The Vagrants

ELEVEN

Bashi was in love, and it perplexed him. The desire to be with Nini for every minute of his life seemed not to come from between his legs but from elsewhere in his body, for which he had no experience or explanation. He thought hard and the only similar experience had been when he was three, not too long after his mother had left him with his grandmother: Winter that year had been particularly harsh in Muddy River, and every morning they would wake up to frozen towels on the washstand, even though his grandmother had not spared one penny on coal. Every day they slipped into bed together straight after dinner, and often in the middle of the night Bashi would wake up with icy cold feet. He would whimper, and his grandmother, still dreaming, would grab his little feet and hold them against her bosom, not one layer of nightclothes in between. The soft warmth made Bashi shiver with inexplicable fear and excitement, and he would lie awake, wiggling one toe and then another, imagining the toes in their adventure until he fell asleep.

Bashi longed to be with Nini the way he had once yearned for his grandmother's bosom. Sometimes he worried that something was wrong with his male root, but it never failed to rise dutifully when he was thinking about Nini. The problem occurred when she was next to him, a tangible body, warm and soft. He could not desire her the way he wanted to. The prenuptial bridal check he had made, on a whim, haunted him; that glimpse into a secret pathway she had opened to him, with trust and ease and even playfulness, shamed him. Her thin hair, cut short carelessly by her mother, looked like a bird's nest. Her pointed chin, her bony arms, and her forever-chapped lips made him want to take her in his arms and rock her and croon to her. But even this desire made him nervous in front of her. What would she think of him, a man with more than one screw loose in his brain?

Nini, however, seemed unaware of his struggle. The morning after Ching Ming, she had come into the house as naturally as daylight. She had moved around as if she had grown up there. Bashi waited for her to bring up the topic of marriage again; he believed everything he had told her when he had conducted his bridal check, but he knew that marriage to a twelve-year-old was easier said than done. Nini, on the other hand, did not press him, as he had dreaded she might. She talked more, even a bit chatty; she jokingly criticized his messy bedroom, and before he had a chance to defend himself, she took it upon herself to put everything in order for him. She did not blink when she discovered his foul-smelling socks and underwear beneath the bed. He protested when she gathered the laundry to wash, but she refused to listen. If a man knew how to take care of himself, she said, what would he need a woman for?

Nini seemed not to understand her value, Bashi thought. She did not put on any of the airs that other women did when being courted—or perhaps she was just a golden-hearted girl. Overwhelmed by his good fortune, Bashi was eager to find a friend with whom he could share his love story, but there was no such person in his life. Through his mind ran all the people he knew—the Huas naturally came up first, as the more Bashi thought about it, the more he believed the Huas to be the only ones willing to offer the assistance that he and Nini needed. But suppose they were old-fashioned and didn't approve of a marriage arranged by the two young people themselves?

Bashi found Mrs. Hua in the street in the morning; the arrests, made the night before, had caused little ripple in the everyday life of Muddy River. “Was your marriage to Old Hua arranged by your parents or his parents?” Bashi asked.

The old woman did not stop sweeping. She was aware of being addressed, yet ever since her dream about the death of her youngest daughter, Bunny, she had found it hard to concentrate on a conversation. The blind fiddler, coming and then leaving with his heartbreaking tunes, had made her nostalgic for her days and nights on the road. She talked to her husband about giving up their home and going back to the vagrant life. They could visit their daughters, the married ones and the ones who'd been taken away from them, before they took their final exit from the world; he said nothing at the beginning, and when she asked again, he said that he imagined these visits would not do the daughters, or themselves, any good.

“Mrs. Hua?” Bashi touched her broomstick and she gazed at him. More than any other day he looked like someone she had known from a long time ago. She closed her eyes but could not locate the person in her memory.

“Did you have a matchmaker to talk to your parents and Old Hua's parents?”

This boy, who was serious and persistent at asking irrelevant questions, baffled her—who was the person returning to her in his body?

“Mrs. Hua?”

“I met him as a beggar,” she said.

“You mean, nobody went between your parents and his parents as a matchmaker?”

“No matchmaker would visit a couple of dead parents in their graves. My husband—he had been an orphan since before he could remember.”

Bashi was elated by Mrs. Hua's answer. He himself was an orphan, and Nini was nearly one. Of course they needed no blessings from their parents, alive or dead. “What do you think of Nini?”

Mrs. Hua looked at Bashi with an intensity that frightened him. He wondered if he had made a mistake bringing up the topic. Would the old woman become suspicious and turn him over to the police?

It was the boy flutist, Mrs. Hua thought. The boy who had once come and begged to become their son. Mrs. Hua looked up at the sky and counted. What year was that? The year that she and her husband had first thought of their deaths and the girls’ lives without them—1959 it was, when the famine had just begun, a hard blow for everyone but hardest for beggars. They had four daughters then, Morning Glory at thirteen, Peony at ten, Lotus at eight, and Hibiscus, seven. The flutist was not older than twelve himself, an orphan who went from village to village, as they themselves did, and begged with his flute.

“Do you play flute?” Mrs. Hua asked Bashi.

“Who is Flute? I don't know him. Does he know me?”

The boy twenty years earlier had talked in this glib way too, but the music he had played could make a stone weep, such was the sadness that his flute had carried; he could make a dead man laugh in his coffin too, when he was in the mood. The boy had made much older girls fall in love with him; even some married women, when their husbands were at the fair or in the field, stood in front of their doors and teased him with jokes usually meant only for married men and women, behind closed doors. Despite all the attention he got, the boy came and begged Mrs. Hua and her husband to adopt him; he would call them Baba and Mama and would support them with his flute, he promised, but her husband refused. With his flute and his sweet words, he would put all their daughters through hell, Old Hua said to Mrs. Hua afterward; she agreed but not without regret, and now the boy had come back to her in another incarnation, flute-less, yet she recognized him.

“What do you think of Nini, Mrs. Hua?”

“Why do you ask, Son?”

“What do you think of my marrying her?” said Bashi. “Mrs. Hua, don't look at me like I have two heads. You're scaring me.”

“Why do you want to marry Nini?”

“She'll be so much better off with me than with her own parents,” said Bashi. “And I'd be the happiest man in the world if I could spend my days with her.”

Mrs. Hua looked hard at Bashi. For a year after the flutist boy had left them, Lotus had been in a cheerless mood, unusual for an eight-year-old. Among the sisters, she had been the closest to the boy; she had learned to sing to his accompaniment, and he had joked that they would make the best beggar couple, with his flute and her voice. Mrs. Hua had wondered then whether they had made a mistake by refusing the boy, but Old Hua, upon hearing her doubt, shook his head. Lotus was the plainest of the four girls, and the boy, with a face too smart for his own good, would one day shatter her heart. Besides, Old Hua said, did they want their daughter to repeat their own fate, married to another beggar, without a roof over her head?

“I'm serious,” Bashi said. Mrs. Hua's silence made him nervous and eager to prove himself. “I'll treat her well.”

“I've seen you grow up these years, Bashi,” Mrs. Hua said. “I've known you enough not to suspect you as a bad person, but anyone else who hears you say this will think you crazy.”

“Why?”

“She's still a child.”

“But she'll grow up,” Bashi said. “I can wait.”

Indeed, why couldn't the boy have the right to think of marrying Nini? What if they had let the young flute player be part of the family—they might have more now to their names, a daughter and a son-in-law to see them off to the next world, music that added color to their dull lives, grandchildren to love.

“Who would marry her and treat her well if not for me? I love her,” Bashi said, and he stood up straighter as he made the bold claim. “She's never happy in her own house. Can you be my matchmaker? Can you talk to her family on our behalf? They can't get a better offer.”

“She's too young,” Mrs. Hua said.

“You married your daughters young to other families, didn't you?” Bashi said. “I can wait for her to grow up. I can pay for Nini to live with you. I just need to have their word that Nini will be mine.”

Mrs. Hua looked at Bashi. The wheel of life, with its ruthless revolving, could be merciful at times. The boy had come back to her, giving her a second chance, but what was the right thing, for any mother, any woman, to decide? “Let me talk to my husband,” she said. “Can you come to our place in the afternoon? We'll have an answer for you then.”

IT TOOK TONG a long walk to gather his courage for school. He imagined his teacher asking for an explanation about the previous day. He would never get the red scarf now that he was a dishonest boy, pretending to be sick and skipping school. The teacher had once said that a small crack in the bottom of a ship would wreck it in the open sea, and Tong imagined himself a deteriorated soul heading toward a sinful life, and the thought made his eyes fill with tears. He would admit his wrongdoing first thing this morning, before the crack widened and made him into a young criminal.

The teacher, however, was in no mood to question Tong. Classes had been canceled from the first through the sixth grades. The principal had announced an emergency meeting for all teachers and staff, and the students were herded into the auditorium, watched by nobody. Soon the unsupervised auditorium exploded with noise. Boys from the upper grades ran wild along the aisles, and the younger boys, even though they dared not leave their seats, hurled paper planes at one another. Girls shrieked when they were bumped or hit by the boys, and some brought out colorful plastic strings to weave key rings in the shape of goldfish or parrots. No question was asked about why they were kept there, or how long it would go on; as far as the children could see, this day of happiness would last forever.

