The Third Son (10 page)

It was Yoshiko! A flush of excitement rushed through me. I had wondered what she might look like grown and thought she might be friendly and pretty, but I would never have imagined that she would be like this, a beauty. But it couldn’t be. Yoshiko had been so happy, and her brother, laughing and handsome, full of love. This girl seemed angry somehow, and her brother’s face quite twisted and ugly as he argued with a customer. With a look of impatience, the girl broke away from Kazuo and reached over her brother’s arm to click a few beads on his abacus and hand change to his customer.

Yi-yang and Wen-shen laughed. “She’s a feisty one,” Wen-shen said.

“Too bad her brother’s an imbecile.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lo Li-hsiang. That lumberyard family, you know, the Chengs and the Los.”

The girl had returned to her customers. Kazuo stood to the side, writing something down on a piece of paper.

“Do you know her Japanese name?” I asked.

“Of course not. Why?”

“She looks like someone I met once. Does she have another brother?”

“No, just two sisters,” Wen-shen replied immediately, and Yi-yang and I looked at him in surprise.

“They came to my cousin’s wedding!” he said. “I haven’t been stalking her any more than usual.”

Yi-yang slapped him on the back. “Well, if you had been, I’d be very impressed.”

“Are you sure it was her?” I asked.

“Of course,” Wen-shen said. “Her, her nasty brother, and two sisters—one very dumpy and one very sour looking like this guy. Mom was weird looking, wore an old dress, must have been a hundred years old.”

“And her father? Was he dressed well?”

Wen-shen gave me a look. “It was a wedding. All the men were dressed the same—”

The pharmacy door opened, and Kazuo emerged, smirking, with his friend Li-wen. “Well, children,” Kazuo said, “she’s coming with me to the meet tomorrow. How do you like that?”

He strutted down the street, slapping Li-wen on the back and laughing.

I looked at the girl through the window. She was frowning as she poured powder into a paper bag and didn’t look at all excited about having just arranged a date.

“I’m going to talk to her,” I said.

“Forget it,” Yi-yang said, grabbing my arm. “She’s a gold digger. Come on. You said you had to get home.”

I hesitated, looking through the window, seeing not the pharmacy but the girl on the bicycle, smiling contentedly in her brother’s arms. The girl standing before me today was not Yoshiko. Yoshiko wouldn’t have behaved like this, wouldn’t have agreed to go out on a date with a man she didn’t like, just because he was going to be a doctor.

“
Hou,
” I said. “
Kianh.
”

And we got on the motorcycle and sped away.

9

A
LL NIGHT I LAY
awake on my futon, listening to Jiro’s snores on the futon next to mine. I twisted and turned, worrying about
Fundamentals of the English Language for Foreigners,
which was still in my bag, as the maid had been tidying up Kazuo’s room until he came home.

It must have been Yoshiko. I had seen the gold shimmer in her eyes in that shaft of sunlight. But that wasn’t her brother. And Wen-shen’s description of her family didn’t sound at all like what I remembered seeing. I went over and over the same arguments in my mind. I saw the girl’s wary look at Kazuo, and Kazuo’s smug face. I should have said something, should have told him I knew she didn’t even like him, that I admired her less for saying yes to someone like him.

A
S SOON AS
the sun rose, I got up and dressed in my track clothes. I took the first train into Taipei for my meet.

Normally I liked to arrive just after the flag-raising ceremony—I generally avoided these as much as possible—but today I had plenty of time to warm up.

“Horse! Last meet of the year! You ready?” our school coach called to me from the field as I lay my jacket down on an aisle seat in our school’s section of the bleachers. “Go stretch.”

The stadium gradually filled. Kazuo brushed past me, wearing a neat button-down shirt smoothed flat over his belly, and sat in the section behind mine with his classmates. The seat next to his was empty. At last, the red-and-blue flag rose against the clear blue sky, and we all stood, keeping the irony to ourselves. In an autocracy, brainwashing was just one more part of the day.

San Min Chu-i

Our aim shall be

To found a free land

World peace be our stand . . .

I had developed the habit of experimenting with my voice as a way of occupying my mind in all the flag-raising ceremonies we had endured over the years. I sang now, my voice, a clear baritone, ringing out into the spring air, and thought happily that perhaps the girl would stand Kazuo up.

The song ended and we were urged to take our seats. And at that moment, in the general bustle as people sat down and the fifty- and one-hundred-meter runners from my school scooted past me to get to the field, I saw her stepping up the stairs toward me in high heels, her eyes down, her face melancholy.

The sun shone on the sophisticated wave of her hair, and the wind blew the silky fabric of her dress, with its brown stripes making an inverted V at her waist, the fabric sliding against the soft white of her arms. As she drew closer, I noted the delicacy of her upturned nose, the gentle curve of her cheek.

“Yoshiko!” I said.

She turned her face quickly to me, her gold-flecked eyes sparkling with surprise, the early morning light gliding over the luminescent skin of her face.

I felt a jolt as her eyes met mine. “It
is
you!” I said, and I searched her face for traces of the girl I had thought about so many times—the wide eyes, the dimple in her cheek. I had found her at last.

She blinked. “Do I know you from school?”

The announcement came over the megaphone:
One-hundred-meter dash.

“No! The war. The air raid. Remember? I saved your life! Your brother picked you up on his bicycle . . .”

It was her turn to stare at me, her eyes flickering back and forth across my face, her foot paused midstep, her hand gracefully holding the skirt of her dress. Her expression softened, and then, to my alarm, her eyes filled with tears.

