Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

Kwen looked at the cigarette dubiously. Bashi sighed and handed over the pack. Kwen lit the cigarette and put the rest of the pack away. A police car drove to the riverbank, followed by a covered truck. A squad of policemen jumped out of the truck, and a moment later, the counterrevolutionary was carried out of the police car by her arms. Kwen and Bashi watched the group cross the frozen river silently. From where they stood they could barely see the woman's face.

“Is she what you're here for?” Bashi said.

Yes, Kwen replied; he was coming to collect her body.

“Why is it you who collects the body and not me?” Bashi said.

“Because I'm paid to.”

“By whom?”

“Her parents.”

“Where is the money?” Bashi said.

Kwen patted the breast pocket of his jacket. “Here.”

“Can I see?” Bashi asked. He did not trust Kwen's words. A woman was a woman, and Bashi knew that Kwen was here because he wanted to take a look at her, in whatever condition they would find her.

Kwen brought out a small package from his pocket. It looked like a thick pad, but who could guarantee that Kwen had not wrapped up some toilet paper in it? Bashi was going to inspect the package more closely, when Kwen slid it back into his pocket and said, “Keep your paws off my money.”

“How much did they pay you?” Bashi asked.

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I can pay the same amount to you for not collecting her body.”

“Who will, then? You can't leave a body to rot by itself on the island.”

“I will,” Bashi said.

Kwen grinned. “You are more fun than I thought,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I've never seen an idiot as interesting as you.”

Bashi thought of acting offended, but on second thought, he laughed with Kwen. Perhaps they could become friends if he could keep entertaining him. People would regard him in a different light if they saw that he alone could befriend Kwen. A fox feared by all animals because he befriended a tiger, the old story occurred to Bashi, but what was wrong with being a smart fox? “Can I help you collect the body? It must be heavy for one person,” Bashi said.

“I don't have money to pay for your help,” Kwen said.

“I can pay you if you let me help,” Bashi said. “At least let me take a look at her.”

Kwen looked at Bashi for a long moment and laughed aloud. A few sparrows pecking on an open field between the trees flew away. Bashi smiled nervously. Then they heard a single shot, crisp, with an echo of metal. Kwen stopped laughing, and they both looked at the flocks of birds flying away from the island. Nothing happened for a few minutes, and then the squad of policemen marched across the river, their heavy boots treading on the old snow. “Crack,” Bashi whispered to himself, and imagined a big hole in the broken ice devouring all those people he despised.

“It's my job now,” Kwen said when the police car and the truck drove away.

“How about me?” Bashi said.

“How much can you pay?”

Bashi stuck two fingers out; Kwen shook his head and Bashi added one finger, and then another. Kwen looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Okay, a hundred, is that okay?” Bashi said, almost begging. “A hundred is probably more than the family is paying you, no?”

Kwen smiled. “That is my business,” he said, and signaled Bashi to follow him onto the ice.

M rs. Gu did not reply when Teacher Gu told her that lunch was ready. He had found her sitting still in a chair when he returned from his visit to Old Kwen, and ever since then she had been a statue. He tried to make small noises with every little chore that he could invent for himself. When he ran out of things to do, he sat down and forced himself to take a short nap. He was awakened by people returning from the denunciation ceremony men talking and locking their bicycles, women calling their children for lunch. He got up and started noisily cutting, boiling, frying things to prepare lunch. He tried not to think about what had happened outside his home—the only way to live on, he had known for most of his adulthood, was to focus on the small patch of life in front of one's eyes.

Teacher Gu sat down at the table with a full bowl of rice and reminded his wife again to eat at least a little. She replied that she had no appetite.

“One has to be responsible for one's body,” Teacher Gu said. He had always insisted on the importance of eating regular and nutritious meals for a healthy body and mind. If there was one thing he prided himself on, it was that he never gave in to difficulties to the point where he ignored his duty to his body. Life was unpredictable, he had taught his wife and daughter, and eating and sleeping were among the few things one could rely on to outwit life and its capriciousness . Teacher Gu chewed and swallowed carefully. He might not have added enough water, and the grains of rice were dry and hard to eat. The fibers from the cabbage hurt his already loosened teeth, but he chewed on, trying to set a good example for his wife, as he had always done.

When he finished the meal, he walked over to her. She did not move and after a moment of hesitation, he put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched and he withdrew his hand. It could have been worse, he said; they should look at the positive side.

“Worse than what?” she said.

He did not answer. After a while, he said, “The Huas cannot do it. I've asked a janitor from the electric plant to help.”

“Where will she be?” Mrs. Gu asked.

“He'll find a spot. I asked him not to mark it.”

Mrs. Gu stood up. “I need to go and find her,” she said.

“I thought we had agreed,” Teacher Gu said. Together they had made the decision, he suggesting and she consenting, that they would not bury her themselves. They were too old for the task, their hearts easily breakable.

She had changed her mind, Mrs. Gu said, and she looked for her coat; she could not let a stranger send off her daughter.

“It's too late,” Teacher Gu said. “It's over now.”

“I want to see her one last time.”

Teacher Gu did not speak. For the past ten years, he had visited Shan only twice, at the beginning of her sentence and right before the retrial. The first time he had gone with his wife, and they had both been hopeful despite the fact that Shan had been given a ten-year sentence. Shan was eighteen then, still a child. Ten years were not hard to go through, he said to his wife and daughter, just a small fraction of one's long life. Things could be worse, he told them.

Shan was sneering the entire time that he spoke. Afterward she said, “Baba, doesn't it make you tired to talk about things you yourself don't even believe in?”

“I believe in good patience,” replied Teacher Gu. It did not surprise him that his daughter behaved this way toward him. The arrest had come as a shock for Teacher Gu and his wife; they had thought of their daughter as a revolutionary youth. Only later did they learn that Shan had written a letter to her boyfriend and expressed doubts about Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution. Teacher Gu and his wife had not known she had a boyfriend. He would have warned Shan had he been told about the man; he would have said—once and again, even if she did not listen—that betrayals often came from the most intimate and beloved people in one's life. He would have demanded that she bring the boyfriend to meet them. But would they have been able to make a difference? The boyfriend turned the letter in to the city Revolution Committee. Shan got a ten-year sentence and her boyfriend was awarded the privilege of joining the army, even though his background—a family of capitalists and counterrevolutionaries—had not been good enough for him to enlist.