The Third Son (17 page)

Be worthy of this girl, I thought to myself.

I got the money for you from my family,
my father had said,
but it comes with certain obligations.

“I only have enough money for a year,” I said. “I can’t even get a degree.”

Her eyes glinted in the sun. “You will,” she whispered.

I tickled Kai-ming’s cheek, feeling desperate; Yoshiko had such ready faith in me. A simple smile from my son would do me good. He had just started smiling two weeks ago, which amazed everyone, considering how ill he was. But here, during our parting moment, his lips were resolutely turned down. “Kai-ming,” I said helplessly, “grow strong.”

The plane’s propellers started to turn.

“
Lai
,” Yoshiko said, drawing near.
Come
.

I put my arms around her and Kai-ming. She tucked her head under my chin, and I felt her tears falling on my throat.

T
HE PROPELLERS QUICKENED.
I sat back, feeling the roaring beat against my back and legs—my arms, too, as I clutched the armrests. Out on the tarmac, the tiny figures of my family clustered loosely behind a white line painted on the concrete, their faces turned up toward the plane. In front, my father, feet planted far apart. My mother, hands on her hips. Beside them, Yoshiko swayed back and forth, holding the baby close against her neck, her hand over his ear. I waved, and she nodded, bouncing Kai-ming up and down.

The roaring of the engines grew so loud that the entire cabin shook, joints creaking, compartments rattling. The entire plane might burst apart—it would be the best possible end for me, to die a hero rather than the charlatan I felt certain I would prove myself to be. But then the plane lurched forward, roaring, and we passed the hangar and a cluster of idle fighter planes. And then we hurtled down the runway, flanked with grassy fields. A farmer, holding his water buffalo by the collar, looked up past the brim of his conical hat as we passed. I felt a sense of being suddenly, heavily dropped. And we were aloft. With a groan, the landing gear folded up into the plane’s belly.

The plane banked over the countryside. Still pinned back against my seat, I peered out as the waving fields of grass—the fields that had represented the boundaries of my boyhood world—transformed into verdant Cartesian grids dotted with houses, with factories, with villages and ponds. Beyond, the central mountains stretched through the clouds, their emerald shoulders cloaked in mist.

“Beautiful island!” the Portuguese had exclaimed, seeing Taiwan for the first time.
Ilha Formosa!
And now I saw why.

Live in the isle of flowers that flatter

For the land is decked with colors of seven . . .

We continued our ascent. I saw the sparkling aqua blue of Sun Moon Lake nestled among languid green hills, the surface of the water rippling in the wake of a rowboat just by the shore where Yoshiko and I had honeymooned. The boat passed through the shadow of a cirrus cloud and then we rose still higher. The air thickened with clouds, and the only land I had ever known vanished from my sight.

I took a deep breath, smelling antiseptic, coffee, pomade. The clouds streaked my window with condensation. All around me on the plane, white men turned their long noses toward the window or spoke with one another over the beating of the propellers in their low, murmuring voices.

I was flying. I felt such despair at leaving Yoshiko and Kai-ming, the lovely family I had wanted all my life. And yet, as the propellers pounded, leaving Taiwan far behind us, and the earth itself became veiled beneath the layers of vapor outside my window, I felt the molecules of the air loosen around me and felt gravity lose its relentless grip. I was no longer that boy in secondhand clothes, Kazuo’s detested little brother, dragging his feet home while he gazed up at the sky. I was in that sky, cutting my own path through the rippling patterns of clouds, through the layers of stratified gases, to a land where no one knew me.

In the vastness of the sky, I felt also my smallness. I was simply a man, dressed in a Japanese broadcloth shirt and a finely tailored wool suit that Yoshiko had insisted on having made so I would look just like the other men, all white, who sat in rows all around me. A man like any other. And when the plane landed, no one would know my name, nor that of my father, my brother, or even my hometown. From now on, all that mattered was the man I was now and the man I planned to be.

