The Vagrants

NINE

Teacher Gu pretended to be asleep while his wife moved quietly in and out of the bedroom on the morning of Ching Ming. He ignored the small noises and tried to focus his memory on another morning, the distant day of his first honeymoon, when his wife had slipped away from the wedding bed and made tea for him. He had willed himself not to hear the small clicking of teacups and saucers, but when he had opened his eyes with feigned surprise at the tea, she had smiled and scolded him lovingly for his playacting. Didn't he know his quivering eyelashes had betrayed him, she said, and he said that he did not, because he had never had to feign sleep for anyone before.

“I'm going out for a few hours,” Mrs. Gu said to him, by the bedside. “Here's your breakfast, in the thermos. I'll be back soon.”

Teacher Gu did not answer. He willed her to disappear so he could go back to that other morning.

“If you need to use the chamber pot, I've put it here behind the chair.”

Teacher Gu thought about the things that he had not known on that newlywed morning, of the intimacies one would never wish to share with anyone but oneself, the vulnerability one was forced into in old age. He thought about secrets too, of sleeping in the same bed with one woman and dreaming about the other, of his wife hiding a social life from a sick husband half dying in the hospital. Such deceptions must take place under every roof, some more hurtful than others. His first wife must often have thought about other men during their honeymoon, thoughts without romantic desire but nameless strangers occupying her mind nonetheless; she had arranged the honeymoon in that specific sea resort so that, with a husband who served at the National Congress as a cover, she could work as a secret messenger for the underground Communist Party. These stories, hidden from him for the duration of their marriage, had been revealed after they signed their divorce papers. He had not doubted her love then, even after she showed him the divorce application, but now, thirty years and the death of a daughter later, he wondered if he had been too naïve to see the truth. Perhaps his first marriage had been based, from the very beginning, on the merit of his serving the government that she and her comrades were fighting to overthrow. He provided cover for her, and brought home government papers not meant for her to peruse; had she ever considered him an exit plan, in case her side failed to win?

Teacher Gu struggled out of bed. Mrs. Gu entered the bedroom, already dressed up to venture into the early April morning, a black mourning band on her arm. “Do you need something?” she said, coming over and helping him into his shoes. “I didn't hear what you said.”

“I said nothing,” he said. “You were hallucinating.”

“Are you all right? Do you need me to find someone to sit with you while I'm away?”

“What's the good in sitting with a half-dead man?”

“Let's not argue.”

“Listen, woman, I'm not arguing with you, or anyone. You have your business, and I have mine.” He pushed her hand away and limped into the front room. By the door he saw a photo of Shan, enlarged to the size of a poster and framed with black paper and white silk ribbon. “I see your comrades and you are making her into a puppet ,” Teacher Gu said. Before his wife answered, he shuffled to the old desk in the kitchen and sat down. He pushed away two glasses and a plate of leftover food.

“She is a martyr,” Mrs. Gu said.

“A martyr serves a cause as a puppet serves a show. If you look at history, as no one in this country does anymore, a martyr has always served the purpose of deception on a grand scale, be it a religion or an ideology,” Teacher Gu said, surprised by his own eloquent and patient voice. He had been conducting these dialogues in various imagined conversations with his first wife in the past few days. Mrs. Gu said something, but Teacher Gu did not catch her words. Already his mind was floating on to the other woman, who had—or had not, if he still had some remaining luck from a luckless life—intentionally deceived him for three years. He wanted to write a letter to her and request the truth.

Mrs. Gu left with the picture without a farewell. Teacher Gu thought for a moment and remembered he had been looking for his fountain pen. He tried the two drawers by the table, in which he was horrified to find all kinds of odds and ends, as if he had forgotten they had been there for years. After some fumbling, he realized that his wife must have moved his decades-old Parker pen someplace for safekeeping after he had fallen ill. Had she been expecting him to die, so that she would burn the pen with him? Or had she already sold the pen to the secondhand store for a few chickens? This new fear left Teacher Gu in a cold sweat. The pen had been a present from his college professor when Teacher Gu had established the first boys’ school in what was then one of the least educated provinces in the nation; the gold tip had worn out and been replaced twice, but the body of the pen—smooth, dark blue, and polished by years of gentle care—retained its aristocratic feel. Even Shan, in her most fervent years as a young revolutionary, denouncing anything Western as capitalist, had spared Teacher Gu the pen by pretending not to know its hiding place, sewn into the middle of a quilt by his wife.

Teacher Gu pushed himself against the table and stood up. There were not many places in the house for safekeeping, and he located the pen in the bedroom in a wooden box, where his wife kept a few of her jewels that had survived the Cultural Revolution as well as a snapshot of all three of them from when Shan had been a toddler. Teacher Gu squinted at the picture, taken by a friend who had come to visit them in the spring of 1954; Shan was staring at the camera while her parents were both watching her. The camera had been a novelty in Muddy River back then, and a group of children and a few adults had gathered and watched the black box hanging from their friend's neck. He snapped shots generously, of Teacher Gu's family as well as of the onlooking children, but this picture was the only one his friend mailed. Teacher Gu wondered what had happened to the other pictures; another letter he needed to write, he thought, before remembering that the friend had taken his own life, in 1957, as an anti-Communist intellectual.

Teacher Gu shuffled back to the front room. He took the pen out of the velvet box, unscrewed the cap carefully, and wiped off the dried ink on the gold tip with a small piece of silk he kept in the box for that purpose.

Greatly respected Comrade Cheng, he started the letter, and then thought the opening ridiculous with its revolutionary ugliness, even though he had addressed her with this formality in his letters, once or twice a year, for the past thirty years. He ripped the page off the notebook and started again. My once closest friend, colleague, and beloved wife, he wrote with great effort. “My once closest friend, colleague, and beloved wife,” he read it out loud, and decided that it suited his mood.