Tong sat among a few quieter classmates, boys and girls who could sit still in their seats for hours when required by their teachers. There was a war coming, the girl sitting next to Tong whispered to him. What war? Tong asked, and the girl did not answer, saying only that she had overheard her father say so to her mother. She was the kind of girl who blushed at every word she said, and Tong looked at her crimson face, finding it hard to believe her.

Half an hour later, the principal led the teachers into the auditorium. He blew his whistle with all his might, hurting everyone's eardrums. The students quickly returned to their seats, and the auditorium soon became quiet. The principal stood at the podium and, as usual, cleared his throat several times into the microphone, which cracked and magnified the sound, before beginning his speech.

“An outbreak of a counterrevolutionary epidemic has caught Muddy River unprepared,” he said. “I want you all to understand that the situation is urgent, and if we don't watch out for ourselves, we may be the next ones infected by this virulent disease.”

Some children shifted in their seats, a few coughing and others rubbing their noses.

“It is time that we cleanse our hearts and our souls with the harshest disinfectant,” the principal said, banging on the podium to emphasize each of his words, the children's hearts pounding along with his fist.

“You've all been born under the red flag of revolution and grown up in the honeypot the party has provided,” the principal continued. “Sometimes this privilege may be the exact reason that one forgets to appreciate one's happiness in this country. Now answer me, children, who has given you this happy life?”

It took a moment of hesitation before some upper-grade students answered, “The Communist Party.”

“I can't hear you,” the principal said. “Say your answer louder if you have confidence in it.”

A few teachers stood up and signaled to the auditorium, and more voices joined the chorus. It took several rounds for the principal to be satisfied with the roaring answer. “Long live the greatest, the most glorious, and the ever-correct Chinese Communist Party,” he said again with a thump-thump of his fist. “Do you all understand these words? What does this mean? It means our party has never been wrong and will never be wrong; it means that anything we do will not escape the scrutiny of the party. I know you've all been taught to respect your parents, but what are they compared to the party, our foremost parents? You are the party's children before you are the children of your parents. Everybody is equally loved by the party, but when someone makes a mistake, just as when a child makes a mistake, the party will not let a single wrongdoer slip by. No one will be spared; no crime will be tolerated.”

Tong's eyes were swollen and hot. How could he, a child loved by the party, skip class only because of a missing pet? How could he have forgotten that he was destined to become a hero? Softhearted-ness would make him useless, as his father had said; he was meant to be a special boy, and never again would he allow himself to forget it. He shouted the slogans with the other students—he could not hear his own voice, but he was sure his voice would reach the party, asking for forgiveness.

After the meeting, the students lined up and went back to their homerooms. The upper grades were required to write down in detail what they and each member of their families had done on the day of Ching Ming. The smaller children were given the time to think and recollect, their teachers patrolling the aisles so those boys and girls who tended to daydream in class would be constantly reminded to focus.

His dog had disappeared the evening before so he had been looking for his dog on the day of Ching Ming, Tong told the teachers in the separate classroom, when it was his turn to confess. The two interrogators, sitting behind the desk with notebooks open, were both strangers—they had been called in from another school, as the school district had instructed that schools swap staffs so the children's answers wouldn't be influenced in any way by their own teachers. The younger one of the two, a woman in her thirties, took notes and then said, “What's your dog's name?”

“Ear.”

The two teachers exchanged looks and the other one, a man in his fifties, asked, “What kind of name is that?”

Tong wiggled on the chair, made for an adult, his feet not reaching the floor. The chair had been placed in the middle of the room, facing the desk and the two chairs behind it. Tong tried to fix his eyes on his shoes, but having their own will, his eyes soon wandered to the four legs underneath the desk across the room. The man's trousers, greenish gray, had two patches of a similar color covering both knees; the woman's black leather shoes had shiny metal clips in the shape of butterflies. Tong did not know how long he would be questioned—even though the principal and teachers had said nothing of the signed petition, he knew that it was one of the things he had to hide.

“Who could prove that you were looking for your dog?” the male teacher asked.

“My mama and my baba,” Tong said.

“Were they with you when you looked for the dog?”

Tong shook his head.

“Then how could they know what you were doing?” the male teacher said. “What were they doing when you were looking for the dog?”

“I don't know,” Tong said. “I went out early. They always get up late on Sundays.”

“Do you know what they do on Sunday mornings?” the male teacher said in a particular tone, and the female teacher looked down at her notebook, trying to hide a knowing smile.

Tong shook his head again, his back cold with sweat.

“What did they do after they got up?” the male teacher asked.

“Nothing,” Tong said.

“Nothing? How could two adults do nothing?”

“My mama did some laundry,” Tong said, hesitantly.

“That's something. And then?”

“My baba fixed the stove,” Tong said. It was not exactly a lie—the damper of their stove had been broken and his mother had asked his father many times before he had fixed it the week before. It was something that a father would do on a Sunday.

“What else?”

“My mama cooked the breakfast and the supper.”

“But not lunch? Did she or your father go out to buy lunch?”

“We eat only two meals on Sundays,” said Tong. “They did not go out. They took a long nap in the afternoon.”

“Again?” the male teacher said with exaggerated disbelief.

Tong bit his lips and did not speak. His mother always said sleeping was the best way to save energy so they would not have to spend extra money for a lunch on Sunday but how could he explain this to the teachers?

“Did your parents leave home at any time in the morning?” the male teacher asked. “Say between seven and twelve o'clock?”

Tong shook his head. He had a vague feeling that they did not believe him, and sooner or later they would reveal his lie to the school and his parents. What would they do with him then? He would never get the red scarf around his neck by June.

“Are you sure?”

“I went home for breakfast and then they said it was a waste to look for Ear so I stayed home with them.”

“Did you find your dog?” the female teacher asked while she screwed the cap back onto her fountain pen and glanced at the roster, ready for the next student.

Tong tried hard to hold back his tears, but the effort gave way to the fear that he would be punished not only for lying but also for signing his father's name on the white cloth. The two teachers watched him for a moment. “Don't cry over a missing dog,” the woman said. “Ask your parents to get another one for you.”

Tong howled without answering. The male teacher waved to dismiss him and the female teacher led him out of the classroom by his hand. For a moment he wanted to confess everything to the female teacher, whose soft and warm palm calmed him a little, but before he could open his mouth, she signaled to his teacher to take him back and called out the name of the next student.

Tong waited in his seat, not talking to the other children. Nobody asked him why he was crying; already two girls and a boy before him had come back sniffling or sobbing, and no one had shown any surprise or concern.

It was past lunchtime when the principal, talking through the PA system, announced that it was time for an hour break for lunch. They were not to discuss anything with their classmates or their parents, the principal said. Anyone who broke the rule would find himself in grave trouble.

Tong walked slowly. That morning he had noticed the sudden appearance of many black caterpillars nicknamed “poplar stingers,” and now, only half a day later, hundreds more had appeared on the sidewalk and the alley walls. Many had been crushed by careless feet and bicycle wheels, their tiny bodies and innards drying in the sun.

When Tong entered the room his parents both looked at him and then returned to their conversation. “Who knows?” his father said. “Maybe the government means it only to be a setup to scare people a little and nothing serious will come of it in the end.”

Tong sat down at the table, a bowl of noodle soup in front of him. His mother told him to hurry up, as both of them needed to return to work within half an hour. “The way this is carried out gives me palpitations.”

“A woman's heart palpitates at anything,” Tong's father scoffed. “A crushed sparrow could make your heart jump out of your mouth. Let me tell you: The law does not punish the masses. You don't even need to go far—just think how many people were beaten by the Red Guards in 1966. Now that their behavior is considered bad and illegal, do you see any former Red Guard being punished? No.”

Tong ate slowly, each mouthful hurting him while he swallowed. When his mother urged him to eat faster, he said, “Baba, why doesn't the law punish the masses?”

“So you finally have a question about something other than that dog of yours,” Tong's father said. From afar came drawn-out sirens. Tong's mother stopped her chopsticks and listened. “Sounds like a fire engine,” she said to his father.

His father went out into the yard and looked. In a minute, he came back and said, “You can see the smoke.”

“Where is the fire?”

“East side.”

On any other day he would ask to be excused and rush to the fire, but Tong only sat and nibbled on a noodle that seemed endless. His mother felt his forehead with her palm. “Are you sick?”

“Lovesick for a dog,” Tong's father said.

Tong did not answer. He forced himself to finish his lunch so his father would not comment on his eating habits. Perhaps nothing bad would happen, after all, as his father said. This hope cheered him as he walked to school. But what if his father was wrong? Grown-ups made mistakes, as they had said nothing would happen to Ear. Plunged back into despair by the thought, Tong felt cold in the spring breeze; his legs stumbled, as if he were walking in cotton clouds.

