The Vagrants

by Yiyun Li

  She returned the framed picture to the wall where it had hung for the past five years along with other pictures, relics of her life onstage between the ages of twelve and twenty-two. The studio, a small, win-dowless room on the top floor of the administration building, with padded walls and flickering fluorescent lights, had struck Kai at first as a place not much different from a prison cell. Han was the one who decorated the room, hanging up her pictures on the walls and a heart-shaped mirror behind the door, placing vases of plastic flowers on the shelves so they could bloom all year round without the need for sunshine or other care—to make the studio her very own, as Han insisted—when he helped her get the news announcer's position. One more reason to consider his marriage proposal, Kai's mother urged, thinking of other less privileged jobs that Kai could have been assigned to after her departure from the provincial theater troupe: teaching in an elementary school and struggling to make the children sing less cacophonously, or serving as one of those clerks who had little function other than filling the offices with pleasant feminine presence in the Cultural and Entertainment Department. Han, the only son of one of the most powerful couples in the city government, had been courting Kai for six months then, a perfect choice for her, according to her parents, who, both as middle-ranked clerks, had little status to help Kai, when younger faces had replaced Kai onstage. The most important success for a woman is not in her profession but in her marriage, Kai's father said when she thought of leaving Muddy River and seeking an acting career in Beijing or Shanghai; it is more of a challenge to retain the lifelong attention of one audience than to win the hearts of many who would forget her overnight. In her mother's absence, Kai's father explained all this, and it was not only his insight into the ephemeral nature of fame but also his unmistakable indication that Kai's mother—the more dominating and abusive one in their marriage—had failed, that made Kai reconsider her decision. A child who catches for the first time a glimpse of the darker side of her parents’ marriage is forced to enter the grown-up world, often against her nature and will, just as she was once pushed through a birth canal to claim her existence. For Kai, who had left home for the theater school at eight, this second birth came at a time when most of her school friends had ventured into marriage and early motherhood, and she made up her mind to marry into Han's family. That Kai's father had passed away shortly thereafter with liver cancer, discovered at a stage too late, had made the decision seem a worthy one, at least for the first year of the marriage.

  Kai placed a record on the phonograph. The needle circled on the red disc, and dutifully the theme song for the morning news, “Love of the Homeland,” flooded out of loudspeakers onto every street corner. Kai imagined the world outside the broadcast studio: the dark coal smoke rising from rooftops into the lead-colored morning sky; sparrows jumping from one roof to the next, their wings dusty and their chirping drowned out by the patriotic music; the people underneath those roofs, used to the morning ritual of music and then the news broadcast. They would probably not hear a single word of the program.

  The chorus ended, and Kai lifted the needle and turned on the microphone. “Good morning, workers, peasants, and all revolutionary comrades of Muddy River,” she began in her standard greeting, her well-trained voice at once warm and impersonal. She reported both international and national news, taken from People's Daily and Reference Journal by a night-shift clerk in the propaganda department, followed by provincial news and local affairs. Afterward she picked up an editorial, denouncing the Vietnamese government for its betrayal of the true Communist faith, and hailing the ideological importance of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge despite the temporary setback brought about by the Vietnamese intrusion. While she was reading, Kai was aware of the note taped to the microphone, instructing her to announce to the townspeople Gu Shan's denunciation ceremony, and her execution to follow.

  Gu Shan was twenty-eight, the same age as Kai, and four years younger than Autumn Jade when she had been beheaded after a hasty trial. Autumn Jade had left two children who were too young to mourn her death, and a husband who had disowned her in defense of the last dynasty she had been fighting against. Kai had a husband and a son; Gu Shan had neither. The freedom to sacrifice for one's belief was a luxury that few could afford, Kai thought. She imagined sneaking the words pioneer and martyr into the announcement of the execution. Would Shan, who was probably being offered her last breakfast and perhaps a change of clean clothes, hear the voice of a friend she had perhaps long ago ceased hoping for in her long years of imprisonment? Kai's hands shook when she read the announcement. She and Shan were allies now, even though Shan would never know it.

  Kai clicked off the microphone, and someone promptly knocked on the door, two short taps followed by a scratch. Kai checked her face in the mirror before opening the door.

  “The best tonic for the best voice,” said Han, as he lifted the thermos and presented it with a theatrical gesture. Every morning, before Han went to his office in the same building, he stopped by the studio with a thermos of tea, brewed from an herb named Big Fat Sea and said to be good for one's voice. It had begun as a habit of love after their honeymoon, and Kai had thought that it would cool down and eventually die as all unreasonable passions between a man and woman did. But five years and a child later, Han had not given up the practice. He must be the only husband in this town who would deliver tea to his wife, Han sometimes said, full of marvel and admiration, as if he himself was happily baffled by what he did; other people must think of him as a fool now, he said, out of self-mockery, yet it was the pride he did not conceal in the statement that filled Kai with panic. Getting married and becoming a mother had once seemed the most natural course for her life, but Kai could not help but wish, at times, that everything she had mistakenly decided could be wiped away.

