The Vagrants

EIGHT

A middle-aged carpenter and his apprentice, both in their undershirts and covered with sawdust and sweat, moved their sawhorse to let Kai enter her flat. The hallway shared by the four families on the floor had been turned into a temporary workshop, and out of curiosity Kai asked which family they were working for. The harmless question, however, seemed to throw both men into instant confusion; they glanced at each other, and when the older man lowered his head, the young apprentice replied that they had been assigned a political task by the city government.

Kai frowned. Before she had a chance to question the men further, the door to her flat opened and Han smiled at her mysteriously. He had a surprise for her, he said, and told her to close her eyes. The young carpenter glanced at Kai and Han with timid curiosity, and Han told the boy to keep working, before he pulled Kai into the flat. What was it? she asked, but Han insisted that she keep her eyes closed. Kai sighed and let him hold her hand and guide her into the living room. When she was told to open her eyes, she saw in the middle of the room a huge cardboard box with a blue television set printed on it.

“When did you get out of town?” Kai asked. The only place to buy a television set was in the provincial capital, with a special permit, and even though Han had been talking about buying a TV for days, Kai thought it would take weeks before permission could be granted.

“I didn't take one step out of my office today,” Han said. “And I didn't have to spend a penny.”

Kai nodded absentmindedly. Han seemed to be disappointed by her lukewarm reaction. “It's a present,” he said. “And only three families in Muddy River got them. Guess who?”

“Your parents and the mayor, and us?”

“Nothing escapes your eyes,” said Han. “Who else deserves such a prize?”

“For the kidney transplant?”

Han smiled and said that the mayor and his wife had recommended the carpenters, as they had finished a top-quality TV stand for them just two days earlier, and he had asked that the carpenters finish by the next day. Shouldn't the neighbors be consulted before they let the carpenters use a public space? Kai asked, but Han dismissed the question and said that he believed the neighbors would feel just fine about it—the men in the three other families occupied positions not much lower than Han's, yet they were the ones who had reached their limits, as Han put it; he himself was the only one on their floor with a future.

Kai nodded, and then asked if there was other news.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Han said as the door to the nursery opened. Ming-Ming walked out on tiptoes, his hands pulled up by the nanny's hands. He looked at his parents and led the nanny toward the sofa. Han had rearranged the furniture in the living room to make room for the TV stand, and when Ming-Ming climbed onto the sofa, now close to the light switch, he reached out to turn on the light, and then off, and then on and off. Kai and Han, both preoccupied with their own thoughts, watched the baby in the blinking light.

Finally, Han made a gesture toward the nanny. Kai picked Ming-Ming up and kissed him, but he wiggled out of her arms to go to the sofa. Kai asked the nanny about the baby's lunch and then told her to dress the baby warmly and take him for a stroll around the city square. A walk before the nap? the nanny asked in surprise, and Kai answered that it was a warm day and he might as well get some fresh air.

Han stood next to the window and watched the street. “I'm sure you've heard of the situation out there,” he said, once the nanny had shut the door to the flat.

Fifteen hundred copies of the first leaflet had been distributed three nights earlier, but by noon the next day they had been torn down by the sanitation squad, and no one had mentioned it since. A couple of nights later a second leaflet showed up, this time talking not only about Gu Shan's execution but also about a democratic wall movement in Beijing. By now Kai thought it would be suspicious to pretend to be unaware of it. “The leaflets,” she said, feeling her words filled with a bitterness that only she herself could detect. She wished she had been part of what was happening in Muddy River.

“This nonsense about the democratic wall, and the talk of the dead woman, neither would be much of a headache if treated separately.”

“Why?”

Han waved a hand to dismiss the topic. Lunch was ready, he said, and they might as well enjoy a good homemade meal.

Rarely did Kai ask Han about the affairs he managed, though he had a habit of recounting his daily activities when they lay in bed at night. Kai decided to wait before asking any more questions. They sat down and ate their lunch, neither talking for a moment, and then Han cheered himself up by turning the conversation back to the new television set. It was a fourteen-inch black-and-white, imported from Japan, bigger and of better quality than the one he had originally set his heart on; the three sets had come as a surprise that morning, a gesture of gratitude, no doubt, from their powerful friend in the provincial capital.

It seemed a perfect invitation for Kai to ask questions. “Who is this mysterious friend you keep talking about?”

Han thought about this and then shook his head. “I'll let you know as soon as we find out where these leaflets are coming from.”

“Is there anything wrong?”

“Not from what I can see,” Han said, and reached across the plates of food to pat Kai's hand. “These are things you shouldn't bother yourself about. Politics is not for women. The last thing I want is for you to become my mother,” Han said with a grin. Before Kai could reply, he straightened his face and imitated his mother's speech at the May Day gathering the previous year; Kai's mother-in-law was nicknamed the “Iron Woman” behind her back by her inferiors.

Kai didn't expect Han to be aware of such talk, as he and his father were known to be admirers of the woman they shared. “You should be thankful for your mother,” Kai said. “You wouldn't have been so lucky, if not for her.”

“Oh, I love her dearly. Still, you wouldn't want our son to have a mother like her, would you?” said Han with a wink. There was a knock at the door. Kai, expecting the nanny with the baby asleep in her arms, went to the door but found Han's parents, both waiting, unsmiling, to be let in. She greeted them, and they nodded and entered the flat without a word. In a low, stern voice they told Han, who had already gone to the kitchen and poured two cups of tea for them, to come up to their flat right away.

Kai stood by the door and said farewell to her parents-in-law. Neither explained anything to her, and Han only squeezed her shoulder and told her to relax, before he ran to catch up with them. The carpenter's apprentice stopped his work and watched Kai. When the older man coughed and told him to mind his own business, he smiled shyly at Kai and went back to sanding the wood.

Han did not wait for the carpenters to finish their work before setting out for the provincial capital that afternoon. A special liaison for the mayor, Han explained when he returned from his parents’ flat; the mayor and Han's parents wanted him to be at the capital to gather firsthand information about how Beijing was reacting to the democratic wall before they could make a decision themselves about the leaflets. He did not know how long he would have to be there, Han said, his spirit unusually low. Kai imagined that he had been warned not to reveal anything to her, but when she pressed him for details, he admitted that the situation was difficult for everyone in the administration, as the central government in Beijing did not have a clear attitude toward the democratic wall. Would it mean that some change would be introduced in national policies? Kai asked. That would be the end of his career, Han answered. He looked despondent. A boy put into a man's position by his parents. Kai looked at him almost with sympathy. She touched his cheek with her palm, but even before she could find some empty words to comfort him, Han grabbed her hand, and asked her if she would still love him if he lost the game.

What was there for him to lose? she wondered, but when she put the question to him, Han only sighed and said that she was right, that it was too early to give up, and he would remain hopeful.

Kai asked for another sick leave slip from the doctor and took the afternoon off. She did not know Teacher Gu's address, but when she searched the area, the first housewife she asked about the Gus led Kai to the alley. Number n, the woman told her, and as a passing comment she said how miserable Mrs. Gu's life was now, with no children to share the burden of an invalid husband.

Kai knocked, and it took Mrs. Gu a while to come to the gate, a hen clucking under her arm. She must have the wrong address, Mrs. Gu said before Kai could open her mouth.

“I heard Teacher Gu was not feeling well,” Kai said. “I've come to see you both.”

“We don't know you,” Mrs. Gu said. She studied Kai for a moment and her stern face softened. “Were you the one to leave the money here?”

Money? Kai said, her confusion disappointing Mrs. Gu. Who could it be then? she mumbled to herself.

Kai looked around at the alley, empty but for an old man dozing in the sun. Could she come into the yard and talk to Mrs. Gu for a few minutes? Kai asked, and Mrs. Gu, looking skeptical, nonetheless let her through the gate. The hen cooed and Mrs. Gu released it, telling it in a conversational tone to stay in the sun so as not to get a cold. The hen sauntered away, pecking at its own shadow.

Kai brought out the copies of the two leaflets she had saved. “I came to talk to you and Teacher Gu about these,” she said.

Mrs. Gu looked at the unfolded sheets without reading them. “My husband is in the hospital,” she said. “He can't talk to you.”

They were leaflets posted on Gu Shan's behalf, Kai said, and explained that not all the people in Muddy River supported the court's decision. Mrs. Gu looked at Kai for a moment and asked sharply if she was the news announcer.

“Yes,” Kai said.

“Did you know my daughter?”

Kai told her that she had moved to Muddy River after graduating from a theater school in the provincial capital. She had always been an admirer of Shan, Kai said, but what difference would her words make?

“My daughter, she wouldn't have done your job any less well than you. She was a good singer. She was always the best,” said Mrs. Gu. She glanced at the leaflets. “Did you write those?” she asked.

She wished she had, Kai said, but no, she had done little to help.

“But you know who did it? Are they your friends?”

Kai hesitated and said yes, some of them were her friends.

“Tell your friends they are very kind,” Mrs. Gu said. “But no, we don't need them to do anything like this.” Mrs. Gu added that she was only happy her husband was in the hospital. It would have upset him had he seen the leaflets.

“But we—they—are only trying to help,” Kai said. “The mistake has to be corrected. Shan was a pioneer among us. And she would be comforted to know that friends and comrades are fighting for what she fought for.”

Mrs. Gu gazed at Kai for a long moment and sighed. She was grateful, Mrs. Gu said, to hear that Kai and her friends had not forgotten Shan. Nor had she herself, Mrs. Gu said. But she had a sick husband to tend to and there was little she could do for them, nor they for her. They were not asking for anything, Kai assured her; she said that the only reason she had come to visit the couple was to let them know that they were not alone in this world, where her daughter's memory lived on as an inspiration.

“You're very good at giving speeches,” Mrs. Gu said. Kai blushed at the comment, but Mrs. Gu seemed to mean little ill. “Shan was like that too. She was the most eloquent child,” Mrs. Gu said gently. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“And you're married? Do you have children?”

Kai replied that she and her husband had a young boy.

“And your parents, are they well?”

Her father had passed away, Kai replied. Mrs. Gu nodded without adding words of sympathy. “It's kind of you to come and see us, and to let us know how you care about Shan. I don't know your friends and what their stories are, but you are a mother and a daughter. Have you thought how your mother would feel about your doing this? Have you ever thought of her?”

Kai did not know how to answer the question. She hadn't visited her mother for a few weeks now, even though they lived within a five-minute walk of each other.

“You haven't thought of her at all, have you?” Mrs. Gu said. “Daughters are all alike. Their parents weigh little in their decisions, and I don't blame you for it. Have you thought about your son?”

Yes, Kai said; she was doing this so that her son could live in a better world. But all parents would think that way, Mrs. Gu said; they wanted to make everything better for their children, but the truth was that what they ended up doing was making their children's lives worse.

“I don't understand that, Mrs. Gu.”

“Think of Shan,” Mrs. Gu said, more vehemently now, her face flushed. “We thought we could give her the best education possible because my husband was one of the most knowledgeable people in town. But what did we do but turn her into a stranger? Your parents must have worked hard to get you a good job, but what are you doing except putting yourself in danger without thinking of them? You think you're doing something for your son, but the last thing he needs is for you to go out and talk about secret leaflets with people.” Her family was not her sole responsibility, Kai replied. Mrs. Gu stared at Kai; she felt for Kai's mother, she said, her narrowing eyes filled with gentle sadness for a brief moment, before it was taken over by a coldness. It was time for Kai to leave now, Mrs. Gu said, as her husband was waiting for her in the hospital.

