by Yiyun Li
“The casket is too heavy for me,” Bashi said when he came in a moment later. “I wonder if the carpenters put some lead in it. Let's not worry about that part now.”
Nini's voice quavered when she pointed out the envelopes to Bashi. He checked their contents and whistled. “I thought she saved everything in our bank account,” he said. He pulled out two ten-yuan bills and handed them to Nini.
She shook her head and said she did not want the money.
“Why not? Friends stick together, so why don't we share the good fortune?”
Nini accepted the money. She wondered if the ghost of the old woman was around supervising her afterlife business like old people said, and if so, whether she would be outraged by the envelope in Nini's pocket. But why did she need to worry about a ghost? Nothing could make her life worse than it was now, with Mrs. Gu and Teacher Gu turning their backs on her. Nini pulled back the blanket and peeled off the old woman's pajamas. There was a strange smell, not pungent but oily sweet, and Nini felt nauseated. When her hand touched the old woman's skin, it was leathery and cold. So this was what it would be like when her parents died. The thought made Nini less scared. After all, it would be her job to care for her parents when they got old, and eventually clean them up for burial. She wondered who would see off Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu. She had more trouble imagining them dead and naked in bed than her own parents. She wished things could be different for the Gus—perhaps the wind would carry them away like smoke before someone's hand touched their skin—but why would she let them off so easily, when they had thrown her out without hesitation?
Bashi loitered on the other side of the curtain without helping Nini. She thought it strange until she realized that perhaps it was not good for a boy to see the naked body of his grandmother. He was a good and honorable person, after all, despite his oddness.
When it came to cleaning the body, Bashi suggested that they use the cold water from the tap in order to spare unnecessary trouble. Nini disagreed. The folded envelope threatened to jump out of her pocket and reveal itself to Bashi and to the world—she wished she had thought of a better way to hide it, in her shoe so she could step on it firmly—and out of guilt, she insisted on starting a fire so she could bathe the old woman with warm water one more time. Bashi followed her to the kitchen, leaned against a cabinet, and watched her stoke the fire. “What a nice granddaughter-in-law you would make!” he said with admiration.
Nini blushed and pretended that she had not heard. Bashi placed a chair by the stove and sat astride it, both arms hugging the back of the chair. “Have your parents arranged someone for you to marry?” he asked.
What a strange question, Nini thought, shaking her head.
“Have you heard of the saying that the bird with the weakest wings needs to take off earlier?”
“No.”
“You should think about it. You don't want to wait too long before looking for a husband.”
Nini said nothing and wondered if Bashi was right. Her parents had no wish to marry her off; they would have no one else to wash them before their burials. Had she been the daughter of Mrs. Gu and Teacher Gu, would they have started to worry about her marriage by now, so that when they exited the world, she would not be left alone?
“I'll keep my eyes open for possible candidates, if you like,” said Bashi.
Nini watched the fire without replying. The water hummed. When he pressed again, she said, “Let's not let your grandma wait too long.”
Bashi laughed. “She won't know now,” he said. He helped Nini carry the kettle to the bedroom and then sat down on his own bed on the other side of the curtain. Nini wiped the old woman gently, trying not to study the dry and creased skin, the eerily long and sagging breasts, the knotted joints. If not for the stolen envelope in her pocket she would have finished the job in a minute or two. When she finally did, she tried to slip the silk clothes onto the body, but the old woman, completely still and stiff, would not cooperate. Nini yanked one of the old woman's arms out of her sleeve when she felt a small crack. She must have broken the old woman's arm, Nini thought, but she did not care anymore. It took her a long time, with her one good hand, to fasten the coiled buttons of the robes. When she finished with the sleeping cap and silk shoes, she said to Bashi, “Now you can come and see her.”
The two of them stood side by side. The old woman looked serene and satisfied in the finest outfit for the next world. After a while, Bashi circled an arm around Nini's shoulder and pulled her closer to him. “What a nice girl you are,” he said.
“I need to go home now,” she said.
“Let's get whatever you need from the storage cabin.”
“Not too much,” Nini said when Bashi put several cabbages in her basket. “Otherwise, my parents would question.”
“I'll walk you home.”
Nini said she would rather he did not walk with her.
“Of course,” Bashi said. “Whatever you prefer. But when do I get to see you again? Can you come this afternoon?”
Nini hesitated. She would love to come to this house again, with food and coal and a friend, but it was impossible. In the end, Bashi found the solution—Nini could spend an hour or so every morning in his house and she could get the coal from his storage bin; later in the day, she could come to see him at least once, with the excuse of going to the marketplace.
Nini was sad when they said goodbye. On the way home, she turned into a side alley and took the envelope out of her pocket. Her parents would certainly discover this by the end of the day. She wondered if they would send her to the police because she was a thief, or just happily confiscate the money. She disliked either possibility, so she changed direction and walked toward the Gus’ house. When she reached their gate, she could not help but hope that they would throw the door open and welcome her into their arms.
