Dr. Bethune's Children Read online

  Dear Dr. Bethune, let me tell you why I went to that supermarket. It wasn’t just to make a purchase. I rushed to the dairy shelf and reached down for a two-litre bottle of whole milk. I checked the expiration date on the seal and then walked toward a cashier. I will tell you why this purchase mattered a lot to me. Before writing to you, I have to admit, I was not in a good frame of mind. In fact, I was feeling disappointed. My disappointment had nothing to do with the purchase itself. I felt disappointed because . . . I will tell you the reason in good time. I believe that you will understand why, which will again demonstrate the special connection I have with you and your city.

  I am writing to you, finally, like a volcano about to erupt. I have so many things to tell you. I need to transfer them from my brain to my computer. There’s another term that you have never heard before. I am not sure whether you can guess from the Chinese translation what this is. The literal translation of computer into Chinese is “electrical brain.” You’re probably still confused. OK, you can think of it as a typewriter. Of all the possessions you left to posterity, your typewriter is the one I find most touching. As a foreigner in China, you could not live without your typewriter. Through it you could communicate with the world far away from you and overcome your loneliness. The typewriter understood your language and thoughts. In fact, only your typewriter could understand. You can think of this “electrical brain,” this new machine I am using to talk to you as a kind of typewriter. (By the way, the phrase “new machine” reminds me of the substitute teacher of the Physiological Hygiene class I took in high school, which is one of the stories I want to tell you.)

  About an hour and a half ago, I sat down at my desk and switched on my “typewriter” to write to you. Why is it necessary to switch it on? This phrasal verb hints at the difference between my “typewriter” and the one you used when you were in China on the front line of the war against Japan. You lived in China for about twenty months, the loneliest time in your life, as I now know. You wrote many letters to your comrades and friends in Canada on your typewriter, but you only received a few replies. You also used the typewriter many times, to write to your great friend, our Chairman Mao, as I learned from his well-known memorial to you. The memorial also mentions that he replied to you just once. Just once! And he never knew whether you received his reply or not. Did you get it?

  Yes, my “typewriter” needs to be switched on to function. Now that I’m writing to you, I realize I will be more disappointed even than you were, because it is impossible for me ever to get your reply. I want to write down all of the things that we children of Dr. Bethune experienced. I know, had it not been you—had you not gotten on the passenger steamer in Vancouver on January 5, 1938, had you not walked into that historically significant cave dwelling at the end of March, had you not been sent to the front line in May, had you not cut your finger in November of the following year, had you not departed from the world due to infection, had your death not startled your great friend, and had he not published an eight-hundred-word memorial a month after your death—then we, your offspring, would not have experienced all the things we have experienced. My life would not have been like this. Our lives would not have been like this.

  You may still be wondering about my “typewriter,” which can only be operated after it is powered up, switched on. At the loneliest time in your life, electricity was hundreds of miles away. This was your own choice. You chose privation over civilization, believing that your choice would prove to be the road to progress. I know that when you were in China, you performed surgery under kerosene lighting. Your eyes started aging, and despite the light of your lamp, more and more of the world fell into shadow.

  You may also be surprised to learn that my “typewriter” has a certain degree of intelligence, which is why it is called an electrical brain. With its intelligence, my “typewriter” knows that I am writing a letter now. A considerate query just popped up on its screen. (Yes, this “typewriter” has a screen, like a television, another device you may not have heard of before). The question on the screen is: “Are you writing a letter?”

  “Yes, I’m writing a letter,” I tell my “typewriter,” “but it’s to Dr. Bethune, an outstanding surgeon, a staunch revolutionary, an unsuccessful artist who kept on pursuing women without ever finding love, a fighter who couldn’t communicate with his comrades, a loner who kept on writing letters but seldom got a reply, a foreigner who wanted to go home but had to die before his dream could come true.” A sudden wave of emotion makes me pause. “He passed away almost seventy years ago. For me, he’s a spectre that appears every now and then. How can you help me write my letter?”

  Dear Dr. Bethune, I can’t follow chronological order in my narrative of the past. I can’t complete a true biography of your life just by using the papers in your archive. All the things I want to tell you are fragments of memory, some of them vague, like tombstones on which the epitaphs have mostly been effaced. All I can do is present my memories in fragmentary form, hoping that, as a great surgeon, you will know how to suture the pieces together into a life, my life, which represents the lives of all your children.

  Dear Dr. Bethune, we both settled in a foreign country. I know I will die in your country as a foreigner, just as you died in mine. Your death was a big deal, “more weighty,” as your great friend emphasized, than Mount Tai, while mine will be as light as a feather. But, no matter how weighty our deaths were or will be, death is our common homeland, the place we will ultimately meet.

  A Dog

  Dear Dr. Bethune, yesterday I ran into Bob at the entrance to my apartment tower. He’s the neighbour I’m most familiar with, and the most talkative. He’s a man in his late seventies now, and every time I see him, he wants to have a long conversation. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time. If I hadn’t been in a hurry to write to you, I would have asked him how he’d been. But last night I didn’t want to get tied up. I just wanted to politely shake his hand, exchange a few pleasantries, extricate myself, and return to my room and my “typewriter.”

