Frontier

by Can Xue

  “I was ambushed by a pack of mad dogs. I picked up bricks to hurl at them. Damn, they bit my face—I won’t get rabies, will I? Maybe they weren’t mad; maybe they were just wild. Oh, José, I saw that garden and also the somber gardener. I saw them through the dog’s eyes when it pounced at me. It was so large. I squatted low, and it placed its heavy front paws on my shoulders . . .”

  An unusual light flashed from Nancy’s eyes, and her face turned purple from the blood surging up.

  “How could that garden—that garden—have appeared in a wild dog’s eyes!?” she shouted loudly. She was hoarse.

  Just then, the institute director and the gardener stuck their heads out the door, but Nancy was distracted. She didn’t notice them. She implored José wretchedly to take her home soon.

  All the way, she leaned heavily on José, like a little girl suffering from a serious illness. It was just under two miles, but they walked a long, long time. Finally, José could no longer keep going. Every now and then, they had to sit down on the ground. José worried: Why had Nancy become so weak? If the dog had rabies, would she die? When he thought of the crazy dog, he suddenly found the energy to run. Putting Nancy on his back, he raced along.

  When they finally reached the residential area, he was about to fall over from exhaustion. Nancy had gone to sleep on his back. Her face was still purple. He set her down on a bench at the side of the road. He intended to ask the apartment manager where to find a doctor. He had no sooner stood up than he saw Lee walking over. He told Lee what had happened.

  “Did this happen at the farmhouse over there? Where it’s so desolate all around?” As Lee spoke, he began laughing. “Don’t worry; they weren’t mad dogs. They’re dogs raised by our director. She indulges those dogs and lets them run around in the wasteland all day long. And so they seem to be wild.”

  The rock in José’s heart dropped to the ground. He greatly appreciated Lee. But why had Nancy’s face turned purple? He couldn’t understand that.

  “That’s because your wife was too excited. Just think about it: she was in the wilderness, running, and besides, she saw the dog’s strange eyes.”

  “So you know about the dog’s eyes?!” José was startled.

  “It’s no secret. Anyone who has ever come into contact with those dogs knows—our institute director is no ordinary woman.”

  Just then, Nancy suddenly came to and said, “Lee, don’t you dare talk about her behind her back! I heard everything.”

  At midnight, when José and Nancy were in bed, the skylight was suddenly automatically propped open. They heard wild geese flying by. Hollow and lonely feelings welled up in both their hearts. Nancy whispered, “The frontier is so beautiful.”

