Proofreaders: happyBuddha, Lee, Kai, m@o, Marcia
Till Death Do Us Part chapter 22
This year, Shen Liangsheng spent a good half of the spring and summertime in the South. Since he decided to leave the country, he had to do what had to be done, and fast. He wanted to sell the factory, and there was no other buyer available except the Japanese. He could not object to the low price since the industrial sector in the North had been monopolized by the Japanese, leaving no room for English or American investors. However, there was no reason to liquidate the remaining securities and real estate at distressed prices, so Shen Liangsheng visited Peip’ing in April and Shanghai in May. After wrapping up business matters, he did not rush to return to Tientsin and instead stayed in Shanghai for a month or so. He thought of it as a long break for himself, and it seemed that the farther he was from Tientsin, the sooner he would forget the man.
Several storms hit the North in July raising the water
levels of all the rivers and streams in the region at an alarming rate. Eventually
by the end of the month flooding occurred, and the farms to the north and south
of Tientsin suffered the worst. The Shen factory was located on the outskirts
of the city but was not endangered as it was on the west side. Erring on the
side of caution, Chou rang the hotel where Shen Liangsheng was staying. He told
him about the flooded farms and asked the boss to return and personally attend
to matters.
Hearing this,
Shen Liangsheng did not hesitate and placed an order for a return ticket to
Tientsin, but he did not take the news very seriously. Indeed, Tientsin was one
of the most important strategic points for the Japanese in northern China, and
thus the dummy government would not let the flood get to the city, no matter
how useless they were. Should worst come to worst, they would destroy the dams
and redirect the water, securing the city even if that meant flooding all the
land around it.
Not only was Shen
Liangsheng, who was out of town, not worried, the residents of Tientsin themselves
were not particularly apprehensive about an impending disaster. Tientsin was
situated at low elevation to begin with and had flooding problems every now and
then. Once it became a frequent spectre, the people dropped their guard. The
worst case scenario was some inconvenience for several days caused by clogged
streets.
Just as the
civilians had no sense of urgency, the dummy government did not take any action
other than releasing a notice for households to build small dams in front of
their doors or at the mouths of the hut’ong so that their homes would not be
flooded.
It was early
August when Shen Liangsheng embarked on his return trip. Halfway through the
journey, news came that the flooding had become serious. Then a little farther
down the road, the announcement came that the rails entering Tientsin had been
flooded making it impossible to enter the city, so the train had to go around
to Peip’ing.
The
transportation system was in utter chaos, and the train kept making stops. The
passengers could do nothing but pray for the government in Tientsin to blow the
dams so the water did not actually enter the city.
This time around,
the Japanese did not sit idly by and ended up sending the army to blow the
Yungting River Dam. However, not only was the location wrong, the timing of the
explosion was wrong, too – they had chosen the day of the highest tide
according to the lunar calendar. The Hai Ho could not redirect any water out to
sea, so when the waves came tumbling down from upstream, they crashed into the
city inundating it in the blink of an eye.
It was a disaster
like none had ever seen. The scene when the monstrous waves hit was surreal –
pedestrians were still strolling along the streets when a thunderous roar from afar mixed with shrieks saying, “It’s here! Run for your lives!”
But legs could not
possibly outrun the water. People could only watch as the flood gushed forth
pushing up waves higher than a grown man as it turned the street corners in
pursuit. With nowhere left to run and the water at their heels, some climbed on
top of nearby vehicles while others climbed up trees. In the end, even the
electricity poles were full of clinging people.
Ch’in Ching was on summer holidays at home reading a
book on the bed when he heard a noise he had never heard in his life. Before he
could react, the water had already entered the house instantly reaching the top
of the bed. The house he rented was located in a depression by the Hai Ho, one
of the areas most affected by the flood. Thankfully, it was daytime and he was
awake. If it had been during the night, he probably would have been washed away in his dreams.
Luckily, the
house was made of bricks unlike the clay houses in the farming villages, so it
did not collapse even after being hit by such a strong wave. Ch’in Ching could
not swim and only managed by holding onto the table. Amidst the struggle, with
water in his nose and ears, he somehow caught the door frame and hauled himself
up to the roof. He wasn’t sure how he even made it up there. Although he did
not have anything with him, he felt fortunate that he had not been swept away
by the water.
Shen Liangsheng arrived in Peip’ing in the evening
whereupon he learned that the entire city of Tientsin had been flooded earlier
in the afternoon. Telephone calls to the office did not go through, so he had
no idea what was going on over there. All he knew was that transportation by
land was completely cut off; the only way to enter Tientsin now was either by
boat or by swimming.
Shen Liangsheng
contacted his friend during the night for boats. His friend thought he was
worried about the properties and factory, so he admonished while searching for
available boats, “What’s the use going back now? It’s all sitting under water
and there’s nothing you can do about it. You know, I heard it’s a big mess in
Tientsin now, a lot of people dying from the water or from being trampled. Life is
worth more than money. Why don’t you stay here, safe and dry, while you wait?”
