THE FRAGRANCE OF RESCUE
Whisper by Chang Yu-Ko; translated by Roddy Flagg
Honford StarOctober 2021Selected by Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
The legacy of Japanese colonialism is a recurring theme in much East Asian literature. In Chang Yu-Ko’s Whisper, the protagonist must face down a vengeful spirit born from the colonial era. To make things even more complicated, the nature of the ghost is tied up in the folklore of the indigenous Taiwanese, a group of people who themselves were colonised by the Chinese. Taxi driver Wu Shih-Sheng, the book’s thoroughly unlikable antihero, is haunted by visions that force him to travel to a sacred mountain outside of Taipei to kill the spirit at the source. Lost, hungry and seemingly alone, he finds refuge in a rest area built years before by the Japanese colonial government, where he discovers he is sharing the space with a young Japanese woman in a kimono. – Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
He knocked gently on the door and it was soon slid open, by a girl of junior-high-school age. She had fair white skin, peach-pink lips, with her hair prettily arranged in the loops and topknot of the Japanese nihongami † style. She wore a pale brown kimono of good quality and seemed, overall, to give off an air of both innocence and freshness.
What is a young Japanese girl doing living here?
Shih-sheng stood in the doorway, unsure if he should enter. But the girl, apparently unable to speak, opened the door more widely, as if indicating he was welcome to come in.
Maybe she can tell I need help?
“I’m sorry to bother you. Do you have anything hot to eat?”
The girl inclined her head in thought. Then she nodded and walked quickly down a corridor that stretched out behind her, disappearing into a doorway and leaving Shih-sheng alone.
She soon stuck her head out again, beckoning for Shih-sheng to follow her, before disappearing once more.
“It’s OK. I can just eat here!” he called.
He was worried about getting dirt on the gleaming wooden floors, but there was no response to his shouts, nor did the girl reappear to beckon him onwards again.
Maybe she’s deaf?
He couldn’t risk taking his shoes off – his socks were dripping wet, his feet already frost-bitten and badly swollen. There was a real danger he would never get his shoes back on. He scraped off the worst of the mud and stepped inside.
He came first to a drawing room. The girl wasn’t there, nor was anyone else. The room held a low heated table surrounded by four cushions. In a recess in the wall, a scroll and a memorial tablet were on display. Everything was gracefully arranged.
Continuing along the corridor, after passing three doorways, he reached the kitchen, from where the clanking of a pan could be heard. He found the young girl warming a pot of soup on the stove and a smell that was, to him, the fragrance of rescue. He fought back tears.
The girl brought him a wooden bowl full of steaming miso soup.
“Thank you!”
That was as much as Shih-sheng could say before taking the bowl and gulping down the contents.
Next, she brought him some pickles and fried eggplant, and then sweets of azuki paste and glutinous rice she took fresh from an oven. As Shih-sheng wolfed all this down, the girl slid open the window and reached out and pulled a cardboard box inside from the sill. Shih-sheng saw through the open window the snow was starting to gather on the ground and turn the landscape white.
He noticed too that the construction of the window was odd: inner and outer panels of glass, with a third middle panel of mesh. There was enough space between the panels to store the cardboard box, which hadn’t been outside as he had first thought. The girl opened the box and took out cabbage, radishes, and mushrooms, which she sliced up before adding them to the soup on the stove.
That was an unusual window.
Despite the snow outside, Shih-sheng didn’t feel cold. He kept thinking about the way the window was made, and the natural refrigeration it created for the vegetables. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made.
I’ve never seen anything like that in Taiwan.
He put down his soup bowl and looked at the girl’s back.
This is very odd.
Something had got stuck between his teeth. He eased it out with his tongue and spat it into his hand. Something small and thornlike.
Oh, just a fish bone.
After a second look, he saw that if it was a fish bone, it was a fish bone with joints. And as far as he knew, fish bones weren’t black. So what was it?
The girl, sensing something amiss, turned to look at Shih-sheng.
There was a long and ominous silence.
Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.
A hair floated down from the ceiling and landed softly on the table in front of Shih-sheng.
Now what? ◉
† Nihongami refer to a group of traditional Japanese hairstyles that often designate a social role or identity. Distinctive for their upswept style and use of “wings” – often held together by wax or bamboo combs – nihongami are only today common among sumo wrestlers and geishas.