  Chapter 3

  QIMING

  Although Qiming was thirty-nine, he didn’t feel old at all. He had no skills; from the time he was young, he’d worked as a janitor in the guesthouse at the Design Institute. Everyone knew him. Sometimes he was a little melancholy, but generally speaking, few people were as optimistic and confident as he was. Qiming had never married; he lived in a simple cabin behind the mailroom of the guesthouse. It was as if the institute administrators had stuffed him indiscriminately into this crude dwelling. But Qiming was quite satisfied with his place. Material life meant nothing to him. For example, he was single, but his heart swelled with erotic dreams. He felt he’d had a lover all along; it was just that they had never lived together. It was because he had a lover that he felt so young. Who could love as he did? Everything he did, he did for the beautiful woman of his memory. He had last seen the Uighur beauty years ago. He still recognized her—of course! The slim girl from back then had now grown up to be a stout housewife, but what difference did this make? Qiming’s yearning for her blazed even more. Aware that someone was staring at her, the stout woman set her satchel down and began dancing with other aunties on the avenue. Qiming stared like crazy. Too bad he didn’t know how to dance. He could only watch from the sidelines. He heard one of the dancing women say in words that he understood: “That guy is awfully ugly, like a savage.” His goddess began laughing uproariously. She flung out her arms and jabbered loudly. After Qiming went home, he was too excited to do anything for the rest of the day. Years had passed; yet, whenever he recalled that meeting, his face burned. The scene hadn’t faded at all. He even imagined that he was holding the beauty tightly and spinning around with her. It wasn’t a Uighur dance, but a dance he had invented. Sometimes others called him Grandpa. Discontentedly, he thought to himself, Am I old? No, no way! My life has just begun! Is it fair for a person to be called Grandpa just because he’s unskilled? He felt more energetic than ever before. Ha, it was time for him to take a wind bath again. He filled a basin with water and, facing the wind blowing over from the mountain, he wiped his face. Then he scrubbed his torso. The guesthouse was great. No one in this quiet place fussed about his activity. While the breeze dried him off, Qiming returned to the time of his youth. His family was a large one; he had eight siblings. They lived at the seaside in the south and made their living as fishermen. He was only thirteen then, but he had gone out on the ocean many times with his father. He loved his life of freedom. He didn’t know why his father had to send him away. He remembered that day: a man who looked like a cadre came to their poor dwelling and took a seat. His father said this person was Qiming’s “lucky star,” and then made Qiming go with him. His brothers and sisters saw him off with envious glances. And so he traveled with that person to this small town in the north—all because he couldn’t disobey his father. Back then, this place was truly desolate. The so-called town was no more than some simple buildings scattered around the wasteland. There were no roads or public facilities. Though there was a little electricity, power outages were frequent. You had to light kerosene lamps. However, as Qiming saw it, this wasn’t a problem because he was used to an even poorer life at home. At first, he did heavy labor. When the officials asked him what he was good at, he said he had only been a fisherman. But this place had no fisheries, and so he worked on constructing buildings, repairing roads, reclaiming land from the river, transporting coal, manning the furnace, and so forth. One day, the Design Institute director noticed him and asked him to work as the guesthouse janitor. That’s when he settled down. He was twenty-two then, and he had no idea why the institute director had chosen him. He thought this sharp-eyed woman was imposing. Finally, after becoming the janitor in this quiet place, he slowly came to understand Pebble Town—and why his father had sent him far away.

  One time when outsiders came to visit the Design Institute, Qiming saw the Uighur beauty who would change his life. She wasn’t wearing her minority dress; for some reason, she was wearing a drab grayish outfit. But her plain clothing couldn’t cloud her stunning beauty. Qiming couldn’t stop staring and tagged along behind her. This playful girl actually broke away from her group and led him to hide behind the rockery. They sat on a cobblestone, watching little birds hopping here and there, and watching the poplars dance in the sunlight. It was so beautiful—like a fairyland. But this stunning beauty couldn’t speak his language, so he could only ogle her and caress her elegant hands over and over. Finally, the tour group had to go back. Their bus stopped outside the gate. When the people passed the rockery, the girl jumped out like a fawn and rejoined the group. This, then, was Qiming’s fleeting encounter, and this encounter had shaped his life. Later, he saw her once more in the market: she was with her father. She seemed to have forgotten him. He followed her all the way to her faraway home—at the big mountain over there. He didn’t dare go in because several large dogs guarded the entrance. The next time they met each other, she was already a married woman. Later, he saw her several more times, almost always with her family. He rarely saw her alone. But Qiming wouldn’t give up: this woman could set his heart afire. What more could he possibly want? He couldn’t sleep at night in the narrow bed in his humble home: he spent a lot of time meditating. He liked this feeling: it made him feel special—a
man destined to pass his lifetime in solitary meditation. His father had been farsighted!

  When Qiming bathed in the wind and thought of his family, he didn’t feel sentimental. In his memory, his poor home became sweet. He recalled how sad his three sisters were when he left. They had tears in their eyes—Father had warned them not to cry. Their rough hands had reddened from the freezing cold water. Their noses—congenitally flat—made them look rustic. Qiming had turned around at once, because he felt like crying, too. Then he said farewell to his mother’s grave: he placed his young face on that stone marker—and all at once he felt his mother’s warmth. There had been much human warmth in Fish Village and in that ugly three-room adobe house. He could see seagulls from the entrance to his home. Whenever he saw them, the idea of leaving home for distant places rose vaguely in his mind. How had Father known this? Although he longed for his faraway hometown, he didn’t plan to go back for a visit. Partly because he reveled in this aesthetic faraway feeling, he was afraid that any bold action would destroy his spiritual pleasure. Another secret reason was that he had obeyed his father’s will in leaving home in the first place; it wasn’t his own choice. On the way, indignant and grief-stricken, he vowed over and over to never go back. Now, more than twenty years had passed, and as Qiming reflected on this matter, he started to question his views. Was it all about Father’s will? Now, he liked everything here so much, and he was self-sufficient and content with his life. It was that one migration that had brought him everything! Just think, if his father hadn’t been so astute and hadn’t entrusted him to that cadre (this was of course his father’s long-range plan), what would his life be like now?

