Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

The wife, her face regaining color, stepped from behind the man. “What do you think you are doing? This is a civilized society.”

The woman's voice was shrill. Teacher Gu could not help but feel sorry for the husband, whose beautiful voice—were it to have a life of its own—would probably be disappointed beyond words by the mismatch of the other voice, blade-thin and ugly.

“Don't think you can scare me with that Red Guard style of your daughter's,” the wife said. “Let me tell you, truth is not to be enforced by violence in our country.”

Teacher Gu pointed his cane at the woman's face, his whole body shaking. “Do not come and shit in my house,” he said slowly, trying to enunciate every word.

“What vulgarity for a schoolteacher,” the woman said. “The earlier you are fired, the better for the next generation.”

The husband pulled her back and moved between her and the shaking cane, apologizing for the misunderstanding. She pushed her husband aside and said there was no need to succumb to the rudeness of the old man. “Now I dare you to hit me. Hit me now, you counterrevolutionary fox! Hit me so we can put you under the guillotine of justice.”

Teacher Gu watched the woman, frothing with a hatred that he did not understand; she was his daughter's age, without much education perhaps, without a brain for sure. He let the cane fall to the floor and said to the husband, “Young man, I beg you—this request is between two men—and I beg you sincerely. Why don't you tell your wife that such behavior will only make her an ugly, unwanted woman in the end?”

The woman sneered. “What a rotten thought. Why should I be taught anything by my husband?” she said. “Women are the major pillars for our Communist mansion.”

Teacher Gu sat down and wrote in big strokes on a piece of paper, his handwriting crooked, with no beautiful calligraphy to speak of. SHUT UP. GO AWAY. He showed the paper to the couple. He had decided not to waste one more word on the woman.

“Who are you to order us around? Let me tell you, you and that wife of yours are like the crickets after the first frost. There's not much time left for you to hop.”

The man dragged his wife away, and when she resisted, he said in a low voice that she might as well shut up now. She raised her voice and questioned him. The man half dragged and half carried her out of the house. Through the open door, Teacher Gu heard her shouting and cursing at her husband's cowardice even in front of an old, useless man. Teacher Gu gathered all his energy to move across the room and close the door. When he returned to the table, his hands were shaking too hard to write. The visitors, even though farcically obvious in their intention to uncover some firsthand secrets, spelled danger; but while waiting for the noose to tighten around his neck, what could a man do except close his eyes and believe that the possibility of escaping one's fate lay not in the hands of others but in one's own will?

UNDER THE SHELTER of a dark evening sky on the day after Ching Ming, ten houses were entered and searched. Arrests were made, and none of the suspects resisted. By nightfall the first victory against the anti-Communist disruption was reported in a classified telegraph to the provincial capital.

A high-ranking party official, flown in from the provincial capital to take charge, was met by the mayor and his staff. Han and his parents, once considered the most trustworthy assistants to the mayor, were excluded from the meeting. Special security teams, formed to ensure an impartial investigation and cleansing of Muddy River, and made up of police and workers from a city a hundred miles away, were transported into the city in ten covered army trucks. During the ride, a young man who had recently inherited his father's position in the police department, worked loose a knot in the tarp cover and peeked outside. The silver stars in the sky and the dark mountain, even from afar, made him shiver like a young dog. He had just turned twenty, and had never left his hometown. He imagined the stories he would tell, upon his return, to the young clerk at the front desk; she would call him a braggart, insisting she did not believe a single word, but her blushing smile would tell a different story, understood only by the two of them.

The people of Muddy River, despite speculation and uncertainty, trusted in the old saying that the law did not punish the masses for their wrongdoing. This belief allowed them to busy themselves with their nightly drinking, arguing, lovemaking—their grand dreams and petty desires all coming alive once again on a night like this, when wild peach and plum trees blossomed along the riverbank, their fragrance carried by the spring breeze through open windows and into people's houses.

A carpenter and his apprentice walked on the Cross-river Bridge in the direction of the mountain, the young man pushing a wheelbarrow with his tools and watching the red tip of a cigarette dangling from his master's mouth. The carpenter had bought the cigarettes with their last money, as he had sworn before coming to the city that he wanted to have a taste of cigarettes. There had been other promises, made to the carpenter's wife and the apprentice's parents, before they had left the mountain, but their hope of making a small fortune was defeated by the officials who hired them to make, among other things, three television stands without paying more than the minimum compensation. City dwellers, the carpenter said between puffs, were a bunch who'd had their hearts eaten out by wild dogs; he warned his apprentice not to make the same mistake again, but the young man, who had been puzzled by the television sets he had seen in the officials’ homes, imagined himself sitting in one of the armchairs he had helped to make and enjoying the beautiful women who appeared on the television screen at the push of a button.

A blind beggar sat in front of the Huas’ shack and ran a small piece of rosin along the length of the bow for his two-string fiddle. He had been on his way from one town to the other when he met Old Hua and his wife, who had invited him to stay at their place for the night and had treated him to a good meal. The beggar had not met the couple before, though it did not surprise him, after a round of drinking, that they began to tell stories about their lives on the road. People recognized their own kind, despite all possible disguises, and in the end, the three of them drank, laughed, and cried together. The couple asked the beggar to stop drifting and settle down with them, and it seemed natural for him to agree. But now that the magic of the rice liquor had waned, the blind man knew that he would leave first thing the next morning. He had never stayed with anyone in his life, and it was too late to change his fate. He tested the bow on the string, and the fiddle sighed and moaned.

The door opened, and the blind man stopped his bow and listened. The husband was snoring from inside the shack, and the wife closed the door as quietly as she had opened it and took a seat near the beggar.

“I'm waking you up,” the blind man said.

“Go on and play,” Mrs. Hua said.

The blind man had planned to sneak away without waking the couple up, but now with the wife sitting next to him, he owed her an explanation. “It was nice of you to invite me to stay,” he said. “I don't mean to be a man who changes his mind often, but I think I may have to decline your kindness.”

“You have to be back on the road. I don't blame you.”

“Once destined to be homeless, one finds it difficult to settle down.”

“I know. I wish we could go back on the road too,” Mrs. Hua said. “Now go on and play”

The blind man nodded, knowing that the couple would not take his departure as an offense. Slowly he drew the bow across the string and played an ancient song called “Leave-taking” for his day-old friendship.