FOR TONG, spring this year had started on March 21, the day of the equinox, when he had seen the first swallow coming back from the south and had noted it in his nature journal. Swallows were the messengers of spring, Old Hua said; they were the most nostalgic and loyal birds, coming back year after year to their old nests. But that meant they would never get a family of swallows to live under their roof, Tong worried aloud, because there was no nest there. In that case, Old Hua said, they had to wait for a young couple who would not return to their parents but would make a new home of their own.

The next day, Tong saw a flock of geese flying across the sunny afternoon sky, the head goose pointing north. Like swallows, geese never mistook where they were flying to, Old Hua said, but when Tong asked him why they never got lost, the only answer Old Hua had was that they were born that way.

Every afternoon after school, Tong went to the city square, where the day's newspapers were displayed in glass cases. There were more than a dozen to choose from, newspapers printed both in Beijing and in the provincial capital, but for Tong, the most important one was Muddy River Daily, from which he copied the temperatures of the local weather forecast into his journal. Tong had read, in an outdated copy of Children's Quarterly, that Old Hua had found a few weeks earlier, about a boy who had for years recorded temperatures three times a day in a nature journal. The year the boy turned thirteen, he noticed a change in the temperature pattern and successfully predicted an earthquake, earning him the title of “Science Hero” for saving people's lives. The story did not say what kind of change the boy had noticed, leaving Tong to construct his own theory about that, but the article showed him a new way to become a hero. His parents, of course, would say they did not have money idling in their pocket for a thermometer, so Tong did not ask. Instead, he decided to use the local newspaper. When Old Hua heard about the nature journal, he wondered why anyone needed to rely on the numbers at all, when one's own skin was the best way to detect minute changes in the air temperature. Tong did not tell the old man of his plan, holding on to the secret and hoping that one day Muddy River would thank him for his vigilance.

According to the weather forecast, the temperature had climbed above the freezing point on March 22, the day after the denunciation ceremony, and the wind in the midafternoon no longer felt like a razor on one's face. Children left school bareheaded, some throwing their hats high into the sky and then catching them as they fell. Ear came home in the evening with a girl's pink mitten, a hole in the tip of the thumb; Tong tried it on, the right size for his hand, and he wiggled his thumb out of the hole, pretending it was a puppet. He told Ear that they would put the mitten by Chairman Mao's statue the following morning, in case the girl, like himself, liked the city square.

The next morning, Tong went out into the alley and saw leaflets posted on the wall, within his reach if he stood on a stack of bricks. Tong peeled one off the wall and read it. The leaflet talked about things that Tong did not understand, and two days later, another leaflet found its way to their alley. The secretive way they came to his door alarmed Tong. They reminded him of the stories he had learned in school, about underground Communist Party members risking their lives to spread the truth to the people, but in the new China, where everybody lived as happily as if in a jar of honey, like it said in the new song they had just learned at school, what use did they have for the leaflets?

Tong wondered whom he could talk to. His parents would not be interested in listening to him, and his schoolteacher taught as if nothing had happened. He patted Ear and said they should team up and solve the mystery together. “Show me anything suspicious,” Tong said. “Nothing is too small.”

Ear circled Tong agitatedly. Tong did not know that Ear had heard, the previous nights, muffled steps in the alley, stopping and then continuing. Ear had jumped as high as he could and then stood with his front paws on the fence, sniffing, but his latest training prevented him from sounding the alarm. Both nights it was the same person, whose scent, of earth and horse manure and winter hay stacks and harvested wheat, reminded Ear of his home village. Like Tong and Ear himself, the night stranger had come from the countryside, where Ear had once chased a squealing piglet until he bumped into the mountainlike body of a sow unperturbed by her baby's dilemma, and where he had barked many times at the passing horse wagon, on which sat a hitchhiking peddler, his rattle drum flipped briskly in his skillful hand, the plimp-plump, plimp-plump never overpowered by the barking of Ear and his companions. In the past six months, Ear had gotten used to the villagers from the mountains who brought with them the smell of stale snow and ancient pine trees, of freshly skinned hares and newly gathered mushrooms, but they were different from the smell of his home on the plain. The stranger at night made Ear fretful.

Fretful too were the members of the city council, the Muddy River Communist Party branch, and other officials. The first leaflet, a letter questioning Gu Shan's retrial, had not induced much alarm; it was more of a nuisance, some people dissatisfied with their lives, for whatever reason, using the dead woman's body as an excuse to make a fuss. Better to wait, the mayor had decided, and he had requested increased surveillance at night. But the extra security guards, cold and hungry in their late-night patrolling, were not able to catch the people who posted the second leaflet. A democratic wall movement in Beijing had begun a new page in the nation's history, the leaflets informed the citizens of Muddy River; why did they never get a chance to hear the news, to know what was going on in the national capital; why could they not speak their minds without being put to death like Gu Shan?

The news of the protest had been accessible to only a few high-ranking officials, and the connection made between Gu Shan's execution and the situation in Beijing seemed a sinister conspiracy, more so when uncertainties raged over how to react to the democratic wall movement not only in the provincial capital but also in Beijing. Daily these veterans of local politics read and reread the news, fresh off the classified wire service, about developments in Beijing. There were clearly two camps, both with significant representation in the central government and among party leaders. Were the leaflets in Muddy River the spawn of the democratic wall seven hundred miles away? And what should they do, which side should they take?—the questions puzzled these people who had never worried over the lack of a meal, a bed, or a job. Offices became minefields where one had to watch out for oneself, constantly defining and redefining friends, enemies, and chameleons who could morph from friends to enemies and then back again. With their fates and their families’ futures in their hands, these people sleepwalked by day and shuddered by night. What would they do about these leaflets that only spelled trouble?

In the period of indecision and uncertainty, old winter-weary snow began to melt. The ground became less solid, the black dirt oozing with moisture in the sunshine. The willow trees lining both sides of the main street took on a yellow hue, which lasted a day or two before the buds turned green. It was the best green of the year-clean, fresh, shining. Boys from middle schools cut off the tender tips of the willow branches, took out the soft pith, and turned the sheaths into willow flutes. The few musical ones among them played simple melodies on the flutes and made girls their age smile.

The ice in the river rumbled at night, resisting the spring, but when the daytime came, its resolve was melted in the sunshine. The middle school boys, despite repeated warnings from their schools and parents, let the ice drifts carry them downstream, their feet planted on the ice as firmly as possible; when the drifts came closer, they tried to push one another off into the water. Sometimes one of them lost his balance and plunged into the river, and all the other boys would stamp their feet and shriek, making animal-like noises. The soaked boy dodged the ice drifts, scrambled onto the bank, and ran home, laughing too because this kind of failure did not bother him. The same thing could happen to anyone; the next day, he would be one of the winning boys, laughing at another boy falling in. It was a game, and it guaranteed neither a permanent victory nor a loss that would last beyond overnight.

Down from the mountains and over the Cross-river Bridge, villagers came with newly hatched chicks and ducklings in bamboo baskets, the first batch of edible ferns picked by the small hands of children with smaller children on their backs, deer that had not escaped the hunters’ buckshot and now came in disjointed forms: antlers, hides, jerky, bucks’ members labeled as deer whips and said to improve a man's performance in his bedroom business.

April, too, came, and with it the approaching Ching Ming, the long-awaited first holiday of the season, the day for people to bring their ancestors and their recent dead freshly steamed rolls painted with spring grass, newly brewed rice wine, and other offerings. As immigrants in a recently built city, the people of Muddy River did not have family burial grounds and ancestral compounds close by to visit, so Ching Ming became a holiday as much for the dead as for the living. Drugstores and peddlers prepared bunches of candles and incense for sale; edible green dye too, as Muddy River would not see its first real grass till after the holiday. Women shopped for the best meat to make cold cuts to feast on at the holiday picnic; men oiled and cleaned their bicycles for the annual spring outing. Even though the city government had announced a new policy eliminating Ching Ming as a public holiday—communicating with the dead in any form was an act of superstition, unfit for the new era when the country was rebuilding itself after the Cultural Revolution—the holiday this year fell on a Sunday, so the impact of the new policy on the townspeople was minimal.

NINI'S PARENTS DECIDED that this year's Ching Ming was to be celebrated as a special occasion. More than ever they needed the blessings of their ancestors. These dead people whom they had rarely thought of in the past years had no doubt been properly honored by more pious relatives in their home province; still, nobody would refuse an additional offering. At night Nini's parents calculated and discussed the menu of their offerings to these ancestors, who, if pleased, would surely send their blessings for male progeny.

Nini couldn't remember similar preparations for the births of any of her sisters. Ever since the execution of the Gus’ daughter, her parents had taken on a more cheerful view of life. Nini's mother moved around with extra caution, her two hands cupped around her belly. Nini's father touched her mother's belly often, in a way that made Nini shiver with disgust, but she couldn't take her eyes off his big-knuckled hand on her mother's body. She kept on looking until one of her parents, usually her mother, caught her staring and gave her a chore to do. Nini's father forbade her mother to do any housework, including the matchbox making that was nothing even for a small child—Nini was told to take all the duties off her mother's shoulders, and now, as well as getting coal, picking up leftover vegetables, and doing grocery shopping, she was going to cook three meals a day and do the laundry for the entire family. Nini pointed out that if they waited for her to cook breakfast after coming back with the coal from the train station, they might be late for work and school; her parents were shocked that she dared to challenge their decision, but what Nini said was true, so they had to reassign the duty to their second daughter, which made her hate Nini more than ever.

Except for the baby, all the girls sensed the importance of this pregnancy. Twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, Nini's mother gagged and threw up into a chamber pot, which it was Nini's duty to clean. Her first and second sisters moved quickly to prepare warm water and a clean towel for their mother. Nini looked on, appalled by how thoroughly the sour, bitter odor of her mother's pregnancy permeated their lives—even though it was warm enough to open the windows now, it seemed that the smell clung to everything in the room, the blankets and the pillows on the brick bed, meals Nini cooked, the laundry that hung from one end of the room to the other, even Nini's own skin. The two younger girls, however, did not wrinkle their noses when they tended their mother, and for that Nini's father praised them; after all, he said, education had made them into sensible and usable human beings. Nini might be the oldest, her mother would say, but she remained a worthless idiot. Nini listened stone-faced; she bit the inside of her mouth and fixed her eyes on a crack on the floor. This made her mother impatient, but when she looked for something to hit Nini with, a broomstick or a ruler, Nini's father would stop her. It was not worth her effort to beat some sense into Nini, he said. What she needed now was to care for the baby; she might hurt him with too much anger.

Nini's mother consented, telling Nini to hide her ugly face so that she would be spared the pain of looking at it. Instead of acting dumb, as she used to, Nini made an obvious effort to look around the small, crowded room for a hiding place before picking up Little Sixth and half burying her face into the baby's soft tummy.

