change from the bottom of your hearts. You must know that the future has no place for man-eating men . . . "
11.
I know now that they ate my younger sister.
The sun did not come out and the door did not open. Every day two meals were brought to me.
As soon as I picked up the chopsticks, I would think of my brother; and I knew that he was solely responsible for the death of my sister. She was only five years old, and her adorable face is still vivid in my memory. Mother cried incessantly, but he persuaded her not to cry, probably because it made him uncomfortable since he himself had eaten her up. If he still felt the prick of his conscience . . .
Whether or not mother knew that sister was eaten up by brother was something that I shall never know.
Maybe mother knew but did not say anything because she also felt that it was as it should be. I recall that when I was four or five years old we were once sitting in the courtyard to keep cool. Brother said that when parents were sick, the children must, if they wanted to be filial, cut off a piece their own flesh and boil it and offer it to them to eat.[1] Mother did not say that that would not do. If it was all right to eat a slice, it was all right to eat a whole human being. But the way she cried that day was most heartbreaking. It moves me still as I recall it now.
It is a very strange world indeed!
12.
I must not think about it any longer.
- ↑ There is a superstition that such an act of piety would move the gods and bring about the recovery of the parents.
