The Vagrants (11 page)

All of a sudden, someone started to shout. A dog darted across the alley, yelping, chased by a policeman waving his baton. “Quick, they're coming,” a voice shouted. The man who had been chasing the dog ran back, and Nini looked out again. Someone was dragged into the alley. For a brief moment, Nini thought she saw the black hair of a woman, but before she could take another look, several men lifted the person onto the gurney, which was at once covered by a piece of white cloth. The body struggled under the sheet, but a few more hands pinned it down. “What is it?” Little Fourth asked. Nini did not answer, her heartbeat quickening when she saw a red spot on the white sheet covering the body, at first about the size of a plate, then spreading into an irregular shape.

A few minutes later, the body was lifted off the gurney, its legs kicking; yet strangely, no noise came from the struggling body. Nini felt an odd heaviness in her chest, as if she was caught in one of those nightmares where, no matter how hard you tried, you could not make a sound. The policemen shuffled the body inside the police car. The men and women in the white lab coats climbed back into the ambulance, and a moment later, both vehicles turned onto the main street and, with long and urgent siren wails, disappeared.

“What is it?” Little Fourth asked again.

Nini shook her head and said she did not know.

“What is it? What is it?” Little Fifth said. Nini told her to stop being a parrot. She led them to the entrance of the alley where the ambulance had parked a few minutes ago. Before the younger girls could notice the drops of blood on the ground, Nini dragged her bad foot across them and smeared them into the dust. Little Fourth pointed to a black cotton shoe on the ground, and Little Fifth picked it up. There was a hole in the rubber sole; she pushed a finger through it and wiggled the finger. Nini told Little Fifth to get rid of the shoe, and when she refused, Nini grabbed it and threw it as hard as she could across the alley. Little Fifth started to cry and then stopped when a huge rumble came from the sky. Nini and her sisters looked up. An army helicopter flew over them like a huge green dragonfly. “Helicopter,” Little Fourth said, and Little Fifth echoed her, both of them pointing their fingers at the sky.

Soon the gates to the stadium opened, and people swarmed out, all chattering. Nini grabbed her sisters by their hands and walked closer to the crowd.

“The woman did not say a word throughout the meeting,” a man said. “I wonder if they drugged her.”

Another man swore that he had seen the woman open her mouth during the meeting. “She didn't look drugged at all to me,” he said.

“How could she speak? They must have cut her trachea,” another man said. “Didn't you see her neck was covered by a bandage?”

“Trachea? You fool. How could she live if her trachea was cut? It was her vocal cords that they cut.”

The first man shrugged. “She couldn't speak, for sure.”

“Pardon me,” Nini said, and raised her voice when she was not heard. “Pardon me, Uncles. Is the counterrevolutionary still in the stadium?”

“What's that to do with you?” one of the men said.

Nini stuttered and said they wanted to see the woman counterrevolutionary, but before she finished her sentence, she was cut off by the men. “What's there to see? They took her away first thing after the meeting was over. By now she's probably been shot.”

Disappointed, Nini told her sisters to stand farther away from the entrance so the crowd would not step on them. They waited until the crowd thinned and the last group of elementary students marched away. There was nothing for them to do now but go home.

THE ARMY PILOT
did not look down at the city of Muddy River and its many upturned heads when he flew the helicopter over the giant statue of Chairman Mao. The flight to the provincial capital was no more than thirty minutes, and after that was the lunch he looked forward to. The meal, after a special operation, with roast chickens, beef ribs, and steamed fish, was fought over even among the best-maintained pilots. He thought about the first year he had joined the army, sixteen and a half and a full head shorter than the training officer who, at formations, liked to spit in his face and kick his legs. For the first three months they had not had a taste of meat. The pilot wished his training officer could see him now, one stripe and three stars on his shoulders. His father had often said that he who could suffer the insufferable would one day become a man above all men. A man above you all, the pilot thought, imagining the boys running in the crowded alleys, pointing out the helicopter to one another.

Among the upturned heads was Bashi's. He was standing across the river from Hunchback Island. The island, located at the eastern end of town where the Muddy River widened and turned down south, was a long and narrow piece of land in the shape of a whale's back. In the summer it was overrun by wild geese and ducks when their migration brought them north; in those months, children liked to swim out to the island and steal the eggs, which, unless cooked with the strongest spice, had a strong, unpleasant taste; the egg hunting was more for the fun of it than for practical reasons. Apart from the wild birds and children, once in a while other visitors included the police, who would clean up the island, as it was the site where executions for Muddy River and several of the surrounding counties took place. The last time someone had been shot dead on the island was the summer two years before, when a man from a neighboring county had been found guilty of raping a young woman and nearly strangling her to death. The policemen had cleared the island ahead of time, but a few daredevil young men swam there and hid underwater just offshore. Later they claimed to have seen the man's head pop like a watermelon at the single shot. Bashi was not one of the young men, but after a while he believed that he had been; he told people about how the man's member had pointed to the sky, inside his pants, even after he dropped dead like a heavy sack. “A man like him, you know, with problems down there,” Bashi said to men and women alike, with a knowing smile.