One night Nini overheard her parents, on the other end of the brick bed, discuss whether they should send Nini away for a few months, the general belief being that a pregnant mother would unknowingly pass on physical traits to the baby from the people around her. Nini's mother did not want the baby to inherit anything by accident from Nini; was there a place to send her for a few months? she asked.

There was no place to send her, her father replied. After a while, her mother said, “If only we had finished her when she was born.”

Nini's father sighed. “Easy to say so but hard to do,” he said. “A life is a life, and we're not murderers.”

Nini's eyes turned warm and wet. For this she would, when the time came to bury her parents, give his body a warm bath instead of a cold one. He had never said more than three sentences to her in a day, but he was a quiet person, and she forgave him. The moment of softness, however, lasted only until her father's next sentence. “Besides,” he said, “Nini's like a maid we don't have to pay”

Quietly Nini put out the fire and filled the basin with icy cold water.

Little Fourth and Little Fifth, who had recently formed an alliance between themselves and did not participate in much of the life outside their secret world, held hands and watched whenever their mother put on a show of morning and evening sickness. They were less annoying to Nini because they never courted their parents’ attention—they were not old enough, or perhaps they had everything they wanted from each other. A few times Nini thought of befriending them, but they showed no interest, their inquiring eyes on Nini's face reminding her that she would never be as beautiful as they—by now there was no mistaking that the two girls would grow up to be the prettiest ones in the family.

But all these things—her parents’ impatience with her, her two oldest sisters’ scheming to get her punished, and the indifference of Little Fourth and Little Fifth—bothered Nini less now that she had Bashi. She explored her power with a secret joy. She put a pinch more salt into the stew than necessary or half a cup more water into the rice; she soaked her parents’ underwear in suds and then wrung them dry without rinsing; she spat on her sisters’ red Young Pioneers’ scarves and rubbed the baby's peed cloth diapers against her mother's blouses. Nobody had yet noticed these sabotaging activities, but at her most daring moments Nini hoped to be discovered. If her parents kicked her out of their house, she would just move across town to Bashi's place, less than a thirty-minute walk and a world away, freed from her prisoner's life.

Her newly added housework, however, made it inconvenient for her to spend more time with Bashi during the day. Apart from providing coal and vegetables, Bashi did not have the magic to make meals cook themselves, or laundry do itself, or the stove and her sisters take care of themselves. He suggested coming to Nini's house and being her companion when her parents were at work. She thought about the idea, alluring and exciting, and then rejected the offer. Her parents would hear about Bashi's presence in no time, if not from the neighbors, then from her younger sisters; they would throw her out for sure. Was Bashi a reliable backup, despite all her wishful thinking? Nini decided to give him some more time.

The short hour in the early morning became the happiest time of her day. When she arrived at six o'clock, Bashi always had a feast ready—sausages, fried tofu, roasted peanuts, pig's blood in gelatin, all bought at the marketplace the day before, more than they could consume. Nini started the fire—Bashi seemed unable to finish this simple task by himself, but he was a man, after all, the deficiency forgivable—and when she cooked porridge on the stove to go with the morning feast, Bashi would peel frozen pears by her side. The flesh of the pears was an unsavory dark brown color, but when Bashi cut it into thin slices and slipped them into Nini's mouth, she was surprised to find the pear crisp and sweet; the iciness inside her mouth and the heat from the burning stove made her shudder with some strange joy. Sometimes his finger stayed on her lips even after the slice of pear disappeared. She opened her mouth wide and pretended to bite; he laughed and snatched his hand away.

The morning before Ching Ming, between slices of frozen pear, Bashi said, “Old Hua says it's time to bury my grandma now.”

“When?” Nini asked.

“Tomorrow. They think it makes sense to bury her on the holiday.”

It seemed everyone had something important planned for Ching Ming, Nini thought. Her father had booked a pedicab for the holiday a luxury they could barely afford. Little Fourth, Little Fifth, and a huge basket of offerings would ride with her mother, while the two older girls and her father would walk. Nini and the baby were to stay home because neither could keep up with the others. Nini found it hard not to feel disappointed; it was the only picnic her family had planned for as long as she could remember, and she longed to go into the mountain where she had never set foot, even though it meant that she would have to endure her family for the entire day.

“Where are you going to bury her?” she asked Bashi.

“Next to my grandpa and my baba. Old Hua said he would go there today to make sure everything is ready.”

“I didn't know Muddy River was your hometown.”

“Close to here. My grandpa was a ginseng picker. He said the best ones were those that grew into the shape of a woman's body.”

“What nonsense.”

“Shhh. Don't say that about a dead man,” said Bashi. “The ghosts can hear you.”

Nini shivered.

“And it's true. Some ginsengs grow into women,” Bashi said. He stuffed the last slice of pear into Nini's mouth and told her to wait. He soon came back from the bedroom with a red silk-wrapped box, which he opened for Nini. Inside was a ginseng root, displayed on ivory-colored silk. “See here, the head, the arms and legs. The long hair,” Bashi said, and let his finger run across the ginseng, which, to Nini's astonishment, did look like an unclothed woman's body. “Beautiful, no?” said Bashi. “This was the best one my grandpa picked. If he'd sold this, he could've bought seven concubines easily but he didn't want to part with it. He thought it was a ginseng goddess. When the army came, he and my grandma prayed to this goddess not to take my father with them, but of course she let them down.”

“Didn't you say he was a war hero?”

“War hero is rubbish. You know how he was recruited? They came to my father's village and said they would invite all the young men to a house for dinner. Well, if someone invited you to dinner with a gun at your head, you would go. So my father went along with some other young people. And they were treated to a very good dinner and then invited to sit on a big brick bed. A boy soldier kept the fire burning under the bed, adding wood so that in a short time the brick bed became very hot. Like a barbecue plate, you see? And the officer said, ‘Young men, we are the People's Liberation Army and we fight for the people. Think about it. If you are interested in our cause, come down and you'll become a glorious member among us.’ Nobody moved. Of course all their parents had warned them not to join the army; they said the Communist army would not enlist someone at gunpoint like the Nationalist army. And yes, it was true that the officer was very polite. He kept telling the boy soldier to make the brick bed warmer for the guests, and an orderly kept bringing them hot tea and more tobacco leaves for their pipes. Now, tell me, what would you do? Move, or stay on the bed to have your ass burned? So after a long time my father couldn't stand the heat and came off the bed. He was the first one so he got a higher rank than his companions, and later they sent him to learn how to fly fighter planes. The rest of them became foot soldiers and orderlies.”

“They all came off, then?”

“All except one. My father's best buddy. His bottom was so badly burned he was called ‘Hot Butt’ for the rest of his life.”

Nini smiled. Bashi often told stories, and she could never tell which part was true and which was from his imagination.

“Why? You don't believe me? Ask anyone in my father's village! They said my father was clever because he came off the bed early and got the biggest promotion, but where did that get him? On the other hand, Hot Butt didn't end up in a better place. He was executed for sabotage in ‘59. He and my father died within a month of each other. They said my father was called by his friend's ghost. What does that tell you?”

Nini shook her head.

“There is only one place for everyone to go.”

Nini tried to picture Bashi's grandmother, her body withered like a ginseng root and her ghost floating in the air, eavesdropping on them. She scooped the porridge into a bowl. “Here, you must eat more and talk less,” she said to Bashi. It couldn't hurt for the old woman's ghost to see that her grandson was well taken care of.

They sat down and ate. After a moment of quietness, Nini said, “My family will go to the mountain tomorrow.”

“Why? Your family didn't have ancestors buried here,” said Bashi. “They don't have a wire service in the mountain for them to send the offerings.”

“They just want an excuse to waste all the money and go to the mountain for fun.”

“Like every other family. Are you going?”

“Me? The sun has to rise from the west for them to take me.”

Bashi nodded and then stopped his chopsticks, looking at Nini with a meaningful smile. “So you'll be home, and … alone.”

“With the baby.”

“She can sleep anywhere, no?” Bashi said.

Nini's heart skipped a beat. “But you need to bury your grandma.”

“Do you think she'll mind if I don't go?”

“Yes,” said Nini. “Don't let her down.”

“But I may get sick and unfit for the burial trip.”

Nini smiled. She was pleased that the old woman's ghost could not compete with her. Out of modesty and caution, she suggested that Bashi buy a lot of paper money for the old woman's ghost in case she felt offended, and he agreed that it was a good idea. The more they planned, the more it seemed the perfect opportunity, Nini thought, for her to put a chain on his heart so it would not go astray to another girl. “How are you doing with Old Kwen's dog?” Nini asked. She did not believe anything he said about the dog, but it made him happy when she talked about it as if it were serious business.

It was going well, Bashi replied. He had been feeding the dog hams and steaks cured in hard liquor and now it had become his friend; what would a dog with a master like Kwen fancy other than that, Bashi said, and added with a smile that he was ready to launch a test of his poison very soon. Nini listened halfheartedly and ate with concentration.

“Of course, hard work gets rewarded,” Bashi said. “While I've been working on Kwen's dog, I've found something else interesting. That woman whose body you didn't see? Some people in town are trying to organize a protest on her behalf.”

A slice of pig-blood gelatin dropped from Nini's chopsticks into her porridge. “Why?” she said. “Isn't she already dead?”

“If you ask me, people go crazy for no reason,” Bashi said. “Have you seen the leaflets all over town?”

Nini said she had not noticed, and then remembered hearing whispered conversations between her parents in bed. One time her father had said that using a dead person as a weapon was a common trick and would get the troublemakers nowhere; another time he said that they themselves had their victory and justice. Both times her mother cursed with her usual venom.

“Who are these people?” Nini asked.

“They belong to a secret group, coming at night with white skulls as necklaces.”

Nini shuddered, even though she knew that Bashi was probably being his exaggerating self. “What do they care about the woman?”

Bashi shrugged. “Maybe the ghost of the dead woman came back and cast a spell so people are under her power now, and work for her.”

“That's nonsense,” Nini said with a trembling voice.

“Why else are these people willing to act like idiots?”

Nini thought about Mrs. Gu, her former gentleness and her sudden change of attitude. Nini had stopped at the Gus’ door several times in the past week, but neither Mrs. Gu nor Teacher Gu had come out to meet her. Perhaps Mrs. Gu herself was under the spell of her daughter's ghost and had become an unreasonable woman. “That old woman,” Nini said sullenly. “She hates me.”

“Who?”

“The mother of the executed woman.”

“Why do you have anything to do with her?”

“How do I know?” Nini said. “People all hate me.”

“Not me,” Bashi said. “I like you.”

“That's what you say now,” Nini said. “Who knows when you'll change your mind?”

Bashi swore this would never happen, but Nini was no longer in a mood to listen. She said abruptly that it was time for her to leave, and before Bashi could object, she went straight to the kitchen to get the coal for herself. Bashi scratched his head and begged her to let him know how he had offended her. She thought his eagerness to keep her pleased was ridiculous. If he wanted a smile from her she would give him one, but the way he worried like an ant on a hot pot made her happy. She said she would come back the next day after her parents and sisters left the house. “You can prove yourself to me then,” she said, and left without giving Bashi a chance to defend himself.

