Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

People were the most dangerous animals in the world, Teacher Gu thought of telling his daughter during that visit ten years ago; stay small and unimportant, like a grain of dust, he thought of advising her, but before he had the chance, his daughter refused to stay in the room and signaled for the guards to take her away.

Teacher Gu had not visited his daughter after that. His wife had gone but only once or twice a year. She had worried that too many visits would harm Shan's record and add more time to her term. They rarely talked about their daughter, each in secret hoping that ten years would somehow pass without any incidents. What came at the end of the term, however, was a notice saying that Shan would receive a retrial—she had been unrepentant in prison and had written, year after year, letters of appeal for herself, and personal journals that contained the most evil slanders of Communism.

At the weekly meeting at his school, the party secretary asked Teacher Gu to share his thoughts on his daughter's upcoming retrial. He had nothing to say, Teacher Gu answered, and all the party members shook their heads at him in disappointment. “Let me tell you what I think, since you have nothing to say,” said the party secretary. “Last time your daughter was sentenced for her slander of our Communist cause. She was young and educable then, and was given this chance to correct her wrong notion. But what happened? She didn't take the opportunity. She not only refused to reclaim her love and trust for our party and our Communist cause, she also argued against us from the most counterrevolutionary point of view. That,” the secretary said, his index and middle fingers pointing at Teacher Gu, “will never be tolerated.”

Teacher Gu did not tell his wife about the meeting. Such a meeting must have taken place in her work unit too, and a similar message conveyed. He heard her weeping sometimes at night. When he tried to comfort her, she acted cheerful and said that they should not worry too much. Shan was still a young woman, she said, and she had already spent ten years in prison; the judge would be lenient and the retrial would be only a form of warning.

Teacher Gu did not say anything to encourage his wife's blind confidence. A few days later he went to the prison for a visit. The guards were rude to him, but he had become used to people's abuse over the years and thought nothing in particular about their behavior. What shocked him was Shan's condition—she was not the defiant, lively girl he had known ten years earlier. Her prison uniform, gray and torn, smelled of filth; her short hair, filthy too, had thinned and there was a big bald patch in the middle of her scalp; her skin was so pale it was almost transparent, and her eyes were wide and dreamy. She recognized him immediately, but it seemed that what had happened ten years earlier was all gone from her memory. She started talking when she sat down. She told him that she had written letters to Chairman Mao and he had replied, apologizing for the wrong decision and promising a release. It had been two years since Chairman Mao had passed away, but Teacher Gu, sitting in a cold sweat, did not point that out to Shan. She talked fast, about all the things she planned to do after her release. In her mind, she had a fiancé waiting for her outside the prison walls, and the first thing they would do was go to city hall to apply for a marriage license. Teacher Gu did not protest when, at the end of the visiting period, two guards grabbed Shan's arms roughly and forced her out of the room. She was still talking, but he did not hear her. He stared at her uniform pants, stained with dark menstrual blood. Death was far from the worst that could happen to a human being. Something bigger than fear crept over him; he wished he could finish his daughter's life for her.

Teacher Gu did not know how long his daughter had been mad, nor did he know if his wife was aware of this fact. Perhaps she had been keeping it from him for years. In turn he lied about a note from the prison informing them that Shan's visiting rights had been stripped away because of disobedience. His wife sighed but did not question further, which made him wonder if she accepted the order willingly for his sake. The death sentence came to him as a relief; perhaps it was for his wife too, but he had no way of knowing. With the failure of the appeal, Mrs. Gu started to talk about seeing Shan one last time, but her request for a visit was turned down, no reason given.

Mrs. Gu put on her coat. Women were like children, Teacher Gu thought, the way they tenaciously held on to things that had little meaning. When he begged her to stay, she raised her voice and asked why he did not let her see their daughter.

“Seeing is not as good as staying blind,” Teacher Gu said, quoting an ancient poem.

“We've been blind all our lives,” said Mrs. Gu. “Why don't you want to open your eyes and see the facts?”

In her eyes he recognized the same defiance that he had once seen in Shan's eyes. “The dead have gone. Let's forget about all of it,” he said.

“How can you forget so easily?”

“It's a necessity,” he said. “A necessity is never easy but we must accept it.”

“You've always wanted us to accept everything without questioning,” his wife said. “Why do we have to live without backbones?”

Teacher Gu averted his eyes. He had no answer for his wife, and he wished she would let it go without prolonging this suffering for both of them. Before he could say something, he felt a sudden dead-ness in the left side of his body and he had to kneel down. He looked up at his wife for help but his eyes could no longer see. She rushed to support him but he was too heavy for her; she let him lie down slowly and he felt the coldness of the cement floor seeping through his clothes and numbing his whole body. “Don't go,” he begged, longing for a fire, for her warm and soft body. For a moment he was confused and thought he saw his first wife's face, still as young and beautiful as thirty years ago. “Don't leave me,” he said. “Don't make me lose you again.”

THE WOMAN'S BODY was lying facedown on the crystallized snow, her arms wrenched and bound behind her back in an intricate way. Her head, unlike what Bashi had imagined, was in one complete piece. He stopped a few steps away and looked at the bloodstains on her prisoner's uniform. “Is she dead?” he asked.

“Why, are you afraid now?” Kwen said, and bent down to study the body. “I didn't pay you to tag along.”

“Afraid? No, no. Just making sure she has no chance.” “No chance at all,” Kwen said, kicking one leg of the body and then the other. He squatted down next to the body and pointed to the woman's back. “Look here. They bound her arms this way so her left middle finger was pointing right at where her heart was.”

“Why the heart?”

“So that the executioner knew where to aim his gun.”

On the walk across the frozen river to the island, Bashi had conjured a vivid story about a blown-away head, a bloody brain blooming on the snow like spilled paint. He had imagined telling the tale to the townspeople who stood around him in awe. He went closer now and squatted beside Kwen. The bloodstain on her back was about the size of a bowl, and it amazed Bashi that such a little wound could finish a life. The woman's face was half-hidden in the snow, impossible for one to make out her features. Bashi touched her scalp; it was cold, but the hair, soft and thin, felt strangely alive.

“Let's get down to work,” Kwen said. He cut the bonds with a knife, but the woman's arms stayed where they were behind her back. Kwen shrugged. He took out a used towel from his coat pocket, wrapped it around the woman's head twice, and tied it with a knot on the back of her head.