The Season of the Stranger Read online

  The man slapped him on the shoulder and said, “How are you?”

  Girard looked up and smiled. “Ma Chi-wei. How are you? Have you no control over your large feet?”

  Ma Chi-wei laughed. “Excuse me.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “No, thank you. You have forgotten that I do not smoke.” As he spoke Girard watched the serrated white line on his jaw. Ma Chi-wei saw him looking and rubbed it. “Pretty, is it not? My medal. My insigne of rank.”

  “Are you healed completely?”

  He nodded. “And back to work.”

  “I have heard. Has anything definite been decided?”

  “Yes, this morning. At a small meeting.”

  “When do we march?”

  “We?”

  “Why not? Think of the prestige it lends the affair.”

  “Ah. It will be interesting. Perhaps if the soldiers come you will be our spokesman. It would be baffling to them.”

  “It would be baffling to me,” Girard said. “When will it be?”

  “The twentyeighth. Four days from now.”

  “Where?”

  “We will march to the Plaza of the People. The speeches will be given there.”

  “The usual place,” Girard said.

  “But not the usual time.”

  “Why?”

  “The meeting will not begin until four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “A special reason?”

  “Yes.” Ma Chi-wei smiled. “That gives us only an hour of good daylight. Which means that the speeches will have to be short and pointed. It also means that if there is trouble with the soldiers we will be better able to disperse in the twilight.”

  “A general,” Girard said.

  “And the meeting will be more dramatic at twilight.”

  “A stage manager.” A student was skating toward them. He called to them.

  “Do you want to play hockey? Two men have left for lunch.” Girard looked at Ma Chi-wei. Ma Chi-wei nodded. Girard pressed his cigarette out on the cold earth and skated after him.

  They were put on opposing teams and told to watch each other carefully. Ma Chi-wei played with concentration. He did not smile and he used his body strongly where the others shied from contact. He escaped Girard when he wanted to. Once Girard took the puck from him, coming from behind him and hipping lightly as he raised his stick and spun. Once Ma Chi-wei scored. He took the puck from Girard several times. He stopped and feinted and veered lightly and surely, as though he were in rubbersoled shoes and they were playing on asphalt. Girard’s hands froze on the wood. After twenty minutes he spent most of his time trying to breathe.

  The centers fought for the puck. Four men scrambled for it and left a side of the rink open. Ma Chi-wei stood waiting near his own goal. They slid the puck to Girard. He started down the open alley, racing and with a burn in his ankles. He was alone until Ma Chi-wei came from his left and spun against him, taking his stick off the ice. Girard swung his body and dropped his hand on the stick, pressing it to the ice, tapping the other beneath it. Still spinning Ma Chi-wei braked. His iceskate struck Girard’s runner. The ankle curved under Girard. He fell toward Ma Chi-wei with his left hand out to break the fall. His body hit the ice and he felt the hand slash against Ma Chi-wei’s iceskate. Ma Chi-wei fell forward and slapped his stick too late on the ice and twisted, turning his shoulder to the point of impact.

  Girard left his stick where it was and got to his feet, looking at his palm. There was a rip from the base of the thumb to the small finger. Ma Chi-wei sat up and smiled. “I think I cut my leg,” he said.

  Girard squatted. He unlaced Ma Chi-wei’s iceskate and rolled the sock down to the ankle. The point of the runner had cut through the sock and had left a deep gash in his lower calf. “Let’s go to the island,” Girard said.

  On the island he took the iceskate off and put a handkerchief against the bleeding hole. “What happened to your hand?” Ma Chi-wei asked.

  Girard showed him. “Too cold to bleed,” he said. “I could hardly get the handkerchief out of my pocket.” He held the handkerchief against Ma Chi-wei’s leg and with the uncut hand he kept the loose sock away from it. “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” he said. Girard lifted the handkerchief and the blood streamed slowly into the torn hollow of the skin. From the handkerchief blood dripped to Ma Chi-wei’s leg and ran off over the calf muscle, falling to the rock. “What is that?”

