Li Ang - The Lost Garden

Amid the sounds of people talking and running feet slapping against the floor, she stood on the purple sandalwood armchair at her Lotus Tower second-story window to look down into the garden, where dim sixty-watt bulbs were lit. There were also circles of light held in people’s hands; though not very bright, they moved around the garden and shone on everything. It was pitch black out there, and people — there were many people, all strangers — blended into the dark night as flickering shadows. They were talking in a language unfamiliar to her, amid cries and shouts and the sounds of heavy objects falling and doors opening.

With her eyes now open wide, though she did not cry, she felt the clamor go on and on, as if it might never end. It was morning the next time she awoke, with bright light bathing Lotus Tower. The sun’s rays streaming in through the window made her face tingle. She realized that she’d fallen asleep in the armchair.

Father was gone, and Mother said she was going to see Yinghong’s maternal grandfather in Taipei. Then Mother abruptly reappeared in Lotus Garden but disappeared a few days later. Mudan was busy with one thing or another the whole time. All of a sudden, no one paid any attention to Yinghong, so she began sneaking out of the house to play at Lucheng’s Number Three Elementary School.

School was not in session. During the sweltering summer days, it was pretty much deserted. So she had the big, wooden elephant-shaped slide all to herself, and had a great time climbing up and sliding down. Cicadas in the banyan tree above were singing their drawn-out, monotonous, seemingly never-ending songs. Beyond the shade of the tree, the sun beat down on the ground, turning the dry, hard surface a withered gray that reflected the blinding white sun, like the glint of a knife. The reflected glow added to the sun’s direct simmering light in creating a miasma that enshrouded the gray playground in a white steam.

The quiet was broken by two soldiers in khaki uniforms, each carrying a rifle over his shoulder. Gray leggings above their black cloth shoes were coming loose in places. They shuffled along, scraping the dry ground as they entered the school compound from a side gate and passed her on the slide before meeting an old janitor at the door to the staff office. The old man, who was holding a dustpan and a long-handled bamboo broom, pointed to the staff office in response to a question. He was still bowing even after the soldiers had gone inside.

The soldiers reemerged with a third person in front of them. Yinghong vaguely recalled that he was one of the teachers she’d seen around school quite often. The only reason he’d have been on campus during summer break was to be on duty.

Heading back the way the soldiers had come, the three men were quickly alongside the slide, giving Yinghong a glimpse of the teacher, a robust man in his thirties. He wore a grimly anxious look, seemingly shrouded in a dark cloud of worry, the sight of which would recur in her dreams for years afterward. As they walked past, she saw that his hands were tied behind him with a Boy Scout rope as thick as a man’s finger. Wound around his wrists several times, each of its ends was held by a soldier.

After they exited through the side gate, from her perch high atop the slide Yinghong saw the three men get into a Jeep and roar off, trailing a column of dust.

When the Jeep disappeared from sight, she was ready, as always, to slide down the elephant’s trunk, but this time, for some reason, a casual look downward sent her into a sudden panic over the terrifying height and rendered her immobile. She squatted down. The cicadas in the banyan tree continued to chirp away, the tiresome notes raising a seemingly endless din. Other sounds mingled with the cicadas’ chirps: running footsteps, the thump of heavy objects, and frightened shouts. She began to wail.

She must have cried for a very long time, without pause, for her eyes were nearly swollen shut by the time the old janitor found her and carried her down off the slide on his back.

The memory of that night at the Lotus Tower, when she’d been startled awake by the chaotic situation and terrified shouts, remained with her long after her father returned and she started elementary school, even after she entered high school. She could recall how she had stood on the purple sandalwood armchair by the window looking down through a classic barrel-shaped ornamental window and seen two soldiers dressed in wrinkled, faded khaki uniforms. She saw that they were carrying rifles over their shoulders, and that their gray, mud-spattered leggings were coming loose as they marched her father past Lotus Tower. His hands were tied behind his back with a Boy Scout rope as thick as a man’s finger. Wound around his pale wrists several times, each of its ends was held by a soldier.

She also vividly recalled the look of grim anxiety on his face. Compassionate sadness and heartfelt pity filled his beautiful, sunken, double-fold dark eyes. He held his head high as he walked in an unhurried manner, flanked by the two soldiers, who looked more like bodyguards. The profound worry on her father’s face continued to appear before her eyes for many years.

She also remembered how the soldiers marched him out of Lotus Garden and stopped at the entrance arch to climb into a Jeep parked by a low lattice wall. Then the Jeep started up and drove away soundlessly into the dark night.

When she was about to leave for college in Japan after graduating from high school, Father finally broke his habit of not talking politics with her and revealed what had happened.

He told her that he’d been fully prepared once the net began to be cast wider and wider. Usually, after everyone in Lotus Tower was asleep, he’d get out of bed to spend the night alone in a bedroom in the Upper House. On that night, he’d heard the sound of people outside and a pounding at the door, and he’d known that his time had come. Her mother had rushed over from Lotus Garden to pack a few pieces of clothing into a small bundle for him. Bundle in hand, he’d gotten into the car and left, without waking up many people.

Father also mentioned that since her Great Uncle Lin Boting, an anti-Japanese war hero back in Shanghai, was present, the Upper House and Lotus Garden had been spared the usual ransacking, though unavoidably some items had gone missing after an extensive search.

Having been taught that she should never question or argue with her elders, she simply listened quietly, head down. Later that night she went up to Lotus Tower alone. By then she was old enough to look out through the barrel window without having to stand on the armchair.

It was the 1960s, and dim sixty-watt bulbs no longer illuminated Lotus Garden. Based on Father’s design, the garden had been wired for bright florescent lights. Turning them all on, she stood at the Lotus Tower window looking south down at the pond whose surface was covered with lotus flowers. From where she stood, it turned out, she could not possibly have seen the garden entrance or the low lattice wall.

Which meant she could not have seen Father being taken away in a Jeep. As she stood at the window that summer night, she shuddered despite the warmth of the winds.

But there was absolutely no denying the existence of a man who, in his Sun Yat-sen suit, had come to question her about Father from time to time, because his last visit caused a bit of a stir. She was a third-grader, and had just written the line, “I was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War …,” which had made her teacher, Keiko, laugh out loud.

The first time the man came and asked about Father hadn’t meant much to Yinghong, who had planned to tell Mudan about it, but then Mudan had grumbled when she’d kicked her feet in the little red-lacquered pail and splashed water on her. Then Yinghong recalled how it always frightened her when someone in the family mentioned her father in a soft, strange voice, and she’d decided not to say anything.