Frontier

by Can Xue

  Liujin looked and looked again at the “black buildings,” and a chill arose from the bottom of her heart. As the black man walked next to her, he kicked the bosk. He said poisonous snakes hid there, and if you kicked a few more times, they would run off. He asked Liujin if she was afraid of poisonous snakes. She said she was: Snake bites could kill you, couldn’t they?

  “If you’re afraid, you should spend more time around them,” he said earnestly. “My name is Ying. This was once the name of a snake. Ha!”

  Without giving it any thought, they returned to the entrance of the Design Institute. Liujin noticed that the buildings had turned dark gray again, and the sky was the same color. The place where her parents worked seemed lonely. The windows were all closed. And she didn’t see anyone coming out of the buildings. If it was a rule that you couldn’t leave during office hours, then why was Ying outside?

  The bus arrived, and Ying asked if she would take it back. He apparently wanted her to leave. Liujin wondered why.

  “I have to take responsibility for your personal safety,” Ying said.

  Saying that she wanted to look around a little more, Liujin hurried off in another direction. Ying caught up with her right away. She asked why he kept following her. His answer caught her off-guard: he said he did it for her mother.

  “In the last ten years or so, your mother and I have been discussing you constantly. It’s the only topic she likes. She’s—she’s a remarkably good mother!”

  Liujin thought this black man’s words were ridiculous, because she had never thought her mother was particularly caring. On the contrary: she felt she had been quite estranged from her mother ever since she was little. What made him say she was a remarkably good mother? Her words alone? Did her mother brag about herself? Liujin frowned and sat on a clump of weeds. She didn’t understand why her mother had wanted to discuss her. The scenery was disheartening enough, and now this odd black man had brought up an annoying topic. She was a little angry. The little black birds flew back in a flock and lit on the clumps of high weeds. Liujin hadn’t ever seen birds living in weeds. Could they be the “weed chickens” that people talked of? Where did they hide in the winter? Here, even trees were sparse. Just then, a snake emerged, a little black bird in its mouth. The little bird was shrieking. The odd thing was that, after a while, the snake spat out the bird. The injured little bird lay on the ground, gasping for breath, and the snake returned to its hole. The black man Ying squatted down with Liujin and looked at the bird. He fed it a tiny pill that he took from his pocket. Then he placed the bird in the clump of weeds. He told Liujin that he always carried this kind of medicine to cure snake bites. He also asked Liujin to look down the hill. She did, but the view was hazy. A person with a white headscarf was walking out from the fog. The black man said: That’s a rag-picker who’s been circling around this office building for more than ten years.

  “What can she find outside the office building?” Liujin asked.

  “We throw things out the windows so she won’t starve. And I even threw out a bronze mirror to surprise her and make her happy. Rag-pickers are so hopeless.”

  Soon, the woman drew closer. Ying led Liujin over to the shrubbery, where they squatted low to conceal themselves. The woman raked a stick back and forth through the weeds for a long time. Then she began hitting a snake. She struck with ferocious assurance, time after time, until the snake stopped moving. Liujin got a good look: this woman must be a farm worker—the veins stood out in her sturdy hands, and her eyes looked dull. She stepped on the snake for a while, then moved ahead.

  Not until after she had walked away did Ying and Liujin emerge from their hiding place and go to look at that snake. It wasn’t dead; after a while, it slowly slithered into the weeds. Ying followed it with his eyes and said, “It couldn’t have died, could it? The animals here all have nine lives.” Liujin asked, “Why did that woman want to hit the snake?” Ying replied, “Because she’s desperate.” He went on to say that her life was very hard because it wasn’t every day that she could find a bronze mirror. Liujin was nonplussed. She looked up at an eagle. The eagle had been hovering for a very long time; it must be exhausted. Or was it desperate, too, because it had found no place to alight?

  “Then was my mama also desperate?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s never lost hope—just like you, young lady.”

  Another bus pulled up. Liujin decided to board it and go home. When she said goodbye to Ying, he looked sad, as if Liujin were going to meet death. Liujin turned around and ignored him.

