Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

Tong thought about Bashi's words. They did not quite make sense but he found it hard to argue. “Are you going there?” Tong asked.

“See, that's a question a smart boy asks. Yes, and no. I'm going there, for a different reason than these people are, but if you're looking for someone to tag along with, you've found the right person. But here's one thing you have to promise me—you need to listen to me. I don't want you to get lost or trampled by the crowd.”

Just then the woman announcer's voice came from the loudspeakers. Both Tong and Bashi stopped to listen. When she finished, Bashi said, “I didn't know that Sweet Pea was behind this. So it must mean the government is behind the rally now. Bad news, huh?”

“What's bad news?”

“Nothing. So, do you want to come with me?”

Tong thought about it and agreed.

“I'm old enough to be your uncle already,” Bashi said. “But I'll give you a discount this time, and you can call me Big Brother.”

Tong did not reply but walked with Bashi. When they reached the city square, Tong realized that Bashi had been lying—there was no one asking for the white flower as a token for admission, nor was there a confused stampede. The line ran from the center to the southwest corner of the square, and then turned east until it reached the southeast corner, where more people were joining it. Tong stepped behind the last man, but Bashi tugged at him and whispered that there was much more to see elsewhere. Tong hesitated but followed Bashi out of curiosity. A smart and sensible boy, Bashi praised Tong, as they walked to the east side of Chairman Mao's statue, where there was less of a crowd. A few wreaths of white flowers had been placed along the edge of the pedestal; in front of the wreaths was an enlarged photo held up by a makeshift stand of bamboo sticks; the young girl in the picture, a teenager, tipped her head slightly backward, her smile wide, as if the photographer had just made a joke.

Bashi clicked his tongue. “Is that the woman?”

“Who?”

“The counterrevolutionary.”

Tong looked at the picture. Hard as he tried, he could not connect the girl, young, confident, and beautiful, to the woman he had seen on the day of the execution, her face an ashen color and her neck wrapped in bloodstained surgical tape.

“Hey, hey, did you lose your soul over a beautiful face?” Bashi said to Tong. “Look there.”

Tong breathed hard and stood on tiptoe. Wreaths as tall as a man's height had formed a circle, and the line of people going in and then leaving, through a gap on the other side of the circle, blocked his view.

Bashi looked for a long moment. “Very interesting. Aha, that's her. And he's there too.”

Tong did not want to admit that he was too short to see anything. Bashi looked at him and sighed. “Well, I've brought you here so I am responsible for entertaining you, no?” He squatted down and told Tong to hop onto his shoulders. Tong hesitated, but when Bashi told him to stop being a sissy, he climbed up. “Hold on to my head,” Bashi said, and stood up. “Ugh. You look like a cabbage but weigh like a stone Buddha,” Bashi complained, but Tong did not reply, his attention drawn inside the circle. In the middle a woman was carefully placing a white flower into a huge basket with a diameter of more than two arms. Next to the basket was a table, on which lay a piece of white fabric. A man behind the table pointed to the white fabric and said something to the woman, and she shook her head apologetically and left without looking up at him. Tong recognized the man as a teacher from his school.

“Do you see what I see?” Bashi said, and moved closer to the fence made of wreaths. Tong wavered and held on to Bashi's neck. “Hey, don't choke me.”

Tong let his hands free. “That auntie there is the news announcer,” he said, a bit too loud.

Kai looked up at a boy's voice but quickly turned back to the woman who was about to leave the circle. “Thank you, comrade,” she said. “This is Gu Shan's mother.”

“Thank you for your support,” Mrs. Gu said.

The woman did not acknowledge Kai or Mrs. Gu when they held out their hands to thank her. She left quickly and thought about her husband and two children, who must be wondering by now why a short stop off at her work unit had taken so long; she had lied and said she needed to readjust a perimeter in the machine she ran in the food-processing factory.

The line moved quietly. One by one people dropped their white flowers in the basket; some of them signed their names on the white cloth, but others, when invited, apologized. Kai greeted everyone in line and spoke to them about the importance of the petition for the nation's well-being. Her voice, soft and clear, sounded reassuring; after all, was she not the official news announcer? Some people, once they had talked to Kai, changed their minds and signed the petition.

“Hey, are you deaf?” Bashi said to Tong. “I'm asking you a question.”

“What did you say?”

“How long is the line now? I can't even lift my head because of you.”

“Still very long.”

“How many people do you see?”

Tong tried to count. “Sixty, maybe eighty. It's hard to count. They're coming and going.”

“Have you seen anyone you know?”

“The auntie by the basket,” Tong said. “She's the announcer, you know? She just smiled at me.”

“Everybody knows that. Who else?”

“A teacher from our school.”

“Who else?”

Tong looked at the people waiting and recognized some faces, another teacher from his school who taught an upper grade, an old shop assistant at the pharmacy who liked to give children pickled plums for snacks, the postman who delivered letters to Tong's neighborhood twice a day and who always whistled when he rode by on his green postman's bicycle, Old Hua and his wife, who stood an arm's length apart in line, neither looking up at the people around them. Tong told Bashi what he saw and Bashi told him to keep up the good work. “You could make a good apprentice for me,” Bashi said. He greeted everyone passing by as if he knew them all, though few returned his greetings. Some people glanced at Tong but most ignored him and his companion. In their eyes, Tong thought, he was probably only a small child who had come for some inappropriate fun; he was sad that he could not prove himself otherwise. He wondered whether the man he was with had come just for a good time, but it seemed too late to confront him.

Thirty minutes passed, perhaps longer; the basket, already overfilled, was put aside and replaced by a new one. The sun had risen now, casting the shadow of Chairman Mao over the place where Tong and Bashi stood. Bashi moved out of the shadow, still with Tong on his shoulders. After a while, when Tong told him that the line was shorter now, Bashi said that Tong should come down. “Sooner or later you'll break my back,” Bashi said, massaging his neck with both hands.

“Are you going to put in your white flower?” Tong asked. His legs had fallen asleep and he had to stamp hard to awake them.

“No,” Bashi said. “Why should I?”

“I thought that was why you were here.”

“I told you I'm here for a different reason,” Bashi said.

Disappointed, Tong limped away.

“You don't want to know where Ear is?”

Tong turned around. “Have you seen him?”

“Not lately,” Bashi said. “But remember, I'm a detective, and I can find anything out for you.”

Tong shook his head and said, “I'll find him myself.”

“Do you want me to lend you my flower?”

Tong thought about the offer and nodded. He wished his mother had not destroyed their flower so he did not have to beg from this man he disliked. Bashi took the flower out from his sleeve and handed it to Tong. “Yours now,” he said. “On the condition that you're not to leave me yet.”