Remember the umbrella that my father lent my mother at a street corner in Paris that started their lifelong love story? It was in the autumn of 1916, if you still remember. You said what a romance when I first told you the story; I am writing to let you know that the emblem of this great love no longer exists. The umbrella did not survive my daughter's death because her mother, my current wife, thought the daughter needed an umbrella in heaven. Were there a heaven above, I wonder if my parents are fighting with my daughter for possession of the umbrella. The grandparents had not met the granddaughter in life; in death I hope they do not have to spend a long time in the company of the girl. My parents, as you may remember, possessed the elegance and wisdom of the intellectuals of their generation; my daughter, however, was more a product of this revolutionary age than of her grandparents’ noble Manchu blood. She died of a poison that she had herself helped to concoct. Despite art and philosophy and your beloved mathematics and my faith in enlightenment, in the end, what marks our era—perhaps we could take the liberty to believe, for all we know, that this era may last for the next hundred years?—is the moaning of our bones crushed beneath the weight of empty words. There is no beauty in this crushing, and there is, alas, no escape for us now, or ever.

Teacher Gu stopped writing and read the letter. His handwriting was a shaky old man's but there was no point in being ashamed at the loss of his capacity as a calligrapher. He folded the letter in the special way that young lovers had folded love notes forty years earlier and put it in an envelope. Only then did he realize he had forgotten to ask the question. He had wasted time and space in a uselessly moody letter. He opened his notebook.

Highly respected Comrade Cheng: Please tell me, in all honesty, if you were assigned to marry me by your party leaders for your Communist cause. I am getting closer to death each day and I prefer not to leave this world a deceived man.

Teacher Gu signed his name carefully and sealed the letter along with the first one without rereading either of them. He put the envelope into his pocket, pulled himself across the room, and stumbled into an old armchair. The writing had exhausted him; he closed his eyes, and returned to the argument he had carried on all night with his first wife, about whether Marxism was a form of spiritual opium, as Marx had once described other religions.

“Greatly respected citizens of Muddy River,” the voice from the loudspeaker said, interrupting Teacher Gu's eloquent argument. He recognized the voice as the star announcer, and thought that the woman sounded falsely grave for a holiday of ghosts. “Good morning, all comrades. This is a special broadcast on the current events in Muddy River,” the voice said. “As you may not know, there is great historical change happening in our nation's capital, where a stretch of wall, called the democratic wall, has been set up for people to express their ideas on where our country is going. It is a critical moment for our nation, yet news about the democratic wall did not reach us. We've been taught for years that in our Communist state we are the masters of our own country, and of our own fates. But is this ever true? Not long ago, Gu Shan, a daughter of Muddy River, was wrongfully sentenced to death. She was not a criminal; she was a woman who felt immense responsibility for our nation's future, who spoke out against a corrupt system with courage and insight, but what became of this heroine who acted ahead of her time?”

Teacher Gu's hands trembled as he tried to pull himself out of the armchair. The woman continued to talk, but he could no longer hear her. He struggled to open the notebook, his hand shaking so much that he tore several pages before finding an intact one. “I will beg you only for this one thing now,” wrote Teacher Gu to his first wife.

May I entrust myself to you when I can no longer trust my wife of thirty years? Only in our culture can a body be dug from its grave and put on display for other people's political ambitions. Could you please agree to oversee my cremation? Do not allow traces of me to be left to my current wife, or anyone, for that matter.

“Comrades with conscience!” the woman continued to speak over the loudspeaker. “Please come to the city square and speak up against our corrupt system. Please come to meet and support a heroic mother who is perpetuating the legend of her daughter.”

Stupid women, Teacher Gu said aloud. He put on a coat on top of his pajamas and got ready to go and post the letters.

THE YARD WAS QUIET in an eerie way when Tong woke up before daybreak. He opened the gate, hoping to see an eager Ear waiting for him outside, but apart from a few early-rising men loading their bicycles with bamboo boxes of offerings for their outings, the alley was empty. Tong asked the men about Ear, but none of them had seen the dog.

Tong left the alley, and at the crossroad of two major streets, he caught the first sight of people walking toward the city square. They were silent, men with hats pulled low over their eyebrows, women with half of their faces wrapped in shawls. Tong stood by the roadside and watched the people pass, sometimes in twos but mostly single file, each keeping a distance from the person ahead of him. Tong recognized an uncle from his father's work unit and greeted him, but the man only nodded briefly and then walked faster, as though eager to get rid of Tong. The shops on the main street would be closed for the day, and there was nothing but the public event to attract people to the town center. Perhaps Ear, a gregarious dog that always enjoyed boisterous events, would be found there. Tong waited for a gap to join the procession.

The eastern sky lit up; another cloudless spring day. The main street was quiet in spite of the growing number of people coming in from side streets and alleys. No one talked, and crows and magpies croaked in the pale light, louder than usual. People nodded when they saw acquaintances, but most of the time they focused on the stretch of road in front of them. A few men loitered in front of the shop doors that lined both sides of the main street, their faces too covered by hats or high collars.

“Are you still looking for that dog of yours?” someone said, with a tap on Tong's shoulder. He looked up and saw the young man from the previous day, grinning and showing his yellowed teeth.

“How did you know?” Tong said.

“Because he'd be here with you otherwise,” Bashi said. “Listen, I'm a detective, so nothing escapes my eyes.”

“Have you seen my dog?”

“Do I look like someone who wouldn't tell you if I'd seen him? But I do have a tip for you. You've come to the wrong place. Nobody here and nobody there”—Bashi pointed in the direction of the city square—”cares about your lost dog.”

Tong knew that the man was right. How could he ask people about a small dog when they had more important things to think about? He thanked Bashi nonetheless and moved toward the city square, wishing that the man would stop following him.

“I know you're not listening to me,” Bashi scolded. He pulled Tong out of the procession. “You can't go there alone.”

“Why?”

“How would you get into the city square by yourself? Do you have an admission ticket? They won't let you in without a ticket.”