TEACHER GU SPENT TWO WEEKS in the city hospital, and was released the day before Ching Ming, along with other patients who had requested to go home for the holiday. Teacher Gu's left hand had recovered well, and with a barely usable left leg and a cane, he was able to move slowly. Mrs. Gu hired a pedicab, and on the short ride home from the hospital, Teacher Gu saw several people stop and watch them pass, some nodding at them and one even raising a hand to wave before scratching his head, as if he was embarrassed by his own gesture. Mrs. Gu nodded back, surreptitiously too, which did not escape Teacher Gu's eyes. He pulled up the blanket that was slipping away from his legs, and his wife, startled as if from a secret dream of her own, bent to rearrange it. “You must be cold without the boots,” she said. She took off her mittens, stuck her hands into the blanket, and held his feet. Through the cotton socks he could feel the warmth of her palms. “The doctor said to avoid the boots so the circulation wouldn't be blocked,” she said, as if she were placating a child. “We'll be home soon.”

Teacher Gu looked down at his feet, tucked away in the old woolen blanket, which bore a pair of phoenixes, the red and golden colors already fading. It had been a present from his first wife the day he had left for Muddy River, at the time a small, undeveloped town, perfect for his exile. The blanket, with its gaudy colors and patterns, was an insult to his aesthetics, and he remembered throwing it back to the woman who had decided to stop being his wife. She had picked it up and repacked it in his suitcase. It was time for them to believe in something less intellectual, she had said; it was an error for them to remain blind in their intellectualism.

Go to court your illiterate proletariat master, was his reply, hurled at her out of rage and self-pity. But later, when he calmed down, he puzzled over his first wife's words. She was always the wise one, choosing the winning side even before the civil war had tipped one way or the other. He, however, was a thorough dreamer, living in his ivory tower until an eviction order was slapped in his face.

It was time to leave their intellectualism behind. When Teacher Gu settled down in Muddy River he recalled her words and decided to teach night classes to illiterate women. In their progress he saw his merit, not as an intellectual but as a worker ant, moving the smallest grains of sand away from a mountain that lay between his people and an enlightened, civilized society. On the night of his wedding to his second wife, he brought out the blanket; a present from an old friend, he told his young bride. An expensive present it was, as a woolen blanket was still a rarity in provincial towns. His wife fell in love with it, and for the first few years, she treasured it and used it only on special occasions, holidays and anniversaries, and the first month of each new year. But like everything else cherished in a new marriage, over the years the blanket lost its original importance and was used now for practical reasons—it was a blanket of top quality, good for the severe six-month-long winter of Muddy River.

When they reached the alley, the pedicab stopped, too wide to pass through to the Gus’ door. Teacher Gu limped slowly toward home while his wife counted out the bills for the driver. A few chickens jumped aside and watched Teacher Gu, and he recognized his two hens among the group. He pushed the gate open and saw a pile of wood, cut and stacked neatly. A young woman heard his steps and came out of the house. They were back just in time for lunch, she said.

Teacher Gu studied the woman. She was in her late twenties, her medium-length straight hair covering the nape of her neck, parted to one side with a barrette; she wore a gray Mao jacket and a pair of pants in a darker gray. At first glance, she had the standard appearance of a young married woman, neutral-looking, as a wife was expected to no longer reveal any of her femininity and beauty to strangers. Yet a corner of her gauzy, peach-colored scarf spilled over the collar of the Mao jacket, perhaps with deliberate intent. Teacher Gu squinted at the scarf; on their wedding night his first wife had worn a silk robe of the same hue, peach being her favorite color.

The woman smiled, her teeth very white and even. “How are you feeling, Teacher Gu?”

He did not reply. He realized that the woman was prettier than she intended to appear. “Who are you?” he asked, his tone unfriendly.

“This is Kai,” said Mrs. Gu, coming through the gate. “She reads the news.”

“Ah, of course it's you,” Teacher Gu said. It was impossible to forget her voice, which could easily be compared to a sunny autumn sky, a clear creek in the springtime, or any other empty similes that could be used to describe other female announcers, from the central radio stations to the provincial stations, all well chosen because of the lack of individual features in their voices. What a sad thing it was, to be someone who could so easily be replaced by another perfect, almost identical voice, Teacher Gu thought. What a tedious job it must be, to speak day in and day out words that were not one's own. But then what right did he have to despise her? For all he knew she might enjoy the fame this job brought her. “You have a nice voice,” Teacher Gu said. “Great for being the throat and tongue for the party.”

There was a small pause before Kai nodded hesitantly. Mrs. Gu studied both of them nervously and put a hand on Teacher Gu's arm. “You must be tired now. Why don't you have some lunch and take a nap?” She half supported and half pulled him into the house. He wiggled his arm, with more force than he had intended, to free himself.

Kai carried a pot of chicken stew to the table and asked Teacher Gu how the trip home had been for him. He did not answer. There was no space in his heart for small talk, neither with his wife nor with a stranger. While he had been lying in the hospital for two weeks, he had conducted many conversations with his first wife, sometimes arguing, other times agreeing with her; he wanted no one to interrupt them.

Mrs. Gu apologized to Kai in a low voice, saying the trip might have worn him out. Kai said it was not a problem at all, and in any case, she should be leaving to take care of a few things. Teacher Gu tried to return to his preoccupation, yet the young woman distracted him. He looked up and studied her face. “You were my student, weren't you?” he said all of a sudden, taking both Kai and Mrs. Gu by surprise.

“Kai did not grow up in Muddy River,” Mrs. Gu said, and explained that Kai had become an announcer after she left the theater troupe in the provincial capital.

Teacher Gu stared at Kai. She would make the bed in case he wanted a rest before lunch, Mrs. Gu said.

He had taught hundreds of students in the past thirty years; only lately had he begun to mix up their names and faces, yet, like any older person, the more forgetful he was in his recent life, the sharper his earlier memories became. “You were my student,” Teacher Gu said again.

Kai looked uneasy. “I was in your first-grade class for two months before I moved away,” Kai said.

“When was that?”

“Nineteen sixty.”

Teacher Gu squinted and calculated. “No, it was in 1959. You were in the same class as Shan.”

Mrs. Gu turned to Kai, who looked stricken, and for a moment no one spoke. Teacher Gu tried hard to recollect more about Kai, but all he saw was Shan, in his first-grade class in 1959, a skinny girl with two thin pigtails, the ends yellowed like scorched weeds, a malnourished child among the starved children in the famine that would last three years before losing its grip on the nation.

Mrs. Gu was the first to recover. She ladled stew into a bowl. “Kai brought the chicken and the chestnuts,” she said.

“Why did you change schools?” Teacher Gu asked.

“I was chosen and sent to the Children's Theater School,” Kai said.

Teacher Gu snorted. “I imagine you were well fed as a selected star, then,” he said. Something about this young woman annoyed him, her voice, her being the same age as Shan but with a secure job and an easy life, her intrusion into his home, her lying to his wife about not having met Shan. His own daughter, seven years old back then, had looked up at him with pleading eyes when he divided the meager food he had saved from his own ration for the children who came from bigger families and were hungrier than his daughter. Those children grew up to be the most dangerous youths, their minds as empty and eagerly receptive as their mouths, and they devoured anything fed to them, good and bad and evil. “Have you ever known hunger?” Teacher Gu said to Kai now, not covering his animosity.

“He who is in your house is a guest,” Mrs. Gu said, and he recognized the tone of disapproval. “You're not behaving like a good host today.”

“Teacher Gu must be tired now,” Kai said. “I'll come back later to talk to him.”

He did not answer either woman. He stumbled out of the chair and into the bedroom. The stove was burning well, and all of a sudden he was exhausted by the warmth. He listened to his wife apologizing to Kai, and Kai replying that of course she understood, and no, she did not mind it at all. Soon their conversation became inaudible. Teacher Gu looked at the clock on the wall. He wondered how long it would take his wife to remember her sick husband, made too hot and uncomfortable by the burning stove in the middle of a spring day.

Seven minutes Teacher Gu had counted on the clock when Mrs. Gu came in with the untouched bowl of stew. “You really should eat a little,” she said.

“Where's that woman?” he said.

“Her name is Kai,” Mrs. Gu said.

Teacher Gu struggled to drag himself into a sitting position. He was surprised that his wife did not hurry to help him.

“You were very unfriendly to her, as if she owed you something,” Mrs. Gu said.

“She lied to us. Why was she here?” Teacher Gu demanded. “She's a political tool for the government. What does she want from us?”

His wife stared at him with a quizzical look that reminded him of his rebellious daughter ten years earlier. “Didn't you teach your students to use their brains and not to jump to quick conclusions?”

So this was what he had come home for, Teacher Gu thought, an unpleasant wife who questioned his every word. “How long do you plan to remain this person that I don't think I've had the privilege of knowing before I went to the hospital? Do I deserve an explanation?” he said, raising his voice.

“The doctors said to remain calm,” she said.

“Never is there a calmer person than a dead one.”

His wife put the bowl on a stool next to the bed. He thought she would sit on the stool and feed him. When she did not, he made an effort to reach for the spoon even though he had no appetite.

“There's something you should know—we didn't tell you before because we thought your recovery was more important then,” Mrs. Gu said.

“Who are ‘we’?”

“Kai and I, and her friends. We're mobilizing the townspeople for a petition for Shan.”

The change in his wife—her eyes that were no longer directed downward when she spoke, her clear pronunciation of words beyond her vocabulary—alarmed Teacher Gu. In almost thirty years of being second-class citizens, and especially in the ten years since Shan's imprisonment, they, as a couple, had retreated to a cocoon they had woven together, a flimsy and claustrophobic shell that provided their only warmth; sometimes it was hard to tell where one self ended and the other began; they were the two fish that chose to live the rest of their lives in the same drying puddle—had all this been an illusion? Who was this woman in front of him, trusting young strangers with some crazy and meaningless idea about a protest that could never change his daughter's fate? The feeling of falling down, unable to grab onto something—the same feeling he had experienced when he was first ill—made his breathing difficult.

“I thought I shouldn't hide this from you now,” said Mrs. Gu. “It's become the biggest news.”

“A new star you've become.”

She ignored him. “You can't believe how many people are sympathetic. People are afraid but that doesn't mean they are callous. We just need to find them.”

Teacher Gu watched his wife. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes, two deep wells of water that had gone dry over the years, looked somewhere beyond his head, with an unusual glimmer. A coldness crept into his body despite the burning stove. It was a disease—this passion for politics, for mobilizing the masses as if they were grains of sand that could easily be gathered under a magic spell and turned into a tower—it was a deadly disease. It had claimed his daughter's life, and now it was fastening its grip on the most unlikely person in the world, his wife, an obedient and humble old woman. “What do you want?” he asked finally. “Shan is already gone.”

“We want the government to acknowledge the mistake. Shan was innocent. Nobody should be punished because of what she thinks. It's wrong and it's time to correct that mistake.”

These words had been fed to his wife, probably by Kai, that young woman whose job it was to read aloud all the grand and empty words created to cast a mirage for suffering souls. “Shan is dead,” Teacher Gu said. “Whatever you do, you won't bring back her life.”

“It's not her life we're fighting for. It's the justice she deserves,” Mrs. Gu said.

