The Light of My Eye
by Wang Yang
I was awake as Dr. Chou Tao-hsiang operated to give me a corneal transplant. They
had deadened the nerves around the eye, but I could hear metallic instruments clanking and
Dr. Chou speaking.
My right eye had been inflamed and swollen for more than three years. When I
checked into Taiwan’s tri-Service General Hospital in Taipei, I could hardly see out of it, and
my left eye was severely hyperopic. Doctors discovered that I was suffering for keratitis
(inflammation of the cornea).
“You could have picked it up from towels or from swimming pools,” I was told.
“I’m a swimming instructor at an army officers’ school,” I said.
“That’s probably how you caught it,” the doctor said.
About a year later, I learned that a corneal transplant could restore my sight to my
now blind eye.
When I told my wife, she brought out her savings deposit book. She had managed
to save some $500 after years of hard work.
“If this isn’t enough, we’ll try to get more,” she said, adding: “You’re not like me. An
illiterate person is blind thought he can see. A man who can read needs both eyes.”
I put my name on Dr. Chou’s waiting list. A month later, he phoned me. “A driver was
involved in a bad car accident,” he said. “Before he died, he told his wife to sell parts of his
body to help support their children. Could you spare $250?”
The operation and expenses would come to a further $200. I agreed, and was told to
check into hospital the following day. I was extremely lucky. People waited for years before
a cornea became available and I told my wife how grateful I was for making the operation
possible.
As I was being wheeled out of the operating room, my daughter Yung put her lips
close to my ear and said, “Everything went well. Mother wanted to come, but she was
afraid.”
“Tell her not to come,” I said. “But tell her I’m all right. She is not to worry.”
I was 19 when I married on my parents’ order. My father and my wife’s father were
close friends and had pledged that if their wives gave birth to a girl and boy, the children
should be married.
I had never set eyes on the girl who was to be my wife until the day she was carried
to our house in a bridal sedan chair. After bowing to heaven and earth, she was let to my
bedroom. When at last I lifted the red brocade of her bridal headdress, I gasped with horror.
Her face was cruelly covered with pockmarks, her nose was a deformity, and beneath sparse
eyebrows, her scarred eyelids made her eyes seem swollen. She was 19, and looked 40.
I fled to my mother’s room and cried all night. My mother told me that I must accept
my fate. Homely girls bring good luck, pretty ones court sorrow. But nothing she said
reduced my anguish. I would not share a room with my wife, and I did not speak to her. I
lodged at school. When summer vacation came, I refused to come home until my father
sent a cousin to fetch me.
My wife was cooking supper when I arrived and raised her head in a smile when she
saw me. I walked right past her. After supper, my mother said to me privately, “Son, you are
being very cruel. Her face is unattractive, but she does not have an ugly heart.”
“No, it must be beautiful,” I stormed. “Otherwise, how could you have made me
marry her?”
My mother’s face grew pale. “She is an extremely good girl, understanding and
considerate,” she said. “She has been in the house for more than six months now and works
from morning to night in the kitchen and at the mill. She has not uttered a word of
complaint about the way you have treated her. I have not seen her shed a tear. But she is
shedding them inside. Do you want her to live a widow although she has a husband? Put
yourself in her place.”
My wife and I began to share the same bedroom, but nothing changed the way I felt.
She always kept her face down and spoke softly. If I argued with her, she would raise her
head to give a submissive smile, then quickly lower it again. She’s like a ball of cotton wool, I
thought. No will, no temper.
In the 30 years that followed, I seldom smiled at my wife and never went out in her
company. Indeed, I often wished her dead.
And yet, my wife proved to be endowed with more patience and love than anyone I
know. When I first came to Taiwan, I held a low rank in the army, and my income was barely
enough to pay for the rent and food. The baby was often ill, and we had to cope with
medical expenses as well. When my wife was not looking after the household, she wove
straw hats and mats to earn a little money.
When we moved to a fishing harbor in the east, she darned fishing nets and, when
we moved north, she learned to paint designs on pottery. We never lived in army quarters
because the truth was we both feared her meeting people I know. I was often away from
home, but I knew that I needn’t worry about our two children or the household, with her
looking after everything.
After the operation, my daughter Yung brought me a transistor radio to occupy the
long hours while the bandage remained on my eyes. But I had plenty of time to think and
my thoughts kept returning to my wife. I was somewhat ashamed for telling her not to
come to see me.
After two weeks, I learned that the stitched would soon be removed. I could not
contain my happiness. “When I recover,” I told Yung, “I want to pay a visit to the grave of
the man who gave me his cornea.”
But I was nervous, for there was a chance that the transplant would not succeed.
When they removed the bandage from my right eye, I scarcely dared open it.
“Do you see any light?” Dr. Chou asked.
I blinked. “Yes, from above.”
“Yes, that’s the lamp,” he said, and patted me on the shoulder. “It’s a success. You
can go home a week from today.”
During the week, he tested my eyes every day. First, I could see shadows and the
number of fingers in his hands.
On the day I was going home, I could see the window, the bed, and even the
teacups on the table.
“Mother’s making your favorite dishes to welcome you home,” Yung said when she
came for me.
“She’s a good wife and a good mother,” I replied, words I would never say before.
Yung and I climbed into a taxi. She was strangely silent all the way home. As I walked
into the house, my wife was coming from the kitchen with a plate of food. When she saw
me, she lowered her head immediately. “You’re back,” she murmured.
“Thank you for letting me see,” I said. It was the first time I remembered ever
thanking her for anything.
She walked past me abruptly and put the food on the table. Leaning against the wall
with her back towards me, she began to sob. ”It is enough to hear you say this. I have not
lived in vain.”
Yung burst into the room in tears. “Tell him!” she cried. “Let father know that you
gave the cornea for his eyes!” She shook her mother. “Tell him!”
“I only did what I could”, my wife said.
I grabbed her by the shoulders, and looked closely at her face. Her left iris was
opaque, as my right one had been.
“Golden Flower!” It was the first time I spoke her name. “Why……why did you do it?” I
demanded, shaking her hard.
“Because…..you are my husband”, she said, burying her head in my shoulder. I held
her tight. Then I got down and knelt at her feet.