I looked into the clear blue over the clouds, a blue bounded only by the emptiness of space.

Perhaps this was how Yoshiko’s father had felt, setting off on his borrowed ship for Japan, leaving behind 1947 and the insatiable demands of family life, which I had only begun to get a taste of. Of course he had sailed on to China, for why, having gazed at the watery, glimmering horizon, feeling the salt spray against his lips, would he willingly fetter himself again? Only for his family’s sake, and he would never in a hundred years have fathomed that his strapping son would die . . .

And here I had my own son—not strapping at all, but sickly, a newborn, his arms a mosaic of variously hued bruises from so many pokes of the needle. What right had I to exult in my escape from the constraints of my life? But my reasoning was more sound than Swe-mu’s, wasn’t it? My departure truly for the betterment of our family?

I
AWOKE WITH
a start, looking out at the Tokyo skyline. Why had I bought so rashly into cowboys and the prairie, the indefinable promises of personal freedom? I could have chosen Japan as my destination, where every class was taught in the language and the culture of my childhood. There was no quota for Taiwanese to visit Japan. Yoshiko and Kai-ming could have visited me, and I could have visited home for the holidays, whereas my visiting home from America was out of the question. Never mind the formidable expense—returning to Taiwan before the year was out would mean surrendering my visa and restarting the application process from the very beginning with both the Nationalist and the American governments. And no one expected the Nationalist government to reissue an American visa.

We finished refueling and hurtled again down the runway, leaving Japan behind in the glinting blue sea. Such a tiny island, for all the grief it had given the world.

H
ALF-ASLEEP IN THE
propellers’ din, I rode my father’s motorcycle through the streets of Taoyuan but found I was not going forward. I checked the throttle, the clutch, and found myself rising—

“Look! Look!”

Excited voices roused me from my dream. The man sitting next to me, a white man in a gray suit—they all looked the same to me still—was craning his head to see out my window. In the plane all around me, people looked out the window into the darkness and exclaimed.

“What is it?”

And then I saw it myself just outside my window—a green glow sweeping across the sky in all directions.

“It’s the northern lights!”

My drowsiness vanished. I had read about auroras in
The Earth
and had never expected to see one in my lifetime. I leaned toward the window, holding my breath so it would not fog the glass. The light seemed so close I could almost feel its feathery yellow edges against the blackness of the sky. I wished that the plane could hover, that we could stay and watch the shimmering beauty as long as it lasted.

The man next to me spoke in English, his voice low and gravelly from smoking.

“Now, someday they’ll tell us what causes that,” he said.

“They know to some extent.” I glanced at him. He was large, white, with a huge, bulbous nose that seemed lumpy. I recalled what I had learned from
The Earth
. “When the sun has flare, it sends gas over and this somehow interacts with Earth’s atmosphere.”

“Interacts how?”

I shook my head. “Something to do with the electrons.” I fell silent and went back to watching the spectacular display outside, feeling foolish for being so vague, as this was all I had learned. I didn’t realize that my embarrassment was mostly a by-product of my insecurity; no one knew much more about auroras at that time.

AFTER MANY INTERRUPTED
dreams and trays of tasteless food and a midnight refueling stop in Hawaii, the plane banked over the ocean. I peered over the laps of my fellow passengers to see my fairyland. And there was the artificial angularity of San Francisco, its rectangular masses of concrete jutting into the sky. Even from the plane, I could see cars crawling along between the buildings and across the massive bridges. My heartbeat sped with anticipation. I felt in my breast pocket for my bus tickets, thick as books, and in my pants pocket for an advertisement I had clipped from an American overseas newspaper.

FOCUS

Friends of Chinese University Students

We will host you upon your arrival in the United States . . .

The plane tilted to the left, and the announcement came that we would soon land.

