Dr. Bethune's Children Page 19

  Bob learned a lot from this last night on his second trip to China. He first realized that Chinese people do not like to call each other by name. When he asked those two young Chinese women what their names were, they said that he should call them xiaojie. Bob, of course, found this word difficult to pronounce. He mispronounced both xiao and jie. So instead of xiaojie he ended up saying shaoji, which is the correct pronunciation of another phrase meaning roasted chicken.

  Then Bob asked these two roasted chickens what xiaojie meant. The shorter one told him civilly that it could be translated into sister in English. Bob found this hard to understand, because in English that’s what you would call a Catholic nun. He did not dare to ask what relationship these two attractive roasted chickens had with the church.

  Then he asked a technical question. If the two of them were called roasted chicken, how could he tell them apart? Then they showed they were not just naughty and lively, but also funny. “You can tell us apart by appearance,” the tall one said. But Bob said that all Asian women looked the same to him. “Then you can tell us apart by the size of our breasts,” the short one said. Bob politely said that both of them had big breasts, so he could not tell them apart by their breasts, either. In the end, the tall one said, “Don’t worry, the service we provide is the same.”

  Bob told me that he had more questions to ask them. Where had they studied English? Were they really sisters? But the two roasted chickens were not interested in his questions. “They just told me to hurry up,” Bob complained. “They didn’t know that Canadians like to take things slow.”

  He still insisted on asking another question, asking the two women if they knew you, dear Dr. Bethune. He said it was because of you that he had come to China. In other words, it was only because of you that he had the opportunity to stay in this hotel and receive special room service from such attractive women.

  Bob never expected that the two roasted chickens would say, in unison, that of course they knew you. There was no need to ask, they added, because for the Chinese people, your household name was a synonym for Canada.

  “I am the compatriot of Dr. Bethune,” Bob told them proudly. Then he jokingly asked if he could get a discount.

  The tall one was out of patience. She pushed him onto the bed. “Don’t embarrass your compatriot,” she said. “He truly was utterly devoted to others and without any thought of self. And what you tell us is that you want a discount.” The short one also tried to hurry Bob up. She reminded him, using another title in the Old Three, that there were more people waiting to be served.

  Bob regretted that they did not have any interest in talking. But the pleasure that they gave him more than made up for his disappointment. He said he did not know what magic they used to restore his long-lost sexual vigour. Again he regretted that he had come to China too late and was leaving too soon.

  After his moment of climactic passion, lying happily on the bed, Bob suddenly thought of the book of folk songs that he had memorized fifty years before. Then he told these two women he could sing a Chinese song. The short one had just come out of the bathroom. She said he couldn’t even correctly pronounce xiaojie, how was he going to sing a Chinese song? She simply didn’t believe it. But the tall one, still lying in Bob’s arms, was curious. She asked Bob what the name of the song was. When he said the name, the two roasted chickens were confused. They had never heard of it. Qilai isn’t the official name of China’s national anthem.

  When Bob sang the first sentence, of course, the two roasted chickens immediately knew what song he meant. They laughed out loud, and so hard that they could not contain themselves. Their laughter made it hard for Bob to keep singing. “What’s wrong?” he asked, unhappy and confused.

  They could not stop laughing. They were in tears, it was so funny.

  Bob stared. When they finally quieted down, he asked, “What was so funny?”

  The short one was facing away from the bed, putting on her bra. “It’s a bit late to sing that song,” she said.

  Bob asked her why.

  “Because,” the other one said, “Now it’s qibulai,” adding an extra syllable to Bob’s title of the song to turn it into “unable to get up.” Then she once again burst out laughing.

  Not getting the joke, Bob tried to correct them. “The title is not qibulai,” he said. “It’s “qilai.”

  “It was qilai,” the short one said. “But it isn’t anymore.”

  “To this day, I don’t know why they thought it was so funny,” Bob said, staring at me. “Were they laughing at my pronunciation?”