  The black man ran behind the bus, waving and shouting, “Liujin, come back again!”

  Complicated feelings about this black man surged up in Liujin’s heart. In her young imagination, black people were the world’s strangest race. Ying made her think of her great-grandfather, whom she had never seen: she imagined he was an ancient person standing behind a curtain with only his feet showing.

  By the time she got off the bus and walked into her small courtyard, her mother had returned and was in the kitchen rinsing soybeans.

  “Mama, I’ve been to the Design Institute.”

  “Ha. It isn’t very interesting, is it? Children don’t usually want to go back there.”

  “Ma, I think Ying is like my great-grandfather.”

  “He . . . he’s the guardian of the Design Institute!”

  When Liujin watered the flowers with a watering can, she recalled once more the birds and snakes on the hill. She ached from pity. What did the birds do when it snowed? Could they go into the office building to escape the cold?

  The sun set behind the mountain. It was hot and stuffy in the house. Liujin rested next to the well. Just then, she heard water. Looking into the well, she saw water rolling and splashing. She thought, This kind of place is so volatile. Even though she was so far from it, she could still feel a slight tremor. The moment she turned around, she saw her dad: he had been standing behind her for quite a while. Pointing toward the well, she asked him to look. José said with a laugh, “I saw this a long time ago. This well is just as restless as you are. People from the Hygiene Bureau have come by numerous times and said this well needs to be filled in. We’ll probably have to do that.”

  José’s comments made Liujin lose interest in observing the well. Dismayed, she stood up and walked into the courtyard. Nancy had set up a small square table there. They began eating. They were all sunk in their own thoughts. No one mentioned the incident from earlier that day. Although they lit mosquito coils, the insects attacked relentlessly. They bit Liujin’s legs several times. All of a sudden, José stood up with his bowl in his hands. Although Nancy and Liujin followed his line of vision, they saw nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” Nancy asked.

  “I was mistaken. I thought it was the director, but actually it’s the bag lady. Like the rest of us, the rag-pickers live in the city. They’re locals. I didn’t know this until today.”

  José’s remarks made Liujin think of the hill again. She was agitated as she thought of the green snake and of those black office buildings. Her mother had told her just now that Ying lived in an office building, and so he was familiar with everything there. Would he let the birds enter the building during the winter? She needn’t worry about the snakes: they could certainly stay in underground holes.

  At night, her sleepless father stood talking with someone outside Liujin’s bedroom window. He and the other person apparently had a limitless supply of topics. Liujin kept waking up. Each time she awakened, she heard them talking in stifled, yet fervent, tones. Later on, she couldn’t stand it and walked to the window and opened the curtains. She saw Ying, the black man. In the moonless night, Ying was a dim shadow: only his head swayed in the air. Liujin thought, He’s so agile. How wonderful to be a black person! Ying was trying to convince her father of something, but her father kept shaking his head, seemingly not daring to trust this wisp of a man. Liujin saw Ying slap his own head in a moment of desperation. He opened his m
outh, revealing snow-white teeth. But her father still shook his head in sorrow. Liujin heard him mention his insomnia and say, “I’ve had this problem for years; it’s incurable.” Liujin didn’t know if Ying saw her. He was facing in her direction, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  The animals came from near the ancient well—five of them. They quietly formed a line behind these two men. Liujin thought they were a little like wolf cubs. As Ying said goodbye to Father, Father hung his head and said nothing. Then Ying turned around and left. The five little animals followed him out of the courtyard. Had Ying brought them here? Now Liujin was full of admiration for Ying! She put on her slippers and headed outside, following him all the way to the road. She shouted at the slender figure in the distance: “Ying! Ying!”

  Ying stopped but didn’t turn around. The five little animals made sounds that Liujin had never heard before—like children’s laughter. Ying kept going in the direction of the Design Institute.

  “Liujin, let’s go back,” José appeared under the street lamp, his voice sad. “That person isn’t on the same track as we are.”

