The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(5)

Faye wondered why the pilot landed here in Kunming. Someone figured out the call sign on what was left of his plane and looked him up. His name was John Garland and he’d flown out of Toungee, six hundred miles away. His squadron had completed a pursuit mission, but he’d been shot up badly. There were other airstrips readily available to make an emergency landing, but he found his way to Kunming. Maybe he couldn’t find those other places. Or maybe he was delirious from the pain. Whatever the reason, he was here. Even though he was unconscious, Faye couldn’t help but brush aside a spit curl of hair from his brow with a surgical sponge.

Then Dr. Gentry dropped his forceps and scalpel in a pan with a clang and began wiping off his soaked gloves. “Let’s close him up.”



* * *



The sun was down and Faye sat in an airplane hangar that once a week was converted into a theater outfitted with charcoal heaters and a projector. There, members of the AVG gathered to watch one of three movies. Tonight’s feature was The Ghost Breakers. With only three movies to choose from, everyone had seen it at least a dozen times. Some of the men had even memorized the words and would stand up front, pantomiming everything happening on-screen. Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard usually helped on nights like this, but Faye didn’t feel like laughing.

Since her arrival she’d treated scores of young pilots and soldiers as well as locals—men, women, and children—some with severe burns, others riddled with bullets and shrapnel. She’d seen so much carnage, she simply regarded death as a byproduct of war. It was unavoidable and with it the feeling of being perpetually detached.

That’s how you keep from going mad, Faye thought as she tried to focus on the movie. You simply can’t let yourself care too much.

“There you are,” Lois whispered as she took an empty seat next to Faye and offered to share her popcorn, which was slightly burned from being cooked in a small coal-fired cannon that local street vendors used.

Faye politely declined. “How’s the new pilot doing?”

“Hard to tell,” Lois whispered. “Doc says he might be out for a day or two. Or he could come around as soon as the anesthesia wears off. Who knows?”

“Who’s reading to him tonight?” As the senior nurse on staff, Faye encouraged the younger caregivers to read to the men in recovery. She believed that bedridden pilots needed the type of escape that could be found only in the latest novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, or Agatha Christie that were occasionally included in Red Cross care packages. But Faye also added Chinese novels like The Family by Ba Jin for injured locals, as well as American classics by Charles Dickens and books of poetry, in translation—whatever she could find.

“No one,” Lois said, blinking. “He’s sound asleep.”

“We read to them anyway.”

“Why?” Lois asked.

“Because it’s comforting. Sometimes the men have nightmares, and if they stir, I don’t want them waking up alone in such an unfamiliar place.”

“But… it’s movie night,” Lois argued as she shoved a fistful of popcorn into her mouth, talking as she chewed. “Nurses need care too, you know. We don’t even know if he’s going to make it.”

That’s precisely why we do it, Faye thought as she stood up and walked out. Her silhouette graced the movie screen like a ghost with an hourglass figure, much to the delight of the men, who whistled and catcalled. Faye left Lois to be the object of their attention and walked back to the monastery that had been converted into a field hospital, when the one in the center of Kunming ran out of room. She found her way to the sanctuary, now crammed with twenty beds, occupied by a mix of Chinese officers, Americans, and civilians. She saw a handful of American nurses sitting bedside, quietly reading to their patients. Some read novels, some read comic books, while others read old newspapers from the United States with articles about scrap metal drives, the Yankees losing the World Series, and a movie called Casablanca.

Faye stopped at a vestibule that she had converted to a small library and pulled out a thick, leather-bound volume of poetry. She found John Garland unconscious, propped up slightly, the covers pulled across his chest, arms exposed. An IV bottle dangled from a tall wooden post, dripping fluids into a long rubber tube.

Faye sat down next to him. “You don’t mind a little Edgar Allan Poe, do you?” She waited for a response and then said, “No? Okay, then we are in agreement, John Garland. Just make yourself comfortable. I’m Faye. We met out there on the runway, and as your nurse I must advise you that smoking is very bad for your health.”

Faye was accustomed to the swagger of the cocksure American pilots, young and so eager to prove themselves. The braggadocio required to land that damaged plane, to walk away from the wreckage, bleeding. At twice the age of most of the pilots, she generally regarded the men as mischievous little brothers. Her feelings for them were always a mixture of admiration and annoyance. But there was something different about this one, a familiar feeling, like Ci cang soeng sik—waking from a dream—though the Chinese version of déjà vu generally referred to two people who have met before.

As she opened the book, Faye thought she saw his eyes flutter.

She stared at the unconscious pilot, wondering if his movement was a figment of her imagination. She touched his cheek, the cleft of his chin, his chest, his arm. Then she opened the book in her lap, flipping through the pages, adjusting to the language. She began with “Eldorado,” the tale of a gallant knight. She looked over at John Garland then moved on to “Spectacles,” a comedy about love at first sight. Then she settled on “A Dream Within a Dream,” a poem about the passage of time.