So I’m Walter Cronkite, dig? And it’s February 27, 1968, and I’m saying, the U.S. is mired in a stalemate in Vietnam, and you are there.
But whoa, let’s back up twenty-nine days to the Lunar New Year. Now we know the Vietnamese call it Tet, but the Chinese own it: New Year, they call it. This year it’s significant for Paul because on this night his dad grabs his heart like it’s been antipersonnel-mined with a BLU-43, what you call dragontooth, like it was waiting there in one of those jungle paths, waiting for someone to put his toe on the de-toe-nator, and boom! There’s firecrackers busting all up and down Grant Avenue, so Paul can’t hear his dad cry out, but he’s walking behind through a narrow in the crowded festivities and the spitting lights glittering overhead only to stumble across his dad, crumpling into a laundry heap on the sidewalk.
“Ba! What is it?”
Ba has a vision as he passes: his big mistake and no atonement. “When your mother died,” he’s gasping, “for your sake, I should have married again.”
“What are you talking about? Help! We need help. An ambulance!”
“Just the two of us from that time on”—gasp—“Good son. Only child.”
“Move away! Give him air!”
“Now, my son . . . I’m sorry . . . in the world all alone . . .”
Maybe he says this, maybe not. Paul can’t hear him with all the explosions and the drumming. This Lunar New Year of the Monkey. There’s a float with everyone dressed like monkeys. They’re scurrying around with their wire tails bouncing. Every day for a hundred days, Paul tries to hear his father’s last words. Maybe he said “. . . in the world be strong . . .” Every Chinese New Year for the rest of his life, he tries to hear his father’s last words. And every year, he will hear something different.
Who’s Paul? Just one of those sensitive Chinatown kids in high school, senior at Lowell, now orphaned. Isn’t his story the story of every kid in the Year of the Monkey, 1968? Every one of us orphaned this year; just that Paul knows it first, a midnight orphan on the gung hay fat choy. Who are we to know that our black daddy Martin with a dream and our little white father Bobby will take bullets to their brains? By the end of the year, we are monkey orphans let loose, raising havoc; no daddies to pull the stops, temper the member; got those wired tails swinging from every rafter, we are free at last, brother, free at last.
On the Tet, boys back in Vietnam about to be orphaned too. Got their helmets fitting snug at the chin, faces smudged like football defenders, hugging those rifles for a sneak attack, all in camouflage like the VC can’t see them. Must be why more Vietnamese get killed than American boys: 58,000 to 3,895. Numbers for Vietnam are rounded off to the nearest thousand. Numbers for The Boys are exact. You do the math—it’s fifteen to one. We must have won. Saigon, Khe Sanh, and Hue—we get them all back. We get back the little places too, like Ben Tre and My Lai. At Ben Tre, an officer without a name says, “It became necessary to destroy it, in order to save it.” At My Lai, Charlie Company gets its orders: This is what you’ve been waiting for—search and destroy—and you’ve got it. LBJ, the CIA, Westmoreland, McNamara, the Wise Men, they all say, let us wash our hands, go quietly into that good night. Bye-bye. See you on the judgment day.
Judgment day is here already for Paul’s daddy. Wait a week to let the festivities die down, keep daddy on ice at the Cathay Wah Sang on Powell Street, over there near Jackson where the cable car makes its turn. How many ghosts hop the cable car to make the U-turn out of Chinatown? Paul makes two calls, one to Auntie and one to the Benevolent Association, and suddenly everyone goes into action like a finely tuned machine that cranks out tradition.
“My brother, what was he thinking?” Auntie wails. “He never went to the doctor. Me, I take my pills every day. Our father died the same way.”
Paul don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s his fault. Wasn’t paying attention to the old man. But how old was he? Turning sixty-five. He was supposed to live to ninety, see Paul graduate college, get married, see his grandchildren. He was betting big-time on his only son.
Auntie’s on the kitchen phone with the Cathay morticians. “My brother only has one son, and he doesn’t know anything about funerals. But why should he? He’s only sixteen.”
“I’m eighteen, Auntie.”
“Ay, how time flies. But what does it matter? He still doesn’t know anything. We’re going to have to take care of all the details.”
