Dr. Bethune's Children Read online

  Who knew my commonplace would induce such an emotional change? “Not necessarily!” He sounded sad. “The world’s not the same anymore.” I could see his cheek twitching. “Young people today are more and more selfish. They don’t have a sense of responsibility, or morality. Nobody would take Dr. Bethune as a role model anymore.”

  “If you had a son, he might be different,” I said, trying to reassure him.

  “I have a son.” His voice sounded cold. “He’s not even average. He’s not the least bit like me.” He stood up, called his little girl, and left without saying goodbye.

  I didn’t understand why my pleasantry would cause Bob to lose all interest in our conversation. Still sitting on the bench, I watched Bob walk away, looking every inch a broken-hearted father from behind. Then I thought of Yangyang’s father. Why had he disappeared? Where had he gone?

  The day after that first conversation with Bob, I ran into Simon in the sauna. He’d already heard about my encounter with Bob. I was going to ask about Bob’s son when Simon brought up Bob’s wife. Two other old Jewish men in the sauna joined in. The three old men praised Bob’s wife as the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen. But that was the only thing they agreed upon. When it came to when she had committed suicide and why, they all remembered differently. One remembered that it happened less than ten years ago, and he was sure that she had killed herself because Bob was involved with a middle-aged woman living on the same floor. Simon and another old man recalled that it was more than a decade ago, but they didn’t agree on the reason. Simon thought it was because their son hadn’t lived up to expectations, while the other old man was sure there was some kind of inherited tendency. As far as he knew, Bob’s father-in-law had committed suicide in a German POW camp on the eve of VE Day.

  The three old men remembered that, after his wife’s funeral, Bob had joined a package tour to China. That was the second time he had gone to China. The first time had been the year before he retired, when he went with his wife. Simon remembered very clearly that Bob went to see the Three Gorges, which he would mention to anyone he met that year, urging his friends to go and see it soon, before the mythic landscape was flooded for the massive hydroelectric engineering project.

  After he came back from that second trip to China, Bob’s life returned to normal. He didn’t move to a smaller apartment on a different floor as he had planned to do before going on his trip. This might have been because the middle-aged lady he was supposedly having a relationship with moved away before he came back. Every morning, like clockwork, he would go down and walk his little girl. He was just as talkative as before, but he never mentioned his late wife to anyone.

  Certainly not with me. I only knew about her tragic end from Simon, and I never mentioned her to Bob himself. But I did happen to see his son one time.

  I was returning from the central library not long ago when I saw Bob standing in the doorway to our apartment tower with a middle-aged man who was tall and thin and tired-looking. Bob called hello, but did not introduce me to the man. I waited to one side for him to say goodbye.

  After the man left, Bob did not immediately turn his head. He watched him walk away, and, as if talking to himself, said, “There he goes.”

  I knew who he was referring to. I recalled our first conversation and did not inquire further.

  “He’s nothing like me. He doesn’t believe in himself. Or should I say all he believes in is drugs.” He was still staring at the retreating man and seemed to be talking to himself. “The only reason he came to see me is because he needs money. That’s our father-son relationship. We no longer have anything to talk about except my pension.”

  He kept staring into the distance, as if into the obscurity of the past. I did not know how to call him back from the sense of despair he must be feeling.

  “A dog,” Bob said. “A dog that has lost its way.”

  I patted Bob on the shoulder. Only then did he remember I was standing there. He looked round with tears in his eyes and sadly shook his head.

  At that moment, I almost mentioned Yangyang’s father to him. Compared with a father who had lost his son forever, Bob should feel lucky, because his “dog” wasn’t really lost. It knew where its home was when it got hungry. Yangyang’s father’s pain might prove some small consolation to Bob. But I did not say anything. I did not want to gaze into the dark obscurity of the past, something I had refused to do for many years. I walked with Bob in silence into the building.

  In the elevator, Bob’s mood took another sharp turn. He smiled slyly and repeated his rhetorical question, “Are you going to the Beijing Olympics?”

  A Spectre

  Dear Dr. Bethune, today Bob mentioned an article in The Globe and Mail about Chinese coal miners. He’s very angry about the bad working environment and living conditions the miners have to endure, so dreadful in comparison with the prosperity he witnessed in Shanghai. He thinks the gap between rich and poor in China is dangerously wide. “China is the biggest capitalist country in the world today,” he said, in all seriousness.

  I don’t know if that’s his own opinion or if he was quoting from the newspaper. “Don’t forget that China is a People’s Republic under the control of the Communist Party,” I reminded him, partly as a provocation.

  “So it’s the biggest capitalist country under the control of the Communist Party.” Bob said, incensed.

  I didn’t know how to react.

  “I don’t care what the country is called. I care about the economic reality!” Bob continued. “I love China, but I hate capitalism.”

