The Hospital’s Secret

 

The mountain valleys are green but the light has faded

The river runs strong but has been polluted with garbage.

 

These are the first pair of lines in my unfinished quatrain.

 

The dark rain clouds so often fill the sky it makes it really hard for the earth and sky to reach each other’s face anymore. Is it even possible for the Sky Goddess to see this little district town covered in smokey fog?

With the covers pulled down to her waist, sitting propped up, slightly raised on the first bed of ward twenty of the district public hospital is a woman whose thin, ashen face is half covered by her long thick strands of hair. From her small, tired eyes, no longer bright in her tired round face two lines of tears squeeze out, nearly uniting at the bridge of her nose to form a single stream, but rolling down her cheeks, down from the corners of her lips pressed tightly together onto the upper part of her neck visible through the unbuttoned red blouse she wears, and on down between her breasts.

What troubles this young woman yet to experience the long path of life? She takes out a little notebook and a new pen from her little bedside table and putting it on her lap begins to write.

"My darling Sun, I am in the district hospital where I came to have our baby in safety. When they examined me they found that the feotus was sick and said that both my life and the baby’s life would be in danger unless they immediately did a cesarian. I had to trust them, but sadly they fined me a thousand yuan for having a baby while still too young and before our marriage. Unless I paid a thousand yuan, they said, they would have to sterilize me. Since I could not quickly raise such a sum they sterilized me. Sun, my beloved, please forgive me, please bear with me and take pity on me." Again two tear drops fell from her eyes sinking into the two words, "please" "please" that she had written on the page. Then the tears flowed from her in an unbroken stream like from springs, but the endless story in her heart that she wanted to spill out she summed up in a few words. She wiped her tears on the sleeves of her blouse. The tears had washed her face and now holding her notebook to her heart she again fell into a reverie. As each "tick-tock" of the clock made time unfold into the future so too it pushed on the unfolding of sad, sad dream.

In the west the black thunderheads are piling up emitting long rolling peals of thunder. The light is fading from the sky that is getter blacker and blacker.

"The mountain valleys are green, but the light has faded."

A slight creak and the door slowly opens. A short fat man with a dark face and prominent eyes, a rough nose and mouth wearing coarse, homemade Tibetan clothes enters. He is carrying some tinned food and a net bag full of apples, biscuits and the like. Long he looks at her face lost to sleep, and slowly he approaches her, putting the net bag on the side table. He takes the notebook from her lap and quickly reads it. Then again, slowly, he goes through it one more time with his eyes unblinking.

Suddenly, talking in her sleep, she says, "Please bear with me, please forgive me." He takes hold of her hands.

"Moon, Moon." Moon, opening her eyes was momentarily taken by surprise. "Moon, it’s me. I could bear with you forever."

She hugged him to her, her cry rising to a high pitch, "Oh! Sun."

He held her to him. For a moment his prominent nose found the hollow of her pretty nose and nestled there.

"I dreamed that you had arrived. Do you understand what has happened?"

"I heard a bit of a rumor from some traders and did not feel good about it so I took a few days leave." He cast a glance at her notebook that he held in his hand. "But it is only now that I learned of this most unhappy turn of events. Anyway, how are you?"

"Now I feel better. But ever since I came to the hospital I have not felt happy."

"Judging by your face you are weak, but regrets and depression will not anything to help. You have to look after your health. I am your’s forever."

"Sun," said Moon deeply moved and with tears, "my mother said just before they took the baby, that it was breathing and that it was a boy. It would have been like just like you when it grew up. We have no chance for any more children." As she spoke her tears came more and more. Between bouts of speaking and crying Sun’s prominent eyes were unblinking, but in the corner of his eyes too a tear drop formed and hardened.

"Moon, stop talking about it. It will just hurt your mind more and more for no purpose. This is just the karma of the both of us. Nowadays in this age and time there is so much of this happening. But..."

At that moment a strong wind rattled the window pane and a bolt of lightening went through the sky. The thunder rumbled the approach of the storm. "Tak, thud." Hailstones that could compete in size with Sun’s eyes bounced of the latticwork of the windows chasing here and there. Then another swooshing sound and a tremendous downpour began like the tears being shed by Moon. The hail only lasted a moment but the heavy rain went on. Such a downpour, hail and rain mixed together was very rare in those parts, but such was the wound torn open in the heart of Sun and Moon there were hailstones in the millions and streaming floods of rain. [19] In a moment the little district town became a little reservoir of rain water.

"The river ran strong, but has been polluted with garbage."

A week passed in a flash. The weather started to brighten and get a little warmer. "Moon, now a bit of color is starting to come back into your face."

"If I am a little happier it comes only from you, Sun, and your presence here by my side these last days. If you are free to stay a few more days it is definite that I will soon be better."

"Ha ha! So I am even better than a doctor, am I?" They laughed. "Our teaching training course finishes at the end of this year. In the new year we will be able to set up a new home together. Aren’t you twenty one already?"