“Auntie, what details?”
She waves her hand at him and continues on the phone. “You know my family, well, everyone knew our father. A modest funeral, you understand? My brother was, well, why not say it, eccentric, but we are a traditional family. Yes, Ning Yung, that’s right. Someone from the Association will be in touch. I’ll be there tomorrow in the morning. Yes, my nephew will come. After all, the son should be the one to choose.”
“Auntie, choose what? And what about Ning Yung?”
“Chinese cemetery in Colma. Don’t worry. They’ll take care of everything. They’re professionals. Tomorrow there’ll be an obituary in the Chinese Times. Be sure you go and get a copy. Now, come here.”
Auntie jumps up, and Paul follows her down the corridor to the study. They walk through and over the books piled with scattered newspapers on the floor. From the desk, she picks up Dad’s reading glasses. She pulls one of his calligraphy brushes from a bamboo holder. “Here,” she says, handing the glasses and the brush to Paul. She scans the tall shelves of books that line every wall of the study. There are books in Chinese, English, and French. There’s classical Chinese literature, painting, ancient and contemporary Chinese, Western and American history, philosophy, politics, and religion. The man could read! Books are open to selected pages, annotated in the margins, wedged in every cranny of available space in the room. And behind everything else, stacked in the corners are painted canvasses. Auntie throws her hands up—“Hasn’t been dusted in years. Scandalous!”—and marches out in disgust. Paul follows obediently like a dumb puppy dog. Everything is the same as it’s always been. He can’t remember his mother’s feminine touch, her tidy ways. It’s all forgotten. He looks back at the torn leather on his dad’s old reading chair, and the way the wood floor is worn from the chair to the desk. He sees his dad pacing back and forth from the chair to the desk. No dust there. Not one speck.
But keep following Auntie. She’s on a mission down the corridor to his dad’s bedroom. She freezes at the door. Their house is a bachelor pad, so it’s a shock. Clothes everywhere. More books. More canvasses. Bed unmade. You can see the shape of his body in the wrinkled sheets. That’s where Auntie finally loses it. “My brother, you are gone,” she weeps, grabbing the dark wood of the doorframe and slipping down into abundant sorrow. Paul bows his head, stares down at his tears spattering his dad’s reading glasses and calligraphy brush. Old ink gets bloody in his young hands.
Later, Auntie sits down in the kitchen. Writes a list:
one full set of clothing including best suit
don’t forget socks and shoes
reading glasses
brush
newspapers
mah-jongg set
bottle of French cognac
What else?
his favorite things
like favorite pen or favorite book
Pentax box camera
“O.K.,” says Auntie. “You have to find these things. If the clothes are dirty, you bring them to me tomorrow morning and I’ll wash them. Remember. His best suit. The one he wears to,” she pauses foolishly, “funerals. Bring everything tomorrow. Maybe we need to get it dry cleaned, too.”
“Why the favorite things?”
“We put these things with him in his coffin, to make his journey.”
“Auntie, maybe he wouldn’t want us to do this.” Paul can’t help it, but he yawns. He’s been up all night in the study trying to read his dad’s old letters. “Maybe he didn’t believe in the journey.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Camus?” he suggests. “Existentialism.”
Auntie huffs, “What did he pump into your young mind? All that’s irrelevant when you die in Chinatown.”
Yes, ma’am, all that’s irrelevant when you die in Viet’nam. To celebrate the Tet, nineteen VC commandos charge through the walls of the U.S. embassy compound in Saigon with antitank rockets. Marines hold them off until they get a helicopter of the Airborne in to finish up this mess. When it’s over, you got nineteen dead VC, two dead Vietnamese civilians, and five dead American boys. And we’re watching the action all on TV, dig? But that’s just the embassy. The North Vietnamese have infiltrated the entire city, coming in on holiday with their ammo hid under flowers, rice, and vegetables. It’s a peasant surprise. Presidential Palace, South Vietnamese Army headquarters, Westmoreland’s headquarters, radio station, and the air bases all attacked. Aircraft crippled, neighborhoods reduced to rubble, two million new refugees. Ol’Walter pulls you back to the map, and you see the DMZ, line that marks North from South, and you say hey, that’s a long ways away from Saigon. What’s the war doing down there in the deep South? Hey, Westmoreland, are we winning this war or not? And if we are, why are twenty-six hearts and minds bleeding there on the floor of our U.S. courtyard, what you call U.S. soil?
