had been told Taiwan was host to a Communist uprising, and having lost so many lives to the Communists, the new troops were vengeful and unmerciful. They swept through the cities, killing every man, woman, and child they encountered in the streets. Chen Yi’s concessions had been a farce, designed to buy time as the division boarded boats on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
The next morning, the magistrate was dragged out of his house and shot in front of his wife and children. In the days to come, a similar fate befell all other members of the Settlement Committee who had not yet gone into hiding, as well as the members of the Loyal Service Corps, university student activists, prominent doctors, lawyers, politicians, and any person who performed or had ever performed the criminal act of showing leadership or offending a Mainland official.
We stayed inside. My parents would not even answer the door, as they had heard that the Nationalists would shoot whoever opened it. It was a fail-safe way of eliminating heads of households.
During our isolation I dribbled a ball in the courtyard with Jiro or folded airplanes for my youngest brother and sister out of musty old newspapers. But my stomach pains worsened and I began having diarrhea with blood in it. I grew so light headed and weak that I retreated to my futon, seeing, on the way, Kazuo’s room with The Earth tantalizingly on his shelf as he studied, his broad back hunched over his desk. Just walking the few yards from the courtyard to my room winded me. My body was dwindling with my dreams; I was becoming a shadow.
One day my parents summoned Toru to the house to attend to a painful rash on my mother’s shin. As he was already out seeing patients, they didn’t mind asking him to make the trip to our house. Doctors weren’t safe from persecution—a prominent physician downtown had recently disappeared and was presumed dead—but Toru was a young doctor who was not yet prominent or politically active, so he seemed less likely to be targeted.
I heard Toru’s calm voice in the great room. “It’s a spider bite,” he was saying. “There’s nothing to do.”
“I’ve been putting this cream on it to make it feel better,” my mother said.
“ Ane hou. ”
“I wanted to be a nurse, you know. It was my parents who wanted me to stop school and help on the farm. Otherwise I was very smart and I could have gotten into a good nursing school.”
“Of course you could have,” Toru said.
I stood in the shadows of the hallway. I wanted so much to see Toru, yet I felt too ashamed. He must have learned of my expulsion by now.
My father asked him for news. Toru, lowering his voice, replied that he had treated a university professor who had been held for questioning. For two days the professor had been tightly bound with sharp wire, so that every movement had caused the wire to cut into his flesh.
“. . . and I saw a ten-year-old boy with stumps for hands because a soldier wanted his bicycle. The child told me he refused to give up the bicycle because it was his father’s, and the soldier simply sliced off the boy’s hands with a bayonet, took the bike, and left the child screaming and bleeding on the street. Luckily there were passersby who stopped his bleeding and brought him to me. They picked his hands up, too, but I am not a surgeon, nor could I find anyone else skilled enough to reattach them.”
“ Ho! ” my father exclaimed. “What a horror!”
“I dream about that poor boy at night,” Toru said. “You are right to keep your children at home.”
M Y MOTHER INSISTED that Toru stay for dinner.
I sat listlessly at the table, picking at my rice and avoiding Toru’s eyes while he talked in low tones with my parents about the government crackdown.
“Boats are having trouble passing through Keelung Harbor,” Toru said, “because it’s so plugged up.”
“Plugged up with what?” Jiro said beside me.
“With fish,” Toru said, turning to smile
The next morning, the magistrate was dragged out of his house and shot in front of his wife and children. In the days to come, a similar fate befell all other members of the Settlement Committee who had not yet gone into hiding, as well as the members of the Loyal Service Corps, university student activists, prominent doctors, lawyers, politicians, and any person who performed or had ever performed the criminal act of showing leadership or offending a Mainland official.
We stayed inside. My parents would not even answer the door, as they had heard that the Nationalists would shoot whoever opened it. It was a fail-safe way of eliminating heads of households.
During our isolation I dribbled a ball in the courtyard with Jiro or folded airplanes for my youngest brother and sister out of musty old newspapers. But my stomach pains worsened and I began having diarrhea with blood in it. I grew so light headed and weak that I retreated to my futon, seeing, on the way, Kazuo’s room with The Earth tantalizingly on his shelf as he studied, his broad back hunched over his desk. Just walking the few yards from the courtyard to my room winded me. My body was dwindling with my dreams; I was becoming a shadow.
One day my parents summoned Toru to the house to attend to a painful rash on my mother’s shin. As he was already out seeing patients, they didn’t mind asking him to make the trip to our house. Doctors weren’t safe from persecution—a prominent physician downtown had recently disappeared and was presumed dead—but Toru was a young doctor who was not yet prominent or politically active, so he seemed less likely to be targeted.
I heard Toru’s calm voice in the great room. “It’s a spider bite,” he was saying. “There’s nothing to do.”
“I’ve been putting this cream on it to make it feel better,” my mother said.
“ Ane hou. ”
“I wanted to be a nurse, you know. It was my parents who wanted me to stop school and help on the farm. Otherwise I was very smart and I could have gotten into a good nursing school.”
“Of course you could have,” Toru said.
I stood in the shadows of the hallway. I wanted so much to see Toru, yet I felt too ashamed. He must have learned of my expulsion by now.
My father asked him for news. Toru, lowering his voice, replied that he had treated a university professor who had been held for questioning. For two days the professor had been tightly bound with sharp wire, so that every movement had caused the wire to cut into his flesh.
“. . . and I saw a ten-year-old boy with stumps for hands because a soldier wanted his bicycle. The child told me he refused to give up the bicycle because it was his father’s, and the soldier simply sliced off the boy’s hands with a bayonet, took the bike, and left the child screaming and bleeding on the street. Luckily there were passersby who stopped his bleeding and brought him to me. They picked his hands up, too, but I am not a surgeon, nor could I find anyone else skilled enough to reattach them.”
“ Ho! ” my father exclaimed. “What a horror!”
“I dream about that poor boy at night,” Toru said. “You are right to keep your children at home.”
M Y MOTHER INSISTED that Toru stay for dinner.
I sat listlessly at the table, picking at my rice and avoiding Toru’s eyes while he talked in low tones with my parents about the government crackdown.
“Boats are having trouble passing through Keelung Harbor,” Toru said, “because it’s so plugged up.”
“Plugged up with what?” Jiro said beside me.
“With fish,” Toru said, turning to smile
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