Chapter Thirty Three

1

“When I was young one of your priests came here, to me, and he asked me about the Long Count and the suns and all the rest of it.  He was also sad because of his woman.  He was also a white man, like you.  I think I gave him better answers than I have given you, but then again I was much younger, and my pride led me to remember many things that I have now forgotten.  Perhaps that other white man is still below, in the town.  Perhaps you can ask him about what I told him then.  I have forgotten.  I am sorry.”

Returned to the Ravenna Library in March.  Sent along by truck to the Chinatown/International District Library.

2

Found in a bus shelter on Highway 99, across from a food bank.  Several papers comprising a manuscript were found within the dust jacket.

Along a street solid-packed with cars, beneath a smog-filled sky, around the corner from a convenience store within an apartment block, somewhat removed from the traffic of Taipei, there is an abandoned house where a general once lived.  This general’s name was lost along with other records long ago, when the Japanese Imperial administration quietly packed their things and left Taiwan for good.  Many of the wooden houses they built still remain, and they speak, as this house speaks, of former times.

        The general had a pretty wife, and she waited for him in his wooden house, which at that time was a very charming building, untouched by the commotions of other places.  At that time, you could see the emerald mountains in every direction, and there were farms nearby, places where people quietly grew rice and followed oxen through the fields.  At night, in that place – and during that time – the sound of the insects was enormous.

        The house was of one floor, and built in the Japanese style with a tiled roof.  Within, one could find many of the screen walls popular in Japan to this day.  Their furnishings were sparse but well-apportioned, the rooms were clean, and at the end of each day the general would come home to find his wife in the kitchen, making dinner.  There was a great deal of order in their lives, but little passion.

        At that time there was only a single road through their village, where now thousands upon thousands live, stacked one upon the other.  Their neighbors were few, where now there are crowds, and car accidents, and litter in all directions.  They led simple lives, and they imagined few changes.  It awaited the arrival of another government, backed by other generals, to change that place from a backwater into the vast metropolis it is today.

The general was a large man, a man of honor, a man given to formal attire and pretentious gestures.  His wife was a silent, pretty thing, and they lived together in that place unmolested.  When they made love she did it all for him.  She never thought about her own pleasure, nor did she ask herself if he really made her happy.  There was no love between the two of them, only duty.

        One day the general was away.  Perhaps, as later propagandists might have you believe, he was away murdering aboriginals, or else raping and beheading girls in the streets.  Or perhaps he was just behind his desk compiling reports, placing these reports into carefully ordered binders, and sweating in the heat of the day.  He was a general, but he was a general in Taiwan, and Taiwan was not like China.  

He was probably doing something menial.  He was probably struck by his own unimportance.  He may have been thankful for this obscurity.  He would have heard some of the stories from Nanjing and Burma.  He would have heard of what lengths men of great ambition or great loyalty were prepared to go.  He was thankful, perhaps, that he had never been tested in that fashion.  He was a man of great loyalty, but he was content to hold a minor part in the theater of war.  He was glad enough to return home after work, and to hear his wife tell stories of her day.

        On a certain afternoon he was away, and his pretty wife was sitting in their yard, waiting for one of her friends to arrive.  At that time she was dressed in her best kimono, and her hair was tied back, leaving her pale face exposed to the sun.  She held an umbrella in her right hand, but she did not open it.  She enjoyed the sun, even though it darkened her pale skin.

        And then, a young man passed along the road before her, and he smiled.  He continued smiling as he walked down the dusty road, his eyes straining to meet her gaze.  He was a beautiful man.  He was a peasant from that village.  He was one of the Chinese, and thus beyond her.

She was a modest woman, so she pulled open the umbrella she was holding and placed it before her lovely face.  She would not allow him to see her.  She would not extend the invitation.  She had been caught off guard by his boldness, but in the instant of seeing him she heard her mother’s voice, and remembered what it is that a good wife must do.

        She hid her true expression behind the umbrella, and one can only wonder if behind that umbrella she was smiling, or if she was laughing, or if she was ashamed.

Returned to the Bellevue Library in February.  Removed from circulation thereafter.