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  The Season of the Stranger

  A Novel

  Stephen Becker

  PART ONE

  1

  The failing whirlwind skipped toward him, brushing leaves from its path, spinning first a long thin column and then with the dying wind squatting, showering its dust to both sides of the road, finally becoming nothing, leaving only the running dust on the yellow road. In the bare cold fields westward three of them gyrated among spotty green stains. With the wind that morning had come the light sand, the dust, and with the dust the yellow sky, screening the blue and the sun; now across the fields checkered by the green and by the whirling columns the ebbing light crawled dimly, and now the peaked and thrusting range of the west lay in hiding, curtained by the particular yellow screen.

  His black cotton shoes were streaked yellow. When he looked up dust flicked painfully across his face and into his eyes. The wind freshened and the pounding of the light grit mounted. He left the road and walked among the clumped straining trees at the right. The wind sighed lower, cut and dissipated by the still thickly clotted leaves and the wall of thin trunks. After the trees there would be the low serpentine town wall and inside it the shops and stalls. He would stop at a teahouse.

  He crossed a gully muddy with the last of the autumn rains. The walls of the ravine were still green, the short grass clinging to them; bushes leaned to drink, tips naked where the rush of the now slow stream had stripped them. Girard used their roots, pulling himself up the far bank, and when his eyes topped the higher level he saw again the dust running smoothly across the worn path. He stepped to the path and slapped his light gown and scraped from his layered cotton shoesoles the mud of the stream.

  When Girard looked up there was a soldier standing where nothing had been before. The soldier’s uniform and skin were tan and the flat tan path stretched behind him; there was no silhouette, only the eyes and mouth and rifle darker in relief. He brought the rifle from his shoulder and stood holding it loosely and waving. Girard walked toward him with his hands out in front of him and held low, palms up and open. When he was close enough to be heard he said, “What do you want?” The wind was bad again.

  The soldier stood with his feet apart, balanced, and the end of one dirty puttee trailed in the dust at his side. The dust Girard thought. I wish I could understand this. And the yellowing darkness.

  “You are not Chinese,” the soldier said. “A foreigner. Your clothes deceived me.”

  “You see.”

  The soldier slung his rifle and brought his feet together. “Ah. Then I want nothing. Do you smoke cigarettes?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. Give me one.”

  Girard gave him a cigarette. The soldier lit it, turning to break the wind with his thin back. He had removed the wiring from his cap and it flopped rapidly when he moved. He smiled twistedly under it. “Good. Go.”

  “Yes,” Girard said. “What is this weather?”

  The soldier looked at Girard’s clothes, his eyes moving slowly down, like those of a man watching from a cliff the drop of a distant wounded bird; or abstractedly, like those, moving and unseeing, of a blind man; then his eyes came up and he examined the high collar under Girard’s gown. “You speak our language and wear our clothes, and you do not know what this weather means.” He looked north into the wind, expressionless. “I do not like it,” he said. “Not any longer. Once it was exciting, but not any longer.”

  “What does it mean?”

  The soldier looked down again. “You wear our shoes and yet you ask me what it means.” His smooth cheeks swelled easily as he blew smoke.

  “You wear a uniform,” Girard said. “Do you know what war means?”

  “I was five when the Japanese came. I know what war means to those who are defeated.” He looked coldly at Girard. “Soon I will know what war means to those who are victorious.”

  “You may not be wrong. Then you are sixteen now?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is fourteen by foreign count.”

  “Fourteen is enough,” the soldier said.

  “It is. And how many times have you seen a day like this day?”

  The soldier laughed and when he had stopped laughing he spat. “Not many. But enough.”

  “Thank you for the information,” Girard said. “I return now.”

  “Return where?”

  “To my home.” Girard bowed shortly and started around him. The soldier put a foot in his way. Girard stopped before he reached it. “What now?”

  “This path leads to the post.”

  “I must pass the post,” Girard said. “I have passed the post many times.”

  “Today you will not pass the post,” the soldier smiled. “It is ordered.”

  “Why is it ordered?”

  “An interview is taking place. We have arrested a troublemaker. A student.” He paused. “You are American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are a friend of the government.”

  “Which government?”

  “Our government.” The soldier looked astonished. “The national government of republican China.”

  “Make no bets,” Girard said.

  They stood with their faces a few inches apart. Neither moved in the wind. The soldier rested his weight on one leg; one hand was on the balance of his rifle and the other on his hip. Girard stepped back, watching his eyes. In their silence then they heard on the wind not the scream but the thin aftersound, floating slowly toward them, unidentifiable until it was complete, then floating slowly between them as the soldier slipped from his shoulder the dry and cracking strap of his rifle.

  He looked toward the post. “You will not move,” he said. Girard stepped around his leg and moved running toward the post, the aftersound of the scream still fading in his ears. The soldier shouted after him but there were no shots. Running into the clearing Girard saw the post, small, almost a cube, of black brick with paper in the windows where the glass had been years before. The sentry at the door was eating melon seeds from a paper bag and when he saw Girard he dropped the bag and brought the rifle up as though he were protecting the thin stream of white and brown seeds between his feet. He saw Girard’s face and forgot then that he had the rifle and stood bewildered while Girard opened the wooden door and ran over the sill into the concrete chamber.

