The Season of the Stranger Page 17

  “Everybody likes him,” Wen-li said.

  “Really? He must work very hard at his teaching. It is not easy for a foreigner. Do the students like him too?”

  There was a silence and then she said, “Yes.” She looked away and then back.

  “Well,” he said. He looked at her clothes. Then he looked at her face. “You are a student?”

  She was not sure what she should say. She said: “Yes.”

  “And you visit him often?” There was nothing in his voice but polite interest, not even that perhaps.

  “Sometimes.”

  “And the others?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “How often?”

  She looked at Wen-li. Wen-li had stopped poking at the fire when he heard her voice. He was watching the two of them. “For conferences about classwork,” he said.

  The soldier said, “And socially?”

  “Occasionally,” Wen-li said. “For games and refreshments.”

  The soldier said, “Did Ma Chi-wei ever come here?”

  “I do not know who he is,” Wen-li said. Li-ling looked at the boy-cake and stopped breathing.

  “They seem to have known each other,” the soldier said.

  Is, Wen-li said. I do not know who he is. And the soldier said was. It was all silly. Here was Ma Chi-wei in front of me and the soldier said was. Now I would weep. Very soon I would weep. There was something about a dream again. Ma Chi-wei should have said something but he just lay there on the baking sheet. He must have been frightened.

  She leaned back in her chair. The cleaver glinted near her left hand.

  Wen-li said, “Will you have some more tea?”

  The soldier smiled and said, “No, thank you. I should go now.” He picked up his cap. When he passed the table I thought he would surely see Ma Chi-wei. “Perhaps I will return,” the soldier said. “I would like to speak to Mr Girard. If I cannot come back, I will send someone.” He stood in the doorway and said, “Goodbye.” Then he was gone.

  There was a little clattering and then Wen-li was standing tall in front of her with a cup of tea in his hand. She drank the tea. “That was a lieutenant,” Wen-li said. “I will tell Mr Girard when he comes home.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It would be better to tell him.” She began to see things properly again. It was like coming up out of the water.

  “The oven is ready,” he said. He took the baking sheet to the oven. She went to him and before he put the baking sheet in the oven she took the body from the boy-cake. “It will take a while to bake,” he said. “Have some more tea.”

  “All right,” she said. He took the lieutenant’s cup and washed and dried it and put it on the shelf. He washed her cup and gave it to her. She set it on the table and he poured tea into it.

  “Food is getting difficult to buy,” he said. He sat down and drew a single cigarette from the pocket of his gown. “May I?”

  “Of course. You mean expensive?”

  “A little,” he said, “but mostly scarce. If it keeps being scarce it will get very expensive.”

  “Does the university still get food?”

  “From the government?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do not know,” he said. “There has not been a shipment due since the riot. The next is due in a week. We will know then.” He lit the cigarette.

  “What will we do if it does not come?”

  He shrugged. “We will do well enough. Mr Girard has foreign money.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but—”

  “I know,” he said. “He does not want to use it. But he must.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because he is already paying me more than he makes as a teacher. Where does the extra come from?” He frowned. “I would not talk too much about that.”

  “No,” she said. “I will not.”

  “He was supposed to pay me one third of his own salary. But in the City for ten foreign dollars he gets twice as much of our money as the university gives him in a month. How would I manage each month on one third of one half of ten foreign dollars?”

  “I did not know that,” she said.

  “I should not have talked about it,” he said. He smoked and she sat looking at the cleaver in the drawer.

  When the cakes were baked he took them from the oven and said, “Let’s try one hot.” He took one off the baking sheet. It was the boy-cake that she had made a body for. “That pig of a lieutenant,” Wen-li said. “Here. Have some.” He held the boy-cake out to her.

  Her hand took it. The cake was hot. It felt as though something were moving inside it. She could see the eyes, the nose, and the mouth of it. There was no hair but many people shaved their heads. The lieutenant shaved his head. Her father shaved his head. So the boy-cake could if he wanted to, if he really wanted to. But why was he silent when the lieutenant said his name. That was very important. He should have spoken. But he was frightened.