  “I've told you many times I don't need it,” said Kai of the tea, and her reply, which often sounded like a loving reprimand, sounded more impatient to her ears today. Han seemed not to notice. He pecked her on the cheek, walked past her into the studio, and poured a mug of tea for her. “It's an important day. I don't want the world to hear that my wife's voice is anything less than perfect.”

  Kai smiled weakly, and when Han urged her to drink the tea, she took a sip. He gazed at her. How was his preparation for the day going, she asked, before he had a chance to compliment her beauty, as he often did.

  “All set but for the helicopter,” Han replied.

  The helicopter? Kai asked. Something that was not his responsibility, he said, and he left it at that. Kai asked, as if out of innocent curiosity, what he needed a helicopter for, and Han replied that he was sure someone would set things straight, she should not bother herself with his boring business. “Worrying makes one grow old,” he said, as a joke, and Kai said that perhaps it would soon be time for him to look for a younger woman. He laughed, taking Kai's reply as a flirtation.

  It amazed her that her husband never doubted her in any way. His faith and confidence in her—and more so in himself—made him a blind worshipper of their marriage. How easy it was to deceive a trusting soul, but the thought unsettled Kai. She looked at the clock, and said it was about time for her to go. She was expected to be at her position at the East Wind Stadium, one of the major sites for the denunciation ceremony, by eight. He would walk her there, Han said. Kai wished she had an excuse to reject his offer, but she said nothing.

  She put a few pages of the news away and adjusted her hair before leaving the studio with him. Her husband placed a hand on her elbow, as if she needed his guidance and assistance to walk down the five flights of stairs, but when they exited the building, he let go of her, so that they would not be seen having any improper physical contact in public.

  “So I'll see you at Three Joy?” Han asked, as they turned at the street corner.

  What for? Kai asked, and Han answered that it was the celebration banquet. Nobody had told her about it, Kai said, and Han replied that he thought she would have known by now t
hat it was the regular thing after such an event. “The last couple of dinners, the mayor asked why you were not there,” Han said, and added that he had found excuses for her both times.

  Kai could envision it: her place at the table with the mayor and his wife, Han and his parents and a few other families, a close-knit circle of status. It had been part of the allure of the marriage, that once she was a member of this family she would enter a social group that clerks like her parents had dreamed of reaching all their lives. Kai was unwilling to admit it now, but she knew that vanity was one of her costly errors. She was a presentable wife and daughter-in-law: good-looking, having had no other boyfriend before she met Han, and capable of giving birth to a son for the first baby. Her in-laws treated her well, but they would never hesitate to let her know that she was the one to have married up in the family.

  She had told the nanny that she would be home around lunch-time, Kai said. The new nanny, having just started the week before, was fifteen and a half, too young to take care of a baby, in Kai's opinion, but when the previous nanny had quit to go back to work on the land with her husband and sons—after many years of the people's commune, the central government had finally allowed peasants to own the planting rights to their own land—a girl from the mountain village was the only one they could find as a replacement.

  He would send his parents’ orderly to check on the nanny, Han said. What could an eighteen-year-old boy know about an eleven-month-old baby, Kai responded, and Han, detecting a trace of impatience in her words, studied her and asked if she was feeling all right. He squeezed her hand quickly before letting it go.

  Kai shook her head and said she only worried about Ming-Ming. Han replied that he understood, but his parents would not be happy if she missed important social events. She nodded and said she would go if that was what he wanted. The baby had been an easy excuse for her distraction at the breakfast table, the dinners she missed at Han's parents’ flat, fewer visits to her own mother, her tired apologies when Han asked for sex at night.

  “My parents want you to be there,” said Han. “So do I.”

  Kai nodded, and they resumed their walk in silence. A few blocks away they saw smoke rising at an intersection. A group of people had gathered, and there was a strong odor of burned leather in the air. A piece of silk, palm-sized and in a soft faded color, was carried across the street by the wind. An orange cat, stretching on a low wall, followed the floating fabric with its eyes.

  Han asked the crowd to make way. A few people stood aside, and Kai followed her husband into the circle. A man sporting the red armband of the Workers’ Union security patrol was staring down at an old woman, who sat in front of a burning pile of clothes. She did not look up when Han asked her why she was blocking traffic on the important day of a political event.

  “The old witch is playing deaf and mute,” the security patrol said, and added that his companion had gone to fetch the police.

  Kai looked at the top of the old woman's head, barely covered by thin gray hair. She bent down toward the old woman, and told her that she was violating a traffic regulation, that she'd better leave now. There was a slight ripple in the crowd as Kai spoke; in this town, people recognized Kai's voice. When she stood up, she could feel the woman standing next to her inching away, so as to study her face at a better angle.

