With America at war, industry was bound to boom and hospitals were bound to grow busier. In December 1941, Qin Siyu’s supervising physician told him that he could become Chief Resident.
This meant that Qin Siyu already possessed the professional skills of a physician.
Qin Siyu believed that life had treated him kindly.
That was why, whenever Qin Siyu looked back on that day, he always felt there had been no warning at all.
Why had it happened?
It was Christmas Day. Even the rain that had fallen for several days stopped that morning. The air was fresh, the sky brilliant blue and cloudless, and the sun shone brightly.
Christmas seemed especially precious that year.
Pearl Harbor had been bombed. As a major port and America’s gateway to the Pacific, San Francisco was widely believed to be the next target. Newspaper boys shouted the latest war news, and air-raid drills and evacuation exercises were taking place throughout the city.
America had declared war little more than ten days earlier and was now fighting on two fronts. The Red Cross was collecting supplies, and state and municipal governments were recruiting soldiers.
No one knew whether their families would still all be together to celebrate Christmas a year from now. So people poured their hearts into this holiday.
To many, this might be their family’s last Christmas together in this world.
Shops displayed magnificent, towering Christmas trees hung with multicolored lights and brilliant wreaths. At the top of each tree gleamed a golden Christmas star, all symbols of eternity.
The sweet scent of hot chocolate drifted out of restaurants.
Mass could be heard from the churches, where people sang hymns and offered fervent prayers for the world, the country, their families, or their friends.
Every household celebrated, family members embracing and kissing one another.
Qin Siyu and Aston went to Union Square.
They heard the cheerful music of “White Christmas” mingling with the newsboys’ cries about the fighting.
Elio’s Notes: Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” was first publicly performed by Bing Crosby on Christmas Day 1941. It became a major hit in 1942, following Holiday Inn. The novel’s Christmas street-music scene is preserved as written. Source: Library of Congress.
Qin Siyu asked, “Is it true that we’ll be the Japanese army’s next target?”
Aston was silent. Nobody knew.
They shared roasted chestnuts. The young master was far too precious to peel his own, so Qin Siyu peeled them and fed him.
They also climbed a hilltop and looked down. San Francisco was lively and full of holiday spirit. But far out on the dark sea, warships gathered, patrol boats rose and fell, and fighter planes took off and landed.
Qin Siyu gave his lover a Christmas present: a talisman for safety that, after much effort, he had obtained from a Chinese temple said to be exceptionally efficacious. Two months earlier, with war approaching, he had asked an acquaintance returning to China to obtain a charm and mail it to him.
Aston lifted the talisman, and Qin Siyu explained, “This is meant to keep you safe. I asked a good friend to get it for me from the most powerful temple in China and send it here.”
Seeing Guanyin on it, Aston asked, “Would the bodhisattva take something Christ doesn’t want? Isn’t that rather improper? Wouldn’t it be embarrassing for her?”
“…” Qin Siyu gave him a little smack. “Of course the bodhisattva will look after you. She protects every good person, and you’re the best person there is.”
Aston held back a laugh. “All right. Seany, you may be the only person in the world who thinks so.”
“Thinks what?”
“That I’m the best person there is.”
Qin Siyu gazed at him. “But of course you are.”
Qin Siyu also gave him a poem he had just written. Over the years they had been together, he had given Aston several poems. Perhaps because his feelings were so sincere, they were genuinely beautiful. Aston, in turn, had written Qin Siyu some lovely love letters.
As Aston continued learning Chinese, they often read poetry together, looking at how people in ancient times had written about love.
Aston gave Qin Siyu his own Christmas present: the gold watch Qin Siyu had picked up on the day they first met.
Not the very same watch, though. The two were identical models. Its strap was sized for Qin Siyu’s wrist. When Qin Siyu turned it over, sure enough, there was an “S” engraved on it.
He smiled and unclasped it. “At last, I finally have one!”
Aston had held back from giving it to him because it was so expensive. But now war had come, and he wanted to give Qin Siyu the thing he had wanted most to give him all these years.
It was the earliest thing Aston knew Qin Siyu had wanted after they met.
He had to give it to him.
To show that anything Qin Siyu wanted, he would give him.
Qin Siyu understood. He gently fastened the watch around his wrist; it fit perfectly.
How strange. Now he, too, was wearing a gold watch!
They wore matching watches. Fingers intertwined, they sat on the hilltop in the night, overlooking the city and the sea.
