That Smile

By Ahming Zee

The fairest day in hapless mortal’s life

Is ever first to flee.

—Virgil, Georgics

I got laid off last summer – the act of Murphy’s Law that is said to occur at least once in a lifetime – it occurred right after I had booked my trip to Beijing to visit my sick father, aged 85, and hospitalized awaiting a major artery surgery to ease the blood clots, a condition that impaired his health and brain, to the point that he was not able to recognize even his closest family members at times, me included. It was the summer of 2019, when I had to make a tough choice between keeping the travel schedule – possibly the last time to see my father – and postponing this visit to allow time for job search to keep a family of five afloat. I learned from my mother in Beijing that it a low-risk surgery statistically, the stake was high for my father going through a surgery at this age, but she insisted that I should focus on job search first and she was going to take care of the rest.

All his life my father had worked for the Palace Museum, formerly called the Forbidden City – the home of emperors and their households – and all his life he had been a devoted accounting manager, responsible for the museum’s revenue and pricing. During the Cultural Revolution, China witnessed ravaging of anything traditional with a bigger mission to start everything new under Chairman Mao Zedong’s policy lines. Mass student-led paramilitary groups, called Red Guards, were deployed to eradicate any symbols of China’s pre-communist past on a national scale – books and art, cultural relics and heritage sites – and the Palace Museum, the world’s major heritage site, was obviously on their target list. The day came when my father received a call that a troop of Red Guards emerged at the Shenwu Gate Entrance, the North Gate of the Museum, and demanded access to everything marked as treasure. “Allowing these folks in would put our major national relics at risk, and it would be a national shame and historic crime to see the national treasure ransacked,” my father said to his office workers before instructing his team to close the Gate. In no time, my father rushed to the Shenwu Gate, and presented himself in front of the surging troop with his frail body.

“I am sorry but we are not authorized for your access to our national treasure,” my father said to the Guards, readying himself to bear the worst possible consequences.

“You understand that you are blocking our noble mind of destroying the old, a reactionary motive to Chairman Mao’s revolutionary lines,” a voice was heard from the crowd. One guy jumped on him and started twisting his arms and forcing his back in a bend-down position to a thunderous applause from the crowd that was surging further up, and pressing my father to surrender and reopen the Gate.

At this critical juncture, trucks of military troops, fully armed and in camouflage military uniform, loomed and lined up right at the center of the Gate entrance. My father flashed a reassuring smile, heaving a big sigh of relief as he observed the Red Guard troop backing off and fleeing from the morass.

Each time the story was told, by him or others, my father would say, half-proudly and half-dismissively, “It was a historic moment, and I did what I could, and called the Premier Zhou Enlai’s Office directly before I set myself up to face off with the Guards, in time for the military involved to prevent what could have been the worst havoc in our history.”

Today, it’s been hardly known exactly why and how the Forbidden City, the ultimate symbol of feudalist power and national treasure, survived the most destructive nationwide holocaust and remained intact during those turbulent years. No rhapsodizing of this national heroic act to my father’s credit. My good-natured father had been living comfortably in his relative obscurity, however, and wouldn’t bother about any intention of setting the record right for him, as he would say that there was nothing said of his glory – the glory credited to him – that was not part of the bigger good. That reminds me of the recently released movie Little Women, where Marmee talked to her daughter Jo: “There are some good natures too noble to curb and too lofty to bend.”

There came the surgery day, when I stayed up all night in my eastern time zone, a twelve-hour difference from China, tracking the surgery progress via WeChat with my brother.

“Surgery a success,” texted my brother, assuring me that while Dad was still in ICU, he would be back to his ward in an hour or so. That night I treated myself a luxury dinner with a Sirloin steak that went with Finland Vodka, to celebrate the success of my father’s surgery, and I had the longest and deepest sleep ever, or at least that’s how I felt.