Tong decided that Bashi was lying, and turned to leave, but Bashi grabbed his shoulder. “You don't believe me?” he said, and brought out something from his sleeve. “See, here's the ticket I'm talking about. Do you have one?”

Tong saw a white paper flower, half-hidden inside Bashi's sleeve.

“Look at these people. They all have a white flower in their sleeves or under their coats. If you don't have one, they won't let you in, because they have to make sure you're not spying for their enemies. Did you see those men in front of the shops? Look there. Why aren't they going to the square?” Bashi paused and savored Tong's questioning look. “Let me tell you—they look like secret police to me. How can you prove that you are not working for the police? Of course you're too young for that, you could say but you're too young to go to a rally also. Unless you're with someone older.”

Tong thought about Bashi's words. They did not quite make sense but he found it hard to argue. “Are you going there?” Tong asked.

“See, that's a question a smart boy asks. Yes, and no. I'm going there, for a different reason than these people are, but if you're looking for someone to tag along with, you've found the right person. But here's one thing you have to promise me—you need to listen to me. I don't want you to get lost or trampled by the crowd.”

Just then the woman announcer's voice came from the loudspeakers. Both Tong and Bashi stopped to listen. When she finished, Bashi said, “I didn't know that Sweet Pea was behind this. So it must mean the government is behind the rally now. Bad news, huh?”

“What's bad news?”

“Nothing. So, do you want to come with me?”

Tong thought about it and agreed.

“I'm old enough to be your uncle already,” Bashi said. “But I'll give you a discount this time, and you can call me Big Brother.”

Tong did not reply but walked with Bashi. When they reached the city square, Tong realized that Bashi had been lying—there was no one asking for the white flower as a token for admission, nor was there a confused stampede. The line ran from the center to the southwest corner of the square, and then turned east until it reached the southeast corner, where more people were joining it. Tong stepped behind the last man, but Bashi tugged at him and whispered that there was much more to see elsewhere. Tong hesitated but followed Bashi out of curiosity. A smart and sensible boy, Bashi praised Tong, as they walked to the east side of Chairman Mao's statue, where there was less of a crowd. A few wreaths of white flowers had been placed along the edge of the pedestal; in front of the wreaths was an enlarged photo held up by a makeshift stand of bamboo sticks; the young girl in the picture, a teenager, tipped her head slightly backward, her smile wide, as if the photographer had just made a joke.

Bashi clicked his tongue. “Is that the woman?”

“Who?”

“The counterrevolutionary.”

Tong looked at the picture. Hard as he tried, he could not connect the girl, young, confident, and beautiful, to the woman he had seen on the day of the execution, her face an ashen color and her neck wrapped in bloodstained surgical tape.

“Hey, hey, did you lose your soul over a beautiful face?” Bashi said to Tong. “Look there.”

Tong breathed hard and stood on tiptoe. Wreaths as tall as a man's height had formed a circle, and the line of people going in and then leaving, through a gap on the other side of the circle, blocked his view.

Bashi looked for a long moment. “Very interesting. Aha, that's her. And he's there too.”

Tong did not want to admit that he was too short to see anything. Bashi looked at him and sighed. “Well, I've brought you here so I am responsible for entertaining you, no?” He squatted down and told Tong to hop onto his shoulders. Tong hesitated, but when Bashi told him to stop being a sissy, he climbed up. “Hold on to my head,” Bashi said, and stood up. “Ugh. You look like a cabbage but weigh like a stone Buddha,” Bashi complained, but Tong did not reply, his attention drawn inside the circle. In the middle a woman was carefully placing a white flower into a huge basket with a diameter of more than two arms. Next to the basket was a table, on which lay a piece of white fabric. A man behind the table pointed to the white fabric and said something to the woman, and she shook her head apologetically and left without looking up at him. Tong recognized the man as a teacher from his school.

“Do you see what I see?” Bashi said, and moved closer to the fence made of wreaths. Tong wavered and held on to Bashi's neck. “Hey, don't choke me.”

Tong let his hands free. “That auntie there is the news announcer,” he said, a bit too loud.

Kai looked up at a boy's voice but quickly turned back to the woman who was about to leave the circle. “Thank you, comrade,” she said. “This is Gu Shan's mother.”

“Thank you for your support,” Mrs. Gu said.

The woman did not acknowledge Kai or Mrs. Gu when they held out their hands to thank her. She left quickly and thought about her husband and two children, who must be wondering by now why a short stop off at her work unit had taken so long; she had lied and said she needed to readjust a perimeter in the machine she ran in the food-processing factory.

The line moved quietly. One by one people dropped their white flowers in the basket; some of them signed their names on the white cloth, but others, when invited, apologized. Kai greeted everyone in line and spoke to them about the importance of the petition for the nation's well-being. Her voice, soft and clear, sounded reassuring; after all, was she not the official news announcer? Some people, once they had talked to Kai, changed their minds and signed the petition.

“Hey, are you deaf?” Bashi said to Tong. “I'm asking you a question.”

“What did you say?”

“How long is the line now? I can't even lift my head because of you.”

“Still very long.”

“How many people do you see?”

Tong tried to count. “Sixty, maybe eighty. It's hard to count. They're coming and going.”

“Have you seen anyone you know?”

“The auntie by the basket,” Tong said. “She's the announcer, you know? She just smiled at me.”

“Everybody knows that. Who else?”

“A teacher from our school.”

“Who else?”

Tong looked at the people waiting and recognized some faces, another teacher from his school who taught an upper grade, an old shop assistant at the pharmacy who liked to give children pickled plums for snacks, the postman who delivered letters to Tong's neighborhood twice a day and who always whistled when he rode by on his green postman's bicycle, Old Hua and his wife, who stood an arm's length apart in line, neither looking up at the people around them. Tong told Bashi what he saw and Bashi told him to keep up the good work. “You could make a good apprentice for me,” Bashi said. He greeted everyone passing by as if he knew them all, though few returned his greetings. Some people glanced at Tong but most ignored him and his companion. In their eyes, Tong thought, he was probably only a small child who had come for some inappropriate fun; he was sad that he could not prove himself otherwise. He wondered whether the man he was with had come just for a good time, but it seemed too late to confront him.

