The Season of the Stranger (23 page)

Then the warmth struck her fully, and the smell of the people around her, and the arrowlike stabbing beams of light, the folds of Andrew's gown, the wrinkles of her own knuckles. And in the moment of sharpness and heightened perception she knew about her father, it was all her father suddenly; and she saw that the knowledge had been with her for a long time but that it had never been real because she had always accepted the knowledge and never given it life; but now there was something else for her and now she could be sure and believe and act because the knowledge was hers and not bought, not secondhand, not transferable, but generated by her own calm and felt and known by her own depths; and because it was like that she did not fear it.

It is not so difficult after all. They are talking about my father. They have been talking about him for a long time now, for many years in many places. And I am not responsible for him. I do not even know the kind of evil work he does. Andrew knows. And I will not be punished for the sins of my father. I am an accessory neither before nor after the fact; I am simply an accessory, almost inanimate. I am no cause and no effect. I have lived my life in the midst of muted industry
.

So my father is the bloated grinning man on the poster. Of course my father is thin and rarely smiles. But that is he. There should be a label on the poster: this is Hsieh Ming-p'u. This is Hsieh Ming-p'u, who leaves his home in dead of night and steals with anxious steps to places still unknown; who lives apart from men, and sucks somehow his life from a million beating pulses; who happy knows not joy and dying does not die and taking never gives; who lives within himself, stranger to the world; this is Hsieh Ming-p'u
.

They should say that on the poster. Then I could walk with my head up and tell them I know you hate my father but I am here anyway; you must take me for me and not for someone else. But there is no label on the poster. We are sly. I must pretend that I do not know that they know, and they must pretend that they do not know. But we all know. Even my father knows
.

And I know more than they know. I am living with a man who is my father's enemy, and even of another tribe. Hence I must abjure my father, and perhaps some day my tribe. But only if I agree that Andrew is right and my father is wrong. I agree. No I do not agree. But I agree that Andrew is righter than my father. No I do not agree to that either
.

And if they do not accept me because of my father? I can go back to him, which is cowardice. Or I can remain anyway, which is a kind of bravery. Therefore what is required is bravery. What is bravery? I know what it is. I just cannot say it. My father has it, because he has always been alone. Andrew has it because he has put himself where he must be alone. Is it a matter of being alone? If it is then I cannot stay with Andrew and at the same time be brave. But if I do not stay with Andrew then there is no need to be brave. So bravery must be something else. Whatever it is, my father has it. He uses it badly, but he has it
.

Now this man has finished his speech and we are all applauding and I have no idea of what he said, except for that terrible beginning. Ma Chi-wei was brave. He was alone, too. It must be tied up with being alone. Perhaps it becomes unnecessary when you are not alone. But then how could soldiers be brave? Perhaps they have a different kind of bravery. Was it bravery when I left the Plaza with Andrew? I suppose I have had some bravery all through this. And I suppose I will need more
.

It takes a long time to empty the auditorium. If there were ever a fire. Those children trapped in the balcony. The noise and smoke. I suppose the building is fireproof. I feel much better. Perhaps now that I know this so well about my father I will not have the dream. Next week: Do Not Dream. The bravest thing. What would be the bravest kind of bravery? To lose your bravery, perhaps. Deliberately and voluntarily, to help someone by losing your bravery. Like a bodhisattva. Renounce. But not the body. Renouncing the body is too easy. The vanity. Renounce the vanity. Like the Christians. But they never do
.

There must be a way to become brave without losing Andrew. We are outside now in the cold, and he is talking to me
.

They were home. Andrew lay on the sofa. “What are you thinking?” he asked her.

She thought she must have looked silly. She had been sitting in the large chair, looking at nothing, her lips loose and turned downward. “Bravery,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Ma Chi-wei.” His eyes were closed. The sofa complained mildly as he breathed.

“Yes. Ma Chi-wei.”

He opened his eyes. “Who, then?”

She said nothing. She looked at him. He looked down toward his feet, at the other end of the sofa. Then he glanced up at the window. With his teeth he tore a shred of skin from his lower lip, and then he sat up.

“I guess I have been cruel,” he said. “Busy, but cruel too. It has not seemed as though there were time.” She watched his mouth move. “And I wanted you to do it by yourself.”

“Do what?”

He gestured. “Beat it down.”

“Then you know what is wrong.”

He nodded. His heavy eyebrows drew together. It looked to her like an easy way to show concern. He pressed his lips together, completing the portrait of sympathy.

“What should I do?” she asked him.

“Forget,” he said. “Work, or play, do anything, but forget. Slash yourself away. You belong here now.”

“Just like that,” she said slowly.

He shook his head. “I know it's hard. You have yourself to fight and then you have the people who make speeches.”

“You were thinking of him too?”

“Yes.”

“I saw you look at me while he was speaking.”

He leaned toward her and put his hand on her knee. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't know if it was sympathy or curiosity or what it was. I had to look at you.”

“Why just then?”

Andrew hesitated. “I don't know. What was he saying?”

“He was talking about tax collectors and opium traders.”

“Oh,” he said, and then, “I don't know.”

“Andrew,” she said, “I don't know what my father does, exactly.”

“I know you don't,” he said.

“I know that he is in the government, but I don't know just what he does. Will you tell me?”

“No,” he said. “I don't know myself.”

“You know that he is with the government.”

“Yes. I know that. And I know that he is very highly placed.”

“And you know nothing more?”

“Nothing.”

“You are lying,” she said.

“How?”

“He must have told you. When he frightened you so much.”