  Girard looked at his palm. “The hand has warmed,” he said. “We should go to the house.”

  At the house he bathed his hand and gave Ma Chi-wei the bottle and cotton. Ma Chi-wei bandaged Girard’s hand and wound gauze around his own leg and sat on the floor near the stove. When the stinging left Girard’s hand he put records on the machine and said, “As promised. Sit and listen. I will get tea.”

  He went to the kitchen and pushed the iron lid away from the firehole and set the kettle above the hole, balancing it on a tripod of dead coalballs. He put tealeaves in the porcelain pot and waited for the water to boil. When he heard the bubbling he filled the teapot and put the lid over the firehole. He took cups and put everything on a tray and walked across the court into the house. “How is your leg?” he asked.

  “Well enough,” Ma Chi-wei said. “It throbs a little. Thank you.” He took a cup and set it empty beside him. Girard put the teapot on the stove.

  Half asleep, Ma Chi-wei listened to the music. The tea steeped. Girard thought of the stories he had heard about Ma Chi-wei and then he thought of what he had not heard, what no one could tell him: Ma Chi-wei’s birthplace, his parents, his age. His accent was Shansi and he had passed most of his boyhood there. That was all they knew of his past. Of his present they knew that he called himself Ma Chi-wei and that he rose at six each morning and ran twelve times around the university cinder track and then swallowed his bowl of rice gruel and his cup of tea; he had time for that, and he had time for meetings and studies and the drafting of constitutions and the writing of political essays; he had time in the spring to go to the paddies and riceponds and transplant the young shoots; he had time for hockey and music, and he knew English and French, and he had found time to let himself be beaten and time to let himself heal.

  “It is good that we are young now,” Ma Chi-wei said, opening his eyes.

  “Why?”

  “If in fifty years they have made a nation here it will not be too late for us to see it.”

  “It may take much longer.”

  “It may. But it can be done. I would like to see that. Even if my part in it were finished, if I were old and incapable. I would like to see it.”

  “Tell me about the march,” Girard said.

  “Yes. The march will start here at two. The students will assemble at the gate and will walk to the City. In the City they will meet the others. They will march to the Plaza of the People. They will hear the speeches and sing the songs. And when it is over they will march back to their universities.” Girard, listening, took the teapot from the stove and filled their cups. “If all goes well they will march back to their universities. The City authorities have said nothing yet. We were expecting a message from them this afternoon.”

  “Why is it always the students?”

  Ma Chi-wei sipped his tea and put the cup on the floor. “You may have guessed at the answer.”

  Girard nodded. “I have an idea,” he said. “But I have not been in it long enough.”

  “The answer is the blessing and curse of the movement,” Ma Chi-wei said. “Do you know how many students there are in the City?”

  “About fifteen thousand,” Girard said.

  “Yes. And about sixty per cent are in the movement. Twenty per cent do not care. And twenty per cent waver. Say that we have nine thousand. Say that every year three or four thousand new people come to the universities.”

  “Say also that every year three or four thousand graduate or disappear or leave for their own reasons.
”

  “Of course. If we enlist the normal sixty per cent of the incoming students, we have done well. But the only way to spread our influence outside the universities is through the graduates.”

  “And what happens to the graduates?”

  “By definition, they cease to be students. And in this country the student is unique. We have no labor leaders, no civil liberties lawyers, no working constitution. We have therefore no one who is concerned about others. No one but the students.”

  “And the student is like that because he has not yet stepped into a profession.”

  “That much is true,” Ma Chi-wei said. “Usually the student represents nothing but his family, or perhaps his family and his native town. The individual may be more sensitive about his father’s function in society; if his father is a farmer the student will worry about the farmers. But as a group the students represent every vocation and social group in the country. Even the National Assembly cannot say that. And the students voice every grievance known to China because they have experienced every injustice known to China.”