Bashi watched the red flags and the yellow tape that circled the island. With the unthawed river, there was no place to hide underwater, and Bashi was plagued by the yearning to outwit the authorities so he could get onto the island. If only he could will himself to become invisible! He would slip onto the island easily, walk around the policemen, and blow cool and tickling exhalations onto their cheeks. He could even talk to them in the charming and breathy voice of a young woman, calling them intimate nicknames, thanking them for finishing her painful life for her, inviting them to join her for some real fun on the other side. Bashi imagined the policemen, especially the one who had threatened him earlier in the street, scared out of their wits and wetting their white uniform pants. He guffawed until he had to lean on a tree to catch his breath. No one would dare to set foot on the haunted island again; he could build a hut on the island and live with the woman, who would certainly devote her life to him because he was her savior.

Twenty-eight the woman was, Bashi remembered from the announcement. Twenty-eight was not too old. Bashi lived with his grandmother, a much older woman, without a problem, and he was sure the woman would love him as his grandmother did. If she became too lonely on the island when he had to go home and spend time with his grandmother—certainly the woman would understand such an arrangement—he could ask Nini to be her companion, a handmaiden even, a trustworthy one because no one would be interested in what Nini knew. He then realized that Nini was probably waiting by the willow tree now, her small crooked face looking serious. Oh well, he could always find her later and spin some tall tales about the execution so she would be entertained. It was hard to make her smile, her little rag face with the scowl, but Bashi would not mind trying again.

Someone tapped Bashi's shoulder and said, “What are you doing here, smiling like an idiot?”

Bashi looked up and saw Kwen studying his face. Kwen had never married, and Bashi had always wanted to ask him what it was like being an old bachelor, having no woman to warm the bed or wash his feet for him; Bashi wondered whether Kwen dreamed about women the way he himself did, but such questions might be offensive. There were only a handful of people in the world that Bashi would not bother with his chattiness, and Kwen was one of them. People said Kwen was not an easy character. All the dogs in town behaved like kittens in front of him. Rumors were that the mountain wolves were scared of him; snakes too, and even the black bears. Bashi had never doubted these claims. He had once seen Kwen whip his black dog, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth; his face had been almost gentle, with a patient smile, but the dog, the beast that had been mean to nearly every creature in the world, had been docile as a lamb, its head low to the ground, as if begging for mercy.

“Did you hear me?” Kwen said again. Close-up, Kwen looked like any old man, a face with its usual wrinkles, squinting eyes, two front teeth missing and the rest stained yellowish black from cigarette smoking. Bashi smiled and raised both hands as if in surrender. “What a surprise. What are you doing here?”

“I'm here for what you're here for.”

“What am I here for?” Bashi asked with great interest.

“The execution, no?”

“Wrong. I'm here for a meeting,” Bashi said. “With a beautiful woman.”

Kwen shook his head. “If you said you were here for a date with death, I'd be more inclined to believe you.”

Bashi spat three times onto his palm. “Bad omen. Don't say that.”

“Where did you get that womanish habit?”

Bashi pretended not to hear Kwen. “So what are you doing here?” Bashi said.

“I'm having a date with death.”

“Come on,” Bashi said. He searched both coat pockets and finally found in his pants pocket the pack of cigarettes he had bought two weeks earlier—he had tried smoking four or five times, but he had found, once again, that he did not like the charred taste. Bashi tapped the bottom of the pack until one cigarette dropped out into his palm. “Here,” he said, and pinched the cigarette into a perfect round shape before handing it to Kwen.

Kwen looked at the cigarette dubiously. Bashi sighed and handed over the pack. Kwen lit the cigarette and put the rest of the pack away. A police car drove to the riverbank, followed by a covered truck. A squad of policemen jumped out of the truck, and a moment later, the counterrevolutionary was carried out of the police car by her arms. Kwen and Bashi watched the group cross the frozen river silently. From where they stood they could barely see the woman's face.

“Is she what you're here for?” Bashi said.

