A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

My death was only documented in two places. The first was the log of the Jefferson, and the other was a brief line in the history of the Methodist mission. Before my death, Canadian doctor Norman Bethune had likewise died of a finger infection after an operation, but our deaths were treated entirely differently. He died at an appropriate time and under suitable circumstances and has thus been an example of one who “died in the line of duty,” documented in Chinese textbooks from one generation to the next. My death, by contrast, was buried among the news of the Nuremberg trials, the Tokyo Trials, the Chinese Civil War, and so forth and became an insignificant matter, no larger than a speck of dust.

Time is a strange thing. It washes away the outer skin of solemnity and reveals the absurd nature of things.

Actually, I could have lived even longer. As my muscles no longer listened to my brain, my body’s energy consumption was compressed into the smallest possible space, like an oil lamp with its wick turned very low, which, though it is nearly dark, burns on for a long time.

When he saw she was a girl, her father ceased to care, not bothering to name her at all. Her father only began to care when he realized he would never have a son. After giving birth, her mother looked up and saw the swallows from the previous year returning to build nests under the eaves. So she gave her the name Guiyan, meaning “swallows that have come home.” Everyone in the village, old or young, just called her Ah Yan. She had almost forgotten her full name.

After I buried the knife, my hands were still shaking. I’d never stolen anything before, and I’d never handled a weapon. That day, I did both. I knew what the knife was for and that it would again be stained with blood one day—not the blood of an animal, but a human. Maybe even by my own blood. From the moment I decided to go, I did not expect to come back alive.

Ah Yan, Wende, Stella. Swallow, Wind, Star. Those were her three names, or rather, three sides of her person. If you separated them, they were three entirely different parts, and it’s hard to imagine that they were all of one body. But together, you could hardly see the seams between them. They blended as naturally as water and milk.

The countryside is beautiful, and because the population is so large and good land so scarce, the farmers here cherish every inch of soil. In America, hills are usually not farmed, but here the hillsides are terraced for crops to grow. They’re well-planned, each terrace growing a different crop—rice, orange, rape, milk vetch, and many others I can’t name.

For her, we were three very different men. Liu Zhaohu, you were her past. When I met her, she had already turned that page. And Pastor Billy, though you lived alongside her, you were always concerned about her future. It was only me who ignored both her past and future, capturing her present. I was the only one of us who knew how to sit in the moment, admiring her blooming youth, not allowing either her past or future to destroy her perfection at that moment.

If there were no war, I wouldn’t know any of them. We ate different foods, spoke different languages, wore different clothes, believed in different gods, and laughed at different jokes. We weren’t brought together by one love, but by one hate. Was hate a stronger bond than love, or weaker? When our common hatred no longer existed, would they remember me? Would I remember them?

After going through so much, Stella no longer trusted crowds, and she no longer trusted emotions that were too big, such as great sorrow or great joy. At the entrance point of every emotion, she had built a gate.

I stubbornly called her Stella, just as Ian stubbornly called her Wende. Neither of us were trying to convince the other. We were just recognizing each other’s stubbornness, even as we each held to our own ideas.

The fear of war had passed, and the responsibilities of peacetime had not yet arrived. We were holding a carnival in the vacuum between war and peace, free even from the law of gravity. Everyone knew there were only a few such days in our lifetimes, so we did what we could to make a lifetime of those days.

“I can’t just go like this. I’ve got to at least tell my family,” the captain said. He’d married two years earlier, and his wife now lived in his hometown with their eight-month-old baby. That was the last thing the captain ever said to me.

I slapped my forehead, regretting every word I’d said. We’re always most hurtful to the ones closest to us. It’s convenient, lashing out at them.

The war was a meat grinder and also a roller. It ground all life into meat and loam. It squeezed love into sympathy, attachment into trust, and carnal lust into a need to stay together for warmth. I firmly believed that sympathy, trust, and the need to stay together for warmth were stronger than love.

It was the war. How much I wish I could go on saying that. Unfortunately, there is no truly innocent person in the world. War is a black cloth that blocks heaven’s light, preventing it from shining on the earth, and under its cover, no one can see their own conscience. The war put the first evil hand into your full and fruitful bag of life, and we followed behind it and stretched out our hands too. This “we” includes not just me, Ian, and Liu Zhaohu but also Ah May, Yang Jianguo, Scabby, Snot, the cook who spread rumors on her pillow, and the sentry who pointed a gun at you in front of the camp. “We” includes everyone who ever passed through your life. Each of us has guilt on our hands. Each of us reached into your heart and stole something from you.