The Vagrants

by Yiyun Li

  The old guardian rang a bell. Teacher Gu stopped and watched the white steam in the cold morning air, and the passengers who were being taken away from him, a man stuffing an egg into his mouth, a woman nibbling on a homemade sausage. Soon the train sped up, and he could no longer identify faces. This was where he and his wife were in their life, where one day could be indistinguishable from the next, and they shouldn't be worrying about a moment or a day being too long or too miserable. At least that's what he had told his wife when she returned from burning the clothes; they were to look forward and understand that the pains would not be as acute a year or two from now. “Everybody dies,” he had said. “We're not the first parents, and won't be the last, to lose a daughter.” It was not the first time they had lost a child either; he had not said it but hoped his wife would remember that.

  The train passed, and a conductor standing at the rear of the train waved at Teacher Gu. After a few seconds, Teacher Gu gathered some energy to wave back, but the man was a small dot already, too far away to see his gesture.

  Teacher Gu walked across the track. Where the street became an unpaved dirt road that pointed to the rural areas in the mountains, Teacher Gu found the Huas’ cabin. Old Hua was squatting in front of the cabin and sorting glass bottles. Mrs. Hua was stirring a pot of porridge on the open fire of a small gas stove. Teacher Gu watched them, and only when Mrs. Hua looked up did he greet them.

  The Huas stood up and greeted Teacher Gu. “Have you had your breakfast? Please join us if you haven't eaten,” Mrs. Hua said.

  “I've eaten already,” said Teacher Gu. “Sorry to disturb your breakfast.”

  “Don't apologize,” Mrs. Hua said, and she placed an extra bowl of porridge on the wooden table inside the cabin door. “Do join us. We don't have a lot to offer.”

  Teacher Gu rubbed his hands and said, “You are so very kind, Mrs. Hua.”

  Mrs. Hua shook her head. She placed a misshapen pan on the fire and dripped some cooking oil from a small bottle that had once been used to keep honey. “A fried egg, Teacher Gu?”

  He tried to stop her, but a few minutes later, she put a fried egg onto a small plate for him. Old Hua stopped his sorting and again invited Teacher Gu to sit down for an extra bite. Finding no way to start the conversation without accepting their hospitality, Teacher Gu took Old Hua's chair, while Old Hua stacked two baskets for a makeshift seating for himself.

  “Spring is late this year,” Old Hua said. “Quite unusual, wouldn't you say?”

  “Indeed,” Teacher Gu said.

  “You are doing well?” Old Hua asked.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “And Mrs. Gu, is she all right?” Mrs. Hua asked.

  “She is a little unwell from the season, but nothing too much.”

  “I hope she gets well soon,” Mrs. Hua said, and nudged the plate toward Teacher Gu. “Please help yourself.”

  “This is too much,” Teacher Gu said, and passed the plate to Old Hua. “I'm rather full.”

  After a minute of pushing to and fro, Old Hua, accepting that Teacher Gu would not touch the egg, divided it with his chopsticks and passed one half to his wife. Teacher Gu waited in silence until the couple finished their breakfast. “I've come to ask a favor from you,” Teacher Gu said. The couple sat quietly, both looking down at their empty bowls.

  Teacher Gu brought out a package and pushed it toward Old Hua. “A big favor, in fact, and I hope this is enough compensation for your trouble.”

  Old Hua exchanged a look with his wife. “Are you trying to find someone to take care of your daughter today?”

  “Yes,” Teacher Gu said. “It's our shame not to have educated her well enough to be a useful human being …”

  Mrs. Hua interrupted, almost with vehemence, saying that her husband and she had little use for such official talk in their place. Teacher Gu apologized and, for a moment, was unable to speak.

  “We're sorry,” Mrs. Hua said in a softened voice. “For you and Mrs. Gu.”

  Old Hua nodded in agreement.

  “You are very kind,” said Teacher Gu.

  “But you have to forgive us,” Mrs. Hua said, and pushed the package of cash across the table. “We can't help you.”

  Teacher Gu felt a sharp pain in his chest and could not find the words to reply. Old Hua coughed with embarrassment and looked away. “We're sorry,” he said, echoing his wife.

  Teacher Gu nodded and stood up. “No, I'm the one to apologize for having come and bothered you with this inappropriate request. Now if you will forgive my visit, I will leave.”

  Mrs. Hua picked up the package and passed it to Old Hua. Old Hua put it into Teacher Gu's hands and said, “We thought you might come so I asked around to see if anyone would be willing to help. Do you know Old Kwen?”

  Teacher Gu replied that he did not know Kwen, nor did he want to bother Old Hua further. It was irresponsible of him to think that the Huas would step in as undertakers for every unwanted child, Teacher Gu thought of adding, but he stopped himself.

  “Not a trouble,” said Old Hua. “He's a bit unfriendly but an old bachelor can come to that. He does a good job with whatever he puts his hands on. If you don't mind, I'll walk with you to his place.”

  “Too much trouble for you,” Teacher Gu repeated. He felt a weakening in his legs and had to support himself with both hands on the table.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Mrs. Hua said.