  Suddenly she was thinking of the room she was in, the kitchen, not knowing why; not knowing why even when the walls silvered and quivered, glowing lightly, and moved, swaying, closing slowly with the dizziness; not even when she saw, as the blackness spread in from its edges, that the silver-red was the dream’s silver-red; not knowing why or what was happening even after she had seen the horse, when the blackness was almost complete, swelling, and then it was complete, until there was neither knowing nor seeing nor even fighting, simply blackness.

  Later the blackness began to fade. “Gently,” she heard Wen-li say. “Gently. Try to sleep.”

  15

  Andrew, hands in full blue sleeves, walked now beside her. In front of them the auditorium rose from the shadows in grotesque relief. They mounted the stone steps. There was a tightly packed swarm of people inside. Shrilly their voices rocketed through the open doorways. On the porch a sadfaced roundshouldered man silently distributed white poppies, giving them one each and waiting and watching while they attached them to their gowns. They passed through the doorway.

  Above the proscenium was a huge charcoal portrait of Ma Chi-wei; flanking him on both sides were black slashingly written epitaphic slogans. Along the side walls a committee had posted cartoons about bloated villains and thin bloody heroes. On the stage a poster was propped against a wooden table: Meeting in memory of Ma Chi-wei and those who died with him. When she had seen all this her eyes went back to the portrait. It was more handsome than he had been, but he looked strong and determined and that was what she remembered about him. She had never known him very well. But many people who had not known him very well would remember that about him. The pictures along the walls reminded her somehow of Andrew’s Japanese paintings.

  When they went to find seats people looked at her. This was their first public appearance together. Andrew had said that it did not matter any more and that no one would know anyway and that they would always say that she was going to the dormitory for the night. But they looked at her and by that time some of them must have known and if some of them knew then it would not be too long before all of them knew. If the war came quickly enough it would make no difference, and they had been saying that for three weeks but the war was still quite a distance away. She had the idea that at a memorial meeting Andrew should be with his men friends, but he said that it did not matter. More and more things were not mattering.

  They sat down and Andrew waved to people and chatted with someone on his right. There was a loose stirring within her, a first faint trembling. She looked at Ma Chi-wei and stiffened her stomach. It made her feel hard and controlled. Self control and do not be conspicuous. The words for this week. Three weeks ago the word for the week had been Stay Home. Last week it had been Self Control. This week it was still Self Control but Andrew had said Just do not be conspicuous. Be natural. Self Control and Do Not Be Conspicuous Be Natural. The dream had come only once in seven days. Perhaps next week the word would be Do Not Dream.

  The auditorium was full. Noise rolled over them in waves and then ebb
ed, leaving only the birdlike calls of the children in the balcony. A man was standing in front of the microphone. The children cheeped into silence and the meeting started.

  At first she was restless. There was a speech about Ma Chi-wei’s life and then they read off the names of the students who had been killed at the Plaza and then they read off the names of the students who had been killed anywhere in China during the three months just gone by. It took a long while but everyone else seemed to be paying attention. A mixed choir sang badly a song for Ma Chi-wei and then someone made a speech about all that Ma Chi-wei had done for the students. Andrew had told her about this so she sat watching Ma Chi-wei, wondering why the eyes in portraits always looked directly at her. For a while she had a feeling, a feeling that tonight something would happen to her, a tragedy, and that she would sit and laugh when it happened because it did not matter any more. But watching Ma Chi-wei she lost the feeling.

  She was remembering the frozen Plaza that day, how quickly it emptied when the soldiers came and how long it took her to find Andrew, worried all that time that he would not be there at all. She remembered seeing Andrew then when it was almost too late and wanting to cry and wishing that he would go with the students and yet being afraid that he would and then because she had one fear it was easy to find another and she began to be afraid of her father. Andrew did not see her. She knew that it was Ma Chi-wei who told him that she was there. She remembered the look on Andrew’s face when he turned to her for the first time. And the look on Ma Chi-wei’s face when she saw him for the last time; not like the Ma Chi-wei she was looking at now; then it was a grey pained face with the mouth open and no words coming, like her in her dream, fear of death and no words.

