Page 60 of Taipei Story

Did you also listen to Liszt?

The Great Men—did you meet them?

Did it seem real?

Any of it?

When did the dream collapse?

During the war,—

In the army,—

When the Japanese,—

After the war,—

During the Great Leap Forward,—

During the Great Famine,—

During the Cultural Revolution,—

When Mao died,—

Why didn’t you leave?

Did you ever try?

Did you sing that song about Baldy Chiang?

When was the last time you saw them?

When did you find out?

When did you know for sure?

Why didn’t you ever go to see your sister?

My uncles,—

Why did you choose my mother?

Did you ever regret it?

Do you ever ask questions to people who can’t answer?

Who do you speak to in the dark?

Interstitial

Courtesy of the author

钟德睿

Known facts, contours of a life. Shipped off at fourteen to relatives he’d never met, to a country he’d never set foot in, for no other reason than a dream. Dreams had currency then. Dynasties fell, empires rose, great powers went to war, and the maps of the world were redrawn in an instant. In the early twentieth century, the grand narrative was about civilizational evolution. Darwin and Spencer made their way to China, and China’s intellectuals concluded: Adapt, or go extinct. Modernity was coming to the East; the Yellow Race was catching up. This nation is diseased, wrote Liang Qichao; ignorant, feeble, backward; we need a new people, we must become strong. At school, reading Rousseau and de Tocqueville, the boy too was compelled by this collective daydream, the constitutional foundations of a new China. The Qing dynasty was overthrown, the National Assembly declared a republic, and democracy was on the horizon. Then came the war, and the civil war after that. He went into the army, where he developed habits he kept for the rest of his life: obsessive hand-washing, for that warded off dysentery; ramrod-straight posture; pants ironed to creases so sharp you could trace a pencil down his leg. The Cold War: promises of utopia ending at the strait, but on either side, families were torn apart, newspapers shut down, protestors disappeared. He did not leave for Taiwan, and he did not dare entertain regrets about whether he should have.

Everyone was starving. They were starving even in Cambodia, where the land was so fertile it was said you could shit in the dirt and seeds would sprout. Yet somehow there was a famine, and whispers of worse, but so little news made it past the borders. The silence was agony. Finally a letter arrived from a refugee camp in Thailand. From his sister: Our parents are gone. My husband is gone. My sons are gone. We are the only ones left. He never asked for more details than that. He wasn’t there; he didn’t have the right. His sister had been an English teacher before the war. She had provided translation services at the camp, and for that, the Americans told her they’d send her wherever she wanted to go. California, or the mainland? She asked her brother for advice—how are things over there? Don’t come, he begged her. Go on.