LITMIR.BIZ

      THIS OUTCAST GENERATION

      I

      —PERHAPS it's easier to go on living than you think.

      I had laid my pillow on the concrete platform used for drying laundry, and I was relaxing in the sun. I took a sunbath there every morning after coming out of my dim back room. In the corner, as usual, were two chickens pecking away at leftover rice and withered vegetables. From the alley below came the almost threatening voices of Chinese haggling over bargains from the Japanese. The voices of the Japanese were low, feeble, and confused, so their customers sounded even more overbearing in their abuse. Only the voices of Japanese children at play were full of energy and happiness. Oddly enough, those joyful cries made the parents even more irritable.

      —Since everyone's apparently able to get along like this.

      With my weak vision it looked to me as if the wall of a theatre beyond the house roofs stood out garishly white. It seemed to float radiantly white out of the blue winter sky.

      —You can lose a war, see your country collapse. And still you can go on living.

      Before I had realized it, the shop windows of even the Japanese were decorated with flags of Nationalist China and photographs of Chiang Kai-shek and his wife. I too had bought a small photograph from an old man peddling pictures of the couple. The snapshot had sold like hotcakes.

      —All you need is a guardian angel.

      To prepare for the inspection tours of the Chinese police, I had put the photograph between the pages of a notebook. When the Chinese national anthem was sung at the movies, the audience stood up and so did I, my eyes obediently on the flag and a framed picture of Sun Yat-sen, I had stood up apathetically, like a puppet, and then sat down, and the movie over, I had gone out through the crowds of Chinese teenagers pushing me around. I had merely listened indifferently as the agitated audience cried out simultaneously over a violently anti-Japanese film. Sometimes I had no expression on my face, sometimes I smiled reluctantly. Whatever the occasion, the only thing I really marveled at was my own ability to somehow continue living when I so easily might have been dead. At first, I believed that bearing the humiliation kept me going. But when I thought over the defeat and its aftermath, I felt no shame, nothing in fact. My blank face and reluctant smile were merely the mask by which-1 was simply living without any humiliation whatsoever.

      I started to earn my keep by writing out documents in Chinese. There was no end of callers. Since my landlord was a broker, his customers of the past fifteen years came to me in a constant stream. They were so totally confused that they even talked respectfully to me! Even in defeat life marches on. As if to confirm this principle, clients came to me to lodge complaints of various kinds. A pale old man once asked me to help him after his employer had been robbed and kidnapped. Unless the police were notified immediately, his boss would be in for some real trouble. So urged, I had gone into my dark back room on the second floor. Even in broad daylight I turned on the electricity. I spread out my carbons on a tangerine crate. I sluggishly went about my task with the help of a Japanese-Chinese dictionary. And the job finished, I was paid off. I would hesitate in giving my fee. The currency of the puppet-government was still in circulation, and I had to figure out the price of four packs of cigarettes. The money I earned came out of human misery. Beautiful reflection that! It's a pity the thought lasted only two or three days after I had gone into my trade. I wanted my sake and rich food so that trouble and customers were an absolute prerequisite.

      Someone would be evicted tomorrow. In one way or another, someone would have to move his belongings into the Japanese compound. A Japanese man desired Chinese citizenship in order to return to his family in Taiwan. A Japanese drafted to dive for salvage wanted to give written notice of illness—that was how eager he was to get home. Some Japanese wished to illegally convert the goods they had on hand into money, others to open street stalls. A Korean-born reporter came. A blind person came. A pregnant woman came. A Japanese merchant who promised to pay me anything I asked and a sick man hardly able to walk because of malnutrition, they came too. I undertook anything. I prepared documents audaciously. I wrote irresponsibly. All I cared about was getting my documents approved. Sometimes I chose expressions designed to move the heartstrings of officials in charge of us Japanese living in China. Sometimes I developed watertight arguments. I wrote grandiloquently. I wrote half-truths that favored my clients. I finally reached the point of writing barefaced lies. At the very least, however, what I did write was understood. That was why most of my documents got through. My customers came to offer their thanks. Before I realized it, I was gaining their confidence. Not only was I a popular transcriber. I began to be looked upon as a reliable guy!

      My only

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