  “No,” I told Bob. “Your pronunciation of qilai was correct. What they were laughing at is qibulai, which was their own joke.”

  “Then what does qibulai mean?” Bob asked.

  “It means ‘unable to get up,’” I explained.

  “Then what the hell does ‘unable to get up’ mean in that song?” Bob asked impatiently.

  The basic meaning of qilai was stand up or arise, I told him, which is what it means in the song. In the room in the hotel, however, the two of them had thought of a special meaning that it doesn’t have in the dictionary but which it can have in that kind of context. Unable to get it up. Unable to rise to the occasion.

  Bob was embarrassed. The first time he had seen the term was over fifty years before. And he had finally learned that it could be used to convey another meaning. This new knowledge made him all the more nostalgic about the end of his second trip to China. “What naughty roasted chickens,” he said, sighing. “They even make a joke out of their national anthem.”

  Dear Dr. Bethune, I read nothing about your relationships with Chinese women in your papers. I wonder whether, as a man who had retained his vigour and was less than fifty years old, you had any fantasies about Chinese women in the last year and a half of your life. You didn’t understand many Chinese words. This was certainly an impediment. But I really hope that you fell in love with a Chinese woman. That would have been the only way to distract you from homesickness and loneliness, from your hopeless waiting for letters from far away. Though who knows? Maybe it would have made you all the more homesick and lonely.

  Would it surprise you to learn that your Chinese name was soon a part of the Chinese language? Dear Dr. Bethune, I’m sure you’d find it hard to imagine how popular Chinese is today. Everyone says that Chinese, meaning Mandarin, is the language of the twenty-first century. It is so popular that I can support myself by teaching Chinese, and I am not alone. More and more students have been studying with me in the past couple of years.

  I’m not actually that excited about the future of Chinese. To me, a language is a palace founded on the past. To grasp a language, a person has to listen carefully to the spectres that are wandering around in that palace, to their tears, their complaints, their laughs, their sighs, even their silences. Every word has so many spectres behind it. That’s why I always mention you in the first lesson I teach to every new student. Dear Dr. Bethune, I always tell my students that today in this world there are millions, no, tens or hundreds of millions of people who can say that they are your children. I also tell them that memorizing “In Memory of Dr. Bethune” is an ideal segue into intermediate Chinese. I always say so, but no student has ever take me seriously.

  A few weeks ago, a student came to speak with me after class. He told me that he was born in Hong Kong and that Cantonese is his mother tongue. He said that he believes the prediction that Mandarin Chinese is the language of the twenty-first century, which is why several years ago he started to study Mandarin in earnest. But his progress was less than ideal. And for a time he even lost interest in studying. He said that he felt lucky to be in my class, because my approach had reignited his passion for Mandarin. After the first class, he told his father on the phone about my feeling for language and my approach to language teaching. His father thought I was an amazing teacher and encouraged him to keep studyi
ng according to my method.

  I was about to ask this student why his father approved so strongly of my teaching methods, but he told me before I had the chance. His father had memorized “In Memory of Dr. Bethune” when he was studying on the mainland. During the Cultural Revolution, he was one of the many young Chinese who fled to Hong Kong. Later on, he opened a Chinese restaurant, which became a well-known chain in the 1980s. “He said that he is also a child of Dr. Bethune,” the student said proudly. He added that “utter devotion to others without any thought of self” had become his father’s management philosophy. “It had brought him very good business,” the student said. “He had made a lot of money.”

  I listened appreciatively to the student’s story, as if he was teaching me a difficult Chinese lesson. Dear Dr. Bethune, I never imagined that your spirit would ever prove to be profitable.

  Your legend has brought so many ironies to our lives and our history.

  A Question

  Dear Dr. Bethune, it’s a lot easier to talk to Bob than it is to talk to Claude. Bob’s questions can be described as rhetorical, not needing earnest answers. But Claude is much more serious. His questions are interrogations. He’ll only accept a certain kind of answer, one that matches his own value judgments. His my-way-or-the-highway attitude makes me wish I could take his questions as rhetorical. I don’t want to reply.