Yes, Kwen replied; he was coming to collect her body.

“Why is it you who collects the body and not me?” Bashi said.

“Because I'm paid to.”

“By whom?”

“Her parents.”

“Where is the money?” Bashi said.

Kwen patted the breast pocket of his jacket. “Here.”

“Can I see?” Bashi asked. He did not trust Kwen's words. A woman was a woman, and Bashi knew that Kwen was here because he wanted to take a look at her, in whatever condition they would find her.

Kwen brought out a small package from his pocket. It looked like a thick pad, but who could guarantee that Kwen had not wrapped up some toilet paper in it? Bashi was going to inspect the package more closely, when Kwen slid it back into his pocket and said, “Keep your paws off my money.”

“How much did they pay you?” Bashi asked.

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I can pay the same amount to you for not collecting her body.”

“Who will, then? You can't leave a body to rot by itself on the island.”

“I will,” Bashi said.

Kwen grinned. “You are more fun than I thought,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I've never seen an idiot as interesting as you.”

Bashi thought of acting offended, but on second thought, he laughed with Kwen. Perhaps they could become friends if he could keep entertaining him. People would regard him in a different light if they saw that he alone could befriend Kwen. A fox feared by all animals because he befriended a tiger, the old story occurred to Bashi, but what was wrong with being a smart fox? “Can I help you collect the body? It must be heavy for one person,” Bashi said.

“I don't have money to pay for your help,” Kwen said.

“I can pay you if you let me help,” Bashi said. “At least let me take a look at her.”

Kwen looked at Bashi for a long moment and laughed aloud. A few sparrows pecking on an open field between the trees flew away. Bashi smiled nervously. Then they heard a single shot, crisp, with an echo of metal. Kwen stopped laughing, and they both looked at the flocks of birds flying away from the island. Nothing happened for a few minutes, and then the squad of policemen marched across the river, their heavy boots treading on the old snow. “Crack,” Bashi whispered to himself, and imagined a big hole in the broken ice devouring all those people he despised.

“It's my job now,” Kwen said when the police car and the truck drove away.

“How about me?” Bashi said.

“How much can you pay?”

Bashi stuck two fingers out; Kwen shook his head and Bashi added one finger, and then another. Kwen looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Okay, a hundred, is that okay?” Bashi said, almost begging. “A hundred is probably more than the family is paying you, no?”

Kwen smiled. “That is my business,” he said, and signaled Bashi to follow him onto the ice.

SIX

         
M
rs. Gu did not reply when Teacher Gu told her that lunch was ready. He had found her sitting still in a chair when he returned from his visit to Old Kwen, and ever since then she had been a statue. He tried to make small noises with every little chore that he could invent for himself. When he ran out of things to do, he sat down and forced himself to take a short nap. He was awakened by people returning from the denunciation ceremony men talking and locking their bicycles, women calling their children for lunch. He got up and started noisily cutting, boiling, frying things to prepare lunch. He tried not to think about what had happened outside his home—the only way to live on, he had known for most of his adulthood, was to focus on the small patch of life in front of one's eyes.

Teacher Gu sat down at the table with a full bowl of rice and reminded his wife again to eat at least a little. She replied that she had no appetite.

“One has to be responsible for one's body,” Teacher Gu said. He had always insisted on the importance of eating regular and nutritious meals for a healthy body and mind. If there was one thing he prided himself on, it was that he never gave in to difficulties to the point where he ignored his duty to his body. Life was unpredictable, he had taught his wife and daughter, and eating and sleeping were among the few things one could rely on to outwit life and its capriciousness . Teacher Gu chewed and swallowed carefully. He might not have added enough water, and the grains of rice were dry and hard to eat. The fibers from the cabbage hurt his already loosened teeth, but he chewed on, trying to set a good example for his wife, as he had always done.

When he finished the meal, he walked over to her. She did not move and after a moment of hesitation, he put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched and he withdrew his hand. It could have been worse, he said; they should look at the positive side.

“Worse than what?” she said.

He did not answer. After a while, he said, “The Huas cannot do it. I've asked a janitor from the electric plant to help.”

“Where will she be?” Mrs. Gu asked.

“He'll find a spot. I asked him not to mark it.”

Mrs. Gu stood up. “I need to go and find her,” she said.

“I thought we had agreed,” Teacher Gu said. Together they had made the decision, he suggesting and she consenting, that they would not bury her themselves. They were too old for the task, their hearts easily breakable.

She had changed her mind, Mrs. Gu said, and she looked for her coat; she could not let a stranger send off her daughter.