A man walked past Nini and then turned to her. “Are you looking for Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu?”
Nini nodded, a small hope rising—perhaps they had known she would come, and had asked a neighbor to watch out for her.
“Teacher Gu is ill, and Mrs. Gu is taking care of him in the hospital. They won't be back for some time.”
Nini thought of asking for more details, but the man went on before she could say anything. She waited until he was out of sight and slipped the envelope beneath the gate. They would never guess that the money had come from her, but perhaps they would change their minds, when they realized that they were well treated by the world while they themselves had mistreated her; perhaps they would come and look for her when Teacher Gu was released from the hospital.
TONG LEFT HOME after lunch. His parents were taking their midday nap, and Ear was running around somewhere in town. Tong's father was not fond of Ear, and thought it a waste of Tong's life to play with the dog. Tong was happy that Ear found places to wander about until sunset, when the darkness made him less of a nuisance to Tong's father, who would by then have begun his nightly drinking.
It was early for the afternoon class, and Tong took a longer route to school. In the past six months he had explored the many streets and alleys of Muddy River, and he never tired of watching people busy with their lives. The marketplace, where many mouths seemed to be talking at the same time without giving anyone the time to reply, was an exciting place, while the back alleys, with men and women gossiping in different groups, were full of overheard tales about other people's lives. Only an old man pondering over nothing or a loitering cat mesmerized by the sunlight at a street corner would make Tong feel lost, as if they belonged to a secret world to which he had no access.
Life seemed the same after the previous day's event. All these people must have attended the denunciation ceremony, but none of the faces betrayed any memories. The announcements, some torn down and others now only fragments glued to the walls, were no longer noticed by the passersby. In the marketplace, housewives bargained in loud, accusing voices, as if the vendors were all shameless liars. At a state-run vegetable stand,
a male sales assistant, bored and idle, formed a pistol with his hand, aiming it at a female colleague's bosom. The woman, in her twenties with a round, full moon face, waved her hand as if chasing away an annoying fly, though every time the man made a banging noise, she laughed. Tong smiled, but when she caught sight of him, she called him a little rascal. “What are you looking at? Be careful or I'll scoop out both your eyeballs.”
Tong blushed and turned away. Behind him the male assistant asked the woman why he himself hadn't the right to such a luxury. She replied that she would oblige him on the spot by removing his eyeballs if he really wanted to be blind; the man urged her to do so, saying that he had no use for his eyes now that he had seen her heavenly beauty. Tong walked on. There was a secret code to the adults’ world, Tong realized once again, and without knowing the rules, he would always be found offensive for reasons he did not understand.
Around the corner a few chickens sauntered in an alley. Tong fixed his eyes on a bantam hen, willing her to stop pecking, but she searched attentively for food, oblivious. A feral cat quietly approached the chickens from behind a three-legged chair, but before the cat could move closer, an older woman, sitting on a wooden stool in front of a yard, hit the ground with her stick and shrieked. The chickens scattered, flapping their wings and cooing frantically. Caught off guard, Tong took a few breaths to calm down before asking the old woman if everything was all right.
“Things could've gone wrong if not for my vigilance,” replied the old woman.
Tong turned to look at the feral cat, studying them at a safe distance. “That cat probably just wanted to play,” he said.
“I'm not talking about the cat,” the old woman said. Tong looked up at the woman, baffled. “I'm talking about you, boy. You thought you could snatch the hen when nobody was around, huh?”
Tong stammered and said he had never thought of stealing anyone's chicken.
“Don't think I didn't hear that little abacus clicking in your belly when you looked at my chickens,” the old woman said. “A village boy like you!”
Tong retreated from the alley. There was little he could say to defend himself.
AFTER LUNCH KAI WENT to the one-room clinic on the first floor of the administration building and told the doctor that she didn't feel well. The doctor, around sixty-five years old, was entitled to give out only cold medicines and slips for a sick leave—with any problem bigger than a cough or a runny nose, the officials and clerks would go to the city hospital across the street.
Three days? the doctor asked while writing Kai's name neatly on top of the slip.
An afternoon would be fine, Kai replied. The doctor put down a cold that required a half day's rest, and then studied his old-fashioned penmanship for a moment with satisfaction before signing his name. Could he run it over to the propaganda department? Kai asked; she did not want her colleagues to make a fuss about a small cold, she explained, and the doctor nodded understandingly saying he would personally deliver the slip.
Kai went up to the studio through the back stairs and unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk. Inside was an old cotton jacket of brownish gray color, with mismatched buttons, and patches sewn on both elbows. A scarf was tucked into one pocket, and in the other pocket was a white cotton mask. The jacket and scarf had belonged to their previous nanny, and Kai had traded with the woman for a jacket and a scarf of her own. For possible out-of-town assignments, Kai had told the nanny, and even though she had tried to keep the explanation vague, the nanny had replied that of course Kai would not want to wear her woolen jacket or silk scarf to some of the filthy places the lower creatures dwelled in.