  Claude is always asking me why I left my country and why I would choose to live in his. By his country, of course, he means Quebec, not Canada.

  Had Yinyin not gone out for a breath of fresh air, of course I would not have left my country. I was just an ordinary university history professor who would, on occasion, discuss politics with students and take part in demonstrations with colleagues. And the ending I dreamed of was very different from what happened. Had Yinyin not gone out for that walk, we might have had a good sleep and found out next morning what had happened the previous night. To this day, I don’t entirely know what did happen in the night.

  Yinyin’s death may have been light as a feather in terms of historical impact, but to me it was as heavy as Mount Tai. It had a subversive influence on my state of mind and completely changed the path of my life.

  Because of the massacre, the local universities had declared an early summer holiday. And after dealing with Yinyin’s funeral, I too left Beijing. At the time, I had not considered that I would not return to the city that had given me so many happy memories. Waiting on the platform for the train in Beijing Central, the friends who came to see me off all said they looked forward to my return at the end of August.

  That was my last trip with Yinyin. That time, I no longer needed to exchange seats with anyone else. Yinyin no longer needed a seat. I kept the urn containing her ashes on my lap. I dared not think about our first trip together. And I refused to look at the scenery outside the window, as Yinyin did, with rapt attention, on the first trip we took together. I just stared up at the luggage rack above the seats. I blamed myself for the tragedy that had suddenly descended into her life or rather our lives.

  The train stopped in Hankou for almost five hours, because angry students were holding a sit-in on the tracks not far from the station. There were also some students milling around the railway cars. The slogans they were holding up did not rouse me. I did not believe that “blood could really be compensated for with blood.” And I did not need blood. I needed only the night and the pleasure I shared with Yinyin, my wife and my lover.

  There were quite a few angry students and onlookers in the square outside the train station in my hometown, and some students were crowded in the entrance asking the emerging passengers if they were coming from Beijing. No one was interested in their questions. But I unconsciously nodded and said yes.

  My response attracted their attention. Excited, they followed along behind me across the square. They wanted to know what had really happened in Beijing and what it was actually like when I left. I wanted to get rid of them as soon as possible. “It’s very quiet there,” I told them. “And very orderly.” That was the truth, but it was obviously not the news that they were hoping to hear.

  Most of the students turned away in disappointment, but three kept on pestering me. One moon-faced girl asked me exactly how many people had died in the night. This question made me very sad. My eyes were moist. “What does it matter how many people died?” I rebuked them, indignantly. Tears ran down my cheeks. “It’s enough that one person died,” I mumbled. “One is too many.”

  My tears and words freaked the students out. As they walked away, I looked down and kissed the travel bag I was holding tightly to my chest. “One is enough, one is too many,” I whispered to Yinyin’s urn. “Right?”

  Before her cremation, I had placed a call to Yangyang’s father informing him of the latest tragedy in their family. And I said I would soon bring her ashes home. Yangyang’s father asked if I could turn them over to their family. Though I’m not sure whether it would have been against Yinyin’s own wishes, it was in fact what I was hoping for, because I could not take them to my own house. I did not tell Yangyang’s father that I had already bought the ticket. I did not want them to take Yinyin home from the station. I knew she never felt like she had gone home.

  So I delivered the urn to their home. Looking exhausted, Yangyang’s father opened the door. He said that he and Yangyang’s mother had been waiting for this moment ever since they got my call. I was sad that they had to face the death of another child. Within fourteen years, they had experienced the deaths of two children.

