That day seventy years ago, the celebrations continued until midnight. After the crowds dispersed, you two—Ian Ferguson, gunner’s mate first class of Naval Group China, and Liu Zhaohu (the last character in your name, hu, meaning “tiger,” in many ways the perfect name for you), a Chinese officer in training at the camp of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization—weren’t done celebrating. You came to my quarters. Ian brought two bottles of whisky, which he’d gotten a few days earlier while at the commissariat to get the mail. In the shabby kitchen of my house, the three of us drank ourselves into a stupor. That day, there was no military discipline. Even God closed one eye. Any mistake made then could be forgiven. You, Liu Zhaohu, said whisky was the worst drink under the sun, with a stench like cockroaches floating in urine. Even so, it didn’t stop you. You raised your cup for round after round. Later, when we were all half drunk, you suggested the scheme.
You said no matter which of us three died first, after death, we would return to Yuehu each year on this day. When we were together, we would drink again.
We felt your proposal was absurd. You said “after death,” not “in the future.” No one knows when another’s final day will be or the day of his own death. The realm after death is something the living have no way of understanding. Now we see that you were the sage among us. You had already foreseen that with the emperor’s “Jewel Voice Broadcast,” we were to go our separate ways and that our paths might never cross again. The living can’t control their own days, but the dead are not thus bound. After death, the soul is no longer limited by time, space, or unexpected events. The soul’s world has no boundaries. To the soul, the entire universe and all eternity are just a thought away.
As we drank that night, we slapped each other’s backs and shook hands and, amid our laughter, accepted Liu Zhaohu’s proposal. That day seemed far away, so we weren’t completely serious. The war had ended. Peace pushed death to its proper place, many steps away from us. I was the oldest of us, and I was only thirty-nine.
I thought I might be the first to make it to our rendezvous at Yuehu Village. I just didn’t expect it to come so fast. I had no idea I would die just three months after we had made our appointment.
When I first met the two of you, I had been living in China for over ten years. Like any local, I could easily pick up a peanut with chopsticks, skillfully tie or untie the intricate cloth buttons on my tunic, or, with a bouncing gait, carry a pair of half-filled water buckets on a shoulder pole up a mountain trail. I could speak the local dialect almost flawlessly and even explain most of the content of a government notice to villagers. I had prayed with dying cholera patients and had myself been infected with typhus passed through the fleas on rats. I had been trapped in a burning house and nearly suffocated. I had experienced a three-day grain shortage. When the air raids came, I was in Hangzhou and only barely managed to get to the raid shelter in time. One of the most terrifying experiences was when I encountered bandits while walking one night. Although my wife, Jenny, and I were dressed in local style, as soon as they passed us, they saw we were foreigners. They assumed our wallets would be fuller than a local person’s. Brandishing knives, they searched us thoroughly, only to find we had nothing. I believe it was the terror of that event that caused poor Jenny to die during her miscarriage shortly thereafter.
But in every danger, God provided a narrow path by which I might escape. I did not die of war, famine, or epidemic disease. I died by my own hand. The medical knowledge I had received at Boston University helped me save the lives of many others—though my wife was not among them. Only later did I realize that the lives I’d saved had a price, and that was my own life. It was my own medical skills that ultimately undid me.
After our drunken celebration, you two made your way through several cities in Jiangsu and Shanghai to assist the Nationalist government in maintaining order and accepting the Japanese surrender. I, on the other hand, took the Jefferson back to America. My mother had written that my father was seriously ill and hoped to see his eldest son—the Isaac he had placed on the altar, whom he had not seen for many years—one more time before he died. As a civilian, I didn’t have to wait under the point system to earn a spot on a ship home the way a demobilized soldier like Ian did. So without much fuss, I was able to buy a spot on the ocean liner. In the end, I didn’t see my father—not because he died before we were reunited, but because I did.
In Shanghai, waiting for the ship, I stayed in the home of a Methodist missionary. His cook had developed a boil on his back, which was festering seriously and was quite painful. I could have done nothing. This was, after all, the huge city of Shanghai, not remote Yuehu, and as long as one was willing to pay a little bit, there were plenty of hospitals where one could be treated. But my scalpel became impatient. It protested loudly from my medical supply box, so I had no choice but to perform a resection for the cook. My lancet was not on its best behavior that day. It was the first and the last time there was any conflict between us. In a fit of anger, it bit through my rubber glove and made a small cut on my index finger. The operation was a great success, and the cook’s pain was immediately relieved. My own wound was very small, with almost no bleeding. It seemed harmless. I disinfected it, and the next day I boarded the Jefferson.
By that evening, the wound had become infected, and my finger swelled to the size of a radish. I took the sulfonamide I had with me, but to no effect. I wasn’t aware that I was allergic to this drug or that newer antibiotics had been developed in Europe and America. After all, my own medical knowledge hadn’t been updated for many years. I went from bad to worse. There was so much pus in my wound, it filled a teacup. The ship, sailing on open sea, was several days away from the nearest port. The doctor aboard suggested removing the finger surgically at once. Not realizing the urgency of the situation, I hesitated. The reason for my hesitation was quite simply that I couldn’t live without this finger in the future. Before I had left on my voyage to America, I had given some thought to my plans once I returned to China. I would set up a clinic with a simple operating table and a ward in another village so that the people from neighboring towns would not have to travel hundreds of li over mountain paths to the county seat for things like traumatic infection or childbirth. What prompted me to devise this plan was not merely the plight of local people. Within these otherwise noble principles was, in fact, hidden a bit of selfishness. It was for another person—a young Chinese woman who held an important place in my heart.
My hesitation ultimately proved fatal. Thirty-five hours later, I died of sepsis. My death was only documented in two places. The first was the log of the Jefferson, and the other was a brief line in the history of the Methodist mission. Before my death, Canadian doctor Norman Bethune had likewise died of a finger infection after an operation, but our deaths were treated entirely differently. He died at an appropriate time and under suitable circumstances and has thus been an example of one who “died in the line of duty,” documented in Chinese textbooks from one generation to the next. My death, by contrast, was buried among the news of the Nuremberg trials, the Tokyo Trials, the Chinese Civil War, and so forth and became an insignificant matter, no larger than a speck of dust.
I went from being a missionary with a beautiful vision of a life at peace to being a ghost drifting between two continents. But I didn’t forget the agreement I made with you, so every year on August 15, I come to Yuehu and wait patiently for your arrival.