Stupid, stupid woman, talking like a parrot and offering their daughter's body as a public sacrifice in return for an empty promise. These women, with their flimsy logic and hungry minds, these women who let themselves be dazzled by magnificent words, their brains washed and refilled by other people. Was it his fate to face such an enemy all his life, first a wife who was so devoted to Communism that a marriage had to be dissolved, then a daughter, and now the only woman left in his life, who had been immune to this disease for the longest part of her life? He stared at his wife. “How long did it take for them to make a heroine out of you?” he asked coldly. “Five seconds, I imagine.”

Like him, she had had doubts too, Mrs. Gu said in a calm voice, but they had to keep hoping for a change. They could not let their daughter's life be sacrificed for nothing.

Their daughter had died out of stupidity, because of trusting the wrong people all her life, Teacher Gu wanted to remind his wife, but in the end he only told her to stop what she was doing. “I won't allow this,” he said. “I forbid you, or anyone, to use Shan's name as an excuse to gain anything.”

Mrs. Gu looked up in shock. After a long moment, she smiled at him. “Teacher Gu, weren't you the one to teach me many years ago that women weren't men's slaves and followers anymore? And what men could not give us, we needed to fight for with our own hands?”

Teacher Gu looked at his wife, his body shaking. The lies he had been forced to teach many years ago had come back to bear down on him, making him into a clown. He thought of throwing the chicken stew against the wall or onto the hard cement floor; he would let the soup splatter everywhere, hot and oily, and he would watch the china bowl smash into pieces. But what would that do except put him down on the level of an uneducated, illogical man? His anger, overwhelming a moment ago, was replaced by disappointment and exhaustion. He looked at his wife with a half smile. “Of course we're living in the Communist era now,” he said. “Forgive an old man's confusion, comrade.”

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that Nini could throw a girlish tan trum, requesting a demonstration of loyalty from him? A rose with a thorny stem was worth the risk and pain, but what if it was a wild-flower by the roadside that considered itself a rose and grew unpleasant thorns? Bashi chuckled to himself. Perhaps he needed to keep an eye on Nini's temperament and make sure she did not grow into one of those grumpy old hens in the marketplace. He watched a young nurse fresh off the night shift stand in front of a shop window, unsatisfied with the way her hair parted and trying hard to fix the problem with her fingers. He walked up to her and brought out a bag of candies that he always carried with him in case there was a young girl to strike up a conversation with. “Your hair looks great,” he said. “Do you want a treat?”

The young woman studied Bashi with a cold look. “Go home and look at yourself in the mirror,” she said.

“Why? I don't need a mirror to know what I look like,” said Bashi. “It's you who are pruning your feathers in the street.”

“What rotten fortune to meet a toad in the morning,” the woman said to a cat strolling by, and she hurried away, her hand still combing her hair.

Who does she think she is, a swan in disguise? Bashi looked at his reflection in the shop window, a presentable lad in a new jacket. Three teenage boys, heads shaved bald and all sporting sunglasses, stopped next to him. “Hey, Bashi, what do you need a jacket like that for?”

Bashi looked for their eyes but only saw six figures of himself in the dark lenses. He did not know the boys, and from a few unfortunate encounters with the newly sprouted gangs of Muddy River, he had learned not to attract their attention. “Nice sunglasses,” he said, patting his pocket and finding the package of cigarettes he kept for these moments. The boys caught the cigarettes Bashi threw to them. “Can we borrow your jacket for a day?” the youngest one said with a grin.

“Yes,” said Bashi. “There's nothing that I don't share with my brothers.” He took off the jacket and shivered in the morning breeze. The boys nodded and walked on, the youngest trying on the jacket for the older brothers to assess.

What a dangerous bunch this city is breeding, thought Bashi. He patted a wad of cash in a pocket of his pants—he was wise not to have left any money in the jacket. He went into a nearby store and asked for a small bag of sunflower seeds, and when he came out, he put a few of the seeds in his mouth and chewed them into an inedible mess, imagining all of them to be unfriendly people crushed between his teeth. Only with Nini did he have the respect he deserved. But what did he give Nini, except for a few basketfuls of coal and vegetables? She was right that he needed to prove himself. “Name the people who make you unhappy,” he imagined himself saying to Nini first thing the next morning. “Name them all and they are Lu Bashi's enemies too. I won't let them live happily.” He would start with that mother of the executed woman, who hated Nini.

At the entrance to an alley, Bashi saw the dog Ear. “Hello, my friend,” Bashi said, putting a hand into his pocket. Ear wagged his tail. “Come on,” Bashi said sweetly. “How are you? Are you looking for me? I was just thinking about you.”

The dog came closer and rubbed his neck on Bashi's leg. What a stupid dog, Bashi thought; he withdrew his hand from his pocket and clapped. “Sorry, I haven't got meat for you today. You see, I'm running some other errands.”

The dog circled him for a minute and ran away. Bashi felt satisfied. The new friendship with Ear was a by-product of his plan for Kwen's dog—it had not taken a long time or much ham to win Ear's heart, and what dog could refuse a piece of meat? Dogs were dogs, after all, unable to compete with man's intellect.

Bashi entered a store with a black wooden plaque bearing the golden characters Long Life. An old woman stood by the counter, laying out many wrinkled bills for the shop owner. “Granny, what are you buying?” Bashi asked.

Hadn't he heard about the medicine woman from Eastern Village who had discovered new ways to communicate with the dead? asked the old woman. She had just paid a visit to the medicine woman, who had given her the message that her husband did not have enough money for liquor in the next world.

“Ha, you believed him?” Bashi said. He looked at the money on the counter; the husband certainly would not get drunk from that poor amount. “Maybe he uses your money to buy a woman out there?”

The old woman mumbled and said her husband had never been into women; it was drinking that he had lived for and then died from. Bashi thought of this fool dying before knowing the real joy of life and shook his head in disbelief. “What a pity,” he said. “What's so good about drinking?”

“You say that because you don't know the real taste,” said the shop owner, a middle-aged woman with a new perm. “People always put liquor and a woman's beauty together, you understand why, little brother? Drinking and women are the two best things for men.”

Bashi snorted. What did a shop owner know about men? He picked up stacks of paper money, a miniature mansion, carriages pulled by four horses, a chest, and some other knickknacks, all made of white rice paper and ready to be burned into ashes to accompany his grandmother to the otherworld. He asked for some rat poison too, and the shop owner was taken aback. “My store serves those who have stepped into the immortal garden,” she said. Like all people in Muddy River, the woman resorted to any euphemism possible to avoid mentioning death, and Bashi smiled. He paid for the paper products and said he had asked for the poison because he did not want any rats to bother his grandmother's body. Frightened, the paled woman bowed to a Buddha that sat in a corner of the store with burning incense in front of him. Please forgive the boy's ignorance, the woman said, and Bashi laughed and decided not to bring any more nightmares to the merchant. A few doors down the street, he bought a packet of rat poison in a drugstore.

When he arrived home, Bashi left the paper offerings next to his grandmother's casket. “Nana, tomorrow Old Hua and his wife are sending you off to my grandpa and my baba,” he said, talking to the old woman as he worked; he had developed a habit of talking to her when he was alone. He hacked off a thick slab of ham, punched a few holes in it, and soaked it in liquor. “When you get there, say a few words for me to my grandpa and my baba. Tell them I am doing well and won't bring disgrace to their name. See, I can't go with you tomorrow, because I have something more important to take care of.” He unpacked the rat poison and poured some pellets into the mortar his grandmother had used to grind dried chili peppers. The pellets were a nasty, dark grayish brown color. What rat would ever want to touch such a disgusting thing, Bashi wondered aloud as he ground the pellets into powder. He did not know how strong the poison was but the layer of powder seemed unconvincing, so he added a handful more of the pellets to the mortar. “I tell you, Nana, not many people use their brains nowadays. It's hard to find someone as smart as my baba now, no?” Bashi said, thinking that ghosts, like the living, must readily devour compliments. Old women were easily pleased if you praised their sons and their grandsons; perhaps his grandma would forgive him for not going with her to the burial tomorrow. He talked on and praised his father more. When he finished grinding, he brought the mortar close and sniffed—apart from a stale, pasty smell, he did not sense anything dangerous. He took out the ham and dredged it in the powder until it was covered on both sides; with a tiny spoon he tried to insert more powder into the holes. “You must be wondering about this,” he said. “But you watch out for me and pray for this to work, and after I finish this big deed, I'll come and burn a lot of paper money for all of you.”

The last time his grandmother had taken him to visit his grandfather's and his father's graves, Bashi was twelve. The next time, he thought, he would bring Nini so they would know that they didn't have to worry about their descendants. He looked at the ham for a moment, and carefully brushed some honey onto both sides, making sure none of the poisonous powder escaped. “There,” he said. “Beautiful, isn't it?”

Bashi walked across half the city before he found Ear. With a smaller piece of meat he was able to entice the dog to follow him. They walked over the Cross-river Bridge and climbed up South Mountain. It was a beautiful day, the sun warm on his face, the buzz of spring unmistakable in the air. Bashi stopped by a bush of early-blooming wild plums. “I have something really good for you,” Bashi said, and laid the ham next to the bush.

Ear sniffed the ham with great curiosity but showed no immediate interest in taking it. Bashi urged the dog on, but it only pawed the ham and sniffed. Bashi became impatient. He grabbed the ham from the dog and pretended that he himself was going to eat it. This seemed to work; when Bashi threw the ham back at the dog, it caught the meat in midair and trotted away.

Bashi loitered, thinking he would give the dog a few minutes before locating it and observing the effect of the poison. If the rat poison did not work on this small dog, it would certainly not work on Kwen's black dog. Bashi wondered if he would need to go back to the drugstore and make a fuss. He would demand something stronger, saying that the rats in his house were as strong as hogs. His thoughts wandered until he heard the dog's painful yelping. “There,” he said, and then he heard a long, painful howl.

Bashi found the dog on the ground, panting, its limbs jerking helplessly. A small ax stuck in its skull, between the eyes, and sticky red blood oozed out. It was obvious that the dog was dying fast. Next to the dog stood a teenage boy in a gray cotton coat as worn-out as a heap of rags; his left hand was bleeding with a dog bite, and his right hand tightly gripped the slab of ham. Bashi looked from the dog to the boy and then to the dog. “Did you kill the dog for that?”

The boy looked at the young man in front of him. He thought of explaining that he had not meant to kill the dog, but who would believe him, when the dog's blood had already stained his ax. The boy, a small teenager who looked not much older than ten, had come to town to sell nothing but his poor, underdeveloped muscles. Sometimes a housewife hired him to chop firewood, kill a live chicken, or unload coal, small chores that she could just as well finish by herself or ask her sons or husband to do, but by hiring the boy, she would feel good about her own heart. Women were all alike, the boy had concluded after a few weeks of working; they talked about their hearts but also watched their wallets carefully. They paid him with food but not money, and the boy, half beggar and half sop for the women's consciences, knew enough not to ask for more than he was allowed.

“Did you kill the dog?” Bashi asked again.

The boy stepped back and said, “He bit me first.”

“Of course he did. You stole his meat. I would bite you too.” Bashi grabbed the boy's sleeve and dragged him to the dog, whose breathing was shallow and fast and whose paws were trying to dig into the newly thawed ground. “Look what you did. What kind of a man are you to fight with a small dog for food?”