The next day, I demanded a look at my father via WeChat video. As the screen was shifted to my father’s face, I was stunned to see him lying on the hospital bed, eyes shut and mouth open, as if he were in a deep coma. Is this my father, the one I knew that would always bring joy to others and radiate ecstatic kindness? That self-effacing dad that was admired for his energy and joie de vivre, and for his perpetual generous smiles?  How I miss those smiles of his – sweet and generous and manly.  I reminisced that Chitetsu Watanabe, reportedly the oldest living man, aged 112 on the Guinness record, once shared his secret to longevity as “not to get angry and keep a smile on your face.” My father had that smile, a universal smile – the lingua franca that could tear down any walls. “You smile into the mirror,” my father used to say to me, “and the mirror smiles back. And that mirror is the wellspring of life.” Now, I kept my eyes locked on the grave face of my father, and wondered if he was still able to wake up again from that moment on.

“Hey Baba,” I shouted into the phone, my eyes wet with a tinge of sadness. My brother said that while our father’s condition was stabilized, such cognitive impairment would persist and could go only worse over time. According to his doctor, my father must have been hit with multiple strokes in the recent past that he hadn’t even realized, which delayed his otherwise timely treatments. My mother recalled that he had complained about severe headaches at one point, and thought he had soon recovered from that within days with no further repercussion. What confused her was his behavior change ever since; he grew excessively forgetful, not remembering what he had eaten, where he used to work, and names of his close friends visiting him. He had been totally quiet, and would spend hours in a tiny bathroom, mopping every tiny spot with all the face towels he could find.

In the weeks that followed, I landed a new job. My wife said that this trip was going to be significant – first one for the Lunar New Year ever since we moved to America two decades ago. I started calling my Beijing relatives sharing the exciting news about my upcoming trip back, and inviting them each to a family reunion I was going to host during New Year week. My mother said that three generations of each immediate family, totaled twenty-eight people were signed up for the reunion and, while I was salivating at the spotlight in an imaginary glitzy and ritzy restaurant, I heard my mother continue, “Your dad will obviously not be able to make it to the reunion, but I shared the news yesterday, a short time he was awake, and he gave a short wisp of a smile – the smile we hadn’t seen for a long while.”

It turned out that epidemic started to hit China before my anticipated trip. “Every time we have your trip booked,” my wife said, “something happens. What’s the odds of that really? This had never happened in our lives.”

“Don’t know,” I snapped, “maybe we are off to an ominous start for some reason, or maybe there is a holy voice sent down to say I should not make this trip – either something will happen to my plane, or coronavirus could flare up, who knows what.”

“Coronavirus?” said my wife, “Don’t be a silly crow mouth. China just ruled out the possibility of this being a recurrence of SARS virus.” Crow mouth by Chinese definition means someone that predicts bad omens, because crows are scavengers who feed on the dead.

I gave my wife a hug, and kissed each other goodbye before embarking on the China-bound flight. The flight was uneventful and timely landed on the Beijing International Airport. At the end of the jet bridge, I was in shock to see everyone coming by with a face mask. This was not something I was prepared for, and felt an urge to secure a face mask for myself. To my astonishment, the Information Desk said that masks were all out of stock. It was January 23^rd, just a flight away from one continent to another in a spate of hours, yet Beijing looked under the spell of gloom. What the heck!  I hailed a Taxi, and the driver gestured for me to sit in the backseat while surprisingly handing a plastic-sealed face mask over to me. I thanked him and pronounced my parents’ address, which he entered into his GPS. No words initiated from the driver, and at the destination, I asked for the total charge, since the meter was not on. He gave me a broad smile, waved goodbye and disappeared into the misty darkness. I shook my head in disbelief as to why the driver ever ventured out for such voluntary servitude without seeking out any sort of reward.

After some hugging and kissing, my mother walked me into my father’s room. There he was, lying on what looked like an electric hospital bed, eyes shut and mouth open, with layers of blankets over him.

“Hey Baba!” I whispered under the breath for fear that my voice would wake him.

“Hey Lao Tou,” my mother said, her eyes on my father, “your kiddy is here all the way from America,” before she turned to me and said, “He was just fed, and should still be awake.” I placed my hand over his nose to confirm his regular breathing, slowly turned up the degree indicator equipped on the bed to elevate his head, before scanning down from his head, and it was a jaw-dropping moment to see a wisp of charcoal-like legs that had apparently atrophied. I asked my mother if my father was still able to move his legs around at all. My mother shook her head and said, “No, not his legs or any part of his body anymore.”

So that is my dad, totally bedridden and paralyzed.

“How come you didn’t tell me this?”

