Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

A son was not what Teacher Gu had consciously hoped for, but now he wondered whether he was wrong. It would make a difference if he had a son, drinking with him, talking man-to-man talk. “Still, better luck than many other families,” Teacher Gu said.

Gousheng took a long drink from the bottle. “Yes, but I wouldn't have felt so much pressure if I'd had a brother.”

“You and—your wife—don't have children?”

Gousheng shook his head. “Not a trace of a baby anywhere,” he said.

“And you are”—Teacher Gu struggled for the right words—”active in trying to make a baby?”

“As often as I can,” Gousheng said. “My wife—Teacher Gu, please don't mind her rudeness—she is a soft woman inside. She feels bad about not being able to have a child. She thinks the whole world laughs at her.”

Teacher Gu thought about the wife, her words that issued like razor blades. He could not imagine her as a soft woman, but it pleased him, for a moment, that she was in well-deserved despair, though the joy of Teacher Gu's revenge soon vanished. They were all sufferers in their despicable pain, every one of them, and what right did he have to laugh at the woman whose husband was pouring his heart out to him, a man in sincere confession to a fellowman?

“I worry that her temper is making it harder for us to have a baby. But how can I tell her? She's the kind of person who wants everything, all the success and glory.”

Teacher Gu picked up the bottle and studied it. Gousheng pushed the food toward him. “Eat and drink,” he said. “Teacher Gu, I'm a man who doesn't know many words in books, and you are the most knowledgeable person I've met. Please, you tell me, Teacher Gu—is there something we could do better? I worry that my wife is mean to too many people and we're being punished because of her behavior.”

Teacher Gu drank carefully from the bottle and braced himself for the coarse liquid. “Scientifically speaking,” he said, and then cringed at his words, which would probably alienate the man who was saving him from a lonely night. “Have you been to the doctor's?” he asked.

“My wife doesn't want to go—we've been married for three years. It's enough that she can't get pregnant—if we go to the doctor, the whole world will know our trouble.”

Teacher Gu thought of explaining that she might not be the one fully responsible for the situation, but then why would he want to release her from her shame and humility? He drank and popped the peanuts into his mouth the way Gousheng did. “There's no other way. Just try again. But you have to know that some hens never lay eggs,” Teacher Gu said, disgusted and then exhilarated by his own crass metaphor.

Gousheng thought about it. After a few gulps he nodded. “I would be doomed, then,” he said. “My parents didn't agree with our marriage when they saw her picture. They worried that she looked too manly for a wife.”

“And you liked her?”

“She was already a branch leader of the Youth League, and I was only a common worker. How could I reject such a match? A blind man could see how lucky I was, especially since she was the one who initiated the matchmaking.”

“Why did she choose you, then?” Teacher Gu said. “But, of course, you are a handsome man,” he offered unconvincingly

Gousheng shook his head. “She said she wanted someone trustworthy, someone from the proletarian class, someone who earned a living with his own hands. But why on earth did she choose me? There are many men who would have fit her standard! Sometimes I wish she had not chosen me—to think I could have had a more obedient wife instead of being the obedient one!”

Teacher Gu looked at the young man, in drunken tears. “Women are unpredictable,” agreed Teacher Gu. “Men certainly want to understand their logic, but let me tell you, they act with little sense. Why don't you divorce her? Let her suffer. Don't suffer with her. They are all the same—they don't know how to make men's lives easier!”

Gousheng seemed to be shocked by Teacher Gu's sudden vehemence, but Teacher Gu drank and talked on with new energy. “Take my wife, for example—look at where she's gotten herself!”

Gousheng drank quietly and then said, “Teacher Gu, your wife …”

“Don't feel you have to defend her in any way. I know what she did.”

“She's probably an accomplice at most,” Gousheng said. “She's older and they probably won't be too harsh on her.”

Teacher Gu ignored Gousheng's effort to comfort him. He drank now with a speed that matched Gousheng's. “Let me tell you, the worst thing that ever happened in this new China—not that I'm against the new China in any way, but to think of all these women who get to do what they want without men's consent. They think they know so much about the world but they act out of anything but a brain! Your wife, forgive me if I offend you—she is the same creature I have seen in my own wife. And my daughter too—you may not know her but she was just like your wife, full of ideas and judgments but no idea how to be a respectful human being. They think they are revolutionary, progressive, they think they are doing a great favor to the world by becoming masters of their own lives, but what is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? Let me tell you—history is, unlike what they say on the loudspeakers, not driven by revolutionary force but by people's desire to climb up onto someone else's neck and shit and pee as he or she wants. Enough bad things are done by men already, but if you add women to the equation, one might as well wish not to bring a baby into this world. What do you see in this world that is worthwhile for a baby to be born into? Tell me, give me one good reason.”

Teacher Gu felt his heart spill out onto the table like the rolling peanuts that his fingers were now too clumsy to catch. He had never felt such passion about the world. Why should he remain respectful and humble when he had to suffer, not only from the men he hated but also from the women he loved? Why did he have to love them from the beginning, when the Buddha had made it clear that every beautiful woman was only a bag of white bones in disguise? How could he be deceived by them, wives and lovers and daughter—who were they but creatures sent to destroy him, to make him live in pain, and die in pain?

“Teacher Gu, don't get too loud,” Gousheng said in a whisper. “You're being imprudent.”

The young man, who sat at his table but whose name had already eluded Teacher Gu, tried to take the bottle away. Teacher Gu pushed his hand, ready to fight the young man and the world standing behind him. This was his home and he could do what he wanted to, Teacher Gu said aloud. He could feel the world take a timid peek from behind the young man's tall and heavily built body. If it looked again, Teacher Gu decided to smash its head with the thick green bottle, but when he looked down at his hand, he did not know where the bottle was.

HALFWAY THROUGH THE CHANTING of a revolutionary song, Tong's father trailed off and soon started to snore. “Not many people can remain cheerful after drinking,” Tong's mother said in admiration, as if to explain her indulgence of her husband's drinking. She knelt down next to him to loosen his shoelaces and take off his shoes. “He has the best virtue of a drunkard.”

Tong sat on the edge of the chair and looked down at his own dangling legs. He was waiting for his father to pass out into happy oblivion. Nobody had mentioned anything about the signature on the petition; still, Tong could not convince himself, and he decided to talk with his mother for reassurance.

She peeled the socks off his father's feet. “Get some warm water,” she said, not looking up. And when Tong did not move, she told him to hurry up before his father caught a cold. Tong dragged himself to where the water kettle sat high on the counter, a pair of cranes strolling on its pink plastic cover. He looked at the cranes, one stretching its neck to the sky and the other lowering its head for something he did not see. When his mother urged him again, he climbed onto a chair and held the water kettle to his chest like a baby. When he jumped down, the loud thump made his mother frown. Tong pulled a basin from underneath the washstand with his foot. The bottom of the basin scratched the cement floor, the noise of which seemed to make him feel livelier than he had felt the whole day. He nudged the basin, first with one foot and then the other, as if the basin were a ball he was trying hard not to lose on the playing field. One, two, one, two, he counted, and almost bumped into his mother.