The Season of the Stranger (19 page)

Go to your room
he said.

I stayed in my room for nine days. On the tenth day he permitted me to leave my room but not to leave the house. Once he came to the pavilion to see me and as he walked in I stood up and said
No
. I remember that
No
. He turned almost in midstep and left.

I do not know even now what would have happened if it had continued that way. But I remember when young Hu's father died and the government demanded a great deal of money and young Hu could not cope with them, so that he found himself with less than half the fortune his father had had and my own father, hearing of this, refused to admit him to the house and sent for me.

He was chuckling again and he looked even older and drier.
You were very intelligent
he said.
No one could have foreseen this. But you did. It appears that you have an instinct
.

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but I never did because his rightness was there again, the rightness that should by then have been mine. Without it I was wrong but there was no way to explain that, no easy way, and even my not having it was part of the wrongness. So I said nothing and he released me then and let me return to the university.

But it was never again the same between us. Andrew came to the university later and when my father heard that I had a foreign teacher he wanted me to leave but I would not and his threats did not frighten me. And then it was even more different between us, even before the blood: I knew too many people who were strangers and worse to him and I heard too many speeches and thought too many thoughts. I was still a student of the classics but I did not work at it. I went instead to classes in English and in political history. He knew about the English but no one ever told him about the political history. And for a long time no one ever told him that I saw Andrew often. It was never the same.

And now it is worse. Now there is so little hope. I will think of him every day as I think of eating and sleeping and dressing myself and I will want to go back to him but it will be impossible. Or perhaps it will not. I wish I knew him better. My father, my own; I wish I knew him. I wish I did not have this fog of love and hate in me. I wish I had not begun to think of all this. I wish I were not weeping and lying in pain.

Andrew moved. He rolled over and raised himself to one elbow. He looked down at her and then he pulled her closer to him. His body was warm. She could not look at it or at the sheet. She felt his body against hers
.

Now there is no one. If I had had a mother; but I never did. I wish there were someone now. I wish I were not so alone.

13

The walls were streaky white in Andrew's house. Smooth, cheap furniture covered in green; brown woodwork; thatched floor and ceiling in Andrew's house. Walls whitewashed in a now paintless country, a brown moribund country where the blinding reds and greens of other ages pushed singly and rarely up from the dust, reds and greens too healthy, too beautiful, like the sad momentary patches of color on a new corpse. On the whitewashed walls of Andrew's house were dark shapeless spots, filthy sudden monuments to innumerable centipedes and mosquitoes and scorpions. On the ceiling of Andrew's house, somewhere between the matted thatching and the ageless wood, lived two salamanders, inactive now in the winter, waiting with the living centipedes and mosquitoes and scorpions for the distant spring afternoon.

Andrew gone, she sat encompassed by white wall and yellow thatch. She would not read. For many days she had read, sitting quietly in her yellow and white garden. She did not want to cook, today, either. She enjoyed not wanting to read and not wanting to cook. She would have been happy except for the whispers, her own unspoken whispers. Where do you want to go now? What do you want to do now? And tomorrow? There were no answers, there was just the concentration, the straining of her mind toward the answers. She imagined the slow flattening and grooving within her, imagined it as Andrew had described it, part of the mind worn to a path, smooth and direct, or cut to a gully, sharp and dangerous, by the thousandlegged thousandbladed thoughts she could not put away. What do you want to do? I want to walk in silence (save the sound of chanting fierce-plumed birds) in the garden
whose garden?
the garden of the queen
where?
in a scented sunlit land
with whom?
no one; alone, by myself, whole and untouched no one
really no one?
yes no one perhaps a fawn a soft tan speckled nuzzling fawn but no other
and then what?
that is all; just that. But here we have no such garden, the old woman said. I know, I said, and I did not expect to find it; but I was looking for it; I think you will find that we are all looking for it. I know, the old woman said, I have seen many come looking for it. And, I asked. And, she said, none of them have found it, not in this corner of the world nor in any; I would advise you, and you see that I am old and that I know much, to live in the world of men. How old are you, I asked, if it is not being impolite. It is not being impolite, she said; I am older than your country. That is strange, I said, because Andrew says what you say and he is very young. He is a fool, the old woman said, because he thinks that he will find it his way; and you are a fool because you think you will find it your way. And you, I asked. And I, she said, I know that the garden does not exist. Then you are a fool too, I said; because we have nothing else to do; even when we know that it does not exist we must go on looking for it. Of course, the old woman said; otherwise I would not be here.

She opened her eyes and stood up. Andrew would say that way madness lies. A good blunt phrase, even in English. She could not remember the English. But he would say it. How many li, she wondered. How many miles. How many kilometers. It depends. But we are all of us on the way.

Now the gown, she thought, and then the shoes, and then the dormitory. They will ask me where I have been and I will not tell them. They will ask me where I am going and I will lie. To the garden, I will say. That way the garden lies. That way I lie. Here lies Ma Chi-wei and there lies my father and I lie with Andrew and Andrew lies with me.

The heatless brilliant sun stopped her for a moment in the doorway. Squinting, she closed the door. Wen-li was not in sight. She walked toward the dormitory, saying to herself, I am invisible. The library cannot see me and the trees cannot see me. And those wandering people, still searching, cannot see me. She stretched her sleeping muscles and fluffed her hair. The cold reached her and she was awake then and seeing clearly.

The dormitory is alive, too, she thought. She could see it in the distance. It has had us in it for many years and now it has come alive. It sits like an embroidering matron. And when I pass through the door I will feel the warmth of it; not created by stoves, this warmth; created by the life of the building; a restless welcoming odor of habitation.