“You have enough to worry about in America, especially with the three kids you have to take care of.” Mom sighed, “How’s work?”

“Just going,” I said, followed by a spasm of coughs from my father. I placed my hand on his forehead, feeling his temperature like a Chinese doctor.

“He’s been coughing from last night, with a low fever.”

I could hear wheezing, at if his throat was packed with phlegm. “He needs to be seen clinically; don’t you think Mom?” I said earnestly.

“He has these symptoms once in a while, and each time in the past, some OTC medicines helped,” said my mother, “We dread sending him to the hospital risking cross-infections with other patients at this time.”

Coronavirus. What if that is exactly what Dad has?

“Maybe we can at least have our auntie take a look,” suggested my brother, joining our conversation from the living room. “Auntie is an internal medicine doctor, and has called us twice this morning.” My brother is the Vice Minister of the China Culture and Tourism, and had been on the phone most night discussing, in my hearing, on the closings of libraries and public cultural centers, including the National Library of China. “Wuhan,” continued my brother, “a major city of the Central Region and the epicenter of the coronavirus, is now placed in lockdown with air and rail departures getting suspended as we speak, so it is getting really serious now.” I would have checked the news for the latest coronavirus updates myself had I had Internet connections at my mother’s home.

In no time, my mother was found on the phone with Auntie, the doctor, and I was by her side listening in. After a slew of questions from my auntie, the advice was for him to stay home for another day or two on our close watch for any breathing problems, and in the meantime to take plenty of Banlangen, root of the isatis tinctorial, which is a kind of herb used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat colds and flu.

After a sleepless night on a squeaky living room sofa, jetlag to blame, I found myself in my father’s room, one hand with Banlangen, and the other with millet porridge that my mother had cooked earlier. Having both nursed, my father looked glistened with sweat on his forehead, which I gently dried off with tubeless tissue paper, the paper with multi-purpose in the absence of paper towel at my parents’ home that we had been accustomed to over the years. His coughs appeared to have subsided, and fever remained low, with no apparent breathing difficulty.

The morning TV was flashing the News channel reporting that the coronavirus outbreak was quickly on the rise, showing 800 infections and 20 deaths.  All Lunar New Year events in Beijing had been canceled, and the World Health Organization was considering travel restrictions for flights into and from China. “I suggest you get on an earlier return flight before it gets too late,” said my brother while the news was on. My mother nodded in agreement.

First time back for Lunar New Year after twenty years, I found myself on a return trip on January 25^th, the very New Year’s Day, and one-and-a-half day after I had just landed in Beijing.

Sitting at my father’s bedside hours before my departure, I leaned in closer to his ears and said, “Baba, Mingming is here with you.”  Mingming is my pet name used within my family, as the Chinese culture goes that the repetition of a given name suggests intimacy.

His eyes were seen frequently moving behind the eyelids, and the narrow opening was hit with packed mucus blocking his view. I gently wiped off the mucus with tissue paper, and there he was, eyes half open, locked with mine, with cheek muscles mildly twitched.

He smiled, and I smiled back.  The smiles brimmed with bittersweet tenderness. I did not tell him that I was departing again; I wanted that smile of his undisturbed and etched in my memory, and mine in his.

“Your strong-willed father would have been much depressed had he known what he’s been going through,” said my mother, “his condition is an escape for him, with no pain that he knows about. And he needs this rest after his whole life’s serving and fighting only for others.”

I think Mom is right – it is an escape from the sufferings he would otherwise have to endure should he know the condition, which is redolent of Vigil’s adage, “The fairest day in hapless mortal’s life is ever first to flee.”

Mom sobbed to see me off at the door, and in return I smiled.

Ahming Zee (pen name) is a Chinese American writer based in Boston. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Constellations, Ariel Chart, Sudden Flash, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Door Is A Jar, and elsewhere. Ahming holds a BA in English, an MA in American Studies, and an MS in Library Science. Previously, he taught English in Beijing, served as Poetry Editor for Hawaii Review, and was a staff writer at Ka Leo O’ Hawaii (Hawaii Daily). He currently contributes to WestfordCAT as a community correspondent and is working on his debut novel. Find him on X @ahmingzee, and on Bluesky @ahmingzee.bsky.social.