By the time Paul’s father’s wake comes along, Saigon the city is under control. The war’s pushed to the outside villages, which is easy because all they got to do now is destroy them. Like the lady at the front of the Cathay mortuary who is burning paper—joss paper, otherworld paper money, paper clothing, paper replicas of cars, televisions, houses, servants, everything going up in symbolic smoke to send along with Dad in the next world. Paul can see the flames go up and smolder, reflecting off the shiny brass along the casket. The pungent smell of incense and burning paper swirls through the room. Paul’s dad is dressed in his best suit, sleeping on a satin bed in a beautiful box with all his favorite things.
Auntie and her husband and their five children and their children are all there. There are other cousins too, but Auntie says they are paper cousins, so do they count? If they’re not careful, lady in the front might grab them, send them up in symbolic smoke.
The Association president is there. So are Paul’s dad’s office manager, the typesetter, and Mr. Fung, who practically does all the writing and photos for the newspaper. It’s just a small operation. His dad’s been publishing this local paper since his mother died maybe twelve years ago. Auntie says her brother went to hide inside that paper, use it to publish what was in his mind. She doesn’t say that no one reads it; at least she never did. She reads Mr. Fung’s articles about events in Chinatown, but she never understood her brother’s writing—all those complicated philosophical ideas of his. Well, his friends always said he was brilliant, and they got their brilliant writing in print too. Paper comes out once a week on Friday, so today’s paper’s a big photo with a full-page obituary. Readers maybe don’t know the whole paper is Paul’s dad, and maybe this is the last issue. Auntie folds a fresh copy and tucks it in with her brother. She inspects everything: can of tea, passport, reading glasses, calligraphy brush, bottle of French cognac.
“Oh,” she notices and says to Paul, “you found his old Pentax box camera.” She approves. “He loved that camera and took so many pictures with it.” Then she notices a book resting in the satin. “What’s this?” she asks.
“Favorite book, you said,” Paul mutters quietly.
“Capital?” she whispers. Even Auntie knows Karl Marx.
“Ah yeah, it was the book he was reading these days.”
“Favorite?”
“He always said the book he was reading was his favorite.”
Auntie’s exasperated, but she smiles and looks around. She slips the book out and hugs the cover to her bosom. “Do you want to get us in trouble?” she squeaks, bowing three times.
“But—”
“Bow three times,” she interjects. “Customary to do so,” she instructs, and moves away with Marx under cover. Outside, she shoves the un-American book at Paul and hisses, “Get rid of this.”
Meanwhile, under cover of air and artillery blasting away at the fat walls of the Citadel, Marines in assault craft ply the Perfume River to its banks to take back the sacred city of Hue. Who will bow three times to bless the blood lapping at the shore?
Next day at the funeral, Paul wears a black suit, a black waistband, and a black band on his left arm. The waistband means he’s the oldest son. He knows people see it and think that that’s not all it means. He’s too young to be wearing this waistband, too young to take his father’s place. Now the Chinatown community files in, solemnly bowing three times, one by one, and filling the pews at the Cathay. They’ve sent wreaths of flowers with ribbons naming the family, institution, or shop Paul’s father did business with.
And now Paul’s got to be the oldest only son, approach the casket to perform the blanket ceremony. If only there were other sons: a third son to place the white blanket of heaven, a second son to place the red blanket of life, a first son to place the gold blanket of spirituality splashed with red characters. If only there were ten sons to place ten blankets, to send his father warmly into his spirit life. But Paul’s the only son, so he surreptitiously hides Karl Marx under the folded blankets, shrouds his father’s traveling body with each eternal blanket, tucking the pei in to hide Dad’s unfinished reading. Paul thinks, even if it’s not his daddy’s journey, it’s their journey: Auntie’s journey, Mr. Fung’s, the Benevolent Association, his father’s writing buddies. It’s their journey, dig? It might be Karl’s too. Back of the hall, paper-burning lady’s going at it with the matches. Could have given her his dad’s entire library plus his paintings, burn it all up to heaven.
