Chapter 12 chapter Ten

Gao Ling said that it won't be long before the Japanese will come and take us all away, so I don't have to rush to commit suicide.It is better to die together than to die together, and you are not alone on the road to Huangquan. Teacher Pan said that I shouldn't leave him alone and die.Otherwise, who else in this world can take care of him as a family member until the end of his life? Miss Grutoff said the children needed me to set an example for them.If I had given up hope too, what hope could these orphans have? However, in the end, it was Sister Yu who made me insist on enduring the suffering in the world and living in this world.She said that when Kai Jing dies, he will go to a Christian heaven.If I commit suicide, God will not allow me to meet Kai Jing.In my opinion, the Christian paradise is like the United States, far away in the sky, full of foreigners, and everything must follow their rules.Suicide is not allowed according to their rules.

So I survived and waited for the Japanese to come back and get me.I often go to see Teacher Pan and bring him some delicious food.Every afternoon, I walked out of the school gate to the hillside.There are many small graves piled up with stones on the hillside.Children who have died over the years are buried here, and so is Kaijing.I found several keel bones in the room, all of which were dug out in the last few months of Kaijing.Those are the bones of some ancient animals, not very valuable.I took a piece of bone and carved characters on it with a thick needle, turning the bone into something like the oracle bone inscription that Aunt Bao had given me earlier.I engraved: "Death and life are inseparable, talk to Zicheng. Hold your hand, and grow old together with you." I finished carving one piece after another, and my hands couldn't stop.I will remember these words.In this way, I swallowed my sadness little by little like tasting delicious food.

I brought these oracle bones to Kaijing's tomb.Every time I put down my bones, I said: "Kaijing, do you miss me?" After a long silence, I then told him what happened that day: which child was sick, which child was particularly smart Brilliant how we ran out of meds and what a pity he can't come back and teach geography to the students, how what.One day I had to tell him that Miss Dowler hadn't woken up this morning, and she was coming soon, to sleep beside him.At breakfast, Miss Grutoff said: "She went away peacefully and returned to the Lord." She said it lightly, as if she was glad that it happened, but as soon as she finished speaking, she closed her eyes tightly. On her mouth, two deep wrinkles appeared at the corners of her mouth, revealing her sadness.To Miss Grutoff, Miss Dowler was like a mother, a sister, an old friend.

After Miss Dowler died, Miss Grutoff began making American flags.I think her mood in making the national flag is the same as that of offering oracle bones to Kaijing's tomb. She also wants to keep some memories, for fear that she will forget them.Every day she would embroider a star or sew a strip of color.She first dyed the strips red and blue, then sewed them together.She also taught the students in the school to make the flag together.It didn't take long for fifty American flags to fly on the outer wall of our old temple, which later became one hundred or two hundred.If people don't know that this is an orphanage for Chinese orphans, they will think that there are many Americans holding patriotic parties.

One cold morning, the Japanese army really gathered in our yard.Although it was not a Sunday, we still gathered in the hall for worship.We heard the sound of gunshots, ran to the door, and saw the cook and his wife lying on the ground, and the chickens were running around, pecking at the grains that had been scattered all over the ground.A large American flag that had been hanging over the gate was now lying on the ground.The girls began to cry, thinking that the cook and his wife were dead.But then we see the cook move his body and turn his head carefully to see who is behind him.Miss Grutoff pushed the crowd and rushed to the front. I think everyone probably thought she would rush to tell the Japanese to stop, because she was an American.But she wants us all to be quiet.Then everyone fell silent.We all put our hands over our mouths to prevent ourselves from screaming, and then watched the Japanese soldiers fire their guns "bang bang", knocking down the other national flags one after another, and criticize loudly if anyone missed.After finishing the flag, they started shooting chickens again.The chicken that was hit jumped up and croaked for a while before falling to the ground.Finally, the Japanese soldiers left with the dead chicken.The cook and his wife stood up, the remaining chickens cooed softly, and the girls who had been holding back for a long time finally burst into tears.