At that moment, Kazuo’s buttoned-down belly appeared in my peripheral vision. “Ah, I see you know my little brother.”

Yoshiko hastily looked away, blinking, and nodded her head.

“He’s sitting with
his
school. We’ll sit with mine. They’re calling your event, Saburo,” Kazuo said to me. “It’s time to run in circles.”

Yoshiko turned and followed Kazuo up the stairs. I felt a draining sensation in my chest and arms as Kazuo, who had everything—from my mother’s love, to the best chunks of meat, to my book—now took from me the one girl I had thought about all these years. He would sap me dry. The blood surged to my face and I began to shake with fury—at Kazuo for taking Yoshiko away, and at Yoshiko for allowing herself to be treated as a trophy.

But then Yoshiko turned back to look down at me. She met my gaze openly, her eyes full of sadness and confusion and longing, and, heart still pounding, I held my breath. The wind rippled her dress and blew her hair across her forehead, and still her eyes, rimmed with the remnants of her tears, looked into mine. I heard the applause of the crowd, and my coach calling my name from the field below, but I could not bear to break Yoshiko’s gaze.

Then, to my despair, she turned again and climbed up the stairs after my brother.

I rushed down to the track, my legs trembling. I ran my race in a rage, hardly noticing who ran in the lanes beside me, and won. But even my win brought me no joy, for I knew that Kazuo was right. All I was good at was running in circles on the ground. He was the one with the way out.

O
N MY WAY
home from the meet, I was more alive than I had ever been; I felt the blood coursing through me, the muscles of my body contracting and relaxing as I walked, their movements smooth and coordinated as an animal’s. I felt, as though for the first time, the warmth of the sun on my hair and the back of my neck, the coolness of the wind blowing through the woven cotton of my clothes. And yet, awakened as I was to the physical world, I was so consumed by replaying, over and over in my mind, those moments when Yoshiko had looked into my eyes, that a motorcyclist nearly ran me over in front of the Taoyuan Train Station.

But she was Kazuo’s. Kazuo’s, I reminded myself bitterly, as I waved to the motorcyclist, who exclaimed and shook his fist at me. Kazuo was the one with the future. And fury so overcame me that once I got home, seeing that Kazuo was in the kitchen having lunch, I boldly stepped right into his room and plunked his book onto his shelf.

“What are you doing?” He appeared in the doorway behind me.

“Putting this book back.”

“I never said you could borrow it.”

“You never even look at it.”

“It’s mine nonetheless.”

He walked past me, pulled
The Earth
neatly off its shelf, and strode out of the room.

I followed him. “What are you doing with that?”

“I’m going to burn it,” he said. “I know you’ve been looking at it. I should have done this a long time ago.”

My stomach dropped. I caught his arm on its backswing and lunged for the book, but he dodged me and then jabbed me in the stomach with his elbow. I grabbed his shirt as he ran away, and it came untucked from his pants, one of its buttons rolling around on the dark floorboards. I felt like a schoolboy scuffling over a marble, but I could not let him destroy the one object I treasured.

“
Otosan!
” he called.

I heard my father’s lumbering step, and I released Kazuo.

Kazuo sneered. “Try to get it from me now.”

Five minutes later,
The Earth
flamed in a pit behind our house, along with some old Japanese newspapers. The smoke curled up into the sky.

Kazuo watched, arms folded, a smug smile on his face

“Why did you do that?” I said angrily. “It meant nothing to you.”

“It’s caused us a lot of trouble,” he said. “And I don’t want you thinking you can take what’s mine, pretty boy.” He looked at me and cocked his head, eyes narrowed. “Stay away from Li-hsiang.”

“Who?” I said.

He glared at me. “The girl!” he said. “She’s mine.”

10

I
SAT DOWN IN
a chair facing Toru across his desk as he wrote something in a large notebook. He glanced at my twitching leg and then up at my face. “What’s the matter?” he said.

I opened my mouth to speak, but there were so many thoughts swirling in my head that I closed my mouth again and looked at the floor.

He watched me for a moment and then resumed writing. His hair was now shot through with strands of gray, and his face looked worn and tired. He took my military-service form from me. “Let’s take a look at you.”

I followed him, towering now over his slight figure as he led me to the examining table. I sat, eyeing the cabinet that held the detested vitamin solution from Taikong. Toru peered into my eyes and mouth. “How is your father enjoying being mayor?” he asked.

“He complains,” I said. “When he can. There are Nationalist agents crawling all over our house spying on him and telling him what to do. The security general’s son is his new best friend.”

“I’ve never seen him.”

“Just like his father. Big lips, square glasses, ugly suit.”

“But your father didn’t run as a Nationalist.”

“No.”

“But I suppose all the parties are controlled by the Nationalists.”

“Of course,” I said. “All this ‘reform’ is just for show.”

He stood in front of me, holding his otoscope, blinking. “Your father’s not afraid?”

“No. They want to look good for the Americans now. You know, after losing the Mainland and slaughtering—”

Toru glanced toward the door and motioned for me to be quiet.

I lowered my voice. “They need American support. They wouldn’t dare do anything overtly bad. It’s what my father thinks, anyway.”

“He must be right. He’s a shrewd man, your father.” He picked up my wrist and began taking my pulse. “Your heart’s racing.”

I felt a flush of resentment at Toru’s admiration of my father. Though, of course, he was right.

“He burned the book you gave me,” I said.

Toru looked up from his watch. “What?”

“Kazuo.” I felt like a schoolboy, tattling on another boy. “With my father’s blessing. He burned my book.”