  On the train, I had imagined the worst, that Yangyang’s mother would ask me who had killed her daughter when I took the urn out of my travel bag. My reply would be, “I don’t know.” Or maybe, “Nobody knows.” Or even, “Nobody will ever know.” I would then say, “Treat it as an accident.” Of course, I would not tell her the people who shot her dead—“by accident” according to the government—and the people who had rescued her from the rubble twenty-three years earlier belonged to the same organization. They were all soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army. Yes, Yinyin’s rescue and Yinyin’s death were linked by liberation, the biggest irony in her life. And if Yangyang’s mother blamed me for ruining her daughter’s life, by falling love with her, marrying her, and causing her to live in Beijing instead of by their side, I would not say anything. I reminded myself that, no matter what happened, I had to keep calm. Even more importantly, no matter what happened, I would never tell them that the ashes in the urn were in fact the remains of two lives. This was the secret I would only share with Yinyin. Just like the pleasure we had shared.

  Yangyang’s mother’s initial response surprised me. Cradling the urn, she looked quiet and calm. In contrast, Yangyang’s father seemed disturbed. Thanking me for allowing them to handle her burial, his voice was weak and trembling. “She would feel lonely,” he added. “We will bury her right beside her elder brother.”

  This got a rise out of Yangyang’s mother, who started sobbing. Soon, her sobbing turned into howling. “I knew you wanted to follow your elder brother wherever he went,” she wailed. “You are the most thoughtful child in the world.”

  Yangyang’s mother’s woe shattered the calm I had wanted to maintain since I saw Yinyin’s body. I had a sense of being torn apart, a sense of alienation. I felt like nothing was real. I felt hatred in my bones. I hated myself for not preventing Yinyin from going out the door. Or for not going out with her. Had I been by her side at that moment, I could have blocked the bullets for the sake of her and the sake of our child. Or I would’ve fallen down with her. All of a sudden, the right side of my brain started throbbing. For the first time in my life I had a strong urge to kill myself.

  After about a week of insomnia, my parents quietly took me to a mental hospital. They were afraid of being seen, especially afraid of being seen by Yangyang’s parents. They felt embarrassed.

  Given my clear symptoms, the doctor was able to
make a diagnosis, and he recommended I stay in the hospital for a period of time. And then I could go home and keep resting. He reminded us that in my situation I should avoid any environment that would remind me of the trauma. Which meant that, for the time being, I should not return to Beijing.

  I stayed in the hospital three months. At the end, my situation noticeably improved, and I started to think about my own future. My university agreed that I could take a year’s sick leave. But I knew that I could never stand to live in the city where I had lived with Yinyin. The air in that city, the nights in that city, and the streets in that city were like viruses that would sicken me, body and mind. I needed to breathe fresh air and experience completely new nights and streets.

  At the beginning of April, 1990, I succeded in fleeing China and made my way to Hong Kong, which was still a British colony at the time. Soon I reached Vancouver, the last Canadian city you ever saw, dear Dr. Bethune. After a period of time there, I settled in Montreal. The route I followed was the same as yours, just in the opposite direction.

  Please forgive me for omitting the details of how I left China. This is the only thing I cannot share with you.

  Let me return to the question Claude kept asking. Maybe your great friend asked you the exact same question when you reached his cave. And what was your answer? That you did it for justice or for the revolution? If so, this was only part of the truth. The core of the truth was the secret between you and your last lover. The core of the truth was the mystery of must.

  In the past few months I’ve been wondering what it would have been like if you had returned to Canada at the end of 1939 as planned, instead of dying in China, Of course, your great friend would not have written the essay that turned you into a political icon. Dr. Bethune would never have had any Chinese children. Daily life in China in the 1970s would have been very different. Yangyang would not have left this world at that early age. Yangyang’s mother would have not become “that madwoman.” And Yangyang’s father would not have gone missing. (I prefer to think that his disappearance was more related to Yangyang’s death and not to the death of the projectionist.) Yinyin would not have become their adoptive daughter. I would never have come to Montreal. Nobody would have had any need to read a biography about you, authentic or otherwise. And of course I would not have had all these stories to tell to you.