  “And they become famous as troublemakers and young radicals,” Girard said.

  “Until they graduate,” Ma Chi-wei said. “And when they graduate, what becomes of them? They are then the bankers and engineers and customs officials, the teachers and the merchants. And they adopt the ways of their group, and think only of the troubles of their group. Because there is so little wealth here, each man’s group becomes to him the only important group. And instead of one giant cooperating body of roaring complainers, we have hundreds of small groups of petty whiners. None of them is heard by any of the others, and they refuse to combine voices. Therefore only the students are listened to. And they are listened to only as long as they remain students.” He sat up and finished his tea. “Consider the student leaders of the early nineteen twenties. Where are they now? Of the five greatest, four are highly placed hangers-on in the government. One was a communist and is dead. I know nothing of his activities, but I know that the four others are weak; that they temporize and delay and by their inactivity permit the students to be beaten down.” He breathed a laugh through his nose.

  “What about Wen I-to?” Girard asked.

  “Question:” he said, “what about Wen I-to? Wen I-to was a teacher who managed always to represent more than his profession and more than himself. Wen I-to is dead for that reason. There will be no more like him. It is too late. One way or another, the teachers have had to make the decision, and they have all decided. I do not judge them harshly. But there will be no heroes among your colleagues.”

  Girard stood up and took the teapot. “And still,” he said, pouring, “you think that fifty years will see a nation here.”

  “Yes,” Ma Chi-wei said. “And you are not the first who has called me a fool for it.”

  “I have not yet called you a fool,” Girard said.

  The door opened and Ma Chi-wei looked over his shoulder. Wen-li came in. “Ma Chi-wei,” he said. “How are you.”

  “Pao Wen-li. I am well. How are you.”

  “Well.” He looked at Girard. “You made tea.”

  “Yes. I made tea.”

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I was shopping.”

  “It was nothing,” Girard said. “It required skill and perseverance, but it was nothing.” Wen-li nodded and went out.

  “And meanwhile,” Girard said, “we march.”

  “Yes. We march.” Ma Chi-wei stood up and lifted his teacup and drank it empty. Some of the liquid trailed down the white line on his jaw. He wiped his mouth. “You should change the records. That one has played twice.”

  Girard went to the machine and turned the records over. “The last time I saw one of those was three years ago,” Ma Chi-wei said.

  “Where was that?”

  “T’aiyüan, in Shansi. One of the professors in the City has one, too. But he has never invited me to his home.”

  “You are at the wrong university.” Girard said.

  Ma Chi-wei smiled. “I have heard the music before. But I have always had to wind the crank of the machine between records. This is much more convenient. I would become lazy with it.”

  “What were you doing in T’aiyüan?”

  “I was in the north and west during the war.”

  “As a guerrilla?”

  Ma Chi-wei smiled. “Sometimes. And sometimes as a farmer and sometimes as a teacher.”

  Girard nodded. “Did you live there before the war?”

  “I was born in Shansi,” he said. “But I remember very little before the war.”

  “You started young.”

  “There was no choice.” He looked away from Girard. “I killed a man when I was thirteen. I do not believe that I will ever forgive them for that.”

  The door opened and Ma Chi-wei made again the motion that for him must have accompanied the opening of any door; his head pivoted in an instant of what could have been fear and then he stared at the floor. “Wen-li,” Girard said, looking at Ma Chi-wei and wondering what had created in him this reflex of terror, a reflex that he might never come to discard. “What is it?”

  “There is one here to see Ma Chi-wei.”

  Still watching Ma Chi-wei, Girard said, “Let him come in.” Wen-li stepped out of the doorway and a student stood on the sill.

  “Ma Chi-wei,” he said. “We are having a meeting.”

  “The message has come?” Ma Chi-wei did not move. He asked the question with his mouth and throat and his body remained still, erect near the stove, the head tilted.