Thirty minutes passed, perhaps longer; the basket, already overfilled, was put aside and replaced by a new one. The sun had risen now, casting the shadow of Chairman Mao over the place where Tong and Bashi stood. Bashi moved out of the shadow, still with Tong on his shoulders. After a while, when Tong told him that the line was shorter now, Bashi said that Tong should come down. “Sooner or later you'll break my back,” Bashi said, massaging his neck with both hands.

“Are you going to put in your white flower?” Tong asked. His legs had fallen asleep and he had to stamp hard to awake them.

“No,” Bashi said. “Why should I?”

“I thought that was why you were here.”

“I told you I'm here for a different reason,” Bashi said.

Disappointed, Tong limped away.

“You don't want to know where Ear is?”

Tong turned around. “Have you seen him?”

“Not lately,” Bashi said. “But remember, I'm a detective, and I can find anything out for you.”

Tong shook his head and said, “I'll find him myself.”

“Do you want me to lend you my flower?”

Tong thought about the offer and nodded. He wished his mother had not destroyed their flower so he did not have to beg from this man he disliked. Bashi took the flower out from his sleeve and handed it to Tong. “Yours now,” he said. “On the condition that you're not to leave me yet.”

“Why?”

“Because we're here together, remember?” Bashi said with a wink, and Tong reluctantly agreed. Bashi accompanied him to the end of the line. When it was Tong's turn, he greeted the announcer and told her that he had been sent by his mother. Bashi only smiled, and said nothing.

“Please thank your mother for us all,” the woman said. The old woman next to the auntie bowed and thanked Tong as if he were another grown-up. Close up, he recognized her now, the one who had burned the clothes at the crossroad on the day of the execution.

“Mrs. Gu?” Bashi said and shook the old woman's hand. “Lu Bashi here. I hope your daughter's first Ching Ming is great. It's the first for my grandma too. We're burying her today. You know how you have to wait for the spring. Not the best time to die, if you ask me. So have you already buried your daughter?”

Kai patted Bashi on his arm. “Please, we don't have time for your talk.”

“But I'm not here to chat,” Bashi said, and grasped Kai's hand. “Lu Bashi here. Sister, I really like your program. You know what nickname people have given you? Sweet Pea. Fresh and yummy. Yes, I know, I'm leaving. No problem, I know you are busy. But I am not here to be mischievous. I was asked by his parents to accompany him here,” Bashi said, and pointed to Tong. “He's awfully small to come by himself, isn't he?”

Tong bit his lip. He did not want to be seen with this man, but Bashi had given him the white flower and had not said anything when he had lied earlier, about his being sent by his mother. Tong waited painfully while Bashi talked on, asking Kai what she thought of the number of people at the rally, what she planned to do next. She tried to be polite but Tong could tell that she had no interest in talking to Bashi. “I know you're busy, but can I have a word with you in private?” Bashi said. She was busy, Kai said. Bashi clicked his tongue. Too bad, he said; in that case perhaps he would have to talk with Mrs. Gu about her daughter's kidneys.

His voice was low, but Kai looked startled. She glanced at Mrs. Gu and beckoned Bashi to step aside. Tong followed them; neither Kai nor Bashi seemed to notice him.

“What did you hear about the kidneys?” Kai asked.

“It's not a secret,” said Bashi. “Or is it?”

Tong watched the announcer frown. “Could you not mention it in front of Mrs. Gu?”

“I'll do whatever you ask me to do,” Bashi said, and in a lower voice explained that there was more to the body than the kidneys, and he only wanted her to know that he was working on it. Things were in good hands, Bashi said, and he assured Kai that he would let her know as soon as he solved the case. Tong could see that the news announcer did not understand what Bashi was talking about, and that she was only trying to be patient. A man in a heavy coat approached them; a cotton mask covered most of his face. “Is there anything wrong here?” he asked, his eyes looking alarmed behind his glasses.

Bashi replied that everything was fine. The man looked at Kai, and she shook her head slowly and said nothing. The man, without taking off his glove, shook Bashi's hand and thanked him for coming to support the rally. Bashi answered that it was everybody's cause to fight against evil, and when he saw that the man would not leave him alone with Kai, he signaled for Tong to follow him to the table. “Do you mind if I take a look?” Bashi asked, and leaned toward the white cloth.

The man behind the table, a new teacher at Tong's school— although he did not recognize Tong—replied that it was not for browsing.

“But we're also here to sign, aren't we, little brother?” Bashi said to Tong. “Didn't your parents say you represent them here? By the way,” he said to the man, “the boy is a student of yours.”

The man turned to Tong. “Do you go to Red Star?”

Tong nodded.

“And didn't you just beg me to let you come and sign the petition?” Bashi said, and turned to the man. “He's a shy boy, especially with a teacher sitting here.”

The man looked at Tong and said he might be too young to sign.

“Too young? Nonsense. Gan Luo became the premier of a nation at eleven,” Bashi said. “There's no such thing as being too young. Have you heard people say heroes are born out of young souls? Here's a young hero for you. Besides, don't you need as many names as you can get?”

The man hesitated and dipped the brush pen in the ink pot. “Are you sure you understand the petition?” he asked Tong.

“Of course. I just told you he was a young hero,” Bashi said, and whispered to Tong. “See how your teacher and your announcer auntie both are behind the petition. They'll be so happy if you sign your name there. Do you know how to write your name?”

Tong was embarrassed and tired of Bashi. He took the brush pen and looked for a place he could put down his name. The teacher was about to say something, and Bashi told him to stop fussing; the boy knew what he was doing, just as a swallow knew where to find his home, Bashi said. Tong breathed carefully and wrote on the white cloth, trying to keep each stroke steady. He had thought of writing down his name, but at the last moment, he changed his mind and wrote down his father's name; after all, he was too young and perhaps his own name wouldn't count.

