The Vagrants

TONG CALLED OUT Ear’s name several times before the dog reappeared. “Did you bother the black dog again?” Tong asked Ear, who was running toward Tong in panic. The black dog belonged to Old Kwen, a janitor for the electric plant who, unlike most people living in the blocks, occupied a small, run-down shack at the border between the residential and industrial areas. Old Kwen and his dog were among the few things Tong’s father had told him about the town when Tong had first arrived. Leashed all its life in front of the shack and allowed to move only in a radius of less than five feet, the dog was said to be the meanest and the best guard dog in town, ready to knock down and bite through the throat of anyone who dared to set foot near his master’s shack; stay away from a man who keeps a dog like this, Tong’s father had warned him, but when Tong asked why, his father did not give an explanation.

Too curious and too friendly, Ear had approached the black dog several times, and each time the black dog had growled and jumped up, pulling at the end of his chain with fierce force; it would then take Tong a long time to calm Ear down. “You have to learn to leave other dogs alone,” Tong said now, but Ear only whined. Maybe he was chastising Ear for the wrong reason, Tong thought, and then he realized that he hadn’t heard the black dog bark. “Well, maybe it’s not the black dog, but someone else. You have to learn to leave others alone. Not all of them love you as you think they do,” Tong said.

They walked on the riverbank. The clouds were heavy in the sky. The wind brought a stale smell of old, unmelted snow. Tong stripped a layer of pale, starchy bark off a birch tree, and sat down with his stump of pencil. He wrote onto the bark the words he remembered from the announcement: Female. Counterrevolutionary. School.

Tong was one of the most hardworking students in his class. The teacher sometimes told the class that Tong was a good example of someone who was not bright but who made up for his shortcoming by thorough work. The comment had left Tong more sad than proud at first, but after a while he learned to cheer himself up: After all, praise from the teacher was praise, and an accumulation of these favorable comments could eventually make him an important pupil in the teacher’s eyes. Tong longed to be one of the first to join the Communist Young Pioneers after first grade so that he would earn more respect from the townspeople, and to realize that dream he needed something to impress his teachers and his peers. He had thought of memorizing every character from the elementary dictionary and presenting the result to the teacher at the end of the semester, but his parents, both workers, were not wealthy enough to give him an endless supply of exercise books. The idea of using the birch bark had occurred to Tong after he had read in a textbook that Comrade Lenin, while imprisoned, had used his black bread as an ink pot and his milk as ink, and had written out secret messages to his comrades; on the margins of newspapers, the messages would show up only when the newspaper was put close to fire; whenever a guard approached Lenin would devour his ink pot with the ink in it. “If you have a right heart, you’ll find the right way,” the teacher said of the story’s moral. Since then Tong had tried to keep the right heart and had gathered a handful of pencil stumps that other children had discarded. He had also discovered the birch bark, perfect for writing, a more steady supply than the paper Old Hua saved for him.

Ear sat down on his hind legs and watched Tong work for a while. Then the dog leapt out to the frozen river, leaving small flowerlike paw prints on the old snow. Tong wrote until his fingers were too cold to move. He blew big white breaths on them, and read the words to himself before putting away his pencil stump.