Shen Liangsheng
shook his head without answering. He only smoked one cigarette after another,
his face pale and his fingers icy cold despite the summer temperature.
Tientsin was not a true port city, so the number of
boats was more limited than one might have expected. Peip’ing would not and
could not watch idly as Tientsin suffered and sent any watercraft they could manage
to scrounge up, even pressing pleasure boats into service.
The next day,
Shen Liangsheng entered Tientsin around noon with the first rescue team and
found the situation worse than he had imagined. The water came higher than a
man’s waist at the lowest point and could cover his head at the highest.
Due to his
connections, Shen Liangsheng was escorted all the way to Cambridge Road.
Possibly out of fear of plunder, two men were given this job, and they even left
Shen Liangsheng with his own boat and a kind-hearted reminder.
“Please stay
safe, Master Shen.”
Cambridge Road
had become Cambridge River by then, but because the house was far from the
water source and its foundations were quite high, only the basement was in bad
condition. The first floor had gotten wet, but the servants blocked the doors
and swept the water out, leaving it in satisfactory condition. Shen Liangsheng
did not say a word when he returned. He went straight to the second floor and
took out from a drawer in the bedroom a handgun he kept there for personal
safety. He stuck it in his pants and hurried back down the stairs again, leaving
just as swiftly as he had come and without telling the servants his
destination.
Indeed, he wanted
to search for Ch’in Ching, but not knowing where to start, he had not been able
to ask the rescue team to go around looking with him. However, now he had a
clear idea – first the man’s home, then the school, then high places and places
where people had gathered. He was going to search through every single one
until he found the man.
The boat Shen Liangsheng was rowing now was a
recreational one from a park. There was a number painted at the tip with red
paint. It likely had been redone recently because the colour was as pure as
blood.
He felt that he
was calm and that his arms were not shaking at all. He even recalled the time
long ago when he went boating with Ch’in Ching – the man fibbed about there being
fish in the water but stopped fighting after Shen Liangsheng grabbed his hand.
It was noontime. It had been raining continuously the
past weeks, but now the sun came out. The glaring sun shone down on him and on
the water. All sorts of floating debris littered the calm water including a few
bodies of chickens and cats.
And one human one,
too – but Shen Liangsheng calmly concluded that this was not fresh. It was most
likely someone who drowned upstream and had been washed down by the flood, only floating to the surface after several days of soaking. It was bloated, and
the gender could not be determined. It had drifted until it came across an uplifted
tree toppled to the side. Trying to continue forward but failing to do so, it writhed
desperately as though the ghost still possessing the body were trying to find a
replacement for its cursed existence so that it could continue along the cycle
of reincarnation.
Naturally, Shen
Liangsheng did not want to consider whether the man had also been washed away
by the flood.
Someone who could
not swim would surely lose his footing when hit by the wave. If he were to get
water in his nose or an injury to the head, then most likely he would never
find his footing again. Afterwards, he would become a floating corpse and
quietly drift along to who-knows-where only to rot under the sun….
Shen Liangsheng
dared not have such notions.
Even so, his mind seemed to split into two. One side
told him,
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
While the other
kept reminding him,
But you have to think. What if he’s dead? What if he….
But if he’s dead, then what?
Shen Liangsheng
felt as though his brain were being baked by the sunlight. His consciousness
was fading in and out. He could not for the life of him muster an answer.
His back was
soaked with sweat from the heat, or perhaps it was cold sweat. The hands on the
oars were still icy cold as they performed the mechanical actions of rowing.
The water had flooded the city the previous afternoon,
but the bogus government could not organize the proper rescue missions. With nothing
else to rely on, some of the braver civilians jumped into the water and swam.
The more cowardly ones stayed put even if they could swim for fear of being sucked
down a lidless sewer or something.
Someone like
Ch’in Ching who could not swim could only stay on the roof. He stayed crouching
from night to day and lay under the sun without food or water for the entire morning.
His lips were peeling, and his head was spinning.
His surroundings
had become a sea. The rooftops almost all housed people. The child of one
family nearby most likely had been outside playing when the water hit and
disappeared in an instant. The father had swum out looking for the child while
the mother stayed on the roof crying. Ch’in Ching had spent the previous night
listening to her sobs until she had nothing left in her to cry.
He looked at the
murky water around him not knowing what to do, either. The next thing he knew,
there was a rhythmic thumping sound like that when someone bangs their head against
the wall.
After a night of
anxiety and fear, his head was not on straight. He thought someone was trying
to end their own life, so he pushed himself to his knees and looked down over
the edge. What he saw was not a person but a coffin that had drifted here from
somewhere – maybe from a cemetery upstream. Like a boat carrying death, it had
drifted until stopped by the wall and then began to knock against it. Clunk-clunk-clunk – it rang like the
death knell.