  The newly-arrived young couple were completely bewildered, especially the man. Qiming could see this, because he used to feel the same. Who wouldn’t be puzzled by Pebble Town’s strange ways? Back then, besides feeling gratified, he was also puzzled and uncomfortable—until the incident that changed him. Qiming’s “incident” was, of course, the appearance of the Uighur beauty. Before that, when he was working in construction, he frequently felt so confused that he didn’t want to go to work. He would sit at the riverside for several hours looking at the tamarisk trees. The foreman was a folksy middle-aged man. He squatted down, clapped Qiming on the shoulder, and said, “You can’t go back, son.” He told Qiming to look up at the sky. Qiming did—and saw only a goshawk. The sky was so high, and its color held no gentleness: it was completely unlike the sky at the seaside. The foreman told him to take another look, to look more carefully. So he looked up again—and suddenly realized what had puzzled him. He stood and quietly followed the foreman back to the work site. It was such a wondrous feeling: the foreman was terrific. Before this, he had paid no attention to this old man, though he had seen his family. His three children wore ragged clothes, but the children’s eyes were composed and bright. Like him, they worked in construction. They weren’t the least bit bewildered, probably because they were locals. Having had all these experiences, when Qiming saw José and his wife abandoned by the crazy guy on the hill, he understood completely why they felt rattled. After a few days, he sensed that Nancy was somewhat like the locals. He sensed, too, that José was stepping into his role, even though he didn’t understand the role. José was a little impatient. So what? The tranquil frontier would help calm this young man. The reason Qiming took note of this couple was that they reminded him of himself when he had just arrived on the frontier.

  After he finished work that day, he rested on the rockery cobblestones. In the haze, he sensed a sheep approaching him, a red cloth tied around its neck. It was a domesticated sheep. After smelling his hand, it knelt down beside him. Qiming was fighting in his dream with a kid with whom he often played back then in Fish Village. This kid threw him to the ground, stepped on his chest, and looked down at him. But as soon as the sheep knelt beside him, the kid above him disappeared. He struggled to open his eyes and saw Nancy sitting next to him. He blushed and stood up in embarrassment. He said, “Hey, I was dozing.” Nancy looked bewildered, and—as though discussing a problem with an invisible person—said, “Hunh. I’m puzzled by lots of things here; they’re mixed together. Still, this place is magnetic. Look at that eagle, flying and stopping . . . Everything’s unresolved.” Qiming thought to himself, This young woman who has just arrived has already become a Pebble Town local. The transformations in the world were so rapid. He heard they were from Smoke City. What was a smoke-swathed city like? Nancy was still sitting on the rock. The wind blowing here had reddened her pale, delicate face. She looked at him, and yet she didn’t seem to actually see him. So Qiming couldn’t decide whether to talk with her or not. Except for his goddess, he hadn’t been this close to a woman for years. He was a little nervous. Nancy quietly pulled some weeds and deftly plaited them into a chain to wear on her head. Qiming’s heart throbbed, and nostalgia rose in him, but he couldn’t remember the scene across from him. So he did his utmost to imagine the scenery in Smoke City. Was it similar to the misty mornings in Fish Village? People often bumped into each other at such times.

  “Ms. Nancy, are you getting used to this place?” he asked a little hesitantly.

  “Mr. Qi, when you first arrived, did you see the snow leopards come down the mountain? Someone said more than one hundred of them are walking around in the town.”

  Qiming didn’t dare make eye contact with a woman whose eyes were so abnormally bright. He thought to himself, How could eyes like this be produced in a smoky city? He was torn: he wanted to leave, but he also wanted to listen to this woman.

  “No. But it’s said there are a lot of them. For a while, everyone was talking of the snow leopards coming down the mountain.”

