The Season of the Stranger Read online

  They moved on the road, clumsily at first and confused; and then, ranks defined and intervals kept, they moved quickly for warmth, their hands in the enveloping sleeves. They left the university and on the main road crossed the town. The shopkeepers laughed and gestured and the dogs were excited, yapping and running in and out of the lines. The children took places at the end of the march and followed them through the town and out the far gate. They stayed with them for a few minutes and then left, running back to the gate and lining the wall inside, watching the procession out of sight.

  The front ranks moved too quickly and there was a halt every few minutes for regrouping. When they had found a common pace and rhythm they started the songs. The man behind Girard was a baritone. Girard could not hear the man in front of him, who wore a gown too long for him, holding it off the ground as though he were about to curtsy. When they reached the first small roadside village the students were singing and the villagers left their knife-sharpening and potmaking and came to the low wall along the road, where they sat and watched with nothing in their faces. One of the dogs from the town had stayed with the march and his frantic barking motion had exhausted him. A man picked him up and held him on one shoulder and people laughed. The dog sat panting with his tongue shaking and the stump of his tail vibrating. When the man in front of Girard laughed he forgot about his gown and dropped it. He stumbled on the hanging cloth and fell and there was more laughing. It was warmer after the walking.

  They passed frozen villages and crossed small bridges over knives of ice cutting through the brown dead earth. Against the farhanging sky were the lofty blurred mountains, and in the middle distance the paralyzed unpeopled fields. They passed three houses near a bridge and a woman opened the door of one of them and stood watching with a pig at her feet; they were motionless and alert and when the march was almost past her she turned and the pig turned lazily with her and she shut the door.

  The road curved often, and coming around a curve they met a sleepy cold bicyclist, his hands numbing on the rubber guards, a dozen bottles in the crate lashed to the bars. An automobile crept cautiously by, chauffeur-driven, and the owner in a black fur hat and rimless spectacles glanced attentively through the rear window at them. Twice before they reached the highway they passed small groups of soldiers. The soldiers stood in the road as they came and when the parade was upon them they gave ground sullenly and stood in the ditch leaning on their rifles. The literate soldiers read the slogans and the banner and repeated the legends for their friends. They thought about them and laughed. Girard thought of Ma Chi-wei. One of the soldiers saw Girard and pointed and the others stopped their laughing and went up on their toes to see.

  They had gone about twelve li and the singing had stopped. A line of trucks came from behind and honked them to the side of the road. The driver of the first one leaned out of his cab and asked what the parade was. They told him. He nodded and said that if anyone wanted a lift he could swing himself onto a truck. A leader thanked him and said that they would walk. The leader went back to the head of the line and the trucks started through. As they passed men swung aboard, yelling that they would meet the others at the Plaza.

  They moved forward again when the trucks were gone. One of the men of the left file called to a leader and told him that the carrying of the banner was a cold task and should be transferred for a time to the right file. That way, he said, the first word of the legend would be at the front of the parade and it would be easier to read. They stopped and the left file walked around the front, still holding the banner, and aligned itself against the right file. The right file took the banner and the others went back to their positions. They marched again.

  Near the highway they passed a group of men sitting around a cart. The men were smoking and spitting, and waved to them.

  “Help us,” one of them said. “The cart is broken.”

  The leaders stopped the march and went to see how they could help. They asked for six strong men. The rest of the marchers sat at the roadside. Girard walked to the cart and stood near the men. The six students lifted one side of the cart and held it off the ground while an old man went underneath with a piece of wire and a shaved peg. He drew the wheel hard to the axle and set the peg in the gap and asked for a hammer. One of his friends gave it to him. He drove the wedge in and dropped the hammer and wound the wire tightly around the hub of the wheel and then around a ringbolt in the axle. The students dropped the cart when he stood up. “Thank you,” he said.

  “How will the wheel rotate if it is tied to the ringbolt?”

  “The ringbolt is free to revolve,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” one of his friends asked.