***

NINI LOCKED THE HOUSE UP once the pedicab her family had hired disappeared around the corner. There was laundry for her to wash, pots and pans to scrub, and the house to sweep and mop, but these, along with the memory of her sisters’ muffled giggling when her parents had ordered her to finish the housework before their return, did little to dampen her mood for the day. She had heard her father say to her mother that, on the way up the mountain, the pedicab driver would not be able to pedal and he would have to help the driver push. They should spend as much time as they could up there, Nini's mother had replied, making the most of the fee they paid the driver. It would be a long day before Nini's family returned home, and even if she did not finish everything, what did it matter? The day was a holiday for her too, a special day to be with Bashi. Nini held Little Sixth in her good arm and told her that they were going out to have a good time for themselves. Little Sixth looked back with clear, trusting eyes; when Nini tickled the baby underneath her soft chin and asked her if she was ready for the ride, the baby finally broke out into a big smile and showed her small new teeth.

The sun was up in the sky, blue without a wisp of cloud, a perfect day for Ching Ming. People came out from alleys and moved toward the Cross-river Bridge, women and children on foot, men pushing bicycles loaded with offerings and picnic baskets. Nini walked north, against the flow of people, and she had to stop from time to time to let people pass, some of whom walked right at her without slowing down, as if she didn't exist. Little Sixth sucked her hand and then pointed a wet finger at the people passing by. Kitty, kitty, she babbled, not making much sense.

Halfway to Bashi's house, Nini turned into the alley where the Gus lived. She did not expect them to have holiday treats for her. Even if they begged her to come into their house and spend a few minutes with them, she would reply coolly that she was quite busy and had no time to waste. Or perhaps she would be more generous and exchange a few nice words with them, saying she'd heard that Teacher Gu had been sick and asking him how he felt now, if he needed any special food from the marketplace that she could bring him the next time. She imagined them speechless in front of her, dumbfounded by her gracefulness and her ease as a grown-up girl. She would smile and say that if they had no important requests, she would come back to visit when she had more time to spare. They would nod and try to find the words to reply, agonized by their secret wish to keep her close to them a moment longer, but she would leave nonetheless, the way a daughter who was married off to a rich husband might bid farewell to her plain parents, her good fortune being the only brightness in their life.

Besides a few sparrows hopping among the chickens, the Gus’ alley was quiet. Nini knocked at the gate, first cautiously, and then a little harder. After a long moment she heard some small noises from the yard. For a moment her heartbeat became wild, her legs ready to take her fleeing before she was seen. But what would that make her except a useless child? She persisted, knocking at the gate, loudly this time.

The gate opened. Teacher Gu, leaning on a cane, stared at Nini. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Don't you know that people have important things to do besides waiting to be disturbed?”

Little Sixth pointed at Teacher Gu's cane and giggled for reasons known only to herself. Nini looked at him in dismay. She had imagined Teacher Gu, weakened and saddened by his illness, in need of comfort, and she could not help but feel that the old man in front of her now, like the other old men strolling in the marketplace or sitting by the roadside who enjoyed nothing but being harsh to a world that had, in their minds, mistreated them, was a stranger who had taken up the space of Teacher Gu's body. She breathed hard. “I heard you were sick, Teacher Gu,” Nini said, trying her newly discovered confidence. “I'm here to see if you feel better now, and if you need anything.”

“Why do you care?” Teacher Gu said. “Don't expect me to entertain anyone who has too much goodwill to dispense.” Before Nini could reply, he banged the gate in her face.

Little Sixth, startled, began to cry then hiccup. Nini looked at the gate. She thought of spitting and cursing, the way she dealt with every humiliation in her life, yet she knew that those actions would not bring her the satisfaction they had before. Teacher Gu, whom she had once loved and admired and wanted as a father, had become a lesser person than she.

Bashi seemed anxious when Nini and Little Sixth arrived. A whole table of food, ordered from Three Joy, the most expensive restaurant in town, waited on the table. He offered to take the baby, and when Little Sixth protested with flailing hands, he made funny faces and squeezed his voice to sing a song about a snail, which scared the baby and made her cry. Nini hushed them both and walked straight into the bedroom. Bashi's bed was freshly made, the sheet and blanket and pillowcases all with a matching pattern of a pair of swallows nestling together in a spring willow tree. “The holiday is for dead people,” Nini said, not yet recovered from the encounter with Teacher Gu. “You thought it was for you?”

Bashi smiled mysteriously. “Don't give me that stupid smile of yours,” Nini said. She brought the baby to the other bed, stripped after the old woman's death. Nini took a rope out of her pocket. The bed was much smaller than their brick bed at home, so she had to double and then double the rope again before binding it around the baby's waist and tying it to a pole on the inner side of the bed. Bashi seemed concerned, but Nini reassured him: Little Sixth was used to the rope; it would be a miracle if she were able to strangle herself or loosen the knot and fall headfirst to the ground.

Bashi watched Little Sixth explore her new territory. “What a nice baby,” he said. He knelt at the bedside so that he was at eye level with her. He made squeaky noises and funny faces, which Little Sixth did not appreciate, and when she cried again, he stood up with resignation. “What if she gets bored?” he asked.

“Why would she get bored?” Nini said. “She lives this way every day.”

Less than convinced, Bashi went to the kitchen and fetched a whole bag of crackers. At each corner of the bed, he put a stack of crackers. He rummaged in the closet and found a pair of old silk shoes that had belonged to his grandmother, who had had bound feet, so the shoes were no bigger than a child's palm. More intrigued by the shoes than the snack, Little Sixth grabbed them and chewed on the embroidered flowers.

Nini looked on as Bashi busied himself making Little Sixth comfortable. What a strangely good man he was sometimes, she thought, wasting his time on a baby. She went out to the living room and sank into a huge cushioned chair. Bashi's solicitousness made her feel important; she could easily be the mistress of this household, making him her servant.