Endless eulogies, three bows per person, and condolences take forever, but finally the pallbearers get the casket out into the long hearse. They make Paul sit in the Cadillac convertible with a giant wreathed photo of his dad. The Cathay brass band of twelve old white guys in maroon outfits starts in with their signature tune, “Nearer My God to Thee,” and marches in front of the convertible Cad. Paul looks back at the hearse following. All the other cars follow the hearse. He’s on parade through Chinatown. Everyone on the street is staring at him and the giant photo. Does he look like a younger version of his dad? Chinese look to see if they recognize the guy in the photo. Kids run alongside the band and then the Cad, like it’s a continuation of New Year’s, and tourists snap their Brownies. He can hear the tourists saying, “The band is playing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ Can you beat that in Chinatown? These folks are Christian too. Honey, is that yellow confetti they’re throwing out of the cars? How festive!” Paul grips his dad’s photo and hides behind it, every nerve in his body electrocuted by an overloaded circuitry of grief and humiliation.
Suddenly, he senses a presence at his side. Someone has jumped into the Cad. “They are going to stop at the Benevolent Association first, next the newspaper office, then at your apartment.”
Paul looks at the man whose agile body leaped into the moving car.
“I know this is highly irregular, but I thought you could use some company.”
Paul nods behind the photo, sucks in his breath. Got to get his composure back.
“I’m Chen Wen-guang,” says the agile man. “Friend of your father.” He nods at the photo. “He would hate all this”—he looks around at the spectacle, “but—”
Paul finishes the thought: “It’s irrelevant when you die in Chinatown.” He notices Chen’s white gloves. So he’s one of the pallbearers.
Chen smiles. “He always said you were a smart kid.”
The procession comes to a halt. Rest stop: Benevolent Association. His dad’s ghost is halfway to heaven. Time to pay his last respects, eat some boiled chicken, a bit of steamed bun, maybe take a banana for the trip.
“We’ll talk again later, I promise.” Chen jumps out into the street, again like an acrobat. “What did you put in that casket with your dad? It’s really heavy.”
Two more stops: the newspaper office on Clay Street and their apartment around the corner on Commercial. Auntie’s planted someone there to open the doors, make sure Paul’s dad gets a good last visit, then shoo his ghost out. The doors on the back of the hearse get flung open. The mortuary director pulls out a wreath of flowers and stands at attention. The brass band plays another Salvation Army tune.
Finally they get to the edge of Chinatown. They might be a band of old white guys, but the edge of Chinatown is their limit. It’s also the limit for the Cad. Paul gets out and sits shotgun in the hearse with a burning cigar of incense. A motorcycle escort takes over. It’s not that Paul has never left Chinatown, but it’s always foreign out there. Chinatown’s his citadel. But when you die, your bones got to travel thirteen miles south outside the city to the Chinese Cemetery in Colma.
As Paul speeds away from Chinatown with his dad’s spirit and favorite things, the boys in Vietnam are battling each other through the streets of Hue, house by house, block by block, hand to hand. Boys got to charge into buildings tossing grenades and wipe out the enemy room by room, meter by meter. Citadel’s a concrete stonewall maze, sort of Old World castle city that American boys never seen back home. Center is the Imperial Palace of Peace, surrounded by a city maze of side-by-side stone houses of the clergy, commoners, and bureaucrats. Boys got to put up the flag at the Palace to show they won the battle, but first they got to get the tanks in there with special concrete-piercing shells to blow out the thick walls, got to destroy ten thousand houses and forty percent of the city. Vietnam boys got their own map of trenches and tunnels and sniper positions; time being, it’s their citadel.
Paul stares into the pit at the coffin, throws in his black armband and his black waistband. It peels away from his waist like a thick skin, exposing his guts for one horrific moment; then suddenly, the tension in his abdomen recedes. No one notices, it seems. Bow ties and white gloves flutter down to the casket. Once again, almost mysteriously, the agile friend of his father, Chen, is at his side; he, like the other pallbearers, tosses his bow tie and gloves, and now his ungloved hand rises to Paul’s shoulder. Paul wants to cry out, but he cannot. Everything gets pushed down deep. He’s still trying to hear, through the fireworks, his dad’s last words. There’s nothing but the soft din of juniper and flowers pelting dark wood.
