Upon my arrival I made myself available for queries and then, when no one spoke, their eyes downcast, I ordered each man and woman to formulate a question. “Make it a good one,” I said. I demanded that they learn, and fast. “Those of you with strength and character will change the direction of this war, and will stay on here. The others will find postings elsewhere,” I said. “Nothing matters here at all except the comfort and dignity of our patients.” With each question posed, if I sensed weakness I'd remind the speaker of his profound ignorance; when he returned the next day, I'd heap praise upon him. Nothing but exactitude, dedication and order would suffice. I told them it was my duty to rid the hospital of anyone whose natural inclination was to drop bloody gauze on the floor, ignore the pain of his patients or dream about the end of his shift before it had scarcely begun. That person was useless to us. At times now I cringe when recalling my tone, but I made a hospital out of that chaos. That is our triumph, and it must be remembered.
After those few days it became clear enough that no one but I could achieve a similar success throughout the entire Border Region. I was the most experienced and most capable. For the Director of Medical Services of the Eighth Route Army, Dr. Chiang Chi-tsien, I prepared a written report concentrating on the lack of sanitary conditions and proper medical training, the frequently incorrect use of medicines and an overall and alarming absence of supplies and discipline. I conducted a thorough investigation, interviewed the entire staff, ran through all the procedures. This facility had failed utterly, and I had no reason to believe it was different from any other in the region. The underlying problem, I concluded, was the Eighth Army's woeful lack of adequate training. I had begun to remedy this situation, I said, and detailed my preliminary efforts.
After I spoke with Dr. Chiang, it was decided that I would prepare a manual outlining basic measures regarding sanitation, wound cleaning and dressing that could be printed as a booklet and distributed to clinics and field hospitals throughout the province and beyond.
In order to continue this work I departed on a tour of the front near the end of May. I was accompanied by Mr. Tung and Ho, my boy, two student surgeons, a Mr. Ping and a Mr. Sun, a nurse and an armed escort of three soldiers. For over six weeks we travelled from village to village like a Gypsy caravan. Instead of bottled herbs and ancient recipes we carried as much spotty evidence of the twentieth century as could be loaded onto our sweaty, half-starved, overworked animals, as if we aimed to deliver the healing powers of modern medicine and technique over the limitless reaches of an undiscovered empire.
*
We were still without a permanent base we could return to. By mid-July Dr. Brown was obliged to return to the Mission Hospital from which he'd been given leave. Now I was alone for the first time since meeting Jean in New York fifteen months before, and the only trained doctor in over 100,000 square miles. As a distraction from the reality of these overwhelming odds, I threw myself into my work with even greater vigour and spent my days reorganizing all medical procedures at Sung-yen K'ou. Of course, there was nothing so grand as a hospital there, only a series of huts and shacks that had been appropriated from the villagers, a breeding ground for untold infection, in which wounded men lay, largely unattended in their filth, stretched out on their hard mattresses with not so much as a blanket or change of clothes.
In order to begin the process of correcting the lamentable conditions there, I saw to the construction of an operating room, a sterilizer, one hundred leg and arm splints, standardized dressing trays, urinals, bedpans, stretcher racks and an incinerator.
To instill routine and improve procedure, I drew up operational checklists defining nursing responsibilities, began holding one-hour tutorials on basic aspects of anatomy and physiology, making much use of a blackboard, and convened a weekly conference at which questions and concerns might be raised. I was aided in this respect by the indefatigable interpreter, Mr. Tung, who had proven himself more than useful in getting across not only my words but also my displeasure, disgust and rage at the frequent incompetence.
It was here at Sung-yen K'ou, in sight of the Great Wall some ten miles distant, that we built our hospital in the shell of an abandoned Buddhist temple. Beside this structure, I was provided an office in a small house that had belonged to a large farming family who had perished in the war. Given seed money of two thousand dollars over a period of two months, carpenters and stonemasons transformed the temple into the Demonstration Hospital, whose thirty beds would serve as a training centre for all medical matters. Every morning, sometimes as early as six, I was awakened by the sound of hammers, saws and axes. It was with the pride and humility of a beneficent ruler that I walked among the rising walls of this great cathedral, encouraging the workers with a cheer or double handshake, bowing deeply under the hot sun to praise their efforts.
