“
Does he know?”
“
Know what?” he said. His other two aunts glanced at each other and kept silent. He didn’t care. He
was hungry. Normally dinner would be here already, a half-bowl of rice, boiled cabbage, and some chicken if he
was lucky. The table was empty.
“
Where’s Mama?”
*
He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t see Mama again. To him, she
was just away.
Everyone acted funny around him. His father shot quick glances at him. His sister wouldn’t speak to
him. His aunts whispered behind his back.
A week after she’d gone, he decided to go to where she had left. He woke up extra early and slipped
out. He walked all the way to the Wall and stood on the edge of the tower, eight meters above ground, feeling
the wind grab at him. He felt nothing, not even when he stood on one foot and deliberately teetered.
So he jumped back down and went home.
*
No. The man knows it’s not this. There’s nothing pure about this act. But he knows it’s the first
domino that will bring them all back.
He settles deeper into his pillows. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought his children were
trying to suffocate him with cotton.
He closes his eyes, and remembers.
*
The airplane flew so low he fancied that he could see the pilot’s face. The engines roared as the plane
spat a chain of bullets into the neighboring field. A plume of blood puffed into the air.
He felt bile rising. The plane soared onwards. He made sure no more were in sight before dropping his
scythe and running towards the fallen man.
Red unfurled beneath him. A smell of iron filled his nostrils as he stripped away the man’s shirt. He
knew then that the man was going to die.
He had seen the man from afar in the village. A fellow farmer, just like his father.
The man gave a sudden shudder. His eyes glazed over. No sound stroked the boy’s ears apart from the
gentle shushing of corn.
It could’ve been him. Or his father. It could’ve been anyone. But instead the Japanese pilot had chosen
this man. He was not even that good a farmer anyway. Just a normal person trying to survive.
The war had barely touched. He’d seen a few soldiers marching along the Wall, but that was it. He
didn’t understand. What did they get from this one death?
He closed the man’s eyes, trying not to cringe as his hand came away smeared with blood. Then he
picked up his scythe, and walked away.
*
They had come back for more. They hadn’t stopped there. His cousin wasn’t killed, but what was left
of her after was a husk. She would move like she was shifting through water. She would answer with a mumble.
It wasn’t one, or even three who had taken her. It’d been five.
He was thankful when they were beaten back.
A chain of little black dashes had sliced the thread of that man’s life. He had gone through thirteen
years in the illusion of his immortality. That moment had torn away any notions of his invincibility.
He had run to the man an innocent, and walked away stained.
*
The memory was sullied. But the image of blood lingered and poured until it became another memory.
*
The power was intoxicating.
He now understood what it meant to be a Red Guard. It was even better being the commander of a Red
Guard troupe.
“
Where’s the counterrevolutionary Hu?” he barked. A man was dragged out from the jail, which was
merely a guarded classroom. But it sufficed. The teachers could not spread their evil words through concrete.
“
Do you confess to your crimes?” he said.