Far as any outsider can tell, on the one side it’s American boys and Vietnam boys dying. On the other side, it’s just Vietnam boys dying. ARVN/U.S. versus NVA/VC. Fighting’s fierce, but the ARVN/U.S. have the advantage of their technology, the superiority of aircraft and artillery. To save lives and win the city, we shell and bomb the sacred history of Hue back to the Stone Age. Six thousand residents die in the rubble and one hundred and twenty thousand wander homeless. In retaliation, sacred history is replaced by sacrilegious history: they massacre the enemies of the state, the government officials, the sympathizers, and the Catholics; pop them off in mass graves, three thousand human lives, Vietnamese rounded off to the thousand. Meanwhile, inside the city Citadel, maggots ooze through the strewn corpses, anonymous piles of sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, spouses and lovers, rats and rabid dogs feasting on their bloated corpses, a fog of stench escaping the crumbling maze, groveling in pity at the perfumed moat.
A week later, Auntie calls and says, “We go to Colma for Ching Ming. This year it’s April fifth. It’s a Friday, so you come to my house after school. Don’t worry. I’ll get everything ready, but you pay attention. One of these days it’s going to be your responsibility. You got to do this for your mother and father. For your grandfather. I say to my kids, don’t let us down, especially when we’re dead.”
Night before Ching Ming, MLK Jr. is standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, gets shot through the neck. Next day, the flags are all at half mast. School’s abuzz. They’re rioting in DC, in Chicago. What’s gonna happen here in SF? The Panthers over in Oakland calling for keeping the peace. It’s not the time to go to the streets. What you want? A bloodbath? They’re pretending they’ve got everything under control. Don’t know that Eldridge Cleaver’s yet to see his soul on ice and Bobby Hutton’s young years got to be cut short.
Once again Paul’s in a car driving to the Chinese cemetery, squeezed between Auntie and her kids and grandkids. Car smells like roast pig and jai choy. Cousin playing Sly and the Family Stone on the local channel. No assassination’s going to interfere with Chinese tradition. “Better to go to Ching Ming, get outside the city,” Auntie justifies. “Ancestors know better. Get outside the city.”
“But what about on the way back?”
“We take safe streets. Inside Chinatown, no trouble. Here,” she says, passing a box of pork bao. “I got extra for you. You must be hungry from school. Are you eating? You didn’t come last week for dinner. What happened?” She nudges him. “Got a girlfriend?”
Paul’s mouth is filled with bread. “Huh?”
“It’s O.K. Forty-nine days are past. You can go back to your party life.”
“Thanks, Auntie.”
At the cemetery, other Chinese already there for the Clear Brightness Festival. Auntie becomes central command, moves her troops into action. Every kid’s got a job. Sweep, rake, pick out the dead leaves, dump the old flowers, make a nice arrangement of new flowers. Stick the red candles in the soft dirt, get them lighted. Make a spread and it’s a feast. Center attraction is the suckling pig’s head looking all tanned and glazed. Contrasting is a whole white boiled chicken. Then the sautéed jai choy and dim sum. Auntie throws in a boiled egg, an orange, a banana, and an apple. Ancestors get three bowls of rice, three cups of wine, three cups of tea, and three pairs of chopsticks.
Paul has to light the incense bundle. “Don’t blow on the fire,” Auntie warns. “Bad luck.” She fans the fire with a newspaper.
One of the kids is holding on to a bag of kitty litter. Auntie rips open the bag. “This is my invention,” she says proudly. “Works good, you know.” She pours the kitty litter into a can and demonstrates how the litter is going to hold up the incense sticks. What’s tradition if you don’t improve on it? It’s also a good bed for burning the joss papers and the otherworld money. Next time the house’s on fire, run to the kitty litter.
Now it’s the ceremony: three incense sticks per person, three bows per person.
