said coldly. “Go home immediately.”

  “Is the important broadcast about Chairman Mao?” I asked carefully when my father got on his bicycle.

  He looked at me for a moment and said I should not talk nonsense.

  But I couldn’t help asking another question. “If Chairman Mao . . . ,” I started to ask, pausing. “What will happen then?”

  My father looked back at me and said in a low voice, “That isn’t something that you kids should worry about.” Then he set off for his office.

  Watching my father ride away, I saw myself as a bystander at a turning point of history and felt an overwhelming loneliness. If only Yangyang were by my side now. I could not bear to hear about the bad health of our great saviour any more than the old woman at the hospital could. Let alone something more serious. Those guesses about his health contradicted our ingrained belief that your great friend would live an eternal life. “Wansui, Chairman Mao!” was the first thing my classmates and I had ever written down in our writing books. We had all copied it out innumerable times. It was not only the first motto we had ever learned but also the first truth. This truth told us that we would all die before Chairman Mao would.

  I rushed home with a heavy heart. I did not know what would happen in the world after the important broadcast. When I got to our apartment complex, I heard someone calling my name. A woman’s voice, but not a voice I recognized. I stopped and looked in the direction the voice was coming from. In the blinding sunlight, I narrowed my eyes and saw Yangyang’s mother. I hadn’t seen her since his death. My mother had warned me to avoid meeting or talking to his parents. She said it would be better for me and for them that way. But this time there was no avoiding her.

  I waited for Yangyang’s mother to approach. I felt that my body was sweating uncomfortably. At the same time, I noticed that it wasn’t just one person walking toward me. By her side was a little girl. I narrowed my eyes and looked at them. My heart was pounding. “How long it’s been since I last saw you!” Yangyang’s mother declared in a loud voice, when we were still some distance apart. Her voice had completely changed.

  “Ever since…,” I was about to reply but then I stopped. I should not mention Yangyang’s death, I reminded myself. “It’s been a while,” I said unhappily.

  Yangyang’s mother changed the subject, just as she used to do in math class. She pulled the little girl in front of her. “This is Yangyang’s little sister,” she said.

  I’d already heard that Yangyang’s parents had adopted a little girl, one in the first batch of orphans from the Tangshan earthquake sent to our city. I had also heard that his parents had had a difference of opinion about whether to adopt a child. His father felt that adopting a child could help them through the mourning process, but his mother had thought it would only add to her pain. In the end the father won the argument, but he had to make a concession. He had originally hoped to adopt a boy.

  “Her name is Yinyin,” Yangyang’s mother said. “I chose her because she has the same birthday as Yangyang. And she can also recite ‘In Memory of Dr. Bethune.’”

  That was the first time I saw Yinyin. She looked sprightly, but also dazed. There was a scar on her chin, a small scar. It had been mentioned, but it was much smaller than I had imagined.

  Yangyang’s mother put her hand on my head and patted it. I winced. “This is your elder brother’s best friend,” she said to Yinyin. “He doesn’t even know how to find the lowest common denominator.” She stroked my hair, which made me feel even more uncomfortable.

  Yinyin did not look up at me.

  “If your older brother were still with us, he would be taller,” she said proudly.

  I was terrified to hear her comparing me with Yangyang. I did not want to keep talking to her. “Why aren’t you at home?” I asked, trying to change the subject and get away as soon as possible. “There’s going to be an important broadcast.”

  Yangyang’s mother kept on patting my head and looking over my face, as if she had not heard what I just said. But she suddenly started mumbling, “Nothing important, don’t you know? Nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all.”

  In the past, when I used to hear her call my n
ame in class to work out a problem on the blackboard, I trembled from head to toe. But that was nothing compared with this. I felt my blood go cold at this mad repetition.

  Solemn music started playing through the loudspeaker on the power lines beside us. It was the music used for announcing a death. Hearing it, Yangyang’s mother seemed literally shocked. Her hand jumped from my head and hung in midair. Her mumbling came to a stop. She stiffened like a statue, but a statue whose head could move, and she slowly turned her head towards the loudspeaker. Her lips were moving, and I could just hear a whisper that was even quieter than her mumbling. “Another boy has died,” she said. “Another boy has died.”