  Recalling that he once said that he was happy that the world had entered the “Made-in-China” era, I asked, “Do you also hate capitalism when it’s made in China?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Dear Dr. Bethune, can you, as a member of the Communist Party, imagine and tolerate the fact that the country you devoted yourself to can now be called “the biggest capitalist country in the world”? Having left China almost two decades ago, I don’t feel personally connected to the huge changes taking place there, but there’s one thing I’m sure about. When I left China, it was a socialist country both in name and in practice. Of course, at the time, the debate between socialism and capitalism had died down, as per the famous “cat theory”: no matter whether it is a white cat or a black cat, if it can catch mice, it is a good cat. It doesn’t matter whether the country adopts socialism or capitalism, in other words, it’s fine so long as it works for China.

  The year before I left China, 1989, was the fiftieth anniversary of your death. That year, so much happened both in China and around the world. Socialist regimes in Europe fell one after another, like dominoes. (You might not find this news too shocking, considering that most of those regimes hadn’t even come into existence in your lifetime.) The Soviet Union, which you were obsessed with, was on the verge of collapse, as well. I know you once visited the first socialist country in human history, and I know how important that visit was to you, how it inspired your conversion from individualist to communist, how it heralded the final and fatal move of your life when you travelled those thousands of miles to join the communist cause in China.

  I have many things to tell you about what happened that year. But let me return to Bob, whose view of China is not completely unreasonable. You would find the way China has evolved unimaginable. In today’s China, money, which you despised, has become the symbol of ability and happiness. Doing things “without any thought of self,” as your great friend described your own spirit, is now seen as either idiocy or hypocrisy.

  Maybe a linguistic detail can help you better understand China’s change. You were used to people calling each other “comrades” in China. But today, the most popular way of addressing someone is as “boss.” Maybe this is a sign of capitalism. My mother is very unhappy about it. She says being called “boss” gives her the creeps. When I was a child, “boss”
only referred to someone who exploited others. If your parents or any of your relatives was a boss, you would feel ashamed of them; if you were a boss yourself, people would think that you deserved to die ten thousand deaths or at least make a confession in the hope of clemency. But today, every Chinese person wants to be a boss. And anyone in a position of power is called “boss.” A government officer is “boss,” a school headmaster is “boss,” a magazine editor is “boss,” a doctor, a concierge, a bus driver. Even those who don’t have any power at all call one another “boss.” If you ask a stranger for directions, you had better call him “boss.” Businessmen (real bosses) are the most respectable group of people in China. They command children’s respect and stimulate their imaginations, just as you aroused ours in the past. You are our father not because of your means, but because of your spirit.

  In a society like that of China today, how many people would pay attention to coal miners working and living under wretched conditions? They don’t represent China, and China doesn’t represent them, either. Bob cannot understand this. He believes that the spectre he met at the beginning of The Communist Manifesto is still haunting the good earth in China.

  That spectre did haunt the good earth in China when I was a kid. We were born into a new society and grew up under the red banner, as adults never failed to remind us. We were the inheritors of the great communist cause. The symbolism of communism was all around, encouraging us and inspiring us. But in the 1980s, those symbols disappeared from view, and today, they have even disappeared from China’s collective memory.

  In Montreal, however, the city you used to call home, one does come across the relics of communism. This is a side of this city I find confusing but exciting. Pictures of the hammer and sickle and workers with huge fists and muscled arms, portraits of the revolutionary mentors, the cover of The Little Red Book of Mao’s pithy sayings, the opening and closing lines of The Communist Manifesto. These words and images often appear in announcements pasted on telephone poles or in the brochures people hand out at the entrance of the metro station or the supermarket. These are signs that connect this city with the city where I lived as a child, as one of Dr. Bethune’s children.

  In my distant hometown, The Communist Manifesto opened the door to Western civilization for me with its famous first line, “A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism.” The Communist Manifesto was the Harry Potter of its time. From the very first sentence, I learned of the existence of the spectre and even of the continent of Europe, and about the impending globalization of communism. I imagined that when the workers of the world united, only one language would be needed, and only one chairman would be necessary. I imagined that the language would be our mother tongue, the chairman our Chairman Mao.

  I remember one evening on my way home from school when I recited that first sentence to myself, it suddenly occurred to me that the beauty of a language was in its metaphor. “Ah, a spectre!” I felt a strange shudder from the bottom of my heart. In our value system, a spectre was an evil presence, like a demon, while communism was the noblest ideology and could only be compared to an angel. How could our great revolutionary mentors juxtapose an angel with a demon, proclaiming opposites in the same breath? “The word spectre is a metaphor,” our principal explained one day across the public-address system. “Comrade Marx and Comrade Engels, our revolutionary mentors, sagaciously wield rhetoric as a weapon in the revolutionary cause.”

  That was the first time I heard the word metaphor. And the “spectre of communism” was the first metaphor I had ever known. Every time I come across some relic of communism on the streets of Montreal, I always think of that afternoon thirty-some years ago and that strange shudder from the bottom of my heart. I am proud of my “red” childhood. It was an extraordinary experience to be “born into a new society” and to “grow up under the red banner.” It taught us the power of metaphor much earlier than children who grow up under the Star-Spangled Banner or the Maple Leaf.