  Teacher Gu nodded, wishing, for a moment, that the couple would change their minds. He imagined walking to another house and waiting for a stranger to despise him or, even worse, to take pity on him. Fatigue overtook him.

  “Old Kwen lives not far from here,” Old Hua said, and put on his sheepskin coat. “A five-minute walk.”

  Mrs. Hua put an old woolen hat on her husband's head and flicked off some dust. “We wish we could help you, but we have our own difficulties,” she said.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “We do wish to help,” Mrs. Hua repeated, as if she were afraid that Teacher Gu would not believe her. “Don't think we are holding a grudge against Shan.”

  Teacher Gu nodded. He had nothing to say to defend his daughter—Old Hua and his wife had been among the ones Shan had whipped and kicked in a public gathering in 1966. All the condemned ones on that day had been old people, widows of ex-property owners, frail grandparents whose grandchildren screamed with fear in the audience and then were silenced by their parents. Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu themselves were among the accused on the platform that day, but at least their daughter had the mercy to leave her parents to her companions for punishment. Teacher Gu did not know why the Huas were there—they were both from poor backgrounds, after all, but crazy as the young revolutionaries were, it seemed that being human was a sufficient reason for humiliation. On that day Teacher Gu lost any remaining hope for his daughter. She was not the only wild one there; one of her comrades, a girl a year younger than Shan, with baby fat still on her cheeks, beat an old woman's head with a nail-studded stick. The woman stumbled and fell down onto the stage with a thud. Teacher Gu remembered watching her thin silver hair become slowly stained red by the dark sticky blood; afterward Shan forced the audience to hail her comrade's feat.

  “We know how you have felt all these years,” Mrs. Hua said.

  Teacher Gu nodded. The Huas were among the few to accept Teacher Gu and his wife when, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Gus visited the people once beaten by Shan with presents and apologies on their daughter's behalf; many of the people, including Nini's parents, turned them away at the door.

  “It wasn't your fault. She was still a child then.”

  “A student's wrongdoing lies with the teacher's incapability,” quoted Teacher Gu from ancient teaching. “A child's fault is the father's fault.”

  “Don't put this burden on yourself,” said Old Hua.

  They were getting old, Mrs. Hua said, and they hoped to stay in Muddy River for the rest of their lives. They did not have legal
residencies so they could not risk being called sympathizers, Mrs. Hua explained. “If we were younger, we would not hesitate to help you. We were always on the road then.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we were less afraid then.”

  “Yes.”

  “We will help you with anything else.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Do come back for a cup of tea whenever you feel like it,” Mrs. Hua said. Old Hua waited for his wife to finish the conversation, then pulled gently on Teacher Gu's arm. “Teacher Gu, this way, please.”

  Teacher Gu nodded, trying to cover his disappointment. “Thank you, Mrs. Hua.”

  “Bring Mrs. Gu over for a cup of tea when she feels like it,” Mrs. Hua said. She hesitated and added, “We've lost daughters too.”

  FIVE

  The stadium was half-full when the Red Star Elementary arrived. “Communism Is Good,” a song Tong remembered by heart, was broadcast through the loudspeakers, and he hummed along. The students were assigned seats in the front rows, and once they settled down, some children in Tong's class started to open the snacks their parents had packed into their school bags; others drank from their canteens. Tong, feeling solemn and important, did not make these childish mistakes.

  The denunciation ceremony started at nine. A woman, in a brand-new blue woolen Mao jacket and wearing a red ribbon on her chest, came onto the stage and asked the audience to stand and join the Workers Choir to sing “Without the Communist Party We Don't Have a Life.” Tong sprang to his feet and looked up at the woman with admiration. When Tong had first arrived at Muddy River, before he had learned the streets of the city by heart, he used to sit in the yard with Ear in the morning and late afternoon and listen to the news announcer's voice from the loudspeakers. He had little understanding of the news she reported, but her voice, warm and comforting, reminded him of the loving hands of his grandmother from when she had put him to sleep.

  It took several minutes for the grown-ups to get onto their feet, and even when the choir began singing, half the people were still talking and laughing. The woman signaled the audience to raise their voices, and Tong flushed and sang at the top of his lungs. The different sections of the stadium proceeded at different speeds, and when the choir and the accompanying music ended, it took another minute for the audience to reach the end of the song, each session taking its time to finish. There was some good-humored laughter here and there.

  The first speaker was introduced, a party representative from the city government, and it took a few seconds for the grown-ups to quiet down. More speakers, from different work units and schools, went onto the stage and denounced the counterrevolutionary, their speeches all ending with slogans shouted into the microphone and repeated by the audience. The speech Tong admired most was presented by a fifth grader from his school, the captain of the school's Young Pioneers and the leading singer of the Muddy River Young Pioneers Choir. She recited harsh, condemning words in a melodious voice, and Tong knew that he would never sound as perfect as she did, nor would he have the right accent to gain him the honor of speaking in a solemn ceremony like this.

  After a while, there was still no sign of the most exhilarating moment of the gathering—the denouncing of the counterrevolutionary in person, before she was escorted to the execution site. The criminal had to be transported from site to site, the woman explained, and then she called for more patriotic music.