  “You may still have a chance, if you walk away by yourself now,” Han said, and in a lower voice, he told Kai to go on to the ceremony, as he would wait for the police.

  The old woman looked up. “You'll all see her off in your way. Why can't I see her off in mine?”

  The security patrol explained to Han and Kai that this woman was the mother of the soon-to-be-executed counterrevolutionary. Only then did Kai recognize the defiance in Mrs. Gu's eyes. She had seen the same expression in Shan's eyes twelve years ago, when they had been in rival factions of the Red Guards.

  “Our way to send your daughter off is not only the most correct way but also the only way permitted by law,” Han said, as he ordered the security patrol to fetch water. Mrs. Gu poked the fire with a tree branch, as if she had not heard him. When the patrol returned with a heavy bucket, Han stepped back and motioned the man to put out the fire. Mrs. Gu did not shield her face from the splashing water. The pile hissed and smoldered, but she poked it again as if she were willing the flame to catch again.

  Two policemen, summoned by the other patrol, were now pushing through the crowd and shouting, telling people to move on. Some people left, but many only retreated and formed a bigger circle. “Let's not make a big fuss out of this,” Kai said to Han, as he strode up to meet the policemen.

  “Those who seek punishment will get what they ask for,” Han said.

  The patrol greeted the police, and pointed out Han and Kai, but Mrs. Gu paid little attention to the men surrounding her, mumbling something before she wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.

  “Why don't you just let her go?” Kai said to Han, and she quoted an old saying, Favors one does will be returned to him, and pains one causes will be inflicted on him.

  Han glanced at Kai, saying that he did not know that she could be superstitious.

  “If you don't want to believe in it for yourself, at least believe in it for your son,” Kai said. The urgency in her voice stopped Han, who looked at her with half-smiling eyes. He said he had never known she would take up the beliefs of the old generation.

  “A mother needs all the help possible to ensure a good life for her child,” Kai said. “What if people direct curses at Ming-Ming because of what we do?”

  Han shook his head, as if amused by his wife's logic. He greeted the policemen and told them to escort the old woman home and find someone to clean up the street. “Let's not make a big fuss this time,” he said, echoing Kai's words and adding that there was no need to put additional stress on this day. The other men complimented Han for his generosity: More power to him who lets someone off without pursuing an error, the older policeman said, and Han nodded in agreement.

  THREE

  Mrs. Hua did not see the policemen remove Mrs. Gu from the site of her crime; nor would Mrs. Hua have realized, had she witnessed the scene, that the woman who was half dragged and half carried to the police jeep was Mrs. Gu.

  Like Mrs. Hua herself, Mrs. Gu would never become a grandmother. Mrs. Hua was sixty-six, an age when a grandchild or two would provide a better reason to live on than the streets her husband scavenged and she swept, but the streets provided a living, while the dreams about grandchildren did not, and she was aware of the good fortune to be alive, for which she and her husband often reminded themselves to be grateful. Still, the urge to hold a baby sometimes became so strong that she had to pause what she was doing and feel, with held breath, the imagined weight of a small body, warm and soft, in her arms. This gave her the look of a distracted old woman. Once in a while her boss, Shaokang, a man in his fifties who had never married, would threaten to fire her, as if he was angry with her slow response to his requests, but she knew that he only said it for the sake of the other workers in the sanitation department, as he was one of those men who concealed his kindness behind harsh words. He had first offered her a job in his department thirteen years ago, when he had seen Mrs. Hua and her husband in the street, she running a high fever and he begging for a bowl of water from a shop. It was shortly after they had been forced to let the four younger girls be taken away to orphanages in four different counties, a practice believed to be good for the girls to start anew. Mrs. Hua and her husband had walked for three months through four provinces, hoping the road would heal their fresh wound. They had not expected to settle down in Muddy River, but Shaokang told them sternly that the coming winter would certainly kill both of them if they did not accept his offer, and in the end, the will to live on ended their journey.

  “The crossroad at Liberation and Yellow River,” said Shaokang, when Mrs. Hua came into the department, a room the size of a warehouse, with a desk in the corner to serve
as an office area. She went to the washstand and rinsed the basin. There was little paste left; he had given her much more flour than needed, but she knew he would not question the whereabouts of the leftover flour.

  Mrs. Hua went to the closet but most brooms had not yet been returned by the road crew. When all present, the brooms, big ones made out of bamboo branches and small ones made out of straw, would stand up in a line, like a platoon of soldiers, each bearing a number in Shaokang's neat handwriting and assigned to a specific sweeper. Sometimes Mrs. Hua wondered if in one of Shaokang's thick notebooks he had a record of all the brooms that had passed through the sanitation department: how much time they had spent in the street and how much they had idled in the closet; how long each broom lasted before its full head went bald. The younger sweepers in the department joked behind Shaokang's back that he loved the brooms as his own children, but Mrs. Hua saw nothing wrong in that and knew that the joke would come only from young people who understood little of parenthood.