Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

“Nine,” the boy said. “My father died six years ago, and my mother is ill.” To prove his story, the boy untied a small cloth bag and showed the man its contents—a few buns and half buns he had got, already hard as rocks. His sister had invented a way of re-cooking the leftover buns into a paste, he explained.

Bashi nodded. The boy must have told the story a thousand times to earn the sympathy of those old hens in town. He brought out a few bills. “You're certainly a boy who knows how to take care of your family. If not for this,” Bashi said, and bared his teeth, “if not for your mother and your sister, I would send for the police. Now take the money and buy some good clothes for your sister.”

The boy looked at the money and swallowed hard. “I killed your dog by accident, Uncle,” he said. “How dare I accept your money?”

Bashi laughed. The boy could certainly tell that Bashi was not much older than he, but he knew how to talk properly, and it pleased Bashi. “It's not my dog,” he said. “If you killed my dog I would wring your skinny neck like this.”

“Are you sure you don't want to send me to the police?”

Bashi knocked on the boy's head with his knuckle. “Don't be silly. The police wouldn't care if you hacked ten dogs to pieces.”

The boy accepted the money and thanked Bashi profusely. Bashi stopped the boy with an upturned hand. They both walked toward the dog; it had stopped panting and moving and now lay on the ground, its paws half-covered with mud. It was hard to imagine that a thin boy could kill a dog with such a precise cut.

The boy knelt down and retrieved the ax and wiped it clean on his coat. Bashi told him to throw away the ham. The boy hesitated and said, “But won't it be a waste?”

“Why do you ask so many silly questions?”

The boy watched Bashi hurl the ham with all his might. It made a beautiful arc in the afternoon sky and fell out of sight. “Now hurry back home before my patience runs out,” Bashi said.

The boy said yes but did not move, eyeing the dead dog. When Bashi urged him again, he said, “Uncle, what do you think will happen to the dog here?”

“How do I know?” Bashi said. “I told you it's not my dog.”

“Do you want a dog-skin hat or mufflers?” the boy asked.

Bashi smiled. “Ha, you cunning little thing. If I need anything I have money to buy it. Take the dog and make something for your sister, if that's what you're thinking.”

The boy smiled too. “Uncle, if not for our shabby place, I would treat you to a good meal with dog-meat soup for the holiday.”

“Don't sweet-talk me,” Bashi said. “Now I need to run on to my own business. Send my greeting to your sister.”

The boy watched Bashi disappear before he sat down to work. He dumped the old buns by the roadside and tore the cloth bag into strips. He took off his coat and wrapped it around the dog, and then strapped the body on his back. It was heavier than he'd thought, warm still, which reminded him of the day his sister rode piggyback on him as they followed their father's coffin to the cemetery. His father had held the boy's hands the moment before his death, and told him that he would have to be the man of the house and take care of his mother and sister.

The boy thought about his father's grave, untended in the past six years. He looked up at the sky, still brightly blue; if he hurried up, he would be able to get home before dark and clean up the grave for Ching Ming. His mother, bedridden for five years now, would not be able to make the trip, but he would take his sister there. He was now a man, responsible for the living as well as the dead. The boy walked fast; then after a moment, he turned back. It took him some thrashing around to locate the meat, which was a little dirty with sand, but with a good scrubbing it would make a fine holiday meal.

KAI TOLD HER COLLEAGUES in the propaganda department that she was going to give her studio a spring-cleaning. An editor raised his eyebrows but said nothing, and Kai realized that cleaning on the day before Ching Ming might be interpreted as a way to celebrate the superstitious holiday, but she decided not to dwell on the matter. Ever since the appearance of the leaflets, her colleagues in the propaganda department had been courteous to one another, yet no one dared mention anything about the situation; they were all seasoned barometers, fine-tuned to detect any minute change in the political atmosphere.

A secretary offered to help, and Kai politely refused, saying that the studio was too small for two people to move around in. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, the slowest time of the day, and when Kai left the office for the studio, she saw that many offices in the administration building were closed. People had started to take the afternoon off for the holiday the next day, even though as government employees, they were not allowed to celebrate Ching Ming publicly. Earlier that morning, when Kai had stopped by her mother's flat, her mother had told her that she had hired a trustworthy helper to send paper money and other offerings to Kai's father; Kai did not know if her in-laws had similar plans, as Han was not back yet from the provincial capital. It was about two weeks since he had left, and apart from a few phone calls he had made to her office—despite their status, they did not have a telephone in their flat, though Han had promised that would change very soon—they had not talked much. The office was not a good place for any exchange of information, nor, she imagined, did the provincial capital allow Han much freedom . All they talked about was Ming-Ming, who had missed Han for the first two days and then settled down as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Kai locked herself in the studio. She had expected some hostility from Teacher Gu, as she had also encountered resistance when she had first met Mrs. Gu—distrust of a stranger, more so in her case, as her voice represented the government. It had taken Kai a few visits for Mrs. Gu not to turn down the fruit and dried milk Kai brought for Teacher Gu, and after a while they had begun to talk, neither about Gu Shan nor about the protest, but, in the most harmless way, about the changing of the seasons. Slowly Mrs. Gu warmed up. One day she asked Kai about her parents, and Kai replied that her father had passed away several years ago. Mrs. Gu pondered this for a moment and said that it was a daughter's good fortune to see off her parents. Mrs. Gu quoted an old saying about the three utmost misfortunes in life—losing parents in childhood, losing a spouse in midlife, and losing a child in old age. Of the three misfortunes she had already experienced two, said Mrs. Gu, and Kai had to avert her eyes, as she could not find words of comfort. It was time for an old woman like her to make herself useful in some way, Mrs. Gu said, looking into Kai's eyes with neither self-pity nor sadness.

Kai had never expected Teacher Gu to recognize her as a former student. His hostility reminded her how she was bound, against her wishes, to her past, her family, and her status. She could, if she wanted to, go back to her old life; apart from introducing Mrs. Gu to Jialin, she did not have much involvement in the upcoming protest, nor did she have much contact with Jialin's friends, who, along with Jialin, had put out the leaflets and planned the event for Ching Ming. The fact that everything could be reversed was disconcerting. She did not need another option, and she wanted Teacher Gu, of all people, to understand and acknowledge her.

Someone banged on the door. Kai's heart pounded. When she opened the door Han squeezed in and locked it behind him.

“You frightened me,” Kai said. Her cheeks felt warm, caught, as she was, in a secretive moment, but Han seemed not to notice her unease. He looked equally flustered. “What's wrong?” Kai asked. “Is Ming-Ming all right?”