It was there. She felt and smelled it as she crossed the doorsill. Wherever people were, there it was. On her right it was stronger. She followed it. It came from the common room. In the common room were three women and a stove, a motionless black ugly stove, like Andrew's, the four figures in astonished frozen tableau; then two of the girls came running toward her. They were squealing. The third girl sat watching her.

“Where have you been?” They screeched it at her, the two of them. The voices scratched across her brain. She blinked and remembered them, and where she was, and why she had come. “What happened to you?”

She laughed and walked to the stove with them. “What do you mean, what happened to me?” Her voice sounded piping and childlike.

“After the demonstration.”

She was saying hello to the third girl. It was not ceremonious. She looked at her and let her look back and then without a word they had said hello.

“After the demonstration?” She took time to think. “I went home,” she said, “and my father thought that I should stay there for a few days.” She giggled. “So I sat in the garden.”

Han-li spoke. She had hardly moved and she had said nothing before this. “I do not blame him,” she said. “The dean told us not to leave the university grounds if we could help it.”

“Not many of us have,” Wen-chen said. “But we worried about you.”

“Why?”

“We did not know where you were. No one had seen you. And even now no one knows exactly who died at the demonstration. You might have been hurt or killed.”

She laughed. “I was with my father.”

Yün-chün asked, “Did you have any trouble getting out here today?”

“No. None at all.”

“I hope you do not have any trouble getting back to the City,” she said.

“I hope not,” Li-ling said. Then she remembered to ask: “Has there been any trouble here since the demonstration?” Wen-chen said, “No.” She and Yün-chün looked mournful. “The demonstration was enough by itself.”

“It was,” she said. “What were you talking about when I came in?”

“Examinations.”

“I thought no one was worried about examinations.”

“We were not. But then we decided that even if the City fell the new administration would have to find some way to grade us. Therefore they will not destroy the records. You know the respect they have for education.”

“I have heard,” she said. “I suppose they will recognize even my diploma.”

Han-li smiled. “They may even put you to work.”

“I would like that.”

“Bored?”

“A little.”

“That will end, too, when the City falls.” Han-li was wearing grey slacks. They went very well with her figure, Li-ling thought. “Just for me,” she said, “the City will fall.”

Wen-Chen asked her, “Then you will not leave when the war comes?”

“No.”

“We thought perhaps because of your father,” she said. “He will not stay, will he?”

She laughed again. “No. He will not stay. But I will. I do not know anyone anywhere else in China.”

“And if he tells you to go with him?”

“He could force me to go,” she said, “but I do not think he will. If he does, I will have to go.” Another lie. She was saying things very easily.

“What will Mr Girard do?” They laughed.

She was blushing. She was sure that they did not know. The blush was helpful. She had to remember that they could not know. They could not know. Yes.

“He will stay,” she said. They laughed again.

“Remarkable,” Wen-chen said. “An unusual boy.”

Yün-chün giggled. “I am sure he is more than a boy.”

Han-li said slowly with her eyes half-closed, “Is he more than a boy, Li-ling?” They were having a wonderful time. Now she was not blushing. Now she wanted to blush and she was not blushing. Instead Andrew was in her mind and she was sitting stiffly and thinking that he was more than a boy.

Han-li said, “Have you seen him today?”

She shook her head.

“We have been hearing a story about him and the demonstration,” Han-li said. “Something strange. But no one seems to know.”

The room was suddenly cold.

“Something about him and Ma Chi-wei,” Wen-chen said.

“Yes,” Han-li said. She did not know, then. That was better. The room was all right now. They were looking at her, waiting for her to tell them the story.

“I saw it,” she said, “but it is his own story. It is not for me to tell.”

“Ask him about it,” Yün-chün said. “Ask him if he will let you tell us.”

“Do that,” Han-li said. “And come back after lunch and tell us.” They laughed again and this time she laughed with them.

“I hate you,” she said. She was blushing again. That was fine. “But I will ask him.”

“He must be lonesome at times,” Yün-chün said.

“Why?”

“To speak his own language, or to talk about his home.”

“He does not seem to care.”

“Or to see a blonde woman,” Han-li said.

“He does not seem to care about that either,” she said. She looked smug for Han-li.

“What does he care about?”

That made her pause. He cared about her. But that was the answer they expected and it was the answer of no value. What else? What was he doing. Why was he here.

She started slowly, serious now. “I am not sure. I know he cares about people. But I do not know what else.”

“All people?”

“All people. Even those he does not like.”

“I did not know there was anyone he disliked,” Han-li said.

“Oh, yes,” she said. Oh yes indeed. At least one.

Wen-chen leaned forward. She was stubby and thick and when she leaned forward in the gown she looked like a blue rock about to roll downhill. Her face was earnest. Li-ling had always wanted to laugh when she became serious. “Maybe he cares about what men need to keep them human,” Wen-chen said.

Li-ling was surprised.

Han-li raised her eyebrows. “Reasonably good,” she said. “Now define human.”

“Your everpresent definitions,” Wen-chen said.

“I am in the department of sociology,” Han-li said.

“I know,” Wen-chen said. “I wish you had chosen physical education or some less disputative field.”

Li-ling almost laughed. She could not look at Han-li and she knew that Han-li could not look at her. Physical education had been very important to Han-li the year before. She had bounced around the room watching her breasts shiver and she had asked Li-ling if she thought that men would like her. She had asked often and each time that Li-ling said yes she had smiled complacently. She was very beautiful. Now Li-ling looked at her and away quickly. Han-li was watching her again.

“Still,” Yün-chün said, “you must define.”

“Say it this way, then,” Wen-chen said. “A man is a being that needs food, good food, shelter with some degree of comfort, and warm clothes. Mr Girard wants all men to have that.”