  I relive my red old days in Montreal from time to time. There are big parades and rallies every year on May Day. Last year, coming out of a bookstore on University Street, I came across a parade of protestors, whose anti-capitalist slogans disoriented me, as did the solemn notes of “The Internationale.” All of a sudden different space-times seemed to overlap with one another. I felt as if I had entered a fairyland. In my childhood, “The Internationale” was the only Western song we were allowed to sing. We even knew the names and nationalities of the lyricist and the composer. We knew, and were able to recite, their tough lives and harsh struggles. The music of “The Internationale” shocked us and encouraged us to be ready to give our lives, just like the revolutionary martyrs. The lyrics also strengthened our awareness of globalization. We looked forward to the day when the ideal of internationalism would be realized.

  I kept following the parade. Dear Dr. Bethune, I know you marched in the parade several times on May Day here in Montreal. I imagined your every step and facial expression. I imagined that all strangers all over the world would become close comrades long before their deaths, just because of this somber anthem.

  As Dr. Bethune’s children, we had similar parades and rallies. We sang “The Internationale,” shouted anti-American slogans such as “Stand with Panama! Down with America!”—a slogan first shouted in 1964 to protest American suppression of student protests over the Panama Canal. In the eighties, however, formal commemorative activities gradually disappeared, and now the May Day holiday, the third biggest holiday after the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and the National Day holiday, has become a time for nouveau riche Chinese to travel and shop. Their travelling and shopping destinations have extended from Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong to Paris, London, and New York.

  The spectre of communism no longer haunts China. China today is no longer the country to which you once devoted yourself. China today is no longer the country that buried you with honour and turned you into an icon, either. If your spectre is still hanging around, it is haunting your homeland, not China. Yes, it has followed me to Montreal. It often appears before me. It is listening to my description of the dusty past, a past in which it figured but of which it has no knowledge. Dear Dr. Bethune, I am going to tell you stories of the other China, which is a red China, a poor China, a China thousands of miles and decades away, a China that was full of sound and fury (though I hope it signifies something)—the China that Bob idealizes.

  That other China had started fading away the year before I left China. One night after the Spring Festival that year, my wife told me, her lips close to my ear, that she wanted to write about her own life. I turned to her to kiss her fearful eyes. “Let me be your only reader,” I said softly.

  She knew I was using a figure of speech, as our great mentors did. She knew what I really needed and what I really meant.

  A Piece of Work

  Dear Dr. Bethune, if you had lived to a hundred, you would have experienced the tumultuous year, 1989. I do not know whether the communist dominoes falling in an instant would have prompted you to re-evaluate your attitude toward life. Perhaps they would. But life is but a dream, and your dream had come to an end half a century before. You were lucky not to be tortured by the shattering of your illusions.

  Nineteen eighty-nine was the most sorrowful year I can remember, the year of my own disillusionment. In the early summer of that year I read the strangest work in my life and then confronted the most intimate death. That death had an inevitable relation with my first bereavement, which is to say, an inevitable relation with you.

  That stifling evening, when martial law was declared, my wife turned off the television before I had finished watching the headlines. She leaned her cheek on my shoulder. “What kind of world will our child grow up to know?” she asked.

  The result of a test in early April had confirmed her pregnancy. I made no reply. “Let’s go to bed and have a nightmare,” I said.

 
We lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. For a long time, neither of us spoke. When I turned around to turn off the light, my wife stopped me. “I have important news to announce,” she said.

  “Who are you for, the people or the government?” I asked in jest, mimicking the stiff voice of a television news announcer.

  “I am for the people’s government,” my wife said, always able to appreciate my humour. But then she turned serious. “I do have important news to announce,” she said.

  “What news can be more important than this?” I said despondently, pointing at the silent TV set.

  “My first story will be published in July,” she said excitedly.

  One night after the spring festival, my wife had told me that she wanted to write about her life. I had not expected news of a publication so soon. “Where did this urge to write about your life come from?” I asked. This was a question I had been wanting to ask her ever since that night.

  My wife touched my lips with her fingertips. “You have beautiful lips, you know,” she said. She seemed reluctant to answer.

  “Tell me,” I insisted. “Why do you suddenly want to write about your life?”

  My wife looked at me seriously. “I’ve always wanted to write my life. There’s nothing sudden about it. The only thing that’s changed is that I want to write it right now.”

  Then she confided that she had gone to a famous fortune teller with her best friend when we were visiting her in Hankou during the Spring Festival. Her friend, who was a successful career woman, had felt that her boyfriend was acting indifferently towards her, and she was desperate to know the future of their relationship. At her insistence, my wife asked her fortune, too. The fortune teller frowned at her lot. He listed several of my wife’s life experiences, to her great surprise. He even foresaw that she would soon become pregnant. And that she would have a boy. But the biggest disaster in her life was right in front of him. “Do you want to know the truth?” he asked. My wife said, “Of course.” The fortune teller said that although she was tough enough to survive the worst natural disaster, she wouldn’t make it through a “man-made disaster.”