  A lieutenant was standing, almost crouching, his pistol on a small table and a thin firelog in his hand. He snapped toward Girard, forgetting as he turned and saw the face what he had been about to say. He looked at Girard’s shoes and again at his face and hair. He straightened and wiped his wet mouth and chin with the back of his hand and then, when the hand was wet, with his sleeve. He wore no hat and had no hair; the lantern flaming irregularly and smelling of kerosene was suspended from the ceiling behind him and the top of his head was yellow and gleaming. Under the light, on the floor, was a line of dust which had sifted through the paper panes. The lieutenant breathed heavily and said, “Who allowed you to come in?”

  “No one allowed me. I came in.”

  The lieutenant panted and then closed his mouth and breathed in whistles through his nose, his enormous nostrils expanding and giving to his face an appearance of absolute frightening flatness. “Why did you come in?”

  “To take him from you.” Girard pointed to the naked moving body on the floor.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Yes. I know him. Do you wish to stop me?”

  “You are Girard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aaaah,” he sighed. A s
hort hard light came into his eyes and disappeared as he sat dully on the one stool. “They told us you might be trouble.”

  The man on the floor moved again, twisting his head. Girard saw a line of blood from the forehead over the ear to the shoulder. The lieutenant looked at the line and the momentary light came into his eyes and died. “Pig,” he said heavily.

  The man’s face came toward them, rising into vision and seeming to move without the body, coming too close, the smell and feel of it in the sweaty decaying mid November air, the lieutenant sucking breath and standing now, the top of his head gleaming, while the wind pushed the paper of the window softly, the sound like the rustle of skin on dry living skin, dust falling lightly and soundlessly, dust clean and unbloody and the man’s face again, rising from the floor and slipping back. They watched without breathing and the face moved again up from the wet floor, loose skin hanging below and dragging slowly, leaving an indentation in the warm red pool on the floor, an indentation which became a path between clean lines of separating blood as the skin pushed through the pool. The jawbone was laid open and white and above it were a bloodfilled eye and the cut flap of a nostril. The man lurched twice, rising and slipping, the legs in long shivering motion, the genitals withdrawn and tight, bound in fear, and the whole moving, pursuing, purposefully rising to the limit of blood and beaten flesh; and dropping then with a rushing sigh, lying as inert as before.

  The lieutenant sat again, eyes empty, one hand rubbing his thigh methodically (smoothly and gently, the flesh of the leg pushing in small even undulations the cloth of the trousers), sweat like heavy drops of mercury moving from the inner line of his cheeks to the swell of his upper lip. Girard knelt, his hands and stomach objecting; he heard the wind still rustling against the papered window; and touched the body and said, “I can take him now.” He lifted him (like lifting a child: thin, light; but unconscious and the weight pulled at Girard’s shoulders) and carried him cradled to the door, and when he turned the lieutenant was staring at the spread liquid patch on the floor. Girard heard a sound come from deep within the lieutenant’s throat and saw him hunch forward, his head yellow-green in the lamplight, and wipe his mouth again with his sleeve; and when he saw him begin to shiver Girard crossed the sill.

  The sentry outside stood watching as they came through the door. He looked at the man and then at Girard and turned away, examining his rifle.

  Girard followed the path through the trees, trying not to see the man in his arms. He stumbled and caught himself up against a sapling without bruising the man. Out of the woods and approaching the low wall the man’s body took the force of the wind. Girard looked down and saw the fine dust speckling the clotted blood over the eye. He walked quickly.

  At the gate was another soldier, tall and bearded, wearing the black of the military police. “Ai,” he said. “What has happened, Andrew?”

  “Your colleagues,” Girard said. “The army of the republic.”

  The soldier’s mouth closed and the wide surprise left his eyes. “The devils.” He opened the gate. “Can I do anything?”

  “Yes. Is there another here?”

  He nodded staring.

  “Good. With a bicycle?”

  He nodded again.

  “Send him to the university, to my house. Let him tell the cook to have a doctor and hot water ready for me. The cook’s name is Wen-li.”

  “Yes,” the soldier said. He stood swallowing.

  “You have seen this before,” Girard said gently. “Go now and do it quickly.”