  Thanks to the great saviour of all the world’s people, I was finally liberated! The sound of the funeral music gave me a chance to break away from Yangyang’s mother. I rushed into our doorway. I stumbled up the stairs. When I put the key in the keyhole, my hands started to tremble violently, and my tears began to fall.

  It was two months before our wedding when Yinyin and I went to bed together for the first time. We squeezed onto a single bed in my bachelor’s dormitory. After we made love, we held each other tight. Yinyin mentioned the first time we had seen each other. She could clearly recall all the details of that historic moment, which surprised me. I asked her about her first impression of her future husband. And she admitted that at the time she thought that I was kind of ugly. She said that my small eyes made her think of her little brother, who had big bright eyes. He was not yet eight years old when he and his parents were killed in the earthquake.

  Then we talked about her second life, her life as Yangyang’s little sister. I was sad that she had been selected by that household, because this choice meant to me that she had been chosen by death. Yangyang’s parents should not have told her the true reason why they were adopting her. They should not have called her Yangyang’s little sister. Still less should they have chosen her because she was born on the same day as Yangyang. I never told her that my right eye started to throb with pain on Yangyang’s first posthumous birthday. Yangyang never knew he had a younger sister, so it was not necessary for Yinyin to know she had an elder brother.

  I understood the causal relation between the disappearance of Yangyang and the appearance of Yinyin. But, unlike Yangyang’s parents, I did not love Yinyin because she was Yangyang’s little sister. And likewise, the reason she loved me was not that I was Yangyang’s best friend. In fact, Yinyin never asked me about Yangyang. And I never felt I should let her share my friendship with him and my secrets with him. Our silence about Yangyang was a kind of unspoken understanding. Call it chemistry. I was not willing that our love should be shadowed by death. After reading her first composition, however, I decided that one day in the future, perhaps when we were old, I would tell her about Yangyang’s notebook. But I never thought that she would leave me so soon, without warning.

  A Note

  Dear Dr. Bethune, that day, when they came home from work, my parents’ eyes were swollen from crying. Over dinner, they said nothing. Neither did I. I kept my questions to myself. But when we were almost done, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed to break that stifling silence. So I told them about seeing Yangyang’s mother on the way home from the hospital. My mother was upset. “How many times have I told you,” she said angrily. “Don’t talk to that madwoman.” Then she asked what the madwoman had said. I had decided not to tell anyone about Yangyang’s mother’s reaction when the funeral music began playing over the loudspeaker. From her reaction, especially from what she murmured, I had known how hard she was hit by the news. Her words were far more intense than my parents’ tears, than anybody’s tears. I looked down and finished my rice. “She didn’t say anything,” I said.

  In the middle of the night, I heard my parents talking in their room. I heard them talk about a seizure of power. That stunned me. I sat lonely on the foot of my bed, suffering hot and cold flashes. When my mom came out to tell me to turn off the light and go to sleep, I asked her the question I’d been wanting to ask her ever since I heard the sad music. “Is it the end of the world?” I asked. “Maybe worse,” my mother said coldly. Then she reminded me that, according to the decision of the funeral committee, all entertainment activities would be forbidden for the next ten days. “You must not sing. Do you understand?” she said. “If anyone hears you singing . . . .” She didn’t finish, but I could well imagine how serious the repercussions would be.

  I felt jealous of Yangyang, because he had left the world before it ended. I remembered the note in the notebook, the note to his mother. I don’t know how many times I’d read it. It was etched in my brain. Dear Dr. Bethune, I’m hesitating as to whether I should let you know what was in that note. I worry that you, too, might feel guilty about Yangyang’s death.

  Mom, I’m going to try to find Dr. Bethune. I once doubted he was real, because in the real world I’ve never seen a noble-minded person, a pure person. In the real world there are only selfish people. Now I believe. I believe he is greater than all the people we have ever known. I want to go find him.

