Frontier

by Can Xue

  “How did you know my name?”

  “It’s a secret. But don’t worry. I won’t bother you. I just came to take a look at you. Goodbye!”

  When he walked off, the elm leaves rustled. He looked really funny. Liujin followed him and watched from the gate: he crossed the street to Meng Yu’s home. Was it a coincidence that he also went to Meng Yu’s? Five or six cellophane candy wrappers littered the area near the salvia. Liujin thought, This kid really likes candy!

  While she was deep in thought under the grape arbor, Mr. Sherman entered the courtyard with a basket of groceries. Liujin thought back to the commotion at the market and tried to guess where he had gone then. Mr. Sherman sat down, took off his glasses, and wiped them with a handkerchief. Because he was very nearsighted, Liujin assumed he couldn’t see anything without his glasses, but—pointing at the candy wrappers—he asked who had thrown them there. Liujin told him it was a kid whom she didn’t know, probably an outsider.

  “An outsider?” Mr. Sherman’s voice became sharp and unpleasant. “I’m an outsider, too.”

  Liujin thought this was ridiculous. What was wrong with Mr. Sherman?

  “I used to live on the other side of the snow mountain.” His voice softened. “Our family dyed cloth. We didn’t have a dye-works business. It was only a hobby. Do you understand?”

  He put on his glasses and watched Liujin’s reaction.

  Liujin nodded her head vigorously and said, “I think I understand. I sold out of the cloth you were looking at in no time. What kind of blue was it? I can’t remember the word. You must know.”

  A frog jumped a few times in his grocery basket, then leapt out and away. It had never crossed Liujin’s mind that such a gentle man would eat frogs—how strange, how barbaric. As the two of them sat in silence, the wagtail that she hadn’t seen for a long time reappeared. Taking small swift strides, it shuttled through the flowers, but it didn’t sing. Liujin felt awkward and impolite, so she forced herself to say something, “Your frog . . .”

  “Did it run off?” A smile floated on his face. “Then water is flowing underground here. It heard it. Frogs are very intelligent.”

  He slammed the basket upside down on the ground, and all the frogs struggled to free themselves and hopped off. They were everywhere. He laughed innocently. Liujin felt tense.

  “I hear that you not only sell cloth, but help your boss stock it—that you know a lot about the merchandise. The snow mountain has been melting slowly for years. On clear days, I can see the snow mountain better by taking off my glasses. I wonder what sort of myopia I have.”

  Liujin hadn’t realized that this person had paid so much attention to her, and so her heart fluttered a little. His protruding eyes were really a little unearthly. He seemed able to see some things, and was blind to other things. What sort of person was he? Was the young woman—the one who had quarreled with him—his lover? It seemed so. So why did he come here? Maybe he was lonely and just wanted someone to talk with. Just then, the wagtail ran up next to her feet, and Mr. Sherman enjoyed this scene from behind his thick lenses. Liujin even felt love radiating from his eyes, but she warned herself: this can’t be true!

  He bent over, picked up the basket, and said he must go. “Your courtyard is really nice.” He looked greatly refreshed.

  After he left, Liujin wanted to find the frogs, but she couldn’t, not even one. They were hiding. Liujin envisioned the chorus in this courtyard on a rainy day: she was enchanted by this image. Did his behavior suggest affection, or was this a prank? Liujin could never distinguish between the two. It was like the night in the poplar grove. Mr. Sherman was an unusual person. He said the snow mountain was melting; this was probably true. The climate was certainly getting warmer and the environment was becoming polluted. In the market, she always smelled the rotting corpses of animals. Once, in a corner, someone had swept out a large nest of dead rats. No one had poisoned them; they had simply died. It was scary. Liujin felt that everyone smelled of corpses.