Paul does his thing obediently, but turning from the altar, he sees Chen coming forward with three sticks of incense.
Chen greets Auntie and smiles at Paul. She says, “Maybe you are interested in my brother’s books. Talk to my nephew and make a visit to the house.”
Chen rakes his fingers through his hair and says to Paul, “Have you walked to the other side of the cemetery?” He motions to Auntie. “Don’t worry. I’ll drive Paul home.”
Auntie’s wraps up the food offerings. “Look, you take this home for your dinner.” She hands Paul a hefty shopping bag.
Paul follows Chen, crisscrossing the tombstones carved with Chinese characters. He points at the names and notes the oldest families, the earliest dates. “No paper names used here. When you die, you use your real name. Too late for immigration to deport you.”
Paul nods, but he knows his name’s not paper. It’s the real thing. His father’s story is different.
“I introduced your mother to your father,” Chen says casually. “She was very beautiful, much younger, my age. Twenty years difference, but it didn’t matter. At first they met with their brains. She fell in love with his mind. Well, there was more of course, since you didn’t pop out of their brains. You were born right away.”
“He was a friend of my family in Paris, but I wasn’t even born. He came to Paris to paint around 1920. He hung around Chou En-lai and the others at the Pascal Restaurant, on the Rue de l’Ecole de Medicine.” Chen speaks the last words in French. “He helped Chou stage a protest of the Chinese Legation, traveled around Europe with Chou to get recruits for the Chinese Communist Youth Corps.”
Paul is hearing this for the first time. “Chou?” he asks.
“Yes, China’s premier. The same.”
“He never said.”
“They parted ways. Chou returned to China to fight with Sun Yat Sen. Your father came home. What he really wanted was to return to his painting, and his family was here. His father died suddenly. Your auntie was a young girl, and he was the only son. He was a Marxist, but also filial.”
Paul is quiet. He isn’t a Marxist, but he already knows it’s going to be impossible to be filial.
“I looked him up when I came to study. He remembered my family from those days in Paris. When I met him, he was living and painting in the Monkey Block.”
“Monkey Block?”
“That’s what they called the block on Montgomery at Washington. The street was a hangout for artists and writers. The building was full of artist studios. Used to be the Black Cat Café in the basement.”
Paul follows Chen. Chen’s a stroller, reading the stones and throwing out anecdotes. Paul’s trying to grab his past as Chen tosses it over his shoulders. “Let’s take that pig’s head and head on home,” Chen says. “I’m famished.”
Paul thinks famished is an interesting word.
Back at the house, Chen clears off the kitchen table, washes the dishes, rummages around the drawers and finds a tablecloth that hasn’t been used since Paul’s mother was alive. He spreads that out, boils water for tea, sets the table. Paul’s not famished, he’s starving, but Chen’s got to have a pot of rice too. Far as Paul knows, it’s high dining. Chen fills glasses with foaming beer and toasts. “Now,” he says, settling in with the food and steaming rice, “eat slowly. Think about your father. And Martin Luther King.” He shakes his head. “I teach at San Francisco State. I cancelled my classes today. A great loss.”
Paul sips at the foam across his glass of beer. Acid bubbles singe his senses. Suddenly it occurs to him. He could get stupidly wasted, like every other high school kid with that opportunity. Chen seems oblivious, cutting into the pig’s head, relishing every bite. It’s an empty freedom.
Next day, he doesn’t know why, but he starts to clean his dad’s house like he’s looking for something. Those paintings in the corners. Dust, sweep, polish, wipe, classify. It’s like he’s one of Auntie’s kids, commandeered to tidy up the gravesite. All summer he’s into it. Auntie comes round to see what he’s up to. She’s pleased, but he doesn’t stop. The dark grain of the wood floors and paneling is shining back at her. Smells like Pledge. “Is this healthy?” she asks timidly. She’s looking at her brother’s old paintings. Kid’s got them hanging on the walls. “Are you having a psychological crisis? You should enjoy the summer with your friends. It’s not normal to be alone inside this old house.”
“I’m fine, Auntie.” He’s distracted. On the television, Walter’s talking about Chicago. Police clubbing and gassing protestors at the Democratic Convention.