  “To the City.”

  “What for?”

  “To demonstrate. For food and fair treatment. The posters explain what we want.”

  “We cannot read,” the man said. He pulled on his cigarette. “You have chosen a bad day.”

  “I know,” the student said. “Cold.”

  “Cold,” the man said, “and a bad day in other ways. The stars. And the moon.” His trousers were torn and he had no socks. His hands swung, white, from the sleeves of his horsejacket.

  The student blew his nose onto the road. “Perhaps we will succeed anyway.”

  “I doubt it,” the man said. “You would have done well to wait two weeks.”

  “It might have been too late in two weeks.”

  “Nevertheless,” the man said. “Anyway I wish you luck.”

  “Thank you,” the student said.

  “It is nothing,” the man said. He turned away and then looked back. “But you will not succeed.”

  “Perhaps,” the student said. “See you again.”

  “See you again,” the man said.

  “See you again,” his friends said. The student waved to the marchers and went to the head of the line.

  Girard was cold after the stop and when the dog put his forepaws on the student’s head he did not laugh with the rest. He kept his hands as far into the sleeves as they would go. No one was trying to keep in step.

  They reached the highway and turned left toward the City, thinning into three files and staying to the left of the road. Threewheelers and trucks went by and the threewheeler men and truck drivers leaned to the side and twisted their bodies reading the banner. They passed a restaurant and three waiters stood at the curb and read the banner and looked at them and shrugged and went inside. The sky was still grey.

  They crossed the railroad tracks and made the final turn to the City gate. When they were close to it they looked up at its height as though they would have to scale it and then they marched parallel to it and turned into the first passageway. They went through the outer gate and the stone closed in around them; no one spoke or tried to sing. In the moist darkness the cold was worse. They came out into the field between the two gates. When they heard what they had been afraid of hearing they stopped. The inner gate pivoted noisily in front of them. Girard looked behind him. They moved closer to one another. The twelve-foot-high inner gate closed.

  Girard said to the man next to him that they should go back outside the first gate. The man said nothing. Girard turned and then they heard again the massive terrible creaking and they all turned. They watched the first gate close behind them.

  A soldier with a rifle left the high guardhouse and ran lightly along the wide top of the wall. Girard looked up at him and saw that there were others along the wall and that directly in front of him there were sandbags on the wall and that a machine gun barrel was resting on the sandbags. He could see the tops of brown helmets over the sandbags.

  A man stepped out of the guardhouse and leaned over the stone railing. He was an officer with the blue and white sunburst on his cap. He wore the cap crushed and loose, the way the fourteen-year-old sentry had.

  “Both gates are closed,” he said. No one moved. “And there are guns along the wall.”

  “We are unarmed,” a student said. “
We come to attend a peaceful meeting.” His voice rose anonymously from the crush. It was impossible to say who had spoken.

  “From where do you come?”

  “We come from the university to the northwest.”

  The officer inspected the crowd. Girard stepped behind a tall student and lowered his head. “How do I know that you will not disturb the peace?” the officer asked.

  “We come only for the meeting,” someone said. “We will go directly there.”

  The officer lit a cigarette, turning his back to them and to the wind. They waited while he drew on it. He looked back at them and blew smoke and smiled. “Good,” he said. “If there is trouble you will not leave the City.” He walked to the guardhouse and leaned inside to say something. He came back to the railing and watched them silently, pulling tighter his padded brown overcoat. The gate swung open. They pressed toward the passageway. Girard looked at the top of the wall. The chubby young soldier who had come out with the rifle was leaning on the railing and his gold front tooth gleamed as he smiled. He saw Girard and his gold tooth disappeared. Girard saw him move along the wall toward the officer and then Girard was in the passageway and out again in the City.

  The carts and trucks were lined up and soldiers were searching them, pushing pointed iron rods through the sacks of grain, ripping open wooden crates. A truck driver spat. “Students,” he said. “You bring trouble always. Now you have given them time to inspect us.” Girard turned and saw the soldier and the officer talking on the wall and gesturing toward them.