Tong looked back at the town. Red flags waved on top of the city hall and the courthouse. At the center of the city square, a stone statue of Chairman Mao dwarfed the nearby five-storied hospital. According to the schoolteachers, it was the tallest statue of Chairman Mao in the province, the pride of Muddy River, and had attracted pilgrims from other towns and villages. It was the main reason that Muddy River had been promoted from a regional town to a city that now had governing rights over several surrounding towns and villages. A few months earlier, not long after Tong’s arrival, a worker assigned to the semiannual cleaning of the statue had an accident and plummeted to his death from the shoulder of Chairman Mao. Many townspeople gathered. Tong was one of the children who had squeezed through the legs of adults to have a close look at the body—the man, in the blue uniform of a cleaning worker, lay face up with a small puddle of blood by his mouth; his eyes were wide open and glassy-looking, and his limbs stuck out at odd and impossible angles. When the orderlies from the city hospital came to gather the body, it slipped and shook as if it were boneless, reminding Tong of a kind of slug in his grandparents’ village—their bodies were fleshy and moist, and if you put a pinch of salt on their bodies, they would slowly become a small pool of white and sticky liquid. The child standing next to him was sick and was whisked away by his parents, and Tong willed himself not to act weakly. Even some grown-ups turned their eyes away when the orderlies had to peel the man’s head off the ground, but Tong forced himself to watch everything without missing a single detail. He believed if he was brave enough, the town’s boys, and perhaps the grown-ups too, would approve of him and accept him as one of the best among them. It was not the first time that Tong had seen a dead body, but never before had he seen a man die in such a strange manner. Back in his grandparents’ village, people died in unsurprising ways, from sickness and old age. Only once a woman, working in the field with a tank of pesticide on her back, was killed instantly when the tank exploded. Tong and other children had gathered at the edge of the field and watched the woman’s husband and two teenage sons hose down the body from afar until the fire was put out and the deadly gas dispersed; they seemed in neither shock nor grief, their silence suggesting something beyond Tong’s understanding.

Some people’s deaths are heavier than Mount Tai, and others’ are as light as a feather. Tong thought about the lesson his teacher had taught a few weeks before. The woman killed in the explosion had become a tale that the villagers enjoyed telling to passersby, and often the listeners would exclaim in awe, but would that give her death more weight than an old woman dying in her sleep in the lane next to Tong’s grandparents’? The counterrevolutionary’s death must be lighter than a feather, but the banners and the ceremony of the day all seemed to say differently.

The city came to life in the boy’s baffled gaze, some people more prepared than others for this important day. A fourth grader found to her horror that her silk Young Pioneer’s kerchief had been ripped by her little brother, who had bound it around his cat’s paw and played tug-of-war with the cat. Her mother tried to comfort her—didn’t she have a spare cotton one, her mother asked, and even if she wore the silk kerchief, nobody would notice the small tear—but nothing could stop the girl’s howling. How could they expect her, a captain of the Communist Young Pioneers in her class, to wear a plain cotton kerchief or a ripped one? The girl cried until it became clear that her tears would only make her look worse for the day; for the first time in her life, she felt its immense worthlessness, when a cat’s small paw could destroy the grandest dream.

A few blocks away, a truck driver grabbed his young wife just as she rose from bed. One more time, he begged; she resisted, but when she failed to free her arms from his tight grip, she lay open for him. After all, they could both take an extra nap at the denunciation ceremony, and she did not need to worry about his driving today. In the city hospital, a nurse arrived late for the morning shift because her son had overslept, and in a hurry to finish her work before going to the denunciation ceremony, she gave the wrong dose of antibiotics to an infant recovering from pneumonia; only years later would the doctors discover the child’s deafness, caused by the mistake, but it would remain uninvestigated, and the parents would have only fate to blame for their misfortune. Across the street in the communication building, the girl working the switchboard yelled at a peasant when he tried to call his uncle in a neighboring province; didn’t he know that today was an important day and she had to be fully prepared for the political event instead of wasting her time with him, she said, her harsh words half-lost in a bad connection; while she was berating him, the army hospital from the provincial capital called in, and this time the girl was shouted at because she was not prompt enough in picking up the call.