End of summer he knows the house, every shelf, every drawer, every corner, everything. House is immaculate. Day after Labor Day he steps out, locks the door. Heads off to SFSC. Got to see Chen to find the real keys to get back in.
Chen’s got a class in contemporary Chinese literature. He lectures without notes. It’s all in his head. This cat’s amazing. Quotes passages. Talks dates, anecdotes. Like he knows the authors. Maybe he does. Paul goes home and finds the books. It’s all there in his library, in Chinese and in translation. His dad’s scribbling’s in the margins, but it’s mostly in Chinese. Paul’s got to use a dictionary to decipher it, or ask Chen. Chen says, “You know Yat Min Lee? Calls himself Edmund. He sits in the back. I’ll introduce you. He can read it all for you. And in return, you can lend him the books. He doesn’t have the money to buy them.”
Turns out Edmund is the smartest kid in class. Reads everything in the original Chinese, criticizes the translations. Paul tries to be friendly, but Edmund’s too busy. He comes around when he can, hangs out in Paul’s library, but he’s got a job busing tables at Fisherman’s Wharf. That’s his routine. Got to make money to keep from taking it from his family’s table. Family’s loud and noisy, crowded into two rooms above a laundry. His business is everybody’s. As for Paul, his dad always had rent money coming in from his properties. Now Paul’s got to do the accounting every month. Two boys wishing they had the other’s problems.
Today Chen’s on to Lu Hsun. “Mao Tse-Tung has said that Lu Hsun is his favorite writer.” Everyone perks up at this. Mao, he’s the man. Lu Hsun’s got to be our favorite too. Chen goes on to give the details. Lu Hsun was studying medicine in Japan when he saw these imperialist war slides of Japanese soldiers chopping off the head of a Chinese spy. What disgusted him were the bored Chinese in the pictures who were forced to see the spectacle. That’s it. Lu Hsun gives up medicine. What’s the point? He could study all he wanted to make his people healthy in body, but they were sick in their minds, dig. Now this might seem like a jump, but Lu Hsun thinks the answer is literature. So he starts a new life writing.
Chen pulls it out of his head: Lu Hsun’s preface to his collection of short stories. He’s got a photographic memory, but if you want to check, you can follow along in the book: “When I was young, I, too, had many dreams. Most of them came to be forgotten, but I see nothing in this to regret. For although recalling the past may make you happy, it may sometimes also make you lonely, and there is no point in clinging in spirit to lonely bygone days. However, my trouble is that I cannot forget completely, and these stories have resulted from what I have been unable to erase from my memory.” Chen’s voice trails off like he’s forgotten what he’s on to, but Paul knows he’s talking to him. Why is the call to write so strong? Only a writer knows. You can give any excuse you want.
Paul says to Edmund, “Chinese students meeting today. You going?”
“I have to work,” Edmund says. “Let me know what happens.”
Later, Paul reports. It’s one of the ICSA Chinese who speaks. That’s Intercollegiate Chinese Students Association. Fills in for a Chinese BSU. Chinese cat wears these shades that he never takes off. Works on being intimidating. He says, “What we are trying to do is to expose the contradictions of this society to our communities, separate fact from fiction. Fiction is that the Chinese have never suffered as much as the black or brown communities. Fact is the Chinese community has the same basic problems. Difference is that we got the neon lights and tourist restaurants. Fact is the restaurants are staffed by illiterate Chinese who work fourteen hours a day, six days a week. Fiction is Chinese businessman is doing good business. Fact is this is exploitation of Chinese immigrants who can only find work in sweatshops, laundries, and restaurants in Chinatown.”
Edmund says, “I’m not illiterate. What’s he talking about?”
Paul says, “It’s not about you. It’s about the others.”
Edmund says, “I am the others.”
Paul says, “There’s another meeting. This one is Third World. You get in if you’re Chinese.”
“I have to go home and work,” Edmund says. He always has to go home and work. Paul doesn’t have to go anywhere. And no one’s waiting at home for him.