  Liujin looked at her father; she didn’t understand what he was saying. He was so exhausted. Liujin thought, Perhaps it’s only strange people like Ying who don’t have to sleep.

  “Dad, did this person want you to leave home?”

  “What a bright kid you are. That’s exactly what he said. He wanted me to go with him to the Gobi Desert, rent a house at the edge of the desert, and look for gold mines there. I thought, that’s his work, not mine.”

  “Huh?”

  “This man, Ying, is linked in thousands of ways to his native Africa.”

  Hands behind his back, José walked back and forth in the courtyard. Although he looked wan and sallow, he didn’t want to go inside and rest. Why? It was dark. Only some light from the window occasionally illuminated him. Liujin looked at him and felt heartbroken. She thought, Dad isn’t old yet, so how has he fallen into this hellish life? José urged Liujin to go in, saying he would follow her shortly.

  After Liujin went to bed, she kept listening for her father, but never heard him open the door. She roused herself when it was barely dawn and immediately sensed something wrong. She ran out and saw her father sitting with his back against a poplar, his head at an angle. Had he actually fallen asleep?

  “Dad! Dad!” Liujin shouted.

  “Oh, is it morning? I’ve been thinking about Ying’s suggestion. Your mother . . . she was also considering it. And then we fell asleep. Hey, this Ying is just terrific! And he’s been our friend for more than ten years.”

  Liujin noticed that her dad’s forehead was a little lined: it looked like butterflies or tree leaves, and made her imagination run wild. But when he yawned, the lines vanished. When Dad mentioned Ying, Liujin’s expression turned somber. She would have forgotten the scenery at the institute if Dad hadn’t talked of the black man. Just then, José stood up and slapped the dust off his body. Looking furtive, he asked Liujin where her mother had gone. When Liujin said Mother was home, he wanted her to go and look. Liujin ran over to Mother’s room, but she wasn’t there. The quilt on her bed had been folded neatly. Behind Liujin, José chuckled.

  “Your mother is working in a garden now!”

  Liujin asked where it was, and José said, “Hard to say. You just know it when you get there.” If she was interested, she could ask the director.

  “You can see that kind of garden many times in a lifetime. In the past, when we lived in the apartment building, we frequently went to visit the next-door neighbors, opened the heavy drapes in their bedroom, and saw the garden—in midair. Your mama has never forgotten it.”

  Just then, the curtains moved, and Liujin screamed from fright. José dashed over and flung the curtains open. They saw the black cat, and Liujin laughed in embarrassment.

  “We have to go to the Gobi to look for gold. The cat is doing it right here,” José said.

  It was bright outside, and the sun’s rays stung José’s eyes so much that he murmured, “It’s too light.”

  While Liujin sat alone in the house, she thought of Ying and of Africa. What a beautiful scene it would be at dusk if those tall, slender black bodies dissolved, leaving only some heads dancing in midair, and drums began sounding, and African lions towered in the distance. If Ying had been born in such an open place, why wouldn’t he be homesick? Liujin’s mother had said that Ying had been at the Design Institute for years: the director’s father had brought him here. Liujin wondered if she were Ying, and the desolate scenery near the Design Institute jogged her memory, would she be reminded of Africa? If so, this was probably the main reason Ying stayed there.

  The black cat returned to the windowsill. Its black fur also made Liujin think of Africa. She pressed her cheek against its fur. The animal’s smell was bewitching. The other night, the five little animals following Ying were animals that she had never seen before. What were they? What an interesting person Ying was! He had the air of a king strutting about on the road with five strange animals following him. She heard the director talking with her mother in the living room at the front of the house. They seemed to be arguing a little. Liujin didn’t much like the director: this old woman with snow-white hair had gained everyone’s respect—that was what Liujin didn’t like. Liujin wasn’t sure how she should act around this woman who was her parents’ boss—and, from what people said, their benefactor, too. She had run into her on the street, and the old woman had patted her head. She had looked puzzled and surprised. This angered Liujin.

  “Sweetie, I’ve brought you a present!” the director shouted.