TWO

The girl was dressed in a dark-colored man’s suit, a size too big for her, her hair coiled up and hidden underneath a fedora hat of matching color. Her hands, clad in black gloves, held tightly on to the handle of a short, unsheathed sword. The blade pointed upward, the only object of light color in the black-and-white picture. The girl’s unsmiling face was half shadowed by the hat, her eyes looking straight into the camera. Think of how Autumn Jade was prepared to give up her life, Kai remembered her teacher explaining when she was chosen to play the famous heroine in a new opera. Kai was twelve then, a rising star in the theater school at the provincial capital, and it was not a surprise that she was given every major role, from Autumn Jade, who had been beheaded after a failed assassination of a provincial representative in the last emperor’s court, to Chen Tiejun, the young Communist who had been shot alongside her lover shortly after they had announced each other husband and wife in front of the firing squad. Kai had always been praised for her mature performances, but looking at her picture now, she could see little understanding in the girl’s eyes of the martyrs she had impersonated. Kai had once taken pride in entering adulthood ahead of her peers, but that adulthood, she could see now, was as false and untrustworthy as her youthful interpretation of death and martyrdom.

She returned the framed picture to the wall where it had hung for the past five years along with other pictures, relics of her life onstage between the ages of twelve and twenty-two. The studio, a small, windowless room on the top floor of the administration building, with padded walls and flickering fluorescent lights, had struck Kai at first as a place not much different from a prison cell. Han was the one who decorated the room, hanging up her pictures on the walls and a heart-shaped mirror behind the door, placing vases of plastic flowers on the shelves so they could bloom all year round without the need for sunshine or other care—to make the studio her very own, as Han insisted—when he helped her get the news announcer’s position. One more reason to consider his marriage proposal, Kai’s mother urged, thinking of other less privileged jobs that Kai could have been assigned to after her departure from the provincial theater troupe: teaching in an elementary school and struggling to make the children sing less cacophonously, or serving as one of those clerks who had little function other than filling the offices with pleasant feminine presence in the Cultural and Entertainment Department. Han, the only son of one of the most powerful couples in the city government, had been courting Kai for six months then, a perfect choice for her, according to her parents, who, both as middle-ranked clerks, had little status to help Kai, when younger faces had replaced Kai onstage. The most important success for a woman is not in her profession but in her marriage, Kai’s father said when she thought of leaving Muddy River and seeking an acting career in Beijing or Shanghai; it is more of a challenge to retain the lifelong attention of one audience than to win the hearts of many who would forget her overnight. In her mother’s absence, Kai’s father explained all this, and it was not only his insight into the ephemeral nature of fame but also his unmistakable indication that Kai’s mother—the more dominating and abusive one in their marriage—had failed, that made Kai reconsider her decision. A child who catches for the first time a glimpse of the darker side of her parents’ marriage is forced to enter the grown-up world, often against her nature and will, just as she was once pushed through a birth canal to claim her existence. For Kai, who had left home for the theater school at eight, this second birth came at a time when most of her school friends had ventured into marriage and early motherhood, and she made up her mind to marry into Han’s family. That Kai’s father had passed away shortly thereafter with liver cancer, discovered at a stage too late, had made the decision seem a worthy one, at least for the first year of the marriage.

Kai placed a record on the phonograph. The needle circled on the red disc, and dutifully the theme song for the morning news, “Love of the Homeland,” flooded out of loudspeakers onto every street corner. Kai imagined the world outside the broadcast studio: the dark coal smoke rising from rooftops into the lead-colored morning sky; sparrows jumping from one roof to the next, their wings dusty and their chirping drowned out by the patriotic music; the people underneath those roofs, used to the morning ritual of music and then the news broadcast. They would probably not hear a single word of the program.

The chorus ended, and Kai lifted the needle and turned on the microphone. “Good morning, workers, peasants, and all revolutionary comrades of Muddy River,” she began in her standard greeting, her well-trained voice at once warm and impersonal. She reported both international and national news, taken from People’s Daily and Reference Journal by a night-shift clerk in the propaganda department, followed by provincial news and local affairs. Afterward she picked up an editorial, denouncing the Vietnamese government for its betrayal of the true Communist faith, and hailing the ideological importance of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge despite the temporary setback brought about by the Vietnamese intrusion. While she was reading, Kai was aware of the note taped to the microphone, instructing her to announce to the townspeople Gu Shan’s denunciation ceremony, and her execution to follow.