  Liujin missed Mr. Sherman. She hadn’t thought of him before, though she had known him for a long time. Although she tried hard, she could only recall the twinkling gaze behind his thick lenses. Sometimes, when she came upon Mr. Sherman abruptly, she felt he was ugly and unbearably vulgar. Sometimes, she felt he was manly, gritty, and decisive—making him attractive in an unusual way. Outside the window, the wagtail resumed singing. Liujin thought, This little bird is a messenger between us. The scene under the grape arbor just now had struck her heart like a warm current. The woman who did odd jobs for the Meng Yu family started to sing again: “Snow lotus blossoms, the snow lotus blossoms that open deep in the mountains . . .” Her hoarse voice was an inauspicious omen. Where had this beautiful woman come from? Had both of the Meng Yu geezers fallen in love with her? Did both of them want to control her? One day the year before, Liujin saw her appear silently in the flock of sheep in Meng Yu’s courtyard. She had thought she was a visiting relative of the family. Somehow, Liujin felt that Pebble Town had a big heart. All kinds of strange people could find places to fit in. Liujin, who had been brought up here, didn’t know whether other cities (for example, her parents’ large city) were the same. Was this a virtue? Perhaps it was—if she could solve the puzzle about those people.

  Liujin bent down next to the girl and asked, “What are you looking at, Xiyu?”

  “Your courtyard wall. You don’t know that someone has made a hole on it, do you? It was that boy.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. I’ll give you some grapes to take back with you.”

  “Thank you, sister Liujin.”

  The little girl hopped when she walked, much like a frog. The frogs had disappeared from the courtyard without a trace. Or maybe they had gone into the groundwater that Mr. Sherman had mentioned. When the girl reached the gate, she turned around and stood there looking at her. When Liujin asked her what she was looking at, she said someone was standing behind Liujin.

  “Xiyu, your imagination is running wild. Who do you see?”

  “I don’t see. I hear him.”

  Frowning, Liujin thought this over. When she was about to ask her again, the child had already walked away. She started examining the courtyard wall, looking at it section by section, but she didn’t notice anything suspicious. The little girl must have been teasing her. What did she think of Liujin? In her eyes, a thirty-five-year-old single woman must be much too odd. She went back to the house, picked up a pen, and wrote to her mother. After she’d written of some ordinary household matters, she couldn’t go on writing. She looked up to see rain beating against the window. Outside, the gorgeous sun shone high in the sky. Where had the rain come from? She walked outside and discovered that the young boy wearing leaves was pouring water on her window with a watering can.

  Liujin was both annoyed and amused. She charged up, grabbed his watering can, and berated him: “You aren’t selling tea leaves. You’ve come here to make trouble. Where do you live? What’s your name?” The kid didn’t answer; he was still staring at the old-fashioned watering can. A mischievous idea struck Liujin. She raised the watering can and poured water over the boy’s head. He stood there, unmoving, as she watered him thoroughly. He mopped his wet face with his hand, and looked curiously at the furnishings in her house.

  “Go in and change your clothes.”

  Taking the boy’s hand, Liujin went inside with him.

  She told him to go to the bathroom and take a bath. She got out her father’s old shirt and a pair of underpants for him.

  But the child bathed for a long time without emerging. Suspicious, Liujin knocked on the door. There was no answer. She opened the door: he had left, maybe by climbing out the window. The old clothes were still lying on the chair.