Miss Grutoff told everyone to go back into the hall.After entering, she told everyone in a trembling voice that she had heard on the radio a few days ago that the Japanese had attacked the United States and that the United States had declared war on Japan. "With the Americans on our side, China will soon win the war." After she finished speaking, she taught everyone to applaud with her.To please her, we all put on a smile and pretended we all believed it was good news.That night, Miss Grutoff told the teacher and the cook couple all the other news she had heard from friends at the Peking Union Medical College.

"The bones of the Beijingers are missing." "Is it destroyed?" Teacher Pan asked. "No one knew that the bones of forty-one ancient humans were completely missing. The bones were supposed to be transported to Tianjin by train, and then transported from Tianjin to Manila by an American ship, but the ship sank. Some people said that the box containing the bones Didn't get on the boat at all. They say the Japanese stopped the train. They thought it was just some GI stuff in the box, so they threw the box on the track and it got crushed by the train. Nobody knows the truth now Either way, it's bad news." As I listened to her words, I felt as if my bones had been hollowed out.All Kaijing's painstaking efforts, his last trip to the archaeological pit, sacrificing his life - all this has become meaningless.I imagined those tiny pieces of skull floating with the fish, slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean, the eels swimming over them, and the sand gradually burying them below.Again I saw bone fragments thrown off trains as trash.The wheels of military trucks ran over the bones, crushing them into pieces not much bigger than the sand and rocks on the Gobi Desert.I think those bones are like Kai Kyung's bones.

The next day, the Japanese came and took Miss Grutov to the prisoner-of-war camp.Miss Grutoff knew this was going to happen, but she made no attempt to escape. "I would never voluntarily leave my students," she told us.Her trunks had already been packed, and she had put on her traveling hat, tied with the ribbon around her neck.Fifty-six girls stood at the gate, crying goodbye to her. "Teacher Pan, don't forget to take the apostles class," she called back before boarding the truck. "Don't forget to tell others and teach them to preach the Gospel." I thought her farewell words were very strange, and everyone else was equally puzzled. In the end, it was Teacher Pan who revealed the secret in her words.

He took us to the hall, to the statue of an apostle.He twisted the hand of the statue, revealing a hole, which he and Miss Grutoff dug, where they hid gold and silver money and the list of graduate students in Beijing.For the past month, he and Miss Grutoff have been busy with this matter, working late into the night.She hides only a small portion of her savings over the years in each statue.In this way, even if the Japanese soldiers found money in one of the statues, non-religious people like them would not be likely to find other statues with money hidden in hundreds of statues. In case the environment around the Yuyingtang becomes very dangerous, we can use the money to take the students to Beijing, taking four or five students away in batches at a time.In Beijing, they can join former students or old school friends.Miss Grutoff has been in contact with these people, and they all agree that if the time comes, we just need to radio them when we arrive and they will help us.

Teacher Pan assigned each of us—the teacher, the helper, and the four older students—a statue of the apostle, and taught us to share the emergency funds.From the day Miss Grutov left, Teacher Pan taught us to practice, remembering which statue is which apostle, and which part of the statue is hollowed out to hide money.I thought it would be enough for everyone to remember the apostles they were responsible for, but Sister Yu said, "We should call out the names of the apostles and call them to protect our property." We had to repeat these names repeatedly, and now I I remember very well: Peter, Matthew, John, James 1, James 2, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Simon, Thaddeus, Bartholomew.There is no statue of Judas the traitor.

