The Vagrants

by Yiyun Li

  SIX

  Mrs. 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 b
ecause 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.

  “Not pretty, huh?” Kwen muttered. He had already put the body into two burlap sacks, and was working to bind the two sacks together with ropes.

  “What did they do to her?” Bashi said.

  “They probably took something from her before they shot her.”

  “Something?”

  “Organs. Kidneys maybe. Or other parts maybe. Old stories.”

  “What are they for?”

  “Haven't you heard of transplants?” Kwen said.

  “No.”

  “I thought you had some education,” Kwen said. “Who knows who has her body parts now? Sometimes it's not even for a transplant, but the doctors need to practice so that their skills remain sharp.”

  “How do you know?”

  “If you live to my age, there's nothing you don't know,” Kwen said.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifty-six.”

  “But I bet there's one thing you don't know,” Bashi said. With the body secured in the sacks, he felt safe and in good humor again.

  “That is?”

  Bashi walked closer and whispered to Kwen: “Women.”

  “How do you know I don't know women?” Kwen said, looking at Bashi with half a grin.

  “You're an old bachelor, aren't you?”

  “There are so many ways to know women,” Kwen said. “Marrying one is the worst among them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you only get to know one woman.”

  “Do you know a lot of women?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “What way?”

  Kwen smiled. “I heard people in town talking about you as a fool. You are too curious to be a fool.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are a man with a brain, and you have to use it.”

  Bashi was confused. Other than his grandmother, he had never been close to a female. “Can you show me the way?” he asked.

  “I can show you where the door is, but you have to get in and find the way by yourself,” Kwen said, and lit a cigarette. “Let me tell you a story. I heard it from older people when I was your age. Once upon a time, there was a woman whose husband liked to sleep with other women. The wife, of course, was not happy. ‘What makes you leave me and seek other women's bodies?’ she asked. Her husband said, ‘Look at your face—you're not a pretty one.’ The wife looked at her face in the mirror and then came up with a plan. Every evening, she cooked vegetable dishes and made them as fancy-looking as possible: radishes carved into peonies, peas linked into necklaces and bracelets as if they were made of pearls, bamboo shoots cut into the shape of curvy women.”

  Bashi swallowed loudly without realizing it.

  “At the beginning, the husband was impressed. ‘You've become a wonderful cook,’ he said to his wife, but after dinner he still went out to sleep with other women. After days of eating the vegetable dishes, the husband asked, ‘Where are the pork chops and beef stew you cook so well? Why are you not cooking them for me now?’ The wife smil
ed and said, ‘But, my master, they don't look pretty at all.’ The husband laughed and said, ‘Now I understand you.’ And from then on he never went out with another woman again.”

  Bashi stared at Kwen when he stopped talking.

  “The story is over,” Kwen said.

  “What happened?”

  “I just told you a story, and the story is over.”

  “What happened to the man? Why did he stop going to the other women?”

  “Because his wife taught him a lesson.”

  “What lesson?”

  “Use your head. Think about it.”

  “I'm bad at riddles. You have to tell me the whole story,” Bashi said.

  “Why do I have to?” Kwen said with a smile.

  “Oh please,” Bashi said. “Do you want another pack of cigarettes? A bottle of rice liquor?”

  “If you promise me one thing, I will tell you.”

  “I promise.”

  “Don't you want to know what the promise is?”

  “As long as you don't want me to kill a person.”

  “Why would I want you to kill a person?” Kwen asked. “If I want to, I can handle it much better than you.”

  Bashi shivered, as Kwen looked at him and laughed. “Don't worry,” Kwen said. “Why would I want to kill someone? So this is what's going on: Her parents gave me the money for a coffin and for the burial. But what I think is a coffin won't make a difference to anyone, her or her parents or you or me, so I'm going to spare the trouble.”

  “It's understandable.”

  “But you have to promise me not to tell anyone. I don't want people to know this.”

  “Of course not.”

  Kwen looked at Bashi. “If I hear anything, I'll wring your neck, do you understand?”

  “Hey, don't frighten me. I don't do well with bad jokes.”

  Kwen picked up a branch thick as a man's arm and broke it in half with his hands. “I'm not joking with you,” he said, looking at Bashi severely.

  “I swear—if I tell Kwen's secret to anyone, I will not have a good death,” Bashi said. “Now can you tell me the lesson?”