  Liujin sat down, stupefied, at the desk, and said to the wall in front of her, “Look at how lonely I am.” But without knowing why, she wrote in the letter, “. . . Mama, life here is rich and colorful!” She’d been writing that letter for a long time
, and she kept feeling she couldn’t go on writing. She couldn’t picture her mother’s face. Who was she really writing to? Had her mother really written back, ever? Inside Liujin’s drawer were many letters from her mother. She was convinced that the words didn’t convey her mother’s ideas, but were from the dark shadow behind her mother—her father—because her mother had never paid attention to her. But the letters were actually in her mother’s writing. For the most part, the letters didn’t ask about her life, but simply described Father’s and her hopes for old age. “Your father and I hope to walk around the city on a rainy day.” “We hope to come back to the snow mountain and talk with the snow leopards.” “We hope we can melt into a wisp of black smoke in this smoky city.” “Today we swam in the river. We wanted to be able to walk on water through exercising.” “We . . . we will not vanish, not ever.” But words like these were inserted into much longer letters, in the middle of confused descriptions of the city. Only someone like Liujin could extract their meaning. Now and then, she would ask herself: What is this correspondence for? Her parents didn’t seem to think of her at all, nor did they care whether or not she married: they hadn’t even asked about this. However, another kind of concern showed up between the lines or in ambiguous expressions. Then after all, they still thought about this daughter. What was it that they were concerned about? Liujin couldn’t figure it out; she just felt bewildered. So when she took up her pen, she wrote strange words. When she wrote them, what she thought of were the poplar grove, the filthy sheep, the mysterious woman in the red skirt, and the old man twisting hemp in the starlight. “Mama, I, I am not one person!” Not one person? How many persons was she? She remembered an adventure from her childhood. She and her father had gone to the Gobi Desert. The whole time, they had walked along the periphery of the Gobi. Suddenly, dozens of sand birds dropped from the sky and fell onto their heads, shoulders, and next to their feet. The little things chirped, and pecked their heads and clothes, as if they had a grievance against them. Liujin noticed that in the blink of an eye the golden-red sun had darkened and the wind had picked up. Many people were shouting her and her father’s names. That was the first time that she, at the age of twelve, had found herself surrounded by a lot of invisible people. Waving her hands, she vigorously drove the birds away. She felt completely at a loss. As for her father, he unexpectedly left her and walked alone toward the west. An inner darkness struck her: she thought she was going to be abandoned in this rough, barren land. The birds had arrived suddenly, and they vanished just as suddenly. “Hey—” she shouted desperately. Thank God, Father reappeared before long: hands behind him, he walked calmly toward her, as though nothing had happened. Now, as she wrote this sentence, she heard a reverberation at the earth’s core. She felt that Pebble Town was a slumbering city. Every day, some people and things were revived in the wind. They came to life suddenly and unexpectedly. That’s right. Liujin recalled her neighbors, she recalled her several lovers who were struggling in loneliness, she recalled Mr. Sherman whom she hadn’t known long. It was as though each of them had emerged from the earth’s core: they came with some features of old times that were incomprehensible to her. Thinking of these enigmas, she didn’t know how to go on writing her letter. “The wind blows as usual, the sun rises as usual.” As if in a fit of pique, she wrote, “How many more things will emerge from the grottoes in the snow mountain?” With this inexplicable question, she ended the letter. Someone entered the room. It was the girl Xiyu. In profile, there was nothing wrong with Xiyu’s lips. How come? And looking again from the front, you still didn’t notice anything wrong until she started talking.

  “Sister Liujin, have you ever seen Mongolian wolves?”

  Liujin noticed the dark hole in her little mouth and turned her head away so that she wouldn’t have to see it.

  “I, I have to go to the post office,” she said as she tidied the desk.

  Xiyu climbed onto the desk, and turned her mouth toward Liujin again, as though forcing her to look at it.

  “A Mongolian wolf carried my little brother off in its mouth.”

  “You’re hallucinating.” Liujin glanced at her and went on, “There aren’t any Mongolian wolves here. Mongolia is far away. As for your little brother, I saw him this morning. He was nursing at your mother’s breast.”

  “He was nursing? I was thinking just now that a wolf had carried him off.”

  She dangled her two thin legs from the desk, and cupped her chin in her hands and worried. Earlier, Liujin had wanted to ask her about the boy wearing leaves. Looking at her now, she gave up that idea.

  What immense, weighty worries were packed into this little girl’s heart? How did she get through each day? But Liujin also felt that the little girl wasn’t pessimistic.

  “Oh, sister Liujin, I saw them. A lot of them are in your house!”

  “Who?”

  “Mongolian wolves. Their shadows are all over the wall on this side. One is really large. It’s like a hill squatting there.”

  “I have to go to the post office.”

  The girl jumped down and ran out. Lost in thought, Liujin sealed the letter and stamped it, but she didn’t feel like going out to mail it. This little imp Xiyu had reminded her of something. Liujin had never seen Mongolian wolves, but as a child, she had heard many legends about them—most about carrying off children and bringing them up in a pack of wolves. She wondered if the wolves seen recently in the market had been Mongolian wolves. Had they crossed the snow mountain and come here? The children of Pebble Town were always fooling around on the streets, even late at night. So it wouldn’t be surprising if they had been carried off by wolves. Perhaps the older children had been eaten, and the little ones had become wolf children. Liujin found these thoughts fascinating and began imagining the lives of the wolf children.