Stokely Carmichael’s the main attraction. You get in to hear him if you got some color in your skin. BSU stands at the door and checks you out. Right on, brother. Paul likes this feeling of attitude rippling under his skin. Some white brother who’s sympathetic wants to get in. Says he knows Stokely personally. BSU takes him aside. “Nothing personal, brother, but this is about self-determination, you dig?” Paul files the information: self-determination.
Stokely tells it like it is. In a nutshell: you got to get control over the power structure. It’s not about you getting some Swahili classes. It’s about getting the methodology and the ideology. We got to heighten the contradictions to politically awaken our people. Easy to die for your people, but more difficult to live to work and kill for your people.
Then some other BSU cats get up and talk about the War of the Flea. Get down to the strategy, dig? How we are going to wear down the man. Paul nods; this is a Chinese thing. Guerilla practice of Uncles Ho and Mao. Lao Tzu. Art of War. Asians the brains behind the operation.
Next day in Chen’s class, it’s Mao Tse-Tung’s poetry. At least that’s the syllabus. But Mao’s practice comes to class instead. BSU and TWLF students walk in with their leather jackets, Afros, dark glasses, berets, what have you, but mostly attitude, and announce: This class is over. We are on strike until the pig administration meets our non-negotiable demands. Someone lights a match in the trash can, and everyone files out. War of the flea.
Month later, it’s more than fleas out there warring. Buses lining up at Holloway and Nineteenth, black folks stepping out like it’s a church function. All the big honchos of the community arrive: Reverends Cecil Williams and Lloyd Wake of Glide Memorial, California Assembly Rep. Willie Brown, Economic Opportunity Director and Delegate to the Democratic Convention Ron Dellums, and physician-publisher of the Sun-Reporter Dr. Carlton Goodlett. Besides which, some of these men are alumni of SF State. It’s a we-shall-overcome protest gathering. Even so, the students are in charge: On strike! Shut it down! We want the puppet! They pelt the windows of the administration building with rocks. Throw garbage cans at the doors. Turn over the cafeteria tables. Throw typewriters out the windows. Run into the library and push the books off the shelves. Stuff them down the toilets. War of the flea.
Inside, the bureaucrats hide the new and acting president, S. I. Hayakawa, in the bathroom. He must be the puppet! Outside the police line up with their riot gear, batons in their fists. You can hear S. I. speaking from his post over the Big Brother speaker system. This is your acting president. I order you to leave the campus at once. There are no innocent bystanders. I thought if we allowed you to talk you would calm down, but now this problem is escalating. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. His voice gets shrill.
Down in the field, publisher and physician Dr. Carlton Goodlett’s being carried on the shoulders of his cohort. Looks like two hundred colored people with Goodlett riding on top in a sea of white students, some say six thousand. He’s got his own bullhorn system, and he’s yelling, “We’re not subscribing to violence at this time! If the police feel that their duty is to provoke violence, all hell is going to break loose.” Who’s he talking to? S. I. in the bathroom? Six thousand white students? Tactical squad lined up on the green? They aren’t listening. Police got their orders. They arrest the good doctor and club the non-innocent bystanders. Throw everyone into paddy wagons. Situation explodes. Garbage cans get firebombed. Blow the motherfucker up! Folks go on a rampage, smash the windows of all the parked cars along Nineteenth. Someone climbs up to the wires of the MUNI car and yanks them off. M looks like a giant metal insect with a wagging antenna stalled in traffic. Another group pushes a UPI station wagon into the intersection, releases the brakes, and lets it roll. Folks hysterical and running in every direction.
Paul’s got his pockets filled with rocks, just in case. He’s in a stand-off with others, between defending himself from and sticking with the crowd. He sees a girl being dragged by her jacket collar into a paddy wagon, and he fingers a jagged stone in the deep of his pocket. He thinks he’s going to save her, but strong arms surround him from behind. He tenses, ready for his own struggle, then he recognizes the voice. “No! Don’t do it!” Chen has got him in one of those kung fu grips. “Run this way,” he commands. They slip away through Quonset huts faking as offices and classrooms. Paul looks back in shock at a charging cavalry of mounted police. Suddenly he sees himself multiplied, monkey orphans let loose, raising havoc. One by one, an invisible daddy cracks his multiplying monkey skulls. Who is free to be free at last?