Two different teachers, from yet another school, were assigned to Tong's class, and one by one the students went in to answer the same questions for a second time. The two teachers were less intimidating this time, and Tong was able to look up at their eyes. They seemed to find nothing unusual in the sleeping patterns of Tong's parents. “Are you sure?” one of the teachers asked every time Tong answered a question; her voice was gentle enough that Tong did not find it hard to lie. By the end of the questioning, Tong felt relieved. The teachers were nice to him—they wouldn't have been if he had already been found out. Indeed, he had done nothing serious except look for Ear; the more Tong thought about it, the less real the signature he had left on the white cloth became, and soon he stopped worrying about the petition.

***

NINI HAD NEVER KNOWN that a secret could have a life of its own. That she had a place to go someday consumed all the space in her chest in no time; expanding still, it made her small breasts ache. Her limbs, even the good hand and leg, seemed to get farther away from her, the joints becoming loose and out of control. Nini studied herself in an oval-shaped, palm-sized mirror that her second sister had hidden underneath her pillow; even though the mirror was only big enough for part of her face at one time, the person in the mirror was no longer the ugly self she remembered, her lips fuller, her cheeks rounder now, always flushed.

It was not the first time her mind had been occupied. Before Bashi there had been Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu, but some longings seemed to be more demanding than others, and Nini felt her body was too small to contain her secret now. She had to bite the inside of her mouth to avoid blurting the news to a stranger on the street or, even worse, to her own family. In the end, when it seemed that she was going to explode, Nini picked up the baby and told Little Fourth and Little Fifth that she was taking the baby to the marketplace. The two girls begged to tag along, but Nini said she had other things to tend to, and they would not be of any help. To appease the girls, Nini gave them each a candy she had brought home from Bashi's house. She promised more snacks if they remained well behaved in the house. Couldn't they play in the yard? Little Fourth asked, and she promised that they would not step into the alley. Nini hesitated. The two girls were growing into a pair of twins, and once they had each other, their world was complete. It was usually fine to let them play in the yard, but Nini decided that this time it would not hurt for her to exercise more authority so that each favor would be returned with gratitude and obedience. She told the girls that she would have to lock them in the house. They looked unhappy, yet neither complained. They stood side by side, each sucking on the candy and watching Nini close the door and padlock it from the outside.

“I've found you a brother-in-law,” Nini whispered to Little Sixth in the street, her lips touching the baby's ear.

The baby pointed to a police car with lights flashing on a side street and said, “Light-light.”

“I'll find you a good husband too, and people will be so jealous that their eyes will turn green,” Nini said to Little Sixth, imagining the helpless infuriation of her parents and the two older girls. If Little Fourth and Little Fifth behaved, she would consider helping them too. She pulled gently until the baby had to look at her instead of the police car. “Listen. Do you want a better life? If you do, you have to stick with me. Don't ever love anybody else in the family. Nobody will make you happy except me, your big sister.”

“Sis,” Little Sixth said, and put her wet mouth on Nini's cheek.

“Your brother-in-law,” Nini said, and blushed at her audacious name for Bashi. “Your big brother, he knows how to make a stone laugh.”

The baby babbled, practicing saying “brother,” a new word for her.

“He's rich and he'll give you a dowry when it's your turn to get married. Don't ever expect that from anybody else.”

When they entered Bashi's house through the unlocked door, for a moment nobody replied to Nini's greetings. The bedroom door was closed. Nini knocked on the door. “I know you're inside. Don't try to play a trick on me,” she said.

There was no reply from the room. Nini put her ear on the door and heard a rustling of clothes. “Bashi?” she said.

A second, he replied, his voice filled with panic. Nini pushed the door open. Bashi rushed to her, a hand buttoning his fly. “I didn't know you were coming,” he said, panting a little.

She studied his flushed face. “Who's here?”

“Nobody,” Bashi said. “Only me.”

Nini shoved Little Sixth into Bashi's arms and went in to check. She found Bashi's reaction suspicious, and instinctively she knew it was another woman he was hiding from her. She picked up Bashi's unmade quilt from his bed but there was no one hiding underneath. She peeked under the bed. On the other side of the curtain, his grandmother's bed was empty. So was the closet.

“What are you looking for?” Bashi said with a smile, the baby sitting astride his shoulders and pulling his hair.

“Are you hiding someone from me?” Nini asked, when she could not find a trace of another woman in the bedroom.

“Of course not,” Bashi said.

“Why else were you sleeping in the middle of the morning?”

“I wasn't really sleeping. I came back from a walk and thought I would take a rest in bed,” Bashi said. “In fact, I was dreaming about you when you came in.”

“What idiot would believe you?”

“Believe me,” Bashi said. “I have no one to think about but you.”

Nini thought of laughing at him but he gazed at her with a desperate look in his eyes. “I'll believe you,” she said.

“I talked to Mrs. Hua.”

Nini felt her heart pause for a beat. “What did she say?”

“She did not say no,” Bashi said.

“But did she agree?”

“She said she needed to talk to Old Hua, but I think they will agree. I can't see why not. Mrs. Hua looked like she was ready to kiss me when I said I wanted to marry you.”

“Nonsense. Why would she want to kiss you? She's an old woman.”

“Then do you want to kiss me, young woman?”

Nini punched Bashi on his arm. He jumped aside, which made the baby shriek with happiness. Nini opened both arms, trying to catch Bashi, and he hopped around, all three of them laughing.

Nini was the first to calm down. She was tired now, she said, sitting on Bashi's bed. Little Sixth pulled Bashi's hair, demanding more rides. He marched around in the bedroom, singing a song about soldiers going to the front in Korea, the baby patting his head and Nini humming along. When he finished the song, he lowered the baby and put her next to Nini. Then he took the baby's kerchief and folded it into a small mouse and played tricks with his fingers so that the mouse jumped onto Little Sixth as if it had a life of its own. The baby screamed with joy; Nini was startled and then laughed.

“What a lucky man I am to have a pair of flower girls here,” Bashi said.

Nini stopped laughing. “What did you say?”

“I said with one trick I made both of you laugh.”

“No, you said something else,” Nini said. “What did you mean?”

Bashi scratched his head. “What did I mean? I don't know.”

“You're lying,” Nini said, and before she knew it, tears came to her eyes. She sounded like the bad-tempered women she saw in the marketplace; she sounded like her own mother, and she was ashamed.

Little Sixth chewed on the tail of the kerchief mouse and watched them with interest. Bashi looked at Nini with concern. “Do you have a stomachache?”

“What ideas do you have about the baby?” Nini said. “I tell you— she's not yours. She'll have the best man in the world.”

“A man even better than I?”

“A hundred times better,” Nini said, though already she was starting to smile. “Don't ever set your heart on Little Sixth.”

“For heaven's sake, she's only a baby!”

“She won't always stay a baby. She'll become a big girl and by then I know you won't like me, because she'll be prettier and younger. Tell me, is that your scheme, to marry me so you will one day get Little Sixth?”

“I swear I've never schemed anything.”

“And when the baby is an older girl—”

“I'm her big brother so of course I'll watch out for her. Pick for her a man a hundred times better than I.”

“Brother-brother,” Little Sixth said, the kerchief still between her teeth.

She did not believe him, Nini said, trying to keep her face straight.

“I'm serious. If not, all the mice of the world will come and nibble me to death, or I will be stung by a scorpion on my tongue and never talk again, or some fish bone will stick in my throat and I will never be able to swallow another grain of rice,” Bashi said. “I swear I only have you in my heart.”

Nini looked at Bashi and saw no trace of humor in his eyes. “Don't swear so harshly,” she said in a soft voice. “I believe you.”

“No, you don't. If only you knew,” Bashi said, and took a deep breath. “Nini, I love you.”

It was the first time he had said love, and they both blushed. “I know. I love you too,” Nini said in a whisper, her arms and legs all in the wrong place, her body a cumbersome burden.

“What? I can't hear you. Say it louder,” Bashi said, with a hand on his ear. “What did you just say?”

Nini smiled. “I said nothing.”

“Ah, how sad. I'm in love with someone in vain.”

“That's not true,” Nini said, louder than she'd intended. Bashi looked at her and shook his head as if in disbelief, and she panicked. Did he misunderstand her? “If I were not telling the truth, the god of lightning would split me in half.”

“Then the goddess of thunder would boom me to death,” Bashi said.

“No, I would die a death a hundred times more painful than you.”

“My death would be a thousand times more painful than yours.”

“I would become your slave in the next life,” Nini said.

“I would become a fly that keeps buzzing around you in the next life until you swat me to death.”

Neither spoke, as if they were each entranced by their desire to demonstrate their willingness to suffer for the other. In the quietness they listened to the baby babbling. Nini wondered what they would become now that they knew how much they desired each other. When Bashi touched her face, it was only natural for his lips to touch hers, and then they let the rest of their bodies drag them down to the bed, onto the floor, without a sound, and they held tight to each other until their bones hurt.

Bashi picked her up and put her on his grandmother's bed. Little Sixth watched and then, when the curtain was drawn, she lost interest. She crawled on Bashi's bed, from one end to the other, exploring the new territory, enjoying the freedom without the rope that bound her to the bed. Soon she rolled off the bed, but the pillow she had been dragging along cushioned her. She cried halfheartedly and then crawled to the other bed, past the curtain that threatened to tangle her, around a pair of big shoes and then another pair, bigger, and finally she reached the place she had set her mind to, under the bed where her big sister and big brother were panting in their inexperienced joy and agony. She picked up half a stick of ginseng from under the bed and chewed it. It was sweet at first but then it tasted awful. She took the stick out and threw it as hard as she could, and it landed in one of the big shoes.