The boy assessed the situation. If he ran, the man could easily catch him. He could fight, but there was not much good in that for him either. He might as well brace himself for a good beating, but besides a beating, there was nothing else the man could do to him. The boy relaxed.

“Look at your eyes,” said Bashi. “What trick are you thinking of playing on me?”

The boy knelt down and started to cry. “Uncle,” he said. “Uncle, it's all my fault. I thought it was a waste for a small dog to eat that much meat. I thought I could get the meat for my mother. My mother and my sister haven't had a taste of meat for three months.”

“So you have a sister?” Bashi said. “How old is she?”

“Nine,” the boy said. “My father died six years ago, and my mother is ill.” To prove his story, the boy untied a small cloth bag and showed the man its contents—a few buns and half buns he had got, already hard as rocks. His sister had invented a way of re-cooking the leftover buns into a paste, he explained.

Bashi nodded. The boy must have told the story a thousand times to earn the sympathy of those old hens in town. He brought out a few bills. “You're certainly a boy who knows how to take care of your family. If not for this,” Bashi said, and bared his teeth, “if not for your mother and your sister, I would send for the police. Now take the money and buy some good clothes for your sister.”

The boy looked at the money and swallowed hard. “I killed your dog by accident, Uncle,” he said. “How dare I accept your money?”

Bashi laughed. The boy could certainly tell that Bashi was not much older than he, but he knew how to talk properly, and it pleased Bashi. “It's not my dog,” he said. “If you killed my dog I would wring your skinny neck like this.”

“Are you sure you don't want to send me to the police?”

Bashi knocked on the boy's head with his knuckle. “Don't be silly. The police wouldn't care if you hacked ten dogs to pieces.”

The boy accepted the money and thanked Bashi profusely. Bashi stopped the boy with an upturned hand. They both walked toward the dog; it had stopped panting and moving and now lay on the ground, its paws half-covered with mud. It was hard to imagine that a thin boy could kill a dog with such a precise cut.

The boy knelt down and retrieved the ax and wiped it clean on his coat. Bashi told him to throw away the ham. The boy hesitated and said, “But won't it be a waste?”

“Why do you ask so many silly questions?”

The boy watched Bashi hurl the ham with all his might. It made a beautiful arc in the afternoon sky and fell out of sight. “Now hurry back home before my patience runs out,” Bashi said.

The boy said yes but did not move, eyeing the dead dog. When Bashi urged him again, he said, “Uncle, what do you think will happen to the dog here?”

“How do I know?” Bashi said. “I told you it's not my dog.”

“Do you want a dog-skin hat or mufflers?” the boy asked.

Bashi smiled. “Ha, you cunning little thing. If I need anything I have money to buy it. Take the dog and make something for your sister, if that's what you're thinking.”

The boy smiled too. “Uncle, if not for our shabby place, I would treat you to a good meal with dog-meat soup for the holiday.”

“Don't sweet-talk me,” Bashi said. “Now I need to run on to my own business. Send my greeting to your sister.”

The boy watched Bashi disappear before he sat down to work. He dumped the old buns by the roadside and tore the cloth bag into strips. He took off his coat and wrapped it around the dog, and then strapped the body on his back. It was heavier than he'd thought, warm still, which reminded him of the day his sister rode piggyback on him as they followed their father's coffin to the cemetery. His father had held the boy's hands the moment before his death, and told him that he would have to be the man of the house and take care of his mother and sister.

The boy thought about his father's grave, untended in the past six years. He looked up at the sky, still brightly blue; if he hurried up, he would be able to get home before dark and clean up the grave for Ching Ming. His mother, bedridden for five years now, would not be able to make the trip, but he would take his sister there. He was now a man, responsible for the living as well as the dead. The boy walked fast; then after a moment, he turned back. It took him some thrashing around to locate the meat, which was a little dirty with sand, but with a good scrubbing it would make a fine holiday meal.

KAI TOLD HER COLLEAGUES in the propaganda department that she was going to give her studio a spring-cleaning. An editor raised his eyebrows but said nothing, and Kai realized that cleaning on the day before Ching Ming might be interpreted as a way to celebrate the superstitious holiday, but she decided not to dwell on the matter. Ever since the appearance of the leaflets, her colleagues in the propaganda department had been courteous to one another, yet no one dared mention anything about the situation; they were all seasoned barometers, fine-tuned to detect any minute change in the political atmosphere.

A secretary offered to help, and Kai politely refused, saying that the studio was too small for two people to move around in. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, the slowest time of the day, and when Kai left the office for the studio, she saw that many offices in the administration building were closed. People had started to take the afternoon off for the holiday the next day, even though as government employees, they were not allowed to celebrate Ching Ming publicly. Earlier that morning, when Kai had stopped by her mother's flat, her mother had told her that she had hired a trustworthy helper to send paper money and other offerings to Kai's father; Kai did not know if her in-laws had similar plans, as Han was not back yet from the provincial capital. It was about two weeks since he had left, and apart from a few phone calls he had made to her office—despite their status, they did not have a telephone in their flat, though Han had promised that would change very soon—they had not talked much. The office was not a good place for any exchange of information, nor, she imagined, did the provincial capital allow Han much freedom . All they talked about was Ming-Ming, who had missed Han for the first two days and then settled down as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Kai locked herself in the studio. She had expected some hostility from Teacher Gu, as she had also encountered resistance when she had first met Mrs. Gu—distrust of a stranger, more so in her case, as her voice represented the government. It had taken Kai a few visits for Mrs. Gu not to turn down the fruit and dried milk Kai brought for Teacher Gu, and after a while they had begun to talk, neither about Gu Shan nor about the protest, but, in the most harmless way, about the changing of the seasons. Slowly Mrs. Gu warmed up. One day she asked Kai about her parents, and Kai replied that her father had passed away several years ago. Mrs. Gu pondered this for a moment and said that it was a daughter's good fortune to see off her parents. Mrs. Gu quoted an old saying about the three utmost misfortunes in life—losing parents in childhood, losing a spouse in midlife, and losing a child in old age. Of the three misfortunes she had already experienced two, said Mrs. Gu, and Kai had to avert her eyes, as she could not find words of comfort. It was time for an old woman like her to make herself useful in some way, Mrs. Gu said, looking into Kai's eyes with neither self-pity nor sadness.

Kai had never expected Teacher Gu to recognize her as a former student. His hostility reminded her how she was bound, against her wishes, to her past, her family, and her status. She could, if she wanted to, go back to her old life; apart from introducing Mrs. Gu to Jialin, she did not have much involvement in the upcoming protest, nor did she have much contact with Jialin's friends, who, along with Jialin, had put out the leaflets and planned the event for Ching Ming. The fact that everything could be reversed was disconcerting. She did not need another option, and she wanted Teacher Gu, of all people, to understand and acknowledge her.

Someone banged on the door. Kai's heart pounded. When she opened the door Han squeezed in and locked it behind him.

“You frightened me,” Kai said. Her cheeks felt warm, caught, as she was, in a secretive moment, but Han seemed not to notice her unease. He looked equally flustered. “What's wrong?” Kai asked. “Is Ming-Ming all right?”

“I haven't been back home,” Han said. “I need to leave in ten minutes.”

“Why?”

Han gazed at Kai and did not reply. Could it be possible that he had heard about the protest planned for tomorrow? She wondered who could have leaked the information, but she did not know Jialin's friends. Things were under control, in trustworthy hands, Jialin had informed Kai, the stage set for Kai and Mrs. Gu on the day of Ching Ming. But perhaps his trust was misplaced. She wished she had met his friends.

“If I ever became a nobody,” Han said, and sat down on the only chair in the studio, “or worse than a nobody—if I became a criminal and was never able to give you anything again, would you still love me?”

Kai looked at Han, his eyes filled with an agony that she wished she could share. The heroines she had performed onstage never faced a husband proclaiming his love: They were maidens giving up their lives for a higher calling, mothers leaving embroidered kerchiefs in the swaddling clothes of their babies before taking the journeys that would not return them to their children, and wives of fellow revolutionaries; in the case of Autumn Jade, her husband was the villain, who had not loved Autumn Jade or had the right to love anyone.

Han walked toward Kai and embraced her. She made herself remain still; after a moment, when he broke down weeping into her hair, she touched the top of his head. He had heard speculation in the provincial capital that the faction standing behind the democratic wall would win in Beijing, Han said, after he had calmed down; the man they had supported with the kidneys would lose the power struggle, if the rumor was true.

“Do your parents know?”

“I came to meet them and the mayor an hour ago,” Han said. “My parents are worried that the mayor might give me up to protect himself.”

Kai looked at Han; his smooth, almost babylike face had a day-old stubble now, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot. “How could you be made responsible?” she said.

“The kidneys,” Han said, and explained that their enemy in the provincial capital, who seemed to be winning so far, was now investigating the transplant and Gu Shan's execution, which he claimed had violated legal procedures.

“Is that true?”

“If not for this, he'd find another excuse to attack us,” Han said. “It's the same old truth—the one who robs and succeeds will become the king, and the one who tries to rob and fails will be called a criminal.“

Kai grabbed the edge of the table where she was leaning, and tried to steady herself. When Han finally looked up, the tears in his eyes had been replaced by a rare look of resolution. “Can you promise me one thing?” Han said. “Can you write up a divorce application and sign it, with today's date, just in case? I don't want anything horrible to happen to you.”

She was not the type to abandon a family because of some rumors, Kai said weakly.

“This is no time for emotion,” said Han. “I know you love me, but I can't destroy your future. Write an application. Say you no longer love me and you want to raise our child by yourself. Pretend you know nothing and let's hope they won't demote you. Draw the line now, and don't let me ruin your future and Ming-Ming's.”

Kai shook her head slowly.

“Do you want me to write a draft for you? You need only to sign.”

Kai had long ago stopped loving the man in front of her; perhaps she had never loved him. But she felt an urge to hug him as a mother would, to comfort a child who had tried hard to act like a brave man. Han broke down again in her arms, and she let him bury his face in her hair, feeling the dampness on her collar. Nobody would love her as much as he did, she remembered his saying on their wedding night; she had looked up at a poster of Chairman Mao on the wall of the hotel room when he whispered the secret into her dark hair, uncut and long as a maiden's.

APRIL 4, 1979, Tong wrote in his nature journal, and then read the weather forecast on the right-hand corner of Muddy River Daily. Sunny. Light wind. High 12° C, low −1° C. He recorded the numbers and then went out to look for Ear. Saturday was a half day at school, and he was surprised that Ear had forgotten; he had told Ear that morning to come home around midday, and Ear had never failed to do so on Saturdays. Tong wondered what the dog was up to. He was no longer a puppy and had secrets of his own. Some evenings Ear looked indifferently at the food Tong brought out to the cardboard box. Tong wondered if Ear had been up to something naughty, stealing food from other dogs or from the marketplace.

He called Ear's name as he walked from alley to alley. He spotted several dogs, but they turned out not to be Ear, all busy with their own lives on this spring afternoon. Perhaps he shouldn't blame Ear, Tong thought; after the long winter, who wouldn't want to run wild a little? He circled the town and then walked up to the river.