After a few minutes, Bashi came out and said, “I've got a present for you.”

Nini turned to study him. When he was not behaving oddly, he looked almost handsome.

“Do you want to guess?”

“How would I know? Who knows which screw has come loose in your brain?” she said.

He laughed. “You're right,” he said. “It'd take you a million years to guess.” He went out to the storage room and, a moment later, came back with a cardboard box. The box was not a big one, but the way Bashi carried it, carefully balanced between his two hands, made Nini think of something expensive or heavy, or both. She wondered if it was a present she could hide from her parents and sisters.

Bashi put the box on the table and opened it; then he stepped aside, gave her a great bow, and invited her to step forward, as if he were a master magician. She squatted by the box and looked inside. She found neither expensive food nor jewelry; instead, the box was filled with ripped newspaper, and in the middle was a little gray ball with quills. She moved it with a finger and it rolled to one side, revealing nothing but more newspaper under its small body.

“So,” Bashi said. “What do you think?”

“What is it?”

“A hedgehog.”

Bashi watched Nini's face closely, which made her impatient. “What kind of present is that? You think I'm a skunk that needs a hedgehog for lunch?” she said.

Bashi guffawed as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world, and despite her wish to remain stern and angry, Nini laughed too. She lifted the hedgehog by its quills and put it on the table. It remained motionless, hiding its small face and soft stomach away from the world. “It's dead,” Nini said.

“Silly girl,” Bashi said. “It looks dead because I put it out in the storage cabin last night.” He picked up a dustpan and scooped the hedgehog into it. “Let me show you the trick,” he said, and carried the hedgehog to the kitchen. The fire in the stove was roaring and the kitchen was hotter than the rest of the house. Bashi took off his sweater and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Now look,” he said, and placed the dustpan on the floor, close to the stove. After a while, the hedgehog started to move, slowly at first, and then it grew longer and flatter, its face showing up underneath its uncurled body. Nini looked at its pale pink nose and small beady eyes—the hedgehog looked confused, its nose twitching helplessly.

“Is he hungry?” Nini asked.

“Wait and see,” Bashi said. He put a shallow plate of water on the floor nearby, and soon the hedgehog crawled toward the water. To Nini's amazement, when it found the water, it gulped it all down without taking a breath.

“How did you know he was thirsty?” Nini asked.

“Because I tried this trick before you came,” Bashi said. “You freeze a hedgehog and then unfreeze him and he thinks he's just out of his hibernation and he's thirsty.”

“Stupid animal,” Nini said.

Bashi smiled and said he had another trick to show her. He took a jar of salt out of the cupboard and asked for her hand, and Nini stuck out her good hand in a fist. He grabbed her fingers and uncurled them, and she felt a small tickling sensation coming not from her hand but from somewhere in her body that she had not known existed before. He poured a tiny mound of salt onto her palm. “Hold still,” he said, and bent down to lick from her palm. She withdrew her hand before his tongue could touch it and the salt spilled all over the counter. “What are you doing?” she said.

Bashi sighed. “I'm teaching you how to do the trick,” he said. “You need to hold still or else the hedgehog will be scared.”

Nini looked at Bashi with suspicion, but he seemed preoccupied with his demonstration. He poured salt onto his own palm and told Nini not to make any noise. He knelt by the hedgehog and held his hand out to the hesitant animal, his palm flat and still. After a moment, the hedgehog moved closer and licked Bashi's palm, his tongue too small for Nini to see, but Bashi winked and grinned as if he were being tickled. Soon the small pile of salt in his palm disappeared. The hedgehog moved away, slow and satisfied. Nini looked at Bashi questioningly. He smiled and signaled her to wait, and a minute later, the hedgehog started to cough vehemently. Nini was startled and glanced around, even though she knew nobody had come into the house—the noise the hedgehog made was low and eerily human, as if from an old man dying of consumption. Nini stared at the hedgehog; there was no mistake that the animal was coughing. Bashi looked at Nini and started to laugh. The hedgehog coughed a minute longer and curled back into a painful ball. Nini poked it a couple of times and when she was sure it would not cough for her again, she stood up. “Where did you learn this mischief?”

Bashi smiled. “It doesn't matter. What's funny is that the hedgehog never learns to stay away from the salt.”

“Why is that?”

Bashi thought about the question. “Maybe they like to be tricked.”

“Stupid animal,” Nini said. She lifted the balled hedgehog and put it back into the box. “What else can it do besides cough?”

“Nothing much.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“It's up to you,” Bashi said. “It's a present for you.”

Nini shook her head. She could not think of anything to do with the hedgehog, and it made her feel empty, all of a sudden, after the good laugh with Bashi. “What do I need a hedgehog for?” she said.

“You can have it as a pet.”

“Why don't you keep it?” she said, and went into the bedroom to check on Little Sixth. The baby had discovered the crackers. Nini watched Little Sixth nibbling one. Today was a day that she had been waiting for, but now she was agitated for reasons she did not understand.

Bashi followed her into the bedroom and offered more crackers to the baby. Nini snatched them away before Little Sixth got ahold of them and the baby started to cry. “Are you going to fill her to death?” Nini snapped.

Bashi scratched his scalp. He seemed perplexed by Nini's sudden change of mood. After a moment, he offered cautiously, “I've got another idea.”

“Your ideas are boring,” Nini said.

“Maybe not this one,” Bashi said. “We can eat the hedgehog. I've heard hedgehog is one of the best tonics.”

“We're not eighty years old and don't need ginseng and hedgehogs to keep us alive,” Nini said. “Who wants to eat that ugly thing with all the quills?”

Bashi smiled and told Nini to come over with him so he could show her one more trick he had heard about. She was not interested, but anything was better than staying in the bedroom with Little Sixth, who, after crying halfheartedly for a minute, began to suck her fist. Nini knew that soon Little Sixth would doze off. She went out to look for Bashi and found him in the yard. He was digging the freshly thawed dirt with a shovel, and when he got a pile of it, he poured some water over it and patiently kneaded the mud, as if he were an experienced baker.