“Bashi,” whispered Nini.

Inches away, Bashi gazed at Nini, and then buried his head into the curve of her neck. “Let's wait until we get married,” he whispered back. “I want you to know that I'm a responsible man.”

Nini looked at her undone clothes and smiled shyly. He buttoned her shirt and together they listened to the baby talking to herself.

“I'm going to find Mrs. Hua and Old Hua right after you go home,” Bashi said.

“Tell them we want to get married tomorrow,” Nini said. “My parents won't care.”

“How lucky I am,” Bashi said.

“I am the lucky one.”

They lay in each other's arms. From time to time one or the other would break the silence and talk of plans for themselves and the baby, their future life. After a long time Bashi looked at the clock and looked again. “It's near noon now,” he said.

Nini looked at the clock and then listened. It was quiet for the time of the day, when normally schoolchildren and grown-ups would be going home for their lunch break. She sat up and said it was time for her to go; she moved slowly, as if her body were filled with lazy dreams too heavy for her to carry. She might as well let her parents and her sisters wait.

“Are you coming in the afternoon?” Bashi asked. “I'll have talked to Old Hua and Mrs. Hua by then.”

“I'll come after lunch,” said Nini. She turned her back to him and straightened her clothes. Before she left she put a small bag of fried peanuts in her coat pocket. For Little Fourth and Little Fifth, she said, and Bashi added some toffees.

When Nini left Bashi's yard, two old women stared at her and then exchanged looks. It was the first time she had left his door in broad daylight—she used to be careful, sneaking in and out of Bashi's house in the semidarkness of the early morning—but let the women suffer in their nosiness and jealousy. She was his, and he was hers, and Old Hua and Mrs. Hua were going to marry them very soon. She had nothing to fear now.

The street was eerily empty. The marketplace was locked, and in the main street, most of the shop doors were shut. When Nini walked past an elementary school, the school gate opened and out ran children of all ages. School was letting the children go home late, she thought, and quickened her steps. She wondered if she could get home before her parents and sisters came back. They might not even discover her absence.

A few blocks away from her house Nini saw the smoke rising. People with buckets and basins ran past her. When she entered her alley, a neighbor saw her and cried out in relief, “Nini, thank heaven you're not in the house.”

Nini looked at their house, engulfed by fire. The smoke was black and thick against the blue sky, and the orange tongues of fire, nimble and mischievous, licked the roof. The neighbor shouted for her to stay at a safe distance; her parents were on their way, and so were the fire engines, he said.

A few schoolchildren ran past Nini. They cried warnings at anyone passing by, more out of excitement than alarm, and soon they were ordered by the grown-ups to leave the alley. Nini looked at the neighbor who was running toward the house and who had, she hoped, forgotten her by now. She held the baby tight and slipped into a nearby alley, against the running crowds, wishing she could turn herself into a wisp of air.

TWICE BASHI HAD WALKED PAST Nini's alley, but none of the neighbors who answered his knocking would provide him with any clue when he inquired about the whereabouts of Nini's family. The brick walls remained standing, but the roof had collapsed. The front room of the house, with its blackened holes where the two windows and a door had been, reminded Bashi of a skull, and he spat and scolded himself for the unlucky connection. An old woman who was probing the ruins with a pair of tongs, upon hearing his steps, looked up with alarm. Thinking that she was a neighbor, Bashi tried to start a conversation, asking her if she knew the family stricken by the disaster, but she seemed to be caught in panic and hurried away with a straw bag of knickknacks. It took Bashi a moment to realize what the woman had been doing, and he shouted at her to return what did not belong to her, but she was soon out of sight.

Bashi decided to go to the city hospital to find any news. Someone there must have information if the two sisters, as Nini believed, had been caught in the fire. He had found Nini curled up in a ball in front of his locked door earlier that afternoon when he had returned from his visit to the Huas. Wake up, girl, he had said, saying he had brought great news, but when she opened her eyes he was struck by how, in less than an hour, she had become a stranger—Nini always had everything on display in her small face, hunger and anger and curiosity and determination, but now the blankness in her face frightened him. Little Sixth, hearing him, crawled out of the storage cabin and smiled.

Did he still want to marry her, a bad-luck girl who had murdered her sisters and left her family homeless? Nini asked. It took Bashi a few minutes to understand the question. He tried to think of something to lighten Nini's mood, but his brain seemed frozen by her unblinking eyes. The Huas had agreed to take her in if her parents agreed to the marriage proposal, Bashi said, the news delivered with less confidence and joy than he had imagined. They could have been in heaven, Nini said; they could have been so happy. They could still be happy, Bashi said, but Nini shook her head, saying she was being punished for her happiness. Heaven was the stingy one, taking back more often than giving—Bashi remembered his grandmother's favorite saying and told it now to Nini. Heaven was the mean one, Nini said, and Bashi replied that, in that case, he would go to hell with her. For a while after that they watched Little Sixth crawl in the yard, their hands clasped together. They were two children for whom the world had not had any use in the first place, and in each other's company they had grown, within half a day, into a man and a woman who would have no more use for that world.

On the way to the hospital, Bashi saw unfamiliar faces loitering in twos and threes in the street. If not for the fire he would have been talking to these strangers, trying to strike up conversations, but now Bashi watched them with detachment. The world could have been collapsing but it would not have made any difference to Nini or to him.

The receptionist at the emergency room was unfriendly as always, and when Bashi could not pry any useful information from her, he thought of the two strangers in front of the hospital. “A busy day, brothers,” Bashi said when he approached them.

The two men looked Bashi up and down and did not reply. He offered them a pack of cigarettes. The younger one, not much older than Bashi, held out a hand and then, taking a quick glance at his companion, shook his head and said they had their own cigarettes.

“How disappointing. No offense, but I think it's unacceptable to refuse a cigarette offered to you. At least here in our town.”

The older man nodded apologetically and brought out two cigarettes, one for himself and one for his companion. The younger man struck a match and lit the older man's cigarette first. When he offered Bashi the match, already burning to the end, Bashi shook his head. “So, where are you from?” he said.

“Why do you ask?” the older man demanded.

“Just curious. I happen to know a lot of people in town, and you don't look like one I've seen.”

“Yes? What do you do?” the older man said.

Bashi shrugged. “Have you heard anything about this fire?” he said.

“There was a fire?”

“A house was burned down.”

“Bad luck,” the younger man said.

“So you haven't heard or seen anything? I thought maybe you would know, the way you have to stand here all day.”

“Who told you we stand here all day?” the younger one said. The older man coughed and pulled his companion's sleeve.

Bashi looked at the two and smiled. “Don't think I'm an idiot,” he said. “You're here because of the rally, no?”

“Who told you this?” the two men said, coming closer, one on each side of Bashi.

“I'm not a blind man, nor deaf,” Bashi said. “I can even help you if you help me.”

The older man put a hand on Bashi's shoulder. “Tell us what you know, Little Brother.”

“Hey, you're hurting me,” Bashi said. “What do you want to know?”

“All that you know,” the older man said.

“As I said, you need to promise to help me first.”

“You don't want to bargain on such things.”

“Oh yes? Do you want to know what that person did?” Bashi pointed to a middle-aged man, who exited the hospital and crossed the street.

The older man gave the younger man a look, and the younger man nodded and went across the street, running a few steps to catch up with the middle-aged man.

“If you can go into the ER and ask them if there was anyone hurt in the fire, I'll tell you what he did,” Bashi said, when the older man pressed again.

“Tell me first.”

“Then you won't help me.”

“I will.”

Bashi studied the man and then said, “I'll take your word. That man—I don't know his name but I know he works in the hospital-he signed a petition for the counterrevolutionary woman. Now you need to go in there and help me.”

The older man did not move. “Just that?”

“Why? This isn't important enough information for you?”

“Use your brain, Little Brother. If he signed the petition, why do we need you to tell us?”

“Then what do you want to hear?”

“Did you see anyone, say, who went to the rally without leaving a signature?”

That was what they were after, Bashi thought, and nodded with a smile, pointing to the entrance of the emergency room. The older man looked at Bashi and then flipped his finished cigarette into the gutter. “I'll do this for you and you better have something good for me in return.”

A few minutes later, the man came back and said nobody had died in the fire, but two little girls, badly burned, had been transferred that afternoon to the provincial capital. Bashi thought about the small bodies engulfed by the fire and shuddered.

The man studied Bashi. “The girls didn't die—I'm not sure if that's good news or bad news, but I've found it out for you. Now your turn.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I've said, all that you know.”

“This old woman—the mother of the counterrevolutionary, if you know whom I'm talking about—is a master behind the scene.”

The man snorted, unimpressed. “What else?” he said. “Tell us something we don't know.”

“I saw so many people I can hardly remember all their names.”

“At least you remember some?”

“Let's see,” Bashi thought, and listed the names, some he had seen at the rally, a few others who had, at one time or another, offended him. The man seemed uninterested in checking the validity of his report, so Bashi went on more boldly, giving as many names as he remembered from the rally and then throwing in a bunch of people he considered his enemies. The man wrote down the names in his notebook and then asked for Bashi's personal information.

