Vagabonds

by Hao Jingfang

  As he passed her, Laak, the Registrar of Files, paused and explained apologetically that he had received her note but hadn’t had a chance to respond. He was going to be in the office the next few days, and she was welcome to come find him.

  “Thank you, Uncle Laak,” said Luoying. “I really appreciate it.”

  The last one to emerge from the living room was Juan. His face, dark and leathery, and his prominent paunch made him resemble a painting of a spice merchant from India from eight hundred years before. Despite his figure, he moved with agility and efficiency. He wore a thick mustache curved up at both ends, and his dark, bushy eyebrows went some way to soften his piercing gaze. When he first came into the entrance hall, his expression was severe and wolfish; but as soon as he saw Luoying, his face cracked into a wide grin, and he picked her up just as he used to when she was a little girl.

  “Look at you! My little bunny is back.” He spun her once around and set her back down. “You’re still so light! Did they starve you over there on Earth? Or were you too picky with your food?”

  “I … I’m a dancer.”

  “So? A dancer must also eat! Put on some weight and you’ll dance even better!”

  “I won’t be able to leap as high then.”

  “That’s no big deal. What’s the point of jumping like a grasshopper? Whatever you want to eat, eat! And if you run out of ideas, come find me. Let me tell you, your Uncle Juan has turned eating into an art. Did you enjoy the desserts last night at the banquet?”

  “I sure did! I ate two helpings.”

  “Aha! I was responsible for those. Put them in the oven myself.”

  “I had no idea you were such a skilled baker! … Oh, Uncle Juan, I heard you talk about your grandmother last night—”

  “Did you?” Juan laughed uproariously. Luoying was befuddled by this unexpected reaction. Juan went on. “Little bunny, you have to understand that in a negotiation someone has to play the role of the reasonable adult, while someone else has to scare them a bit, like a madman. Your grandfather loves being reasonable, which means I have to go scare people. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? I’ve complained to Hans many times that we need to switch roles once in a while.”

  Juan continued to laugh. He promised to have Luoying over to his house for dinner soon and then left.

  Watching his departing figure, Luoying wasn’t sure what to think. She saw how the laughter had slid off Juan’s face the moment he turned away and how his gaze had again acquired that terrifying piercing quality. As he strode away, his back was as erect as a tree and his upper body never wavered. She remembered that Uncle Juan had always called her “little bunny” and loved to tease her, asking her what she wanted to do when she was grown up.

  She knew the answer now. When I’m grown up, I want to understand what lies behind the words, not just the words themselves.

  The entrance hall fell quiet. She turned around and saw Rudy and Grandfather at the door to the living room, chatting in low voices. Through the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hall, she could see that the red surface of the planet appeared almost brown with the angle of the light, and the thorn apple flowers glowed silver. The two of them seemed to be arguing, but Luoying couldn’t be sure. She saw that Grandfather’s expression was so severe that the blood seemed to have drained from his face. Only very rarely had she seen him so troubled. In her memory, she could recall only a scene from a news broadcast, after Grandfather had pacified a brewing rebellion in the Boule, when he had looked like this. Back then, Hans Sloan had strode into the Boule Chamber and sat down in a chair in the middle. Without saying a single word, the chamber quieted down as the legislators saw his face.

  “… but a principle isn’t the same as a line that cannot be crossed,” she heard Rudy say.

  “Of course it is,” said Grandfather. “If it can be crossed, then it isn’t a principle at all.”

  She realized then that her worries had been justified. There was a looming crisis. If the negotiations failed, war would follow. The Terrans wanted controlled nuclear fusion.

  * * *

  Back in her room, she dropped her backpack on the floor and slid to the floor herself. This had been a long afternoon for her. The snippets of conversation she had heard were rough, technical, and abbreviated, but they were enough to give her an outline of the situation. Distracted, she took a bath. Soaking in the tub, she allowed her mind to wander as the world disappeared in the steam.

  It had been some time since she had heard such frank discussion of politics. When she was little, such discussions were a part of her daily life. Many of her parents’ friends gathered at their home to talk politics while gulping cup after cup of bitter coffee, filling the walls with projected maps. But on Earth it was rare to encounter real politics. Other than the Reversionist movement, which flared up in the year before her return to Mars, most of her time there had been spent in the pursuit of lighthearted diversions. It was as though she had lived in a bubble, a champagne-flavored, fun bubble. The bitter coffee aroma of political debates seemed unfamiliar to her now.

  It wasn’t just because she had avoided the company of policy makers on Earth. It was more a consequence of mood and atmosphere. Unlike the politicians she had met on Earth, the decision-makers on Mars had a seriousness of purpose. They often spoke of universal responsibilities and the ultimate goal of humankind, but the politicians on Earth rarely uttered such phrases. On Earth the news was dominated by events such as some government filing for bankruptcy with the World Bank, a head of state somewhere making a film to boost tourism to their country, the chief diplomat of some country making a promise to buy the government bonds of another country … It was as though countries were just large companies, and the politicians their executives. She rarely heard the kind of news that was common on Mars: a plan to divert the orbit of some asteroid or dwarf planet; an attempt to build a new model for human survival; collecting and cataloging the fruits of human civilization; ascertaining the sources of errors in simulations of human history; and so on. She often wondered if alien visitors might, based on the news broadcast on the two planets, come to the conclusion that the population of Earth was only twenty million and that of Mars twenty billion, as opposed to the other way around.