T
HERE ARE CERTAIN
things we take for granted: the smell of the air, the feel of our clothes. Walking along the immense, shiny corridors of the San Francisco Airport’s Central Terminal, I found my most basic physical expectations upended. The airport smelled curiously bland, as though the oxygen and nitrogen molecules themselves had been boiled and scrubbed clean. As I walked, my tailored shirt and wool slacks slipped against my skin, smooth as silk. I stepped down to the baggage carousel, my hand sliding along the chrome banister and leaving no imprint. I realized, then, how humid Taiwan’s climate was, how it had weighed me down.

I passed through customs, and a gray-suited man in a fedora extended his hand to me. “Mr. Tong?”

I looked up in surprise into the man’s eyes, which were as pale blue as a wildcat’s. The pinkish skin over his nose wrinkled as he smiled.

“Pat O’Reilly,” he said. “From FOCUS. Call me Pat.”

“I’m Chia-lin,” I said. The Americans in Taipei had advised me to go by my Chinese name here, as Americans were still sore over Pearl Harbor and disliked Japanese.

He gripped my hand firmly. I had heard that a firm handshake was important in America. I returned his grip in kind, my sleeve cuffs, for once, hitting just right at the base of my thumb, the smooth cloth of my shirt slipping against my shoulder. I had been annoyed with Yoshiko for spending so much precious time and money, for fussing so much over my clothing, but now I was grateful she had insisted on a suit that turned out to be just as fine as Pat O’Reilly’s.

“I did not know if you would come,” I said.

“Oh, sure!” He smiled, teeth brilliant. “Welcome to San Francisco!”

Oh, sure!
So friendly, so American.

Pat O’Reilly smiled and picked up one of my suitcases with surprising ease. “You’ll stay with me tonight. I’m having some friends over. My dental assistant, Mary, and a Chinaman, like you.”

“Oh, sure!” I said, smiling, though there was no guarantee this “Chinaman” would even speak my language. And feeling tall, debonair, and American, I picked up my other suitcase with the same casual movement that Pat had used.

But the suitcase was much heavier than I was ready for, and I felt a ripping in my lower back.

“You okay?”

I gasped in pain. “Fine.” I had forgotten. This was the one with Kazuo’s package.

“You don’t look fine . . .”

I bent double, looking into the reflection of my grimace in the polished linoleum. This was not how I had hoped to start my year in America. I could almost hear Kazuo laughing. In a few minutes the pain receded to a dull throb.

“I’ll call a bellhop. That thing’s darn heavy. No wonder—”

“I’m fine,” I said, standing up. Pat nodded doubtfully and led me out of the building. I followed, hobbling, through a set of glass doors to a sea of undulating steel—row upon row of cars, massive, gorgeous, gleaming like rockets. A spasm of pain shot through my back, and I dropped my suitcase for a moment to survey the sight. Chevrolet, Lincoln, Mercury. Names I had only dreamed about. They might as well have been rockets, as far as I was concerned. Each one was worth a life’s savings in Taiwan.

Pat O’Reilly opened the trunk of a sky-blue ’56 Chrysler with tail fins and heaved my suitcases into the cavernous interior. I pressed the shiny chrome handle on the passenger door and sank into a seat so plush that I ran my hand along it, imagining how Yoshiko would love to ride in a car like this, how she would smile. Then my back clenched as I settled in, and my image of Yoshiko vanished.

Pat settled beside me and reached for the keys sitting in the ignition. He hesitated, then looked up at me. “We’ve got a couple hours before dinner,” he said. “Care to see the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“Oh, sure!” I exclaimed.

“Redwoods, after. How about that?” He turned the ignition, and the car purred to life. Despite my excitement, my head was heavy with fatigue. I turned the smoothly oiled arm of my window crank, and cool air blasted into my face. I blinked, watching the pastel-colored cars around us staying demurely within the painted lines on the road and blinking their directional signals. They slowed gradually and let each other pass when roads merged; it was so genteel. No one honked, and though I had expected no rickshaws or oxcarts in American streets, I was surprised at the complete absence of military vehicles.