  Bob did not relax his hand. He mentioned the massacre he had just seen on television and complained that “the world has gone mad.” I didn’t say a thing. He’s got a talent for turning small talk into desultory conversation. I didn’t want to talk to him. I just wanted to make up an excuse so he would release my hand. To my surprise, he did something even more dramatic. He suddenly embraced me and started crying, broken-heartedly. Taken aback, I reminded myself not to ask him what had happened.

  “My little girl is dead!” he sobbed.

  I was shocked, because I knew how important Bob’s “little girl” was to him. She was his only companion since his wife’s suicide. He had told me many times that without her he never would have survived and wouldn’t be able to keep on living. He said she was his only spiritual support.

  “What happened?” I asked, a bit reluctantly.

  Bob cried even harder at my expression of concern.

  I tried to move Bob’s head off my shoulder, but he just wouldn’t let go of my right hand. He told me she had refused food for four days. In the end, he took her to the vet, and she was diagnosed with cancer of the kidneys, late stage. And then she died, not even a week after the diagnosis.

  Bob described this as the biggest tragedy of his life. Which was to say that it was worse than his wife’s suicide. After burying his little girl, Bob had gone on a trip around the world. First he went to South America, then to Oceania, Africa, and Europe. Finally he returned to North America. He’d only been back in Montreal for three days. In Asia, he’d mainly gone to countries he’d not visited before like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Japan. But he had made a two-day stopover in Shanghai, his third trip to China. He found the prosperity he witnessed there disgraceful.

  “Will you consider getting another one?” I asked without thinking, immediately regretting it because I didn’t want to prolong our conversation.

 
My question made Bob all the more upset. “I’ve never considered it. I’ll never consider it! It’s impossible!” he said, wiping the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. “I loved her too much,” he said, pausing. “That kind of love is irreplaceable.”

  Dear Dr. Bethune, I could feel your gaze, pressing me not to keep talking to Bob. I twisted out of his embrace, patted his shoulder, and offered a few words of consolation, and then headed for the elevator. Before he saw me, Bob was obviously on the way out, but now he changed direction and followed me to stand in front of the elevator. Then he walked into the elevator with me.

  “Will you go to the Olympics in Beijing?” he asked me, repeating the question he had first asked me four years previously, the question he asks me every time we see each other, a rhetorical question that needs no reply. Whether I said yes or no, Bob would always follow with the same remark. “The Olympics are going to cause a lot of trouble for China,” he said in seeming earnest.

  Bob fixed his eyes on me, not even glancing at the buttons. I pressed the button for his floor for him. He smiled and said that he wanted to accompany me to my floor and then go down and continue his walk. It wasn’t the first time. I often wonder whether this company is for me or for himself. Dear Dr. Bethune, I was reminded of your “utter devotion to others without any thought of self.”

  By the time the elevator door opened on my floor, I was sick and tired of Bob’s attention. “What trouble will the Beijing Olympics cause?” I said, angry. This was the first time I had ever responded to Bob’s Beijing Olympics obsession. My response was also a rhetorical question. I didn’t wait for him to reply.

  But my response provoked Bob even more. The pain of losing his “little girl” left his eyes for an instant. “I don’t know what trouble they’ll cause,” he said, looking at me proudly and holding the door of the elevator for me. “But I know there’ll be trouble.” Then, even more earnestly, he added, “A lot of trouble.”

  My first long conversation with Bob had taken place in strange circumstances. That evening, I’d called my mother to wish her Happy Mother’s Day and heard the news of Yangyang’s father’s disappearance. The news was unbearable and had left me feeling anxious. To calm myself down, I’d walked loops around our building, trying to breathe deeply. On the ninth loop, a stately Belgian shepherd blocked my path. I stopped and knelt down to pet it. Then I heard a forthright voice from somewhere nearby. “Her name is Sheila. She’s my little girl.”

  I stood up and walked over to an older man sitting on a bench beside the lawn. Out of politeness, I praised his daughter’s noble appearance and elegant manner.

  The old man motioned for me to sit down on the bench. He told me his name and the floor he lived on. He said he knew I was Chinese. His friend Simon had told him. Simon is another neighbour. I often see him in the sauna by the swimming pool. Like Simon, the old man said he liked China and the Chinese people.

  I was a bit hesitant, because I wasn’t interested in talking to anyone at that moment. Especially not about China. The news of Yangyang’s father’s disappearance had left me disturbed by my memories of China. “I’m waiting to see how that madwoman will carry on!” my mother had said at the end of the call, her voice animated. Not even at such a disastrous moment was she willing to utter Yangyang’s mother’s name. Instead, as obstinate as ever, she kept calling her “that madwoman.” I found it almost unbearable. I knew that any disaster that befell Yangyang’s family was good news to my mother, news she thought deserved to be broadcast far and wide.

  My hesitation had no impact on Bob’s mood. He started telling me all about his happiest trip to China. “It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years,” he said, about to launch into a brisk reminiscence, motioning again for me to sit down by his side. “I’ve always liked Chinese people,” he said, a sincere smile flashing across his face. “Even though they eat dog meat.”