Qin Siyu felt nothing but happiness. “Kingsy, we got together in 1934, and now it’s 1941. We’ve been together more than seven years. In China, older people often say that after seven years together, two people start to dislike each other. They might even grow to hate or resent each other and no longer want to be together. America has a notion of the eighth anniversary being a ‘pottery anniversary,’ doesn’t it? As if a marriage could shatter easily. I used to worry about that, but now it’s been seven years and nine months—”
Aston teased him. “So you really do want to break up?”
“No.” Qin Siyu smiled. “I only want us to keep being together, forever and ever. How could seven years be enough? Seventy years wouldn’t be enough. Nor seven hundred, seven thousand, or seventy thousand. It’s so strange. How could people who love each other become tired of each other in only seven years?”
He meant every word.
Seven years was so short.
Even seventy years was only ten times as long. That felt terribly short too. Only ten times! How could such passionate feelings possibly go bad in that span?
Seven hundred years was the same. Only a hundred times as long. Still so short.
Even seven thousand years, seventy thousand years, were so very short: a thousand times, ten thousand times, that was all.
Of course, even after death they could go on loving each other forever in hell.
“Me too.” Aston fixed his blue eyes on him. “Seany, me too.”
When they returned “home,” they sensed that something was wrong the moment they stepped out of the car.
The air seemed murderous, tense as a tightly drawn string.
They went upstairs together.
The front door stood wide open. The frame was split, and the lock had been ripped out. The gaping doorway looked like a great hole waiting to swallow someone. Neighbors poked their heads out to stare.
The Aston family’s security men quietly appeared behind them. All were retired police officers, boxers, or former soldiers.
Alex Aston stood inside, consumed by fury, an air of brutality surrounding him.
Strangely, Qin Siyu had never met Alex Aston, yet the moment he caught sight of that back he knew, with absolute certainty, who it was.
Kingsy’s father.
Looking inside, he saw that their entire “home” had been wrecked.
Qin Siyu had hung a photograph of the two of them on the wall, the one they had taken together in 1933. Hollywood-style, they were walking toward the camera side by side. Qin Siyu’s jacket was open over a vest and tie, with a pocket watch in the vest pocket. He looked at the camera with the hint of a smile. Aston, as always, was tall and handsome, his gaze languid and his suit jacket draped over his arm.
Now the picture hung crooked, like someone on the verge of death. The glass had shattered. Several pieces in the center had already fallen and been pulverized on the floor, while the shards remaining around the edges pointed like knives at the two people in the picture.
All the flowers and plants Qin Siyu had grown lay crushed on the floor, trampled beneath the feet of the many people who had come through. They were dead.
The walls were ruined too, with great holes in places and pits and dents everywhere.
Qin Siyu quietly took it all in.
The home he had put so much care into furnishing… reduced to this.
He had spent ages getting the wall paint just right and even covered every nail hole. There had not been a flaw anywhere. Now, through the huge holes, he could see the structural beams.
They had cherished it so much.
Thankfully, he had already taken some things… back to Chinatown.
The two poems he had copied out, the poker chip, the cartridge casing, that collection of information about Aston… and the seal, too—
But Kingsy’s things…
Qin Siyu’s gaze fell on the rabbit lantern that had been thrown out.
The rabbit lantern was broken.
Luckily, he had brought the seashell home too.
Hearing the sound behind him, Alex Aston turned and met his only son’s eyes.
They watched one another in silence. Both possessed an overwhelming presence, and for a time the entire house fell deathly still.
“Kingsley,” Alex said, word by word, “a man. A Chinese man.”
“Yes.” Aston met his father’s gaze. “A man. A Chinese man.”
Alex looked toward Qin Siyu and recited mechanically, “Sean Chin. From Guangdong, China. Came to America at two. Undergraduate at UCB, doctorate at UCSF. Now working at SF General Hospital—”
Qin Siyu turned his calm, unreadable gaze toward him.
“Enough.” Alex suddenly raised a revolver. “Kingsley, come over here.”
Aston did not move a finger.
“Kingsley.” Alex took a few steps closer and pointed the gun at his son. “Come over here.”
Aston and Qin Siyu: “…”
Almost in the same instant, they clasped hands and flew out of the house before the guards could react, raced down the stairs, and slipped into the car as one. Aston stamped on the accelerator, started the engine, backed out, and disappeared into the night like an arrow shooting down the road.
As they climbed into the car, they heard Alex’s gun go off.
He had actually fired at his own son!