"Each of your soothing words is more effective for me than each of the injections given in this hospital." Again his prominent nose found the hollow of her pretty nose and nestled there. The warm wave of love lapped from out to in, from in to out, the feeling of warmth spreading everywhere. It had the feel of a last meeting on separation, the feel of the very last meeting of all.

Sunday came and went and on Monday Sun said good-bye to Moon and left. She was not particularly worried.

[20] Another Sunday came and with it a lucky piece of news blowing in on an unlucky wind. There was an announcement that after next week the head doctor was leaving to take up another position as the chief medical officer at the zonal hospital, a position carrying great responsibility. It was news that rolled like a peal of thunder across the whole grassland region in a moment. Ever since the head doctor had taken up the post of chief medical officer at the district hospital, because of his operating skills, his fame had become widespread in the little nomad region. When the family limitation policy had first been introduced a lot of women were either rendered sterile or even killed by the abortion procedure. Ever since the head doctor had arrived, not one woman had died at his hands aso everyone called him "Our head doctor." So the moment they heard the news the populace again started to worry and feel scared.

Who could see in the doctor’s hands the hand of an actual demon?

On that Sunday the sun is hot and the sky is clear and the grasslands are themselves showing a bit of a smile. So why is everybody’s face quite the opposite to that?

Today the head doctor and his son are in their little garden resing and taking it easy. Also Moon is on the lawn in the hospital compound lying on her stomach, with her knees bent and her feet pointed crookedly at the sky, her two hands cupping her chin as she rests on her elbows. As she looks at the two doctors she said to herself, "I am unlucky but still I have some luck. If I had not had the head doctor I do not know whether I would still be alive or not. [21] I expect that when he leaves the young women of these grasslands are going to go mad and wander around like crazed animals with their wounds.

At that same time the doctor and his son too glanced at Moon and started talking about a secret they shared in a whisper. "That unfortunate girl is the one I practiced on. Dr. Len Hua took out two cigarettes, took one himself and gave the other to his father and glanced at Moon while lighting them. "They say Moon’s husband is a teacher. It would not be good if he found out about this. The father and son glanced at Moon together. Moon was watching a pair of butterflies in front of her. She imagined she and Sun were playing and enjoying each other’s company together amongst the flowers on the grasslands, stolling with each other. "Still, there is no way people in general are going to easily find out about the hospital’s secret. I have myself have got rid of the kids of more than twenty young women like Moon in the last six months, telling them one thing or the other without them knowing anything about it. And I do not know how many many women I have sterilized in the five years I have been here. And even if it will be difficult to keep it a secret for long the government is behind us so there is no danger to us. And not only that, it is my legacy. "But it all depends on how skilled the person is," he said looking at Len Hua. "It will not be so easy as before to fool these people. [20] Don’t accept any difficult operation from now on." The head doctor took a drag on his cigarette and continued while looking at Moon, "she is definitely going to face some real complications before long. Still, I am moving to a new post so it does not matter. You are going to have to make the same name that I had for yourself. I will give you tomorrow’s operating schedule again to do under my name in order that you will get more practice."

"Great. Now just sterilizations. I am even better at it than I was before," said Len Hua putting another cigarette into his mouth.

The summer sky is now clear, now overcast; now locking in, now clear again, always changing. I do not know where they have come from, but there is a layer of rain clouds that build up just now around the district town, stealing away the smile on the mountain region’s face. Moon turned over, lay on her back for a moment and looked at the rain clouds. A few drops sprinkled on her face, then she again got up, glanced at the two doctors and went inside.

One of them can see another’s complications; but who can see another’s secrets? The Precious Jewels know if this grassland can ever wake up from its sleep.

The next week passed and the clever doctor left, but the clever son of the doctor, head doctor Len Hua stopes into his father’s shoes to do the work. [23] With the discharge slip from the earlier head doctor, Moon, also on that Monday, on the sixteenth day of the lunar month accompanied by the moon in decline went back to her part of the nomad lands...

 

My dear readers, you will really want to know the rest of the story but I do not want to write it so I will not spell it out in detail. I am sorry.

When the moon began to wax at the start of the new month, Moon suddenly felt a sharp pain. As the moon got bigger and bigger Moon’s pain got steadily more intense. On the evening of the full moon there was a lunar eclipse. The full moon that rises with sunset and sets with dawn was not able to dawn at all, caught in the mouth of the eclipse and the dark, dark clouds.

And today the sun is hidden behind misty clouds like the cloudy bluish eyes of an eighty year old. Could it ever be, this sign in the sky, the moon hidden by an eclipse and the sun in the sky feeling sorrow.

 

The doctor is skilled but his hands are poison.

The hearts of the people are good but their worry is great.

 

These are the concluding pair of lines in my opening quatrain.

 

 

 

I wrote this in the first months of 1990 in Kharshar in Darjeeling in India. That year it was published in Jongzhon for the first time. I made a few revisions for this publication.