“Fools, what is this all about?” said Dengmei wearily.

  “Please stop, Mother,” said Mingqing, trying very hard to sound natural.

  “I’m going in any case,” she said as she turned to Jianting. “Now take that chair outside.”

  Tears were streaming down Jianting’s face, but he dared not cry. Nor could he disobey his grandmother. He picked up the chair, his face full of fear.

  “What’s the matter, Jianting?” asked Dengmei. She held her prayer beads in her left hand and stroked his cheeks gently. “It’s nothing. You go inside now.”

  Dengmei adjusted her chair so that she was facing the main hall, and then she sat down. Her eyes were half closed as she chanted her beads. The sun was nearly directly overhead. The air was humid and seemed to brighten. Dengmei’s silver hair flashed with light.

  Mingqing and Mingcheng got up from where they knelt and rushed over to their mother. With one on either side of her, they tried to make her rise and go back inside the house.

  “Fools! You want to carry me inside just as the gods are arriving?”

  Mingqing and his brother, without offering a word, forced their mother back inside the house.

  “Oh dear, why?

  “Mother.”

  “It’s all the same, anyway.”

  “Mother, you must not do this.”

  “You must pray for Mingji.”

  “Mother, don’t go.”

  The old lady’s voice grew faint as she began to detect a fragrant aroma in the air. What was that subtle fragrance? She stopped counting her beads and her lips ceased to move. Her hands opened once, then closed. Her head rolled forward, then she pulled it back, and then it rolled to the right. The sweet scent was growing stronger. The whole Liu family was aware of it. Then it vanished.

  Mingji staggered along the northern plains of Luzon, followed by Nozawa. There had been a violent storm and now the dark clouds were moving swiftly, low in the sky. Like a swarm of angry hornets, the clouds rolled on. Gusts of wet wind blew over the plain. It looked like afternoon, but it also looked like rain threatening in the morning.

  Mingji’s and Nozawa’s limbs were swollen and difficult to move. Day and night they had walked, never stopping for the rain or the fierce sun. Even when the lightning flashed, they just kept on walking. It had been a long time since they had felt any pain; now it was just numbness. Mingji struggled on and suddenly opened his half-closed eyelids. A sweet scent. He smelled a delicate and subtly sweet aroma.

  He had smelled that scent before. He slowly lowered himself to the ground. On his hands and knees, he breathed that sweet aroma deeply into his lungs. But as he breathed, the smell vanished. It was a smell he associated with his mother. He didn’t want to think about it for fear of losing something.

  The scent had vanished, but he felt that he would encounter it again. He then lifted his hand with great difficulty and leaned toward it. He touched his swollen and cracked lips to his little finger. He felt a jolt and looked carefully at his blackened and swollen finger. The ring his mother had given him was gone. He had lost the ring!

  His body seemed on fire and he trembled. He crawled on the ground looking for it. He looked everywhere.

  Nozawa stood beside him, making faint, unintelligible noises.

  He had lost the ring his mother had given him. He remembered how she had given it to him on December 18, 1943, just as he was walking out of the main hall of their home. She had pulled it from her sash and pressed it into his hands, saying that it had been his father’s and he had given it to her on the day of their wedding. He recalled how he had bit his lips as he held her small, thin hands. She told him that the ring wasn’t worth much, but she wanted him to wear it so as to have her near him. His mother, who was a strong woman, broke down and cried. She told him to bring it back to her and to return home safe and sound.

  He was so confident about returning safe and sound at that time. And later, in the face of death, he never lost that confidence. For him, his mother represented home; home, Taiwan, and Fanzai Wood were all one and the same. His mother was more than just a woman of flesh and blood; for him she was life itself. She was a sweet smell, a sound, a lamp, all emitting love, a love that knew no distance, a gentle light that penetrated the soul.

  Now that sweet scent wafted through the air and disappeared. And that ring that had come to stand for his mother had somehow disappeared. He wondered how his mother was. Had she …? The ring was gone. Did that mean she had gone?

  His senses came alive—and the sensations of color, sound, smell, and touch were all extraordinarily vivid. Then they gradually began to fade until they disappeared. Mingji collapsed, a heap of flesh prostrate on the ground.

  It was death, death that began in the heart and spread outward. It was a death of sorts.

  Dead. His mother had died. Ahua was most likely dead too. He didn’t know how she had gotten here, but she had come to the Philippines on account of him. And she had died on account of him. Taiwan and Fanzai Wood had all expired. That sweet scent, the sound, and the light had all vanished along with the ring. Everything had been lost.

  Nozawa was still standing there in front of him. No, he was pacing about, but never more than ten feet away.

  When had he heard of Japan’s surrender? Japan had been defeated. The war was over. The war in the Pacific and Asia was over, but why was he still fighting? He was alive, but he felt dead inside. He had to walk, he had to move on.

  He got up; that heap of flesh got up off the ground. The war was over. He had to head north in the direction of Taiwan, his home. He seemed to be empty of feelings and have no will of his own—his feet moved of their own accord. He didn’t know where he got the strength to walk. A man comes from the earth and returns to the earth; he was from Taiwan and he would return to Taiwan. He would return to his home in Fanzai Wood, and the balance of nature would be preserved.

  There was no familiar scent or voice to follow, but before him, in the direction of Taiwan, there burned an eternal light. It was a light that was not perceptible to the senses, but it burned there all the same.

  His mother might have died, but she was still there all the same. She had nothing to do with death; she was eternal. His mother was that light, that lamp, the light of thousands of lamps shining in Fanzai Wood, shining over the Pacific, shining above his own lofty soul.

  He stumbled toward the light, keeping his sights set on it. Time and space had become unreal and had lost their meaning. But time continued to flow.

  One day vague, flickering shadows appeared before him. Each shadow held a black rod; they trained their rods on him, but he continued to plod forward.

  The shadows began emitting strange noises. He did not understand them. He continued to advance. The shadows continued to make strange noises and grunts.

  Then he heard an explosion. It was a sound he knew, a bad sound. It must have come from those black rods. The sound had been accompanied by a blue flash of light.

  He moved no more. He seemed to have fallen. He wanted to continue forward. He continued northward, following the light. The shadows approached him, still making those strange sounds.

  “The war is over. Surrender!”

  What? Who was speaking? He seemed to have understood what was said to him. He was held fast by something, and prevented from moving. Then his body seemed to float above the earth. Had he been lifted up? He felt unobstructed, and the light was there ahead of him. He knew he had to head toward that light.

 

 

  Qiao Li, Wintry Night

 

 

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