When
Ch’in Ching looked up again, he saw Shen Liangsheng. Well, his glasses had
fallen into the water long before, and his vision was a blur. However, he
somehow knew when he saw a small boat coming towards him that it was Shen
Liangsheng.
He shot up to his
feet only to fall down before finding solid footing due to his legs being numb
from crouching. Instinctively, he held onto the tiles nearby but did so too
forcefully. The tile cut a long gash on his palm. Blood gushed out, but he
didn’t feel any pain.
Shen Liangsheng
had good eyesight and spotted Ch’in Ching from afar. His anxiety had barely
settled down when he realized the man was wobbling on the rooftop. Worried once
more despite having found the man, he sped up his paddling. Once he reached the
house, he stuck out his hand and called out hoarsely, “Come, I’ll catch you.”
The water level
here was much higher than a grown man, and the boat was not far from the
rooftop. Without having to actually jump, Ch’in Ching more or less was dragged
into Shen Liangsheng’s arms. He had barely caught his balance when the other
man lurched and brought both of them down on their knees.
“Shen–” Kneeling
face to face, Ch’in Ching was in Shen Liangsheng’s tight embrace. He had barely
said the man’s name when he felt a warm wetness on his neck which stopped him
from forming any words.
Shen Liangsheng
cried in silence. He held the other man tightly, perhaps too tightly as he was
trembling. Ch’in Ching hugged the man back, watching his own blood dirtying the
man’s clothes. Only after his palm touched the wet shirt on the man’s back did
he begin to feel pain. It was a pain that reached his heart and made him want
to cry as well.
Face buried in Ch’in Ching’s neck, Shen Liangsheng
soon regained control of himself but continued to embrace the man for a while
before letting go. He grabbed the man by the wrist and spotted the gash on the
palm. He wanted to touch it but dared not.
“Just a small
cut. I’m fine,” Ch’in Ching quickly assured him, his voice just as hoarse.
“Are you hurt
anywhere else?”
“No. I’m all
right. You, on the other hand–”
“Ch’in Ching….”
There were no
sign of tears on Shen Liangsheng’s face, but his eyes were still a bit red. It
was an expression of vulnerability bordering on helplessness which Ch’in Ching
had never seen on the man before.
He heard the man
continue,
“Come with me,
I’m begging you, to England, to America. We’ll go wherever you want to go.
Please?”
The utterance left Ch’in Ching completely dumfounded.
Shen Liangsheng had never told him about his plans to leave the country, but
that was not what surprised him. It was the word “beg.”
Even after all
his time with this man, he had never known the man to beg anyone for anything.
Hearing the word “beg” now was like a knife stabbing into his heart. The handle
was sticking out, sealing in the blood, the pain, and also the answer “yes”
that almost sneaked past his lips.
“Shen Liangsheng….”
Ch’in Ching
stared dumbly at the man kneeling before him and then at the water around them
that seemed to have no end.
War, disaster,
one calamity after another – it was as though the world really were caving on
itself and the land sinking into sea.
They said
thinkers were the most useless, and indeed, as a teacher, the things he could
do were limited. Yet, when he was confronted with the request, he knew he could
not bear to leave this place behind.
“Shen
Liangsheng…I can’t do it.”
Perhaps he could
if there were peace. But sadly, there was not. He could not leave precisely
because there was not. Even if he was of no use and there was not a thing he
could do, there was one last thing he wanted to do.
It all came down
to the saying, ‘My motherland gave me life and sustenance, and I shall in turn
live and die with her.’
“But you
should…just go…. I….”
For a moment,
Ch’in Ching wanted to tell the man,
I love you. I can’t leave, but I will love you and you
only for the rest of my life. No matter where you might be, no matter where I
might be, I will remember you every day I am alive and miss you forever and
always.
But he couldn’t
say it. He couldn’t leave with the man, so saying those words would only be
rubbing salt into his wounds.
He didn’t speak,
but the knife began to move. From head to toe, it tore through him inch by inch
until he became two bloody halves. Never before had he truly wished to be cut
into two so that one half could stay behind and the other could leave with the
man.
“You say I should go….”
Shen Liangsheng was on his knees like
Ch’in Ching and was at a loss. Then after what seemed like minutes, he asked in
a puzzled tone as though he really did not know the answer,
“But with you
here…where else do you expect me to be?”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Caption: Great Flood of 1939, near Furong Elementary (photo: Yoshiro Kawana)
Asahi Road in the Japanese concession (current Heping Road) during the flood
Nakahara Company
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
On the corpse floating in the water:
It is believed
that the spirit of someone who dies from drowning will turn into a water demon
(or ghost) and cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation unless it drowns someone
else and finds a replacement.
For more information:
Yungting River
Western news article on the flood at the time
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
ayszhang: It's getting warm in Tokyo >A< me no like!
Previous chapter
Till Death Do Us Part - English Translation by ayszhang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
No comments:
Post a Comment