About three months after Miss Grutov left us, Teacher Pan decided that we should leave too.The Japanese knew that the Communist Party was hidden in the mountains, and they were very angry. They wanted to lure the Communist Party out by massacring people in nearby villages.Sister Yu told Gao Ling and me that the Japanese soldiers had committed unspeakable crimes against many innocent girls, some of whom were only eleven or twelve years old.This kind of thing happened everywhere, Tianjin, Tongzhou, and Nanjing. "They didn't kill some girls on the spot, but later they didn't want to live anymore and wanted to commit suicide," she added.We can imagine all kinds of tragedies, even if Sister Yu didn't say it, we all understand what happened. Counting the four older students, we have a total of twelve capable people.We radioed Miss Grutov's friends in Beijing. They said that the capital had fallen, but the situation was still stable. Let us wait for their news.Because the train does not run every day, if we are stuck on the road, it may not be appropriate to wait in different places for several days.Teacher Pan arranged the order for us: the first group is led by Madam Wang, who can tell everyone how the road is going, then the four older students lead the children, then the cook's wife, Mr. Wang, and the cook , Gao Ling, me, Sister Yu, and finally Teacher Pan. "Why did you stay last?" I asked him. "Because I know how to use the radio." "You can teach me to use the radio, too." "And me," Sister Yu and Gao Ling also said. We argued endlessly, fighting to stay until the end.In order to keep the danger to ourselves, we criticize each other very unceremoniously.Teacher Pan has bad eyesight, so I can't stay alone.Sister Yu has bad ears.Gao Ling has bad feet and is afraid of ghosts, so he loses his feet when he panics.Although I also have various shortcomings, but in the end they decided to let me stay until the end, so that I can stay with Kaijing's tomb for as long as possible. I can finally confess now that I was terrified those last few days.I am responsible for four children: a six-year-old, an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, and a twelve-year-old.While the thought of suicide was comforting for a moment, waiting to die was nerve-wracking.Every time a group of children left, the nursery seemed bigger and empty, and the footsteps became louder and louder.I was afraid that the Japanese soldiers would come and discover the radio, take me as a spy and torture me to extract a confession.I smeared ashes on the faces of the children and taught them that if the Japanese came, they should scratch their faces and pretend to be bitten by lice.Every hour I have to beg to Jesus and Tathagata Buddha, don't care about the gods, just bless us.I put incense on Aunt Bao's photo, went to Kaijing's tomb, and confessed my fears to him. "Where's my backbone?" I asked him. "You say I have a strong character. Where is my strength?" We were the last ones left, and after four days alone, I heard a message on the radio saying, "Come on, the train is leaving." I hurried to tell the children.At this time, I finally saw a miracle happen, but I don't know if it was the blessing of the Western gods, or the help of Chinese gods.I can only thank God, fortunately, the eyes of several children are swollen, and green pus is still flowing from the corners of the eyes.Their eyes were only slightly infected, but they looked so frightening that no one would want to touch them.I quickly came up with ideas to dress myself up.I poured out some of the leftover porridge we drank in the morning, poured out the thin rice soup and wiped it all over my face, neck and hands.After the rice soup dries up, I turn into a rough, ugly old village woman.I poured the remaining rice soup into a thermos bottle, and poured some chicken blood into it.I ordered the children to take all the eggs left in the coop, even the rotten eggs, and put them in the basket.In this way, we dressed up and walked down the hill to the train station. We had only walked a hundred steps before we saw a soldier.I slowed down and took a sip from the thermos bottle.The soldier stood still and waited for us to approach before stopping us. "Where are you going?" he asked.All five of us looked up, and I could see the disgust on his face.The children raised their hands and scratched their heads.Before I opened my mouth, I coughed on the handkerchief for a while, and then folded the handkerchief so that he could see the blood-stained phlegm on it. "Let's go to Jishang to sell eggs," I said.We held up the basket to show him. "Do you want to come?" He immediately waved us over. After walking a certain distance, I took another sip of rice porridge and chicken blood soup and put it in my mouth.We were stopped twice again, and I coughed profusely and spit out the bloody phlegm typical of tuberculosis patients.The child beside him looked up with eyes full of green pus. In this way, we arrived in Beijing.I saw Gao Ling meet us at the platform from the car window.She