Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

Nini hesitated. She would love to come to this house again, with food and coal and a friend, but it was impossible. In the end, Bashi found the solution—Nini could spend an hour or so every morning in his house and she could get the coal from his storage bin; later in the day, she could come to see him at least once, with the excuse of going to the marketplace.

Nini was sad when they said goodbye. On the way home, she turned into a side alley and took the envelope out of her pocket. Her parents would certainly discover this by the end of the day. She wondered if they would send her to the police because she was a thief, or just happily confiscate the money. She disliked either possibility, so she changed direction and walked toward the Gus’ house. When she reached their gate, she could not help but hope that they would throw the door open and welcome her into their arms.

A man walked past Nini and then turned to her. “Are you looking for Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu?”

Nini nodded, a small hope rising—perhaps they had known she would come, and had asked a neighbor to watch out for her.

“Teacher Gu is ill, and Mrs. Gu is taking care of him in the hospital. They won't be back for some time.”

Nini thought of asking for more details, but the man went on before she could say anything. She waited until he was out of sight and slipped the envelope beneath the gate. They would never guess that the money had come from her, but perhaps they would change their minds, when they realized that they were well treated by the world while they themselves had mistreated her; perhaps they would come and look for her when Teacher Gu was released from the hospital.

TONG LEFT HOME after lunch. His parents were taking their midday nap, and Ear was running around somewhere in town. Tong's father was not fond of Ear, and thought it a waste of Tong's life to play with the dog. Tong was happy that Ear found places to wander about until sunset, when the darkness made him less of a nuisance to Tong's father, who would by then have begun his nightly drinking.

It was early for the afternoon class, and Tong took a longer route to school. In the past six months he had explored the many streets and alleys of Muddy River, and he never tired of watching people busy with their lives. The marketplace, where many mouths seemed to be talking at the same time without giving anyone the time to reply, was an exciting place, while the back alleys, with men and women gossiping in different groups, were full of overheard tales about other people's lives. Only an old man pondering over nothing or a loitering cat mesmerized by the sunlight at a street corner would make Tong feel lost, as if they belonged to a secret world to which he had no access.

Life seemed the same after the previous day's event. All these people must have attended the denunciation ceremony, but none of the faces betrayed any memories. The announcements, some torn down and others now only fragments glued to the walls, were no longer noticed by the passersby. In the marketplace, housewives bargained in loud, accusing voices, as if the vendors were all shameless liars. At a state-run vegetable stand, a male sales assistant, bored and idle, formed a pistol with his hand, aiming it at a female colleague's bosom. The woman, in her twenties with a round, full moon face, waved her hand as if chasing away an annoying fly, though every time the man made a banging noise, she laughed. Tong smiled, but when she caught sight of him, she called him a little rascal. “What are you looking at? Be careful or I'll scoop out both your eyeballs.”

Tong blushed and turned away. Behind him the male assistant asked the woman why he himself hadn't the right to such a luxury. She replied that she would oblige him on the spot by removing his eyeballs if he really wanted to be blind; the man urged her to do so, saying that he had no use for his eyes now that he had seen her heavenly beauty. Tong walked on. There was a secret code to the adults’ world, Tong realized once again, and without knowing the rules, he would always be found offensive for reasons he did not understand.

Around the corner a few chickens sauntered in an alley. Tong fixed his eyes on a bantam hen, willing her to stop pecking, but she searched attentively for food, oblivious. A feral cat quietly approached the chickens from behind a three-legged chair, but before the cat could move closer, an older woman, sitting on a wooden stool in front of a yard, hit the ground with her stick and shrieked. The chickens scattered, flapping their wings and cooing frantically. Caught off guard, Tong took a few breaths to calm down before asking the old woman if everything was all right.

“Things could've gone wrong if not for my vigilance,” replied the old woman.

Tong turned to look at the feral cat, studying them at a safe distance. “That cat probably just wanted to play,” he said.

“I'm not talking about the cat,” the old woman said. Tong looked up at the woman, baffled. “I'm talking about you, boy. You thought you could snatch the hen when nobody was around, huh?”

Tong stammered and said he had never thought of stealing anyone's chicken.

“Don't think I didn't hear that little abacus clicking in your belly when you looked at my chickens,” the old woman said. “A village boy like you!”

Tong retreated from the alley. There was little he could say to defend himself.

AFTER LUNCH KAI WENT to the one-room clinic on the first floor of the administration building and told the doctor that she didn't feel well. The doctor, around sixty-five years old, was entitled to give out only cold medicines and slips for a sick leave—with any problem bigger than a cough or a runny nose, the officials and clerks would go to the city hospital across the street.

Three days? the doctor asked while writing Kai's name neatly on top of the slip.

An afternoon would be fine, Kai replied. The doctor put down a cold that required a half day's rest, and then studied his old-fashioned penmanship for a moment with satisfaction before signing his name. Could he run it over to the propaganda department? Kai asked; she did not want her colleagues to make a fuss about a small cold, she explained, and the doctor nodded understandingly saying he would personally deliver the slip.

Kai went up to the studio through the back stairs and unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk. Inside was an old cotton jacket of brownish gray color, with mismatched buttons, and patches sewn on both elbows. A scarf was tucked into one pocket, and in the other pocket was a white cotton mask. The jacket and scarf had belonged to their previous nanny, and Kai had traded with the woman for a jacket and a scarf of her own. For possible out-of-town assignments, Kai had told the nanny, and even though she had tried to keep the explanation vague, the nanny had replied that of course Kai would not want to wear her woolen jacket or silk scarf to some of the filthy places the lower creatures dwelled in.

Kai changed into the outfit. Underneath where the outfit was kept were a stack of letters, in unmarked envelopes, all from Jialin. Before she locked the drawer again she took one envelope randomly from the stack. Inside she found a long letter about the nature of a totalitarian system, and Kai, having reread it many times and memorized the content by heart, scanned the page; it was written more as a meditation than a letter, and she always wondered if the same letter had been sent to and read by many of Jialin's friends. On a separate page in the same envelope there was a note, a brief paragraph about a new program from Britain, broadcast in Mandarin, which Jialin said he had picked up recently on his shortwave transistor radio. Once again Kai wondered if it was pure imagination when she had sensed his eagerness to share the news with her; it was these shorter notes, addressed to her and about the small details of his life that were largely unknown to her, that made her unwilling to burn his letters as he had instructed her to do.