  I sat down on the bench, feeling overwhelmed by memories of Yangyang’s father. I was not the least bit interested in probing Bob’s rather unsavoury topic of conversation. But then his expression turned serious. He looked me over and asked me solemnly, “Have you ever eaten dog meat?”

  I civilly told him I hadn’t. It wasn’t actually the complete truth. The complete truth would have been, “Sort of.” About forty years ago we visited the home of a friend of my father’s, where we were served “stewed dog meat.” At the time, I was feverish. And dog meat, normally a tonic according to traditional Chinese medicine, is considered poisonous to a feverish body. Though my father and his friend said this wasn’t to be taken seriously, my mother insisted. She wouldn’t allow me to eat at the beginning. But a compromise was successfully reached at the end. My mother agreed to let me taste the broth with a chopstick. Thus, strictly speaking, I have “sort of” eaten dog meat.

  Bob’s face relaxed at my reply. Then I told him that even though Chinese people do not consider eating dog meat barbaric, not many have actually had the opportunity to try it. “Because there are a lot of Chinese people, and very few dogs,” I said, trying to be witty.

  “Why so very few dogs?” Bob laughed and answered his own question. “Because your ancestors ate too many.”

  I didn’t find it this amusing.

  Then Bob shared that well-known claim about Cantonese-speaking people—that they’ll eat anything with four legs except the table. He told me about how he’d seen endangered animals in cages in the entrance to a restaurant in Guangzhou City for the patrons to choose. Bob found this completely unacceptable. Other than that, Bob felt a deep respect for Chinese culture. He said he liked everything that was “Made in China.”

  “Is it because you’ve been to China that you like things Chinese?” I asked.

  Bob waved his hand and said, “Quite the opposite. I went to China because I liked all things Chinese.”

  “Then how did you come by your fondness for Chinese things?” I asked.

  Bob didn’t reply directly, but asked another question instead. “Have you heard of Dr. Bethune?”

  This was a question I’d often been asked in Montreal. In the past I never considered it a serious issue. But now, feeling unsettled by the news of Yangyang’s father, it seemed a weighty matter indeed. It made me feel like the world was shaking. One scream after another burst through the partitions of time, exploding out of the depths of my memory. I could even see the frightened expression on Yangyang’s mother’s face. “I’m waiting to see how that madwoman will carry on!”—my own mother’s voice over the telephone echoed in my ear. I was ashamed of her stubborn indifference towards the mother of my childhood friend.

  Bob stared at me, waiting for my reply.

  “Of course,” I said. “Mao described him as a ‘pure human being.’”

  It was impossible for Bob to know about the pain I endured between his question and my reply. But he clearly knew the source of the words I quoted in my reply. His eyes lit up. “He was my idol when I was a boy. My very first idol.”

  Bob’s declaration surprised me, because it could almost have been a part of my own reply. How could a political hero in China play any part in the childhood of an elderly Canadian? Dear Dr. Bethune, you were my childhood idol. Your portrait was stuck to the walls of my classroom in elementary school, while photographs of likenesses of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao hung over the blackboard. Your Canadian compatriots could not possibly have had the same experience as we had. In fact, you were our ideal not just in our childhood. You were also in the words we memorized, in our daily lives, and in our far-reaching imaginations. You were part of us.

  I had no intention of opening the gates of memory to my childhood and letting Bob in. But Bob immediately dragged me into his own childhood. He said he clearly remembered one cloudy afternoon when his father took him to St. Catherine Street to take part in a gathering to celebrate your return from Spain. Bob’s father was a member of the Communist Party. Th
at day, he made a point of wearing a red scarf, “and he gave me a red scarf to wear, too,” Bob said proudly. Riding on his father’s shoulders, he saw you from a distance. Of course, he did not understand your speech, dear Dr. Bethune. But your gestures and the applause that you got were etched in his childhood memory. You became the first idol in his life. And his second idol, his father, was also born of that gathering. A week later, abandoning his wife and four kids, the second idol threw himself into the Spanish Civil War, too. Three months later, he lost his life in battle near Catalonia. Bob was proud that he had such a heroic father. He said that in his heart his father had never died. He still remembered how it felt to ride on his father’s shoulders the afternoon of your return.

  Bob admitted that he only understood your true greatness after he grew up. He was a clerk at Revenue Canada at the time. One day, after noticing a supervisor reading your biography, Bob went out to buy a copy for himself. That biography, which was basically a work of propaganda, intensified Bob’s esteem for you. It drew him closer to communism. He said he’d never joined the Communist Party, because he thought being a communist would be the hardest thing in the world, given the way the world has gone. But he was firmly convinced that a socialist system, far superior to capitalism, was the most humane social system possible.

  We talked until deep in the night. Or rather, Bob talked deep into the night. I was surprised that I would, so many years later and on the other side of the earth, hear someone say that “socialism is superior to capitalism,” the “truth” our politics teacher in high school proved with “facts” in every class. “The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I said, trying to sum up Bob’s relationship to his father.