squinted at me to get out of the car and recognized me with difficulty.As soon as she came up, she opened her mouth wide and asked in surprise, "What's wrong with you?" I finally coughed into the handkerchief again and spit out blood. "Oops!" she yelled, taking a step back.I immediately burst out laughing and couldn't stop laughing.I was so happy that I could finally breathe a sigh of relief and be safe at last. Gao Ling complained to me: "I've been worrying to death these days, you know how to joke." We placed the children in the homes of former students.Over the next few years, some got married, some passed away, and some visited us as adoptive parents.Gao Ling and I lived in the back room of the old ink shop in Ciqikou.We also invited Teacher Pan and Sister Yu to live with us.As for Gao Ling's husband, we all hope that that guy has already died. Now the ink shop is owned by Zhang's family, and when I think of it, I get angry.After Aunt Bao died for so many years, I seldom thought of the coffin extravagance boss.Now he tells us to sell more and sell faster all day long, yelling and drinking.This is the man who killed my father and grandfather, brought endless suffering to Aunt Bao, and ruined her life.But I changed my mind and thought again, ten years is not too late for a gentleman to take revenge, the closer he is to the enemy, the more chance he has.I decided to settle down in the ink shop. Firstly, it is more convenient, and secondly, I can also look for opportunities for revenge. After the war ended in 1945, Miss Grutoff was finally released from the prison camp, but she was very ill.The four of us hurried to see her.She lives with a friend named Mrs. Riley.As soon as we entered, we saw that Miss Grutoff was almost out of shape.In the past, we always joked that Western women drink milk, so their boobs are particularly big.But now Miss Grutoff is very thin, and her complexion is also bad.She insisted on standing up to welcome us, and we insisted that she sit down and not be polite to old friends.Take a closer look at the loose skin on her face and arms.The hair that used to be red is now gray and thinning. "How are you?" we asked her. "It's okay," she said with a smile on her face, in good spirits. "As you can see, I'm still alive. The Japanese couldn't starve me to death. But the mosquitoes almost killed me. I got malaria." Two children at the school died of malaria.But I didn't tell Miss Grutoff.We have plenty of time to save bad news for later. "You need to get better soon," I said. "We went back and reopened the school." Miss Grutov shook her head and said, "The old temple is gone. It was destroyed. I heard from another missionary." We were shocked. "Trees, houses, everything is razed to the ground, it's gone," Mrs. Riley next to her nodded. I wanted to ask how the cemetery was, but I couldn't.The feeling in my heart was the same as the day I found out that Kai Jing had died.When I think of Kaijing, I can't help remembering his appearance.But I can only remember the stones on his tomb.How long have I loved him while he was alive?How long will I be sad after he dies? Mrs. Riley went on to say: "When we find a house in Beijing, we will start the school as soon as possible. But now we have to make Miss Grutoff get well soon, don't we, Ruth?" She said, gently Clapped Miss Grutoff's hand. "As long as we can do it," everyone rushed to say. "We are all willing to help. We love Miss Grutov and treat her like a mother and sister. Just ask, what do we need?" So Mrs. Riley said Miss Grutoff had to go back to America and go to San Francisco to see a doctor.She had to go to Hong Kong first and then across the Pacific Ocean.Along the way, she needs someone to accompany her. "Will any of you want to come with me? I can arrange a visa." "We are all willing to go!" Gao Ling replied immediately. Miss Grutoff looked embarrassed.I saw it too. "I don't want to bother too many people, just one person, I think," she said.Then she sighed and said she was tired.She has to lie down and rest. After she left the room, we all looked at each other, not knowing what to say, and discussing who should do Miss Grutoff this favor.This is going to America!We all know that Miss Grutoff is not just asking for our help.It also gave us a rare opportunity, a visa to the United States.But only one person can get this chance.I'm thinking carefully about going to America.In my opinion, the United States is a Christian paradise.Kaijing went there and waited for me there.I know this is just wishful thinking on my part, but going to America meant to me the hope of finding happiness.I have encountered all kinds of misfortunes before, and when I go to the United States, I can put the curse of the past and my bad background behind me. I heard Gao Ling say, "Teacher Pan should go. He is the oldest and most experienced." She hurriedly jumped out to suggest that she wanted to go too. "What experience do you have?" Teacher Pan said. "I'm afraid I can't be of much help. I'm old, and my handwriting has to be as big as