  The soldier looked once down the road and turned back to the sentry house. Girard started into the town, stepping carefully on the stony dirt road, passing now the high walls of homes, now the open faces of shops. Near the meat market were the children, eight or ten of them suddenly, howling and pointing, more at his strange large-nosed face and brown hair and height than at the unconscious violated being he carried. They followed screaming down a long alley, tripping over the legs of their elders (who sat in doorways holding pipes and cigarettes, glancing once at the procession and closing their eyes again, leaving only the slowly wreathing smoke in motion); they ran, faces daubed with mucus and coaldust, pushing and kicking one another. One of them called to him, “You have blood on your shoe, Bignose,” and the others, laughing, howled variations, bobbing at his side, in front of him, never touching him but always there. “You have blood on your shoe. Bignose; you have blood on your gown, Bignose; you have blood on your face, Bignose; you have blood on your shoes, blood on your gown, blood on your face, blood on your hands,” and they shouted, “blood on your organ, Bignose; on your gown, your feet, your hands, your face, your organ,” chanting in chorus, the mucus-stained faces advancing and receding, approaching and finally disappearing as he left the town and walked on to the field. He saw the open gate across the field, with the flag above it wooden in the wind which flattened the grasses he crossed and brought again the stinging grains; looking up into the yellowness he heard them, grouped behind him at the edge of the town: “blood on your hands, Bignose; your hands, your feet, your face, your gown, your organ.”

  He took the short path through the university, the one behind the coalyards, and when he came into his courtyard Wen-li took the man from him. “Put him on the sofa,” Girard said. “Is the doctor here?”

  “He is here.” Wen-li took the man inside. Girard went into the kitchen across the courtyard and ran a glass of water from the jug and sat looking out at the sky, sipping the water and fighting his bowels. There was blood on his shoe.

  He was well again twenty minutes later when the doctor came into the kitchen. The doctor pushed his head around the jamb of the door first and said, “Hello, Andrew.”

  “Hello, Sam,” Girard said in English. “How is the patient?”

  “All right,” the doctor said. He came all the way into the kitchen. “I cleaned his eye and sewed up his jaw. He’s conscious.”

  “Good. Will you have some tea?”

  “No thank you. I must get home.”

  “I owe you the thanks.”

  The doctor nodded. “I thought you made it a rule not to speak English here.”

  “I’ve had a bad afternoon.”

  The doctor looked at Girard’s shoe. “Yes.” And then in Chinese, “He will be all right quickly.”

  “Good.” Girard shook hands with him. The doctor turned and walked away, his black bag and blue gown giving him the appearance of a priest-doctor, the healing saint of an ancient tribe in Babylon or India, come to life now and known to half the world as Liao Hsü-mo and to the other half as Samuel Liao, and to some like Andrew Girard as both; and then he was gone.

  Girard went into the house and walked to the sofa. The man lay still, one eye open and the other bandaged. Young, Girard thought, twenty at the most. The man’s jaw was bound and slung, the bandage disappearing over the top of his head and coming around again on the other side. There was a square of gauze over the side of his nose with a runner of tape from his upper lip to his forehead. Girard told Wen-li to get tea, and sat on the table near the sofa.

  “Will you be able to eat? Perhaps the bandage is too tight.”

  “I could chew slowly,” the man said, “but I am not hungry.” He stared at the ceiling.

  “Tea, then.”

  “Yes, tea.”

  Girard took a blanket from the bedroom and came back and threw it over the man’s body. When it touched him the man trembled. He shifted his vision to the window and stroked his forehead and crewcut slowly with one hand, stopping to feel the linen strapped across his head. “This is very ironic,” he said.

  “Don’t talk if you don’t want to.”

  “I am well. It was the shock. The sharp blows and the shock. There is nothing broken.”

  “No. The doctor said you would be well soon.”

  “It was Doctor Liao?”

  “Yes.”

  “That too is irony.”

  “Why?”

  “Doctor Liao was e
ducated in America. The lieutenant had an American pistol. The soldiers had American rifles.”

  “Oh,” Girard said. “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “No. I do not smoke.” He smiled under the bandages. “I suppose it is an American cigarette.”

  “Yes.”

  The man looked at Girard then for the first time. Girard smiled.

  “Who are you?” the man asked.

  “My name is Girard.”

  “Andrew Girard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Better,” the man said. “That makes it a little better. And Doctor Liao too is all right. They say that you have not been here too long, but that you understand well.”

  “Perhaps I understood some of it before I came here.”

  “Perhaps.” He felt the bandage again. “Thank you for this.”

  “It is foolish to thank me.”

  “Yes,” the man said. “Would you like to speak English?”

  “No,” Girard said. “Continue this way. You know English?”

  “Fairly well. And some French. I prefer Chinese, of course.”

  “What is your name?” Girard asked.

  The man smiled. “It seems to me that I heard you telling the lieutenant that you knew me.”

  Girard laughed.

  “Ma,” the man said. “Ma Chi-wei.”

  Wen-li came in with the teapot and two cups on a tray. He set them on the table and poured. Girard took a cup and held it out to Ma Chi-wei, who raised his hands from his sides and held the cup in both of them, saying, “I can manage.” Girard picked up the other cup.

  “Ma Chi-wei, Pao Wen-li,” he said.

  “Honored,” they said together.

  “Ma Chi-wei will stay here tonight,” Girard said.

  “No,” he said. “I cannot. I came here to attend a meeting, and now I will be late; but I feel stronger. I will go soon.”

  “You may have more trouble getting back to the City,” Girard said. He turned to Wen-li and added, “Ma Chi-wei is a well known leader of the university in the City.”

  Wen-li nodded and said, “I have heard.”