Bashi gave the man his name and address. “Anytime you need help,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” the old man said. “Why did you go to the rally?”

“Just to see what was going on,” Bashi said, and bid farewell to the men.

THE JOY OF YOUTH shortened a day into a blink; the loneliness of old age stretched a moment into an endless nightmare. Teacher Gu watched his slanting shadow, cast onto the wall of the alley by the evening sun. The envelope in his hand was heavy, but for an instant he could not remember what he had been writing to his first wife. How long did it take for his letters to reach her desk, be opened, read, reread, and answered? He counted and calculated the time it should take for her letter to arrive, but the number of days eluded him.

His wife had been taken away the night before by two policemen, and now he remembered he had mentioned the arrest in a matter-of-fact way in the latest letter. The police had come and pushed open the door after one knock, and she came out of the bedroom and let them cuff her wrists without saying anything. Teacher Gu was sitting at the table, his fountain pen in his palm even though he wasn't writing a letter. Neither the policemen nor his wife said anything to him, and for a moment he felt that he had become transparent, according to his own will. He wrote a long letter to his first wife, the spell of his liberation turning him into the poet that he had long ago ceased to be.

His wife did not return for breakfast or lunch, and by now, when homebound people were starting to fill the streets and alleys with their long overlapping shadows, Teacher Gu knew that she would not come home for dinner, or, as far as he knew, for the rest of his life. They all disappeared in this manner, not giving him any chance to participate, or even to protest: his first wife, late from work one day and the next thing he knew she had left a letter proposing divorce, written in her beautiful penmanship, next to a pot of tea that he had brewed for her and that later turned cold, untouched; Shan had been reading a book in her bed when the police came for her, close to bedtime because that was when all the arrests were customarily carried out, and there had been scuffles, resistance on Shan's side, questioning the legality of the arrest, but in the end Shan had been dragged away, leaving the dog-eared book by her pillow; his wife, the night before, had said nothing to question the police when they informed her of the arrest, nor had she resisted. She had said some words of apology to her husband's back, but what was the point of it, her heart no longer with him in the house they had shared for thirty years, but floating to a farther place, ready to occupy an altar? They all took their exits so easily, as if he were a dream, neither a good nor a bad one but an indifferent one filled with uninteresting details, and they would wake up one day and continue their lives, oblivious to his absence. Would they have a moment of hesitation and think about him, when they saw his face between two tree branches, or heard him in an old dog's coughing? Was his wife, wherever she was now, thinking about him, this aged invalid who had nothing better to do than wait and weep in the alley? Teacher Gu tried to steady himself with his cane but his hand shook so hard that, for a moment, he thought this was the end he had been looking forward to, when his body would exert its own will and throw him into the gutter before his mind could stop it.

“Are you all right?” It was the neighbor with the beautiful voice, whose name Teacher Gu had never bothered to find out and whose wife had been so keen on spying on them. He braked his bicycle next to Teacher Gu and supported him with a hand.

Teacher Gu, in a moment of confusion, tried to wriggle his arm free and run away. The man's grip, however, tightened like an iron clamp. He got off the bicycle, and with one hand still on Teacher Gu's arm, he said, “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“I'm going to the mailbox,” Teacher Gu said, when he regained his dignity.

“I can do it for you,” the man said.

Teacher Gu shook his head. He wanted to hear the thud of the letter dropping into the metal box. How many days had it been since he had sent out the first letter? He counted again, not knowing that the letter, bearing his name and address, would be, as were the other thick letters he had sent out, intercepted and read by a stranger first. The man who read the letters, an older man serving his last year in a clerical position at the police department, agonized over the almost-illegible passages, which reminded him of his dying parents and his own imminent retirement. He could circle the lines that spelled some unfriendly message to the government and make a big fuss, but in the end, finding no reason to cause undue pain to a fellow-man in the final, joyless years of old age, he stamped the letters as harmless and let them continue on through the post. He even wondered, at night, when he could not fall asleep, about the woman who would be reading the letters and writing back. He wished it was his duty to read the letters sent back to the Gu address, but that job belonged to another colleague, a woman in her late thirties who always sucked hard candy when she read, and the small distracting noise the candy made, clicking against her teeth, annoyed the old man. He could not bring himself to ask her about letters from a certain woman to Teacher Gu, but he was curious, almost as eager as Teacher Gu, for the woman to write back. Neither knew that the letters were sitting unopened in a study, along with other mail, the woman in question dying of cancer and loneliness, in a hospital for high-ranking officials in Beijing.

“I'll help you to the mailbox,” the man said now to Teacher Gu.

Teacher Gu did not speak. He freed himself from the man and walked on, but after a few steps, when the man offered again, he did not protest. He had not eaten anything since the night before, and when the man came back and found him barely supporting himself by the wall, he picked Teacher Gu up easily and placed him on the back rack of his bicycle. “I'm taking you to the hospital, all right?” he said in a raised voice, one hand gripping the handlebars of the bicycle and the other stabilizing Teacher Gu.

Teacher Gu protested so vehemently that he almost caused both of them and the bicycle to fall over. Another neighbor came to help, and together they rolled the bicycle slowly to Gu's gate. The man leaned the bicycle against the wall and helped Teacher Gu to get down from the rack, but before they could enter the yard, the man's wife appeared as if from nowhere. “What's going on here?” she said, clicking her tongue. “Aren't you the one who hates us proletariats?”

Teacher Gu stopped, and it took him a moment to realize she was addressing him, her eyes enlarging in front of his face, as she stood ridiculously close. “Where's that wife of yours?” she said. “Do you now believe in the power of the people?”

The other neighbor slipped away, and the man said to his wife, “Go home now. Don't make a scene.”

“Why shouldn't I?” the woman said. “I want to see these people rot in front of my eyes.”

Teacher Gu coughed and the woman shielded her face with her hand. “Go ahead. Come on in,” Teacher Gu said weakly. “It won't take too long.”

The woman opened her mouth but the husband said again in a pleading voice, “Go home now. I'll be back in a minute.”

“Who are you to order me around?” the wife said.

Teacher Gu, past the bout of dizziness now, carefully pried the man's fingers off his own arm. “Thank you, young man,” he said. “This is my home and you can leave me here.”

The man hesitated and his wife laughed. “Come on,” she said. “He's not your father and you don't have to follow him around like a pious son.”

The man left with his wife without a word, as she continued to ask why he was being courteous to an old counterrevolutionary. Teacher Gu watched them disappear through their own door. After a while, he entered the quiet house, dim and cold. For a moment he wished for a garrulous wife like the neighbor's. He wished she would flood the house with her witless words so he did not have to find meaning to fill in the emptiness himself. He stood and wished for things unwisely before pulling himself together. From a kettle he poured lukewarm water into a teacup and then added spoonfuls of powdered sugar to the water. He would need the energy to take care of all the necessary things first, the empty stomach and the full bladder and later the filled chamber pot. There would be other things to tend to afterward, plans to locate his wife, the procedures to go through to see her, all the things he had once done for his daughter and now would have to do again, less hopefully than ten years earlier, for his wife. Teacher Gu sipped the sugar water, chokingly sweet.

A single knock on the door announced once again an uninvited visitor. Teacher Gu turned and saw his neighbor, still in his worker's outfit, dark grease on the front of his overalls. “Teacher Gu,” he said. “I hope you don't mind my wife's rudeness.”

Teacher Gu shook his head. He invited the man to sit down at the table with a wordless gesture. The man brought out a few paper bags from his pocket. He ripped them open and let their contents—fried tofu, pickled pig's feet, boiled peanuts, seaweed salad scattered with white sesame seeds—spread onto the flattened paper. “I thought you might want to talk to someone,” the man said, and handed a small flat bottle of sorghum liquor to Teacher Gu.

Teacher Gu looked at the palm-sized flat bottle in his hand, green thick glass wrapped in a coarse paper with red stars. “My apologies for having nothing to offer you in return,” said Teacher Gu when he handed a pair of chopsticks to the neighbor.

The man produced another bottle of liquor for himself. “Teacher Gu, I've come to apologize for my wife,” he said. “As you said, man to man.”

Teacher Gu shook his head. As an adult, he had never sat at a table with someone of his neighbor's status, a worker, a less educated member of the all-powerful proletarian class. His only similar memory was from when he had visited a servant's home as a small boy—her husband was a carpenter who had lost the four fingers of his right hand in an accident, and Teacher Gu remembered staring at the stumps when the man poured tea for him. The smell from the man's body was different from the men he had known, masters of literature and teachers of the highest reputation. “What do you do, young man?” Teacher Gu asked.

“I work in the cement factory,” the man said. “You know the cement factory?”

Teacher Gu nodded and watched the man put two peanuts at a time in his mouth and chew them in a noisy way. “What's your name? Please forgive me for being an old and ignorant invalid.”

“My name is Gousheng,” the man said, and then, as if apologizing, he explained that his parents were illiterate, and that they had given him the name, a dog's leftovers, to make sure he would not be desired by devils.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Teacher Gu said. “How many siblings do you have?”