“Are you cooking a mud pie with the hedgehog?” Nini said.

“Close,” Bashi said. He went into the room and brought the box out. The hedgehog was still a frightened small ball. Bashi lifted it out of the box and put it in the mud dough. “Do you know how beggars cook the chickens they steal?” Bashi said. “They wrap the chicken up in mud and put the whole thing into hot ashes. When the roasting is done, you break the mud shell and eat the tender meat. The same with hedgehog, I heard.” Bashi rubbed mud onto the hedgehog until it was totally enclosed. He rolled the ball in the mud a few more times and worked to make it perfectly round.

The fire in the stove hissed. Bashi tried in vain to blow on the fire to put it out; Nini laughed at him and slammed the damper shut. Soon the fire went out, smoldering quietly. Bashi poked the mud ball into the amber ashes. Together they stood and watched the mud ball in the belly of the stove, the outside drying into a crust. After a moment, Nini sighed and said, “What do we do now?”

Bashi turned around with his two muddy hands sticking out like claws. “We can play eagle-catching-the-chick,” he said, and bared his yellow teeth. “Here I come.”

Nini limped away with a happy scream, and Bashi followed her, always two steps behind, making a funny screeching noise with his grinding teeth. They circled the living room and then Nini ran into the bedroom. She threw herself onto Bashi's bed and panted. “I don't like this game,” she said, with her face buried in the pillow.

Bashi did not reply. Nini rolled over and was surprised to see him standing by the bedside, gazing at her with a strange half smile. “Don't stand there like dead wood,” she said. “Think of something better to do.”

“Do you want to marry me?” Bashi said.

For a moment, Nini thought he was joking. “No,” she said. “I don't want to marry you.”

“Why not?” Bashi said. He looked hurt and disappointed. “You should consider it before you decide. I have money. I have this place all to myself. I'm your friend. I make you laugh. I'll be good to you— I'm always good to women, you know?”

Nini looked at Bashi. His eyes, fixing on her face with a seriousness that she had never seen in him before, made her nervous. She wondered whether her face looked especially crooked. She turned and hid the bad half from his gaze.

“Think about it,” Bashi said. “Not many men would want to marry you.”

Nini did not need him to remind her of that. Anyone who had eyes could see that she would never get a marriage offer. She had blindly hoped that Bashi would not notice her deformed face, but of course, like everyone else, he could not get it out of his mind. “Why do you want to marry me then?” she said. “Aren't you one of them?”

Bashi sat down by Nini and ran a finger through her hair. She did not move away even when she saw that he had mud on his hand. “Of course I'm different,” Bashi said. “Why else do you think I'm your friend?”

Nini turned to look at Bashi, and he nodded at her sincerely. She wondered if she should believe him. Perhaps he was what he said, a man different from everyone else in the world; perhaps he was not. But what harm was there even if he was lying? He was her only friend, and even if he did see her as a monster, he seemed not to be bothered by it. She had no other choice; he was not a bad one, in any case. “Will you marry me if I agree to marry you?” Nini said.

“Of course. What do I need other women for if you agree to marry me?”

Not many women would want to marry him, Nini thought. She wondered if she herself was his only choice, but no matter how strange a man he was, she was on the bottom rung when it came to marriage and he was somewhere higher up. “What do we do if we agree to marry each other? When do I get to move out of my parents’ home?” she said.

Bashi circled Nini's eyes with his muddy finger and then sat back to look at the effect. “Look in the mirror and see what a silly girl you are,” he said. “If people heard you say this, they would all laugh at you.”

Nini felt the tightening of her skin around her eyes. “Why would they want to laugh at me?” she asked.

“No girl should express such eagerness to marry a man, even if you can't wait for another minute.”

“I can't wait for another minute to move out of my parents’ house. I hate everyone there,” Nini said. As if to dispute her, the baby babbled on the other side of the curtain. Nini got up from the bed and peeked at Little Sixth. She was crawling to reach half a cracker she had missed earlier. She sucked her lips with satisfaction after she ate the cracker and then began to play with the rope. She was a good baby; as long as she was not hungry, she could entertain herself for a long time. Nini let go of the curtain and sat down next to Bashi. “Do you think I can bring Little Sixth with me if I marry you?” she said.

“Two at a time? I must be a man hit by good fortune right on the forehead,” Bashi said.

If she were not there to watch out for Little Sixth, who knew what might become of her, especially if her mother gave birth to a baby brother soon. If her parents did not like the idea, Nini thought, she would find a way to sneak the baby out of the house. But why wouldn't they be happy to get rid of two daughters without any trouble? The longer Nini thought about this, the more she was convinced that Little Sixth belonged to her more than to her parents. She could find a good husband for the baby when the time came. She turned to Bashi and patted his face to stop his grinning. “I'm serious,” she said. “When can I leave my parents?”

“Wait a minute,” Bashi said. “How old are you?”

“Twelve. Twelve and a half.”

“Honestly, I would like to get married now,” he said. “But there's a problem. You might be a little young yet to marry me.”

“Why?”

“Because there are people who might not be happy about it.”

“Who? What does it have to do with them?”

Bashi wagged a finger at Nini and hushed her. He knocked his forehead with his fist and Nini watched him. There was an unusual aroma in the room, and Nini twitched her nose hard to identify the smell. “The hedgehog,” she said finally. “It's ready.”

Bashi put a hand on Nini's mouth. “Don't distract me,” he said, and let his palm touch Nini's lips. The mud on his hands had already dried up. Nini thought about the hedgehog, roasted in the ashes. With Bashi there were always things unexpected that made her happy. Nini began to think that perhaps it was a very good idea to marry him.

“I know,” Bashi said after a moment. “Have you heard of child brides?”

“No.”

