The Vagrants

by Yiyun Li

  For a moment, Nini thought of bringing all three sisters back home and locking them inside the house, as she often did when she went to the marketplace. She would go to the riverbank by herself. The young man Bashi, odd as his talk was, was an interesting person, and Nini was curious to find out if he had lied about the coal he would give her for free. But the girls would tell on her, and certainly her mother would send her to a corner to kneel through lunch. She should have hidden the tin of biscuits, Nini thought, and then remembered the barrette in her pocket. She hushed her sisters and displayed the blue plastic butterfly in the palm of her good hand. It took Nini five minutes of coaxing and threatening to persuade the older girls to agree to wait for their turns. Nini sat Little Sixth on the sidewalk and plaited her soft brown hair into a tiny braid on top of her head, and then clipped the barrette at the end. The braid wobbled, and Little Fourth and Little Fifth clapped with laughter. Nini smiled. At moments such as this, she liked her sisters.

  When they reached the East Wind Stadium, all the entrances were closed; the only people walking around were the security guards in red armbands. “What are you doing here?” a guard shouted at Nini as they walked closer to the entrance. Little Fourth was no longer running, her hand nervously gripping Nini's sleeve.

  Nini held Little Fourth closer and replied that they were coming for the denunciation ceremony.

  “Which unit do you belong to?”

  “Unit?” Nini said.

  “Yes, which unit?” the man said with half a smile.

  An older guard came closer and told his colleague not to tease the young girls, and the first man replied that he was not teasing but teaching them the most important lesson of life, which was to belong to a unit. The second guard ignored the young man and said to Nini, “Go home now. This is not a place for you to play around.”

  Nini thought of explaining to the old man why she had to go to the denunciation ceremony with her sisters, but he was already waving his arms and shooing them away. Nini walked her sisters to the alley closest to the stadium, and told them to sit down at the corner. “Let's wait here.”

  “Why?” Little Fourth asked.

  “We're supposed to take a look at this daughter of the Gu family before she's executed,” Nini said. “If we don't see her, there'll be no dinner for us tonight.”

  The two girls sat down immediately. A few minutes later, they started to play games with pebbles and twigs, chanting in whispers. Nini walked around in a circle, and soon Little Sixth fell asleep, her head heavy and warm on Nini's neck. Slogans, songs, and angry voices came from the loudspeakers in the stadium, but Nini could not tell what they were saying. She thought about Mrs. Gu, laying out pickled string beans and scrambled eggs and telling her to eat as much as she wanted, and Teacher Gu, handing her the paper frogs, his hands gentle yet not quite touching hers. They must have wished all along that Nini had never existed, since Nini's deformity was proof of their daughter's crime.

  An ambulance and a police car drove down the main street and turned into the alley. The drivers turned off the sirens, but left the blue and red lights blinking. Little Fourth and Little Fifth stopped their game and asked, “What is it?”

  Before Nini could reply, a policeman came out of the patrol car and yelled to the girls, “Where is your home? Go home now. Don't stay in the alley.”

  Little Sixth was startled from her dozing and started to cry. Nini grabbed Little Fifth's hand and told Little Fourth to come with her. A few steps into the alley Nini saw one of the row houses without a fence. She pulled her sisters in and hid behind the fence of an adjoining house, and told them to keep quiet. Little Sixth was squirming on Nini's back. She put a finger into the baby's mouth and calmed her. The two younger girls wandered around the yard, checking the pile of firewood at a corner, crushing a few pieces of soft coal into powder.

  Nini peeked out from behind the fence. A few people jumped out of an ambulance, all of them wearing white lab coats, white head covers and masks. One of them pulled a gurney out of the ambulance, and the two shorter ones—two women, Nini realized, as their hair crept out from underneath the head covers and reached their necks—pulled from the ambulance white and blue packages, tubes, and a strangely shaped lamp that connected to the inside of the ambulance with long metal arms. One of the women switched the lamp on and off for a test, and the four policemen, uncurious, patrolled nearby with black batons.

  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.