“It's too late,” Teacher Gu said. “It's over now.”

“I want to see her one last time.”

Teacher Gu did not speak. For the past ten years, he had visited Shan only twice, at the beginning of her sentence and right before the retrial. The first time he had gone with his wife, and they had both been hopeful despite the fact that Shan had been given a ten-year sentence. Shan was eighteen then, still a child. Ten years were not hard to go through, he said to his wife and daughter, just a small fraction of one's long life. Things could be worse, he told them.

Shan was sneering the entire time that he spoke. Afterward she said, “Baba, doesn't it make you tired to talk about things you yourself don't even believe in?”

“I believe in good patience,” replied Teacher Gu. It did not surprise him that his daughter behaved this way toward him. The arrest had come as a shock for Teacher Gu and his wife; they had thought of their daughter as a revolutionary youth. Only later did they learn that Shan had written a letter to her boyfriend and expressed doubts about Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution. Teacher Gu and his wife had not known she had a boyfriend. He would have warned Shan had he been told about the man; he would have said—once and again, even if she did not listen—that betrayals often came from the most intimate and beloved people in one's life. He would have demanded that she bring the boyfriend to meet them. But would they have been able to make a difference? The boyfriend turned the letter in to the city Revolution Committee. Shan got a ten-year sentence and her boyfriend was awarded the privilege of joining the army, even though his background—a family of capitalists and counterrevolutionaries—had not been good enough for him to enlist.

People were the most dangerous animals in the world, Teacher Gu thought of telling his daughter during that visit ten years ago; stay small and unimportant, like a grain of dust, he thought of advising her, but before he had the chance, his daughter refused to stay in the room and signaled for the guards to take her away.

Teacher Gu had not visited his daughter after that. His wife had gone but only once or twice a year. She had worried that too many visits would harm Shan's record and add more time to her term. They rarely talked about their daughter, each in secret hoping that ten years would somehow pass without any incidents. What came at the end of the term, however, was a notice saying that Shan would receive a retrial—she had been unrepentant in prison and had written, year after year, letters of appeal for herself, and personal journals that contained the most evil slanders of Communism.

At the weekly meeting at his school, the party secretary asked Teacher Gu to share his thoughts on his daughter's upcoming retrial. He had nothing to say, Teacher Gu answered, and all the party members shook their heads at him in disappointment. “Let me tell you what I think, since you have nothing to say,” said the party secretary. “Last time your daughter was sentenced for her slander of our Communist cause. She was young and educable then, and was given this chance to correct her wrong notion. But what happened? She didn't take the opportunity. She not only refused to reclaim her love and trust for our party and our Communist cause, she also argued against us from the most counterrevolutionary point of view. That,” the secretary said, his index and middle fingers pointing at Teacher Gu, “will never be tolerated.”

Teacher Gu did not tell his wife about the meeting. Such a meeting must have taken place in her work unit too, and a similar message conveyed. He heard her weeping sometimes at night. When he tried to comfort her, she acted cheerful and said that they should not worry too much. Shan was still a young woman, she said, and she had already spent ten years in prison; the judge would be lenient and the retrial would be only a form of warning.

Teacher Gu did not say anything to encourage his wife's blind confidence. A few days later he went to the prison for a visit. The guards were rude to him, but he had become used to people's abuse over the years and thought nothing in particular about their behavior. What shocked him was Shan's condition—she was not the defiant, lively girl he had known ten years earlier. Her prison uniform, gray and torn, smelled of filth; her short hair, filthy too, had thinned and there was a big bald patch in the middle of her scalp; her skin was so pale it was almost transparent, and her eyes were wide and dreamy. She recognized him immediately, but it seemed that what had happened ten years earlier was all gone from her memory. She started talking when she sat down. She told him that she had written letters to Chairman Mao and he had replied, apologizing for the wrong decision and promising a release. It had been two years since Chairman Mao had passed away, but Teacher Gu, sitting in a cold sweat, did not point that out to Shan. She talked fast, about all the things she planned to do after her release. In her mind, she had a fiancé waiting for her outside the prison walls, and the first thing they would do was go to city hall to apply for a marriage license. Teacher Gu did not protest when, at the end of the visiting period, two guards grabbed Shan's arms roughly and forced her out of the room. She was still talking, but he did not hear her. He stared at her uniform pants, stained with dark menstrual blood. Death was far from the worst that could happen to a human being. Something bigger than fear crept over him; he wished he could finish his daughter's life for her.