  They were not bothered after they left the gate. The students with the banner grouped again so that the banner could be read. Two men at the side of the road had finished dividing a pig and they stood, each with half a pig on his shoulder, waiting to cross the road. A man with an iron pot and four dirty cups broke into the ranks and stood as they split around him and offered tea at five hundred dollars a cup. When they had passed him Girard looked back and saw him squatting at the curb drinking.

  At the large corner a white-helmeted serious policeman held them for an official car and two motorcycles and then waved them ahead. Two foreigners stepped off the curb and decided to wait until the marchers were out of the way. They stood in the gutter looking at the faces and when they came to Girard’s they turned to each other with their lower lips speculating.

  They marched into the Plaza. There were probably three thousand before them. Some of the early group shouted when they saw the newcomers and came running to the gate of the Plaza and marched with them to the platform. They finished a song and broke up noisily. Girard walked around in the screaming and laughing looking for someone to talk to. He was looking for Ma Chi-wei. He went to the platform and watched the men set up the loudspeaker. There was a Hong Kong label in English on the control box. He sat on the edge of the stage and looked for Ma Chi-wei. The dusty parade ground was filling. A short thin boy motioned in marionette spasms as he talked to a sallow girl. There were no soldiers in the Plaza. There were three foreigners standing against the far wall. One of them was a French journalist. Girard did not know the other two. After a few minutes he lit a cigarette and stopped looking.

  He finished the cigarette and stamped it out in the dust. He was cold. He tried to remember whether or not there was a tea-shop near the Plaza. He thought of one and pushed himself off the platform and started through the square. The noise behind him increased and when he was across the square he looked back. There was no one on the platform. They were staring toward the sky. On the highest of the surrounding buildings they had hoisted the flag of the Three People’s Principles. The noise was for the flag. Another flag went up. When the red and blue of the government unfurled and flapped the noise stopped. Someone laughed. The crowd drifted toward the platform. Four men climbed to the stage and when Girard left the Plaza they were bowing and the students were making more noise.

  He was gone for twenty minutes and when he came back into the Plaza again the sun broke through and there was a cheer for that. They were happy now, laughing and chatting through the speeches and waiting for jokes from the speakers. The light came from Girard’s left and threw long pale shadows. Some of the students stood facing like sunflowers into the glare from the west. Near the stage they were sitting in the dust.

  Ma Chi-wei was not on the stage even then, and Girard wove quietly through the crowd trying to find him. He saw one of his students sitting with his back to the high wall of the Plaza. He walked over to him and asked if he had seen Ma Chi-wei. The student said no, and that the long walk had tired him. Girard told him to rest because examinations were coming and walked back into the crowd.

  They were all over the Plaza now. The stage was in the north-west corner and along the northern and western walls students reclined and listened sleepily. Along the eastern wall were foreigners and some Chinese Girard did not recognize at that distance. Most of the listeners were still grouped around the stage in a quarter-circle. The last rows of the audience were almost in the southeast corner. There were probably five thousand of them.

  The speaker was reading the text of a resolution which, in petition form, would be signed by every student in north China, he said, and presented to the government. When he finished reading the resolution he put it away and gripped the microphone and told them what the petition would do for them. “They must listen to us,” he said. The Plaza roared. “We are the intellectual life of the country.” The Plaza roared again. When he mentioned the government the Plaza roared and when he mentioned the students the Plaza roared. He was talking about the government and the students and the Plaza spent most of its time roaring.

  Girard went to the west wall and leaned against it and looked at the second hand of his watch. At the end of seven minutes he had calculated that for every twelve seconds of speech there were fifteen seconds of roar. He sat at the base of the wall and lit another cigarette and closed his eyes.