The ice drifts, which not long ago were entertaining teenagers, had melted, while the boys had taken up a new, more exciting game in the alleys, where they formed gangs that bore the names of wild beasts and fought to make their groups’ names endure. The fights started harmlessly, with fists and kicks, but soon smaller groups merged into bigger ones, and weapons of all sorts were created by stealing, whetting, grinding, and imagining. The authorities, however, ignored the gangs—parents and teachers and city officials were busy worrying about feeding their families and securing promotions, but this spring they were also preoccupied with the trouble that had intruded on their lives in the form of uninvited, mimeographed leaflets. A line had been crossed. Which side would they choose? they wondered secretly at work, and asked their spouses at home.

The troubles and indecisions of the grown-up world did not trespass on the many worlds occupied by other, less anxious lives. As they did every year, children in elementary school found a new craze. This spring, for the girls, collecting cellophane candy wrappers replaced the plastic beads of last year, and for the boys, gambling with serialized martial arts heroes replaced a similar game with folded paper triangles. Girls in middle school remained aloof to the street fighting, even though some of the rumbles were for their attention. Unaware of the boys’ youthful ambition, the girls lavished their passions on their most intimate girlfriends. They sat on the riverbank or in their own yards, their hands locked and their fingers interwoven; they murmured about the future, their voices no more than whispers, for fear they would startle themselves from the dream about a world that would soon open like a mysterious flower.

Tong walked past a pair of girls sitting by the river singing a love song, neither of them noticing his distress. Soon he reached the birch woods, and a young man crouching in front of a shallow cave stood up at his approaching steps. Tong walked closer and saw a gray ball with arrows embedded in it on the ground. “What is it?” he asked.

The man turned to Tong and hissed. “Don't wake up my hedgehog.”

Tong recognized the young man, though he did not know his name. “Don't worry,” Tong said. “He's hibernating so you won't wake him up by speaking.”

“Spring's already here,” the man said.

“But it's not warm enough for the hedgehog yet,” Tong said. He had read in a children's almanac, retrieved by Old Hua from a garbage can, that hedgehogs would not wake up from hibernation until the daytime temperature rose to 15 ° C. He told this to the young man and showed him the recordings in his nature journal. Snakes too would wake up around the same time, Tong said, though turtles would wait longer because it took longer for the river to warm up. The man shrugged and said he had no use for the information. “My home is definitely warmer,” he said. He put on his gloves and scooped up the arrowed ball.

“Why do you want to take him home?” The hedgehog looked dead in the young man's arms, though Tong knew better than to worry.

“Because I need a pet. You have a dog named Ear, don't you?”

“Have you seen him today? I'm looking for him,” Tong said.

Bashi looked at Tong with a strange smile. He wondered how fast the boy who had killed Ear walked. By now he must be past the city boundary. “He may be running somewhere with his girlfriend now,” said Bashi.

“He doesn't have a girlfriend,” Tong said.

“How do you know?” Bashi said with a grin that made Tong uneasy. Tong decided not to talk to the man. He turned to walk away but Bashi caught up with him, holding the hedgehog in the cup of his two hands. “I'm teaching you a lesson. Sometimes you think your dog is your best friend but you may be wrong. For instance, all of a sudden he may decide to go home with someone else.”

“He won't,” Tong said, a little angry.

“How do you know?”

“Of course I know. He's my dog.”

Bashi said nothing and whistled. After a while, Tong said, “Why are you following me?”

“You're going back to town, and I am too. So how come it is not you who's following me?”

Tong stopped, and the man did too. Tong turned and walked back toward the river and Bashi turned, walking side by side with the boy.

“Now you're following me,” Tong said.

“It just so happened that I changed my mind and decided to go in that direction too,” Bashi said, and winked.

Tong flushed with anger. What a shameless grown-up; even a five-year-old would know more of the rules of the world. “I don't want to walk with you,” Tong said. “Stop following me.”

“I want to walk with you,” said Bashi, affecting a child's voice. “There's no law that says I can't walk with you.”

“But you don't follow people if they tell you they don't want to play with you,” Tong said with exasperation.

“Whose rule is that? You don't own this road, do you? So I can put my feet wherever I want on this road, no? If I like, I can follow you anywhere, as long as I don't go into your house.”

Tong was in tears, speechless. He had never met a person like the man in front of him, and he didn't know how to reason with him. Bashi looked at Tong's tears with great interest and then smiled. “Okay, now I don't want to play with you anymore,” he said, still in a little boy's voice. He walked away, throwing the hedgehog up like a ball and catching it with gloved hands. A few times he missed and the hedgehog rolled onto the road, which made him laugh.

Ear didn't return by dinnertime. When Tong mentioned this absence to his parents, his father, who slumped in the only armchair and looked at the wall, where there was nothing to see, said dully, “He'll come home when he will.”

It was useless to talk with his father about anything before dinner—for him, it was the most important meal and nothing, not even a falling sky, could disturb him while he waited for it. Tong's mother glanced at him with sympathy but said nothing. She put dinner on the table and brought out a bottle of rice liquor. Tong took the bottle from her and poured some of the liquor into a porcelain cup. When his father was drunk and asleep, he would beg his mother for help.

Tong carried the cup with both hands to his father. “Dinner is ready, Baba.”

Tong's father accepted the cup and tapped on Tong's head with his knuckles. It hurt but Tong tried not to let it show. “It's better raising a boy than a dog,” his father said, his way of showing his approval of Tong. He moved to the table and downed the cup. “Now pour me another one, Son.”

Tong did and his father asked him if he wanted to try some. His mother intervened halfheartedly, but his father wouldn't listen. “Try once,” he urged Tong. “You're old enough. When I was your age, I smoked and drank with my father every night,” he said, and he struck the table with his fist. “My father—your grandfather—wasn't he a real man? I tell you, Son, don't ever do anything less than he did.”

Tong's paternal grandfather was, according to his father's drunken tales, a local legend, with a firecracker temper, ready to fight anyone over the slightest injustice. He had died in 1951, in his late forties. The story was that he had had a big fight defending his fellow villagers against a party official, sent down to supervise the process of turning private land into a collective commune. He had beaten the official half to death; the next day he had been arrested and executed on the spot as an enemy of the new Communist nation.

Tong's mother scooped some fried peanuts onto his father's plate. “Don't drink on an empty stomach,” she said.

Tong's father ignored her. He poured himself another cup and pointed his chopsticks at Tong. “Listen, your grandfather was a real man. Your father is nothing less. You'd better not disappoint us. Now move here next to me.”

Tong hesitated. He did not like his father's breath and his intimate gestures when he was drunk, but his mother moved his chair, with him in it, before he could protest. His father put a hand on Tong's shoulder and said, “Let me tell you this story, and you'll know how a man was made. Have you heard of Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han dynasty? Before he became an emperor, he had to fight many years with Xiang Yu, his toughest enemy. Once, Xiang Yu caught Liu Bang's grandparents, his mother, and his wife. He brought them to the battlefield and sent a messenger to Liu Bang. If you don't surrender this very moment, I'll cook them into meat paste and my soldiers will have a feast tonight. Guess what Liu Bang said? Ah, wasn't he the hero of all heroes! He wrote back to Xiang Yu, Thank you for letting me know about the banquet. Would you be a good and generous person and send me, your hungry enemy, a bowl of the meat paste? Think about that, Son. If your heart is hard enough to eat your mother and your wife, nothing can beat you in life.”

Tong looked at his mother, on the other side of the table. She gave him a smile, and he tried to smile back. They were on their way, it seemed, to another night during which he and his mother would have to sit and listen to his father tell the same old stories; the dishes and the rice would be reheated a few times, until his father was finally too drunk to carry on with his tales, and eventually Tong and his mother would be permitted to eat.

Tong thought about Ear; his father said that love for a dog was a lowly thing to feel, and his only concern, when it came to Tong, seemed to be to make him into a manly man. Tong wondered if he would disappoint his father. If an enemy were to threaten him with his grandparents’ and his mother's lives, he would cry and beg, promising anything in exchange for their lives.

After several more rounds of drinking, Tong's father pushed his chair back and told his mother to get a brick—she kept a pile of bricks in the kitchen for him to demonstrate his kung-fu skills with, and she replenished the stock dutifully when it was running low. When she came back with a red brick, he shook his head and said it would be too easy; he needed a bigger, harder brick tonight. Hear that? he said, stretching his fingers and making cracking sounds with his knuckles. She replied that the red bricks were all they had, and wouldn't it work for him if she stacked two bricks. Tong's father lost his temper, calling her a brainless woman and ordering her to go out and borrow one from their neighbors, who were building an extra shack in their yard for a granduncle who had come to visit and decided not to leave.

When she returned with a heavy construction brick, six times as big as the red brick, Tong's father took it over and put another hand on her neck. “I could wring your neck with two fingers. Do you believe me?” he asked. She giggled and said of course, she had no doubt about it. He snorted with satisfaction and set down the brick in the middle of the yard.

Tong watched his father chanting and dancing a little before he crouched down and, with a bellow, hit the brick with the heel of his hand. Ear would have enjoyed the evening if only he had been home in time—he was always the most excited member of the family when Tong's father put on a drunken show. The brick remained intact, but his father's hand looked red and swollen. Tong hid both hands in his pockets. Only once in a while could Tong's father break a brick in half, by sheer luck perhaps, but he never tired of his brick-hacking trick.

He tried another time with both hands but the brick did not yield to the strike. When he examined his hands, the sides of both of them were bleeding. Unfazed, he told Tong's mother to stop fussing, when she brought a clean, soft rag for him. He tried two more times, and when the brick refused to surrender, he kicked it, which seemed to hurt his toe more than it had his hands. He cursed and hopped on his good foot to the storage cabin, and before Tong's mother could protest, his father hit the brick hard with a hammer. The brick broke but not into two halves; he squatted down to study it and roared with laughter. Tong moved closer with his mother, and they saw three rusty iron rods in the middle of the brick, holding it together. “Where did they steal the construction blocks for their shack?” Tong's father said. He wiped his bleeding hands carelessly on his pants and drank more liquor, content with the fact that he had not lost face. When he was urged once again by Tong's mother to go to bed, he retreated into the bedroom with a last cup, and soon his snores thundered through the closed door.

Tong and his mother sat by the table and she smiled at him. “What a funny man he is,” she said quietly, and shook her head with admiration. The dinner was cold now and she stoked the fire to heat it up for Tong, but he was not in the mood for eating. “Mama, do you think something has happened to Ear?” he asked.

He shouldn't worry, Tong's mother said. Before he could reply, he heard a noise. He rushed to the yard and was disappointed to find that it was not Ear scratching on the gate but someone knocking. He opened the gate. In the yellow streetlight Tong saw the unfamiliar face of a middle-aged woman, her head wrapped in a shawl. She asked for his parents in a low voice. Next to her on the ground was a big nylon bag.

“Are you coming because of my dog? Did something happen to Ear?” Tong asked.

“Why, is your dog missing?”

“He's never been out so late,” he said.

“I'm sorry to hear that. But don't worry,” the woman said.

The grown-ups all said the same thing, without any offer to help. Tong stood aside but before he could invite the woman into the yard, his mother came to the gate and asked the woman what had brought her.