“Six, but all the rest are sisters,” Gousheng said. “I was my parents’ only good luck.”

A son was not what Teacher Gu had consciously hoped for, but now he wondered whether he was wrong. It would make a difference if he had a son, drinking with him, talking man-to-man talk. “Still, better luck than many other families,” Teacher Gu said.

Gousheng took a long drink from the bottle. “Yes, but I wouldn't have felt so much pressure if I'd had a brother.”

“You and—your wife—don't have children?”

Gousheng shook his head. “Not a trace of a baby anywhere,” he said.

“And you are”—Teacher Gu struggled for the right words—”active in trying to make a baby?”

“As often as I can,” Gousheng said. “My wife—Teacher Gu, please don't mind her rudeness—she is a soft woman inside. She feels bad about not being able to have a child. She thinks the whole world laughs at her.”

Teacher Gu thought about the wife, her words that issued like razor blades. He could not imagine her as a soft woman, but it pleased him, for a moment, that she was in well-deserved despair, though the joy of Teacher Gu's revenge soon vanished. They were all sufferers in their despicable pain, every one of them, and what right did he have to laugh at the woman whose husband was pouring his heart out to him, a man in sincere confession to a fellowman?

“I worry that her temper is making it harder for us to have a baby. But how can I tell her? She's the kind of person who wants everything, all the success and glory.”

Teacher Gu picked up the bottle and studied it. Gousheng pushed the food toward him. “Eat and drink,” he said. “Teacher Gu, I'm a man who doesn't know many words in books, and you are the most knowledgeable person I've met. Please, you tell me, Teacher Gu—is there something we could do better? I worry that my wife is mean to too many people and we're being punished because of her behavior.”

Teacher Gu drank carefully from the bottle and braced himself for the coarse liquid. “Scientifically speaking,” he said, and then cringed at his words, which would probably alienate the man who was saving him from a lonely night. “Have you been to the doctor's?” he asked.

“My wife doesn't want to go—we've been married for three years. It's enough that she can't get pregnant—if we go to the doctor, the whole world will know our trouble.”

Teacher Gu thought of explaining that she might not be the one fully responsible for the situation, but then why would he want to release her from her shame and humility? He drank and popped the peanuts into his mouth the way Gousheng did. “There's no other way. Just try again. But you have to know that some hens never lay eggs,” Teacher Gu said, disgusted and then exhilarated by his own crass metaphor.

Gousheng thought about it. After a few gulps he nodded. “I would be doomed, then,” he said. “My parents didn't agree with our marriage when they saw her picture. They worried that she looked too manly for a wife.”

“And you liked her?”

“She was already a branch leader of the Youth League, and I was only a common worker. How could I reject such a match? A blind man could see how lucky I was, especially since she was the one who initiated the matchmaking.”

“Why did she choose you, then?” Teacher Gu said. “But, of course, you are a handsome man,” he offered unconvincingly

Gousheng shook his head. “She said she wanted someone trustworthy, someone from the proletarian class, someone who earned a living with his own hands. But why on earth did she choose me? There are many men who would have fit her standard! Sometimes I wish she had not chosen me—to think I could have had a more obedient wife instead of being the obedient one!”

Teacher Gu looked at the young man, in drunken tears. “Women are unpredictable,” agreed Teacher Gu. “Men certainly want to understand their logic, but let me tell you, they act with little sense. Why don't you divorce her? Let her suffer. Don't suffer with her. They are all the same—they don't know how to make men's lives easier!”

Gousheng seemed to be shocked by Teacher Gu's sudden vehemence, but Teacher Gu drank and talked on with new energy. “Take my wife, for example—look at where she's gotten herself!”

Gousheng drank quietly and then said, “Teacher Gu, your wife …”

“Don't feel you have to defend her in any way. I know what she did.”

“She's probably an accomplice at most,” Gousheng said. “She's older and they probably won't be too harsh on her.”

Teacher Gu ignored Gousheng's effort to comfort him. He drank now with a speed that matched Gousheng's. “Let me tell you, the worst thing that ever happened in this new China—not that I'm against the new China in any way, but to think of all these women who get to do what they want without men's consent. They think they know so much about the world but they act out of anything but a brain! Your wife, forgive me if I offend you—she is the same creature I have seen in my own wife. And my daughter too—you may not know her but she was just like your wife, full of ideas and judgments but no idea how to be a respectful human being. They think they are revolutionary, progressive, they think they are doing a great favor to the world by becoming masters of their own lives, but what is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? Let me tell you—history is, unlike what they say on the loudspeakers, not driven by revolutionary force but by people's desire to climb up onto someone else's neck and shit and pee as he or she wants. Enough bad things are done by men already, but if you add women to the equation, one might as well wish not to bring a baby into this world. What do you see in this world that is worthwhile for a baby to be born into? Tell me, give me one good reason.”

Teacher Gu felt his heart spill out onto the table like the rolling peanuts that his fingers were now too clumsy to catch. He had never felt such passion about the world. Why should he remain respectful and humble when he had to suffer, not only from the men he hated but also from the women he loved? Why did he have to love them from the beginning, when the Buddha had made it clear that every beautiful woman was only a bag of white bones in disguise? How could he be deceived by them, wives and lovers and daughter—who were they but creatures sent to destroy him, to make him live in pain, and die in pain?

“Teacher Gu, don't get too loud,” Gousheng said in a whisper. “You're being imprudent.”

The young man, who sat at his table but whose name had already eluded Teacher Gu, tried to take the bottle away. Teacher Gu pushed his hand, ready to fight the young man and the world standing behind him. This was his home and he could do what he wanted to, Teacher Gu said aloud. He could feel the world take a timid peek from behind the young man's tall and heavily built body. If it looked again, Teacher Gu decided to smash its head with the thick green bottle, but when he looked down at his hand, he did not know where the bottle was.

HALFWAY THROUGH THE CHANTING of a revolutionary song, Tong's father trailed off and soon started to snore. “Not many people can remain cheerful after drinking,” Tong's mother said in admiration, as if to explain her indulgence of her husband's drinking. She knelt down next to him to loosen his shoelaces and take off his shoes. “He has the best virtue of a drunkard.”

Tong sat on the edge of the chair and looked down at his own dangling legs. He was waiting for his father to pass out into happy oblivion. Nobody had mentioned anything about the signature on the petition; still, Tong could not convince himself, and he decided to talk with his mother for reassurance.

She peeled the socks off his father's feet. “Get some warm water,” she said, not looking up. And when Tong did not move, she told him to hurry up before his father caught a cold. Tong dragged himself to where the water kettle sat high on the counter, a pair of cranes strolling on its pink plastic cover. He looked at the cranes, one stretching its neck to the sky and the other lowering its head for something he did not see. When his mother urged him again, he climbed onto a chair and held the water kettle to his chest like a baby. When he jumped down, the loud thump made his mother frown. Tong pulled a basin from underneath the washstand with his foot. The bottom of the basin scratched the cement floor, the noise of which seemed to make him feel livelier than he had felt the whole day. He nudged the basin, first with one foot and then the other, as if the basin were a ball he was trying hard not to lose on the playing field. One, two, one, two, he counted, and almost bumped into his mother.

She went for the basin first and checked the enamel bottom carefully before she said in a disapproving tone, “Tong, you're old enough to know what you shouldn't do.”

He felt the sting of tears but it would be wrong to cry. He hugged the water kettle and waited for harsher words from his mother, but she grabbed it from him. Tong watched her test the water temperature with the back of her hand first and then splash water onto his father's big feet. He moved a little in the chair and snored on.

Tong asked her why she did everything for his father.

“What a question!” Tong's mother said. She looked up and when she saw Tong's serious face, she smiled and rubbed his hair. “When you become a man, you'll have a good wife and a good son who will serve you on their knees too.”

Tong did not answer. He carried the water out to the yard and poured it into a corner by the fence. When he came back to the room, his mother was half dragging and half supporting his father to the bedroom; Tong's father complained and flailed his arms but when she tucked him in, he fell into a drunken sleep. She watched him for a moment and turned to Tong. “Did you finish your homework?”

“There's no homework today,” Tong said.

“How come?”

Tong glanced at his mother but she seemed not to notice it. “There were emergency meetings all day at school,” he said.

“Oh yes, now I remember,” she said. “The thing about the rally.”

“What happened on Ching Ming?” Tong asked, not knowing if she could tell he was hiding a secret from her.

“It's too complicated to explain to you. It's all grown-ups’ business.”

“Our principal said horrible things happened.”

“Not as bad as you think,” Tong's mother said. “Some people think one way and some think the other way. People are always like this. They seldom agree on anything.”

“Which side is right?”

“The side where your teachers and principal stand. Always follow what's been taught and you won't make a mistake.”

Tong thought about a few teachers he had seen the day before at the rally, the teacher who had sat behind the petition, and a couple of others standing in silence in the line, with their white flowers. “Don't think too much about these meaningless things,” Tong's mother said. “If you stay in line you'll never be in the wrong place. And if you do nothing wrong, you will never fear anything, even when the ghosts come to knock on your door at midnight.”