  He opened them when something wet passed across his cheek. The dog was standing at his side wagging the stump he had for a tail. Girard blew smoke at him. The dog enjoyed that. He lowered his head and put his tail in the air and barked. Girard closed his eyes. When the dog jumped into his lap Girard threw him off. The dog landed about a yard away and yipped, and then got up and went to look for someone else. The Plaza roared. The dog seemed to think it was for him and pranced off toward the stage.

  The roar did not die off into respectful and expectant silence, the way the others had. It hung over the Plaza and subsided by levels to a murmur. The murmur lasted half a minute and then became stronger. The speaker was fidgeting anxiously near the microphone. No one was watching him. Girard stood up and walked toward the stage. Everyone walked toward the stage. Those who had been sitting in the dust stood up and the crowd pressed them close to the platform. The loungers along the walls pushed themselves off the ground and walked toward the others. The murmur was louder and then it stopped being steady and gossipy and became many voices shouting at one time. Girard heard the word “soldiers” and ran around to the back of the audience where he could see both entrances to the Plaza.

  While he was running he saw khaki figures in the south gate, where the marchers had come in, and when he got further around the Plaza he saw them pouring in the north gate. There was a noise to the east and he saw half a dozen of them on the eastern wall. The group at the north was setting up a machine gun. The noise increased. A girl wailed, a five-note chant. She wailed again, the same notes.

  Six of the khaki men came at a trot from the south gate and cut through the crowd and mounted to the stage. One of them, an officer, stood in front of the microphone and held both hands over his head. Sound fell away in a rushing gasp. Only the wailing girl tongued hysterically.

  “Your meeting is declared unlawful, by order of the commanding general,” the officer said. He opened the thick brown leather holster at his belt and took the pistol from it. He waved the pistol in the air and said: “We have reason to believe that the speakers are treasonous.�
� No one moved or spoke until they had all understood; and then at one time they shouted, all of them, a deep funeral protest that rolled through the Plaza and rebounded from all sides to the center, to themselves. Tears came and some of them wiped the flapping blue sleeves across their faces, their mouths open, and when the sleeves had passed the moisture of fear and despair was left on the faces.

  The officer waved the pistol again and moved his arms in wing-like passes at the men and women. No one saw him; they stood lost, crying. The officer faced the north gate and motioned with one hand, the hand that held the pistol, and a grating sputter cut through the screaming and froze the Plaza. The machine gunner smiling patted the barrel of his weapon. “You have five minutes to leave the Plaza,” the officer said. “You will use the two gates. No one will go over the walls.” He holstered the pistol and jumped from the platform. He led his men running to the south gate.

  The men and women pressed herding to the center of the mass, white faces staring at white faces and rejecting and staring again, as though here could be found an ancestor or a god returned, one, someone, anyone willing to lead them from their wilderness. They walked singly, hiding in themselves and in one another, weaving aimless patterns, the great blue spread of them static on the yellow Plaza ground, only the bewildered motion inside the circle, like unattached, homeless ions, the design of their fear. In the darkening blue and grey of early dusk the Plaza was quiet, the soft shuffshuffshuff in the dust alone voicing the fear, until the girl sounded again mechanically the dirge of five notes. The last breathless high note stopped the even trailing of the white faces. They turned to her and the silence of fear became another kind of silence, a calm; they waited, and when she cried again they started to the gates, smoothly cleaving in two clots of moving blue, flowing apart like twinned and tilted drops of ink, hearing the bellwether’s hopeless unconscious command.

  When the last of them had filed through the gates Girard found Ma Chi-wei. He was near the stage, talking to three men. There were a dozen spectators at the west wall. They stood in the shadows and looked at Girard and at the four students. The officer came across the Plaza again and took the microphone and said, “You have one minute. There will be no exceptions.” The spectators walked in the shadow of the wall toward the stage and the north gate. The four students walked away from the officer and the microphone and came to the center of the Plaza. “Out,” the officer called. “Out.” Girard looked at his watch and moved toward the students.