“Comrade, you must have heard of Gu Shan's case by now,” said the woman. “I'm here to talk to you about a rally on Gu Shan's behalf.”

Tong's mother looked around before apologizing in a low voice that she and her husband were not the type of people who cared for this information.

“Think about the horrible things that happened to a child of another mother,” the woman said. “I'm a mother of three. And you're a mother too. How many siblings do you have, boy?”

“Three,” Tong said.

His mother pulled him closer to her. “I'm sorry. This household is not interested in politics.”

“We can't run away from politics. It'll catch up with us.”

“It's not that I'm not sympathetic,” Tong's mother said. “But what difference would we make? The dead are dead.”

“But if we don't speak up now, there will be a next time, another child maybe. A thousand grains of sand can make a tower. We each have to do what we can, don't we?”

Tong watched his mother, who looked away from the woman and apologized again. Once in a while, beggars from out of town would stop in their alley, asking for money and food. Tong's father never allowed these people near their yard, but his mother always looked embarrassed when he shouted at the poor and hungry strangers that he was an honest worker and had no obligation to share his blood-and-sweat money. Sometimes when Tong's father fell into a drunken slumber, his mother would wrap up a few leftover buns and leave them outside the gate. When Tong got up early the next morning, the buns would always be gone. Did the beggars come back to get the buns? he asked his mother when his father was not around, but she only shook her head and smiled, as if she did not understand the question.

“Comrade, please listen to me just for this one time,” the woman said. “We're having a memorial service for Gu Shan tomorrow at the city square. Come and meet her mother. Perhaps you'll change your mind then and sign the petition to support the rally.”

Tong's mother looked flustered. “I can't go—I—my husband won't be happy with it.” She looked around as though to check if he was coming.

“I'm asking for your own heart and conscience,” the woman said. “You can't let your husband make every decision for you.”

Tong's mother shook her head slowly, as if disappointed at the accusation. The woman unzipped the nylon sack and brought out a white flower. “Even if you don't want to sign the petition, come with this white flower and pay respect to the heroic woman and her mother,” she said.

Tong looked at the flower, made of white tissue paper and attached to a long stem, also made of white paper. His mother sighed and did not move. Tong accepted the flower and the woman smiled. “You're a good helper for your mama,” the woman said to Tong, and then turned to his mother. “Every family will receive a white flower tonight. It won't pose any danger if you just leave the flower in the basket for us tomorrow. We'll be there before sunrise.”

Tong's mother closed the gate quietly behind the woman. She and Tong stood in the darkness and listened to the woman knock on their neighbor's gate. After a moment, Tong nudged his mother and handed her the paper flower. She took it, and then tore the flower off the paper stem and squeezed both together into a small ball. When Tong raised his voice and asked her why, she put a warm, soft palm over his lips. “We can't keep the flower. Baba will find out and he won't be happy.”

Tong was about to protest, but she shushed him and said the matter was better left where it was. She led him gently by the arm and he followed her into the front room of the house. His father was still snoring in the bedroom. The dishes that his mother had reheated had grown cold again, but she seemed too tired to care now. She sat him down at the table and took the seat on the other side. “You must be starving now,” she said.

“No.”

“Don't you want to eat something? There's your favorite potato stew.”

“No.”

“Don't be angry at me,” she said. “You'll understand when you're older.”

“Why don't you want to take the flower back tomorrow? The auntie said it wouldn't bring any trouble.”

“We can't trust her.”

“But why?” Tong asked.

“We don't want to have anything to do with these people,” his mother said. “Baba says they're crazy.”

“But Baba is wrong and they aren't crazy,” Tong said.

Tong's mother looked at him sharply. “What do you know to say so?” she said.

Tong did not speak. He thought about the leaflets he had kept and made into an exercise book. He had read the words on the leaflets; the part that he could grasp sounded reasonable to him— they said that people should have the right to say what they thought; they talked about respecting everyone's rights, however lowly people were in their social positions. Tong himself understood how it felt to be looked down upon all the time as a village boy.

“Don't question your parents,” Tong's mother said. “We make decisions that are in our own best interests.”

“Mama, is the auntie a bad person?” Tong asked.

“Who? The one with the flowers? I don't know. She may not be a bad person, but she is doing the wrong thing.”

“Why?”

“The government wouldn't have killed the wrong person in the first place.”

“Was my grandfather a bad person?”

Tong's mother was quiet for a long time and then got up to close the bedroom door. “Maybe I shouldn't tell you this,” she said. “But you have to know that the story Baba told was not all true. Your grandpa did beat an official but it was over a widow he wanted to marry after your grandma died. The official also wanted to marry the woman, so they had a fight after an argument in a diner. When the official was beaten, he announced that your grandpa was a counterrevolutionary and executed him. There was nothing grand in the story, and Baba knows it too.”

“So was my grandpa wronged?”

Tong's mother shook her head. “The lesson for you is: Never act against government officials. Don't think Baba is only a drunkard. He knows every rule by heart and he doesn't make mistakes. Otherwise, he would not have lived till now, with a counterrevolutionary father.”

“But what if the government made a mistake? Our teacher says nobody is always right.”

“Let other people be wronged—it has nothing to do with us. Remember Baba's story of the emperor? You have to harden your heart to grow up into a man, do you understand?”

Tong nodded, though he didn't know what to think of her words. She had never talked to him about such things, and she looked unfamiliar , almost intimidating. She watched him a moment longer and then smiled. “Look how serious you are,” she said. “You're a little boy and you shouldn't worry yourself with grown-ups’ business.”

Tong did not reply. His mother urged him to eat again. He shoveled the food into his mouth without tasting it. Then he heard a noise and ran to the gate, but it was only wind passing through the alley. He came back and asked his mother if they should go out and look for Ear.

She sighed and put on her coat. “Another boy that constantly asks for attention,” she said tiredly. “Why don't you wash and go to bed now? I'll go out and look for him.”

“Can I come with you?” Tong asked.

“No,” she said, and her voice, harsher than usual, stopped him from begging again.

Tong's mother walked to a friend's house two blocks away and knocked on the door. She was coming for a chat, she said, not wanting to stay cold in the windy night looking in vain for a missing dog. The friend—a fellow worker—invited her in and they talked over cups of hot tea about the plan for the next day: The friend's family would be having a picnic, it being their ritual to go to the mountain on the day of Ching Ming; Tong's mother said they had no plans, though watching the friend's children pack the food containers with excitement, she wished for Tong's sake that they did.

Elsewhere in the city, white flowers in nylon bags were carried from house to house. People opened their gates, finding themselves facing a doctor from a workers’ clinic, a clerk in the optical factory, a retired middle school teacher, a department store accountant, a pharmacist, and a few educated youths who had recently returned from the countryside. Some of the white flowers found their way into trash cans, toy boxes, and other corners where they soon would be forgotten; others, placed more carefully, sat in vigil and waited for the day to break.

That night Tong did not sleep well. He woke up several times and went out into the yard to check Ear's cardboard house, even though he knew Ear couldn't get through the locked gate. Ear must have got himself into some big trouble. Tong cried quietly to himself, and his mother woke up once and told him in a hushed voice that maybe Ear would be back in the morning. Tong sniffled; he knew she did not believe what she was saying. After a while, when he still could not stop crying, she held him close and rocked him before telling him that perhaps Ear would never come home again. Had something happened to him? Tong asked. She did not know, his mother replied, but it did not hurt to prepare for the worst.

THEY HAD NAMED HER PEONY after the kerchief that had come with the bundle, a silk square with a single embroidered peony. The pink of the blossom and the green of the leaves had both faded, the white fabric taking on a yellow hue, and Mrs. Hua, her arms curled around the newborn, had wondered if the baby had come from an old family with status. All the same, a princess's body trapped in the fate of a handmaiden, Old Hua replied, bending down and telling Morning Glory, three and a half then, that heaven had answered her request and sent her a little sister.

The kerchief, Mrs. Hua said to Old Hua now, had they left it with Peony?

They must have, Old Hua replied; there was no reason they would not have. Peony had always known it to be special to her.

Mrs. Hua watched Old Hua work on the pickax, which had a loose head; Bashi had offered to buy them new tools, but Mrs. Hua, worrying that the boy would squander his savings before he knew it, had told him that they would rather use their own pickaxes and shovels, which their old hands had grown used to.

She wondered if Peony's mother had ever found her, Mrs. Hua said, a question she asked often of herself. Old Hua hammered on the pickax and replied that they did not even know if the mother was alive, or whether she ever meant to find Peony. It would be a pity if they had not found each other, Mrs. Hua said, and Old Hua hammered without saying anything.

The girl had taken to dreaming more than her adopted parents and elder sister, more than the younger girls who were added to the family one by one. She was the slowest to sort the rubbish but the first to suggest that a thrown-away wallet, once found in a garbage can, might contain enough money for the family to live happily and comfortably for the rest of their lives, and she was disappointed by the photographs in the wallet, cut so methodically that the fragments were beyond recognition. She wept after each baby found at the roadside, and she made a point to remember the names of the towns where her younger sisters were picked up, not concealing her hope of finding the birth parents, hers and Morning Glory's included.

That had not surprised Mrs. Hua and her husband, as they too had had dreams about Peony's return to her birth parents. The kerchief, an intentional loose end left by a mother in a helpless situation, would perhaps one day be sought out. What was the woman's story? Mrs. Hua wondered, more often than she thought about the mothers of the other girls. Heaven had placed Peony in their care and it would be up to heaven's will to take her back, the Huas believed, but in the end, they had to harden their hearts and let her be taken in, at thirteen and a half, as a child bride for a man ten years her senior. He was an only son, born to parents in their late forties when the hope for a child had almost run out. They would treat Peony as their own daughter, the couple promised, their apparent affection for the girl a relief for the Huas.

Mrs. Hua wondered if Peony's birth mother would have acknowledged and honored the marriage arrangement had she found the girl. Different scenes played out often in her imagination. Sometimes it was the boy and his parents who were greatly dismayed when Peony decided to leave them for a life she had always dreamed of going back to; at other times the mother was hurt when Peony turned her back as a punishment for the abandonment. Mrs. Hua talked about these worries now to her husband, and he stopped his hammering for a beat. Once a mother, always a mother, he said, his voice reproachful, but Mrs. Hua, knowing the same could be said of him as a father, only sighed in agreement. A child losing her parents became an orphan, a woman losing her husband a widow, but there was not a term for the lesser parents that those who had lost their children became. Once parents, they would remain parents for the rest of their lives.

Neither talked for a moment. Old Hua laid the pickax aside and began to work on the dulled edge of a shovel.

When Mrs. Hua broke the silence she said that they should go to the city square the next morning.

Old Hua looked up at her and did not reply.

She felt responsible for Teacher Gu, Mrs. Hua said. It had been on her mind since she had learned of Teacher Gu's illness. They should go there and apologize to Mrs. Gu.

Old Hua said that they were hired for a burial.

They could go early, before they went out to the burial, Mrs. Hua said. Bashi had come earlier in the evening and said that he had a bad cold, and asked the couple to bury his grandmother themselves. Neither Old Hua nor Mrs. Hua had pointed out the lie to the boy's face; he had paid them generously.

Old Hua nodded. So they would go, he said, as she had known that he would.