  I am sorry, Mom. Please forgive me. Please do not say that I am a person who only thinks of himself.

  Mom, I’m telling this only to you. You won’t blame me, will you? I don’t hate Dad, not even a little bit. He is just a stranger. I forgave him for hitting me. Now I know why he lost his temper that day. But I don’t know why such a thing would happen to me. Mom, don’t ask what I know, because I don’t want to lie. Don’t ask me.

  Mom, please forgive me and forget me. Don’t worry about me. Dr. Bethune will take good care of me.

  Those were Yangyang’s last words. But I’ve always wondered why he stuck the note in the cover of his notebook, leaving it for me rather than for his mother. Maybe he thought that such words would make his mother angry at his father or at you, dear Dr. Bethune. Maybe he worried that such words would make her blame herself? I’ve never figured it out.

  I had turned off the light and lain down, but I hadn’t closed my eyes. I looked up at the trembling shadows on the ceiling. Yangyang’s mother’s expression at that historic moment came back to me. “Another boy has died.”

  I’m curious about the world she inhabits. In that world, all deaths are the deaths of boys. She did not have to worry about the end of the world. Her world was a world without an end. Or perhaps you could say that her world had already ended, when the first child, her child, her only child, died. Even after all these years, that hot afternoon replays over and over again in my mind. It gave me the most memorable and moving phrase. Every time death appears in my life, I use that phrase: “Another boy has died.” Yangyang’s mother turned that solemn, historic afternoon into the most poetic moment of my life.

  If Yangyang’s mother were to read her son’s last words, how would she react?

  I know Yangyang really loved his mother. Perhaps that is why he was not willing to lie to her when he came back from Graveyard Hill. I still remember many of the stories he told me about her. The story about the plaster statue of Mao is one. Another story took place when he was six years old, soon after his father went to the May Seventh Cadre School. At the time, his mother was going to the office every night to take part in political study and to do criticism and self-criticism. Each night, she locked Yangyang in his room before she went. Alone in the locked room, Yangyang felt very bored and moved all the furniture around to make the time go faster. One day, he stood on the chair and went through the top drawer of the chest of drawers. Under some old underwear, at the back of the drawer, he found a precious book, Selected Poems of the Revolutionary Martyrs. The title page had his father’s dedication on it, from which Yangyang saw it was a present his father had given to his mother on their wedding anniversary.

  Yangyang never knew there was such a book at his home. Apart from The Little Red Book and a few other works by the revolutionary mentors, households were not allowed books. All other books were poison w
eeds that were supposed to be burnt or sent to the recycling station and sold. Yangyang did not know why this book was there. He sat on the chair and flipped through it, discovering some notations his mother had made in the margins beside some of the poems. Beside a couplet, “On the ground where my skeleton lies, the flowers of love will bloom,” his mother had noted, “Revolutionary romanticism.” Yangyang did not know what this meant. He read the lines many times and still did not know the meaning of the notation. But the word love in the couplet unsettled him. In the past, his understanding was that love was a verb, and had to be connected to a great object, like Chairman Mao, the Chinese Communist Party or the People’s Republic of China. He never imagined that love would be a noun—a thing. What kind of thing was it? He instinctively felt that it was a secret he should not know. The secret made him feel nervous. But why did he not feel nervous at all when love was directed at a great object?

  After Yangyang had put the book back where he found it and was lying in bed, he still felt unsettled and embarrassed and was unable to sleep. He was still awake when his mother got home from the office at ten o’clock. As soon as his mother had turned off the lamp and lain down, he asked, “Mom, what is revolutionary romanticism?”

  After a long silence, his mother in replied, “Revolutionary romanticism means that romanticism is revolutionary.”

  This reply confused Yangyang even more. “Then what is romanticism?” he asked.

  This time, the period of silence was longer. “It’s a kind of positive or optimistic attitude towards life,” she said finally.

  This reply did nothing to clear up Yangyang’s confusion. He wanted to ask more questions, but his mother told him that it was late, that he should not say anything more.