Kai changed into the outfit. Underneath where the outfit was kept were a stack of letters, in unmarked envelopes, all from Jialin. Before she locked the drawer again she took one envelope randomly from the stack. Inside she found a long letter about the nature of a totalitarian system, and Kai, having reread it many times and memorized the content by heart, scanned the page; it was written more as a meditation than a letter, and she always wondered if the same letter had been sent to and read by many of Jialin's friends. On a separate page in the same envelope there was a note, a brief paragraph about a new program from Britain, broadcast in Mandarin, which Jialin said he had picked up recently on his shortwave transistor radio. Once again Kai wondered if it was pure imagination when she had sensed his eagerness to share the news with her; it was these shorter notes, addressed to her and about the small details of his life that were largely unknown to her, that made her unwilling to burn his letters as he had instructed her to do.
Jialin and Kai did not see each other often, and sometimes a week or two would pass before she could find an excuse to walk to the town library. They did not talk much, but quietly exchanged letters tucked inside magazines. Sometimes there would be several letters in the envelope he passed to her, and she tried not to wonder whether he might be waiting for her in the reading room day after day, or about his disappointment when she did not show up. The librarian was his friend, Jialin had once said; she allowed him to sit in the reading room as long as he had his mask and gloves on. Kai made herself believe that the librarian, a quiet woman in her late forties, offered enough friendship to Jialin so that his trips to the library were not futile.
Jialin and Kai never planned their encounters, and in their letters they dwelled little on the world where they would have to find excuses to see each other for just five or ten minutes; rather, they wrote about topics they could not discuss in person. She saved every letter from him. She wished she could bring herself to burn them, as she knew he must have dutifully done with every letter she had written to him, but one day she would have nothing left of him but his words, written on sheets of paper from a student's notebook, his handwriting slender and slanted to the right. Sometimes the ink from the fountain pen would run out and the dark blue words turned pale in the middle of a long passage; only when the words became as light as the paper, seemingly engraved onto the page rather than written, would he remember to refill the fountain pen.
Kai put the sheets back into the envelope and locked it with the others. A few minutes later, she left the building, her head wrapped up in the old scarf, her face covered by the mask. Few would recognize her now as the star announcer, and she felt momentarily free.
The library, the only one in town that was open to the public, was in a house that had once served as the headquarters for a local faction of Red Guards. Before that the house had belonged to an old man, but soon after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution the man had killed himself with rat poison. His action baffled the townspeople. The man, said to have been an orphan adopted by a doctor and his wife, had grown up as half son, half apprentice to the doctor, who was the only medical expert in town when Muddy River was no more than a trading post; when the old couple passed away the man inherited their money and the old-style house, built as a quadrangle around a small and well-groomed garden, near the town center. The man practiced acupuncture occasionally but only for older patients troubled by back pain and arthritis; he was sage-looking, polite, and friendly, and it seemed that there was little reason for him to fear the upcoming revolutionary storms. But as any death had to be accounted for—suicide in particular, since any suicide could be a sinful escape from Communist justice—rumors started that the man was a Manchurian prince who had been biding his time to resurrect the last dynasty; as a famous general had said, a lie repeated a thousand times would become truth, and after a while the old man was deemed a political enemy who had slipped through the net of justice with an easy death. The local Red Guards soon occupied the property, printing out propaganda leaflets and storing ammunition; for months the back rooms also served as a makeshift interrogation room and prison cell.
The library, established now for a mere year and a half, occupied the two front rooms of the house. A few desks and chairs lined one side of the reading room, and on the other side was a butcher's workbench, where a dozen magazines were on display. The l
ibrarian sat at a desk at the entrance to the reading room, and if one asked for a book from the collection, she would unlock the door to the other room, where there were no more than ten shelves of books. There were no cards or catalogs; rather, when one was looking for a specific subject, the librarian would go into the collection and then come out with a book or two she had deemed fit for the subject at hand.
Few people in town used the library, and it had not surprised Kai that Jialin chose this place to wait for her. The librarian nodded at Kai distantly when she arrived, and went back to her reading. Kai wondered if the woman recognized her as the news announcer, but probably she just remembered Kai as the woman who stopped by once in a while to check out the few magazine subscriptions in the reading room. Kai did not talk, so that the librarian would not recognize her voice. The woman was a widow, and her late husband, a clerk in the city government, had jumped into the Muddy River when two young boys called for help; the man himself could barely swim and had saved neither his life nor the two boys’, in the end. The city government granted the man the title of hero, and when his wife, once a schoolteacher, requested a less challenging job, the government gave her the newly established position as the town's librarian, a position with an abundance of time for her to mourn in quiet.
Jialin was the only person in the reading room. Sitting in a corner and facing the door, he looked at Kai from above his cotton mask before resuming his writing in a thick notebook. She always looked for a change of expression on his face, but there never was one, and she wondered if her own eyes above her mask looked as blank as his. She walked to the magazine display and picked one up, the front cover showing an enlarged picture of the new national leader.