Gu Shan was twenty-eight, the same age as Kai, and four years younger than Autumn Jade when she had been beheaded after a hasty trial. Autumn Jade had left two children who were too young to mourn her death, and a husband who had disowned her in defense of the last dynasty she had been fighting against. Kai had a husband and a son; Gu Shan had neither. The freedom to sacrifice for one’s belief was a luxury that few could afford, Kai thought. She imagined sneaking the words pioneer and martyr into the announcement of the execution. Would Shan, who was probably being offered her last breakfast and perhaps a change of clean clothes, hear the voice of a friend she had perhaps long ago ceased hoping for in her long years of imprisonment? Kai’s hands shook when she read the announcement. She and Shan were allies now, even though Shan would never know it.

Kai clicked off the microphone, and someone promptly knocked on the door, two short taps followed by a scratch. Kai checked her face in the mirror before opening the door.

“The best tonic for the best voice,” said Han, as he lifted the thermos and presented it with a theatrical gesture. Every morning, before Han went to his office in the same building, he stopped by the studio with a thermos of tea, brewed from an herb named Big Fat Sea and said to be good for one’s voice. It had begun as a habit of love after their honeymoon, and Kai had thought that it would cool down and eventually die as all unreasonable passions between a man and woman did. But five years and a child later, Han had not given up the practice. He must be the only husband in this town who would deliver tea to his wife, Han sometimes said, full of marvel and admiration, as if he himself was happily baffled by what he did; other people must think of him as a fool now, he said, out of self-mockery, yet it was the pride he did not conceal in the statement that filled Kai with panic. Getting married and becoming a mother had once seemed the most natural course for her life, but Kai could not help but wish, at times, that everything she had mistakenly decided could be wiped away.

“I’ve told you many times I don’t need it,” said Kai of the tea, and her reply, which often sounded like a loving reprimand, sounded more impatient to her ears today. Han seemed not to notice. He pecked her on the cheek, walked past her into the studio, and poured a mug of tea for her. “It’s an important day. I don’t want the world to hear that my wife’s voice is anything less than perfect.”

Kai smiled weakly, and when Han urged her to drink the tea, she took a sip. He gazed at her. How was his preparation for the day going, she asked, before he had a chance to compliment her beauty, as he often did.

“All set but for the helicopter,” Han replied.

The helicopter? Kai asked. Something that was not his responsibility, he said, and he left it at that. Kai asked, as if out of innocent curiosity, what he needed a helicopter for, and Han replied that he was sure someone would set things straight, she should not bother herself with his boring business. “Worrying makes one grow old,” he said, as a joke, and Kai said that perhaps it would soon be time for him to look for a younger woman. He laughed, taking Kai’s reply as a flirtation.

It amazed her that her husband never doubted her in any way. His faith and confidence in her—and more so in himself—made him a blind worshipper of their marriage. How easy it was to deceive a trusting soul, but the thought unsettled Kai. She looked at the clock, and said it was about time for her to go. She was expected to be at her position at the East Wind Stadium, one of the major sites for the denunciation ceremony, by eight. He would walk her there, Han said. Kai wished she had an excuse to reject his offer, but she said nothing.

She put a few pages of the news away and adjusted her hair before leaving the studio with him. Her husband placed a hand on her elbow, as if she needed his guidance and assistance to walk down the five flights of stairs, but when they exited the building, he let go of her, so that they would not be seen having any improper physical contact in public.

“So I’ll see you at Three Joy?” Han asked, as they turned at the street corner.

What for? Kai asked, and Han answered that it was the celebration banquet. Nobody had told her about it, Kai said, and Han replied that he thought she would have known by now that it was the regular thing after such an event. “The last couple of dinners, the mayor asked why you were not there,” Han said, and added that he had found excuses for her both times.