  “No,” the man said. “There has been no message. But we would like you to speak.”

  “I will come.”

  “Come in,” Girard said. “Wait near the stove.” The man closed the door and went to the stove and squatted, holding his hands near the hot metal. Ma Chi-wei pulled his trouserleg up to the knee and touched the bandage.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I will go now.”

  “Do not thank me,” Girard said. “It has become a habit.” He smiled. Ma Chi-wei laughed and touched the man on the shoulder.

  “Come,” he said. He turned and gave Girard his hand. “Until the march.”

  “Until the march,” Girard said.

  “Excuse me for interrupting you,” the student said.

  “It was nothing,” Girard said. “Go to the meeting.” Ma Chi-wei released Girard’s hand and walked to the door. The student straightened with a snapping sound in his knees. He looked down at them and followed Ma Chi-wei to the door.

  Ma Chi-wei opened the door and went into the courtyard. “I will see you again,” the student said to Girard.

  “See you again,” Girard said. The student stepped across the sill and closed the door quietly behind him.

  Girard put the teapot on the small table and put one cup into the other next to the pot. He knelt at the stove and shook the ashes and clinkers into the pan beneath it. He took off the sweater and threw it on the bed in the other room and came out and squatted at the bookcase looking for anything that he had not already read. He reached for a paperbound pamphlet and saw the coaldust on his hands. He went into the bathroom and washed, being careful with the bandage.

  When he opened the bathroom door and stepped into the living room he saw a girl step quickly past the tree in the court and come to the door. She knocked and he crossed the room and opened the door.

  “The message has come,” she said. The high sun ricocheted from her thick-lensed glasses.

  “Wang Chia-shao,” he said. “How are you. What message?”

  “The message from the government,” she said.

  “Ah. From the government. What do they say?”

  “They say that if we march they will stop shipments of food to the universities.”

  “Serious,” he said.

  “Yes. Will you come to the meeting?”

  “Wait,” he said. “I will put on a gown. Sit near the fire.”

  He took his gown from the closet
and put it on. He had trouble with the six cloth buttons. When he came out of the bedroom she was still standing at the door. He pushed it open for her.

  “Will we call off the march?” she asked.

  He walked behind her seeing her heavy unhesitating movements until they were out of the court and on the path. Her hair was black and straight and cut short. When they were on the path he walked beside her. He looked down at her grave square face.

  “No,” he said. “Nothing will be called off.”

  She smiled. “I am glad of that,” she said.

  “So am I,” he said. He patted her shoulder.

  10

  “It had to be the coldest afternoon of the year,” he said.

  No one heard him. Bunched and talking, they flapped arms and stamped feet. The blue gowns blocked sight of the road as far as the curve, and beyond the curve he knew there were more. Posters bobbed on wooden arms above the blue. Breath came whitely from cold lips and lay briefly cloudlike among the heads. The sky curved grey into the west, meeting the grey hills in a vague far track. There was no snow. It felt as though there would be by night. Now there were the dead sky and the unrelenting cold.

  The two o’clock bus appeared and horned its way through the parting mass which drew immediately together on the cracked concrete when the bus had passed. The talk whispered into silence. Heads turned and posters were raised. The leaders, who had been sitting at the side of the road, stood and waved, brushing their gowns and then rubbing their cold buttocks. They filed to the head of the grouped crowd and raised their hands.

  “We will start,” one of them said. “Remember, there is to be no destruction; no property damage; no mischief with the automobiles of foreigners; and no fighting if it can be helped.” He moved to the side and lifted from the ground a heavy roll of cloth. The leader of the left file held the end of the roll and passed the rest behind him, each man of the file grasping the top of the cloth as it ribboned by, until when the roll was gone there was a long scroll binding them on the left. “The scroll is a statement of our aims,” the leader said. “We will carry it with us into the City.” He looked at the quiet people and said, “March.”