  The debate in the living room just then seemed to her unreal. When she was a little girl, she had been impressed by such grand visions and heroic words. But on Earth she had lost her enthusiasm for them. There was no one who persuaded her to abandon her faith, but she had ceased to believe. Her encounter with a far larger portion of humanity, with their chaotic and selfish desires, had confused her. She no longer saw a Humanity waiting to be changed, or a Civilization that entrusted its hope to Mars. Those visions, which had once seemed full of grandeur to her, now appeared as magnificent illusions, mere windmill giants.

  She understood that she was lost. There was no question that the men who had been in her house today represented the ideal of Martian life: they were the best in the fields of scientific research, engineering, exploration, and development. They stood at the peak where all the roads on Mars—solemn and honor-strewn roads—converged. But she had no idea how they could show her the way she wanted to go for her own future.

  She closed her eyes and sank deeper into the warm bathwater. Through the steam-fogged walls of the bathroom, she knew that the monitor by her bed glowed with the log-in page for her personal space. She wasn’t looking at it, but she couldn’t escape its presence.

  She had to make a choice soon. She needed to register with an atelier and establish her identity. It was a step that every child on Mars had to take to become an adult. An atelier gave one an identification number, established the credentials for acquiring the necessities of life and for expressing and living a life. All jobs, passports, documents, and credits were linked to the number. She had not logged in yet; it was as though she didn’t exist, hadn’t yet returned from Earth.

  But she didn’t want to choose an atelier. Just as a woman
returning from a war didn’t want to go to a regular job.

  For most people on Mars, the choice of an atelier was a choice for life. Yes, some did change ateliers, but most stuck with their initial decision and climbed the career ladder year by year. Luoying didn’t want to live like that, though she knew that was how everyone on Mars lived.

  During her five years on Earth, she moved fourteen times and lived in twelve different cities. She tried out seven different jobs and built up five different groups of friends. She lost all certainty that she knew how to plan the rest of her life. She could no longer accept monotony, and she found hierarchy revolting. What had seemed to her the natural order of life in childhood now appeared as unbearable restraints. She wished she felt otherwise, but there it was.

  The log-in screen continued to glow. She refused to go near it.

  Next to the monitor, on the window ledge, was a collection of toys: a walking-singing electronic clock, a thermometer shaped like a strawberry, a mechanical doll, a lamp made from orange and green glass. Luoying stared at the collection, almost disbelieving that she had once treasured them. But there they were, a frozen memorial of the world of a thirteen-year-old girl.

  She climbed out of the bathtub and dried herself in the heating booth. She put on her pajamas, and the fragrance of fresh laundry gave her some comfort. She stared at herself in the mirror as though looking as a stranger. Under her wet hair, her pale neck seemed too thin and delicate, not at all what she had hoped for herself. She wanted to be strong and clearheaded, with definite ideas about how to live, how to choose, how to live a thoughtful, determined, lucid life.

  She did not want to be the confused and pale girl in the mirror.

  * * *

  Her hair pinned up, she padded out of her room. She was going down the hall to find Grandfather.

  He had said yesterday that they were going to have dinner together tonight, to pray for her parents on the anniversary of their deaths. But after searching through every room, she didn’t find Rudy or Hans. Inside the kitchen, a prepared dinner was being warmed in the cooker.

  She sighed, staring at the glass dishes and the empty dining room. In the end, Grandfather couldn’t keep his promise. She didn’t blame him. He was, after all, consul of Mars, and she knew now the Terran negotiations were pushing them toward a crisis.

  Leaving the kitchen, she climbed the stairs to the study on the second floor.

  She wanted to talk to her parents by herself, to ask them how she ought to choose her life.

  Luoying was only eight when her mother and father died. There were many things she didn’t understand at the time, or perhaps she did but then forgot about them. On Earth, there was a time when she had tried to shut off her past deliberately. And unfortunately, when a door was shut for too long, it was impossible to open up again. To make herself stronger, she had cut herself off from her memories. And now, after trying to be strong for so long, she no longer had the key to go back.

  The study looked just the way she had last seen it five years ago, which was the same as the way it had been ten years ago, when her parents died. This was where her father read and wrote, where her mother sculpted, and where they discussed politics with their friends. A tea service still sat on the table, with tiny spoons on saucers, as though the guests had only departed for a break and would return shortly. Her mother’s tools sat on a shelf, and an unfinished sculpture rested on the workbench.

  Everything was carefully maintained. But the room was too perfect. The window ledge and the corners of the window frames were so clean that it was obvious at a glance that no one lived here anymore.