My hospital opened three months later, on September 15, 1938. It was indeed a proud day, and one that I wish I had been able to share with your dear mother. How her face would have glowed with joy. But I did not stay long to bask in the glory, the Japanese made sure of that. We struck out for Hopei Province, where there were new reports of a gathering threat. Throughout the remainder of that month and well into October we travelled by horse and by foot, with three tethered mules bearing the burden of our equipment and supplies, visiting one village after another. Ho and Mr. Tung were always at my side; the latter now, in addition to bridging the linguistic divide between me and the world, served as my anaesthetist. We moved from skirmish to skirmish operating and, when time permitted, instructing those men and women who were able to learn.
One night, shortly after the evening meal, a young man approached me and Mr. Tung. When he saluted me, I rose.
“What is it?” I asked.
His face was visibly upset. Not unlike Ho, he was very young.
Mr. Tung listened to him and then turned to me. “There has been an attack,” he said, “on Sung-yen K'ou. The Japanese have overrun the town. Nothing is left.”
“The hospital?” I said.
“Destroyed.” he said.
Ho appeared then. He had not yet heard the news. He leaned across the table. I suppose now he was going to remove my plate. Perhaps it was the expression I wore on my face, the rage he saw there, but before he was able to withdraw his hand, I grabbed his wrist and raised it to my face, examining it as if for some abrasion or proof of . . . I don't know what. I knew I had terrified him, though, and I had no business doing that. From the corner of my eye I could see the fear on his face as he glanced at Mr. Tung. His limp hand offered no resistance. I threw it down in disgust and walked out into the dark.
I walked through the village and out into the country. I don't know precisely where. But there are hours I cannot account for. The Japanese knew perfectly well how to strike at the morale of the Eighth, how to cut its heart out perfectly. I had been warned that the hospital might prove an irresistible target, yet my persuasiveness and vanity had won that argument. And as if to shame myself further still I had assaulted the person as loyal to me as if he were my own son. Children are the heritage of the Lord, I heard myself say.
The following morning I awoke in my tent. My limbs ached. My stomach was empty. I dressed and slipped out from under the tent flap. Light was just breaking over the hills. Ho sat alone by the cooking fire. He rose and saluted, still afraid of me. When I motioned with a hand to my mouth, he turned to the fire and began preparing my meal. Watching him, I wondered: Had I become my father?
*
I have been thinking a fair bit about mortality lately. You might suppose I've always done this, but you would be wrong. You might lose your shirt on that one. I have spent a lifetime in the presence of death. I have watched it, touched it, regretted it, bereaved it and done my best to dodge it for these last forty-nine years, but it strikes me as odd that I have not really pondered it. I am not one to duck philosophical issues, nor am I easily frightened. Could there be in the inner reaches of my heart some residual Christian belief that I draw upon in moments of need? It surprises me even to think this.
It has been a difficult stretch, lately. We are all worn out. I'm often too tired to write and yet find myself wandering in thought more than is usual, even for the dreamer I am. I've been recalling the surgery I underwent to collapse my tubercular lung so many years ago, in October of 1927. Why should this occur to me now? I remember walking lost among the great dark trees along the shores at Saranac Lake the day before the procedure, in my mind running through the operation I'd chosen to subject myself to, when I saw my old mother quietly standing beside a large pine, watching me. I hadn't known she was coming. I had informed her as to the state of my health, of course, and the date of my surgery. Even so, her presence there surprised me. It was as if she'd felt her own life's blood at the edge of extinction.
We walked together quietly. A light breeze drifted over the lake. It was an odd reversal, I thought, the mother walking slowly for the son, who in turn resembled an old man shuffling off to his own funeral.
“I know what I'm saying,” she told me. “I know you'll be fine. There is still much in this world for you to do, Norman.”
“The world needs a fair bit of correcting, I'll grant you that, but I'm not so sure I am the one to do it.”
She took my hand in hers. “You are a special man. You're on this earth for a reason. The Lord will see that you understand that reason.”