my palm, and I have to hold it tremblingly in front of my eyes to see it. Besides, it's not right for me to travel with a lady as a man. How inconvenient is it if she needs help at night?" "Sister Yu," Gao Ling said again. "Then you go. You are so smart, nothing can trouble you." Gao Ling jumped out again!She must have wanted to go very much, so she impatiently suggested that others go, and let them give in to her, saying that it would be better for her to go. "If people don't trample me to death, I'm lucky!" Sister Yu said. "Don't make trouble. Besides, I don't want to leave China. To be honest, although I have a Christian friendship with Miss Grutoff and our foreign friends, I don't want to mix with other Americans. Civil war or not, I'd rather stay in China." "Then let Ru Ling go," Gao Ling said. So far, what can I say?I had to argue with her: "I must never leave my father-in-law, and you." "No, no, you don't have to accompany me, old man," I heard my father-in-law say. "I've been wanting to tell you that I might be getting married again. Yes, I'm getting married. I know what you're going to think. God would laugh at me for being ridiculous, and I'd find it funny too." "Who are you going to marry?" I asked.I can't figure out how he would find time to meet women.He usually stays in the store, only occasionally going out to deal with odds and ends. "She lives next door to us. It's the widow of the former bookstore next door." "Now that I see it clearly, Ru Ling should accompany Miss Grutov back to America," Sister Yu said. "It won't be long before Teacher Pan will marry a new wife. It's a joy to be subordinated by his wife. There's no need for Ru Ling to stay." Gao Ling hesitated for a while before saying, "That's right, this arrangement is the best. That's it." "What do you mean?" I said pretending to be generous, "I can't leave my own sister alone." "I'm not your real sister," Gao Ling said. "You go first. After you go, you can act as a guarantor and send me out." "Ah, look, I knew you wanted to go!" I couldn't help pointing at her.Anyway, now that the overall situation has been decided, it doesn't matter if I say it so clearly. "I didn't say that," Gao Ling said. "I mean, if the situation changes in the future and I have to go, I will teach you to send me out." "Then why don't you go out first, and you will be my guarantor later? If you stay, your husband won't torture you as hard as he has rubbed you enough?" I was really worried about her. "But I can't abandon my own sister, don't you also refuse to abandon me?" Gao Ling said. "Stop arguing with me," I told her. "I'm older than you, so you have to listen to me. You go first, and I'll go to Hong Kong in a month or so. I'll wait for you to send me a letter of guarantee before I leave." Gao Ling should have pushed back, saying that she should be allowed to stay in Hong Kong and so on.But she didn't.She just asked: "It only takes one month to be a guarantee for others? Is it so fast?" Even though I had no idea if it would work or how long it would take for a new immigrant to sponsor someone else, I said, "Maybe not even a month," thinking in my heart that she would agree to wait. "It's really so fast," Gao Ling marveled. "If it's really possible to pick you up so quickly, I'll go first, but I'm doing this just to get away from my damn husband." Just then Mrs. Riley came back.Sister Yu announced, "We have decided to let Gao Ling accompany Miss Grutov to San Francisco." I was so shocked that I couldn't say a word.That night, I wondered over and over how on earth I had missed this precious opportunity.I was very angry and felt that Gao Ling had tricked me.But after thinking about it, I was happy for her when I was with her as a sister. Once she leaves, I will be able to leave Fu Nan.I just thought about it over and over again, and the two thoughts were tossing back and forth.Before going to bed, I figured it out, this is life.Whatever happens, this is my new destiny. Every night, when I go back to my room in Hong Kong and lie on the small bed, I have to put a wet towel on my chest to cool off the heat.The hut was so stuffy that the walls were sweating and I couldn't open the windows for ventilation because I live on Fish Market Street in the Kowloon area.The house does not face the market, and the side facing the market exudes the smell of the ocean in the morning, salty and pungent.I live in Kowloon City, right next to a stinky ditch, on a low terrain. At night, the fishmongers pour buckets of water down, washing fish scales, blood, and viscera here.The air I breathed smelled of death, and when I breathed in that stench, it was as if someone had put their hands in my stomach and ripped out all my internal organs. It was disgusting as hell.Since then, the so-called "fragrance" of "Hong Kong" has been such a smell in my impression.Who would have expected that I had to endure hardships in Hong Kong for more than two years before finally embarking on a ship bound for the United States.Come to this continent without ghosts and curses.