Gunfire tore through Christmas night. Every street was decorated for the holiday. Colored lights hung beneath the neighbors’ eaves; wreaths adorned the doors. Wooden reindeer, sleighs, and Santa Clauses stood on front lawns, while brightly lit Christmas trees shone through great windows. Every family was celebrating.
Against that festive backdrop, Aston and Qin Siyu shot out of the house and streaked along the street like an arrow, gunshots ringing behind them.
But Alex had men stationed along the roadside and at street corners.
They could not shake their pursuers completely. Someone was always following the car, so they decided to let themselves go for just one night.
Since they had been discovered anyway, they might as well let themselves go.
They would do the things they had always wanted to do.
They drove all the way to Berkeley, the place that mattered most.
The place where they had met, learned each other’s names, passed countless hours together, and made countless memories.
They were wild with it. The clock tower was open all day on Christmas, and they took the elevator floor by floor to the top. There, embracing on the tower, they abandoned all restraint and kissed.
On the side facing the campus gate, they held each other tightly and kissed with abandon.
People nearby stared in utter shock. Two men, one white and one Chinese, kissing atop Berkeley’s clock tower!
Several girls covered their mouths. A few boys exclaimed, “What the…”
But the two men were both so beautiful.
Before anyone could react, they burst out laughing, ran back down the tower hand in hand, and drove to San Francisco again in Aston’s car.
They headed straight for Union Square.
The city’s most important commercial center.
Union Square was crowded. Every display window shone with light, streetcars and automobiles passed incessantly, and the great Christmas tree glittered with ornaments and lights. People carrying shopping bags walked arm in arm with their families. Everywhere was lively.
The huge Christmas tree was beautiful, decorated in a “White Christmas” theme. Its branches were covered in snow, green and white together. A ring of red candles stood around the base. They looked as though they were burning, but only when one came closer could one see that they were electric decorations.
Several people were waiting in line to take photographs, though not very many. Few people owned cameras in those days.
A couple had just finished taking a picture when Aston and Qin Siyu rushed beneath the tree, into the circle of candles, heedless of everything else.
They had not come to take a photograph. They had come—
Before a great ring of onlookers, they wrapped their arms around each other again and pressed their lips together.
The crowd erupted into discussion once more.
One white man, one Chinese man, and both were men. They…!
The Chinese man had not even made a token effort to disguise himself as a woman! He was openly wearing a man’s overcoat, a man’s suit, and men’s leather shoes, kissing another man in front of the Christmas tree in the busiest part of town!
Amid the uproar, they kissed for a long, long time.
Perhaps because the crowd was so dense, the men following them caught up. They froze for a moment but chose not to intervene.
When the kiss ended, the two ran off again.
“Kingsy,” Qin Siyu asked in the car, “if we manage to escape, would you take my surname, Chin, from then on?”
A smile bloomed on Aston’s lips. “Yes. Of course I would.”
Qin Siyu pretended to worry. “Would having a Chinese surname seem terribly strange?”
Aston smiled again, looking utterly happy. “Maybe. But it would only be right. The person who gives me life should be the one who gives me my name.”
“Mm.” Qin Siyu smiled too. “For the first time, I’m grateful for the character ‘Qin.’ It has elegance. It suits you.”
Their third destination was the Golden Gate Bridge.
They stood at the entrance to the bridge, embraced again, and kissed.
The Golden Gate Bridge towered high above them. Countless cars entered San Francisco over the bridge; their passengers could see the two of them.
A musical celebration was being held on the grass below the bridge. People were singing traditional holiday songs merrily.
As the two men kissed, the crowd was singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”
They sang together:
“We Wish you a Merry Christmas~
We Wish you a Merry Christmas~
We Wish you a Merry Christmas，
And a Happy New Year!”
The joyful echoes rang through the air:
“A Merry Christmas， And a Happy New Year!”
By now Alex had completely lost patience.
All his people were professional police officers or soldiers, and Qin Siyu could not shake them.
On receiving their orders, the Aston family’s men forcibly separated the two, pinned Aston down, and shoved their “young master” into a car that sped away into the night wind.
Aston’s final words were, “I love you.”
Qin Siyu ran after him a few steps but could not catch up. He shouted, “Kingsy—!!!”
But his voice was too small. It was swallowed by the noise and never reached him.
His eyes remained fixed on the taillights of the car carrying Aston away. In his ears were the whistles of patrolling warships and the roar of fighter planes taking off and landing; an aircraft carrier out of San Diego was about to enter the port. And on the other side, the cheerful Christmas song still rang out:
“We Wish you a Merry Christmas~~~And a Happy New Year!”