Tong thought of asking more questions, but before he could speak, someone pounded on their gate. His mother laughed. “The moment you talk about someone, here he is tapping on your door. Who would come at this late hour?”

Tong followed her to the yard and all of a sudden, his throat was gripped by fear. There was nowhere to hide in the yard except in the tipped-over cardboard box that had once served as a home for Ear. When his mother opened the gate to two bright beams of flashlights, Tong climbed into the box, holding his breath.

Tong's mother asked the visitors what they wanted, and someone answered in a low voice. Could there be a mistake? Tong's mother said, and Tong recognized fear in her voice. There must be a misunderstanding, she argued in a pleading tone, but the visitors seemed not to hear her, and one of them must have pushed her, because she stepped back with a small cry of surprise. Tong looked out and tried to recognize his mother's cotton shoes among the four leather boots of the visitors. Two men were walking toward the house now, his mother trailing behind; her husband was sick and he was in bed now, she lied, but the visitors ignored her entreaties. They went into the room and soon Tong heard his father, being awakened, question the intruders. They spoke in low and undisturbed voices, and hard as Tong tried, he could not hear what they were saying. “Let me be clear with you,” Tong's father said. “I didn't leave this house one step that morning.”

The visitors replied in indiscernible voices.

“There must be a mistake,” Tong's mother insisted. “I swear we're both law-abiding citizens.”

Tong climbed out of the box and crawled closer to the house. Through the open door, he heard one of the visitors speak in a calm voice: “We're not going to argue with you now. Our job is to get you to the station. You can talk all you want at the station, but here's the arrest order that you've seen. If you're not going to move, don't think we can't use force to get you out of here.”

“But, sir, can you wait till tomorrow morning? Why do you need him tonight, when you can let him sleep at home?” Tong's mother said. “We promise first thing in the morning we'll come in and clarify the misunderstanding.”

The visitors didn't reply, and Tong imagined the way they were looking at his father without acknowledging her voice. Tong had seen many men behave this way, ignoring women and, for that matter, all children, as if they didn't exist. He wished his mother could understand this and leave things for his father to deal with. “A woman's insight,” his father sneered. “As short as an ant's legs. Haven't you heard of the saying that if the ghosts want to invite you for a talk, you can't stay longer than a minute?”

“There you go,” one man said, with a short chuckle.

“But what did he do, really?” Tong's mother mumbled.

“Black words on white paper,” another man said. “You can't argue with the police order.”

“Don't fuss, woman,” Tong's father said. “It seems that I have to condescend to a journey tonight. Why are we still standing and wasting our lives, brothers?”

“Here you go. A smart man you are,” one of the visitors said, and then clanked something metal.

“Do you need to do that?” Tong's father asked. “It's not like I'm causing a riot.”

“Sorry.” The handcuffs clicked. “Can't exempt you from that.”

“Can he bring some snacks?” Tong's mother asked. “It might be a long night.”

The visitors did not say anything. “What silly talk about snacks,” Tong's father said. “Cook a good breakfast and I'll be back tomorrow morning, when the misunderstanding is cleared up.”

“Some hot tea before you go? Is the coat warm enough? Do you want me to get the sheepskin out for you?”

“A good wife you've got for yourself,” one man said.

“You know how it goes with women,” Tong's father said. “The more you treat them like crap, the more they want to crawl to you on their knees. Now stop fussing like an old duck. Sleep tight and I'll be back soon.”

Tong retreated to the box and watched his father, still tipsy, leave with the two men in black uniforms. His father's hands were cuffed behind him but that did not stop him from talking intimately with the visitors, as if they were his long-lost brothers. His father's ease and confidence frightened Tong. He imagined his father's shock when he was shown his own name signed on the white cloth. Would his mind be lucid enough for him to point out that the handwriting was not his? But would the police then come with another pair of handcuffs for him? Tong wondered, and the thought frightened him. They would never give him the red scarf of a Young Pioneer.

When the two men left with his father and slammed the gate in his mother's face, she stood in a trance and then called Tong's name, and when he did not answer, she raised her voice and called to him again.

He did not reply, holding his breath, his blood pumping in his ears in heavy thumps. He watched her listen for a minute and then go into the house, still calling his name. If he tiptoed to the gate, he might have enough time to run before she caught him; if he jumped onto a passing night train, he might be able to get back to his grandparents’ village by the next day. Back at the village, nobody would blame him for anything; they knew him to be a boy destined to make a big and important name for himself.

Tong's mother came out to the yard, still calling his name in a low voice, but he could hear her panic now. He crawled out from the box and stood up. “Mama,” he said. “I'm here.”

IF SHE KEPT STILL ENOUGH in the chair, Nini thought, the ghost of Bashi's grandmother, if the old woman's ghost existed at all, would perhaps think Nini was part of the furniture in the room. Nini looked at the posters, Chairman Mao shaking hands with General Zhu, a fat boy holding up a cheerful golden carp, and a pair of red magpies chirping to each other as messengers of good luck, all of them dusty from coal ashes now, hanging dimly on the wall. The old woman would not like it if Nini did not keep her house neat and clean, Nini thought, slowly pulling one leg and then the other onto the chair and crossing them. In the bedroom Little Sixth stirred and cried a little, but after a while she fell asleep again. They were a family now, Bashi and Nini and the baby.

The fish soup was steaming hot on the table, the two bowls of rice looking invitingly delicious; the fried tofu and steamed sausages and pickled bean sprouts all beckoned to her rumbling stomach. This was her first supper with Bashi, and she had gone to great lengths to make it a special meal. She picked up one chopstick and dipped it into the soup and then sucked it. The taste made her hungrier, yet she dared not steal a bite, for fear that it would bring bad luck to the life she would share with Bashi from now on.

It had been a while since Bashi left, and she wondered how long it would take for him to return with news about her sisters. Could he have bumped into her parents or other suspecting adults? Would they ask him where she was? Nini wiggled her toes, which were falling asleep, and looked up at the ceiling. There were no eyes watching her, and she picked up the chopsticks and caught a slice of ginger from the fish soup. That led to another ginger slice and then a small bite of the fish, from under its belly. The tender flesh cheered her up—why should she care about a future she had no control over? If indeed there was heavenly justice, she would be heading to hell-she had destroyed the lives of Little Fourth and Little Fifth, and she'd better enjoy her own while she still could. Nini took another bite, and then another. When she had finished a whole fish, she wrapped up the bones in an old newspaper and threw them into the flames in the stove. The remaining fish looked lonesome, and she wondered if it was one more sign of misfortune for her, as married couples should do everything in twos.

A strange smell came from the stove, reminding Nini of her father's sheepskin hat that had been shoveled into the belly of the stove under their bed at home; it was Little Fourth and Little Fifth who had dreamed up this mischief, for reasons that Nini didn't understand, but it was Nini who had received a good beating on their behalf, her back swollen for a week afterward.

Nini poked the burning fish bones with the iron tongs but the nauseating odor became stronger. She went into the bedroom and rummaged through the closet and chest of drawers, and found nothing but an old bottle of floral water that must have belonged to Bashi's grandmother, the green liquid already sticky. She opened the lid and poured a small amount in her palm, and was horrified by the pungent fragrance condensed by years of sitting in the bottle. It made her sneeze.

Nini put her hand under running water for a long time and then sniffed her palm. It was less noticeable. She was relieved when she found half an orange left next to Bashi's pillow. She peeled one slice and sucked it while putting the rest of the orange into the fire. The fire engulfed the half orange and soon the room was filled with a more pleasant smell.

Someone knocked on the gate. She turned off the light in the room and slipped out of the house and into the storage cabin. The pounding of something metal on the thin wooden gate frightened Nini. Soon these people would come in, devils sent by her parents to destroy her hope of a happy life, and Bashi was not here to protect her; soon they would drag her away from this house and put her back into the jail run by her parents.

“Hello, what are you doing to my gate?”

Out of gratitude Nini almost wept when she heard Bashi's voice.

“Are you Lu Bashi?”

“I don't know any other Lu Bashi in my life.”

“Then come with us.”

“Where to?”

“You'll know when you get there.”

“That sounds exciting,” Bashi said. “But I can't go with you just now. I have more important business to deal with.”

“Be disappointed, then,” the man said. “Nothing is more important tonight than coming with us.”

Something metal was shaken outside.

“Are the handcuffs real? I remember I had a toy pair when I was this small,” Bashi said.

“Try them on.”

“Sorry, but I would rather be the one to cuff others,” said Bashi. “What are you here for?”

“You know better than we do.”

“I truly can't think of anything I've done wrong.”

“Well, you can keep thinking about it when we get to the station.”

Nini thought about opening the gate and dragging Bashi in before the men registered her existence. She could bolt the gate from the inside, and by the time the men broke it down she and Bashi would be gone from the yard, the house, and this world of horrors.

“But I'm busy tonight. Can I come tomorrow morning?”

A man grunted. “Look here. Do you know what this is? Can you read?”

“Arrest order. Now what is that for?”

“Well, let's go. I've never seen a person who talks as much as you.”

“Please, brothers, give me a hint. Is it because of a girl? Do you know if this has anything to do with a girl?”