Teacher Gu did not know how long his daughter had been mad, nor did he know if his wife was aware of this fact. Perhaps she had been keeping it from him for years. In turn he lied about a note from the prison informing them that Shan's visiting rights had been stripped away because of disobedience. His wife sighed but did not question further, which made him wonder if she accepted the order willingly for his sake. The death sentence came to him as a relief; perhaps it was for his wife too, but he had no way of knowing. With the failure of the appeal, Mrs. Gu started to talk about seeing Shan one last time, but her request for a visit was turned down, no reason given.

Mrs. Gu put on her coat. Women were like children, Teacher Gu thought, the way they tenaciously held on to things that had little meaning. When he begged her to stay, she raised her voice and asked why he did not let her see their daughter.

“Seeing is not as good as staying blind,”
Teacher Gu said, quoting an ancient poem.

“We've been blind all our lives,” said Mrs. Gu. “Why don't you want to open your eyes and see the facts?”

In her eyes he recognized the same defiance that he had once seen in Shan's eyes. “The dead have gone. Let's forget about all of it,” he said.

“How can you forget so easily?”

“It's a necessity,” he said. “A necessity is never easy but we must accept it.”

“You've always wanted us to accept everything without questioning,” his wife said. “Why do we have to live without backbones?”

Teacher Gu averted his eyes. He had no answer for his wife, and he wished she would let it go without prolonging this suffering for both of them. Before he could say something, he felt a sudden dead-ness in the left side of his body and he had to kneel down. He looked up at his wife for help but his eyes could no longer see. She rushed to support him but he was too heavy for her; she let him lie down slowly and he felt the coldness of the cement floor seeping through his clothes and numbing his whole body. “Don't go,” he begged, longing for a fire, for her warm and soft body. For a moment he was confused and thought he saw his first wife's face, still as young and beautiful as thirty years ago. “Don't leave me,” he said. “Don't make me lose you again.”

THE WOMAN'S BODY
was lying facedown on the crystallized snow, her arms wrenched and bound behind her back in an intricate way. Her head, unlike what Bashi had imagined, was in one complete piece. He stopped a few steps away and looked at the bloodstains on her prisoner's uniform. “Is she dead?” he asked.

“Why, are you afraid now?” Kwen said, and bent down to study the body. “I didn't pay you to tag along.”

“Afraid? No, no. Just making sure she has no chance.” “No chance at all,” Kwen said, kicking one leg of the body and then the other. He squatted down next to the body and pointed to the woman's back. “Look here. They bound her arms this way so her left middle finger was pointing right at where her heart was.”

“Why the heart?”

“So that the executioner knew where to aim his gun.”

On the walk across the frozen river to the island, Bashi had conjured a vivid story about a blown-away head, a bloody brain blooming on the snow like spilled paint. He had imagined telling the tale to the townspeople who stood around him in awe. He went closer now and squatted beside Kwen. The bloodstain on her back was about the size of a bowl, and it amazed Bashi that such a little wound could finish a life. The woman's face was half-hidden in the snow, impossible for one to make out her features. Bashi touched her scalp; it was cold, but the hair, soft and thin, felt strangely alive.

“Let's get down to work,” Kwen said. He cut the bonds with a knife, but the woman's arms stayed where they were behind her back. Kwen shrugged. He took out a used towel from his coat pocket, wrapped it around the woman's head twice, and tied it with a knot on the back of her head.

“What's that for?” Bashi asked.

“So we don't have to see her eyes.”

“Why?”

“That's where her ghost looks out, to see anybody responsible for her death. Once the ghost sees you, she'll never let you go,” Kwen said. “Especially a young female ghost. It'll come and suck you dry.”

“Superstition,” Bashi said. “I would rather have someone to suck me dry.”

Kwen snorted a half laugh. “I've eaten more grains of salt than you've eaten rice. It's up to you whether you believe me, but don't cry for help when you need me.”

“What are you afraid of? We're only helping her,” Bashi said. He pointed to the middle part of the body. “What's that? Did she get another shot there?”

The two men came closer to examine the body's lower back, where the uniform had been soaked in blood that already was dry and dark brown. Unable to lift the clothes by layers, Kwen tore hard at the fabric and tried to separate the clothes from the body.

“Be careful,” Bashi said.

“Of what? She won't feel a thing now.”

Bashi did not reply. When Kwen ripped the clothes off the body, they both looked at the exposed middle part of the woman, the bloody and gaping flesh opening like a mouth with an eerie smile. Bashi felt warm liquid rise in his throat and threw up by a bush. He grabbed a handful of snow and wiped his face, its coldness refreshing, reassuring.