  The bookcases in the study were custom designed by her father. Together, they resembled some architectural wonder: tall and short, horizontal and vertical, the beams and buttresses raised frozen words into the air like some imaginary castle. The bookcases were submerged in the evening shadow. The whole room seemed to be gazing upon the past. The people were gone, but memories remained.

  Luoying remembered that her parents’ lives had always been connected with art. She could no longer recall the details, but that sense of art intermingling with life, with exchange and conversation, lingered.

  Slowly, she walked along the walls, picking up and examining everything before setting it back down, trying to imagine what it was like when her parents had held it.

  On a small table in the corner, she saw a photo album standing open. The photograph was one of her parents together.

  She picked up the album, a memorial book, and flipped through it. There were photos from Mom’s and Dad’s childhoods: school awards, portraits taken at a dance, records of achievements in science and art. Both of them had been accomplished youths. Dad had written, directed, and starred in a historical drama. Photographs of the production showed intricate sets projected onto the stage of a small community theater, and her father, performing the role of a hero about to be executed for his beliefs, stood in front of other teenagers with a determined expression. Mom had always loved painting and sculpting, and one of her early paintings, the winner of a competition, was still on display in the community museum. Both of them had chosen to join an engineering atelier, but their love of art continued unabated unto death.

  As she looked through the photos, Luoying remembered that when she was a little girl, her favorite place in the world was with her mother in here, while she sculpted.

  And just like that, she seemed to see Mom standing next to one of the bookcases. Her long hair was braided, coiled, and pinned atop her head. She gazed intently at Luoying, full of love, before rushing back to the workbench and the lump of clay. Her hands kneaded and squeezed, the sculpting knife carving away the excess to reveal the outline of what she was making. Luoying saw herself sitting in the chair, a bow in her hair and a doll in her arms, staring curiously at her mother, infected by her passion for her art.

  Then she saw Dad. He was next to them, leaning against one of the bookcases, wearing a brown shirt and a wool vest. One of his feet was on top of a chair, and he rested an arm against the other leg as his hand sketched something in the air with a pen. The expression on his face was one of intense concentration as he recounted a period of history to his audience. The audience, other men and women her parents’ age, discussed history and art and debated ideas that stirred the heart. She didn’t understand everything they said, but she loved listening to them.

  The visions awakened her memory. Bit by bit, the past sealed in her head seeped out and filled the rest of the night-shrouded room. She realized that she had not in fact forgotten—she just hadn’t thought of them for a long time.

  On a page of the memorial book she saw the following: From that day on, Adele officially became a person without an atelier.

  How could her mother be without an atelier? Luoying glanced at the date on the page: it was the year she turned six. There was no explanation elaborating the statement. She flipped back to the front of the book, where there was a copy of her mother’s curriculum vitae. Indeed, there was nothing about the last two years of Mom’s life. Everything simply came to an abrupt stop, like an unfinished play.

  Mom didn’t want to register either! A bittersweet feeling filled Luoying’s heart. She felt connected to her mother’s soul, despite the yawning gulf of death. She was not alone in her confusion, and her own troubles seemed suffused with her parents’ influence and legacy. Her vagabond days and consequent anxiety were not so strange after all. She had wandered afar only to return to the path her mother had chosen.

  But why had Mom done it? Her own confusion was the result of her time on Earth, but what had happened to her mother to make her fall into the same kind of self-doubt until she chose to belong to no set identity, no atelier?

  She wanted to find out more about her mother’s experiences, but there was nothing more in the memorial book. Carefully, Luoying placed the album back on the table. She turned to the bookcases, thinking perhaps they held more clues.

  By the moonlight, she saw a bo
uquet of white flowers resting in the shadow of the legs of the semicircular table at the other end of the study. This was a traditional piece of Chinese furniture, also called a crescent table. With the flat side placed against the wall, it was intended for vases and other decorations.

  The flowers were lilies, their stems wrapped in green tissue. The bouquet had been so well hidden that she had missed it when she came in earlier.

  She walked over and picked up the bouquet. Below it was a card.

  Forgive me.

  The handwriting belonged to Grandfather. Her heart pounded.

  So he had been here. Even though they couldn’t have dinner together, he had kept his promise.

  Luoying examined the card, perplexed. The card glowed a pale white in the moonlight, and the dark, angular strokes appeared particularly striking.

  What had Hans Sloan done that he needed to beg forgiveness from her parents? She recalled how Grandfather had looked at the photograph of her parents on the day of her return. It was a look full of love and longing.

  Forgive me.

  She looked at the words again and froze, thunderstruck.

  The scene from earlier in the afternoon, when Grandfather had looked so severe while talking to Rudy, came to her mind. Her heart seemed to stop as she finally remembered where she had seen that broadcast of her grandfather in the Boule Chamber.

  It was just before she left for Earth. She was in the living room, trying to find a film she wanted to watch. By happenstance, she triggered a recording that someone else in the house had just finished playing.

  She had stared, fascinated, as Grandfather strode across the Boule Chamber, full of rebellious agitation, and sat down. She saw his cold face as the chamber quieted.

  And then the real Hans Sloan had appeared in the door of the living room. She rushed to turn off the recording as though caught doing something forbidden.