“A girl!” the men said, laughing. “Did you get lost in your own wet dreams to think that we would come to get you because of a girl?”

“So it's not girl-related,” Bashi said.

Her parents, after all, did not care about her enough to go through the trouble to find her, Nini thought. Perhaps they would celebrate their good fortune in her loss.

The men again urged Bashi to go with them.

“Wait a second. Comrades, you are very gracious. Do you want to give me a minute to get a few things settled in my house?”

“You look enough like a man but fuss like a girl,” one man said, shaking the handcuffs again. “We have other houses to visit. We don't have the whole night to entertain you.”

“Please, just one minute. I have to tell my grandmother that I will not spend the night at home. You know how it goes with old women—they worry all the time even when there's nothing much going on.”

“Now don't fool us. Here it says you're the only resident in this house, isn't that correct?”

“True for the household register, but think of the ghost of my grandma—she raised me and she wouldn't leave me here all by myself so I talk to her every day and let her know where I am. If you take me away without informing her, what if she followed me to the station? What if she made a mistake and followed you two home instead and disturbed your children's sleep? Don't say you're from out of town and you don't worry about such things. Ghosts travel faster than you and me.”

Nini shivered in the darkness. She looked up at the ham hanging just above her head. What if the ghost was watching her? But what kind of a ghost was she if she didn't come to rescue her own grandson? Nini said a low prayer to the old woman and asked her to understand who her real enemies were.

“Are you bluffing? You know this is a new society where superstition has no place.”

“Well, if you don't trust me, take me away now. The thing is, you never know. Ghosts don't read newspapers and they don't listen to government broadcasts.”

“That's all right,” the voice that belonged to the older of the two men said. “Let's give him a minute. It's not like he can run away from us.”

“No, I won't run away from you,” said Bashi. “You have my word—I'll only be a minute.”

“What do you mean by that? We're coming in with you.”

“But my grandma hasn't invited you.”

“We'll be good houseguests.”

The gate opened and the three men came into the yard. Nini, squatting behind a jar in the storage cabin, remembered Little Sixth fast asleep in the bedroom, and her heart began to pound. “Do you smell that?” she heard Bashi say, after the door was open.

“What's the smell?”

“My grandmother's floral water,” Bashi said. “How long has it been since I smelled it? The last time she used it I was still a child going into the street without my pants.”

The two men coughed uneasily and one of them said, “Now hurry up.”

“You're not coming in with me? Perhaps my grandma knew you were coming and prepared some food for you.”

“Let's go now,” one man ordered suddenly with a sharp voice. “I'm tired of your superstitious nonsense.”

“Are you scared, comrade?” Bashi said, but his laughing was interrupted when one of the men yanked him back and made him stumble down the steps. He cried out loudly, but the two men grabbed him and dragged him out the door. “Nana,” called out Bashi. “Did you hear the gentlemen? I need to be away for a night. No need to worry, Nana. I'll be back in a blink and you be good and stay here. Don't ever think of being naughty and following the gentlemen here, all right? I don't want you to get lost.”

Someone cursed and then Bashi screamed in pain. Nini squatted in the darkness and cried. She heard the neighbors’ gates open with creaks and then close. After a while, she came out of the storage cabin. A crescent moon was halfway up the sky, reddish gold. The gate to the alley was open just a crack. Nini walked quietly to the gate and looked out. The neighbors had returned home, every gate closed in the alley. She pushed Bashi's gate, inch by inch, until it shut soundlessly. There was no ghost in the world, she thought; the old woman was buried, cold in the dirt, and she would not come to rescue Bashi or be offended by Nini. They were at the mercy of strangers, as always.

THE WATER DRIBBLED in a slow, hesitant rhythm, as the raindrops had done many years earlier in his grandparents’ garden, dripping from the tips of the banana leaves to a small puddle beneath. Any moment now his nanny would come, and he would have to shut his eyes, but she was always able to tell that he'd been crying. Look at your pillowcase, his nanny would say, and stroke his wet eyelashes with a finger, the light from the red lantern in her other hand warm on his face, but they were never able to expel his gloom, just as he was never able to find an explanation for his tears. Young Master has been crying again, he heard her say to his grandparents after she walked out of the bedroom, and his grandmother would explain, once again without losing her patience, that children cried so that all the sadness they had to carry from their last lives would leave with the tears.

A perfect cycle it was, Teacher Gu thought, one's life starting with the pain carried from the previous life, growing up to shed the burden only to accumulate fresh pain for the next life. Slowly the world came back to him, and with great effort he turned on the bedside light. He was in his shirt and underwear. His jacket and pants-soiled by his vomit, he supposed—had been washed and now hung on the clothesline, dripping into a small puddle on the cement floor. Gousheng had left a pot of tea by his bedside, still warm to the touch. How long had he been unconscious? Teacher Gu opened his mouth but no sound came from his scratchy throat. So this was what he was reduced to, an old man hung over, from nothing other than his own illusion of staying alive. Staying alive had been his faith since his divorce, and for this he had given up dignity, hope, anger, and his loved ones; but where did this faith lead him except back to this cycle that no one could escape?

Dearest love, my mind is as clear as a mirror wiped spotless under the silver light of a full moon, Teacher Gu wrote, and put it with other notes to his first wife in a large envelope. For the last time he spelled out her name and address, and then screwed the cap carefully back on his Parker and inserted it, with his letters, in the envelope.

Underneath the bed was the old wooden chest where his wife had kept their precious possessions, and it cost Teacher Gu a great effort to drag it out. There was a Western-style suit in the chest. The suit had belonged to her grandfather, Teacher Gu told Shan the night before she and her comrades planned to come and cleanse him of his bourgeois possessions; the umbrella next to the suit, a souvenir of his parents’ love story. He would appreciate it if she could spare the few things he had kept from his parents. At the time, Shan sneered at his pleading, but the next day she decided to overlook the suit and the umbrella while she threw the other stuff into the fire, including her mother's silk blouses and Teacher Gu's college graduation robe.

Teacher Gu buttoned the suit and tidied his hair; it was one's responsibility to leave the world as a clean person.

The distance to the mailbox was longer than he'd thought, and twice he had to stop and catch his breath. The letter weighed no more than his own heart, and no sound came back when he dropped it into the metal box.

A dog barked; a feral cat whined and another answered in a shriller voice; a child cried in a nearby house and a mother sang a lullaby; the world was a beautiful place under the spring sky with the new moon surrounded by silver stars and a gentle breeze combing its unseen fingers through the long branches of the willow trees. Teacher Gu listened. His heart was a bottomless well; each small sound, a sigh and a whisper and the flapping of the most tender wings, was welcomed with deep-felt serenity.

“Where are you going?” two men said, stopping Teacher Gu as he was leaving the alley.

“The Muddy River,” Teacher Gu replied.

The men looked at each other and told Teacher Gu he was not allowed to go there. Why? Teacher Gu questioned, but the men only shrugged and said nobody was allowed to move around town after eight o'clock. They pointed to where he'd come from and ordered him to go back home. Elsewhere similar requests were made, the curfew enforced by workers from another town.

Beware, Teacher Gu said, full of sympathy for these people who lived in blind faith and who would die, one day, without a single light shining into their souls. Butchers one day and the next day you will be the meat on the cutting board, he said to the men; your knives that slit open others’ throats will one day slit your own.

The two men, infuriated, pushed Teacher Gu and threatened to place him under arrest. Their mouths opened and closed with useless words and empty warnings. You stupid human beings, Teacher Gu said; with the resolution to meet the water that would carry him away, he struck at them with his cane and ordered them to let him pass. It did not take long for the men to pin the old man to the ground. Cold as water, the thought of relief passed through him like a whisper as he moved his head slightly so his cheek would hurt less from the smashed glasses.

Unknown to Teacher Gu's fading consciousness were the screams and howls of tortured flesh, muffled by unfeeling walls as well as unfeeling hearts. Tong's father, beaten into a stupor, for a moment was lost in one of his drunken dreams in which, behind his warm eyelids, his mother stirred a single egg, but the beat-beat of the bamboo chopsticks on the china bowl was then disturbed by the heavy thumping of boots on his head. Not far away, in another room, a man, father of two daughters who had once been among the girls dreamed of by Bashi, cried on the cold cement floor after having pressed a bloody fingerprint onto the confession thrust at him. Cautious man as he was, he had never been near any leaflet, but in Bashi's made-up and unsubstantiated account the man had turned up at the rally with a white flower.

In a different room Bashi cried too, rolling on the floor and grasping his crotch with both hands. Please big brothers please uncles please grandpapas please please, he begged; he was smaller than their smallest toenail he was smaller than his own fart please he would confess to everything anything they wanted him to; yes he was a counterrevolutionary yes he had been to the rally but please big brothers please uncles and grandpapas he remembered all of the people he had seen; he would give their names he would point out their faces in pictures please please don't kick don't beat because he was so low he would soil their shoes and their hands; please he had everything and anything to tell please he could tell them about the man who said bad words about Communism and the woman who spat at Chairman Mao's statue and yes yes he could tell them all about this man who raped and mutilated female corpses and who would do the same thing to their wives and their sisters if they did not catch him in time.