Andrew looked down and his teeth played with his lip again. “Don't bite your lip,” she said. He stopped.

“I don't know,” he said again. “Your father told me that he was powerful, and that's all he told me. He showed me some people who worked for him. They were rough.”

She took in a deep tired breath and let it out slowly. “I want very much to know.”

“Why? Can't you forget the whole thing?”

“Twenty years of my life?”

One of his eyebrows went up, and the corner of his mouth with it. “What if you'd been married? You'd have had to forget it then, wouldn't you?”

“No. If I had been married it would have been to a man of his choosing, even to a man of his employ. There would have been weekly visits. There would have been the same life.”

“Would you have been happier?”

“Not in the end. But there would not have been this particular problem.”

“No,” he said. “I guess you're right.”

“Forgetting it is impossible,” she said. “Remember that.”

“Why?”

“I owe him something. If not love, loyalty.”

“Why?”

“Because he's my father. Just that.”

He breathed a heavy, settling breath, and leaned back against the sofa. “Not enough,” he said. “It could have happened to anyone.”

“But it happened to me.”

“What is there to repay him for?”

She considered. “My youth, my upbringing, my education.” She was leaning toward him.

“All of which he did in self-interest.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know it.”

“Even if that is true,” she said, “there is more to it.”

“Such as.”

“Such as that I cannot leave anyone to whom I owe something.”

“But you don't owe him anything.” He sounded as though he were trying to explain subtraction to a stupid schoolgirl.

“But I do,” she flared. “I've told you. And then to leave him without repaying him, to leave him in his loneliness—”

“He deserves it.” Andrew's voice snapped hard across the space between them.

“Then you've made the final judgment.”

“It wasn't difficult. He deserves all he gets now for what he's been all his life.”

“And what has he been all his life?” She was tight inside again.

Andrew looked at her with nothing in his eyes and said, “He's been a bloodsucker all his life. Living on the flesh of the human race.”

She had thought that herself an hour before and still she wanted to leap upon Andrew. Instead she waited until her voice could be calm, and said, “What did you expect him to be?”

“Something human. Not a leech. Something with enough simple humanity in it so that he could stay awake a night now and then worrying about other people.”

“He worries about me.”

“Yes, he worries about you. He worries about you because you're all he has now to remind him of the days when he never worried at all. He would worry more about his decorations and his yellow and purple horsejackets if he still had them.”

“Horsejackets,” she murmured. Otherwise for a moment she did not seem to have heard him. Then she nodded slowly and looked up at him. “Let's work at it in another way. Sit back and be comfortable.”

He smiled hesitantly and lay back on the sofa. “Go on. I will try.”

“First, about the classical greatness of China. Do you think it was real and valuable?”

He looked puzzled, and then he considered. “Yes.”

“What was its origin?”

“Emperors,” he said. “Dukes. Scholars.” He frowned.

“The elite,” she said.

“Yes. But an elite—”

“I know.”

“Supported by the rulers who in turn were supported by a hundred million starving peasants who gave them all, and who were kept poor and were kept giving by any means, by lies and theft and bribery and murder and a thousand unrecounted corruptions.”

“Does that make any less valuable the greatness?”

“Yes.”

“But not less real.”

“Not less real,” he agreed. “But less valuable. Less great because there is always a feeling in the back of the mind that there must be an undefinable and unpublicized rottenness at the heart of the greatness. Less valuable for the same reason. It cannot be completely trusted.”

“And if that feeling in the back of the mind does not exist?”

“All right,” he said. There was a white ridge of skin between his eyebrows. “Even if there are people who do not have that feeling, there is another reason. Call it waste. Say even for the moment that there is no difference in quality between what comes out of free people and what comes out of an elite supported by slaves. There is still a waste. One hundred million free people can produce more of anything than ten thousand comfortable parasites.”

“How do you know?” There was an edge to her voice. It surprised her.

“I do not know. But the elite produce because they are free; why wouldn't the others if they were free? And what they produced would be circulated. Why were reading and writing high and occult arts here for three thousand years?”

“Power,” she said. “They meant power.”

“Then if all could read and write, there would be more total power. More production. More greatness.”

“No.” Her voice was quiet and even again. “The greatness needed leisure, and the only way to get the leisure was to be powerful enough; to protect yourself from other kingdoms and from your own peasants.”

“And the power would not have been there if the people had been free?”

“No. Not then. Or only if it had been true of the whole country, which was impossible. If three parts of the country had been free, the fourth, with slave soldiers and no internal arguments, would have conquered them. Free states have always lived shorter lives than empires.”

He licked his lips. “Have you ever read Plato?”

“No.”

“You ought to. Perhaps he has been translated. He argues at times almost the way you do. It leads to a kind of fascism.”

“Yes,” she said. “You had to mention that. Words like that. Conserve your words for those whom words hurt. And do not attack me on the basis of what I have not read.”

His face reddened. “All right,” he said. “I will agree for now. If you will remember that we are talking about the past.”

“The past. What do you suppose the present is for most Chinese?”

“A time of discovery,” he said. “And growth.”

She shook her head. “Not for many. It is only a continuation of the past. For the government and for people like my father it is one more struggle for power. For the farmer it is one more rumored change that has nothing to do with him and that he cannot believe ever will. Only among the intellectuals is there discovery and growth.”

“And in the north?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps where it has been imposed the people have come to like it. But the north is still a small part.”

“But they learn,” he said. “They will continue to learn. It will be done more quickly than you think.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“How did you learn?”