  Liujin hurried to the living room, where the director was holding up a crook-necked bottle with many little fish in it. Some had died from lack of oxygen. The director put the bottle on a table, and because the water vibrated, some fish fainted. Most of the fish were dead. Liujin ran into the kitchen and brought back a basin of water, into which she dumped the fish from the bottle. Some slowly revived. Liujin told the director she didn’t understand why she had packed the fish in a crook-necked bottle. The director explained that she was doing an experiment related to execution reform. Nancy smiled, but she didn’t enter into the conversation. When the director left the room for a while, all the fish died. Nancy speculated that perhaps it was because of bleach in the running water. As she stared at the dead fish, Liujin started hating the director.

  When she went back to her room, an idea jumped out of her brain: Had the director sentenced Ying to life imprisonment? As she considered this, she grew more and more excited. She came up with all kinds of ways that Ying could escape.

  “Dad, did the black man really ask you to look for a gold mine?”

  “Of course not. He urged me to go, that’s all. As for him, I think he doesn’t want to go anywhere. He only wants to ‘guard’—in other words, keep watch over the Design Institute’s land.”

  “Oh!”

  Liujin’s heart sank: there was no justice in the world. Everything was the opposite of what she thought it should be; nothing made any sense. She certainly didn’t intend to go to Africa to see for herself, but she liked to experience Africa vicariously through Ying. For a long time now, she had felt that the Design Institute’s old director was a masked despot. When she had patted her on the head, she wanted to howl. Liujin had never understood anything about the Design Institute—not the people and not the work, either. From the time she was old enough to understand things, she had listened closely and observed. Sometimes, Dad would explain a little to her, but his explanations frequently drew her into deeper, more complicated, and darker entanglements. He seemed to take pleasure in this. But Liujin wouldn’t play along. When she couldn’t figure things out, she gave up. She simply stopped thinking about it. Ying was one of these issues. Ying impressed Liujin with a sense of intimacy. She was especially enthralled that night when she saw the five little animals following him. Yet, today Dad had said Ying was simply doing his job. Did everyone i
n this institute have a specific responsibility? Were her dad and mama also just doing their jobs every day? How lighthearted the director seemed while she was killing those tiny fish!

  Looking at the back of Liujin’s head, José thought to himself, Although my daughter is thin, her hair is luxuriant!

  The two of them didn’t talk as they reached the courtyard. José placed the dead bird in the bottom of the deep hole that he had dug. He would plant a grapevine over it in the future. The bird was probably an owl. He had no idea how it had died. When they saw its corpse below the fence, ants were already crawling all over it. José said some people in this neighborhood shot birds with BB guns; they shot cats and dogs, too.

  “Do they do this at night?” Liujin asked.

  “Yes. They’re sharpshooters. When I turned around, I sensed they were aiming at the back of my head. Hunh, these guys!”

  José smoothed the ground and sat on the stone bench, deep in thought. In the kitchen, Nancy was cooking porridge; the aroma spilled all around. José saw his wife appear briefly at the door; she had probably come to take the stool inside. It was time for her to prepare the vegetables. Just then, José heard people talking inside.

  “Last year’s garlic bulbs are hanging behind the door,” one voice said.

  José asked Liujin if she heard the voice. She shook her head and said she heard only a cat—the adorable black cat inside. Then she said abruptly, “I don’t want to follow in your footsteps.”

  José answered with a smile, “But you’re still a daughter of the frontier.”

  “Hmm.”

  Irritated, Liujin lay down next to the well. Although the well was already filled in, Liujin could still hear the deep subterranean water whenever she concentrated. She was at school the day that the well was filled in. The moment she got home, she knew something was different. The courtyard was extremely quiet, and no one was inside. The air smelled of fresh earth. A picture frame had been newly hung in the living room. It held a photograph of her maternal great-grandfather. Liujin had seen that photo once before—pressed in a book. It was yellowed, a remnant of a past life. These two things—the well being filled in and the photo being hung up—occurred simultaneously. Liujin felt this was quite odd.