  She sat not listening, thinking of that day. She felt calm and safe in her remembering. In remembering she would conquer. Relaxation came to her, so strongly that she was ashamed. She looked away from Ma Chi-wei and the auditorium sounds bounded into her mind. She had not been hearing them. Andrew was sitting with his chin on his hairy hand, frowning, his lips thrust forward, the skin of his cheek pushing up to deepen the lines beneath his eyes. Sometimes he was so serious and sometimes he was like a baby. She touched his sleeve and when he turned his head she smiled at him. He looked annoyed and put his chin back on his hand and went on frowning. Tonight he was busy and serious.

  So she thought about him for a while. How frightened she had been in the truck that night and then how happy. And getting home later, Wen-li standing in the court, worried, welcoming. And after a bath, not wanting supper, sitting in the living room telling Wen-li what had happened. Wen-li’s face not changing at all except for the eyes, the dark brown eyes swinging toward her and warming briefly into soft brown when Andrew told him she would stay. She wanted to say no, that she was going, but she could not; by then she could not because she had already committed herself too far. In bed then, warm and weeping, weeping until the frantic blush of her body cut off tears and there was nothing but Andrew and the weight of him and then not even the weight; in the final utter rush of her to him, in the last breathless reaching she had screamed, “Yes,” but there had been no breath in her for the scream and the word had been a whisper.

  Now she was in the auditorium and people were applauding. She wanted to touch Andrew’s face. He was talking rapidly to the man next to him. She looked at Ma Chi-wei again. She snapped a loose thread from the seam of her gown. She wondered where her father was. Then she had that feeling again and looked around to see if anything was happening near her. She saw the wall posters, the cartoons. Her father would be working now, probably by the irregular flickering light of a kerosene lamp. Andrew was still talking. Ma Chi-wei would probably have thought the whole thing foolish. She wished that she had stayed away.

  The applause stopped and another speaker stepped to the microphone. She decided to listen to him. Andrew would probably want to talk about the meeting later.

  “We have been charitable tonight,” the man said. “We have talked about Ma Chi-wei and his companions and what they died for. We have paid homage to them. But we have said nothing about the men who killed them.”

  This will be terrible, she thought. He is going to talk about sacrifices, and then cause and effect, and then revenge. Andrew will be disgusted too.

  Andrew was leaning forward. He had that intent look on his face, the look that came over his face when he listened to music that he liked. I would just as soon not talk to him, she decided. There are times when he makes me angry.

  “I do not mean the soldiers,” the speaker said. “The soldiers died as tragically as we did.” We, he said. Now why We? He is up there alive and making noise, backed by nodding righteous living men, fronted by the massed warmth of living men, clasping in his own living hand the product of living men’s labour, and still he says We. “They were indoctrinated and ordered and they followed their doctrines, obeyed their orders.”

  The speaker cleared his throat. “I mean the men behind the soldiers. I mean the men who have made it possible for an army to control a nation. I mean the politicians, the officials, the merchants, even the intellectuals, who have stood by and allowed this to happen.” The audience murmured. Some of them looked around at the people near them. They must have been remembering the speeches at the Plaza, she thought. They may be afraid that soldiers are going to come rushing through the doorways.

  “I mean above all the men of another generation and another life who are today in control of the country, in control of us. And they are not all Chinese.” She looked at Andrew. He was staring at his shoes. He should not have been, she knew. The man might just as well have meant British or French or Russians. And it was the Portuguese who started it, but he was not thinking so far back. Everyone had taken something from China. Sometimes they had given to China, but only so they could take more later. In the last hundred years people had become excited about it. That was strange, too. Her father hated foreigners.

  “The men of another age, older than we, who grew up in a time when might made right and who believe that might will always make right.” It was warm in the auditorium, too warm for this dull kind of speech. All these people breathing and moving in their seats. They should open a window. “And who, believing that might makes right, have not only allowed the death of Ma Chi-wei, but have approved it and profited by it. I mean the men who have used this country and its beaten people as a means, the end of which has been and is their own power and wealth.” Her father did not like open windows. Even in the summer he sat in a stale room.

  “Some of them are tax officials; some of them are generals; some of them are opium traders; all of them rule us.” Andrew looked at her. Kindly. Ignore him. Those ugly cartoons. They should think of artistic merit before they tack things to the walls. Even the Japanese paintings are better. The Japanese paintings.

  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.