  The letter lay conspicuously on the table. Looking at it, Liujin started connecting it with the wolves. In her imagination, Mongolian wolves also showed up in Smoke City. What fun it would be if her wizened father galloped on a wolf’s back. “Dad, Dad, you mustn’t get down!” she shouted to herself. This vision gave Liujin some faith in the letter she had just written. She slipped it into her handbag and made up her mind to go to the post office. When she locked the door, something stirred inside the house. No matter, she thought. Without turning around, she went out to the street.

  After dropping the letter into the mailbox, she ran into a neighbor, Auntie Lu. Auntie Lu was her mother’s good friend.

  “Why do I always think your mother has come back?” As she talked, Auntie Lu massaged her swollen eyes, as if she wasn’t awake.

  “She hasn’t. Auntie Lu, where are you going?”

  “Me? I’m walking all around to have a look. I’m thinking of these children’s problems. Those wolves really did come in the night. My granddaughter didn’t come home all night. This morning, she rushed in and yelled that she was hungry!”

  Auntie Lu disappeared around the corner, and all at once Liujin felt empty. Auntie Lu seemed to think that her mother still showed up frequently. Liujin didn’t know what Auntie Lu, who was a local, thought of Mother. The sight of Mother and Auntie Lu wearing headscarves and walking together to work flashed out from Liujin’s memory. Back then, Auntie Lu was a little neurotic: she kept turning back to see what was behind her. Why did this old auntie feel that Mother had come back? Was it . . . She didn’t dare continue this thought. She felt her words were incomprehensible. She wanted to recall what she had written to her mother, but she couldn’t remember a single sentence.

  When she was almost home, Liujin saw the woman from Meng Yu’s staring idiotically at the passersby on the street. This didn’t happen often, since she ordinarily did all she could to avoid other people. Curious, Liujin walked over at once to greet her. “Are you homesick?” Surprised by her own words, Liujin felt awkward. With a slight smile, Amy shook her head. “No.” Liujin thought that Amy’s Mona Lisa smile could easily captivate men. She asked, “Where is your home?�
�� She was surprised that the woman wasn’t evasive and talked on and on. She said her home was on the other side of the snow mountain, and that she had a father and brother. Her home wasn’t a regular house, but just a few thatched rooms. The family cut firewood for a living. Woodcutters had nearly disappeared now, but her father and brother loved working deep in the mountain and didn’t want to give it up. Back then, her mother worried every day at dusk, for she was afraid that the snow leopards had attacked father and son. It was difficult to imagine how impoverished her family was. Sometimes they couldn’t even afford lamp oil. For years, she had thought of coming out to see the world, but she was afraid. This went on until one day Uncle Meng Yu had come to her home, and brought her here.

  “You’re lonely here, aren’t you?”

  “No, no!” she vehemently retorted. “I like this place best of all!”

  Amy’s eyes opened like two flowers, and Liujin saw purity surging up in them. Remembering her shrill sad singing at night, Liujin sensed an even more immense enigma. She didn’t know what to talk about, so she said goodbye and left. The whole time, Amy was smiling slightly—a smile with the faint scent of pine trees after rain. Liujin felt that she herself had acted like an idiot.

  For no reason, Liujin thought that Mr. Sherman would come, and so she tidied the flower garden. It was odd that she didn’t find even one frog. Now she recognized that Mr. Sherman’s letting the frogs out was premeditated. Even though they were already good friends and the two of them had drunk tea together many times in her garden, Liujin still didn’t have one solid feeling about this man who attracted her. Nor had she dreamed of him. She took note of one thing: whenever guests sat in her cane chair, the chair creaked for a long time. The heavier the person was, the more the chair creaked. But Mr. Sherman was different: when he sat down, he and the chair fused into one. The old, old chair just groaned a little and then fell silent. He harmonized so perfectly with it that it was as though this burly middle-aged man had grown into the chair. Because of this, Liujin couldn’t help the deepening affection she felt for him. The grapes had almost all been picked, summer was drawing to a close, and Liujin felt on edge somewhere deep in her soul. But Mr. Sherman didn’t come that day. He didn’t come until the next day. When Liujin saw him appear at the courtyard gate, she was like the saying “Dry Mother Earth is thirsting for rain.” She actually blushed.