I said, “That I can offer myself as a guinea pig?”
She said, sternly, “Don't mock His ways.”
“What, then, is this great plan of His? The Kaiser? Sixteen million dead of the bloody Spanish influenza? Is that His great plan? Forgive me if I don't drop down on my knees.”
“Will you pray with me?”
I looked at her. “You know I almost killed a man? Only three weeks ago. Frances's lover. Did the war do that to meâthe faithless, jealous husband?”
She didn't say anything. We were stopped, standing on a pebbled shore. Out before us the lake was a sheet of unbroken glass, reflecting the sky. Here was all Heaven and Earth spread before us and I could think only of mocking the beliefs that had formed me and defined the one woman who had always loved me, unconditionally, perfectly.
I said, “What do you think of God's plan now, Mother? A murderer if I'd shown half the bravery I like to think I have.”
She turned and walked back up the shore. I'd hurt her gravely, saying that. I thought I'd driven her away for good. To my shame, I was glad to have her gone.
That night we ate in silence. She had reserved a guest cabin. We sat on her porch, our chairs positioned to face the lake.
“I want to apologize,” I said. “I haven't been thinking straight.”
“I know. A mother knows.”
I said, “He couldn't come?”
“Your father gave it a fair bit of considering. He fears his congregation would be lost without him. I told him it was the other way around. âYou should think about that,' I said. He didn't appreciate my saying that and went upstairs for the rest of the night. At breakfast he gave me a letter. He went out without touching a thing.”
She got up and went into the cabin. The screen door slammed. The sound carried over the lake. She returned a moment later and placed the sealed envelope before me. I didn't move to pick it up.
“He's a good man, Norman,” she said.
“I'll read it later.”
That letter remained unopened, tucked into the pages of a medical text, for the rest of my stay at the sanatorium. When I left, the book was packed among others and shipped, after the house where Frances and I had lived in Detroit was closed down, to Montreal, where it remained sealed, forgotten, until Father died in 1932. The evening I learned of his death, I opened the letter.
I poured myself a strong brandy, sat at the kitchen table of my small apartment and inserted a knife into a slit at the corner of the envelope, pulling the blade along the crease. I took the page out and read it, then folded and returned it to its envelope.
I found it again on an October morning, four years later, as I packed up my things for Spain. It was a poignant reminder of the end of things, a good life frustrated by silence and shame. Without thinking much about it, I slipped the letter into one of the books I'd set aside for the journey and resumed my packing. But I have kept it with me ever since, and want you to read it now.
Toronto
Oct 22, 1927
Dear Norman,
You have by now spoken with Mother, and perhaps she is at this very moment sitting before you, watching you read this letter from your absent father. Perhaps you are alone in that little cabin you have written to us about, I hope in swift and complete recovery following your operation. Either way I regret the fact that I have been unable to visit with you at Saranac Lake. I am told by a congregantâJames McGovern, Jacob's son, do you remember him? âthat it is a lovely place of trees and hills and peaceful dark lakes. Much like Muskoka, he says, where you spent your early years. In any case, I am hopeful that this peace James referred to fills your heart now at this trying time.
As a father getting on in years I see that my life's regrets are not few. Principal among them is the reality that for many years now I have been somewhat estranged from you, my son, and yet not in any absolute sense, for our relations are commonly respectful, as you will likely agree. But it is clear enough that there has remained between us an enmity the root of which I cannot but fail to explain or grasp. We are, it often seems at familial gatherings, reserved and suspicious strangers obliged to share a taxicab during a spot of summer rain. A mean characterization, but do you agree? It has been this way for as long as I can remember, and it is a terrible thing to admit, as I write this, so late (though God will show us that it is never too late) on the eve of this serious medical predicament you now face. Perhaps I have been too hard, too distant, too demanding a father? I am willing to assume what guilt I must in order that we together root out this hardness that you harbour toward me, for in my heart I feel much pride and love for you, as any father could toward his son. It is my great and sincere wish that you soften your thoughts toward your aging father, and that from this medical treatment you will emerge healthy and strong.