  “So it’s just a legend,” Nancy asserted.

  “It’s a legend,” he agreed.

  When Nancy said “legend,” she looked absolutely absorbed. All at once, Qiming felt her expression was familiar. Where had he seen it? Perplexed, he glanced at her. But she stood up and removed the chain of weeds from her head. She said, “Just now, I saw how happy you looked as you were dreaming, and so I assumed you had seen the snow leopards coming down the mountain. You see, I like to make inferences, don’t I?”

  After she’d been gone for quite a while, Qiming finally remembered where he had seen the absorbed expression on her face. It was in a mirror—no wonder it seemed so familiar. He was stunned.

  Qiming didn’t contact the young couple for a long time, but he did take note of their activities. This was instinctive; he had no idea why he did it. He noticed they were always wandering around: it was said that the director hadn’t given them any work. Qiming snickered to himself: what work could they be assigned to do? They would just go on waiting. He heard that they were both engineers. But this town had already been built, so construction design engineers were no longer needed. This Design Institute was merely an empty name. He had witnessed Pebble Town’s construction, but José and Nancy had arrived only long after it had been finished. They were a new generation: how could she have the same expression as his? This Nancy woman must be unusual; no one should take her lightly.

  When he first arrived at the Design Institute, the director had been like a mother to him. She often came over to see how he was doing, often sat in the dark in his little cabin and talked with him about the snow mountain. Sometimes, she came to his place as soon as she arrived for work and chatted with him right up until lunchtime. They didn’t do any work. She consoled him, “It doesn’t matter. I’m the institute director.” Qiming was greatly astonished by her behavior, and also happy. He considered her his mentor. But later on, she didn’t come to see him, nor was she concerned about him. She no longer seemed aware of his existence. So years later, Qiming still lived in temporary housing, while his workmates had moved to more comfortable apartments long before. Had he been forgotten? In the beginning, Qiming felt aggrieved, but the longer he lived in the small cabin, the more he realized the benefits of living here. Every night, he felt he was sleeping in t
he embrace of mother earth. And so he rested well. When he arose the next morning, he was in high spirits. Second, this kind of house was like a public place. He didn’t even bother to lock the door; anyone could walk in uninvited. Nothing seemed to be a secret, yet everything was mysterious at the same time. Take the blocked-up wall out front, for example: it seemed to be made of brick, but after noon, it became adobe. And the next morning, it was restored to brick. After being here only two days, he spotted this mystery and told the director about it. She patted him on the shoulder and said, “Young man, you have very good prospects.” His rooftop was made of cement tiles. Sometimes the sunlight streaming through the countless broken holes brightened the room, and sometimes the holes disappeared and the room darkened. Of course it was dark most of the time, especially when he had guests. Nancy had come over once. She had sharp eyes. She glanced back and forth in the dark and could see everything. When she moved close to talk, Qiming felt a long dormant urge awaken in him. In that moment, even the Uighur girl’s image faded. He marveled at the heat emanating from Nancy’s body! Qiming thought that the moment she entered, she had fused into one with this room. It was miraculous. What had this young couple’s lives been like in the faraway Smoke City? Was the ocean there?

  The day that Nancy’s daughter was born, Qiming was building a grape arbor in front of the guesthouse. He murmured to himself, “She’s put down roots here.” Then he saw José rush to the hospital, the institute director beside him. Soon, a cold wind blew up. Qiming put away his tools and went inside, where he brewed himself a cup of tea and sat down to think about this incident. Time had passed so quickly. The day he had been fishing in the river and the young couple lost their way seemed like yesterday. Qiming called their daughter (he firmly believed it was a girl) “Daughter of the Frontier.” He thought, after this little girl—who had inherited her mother’s heat—after she grew up, he would tell her about the ocean. It was yesterday that he’d gotten `word that his father had died. The person who came to tell him was a sallow-faced man with whom he had played when they were children. He had stood awkwardly in his room and hadn’t spoken about his father, but about his own arthritis. It was as if he had traveled thousands of miles just to tell Qiming this. He said he wouldn’t go back, because their fishing village no longer existed. He wanted to stay at the Design Institute.