  The grown-ups started to wander around, talking and joking. Some women brought out knitting needles and balls of yarn. A teacher told the children to eat their snacks. A boy reported in a loud voice that his mother wanted him to pee at least once at the stadium, which led to several boys and girls raising their hands and making the same request. The teacher counted, and when she had gathered enough children, she led them single file to the back of the stadium.

  Tong sat straight in his seat, the crackers his mother had packed for him untouched in his bag. He wished the woman announcer would come onstage and chastise the children and grown-ups who had turned the ceremony into a street fair, but he had learned, since his arrival in Muddy River, that the opinions of a child like him held no meaning in the world. Back in his grandparents’ village the peasants respected him because he had once been chosen by a famous fortune-teller as an apprentice. Tong had been two and a half then, before he could remember the story, and all he knew were the tales repeated by his grandparents and their neighbors: The old blind man, weakened by years of traveling from village to village and telling other people's fortunes, had foreseen his own death coming, and decided to choose a boy who would inherit his secret wisdom and knowledge of the world. He had walked across three mountains and combed through eighteen villages before finding Tong. Legend had it that when the old man came to the village, he studied the shape of the skulls of all the boys under age ten, disappointed each time until he reached Tong, the youngest in the line; the old man touched Tong's head and instantly shed tears of relief. In the next six months, the old man settled down in the village and came to Tong's bed every morning before sunrise, teaching Tong to chant, and to memorize rhymes and formulas that Tong would need for his fortune-telling career.

  Tong no longer remembered his master. The old man had died shortly after Tong turned three, surprising the villagers, as the master fortune-teller failed to foretell his own death with accuracy. It was a pity that the blind man's wisdom was lost to the world; still, the short stint as the fortune-teller's apprentice marked Tong as a boy with a special status, revered by the villagers. But these stories meant little to Tong's parents and the townspeople. They did not look into Tong's eyes, which old people back in the village had always said were profoundly humane. An extraordinary boy, they had said of him, and Tong knew he was meant for a grand cause. But how could he convince Muddy River of his importance, when his existence was not much more noticeable than the existence of dogs and cats in the street?

  A squad of policemen marched into the stadium and guarded both ends of every aisle. The announcer called for the audience to return to their seats. Her voice was muffled, as if she had caught a cold, and from the front row where Tong sat, he could see her knitted eyebrows. He wondered if she felt hurt as much as he did by people's lack of enthusiasm, but she did not see his upturned and concerned face when she announced the arrival of the counterrevolutionary.

  Hushed talk rippled through the stadium when the counterrevolutionary was dragged onto the stage by two policemen dressed in well-ironed snow-white uniforms. Her arms were bound behind her back, and her weight was supported by the two men's hands, her feet barely touching the ground. For the first time since the beginning of the ceremony, the audience heaved a collective sigh. The woman's head drooped as if she were asleep. One of the two policemen pulled her head up by her hair, and Tong could see that her neck was wrapped in thick surgical tape, stained dark by blood. Her eyes, half-open, seemed to be looking at the children in the front rows without registering anything, and when the policeman let go of her hair, her head drooped again as if she were falling back into sleep.

  The audience was called to its feet, and the shouting of slogans began. Tong shouted along with his classmates, but he felt cheated. The woman was not what he had expected: Her head was not shaved bald, as his parents had guessed it would be, nor did she look like the devil described to him by a classmate. From where he stood, he could see the top of her head, a bald patch in the middle, and her body, small in the prisoner's uniform that draped over her like a gray flour sack, did not make her look like a dangerous criminal.

  After a few minutes the woman was escorted off the stage and disappeared with the two policemen to the back of the stadium. The slogan shouting trailed off until there was nothing for the audience to do but go home. Some grown-ups started to move toward the exits, but the security guards refused to let them pass. A fight or two broke out, attracting more security guards, and soon the woman announcer hurried back to the stage and signaled the audience to join the choir for
a few more revolutionary songs. Already losing interest, most grown-ups just crowded toward the exits, the banners they had brought with them abandoned on the seats.

  On the way back to school, Tong listened to the boys behind him talk about the event. One boy swore that the woman had threatened to come off the stage and attack him, if it were not for the two policemen holding her; another boy told a story that he had heard from his grandfather: Sometimes a woman is a snake in disguise—if she succeeds in locking your eyes with hers, at night she can slither into your dreams and eat your brain.

  What nonsense, Tong thought, but his spirit was low and he did not want to contradict the childish notions of his peers.

  NEITHER LITTLE FOURTH nor Little Fifth was willing to take Nini's bad hand, so she had to let Little Fourth run free. Little Fifth tried to wiggle her hand out of Nini's grip too, and Nini said in a fierce tone that if she did not obey, a car would run over her, or someone would steal her and sell her to strangers and she would never see their parents again. Frightened, the girl started to cry, and Little Sixth, who had been happily babbling in a cotton sling on Nini's back a moment ago, watched her crying sister for a moment and then joined the howling.