“Ask Mrs. Hua and she'll tell you about it. Sometimes people send their young daughters to live with their future husbands and their families, and when the girls are old enough, they get married. Maybe you can become my child bride.”

“Will those people you talked about be unhappy with this?”

“Why should they be, if you're my child bride? We can even ask Mr. and Mrs. Hua for help if your parents don't agree with the idea. You can live with the Huas, because they're good friends of mine. They won't mind having you around. I can pay them for your expenses. Will you be happier that way?”

Nini thought about the arrangement. Would her parents let her, a free maid, go so easily? But what could they do if she insisted on leaving for her own husband? People in the marketplace always said that a daughter who was ready to marry had a heart like the water splashed out of a basin—no matter how hard the parents tried, they would never get the water back. Of course her parents would understand this. Perhaps they would even celebrate her success in finding a husband; perhaps they would be generous enough to give her a tiny dowry. “Let's find the Huas and talk to them,” Nini said.

“What an impatient girl,” Bashi said. “They're burying my grandma at this moment. We'll see them later. We have something more important to do.”

“The hedgehog?”

Bashi smiled. “More important than that. Have you heard of the bride check?”

“No.”

“It used to be that the matchmaker checked the bride's body and made sure she was in fine shape for a wife,” Bashi said. “In the case of a love marriage, like ours, the husband does the checking himself.”

Nini thought about her crooked face, her chicken-claw hand, and her crippled foot. Was there a possibility that he could still reject her, even if he promised to take her in as a child bride?

“Don't look so nervous,” Bashi said, and moved closer. He pulled Nini to her feet and let her stand in front of him. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and worked his thumbs underneath Nini's old sweater. “Just like this,” he said, and rubbed her collarbone with his thumbs. “Does it hurt?”

Nini looked at his face, serious with a studying expression. She held her breath and shook her head. He moved his hands downward and cupped her rib cage in his two big palms. Tickled, she wiggled with laughter. He shushed her and said, “The sweater is a problem. Do you want to take it off?”

Nini looked at Bashi suspiciously and he smiled. “You don't have to,” he said, and squeezed his hands beneath her sweater and undershirt and enclosed her washboard body again, his hands hot on her cool skin. She shuddered. He moved his fingers up and down, as if he was counting her ribs. “A bit on the skinny side,” he said. “But it's an easier problem to solve than having a fat hen.”

Nini looked up at Bashi's face, close to her own. It wasn't right for a stranger to touch a girl this way, Nini knew, but Bashi was no longer a stranger after their talk of marriage. His hands on her skin made her feel good. She wasn't nervous now, yet her body still shivered as if it had its own will. When his hands wiggled downward she did not protest. He let his hands stay around her waist for a moment and said with a hoarse voice, “I need to check you down there too.”

“Do you think the hedgehog will be overdone when we finish?” Nini asked. The aroma of slightly burned meat from the kitchen was getting stronger and she was surprised that Bashi did not notice it.

Bashi did not reply. He picked Nini up and laid her on his bed. She felt his hands working on her belt, a long and threadbare piece of cloth she had ripped from an old sheet. Let her do it, she said, and pushed him slightly aside, feeling embarrassed in front of him for the first time. She untied the knot and he helped her take her pants and underpants down to the crook of her knees. She looked up at Bashi but he seemed to be shaking more than she was. Was he cold? she asked curiously. He did not answer, and covered her exposed body with a blanket. He needed a flashlight to go under there so she did not catch a cold, he said in a hushed voice, and he left the bedroom.

Nini waited. The hedgehog would be badly burned when they were finished, she thought. She wondered what Bashi would do to her—the bedroom business, as the men and women in the marketplace talked about? Whatever it was, Nini believed that it was a good thing, because those shameless women always pretended to be uninterested but their flushed faces and giggles told a different story.

Nini wondered why it was taking Bashi so long to find a flashlight. Little Sixth started to cry on the other side of the curtain. “I'm here,” Nini said in her gentlest voice, and when the baby did not calm down, Nini started to sing Little Sixth's favorite lullaby, a song Nini had made up herself and sang to the baby when she was in a good mood. Little Sixth stopped crying and babbled to herself; Nini continued singing, lost in the wordless song of her own creation.

When Bashi finally returned, he seemed less flustered.

“Where were you?” Nini asked. “It took you so long.”

“Ah, I just suddenly needed to go to the outhouse,” Bashi said. He shone the flashlight on her face. “The best one a detective could have,” he said, and crawled underneath the blanket, his legs dangling by the bedside. Nini felt him gently move her legs apart. She was about to ask him what he was doing under there, when a finger tentatively touched her between her legs. She badly felt a need to pee but she held it in and waited. The finger moved around a little, so gentle she almost did not feel it. After a long moment, Bashi emerged from beneath the blanket. “You're great,” he said.

“Are you done?”

“For now, yes.”

Nini was disappointed. She had once heard her mother and father panting at night for a long time, and only later did she realize that they had been engaged in their bedroom business. “Why didn't it take you long?” she said.

“What didn't take me long?”

Nini got up from the bed and got dressed. “I thought husband and wife did more than just looking,” she said.

Bashi looked at Nini for a long moment before he stepped closer and held her in his arms. “I didn't want to frighten you,” he said.

“What would frighten me?” Nini said. “We're husband and wife now, aren't we?”

Bashi smiled. “Yes, you're perfect for a wife, and of course we will be one day soon.”

“Why not now?”

Bashi seemed baffled and unable to answer her question. “People need a wedding ceremony to become husband and wife,” he said finally.

Nini shrugged. She did not care about a ceremony. He had checked her body and he had said everything was fine. That was all she cared about now that she had finally found herself a place to go. She was eager to make it happen. After a moment, she said, “How's your hedgehog now?”

Bashi was startled, as though he had only just now remembered the roasted animal. He ran to the kitchen, and when Nini followed him there, she was not surprised to see that when Bashi knocked open the dried mud ball, the hedgehog was a ball of charcoal, no longer edible.