Kai could envision it: her place at the table with the mayor and his wife, Han and his parents and a few other families, a close-knit circle of status. It had been part of the allure of the marriage, that once she was a member of this family she would enter a social group that clerks like her parents had dreamed of reaching all their lives. Kai was unwilling to admit it now, but she knew that vanity was one of her costly errors. She was a presentable wife and daughter-in-law: good-looking, having had no other boyfriend before she met Han, and capable of giving birth to a son for the first baby. Her in-laws treated her well, but they would never hesitate to let her know that she was the one to have married up in the family.

She had told the nanny that she would be home around lunchtime, Kai said. The new nanny, having just started the week before, was fifteen and a half, too young to take care of a baby, in Kai’s opinion, but when the previous nanny had quit to go back to work on the land with her husband and sons—after many years of the people’s commune, the central government had finally allowed peasants to own the planting rights to their own land—a girl from the mountain village was the only one they could find as a replacement.

He would send his parents’ orderly to check on the nanny, Han said. What could an eighteen-year-old boy know about an eleven-month-old baby, Kai responded, and Han, detecting a trace of impatience in her words, studied her and asked if she was feeling all right. He squeezed her hand quickly before letting it go.

Kai shook her head and said she only worried about Ming-Ming. Han replied that he understood, but his parents would not be happy if she missed important social events. She nodded and said she would go if that was what he wanted. The baby had been an easy excuse for her distraction at the breakfast table, the dinners she missed at Han’s parents’ flat, fewer visits to her own mother, her tired apologies when Han asked for sex at night.

“My parents want you to be there,” said Han. “So do I.”

Kai nodded, and they resumed their walk in silence. A few blocks away they saw smoke rising at an intersection. A group of people had gathered, and there was a strong odor of burned leather in the air. A piece of silk, palm-sized and in a soft faded color, was carried across the street by the wind. An orange cat, stretching on a low wall, followed the floating fabric with its eyes.

Han asked the crowd to make way. A few people stood aside, and Kai followed her husband into the circle. A man sporting the red armband of the Workers’ Union security patrol was staring down at an old woman, who sat in front of a burning pile of clothes. She did not look up when Han asked her why she was blocking traffic on the important day of a political event.

“The old witch is playing deaf and mute,” the security patrol said, and added that his companion had gone to fetch the police.

Kai looked at the top of the old woman’s head, barely covered by thin gray hair. She bent down toward the old woman, and told her that she was violating a traffic regulation, that she’d better leave now. There was a slight ripple in the crowd as Kai spoke; in this town, people recognized Kai’s voice. When she stood up, she could feel the woman standing next to her inching away, so as to study her face at a better angle.

“You may still have a chance, if you walk away by yourself now,” Han said, and in a lower voice, he told Kai to go on to the ceremony, as he would wait for the police.

The old woman looked up. “You’ll all see her off in your way. Why can’t I see her off in mine?”

The security patrol explained to Han and Kai that this woman was the mother of the soon-to-be-executed counterrevolutionary. Only then did Kai recognize the defiance in Mrs. Gu’s eyes. She had seen the same expression in Shan’s eyes twelve years ago, when they had been in rival factions of the Red Guards.

“Our way to send your daughter off is not only the most correct way but also the only way permitted by law,” Han said, as he ordered the security patrol to fetch water. Mrs. Gu poked the fire with a tree branch, as if she had not heard him. When the patrol returned with a heavy bucket, Han stepped back and motioned the man to put out the fire. Mrs. Gu did not shield her face from the splashing water. The pile hissed and smoldered, but she poked it again as if she were willing the flame to catch again.

Two policemen, summoned by the other patrol, were now pushing through the crowd and shouting, telling people to move on. Some people left, but many only retreated and formed a bigger circle. “Let’s not make a big fuss out of this,” Kai said to Han, as he strode up to meet the policemen.

“Those who seek punishment will get what they ask for,” Han said.

The patrol greeted the police, and pointed out Han and Kai, but Mrs. Gu paid little attention to the men surrounding her, mumbling something before she wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Why don’t you just let her go?” Kai said to Han, and she quoted an old saying, Favors one does will be returned to him, and pains one causes will be inflicted on him.