heard her sobbing and shrieking: "Go back to your son and grandsons! Leave me and my daughter and go your own way!" Then, in gasps between sobs, she said:
"Was it my fault or yours that your son killed himself?
Why should we have to bear the burden year after year? It isn't me who is stopping you seeing your children. It is they who have refused to come and see you .... Since they had left Yixian, only De-gui, Dr. Xia's second son, had visited them. My mother did not hear a sound from
Dr. Xia.
From then on my mother felt there was something wrong. Dr. Xia became increasingly taciturn, and she instinctively avoided him. Every now and then my grandmother would become tearful, and murmur to herself that she and Dr. Xia could never be completely happy with the heavy price they had paid for their love. She would hug my mother close and tell her that she was the only thing she had in her life.
My mother was in an uncharacterisfically melancholy mood as winter descended on Jinzhou. Even the appearance of a second flight of American B-29s in the clear, cold December sky failed to lift her spirits.
The Japanese were becoming more and more edgy. One day one of my mother's school friends got hold of a book by a banned Chinese writer. Looking for somewhere quiet to read, she went off into the countryside, where she found a cavern which she thought was an empty air-raid shelter.
Groping around in the dark, her hand touched what felt like a light switch. A piercing noise erupted. What she had touched was an alarm. She had stumbled into an arms depot. Her legs turned to jelly. She tried to run, but got only a couple of hundred yards before some Japanese soldiers caught her and dragged her away.
Two days later the whole school was marched to a barren, snow-covered stretch of ground outside the west gate, in a bend of the Xiaoling River. Local residents had also been summoned there by the neighborhood chiefs.
The children were told they were to witness 'the punishment of an evil person who disobeys Great Japan." Suddenly my mother saw her friend being hauled by Japanese guards to a spot right in front of her. The girl was in chains and could hardly walk. She had been tortured, and her face was so swollen that my mother could barely recognize her. Then the Japanese soldiers lifted their rifles and pointed them at the girl, who seemed to be trying to say something, but no sound came out. There was a crack of bullets, and the girl's body slumped as her blood began to drip onto the snow.
"Donkey," the Japanese headmaster, was scanning the rows of his pupils. With a tremendous effort, my mother tried to hide her emotions. She forced herself to look at the body of her friend, which by now was lying in a glistening red patch in the white snow.
She heard someone trying to suppress sobs. It was Mi~s Tanaka, a young Japanese woman teacher whom she liked.
In an instant "Donkey' was on Miss Tanaka, slapping and kicking her. She fell to the ground, and tried to roll out of the way of his boots, but he went on kicking her ferociously.
She had betrayed the Japanese race, he bawled. Eventually "Donkey' stopped, looked up at the pupils, and barked the order to march off.
My mother took one last look at the crooked body of her teacher and the corpse of her friend and forced down her hate.
4. "Slaves Who Have No Country of Your Own' Ruled by Different Masters (1945-1947)
In May 1945 the news spread around Jinzhou that Germany had surrendered and that the war in Europe was over. US planes were flying over the area much more often: B-19s were bombing other cities in Manchuria, though Jinzhou was not attacked. The feeling that Japan would soon be defeated swept through the city.
On 8 August my mother's school was ordered to go to a shrine to pray for the victory of Japan. The next day, Soviet and Mongolian troops entered
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