Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

Kwen lit a cigarette. “You know I don't like anyone to be naughty around me?”

“Why would I want to? I have my own grandmother to take care of.”

Kwen nodded. “Just a reminder.”

Bashi promised that he would behave and left in haste. He should have returned the boulders to their place the night before. A good detective did not leave any traces of his investigation around. He wondered if it was too late for him to correct his mistake.

The Huas’ cabin was padlocked. Bashi picked up a small piece of coal and wrote big scrawling characters on the door: My grandma is dead—Bashi. He looked at the characters and then wiped out the word dead and wrote gone. There was no need to disturb two old people with the harshness of reality, Bashi thought, and then it occurred to him that the Huas might not be able to read.

The visit to the morgue was disappointing, one more sign that this world was becoming as bad as it could get. The woman at the front desk threw a pad across the table, before Bashi could explain things to her. When he opened his mouth, she pointed to the papers. “Fill them out before you open your mouth.”

It took Bashi some time to work out how to answer the questions. He had forgotten to bring the household register card; the woman wouldn't be too happy about it, but she would certainly understand negligence from a bereft grandson. Perhaps people would regard him differently now that his grandmother was dead; perhaps they would forgive him and love him because he was an orphan. He dipped the pen into the ink bottle and said to the woman as he wrote, “You know, she is the only one I have and I'm her only one too.”

The woman raised an eyebrow and glanced at Bashi without replying. Perhaps she did not know who he was. “My grandma, she left me today,” he explained. “I don't have parents. I never did, as long as I can remember.”

“Did I say not to open your mouth before finishing the forms?”

“Yes, but I'm just being friendly,” Bashi said. “You don't have many people to talk with you here, do you?”

The woman sighed and put a magazine up in front of her eyes. He looked at the magazine cover; Popular Movies, the title said, and a young couple leaned onto a tree and looked out at Bashi with blissful anticipation. Bashi made a face at the couple before going back to work on the forms. The last paper was a permission sheet for cremation. Bashi read through it twice before he could understand it. “Comrade,” he said in a hoarse, low voice, intending to earn the sympathy that he fully deserved.

“Done?”

“I have a question. My grandmother—she was eighty-one and she raised me from very young—she already had a casket made. She didn't like the idea of being burned,” Bashi said. “I don't know about you but I myself would rather not be burned, alive or dead.”

The woman stared at Bashi for a long moment and grabbed the registration from his hand. “Why are you wasting my time then?” she said. She ripped the sheets off, squeezed them into a ball, and targeted the wastebasket by the entrance. She missed, and Bashi walked over to pick the ball up. “I don't get it, comrade,” he said, trying to sound humble. “You asked me to fill out the forms and open my mouth afterward, and I did as you told me.” Most women were ill-tempered at work, according to Bashi's observation; at home they served their grumpy husbands, so women had to show, at work, that they were fully in control. Bashi was willing to humor this one despite her looks—she was no longer young, and the dark bags underneath her eyes made her look like a panda.

The woman pointed to a poster on the wall. “Read it,” she said and went back to the magazine.

“Of course, comrade, anything you say,” said Bashi. He read the poster: The city government, in accordance with the new provincial policy to transform the old, outdated custom of underground burying, which took up too much land that could otherwise be used to grow food for the ever-growing population, had decided to make cremation the only legal form of undertaking; the effective date was two and a half months away.

“It seems we still have some time till the policy becomes effective,” Bashi said to the woman. “Enough time to bury a little old woman, isn't it?”

“That's your business,” the woman said behind the magazine. “Not ours.”

“But can I rent some space in your freezer, until the ground starts to thaw?”

“We only take in bodies for cremation.”

“But the regulation says—”

“Forget the regulation. We don't have enough space here for everyone, and our policy now is to take bodies that are for cremation only,” said the woman. She left the front desk and entered an inner office.

Bashi left the morgue with a less heavy heart. His grandmother, a wise woman, had chosen the right time to die. Two more months of living would have sent her into an oven; just like she had always said—heaven assigned punishment to any form of greed. The death of his grandmother, instead of being a tragedy had become something worth celebrating. One must always look on the good side of things, Bashi reminded himself. His usual energy was restored. The sunshine was warm on his face, a cheerful spring morning.

“Bashi,” said a small voice, coming from a side alley. Bashi turned and saw Nini, bareheaded, with his hat in her good hand, standing in the shadow of the alley wall. She did not look as ugly as he remembered.

“Nini!” Bashi said, happy to see a friendly face. “What are you doing here?”

“I've been looking for you. I didn't see you this morning,” Nini said. “You said yesterday you would give me coal if I talked to you.”

Bashi knocked on his head harder than he'd meant to and winced. “Of course, it's my mistake,” he said, and walked over. “But it was only because I was running an important errand this morning. Do you want to hear about it?”

Nini opened her eyes wide, and for the first time Bashi noticed her lovely, dense eyelashes and dark brown irises. He blew at her eyelashes and she winked. He laughed and then rubbed his eyes hard to look sad. “My grandma died last night,” he said.

Nini gasped.

“Yes, my grandma who brought me up alone and loved no one but me,” said Bashi.

“How did it happen?”

“I don't know. She died in her sleep.”

“Then why are you sad?” Nini said. “You should be happy. I've heard people say if a woman dies in her sleep, it means she's been rewarded for her good deeds.”

“Happy I am!” Bashi said. “But the thing is, nobody is willing to help me with her burial.”

“Where is she now?” Nini asked. “Did you clean and change her? You don't want her to leave unwashed and in old clothes.”

“How do I know these things?” Bashi said. “Nobody has died before. You know a lot. Do you want to come and help me?”

Nini hesitated. “I need to go to the marketplace.”

“We have enough vegetables to feed you and all your fairy sisters. Coal too. You can get as much as you want. Just come and help a good old woman,” Bashi said. “Come on, don't make a friend wait.”

A FEW STEPS BEHIND BASHI, Nini counted the lampposts. It was his idea not to walk side by side, so that people would not suspect anything. From the marketplace they turned north and followed the road halfway up the northern mountain. Here the blocks were built in the same fashion as in the valley, but Bashi's house was unusually large. He looked around the alley, which was empty, before unlocking the gate and motioning to Nini to enter. She looked at the mansion in front of her, impressed. The yard was twice the usual size, with a wooden storage cabin as big as the front room of her family's home and with a high brick wall to separate it from the neighbors’ yards. His father had been a war hero, Bashi explained, so they were granted more space for their house; however, he added, the construction team hadn't bothered to make it presentable, building a two-room house like every other house on the street, only twice as big.