The Season of the Stranger Read online

  Ma Chi-wei said, “There will be no trouble.” He smiled. “This is perhaps the greatest irony. They will not touch me again for a time; they fear your nationality.”

  “You are right,” Girard said. “As you wish.” Wen-li went out. “I do not think this is such irony,” Girard said. “I think you have invented a doctrine about Americans which does not apply to all of them.”

  “Of course. And yet without a doctrine nothing would be done.”

  “You are right again.” They sipped hot yellow tea. “But even the doctrines must always be in a state of change.”

  “Not always,” Ma Chi-wei said. “That would be equivalent to having no doctrines at all.”

  “Perhaps. But no more such irony.”

  Ma Chi-wei smiled. “No. There will be no more such irony. In fact,” he sipped the tea with a harsh gurgle, cooling it in the drinking of it, “such irony runs counter to our doctrines.” They laughed, and then were silent.

  When Ma Chi-wei had finished his tea he set the cup carefully on the carved table and said, “I see you have a phonograph.”

  “Yes. Would you like to hear something?”

  “Have you Beethoven?”

  “Some. Shall I play it?”

  He shook his head and winced and said, “No. I will go now if the walking is easy. But I will come back to listen.”

  “Good,” Girard said. “As soon as you can.”

  Ma Chi-wei threw back the blanket and pivoted on his buttocks until his feet were on the floor and his head rested on the soft back of the sofa, outlined in the dusk against the grey-green dull sky, his shadowed eyes invisible; light seeped through the pane behind him. He leaned forward and rose slowly in delicate balance and when he was erect he held himself against the padded arm of the sofa, blinking his now visible eyes.

  “I had forgotten entirely,” Girard said. “You will need clothes.” He went to the bedroom and got a sweater and trousers and a gown. He came back and said, “What size shoe do you wear?”

  “Thirteen,” Ma Chi-wei said. He was sitting on the arm of the sofa.

  “Mine are seventeen,” Girard said, “but Wen-li wears a twelve, and an old pair will be larger.” Ma Chi-wei pushed himself off the sofa. “How does it feel to stand?”

  “There is dizziness, but I will be all right.”

  “Good. Put these on,” Girard said. “I will get the shoes.” He threw the clothes on the sofa and went to Wen-li’s room. When he came back with the shoes Ma Chi-wei was wearing the trousers.

  “These are American military trousers,” Ma Chi-wei said.

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “It is no longer ironic.”

  “No,” Girard said. “But it is funny.”

  “What is funny?”

  “The size. Look at them.” Girard moved toward him. “Let me roll them up. Sit down on the sofa.”

  Ma Chi-wei sat and Girard rolled the cuffs back for him. While Ma Chi-wei put the sweater and gown around himself Girard went to get socks. He came back and knelt and slid them onto Ma Chi-wei’s feet. He slid the shoes over them. Ma Chi-wei stood up and walked to the bathroom. “Here,” Girard said, “take a handkerchief. There may be blood.”

  Ma Chi-wei took it and looked into the mirror and then smiled and said, “I will not use it on this nose, I promise you.” They laughed. Ma Chi-wei put his hands on the edges of the washbasin and leaned forward to the mirror. After a moment he said, “Excuse me. I must urinate.” Girard left him and closed the door and waited.

  When Ma Chi-wei was ready to leave they went to the front door. Girard asked him what the meeting was for. “There is fighting in the north,” Ma Chi-wei said. “Perhaps nine hundred li from here. It will affect our conduct if it comes closer. We are in the process of deciding what that conduct will be.”

  “More doctrines,” Girard said, opening the door.

  “More doctrines,” Ma Chi-wei agreed. “But doctrines of a flexibility.”

  “Listen,” Girard said, “what will you do for a citizen’s card? It was in your clothes, I suppose.”

  “No. I had left it at home. It was that for which they first arrested me. When I told them my name the rest followed.” He saw Wen-li in the kitchen and called, “Thank you for the shoes.”

  “It was nothing,” Wen-li called back.

  “And now I will not need it,” he went on to Girard. “The issue is greater. And they will know me as your friend.”

  “I am happy that they will,” Girard said.

  Ma Chi-wei looked out and turned to Girard with his hand outstretched. “Thank you for many things,” he said.

  “Yes,” Girard nodded. “Never mind.” They shook hands. “Tell me one thing before you go.”

  Ma Chi-wei looked up, still holding his hand. “What is it?”

  “What do he dust and the wind and the yellow mean?”

  “You do not know?”

  “No.”

  He smiled and this time Girard noticed his teeth: even and large and almost too white, gleaming slightly. “It happens each year at this time. The wind shifts and comes suddenly from the north, from Siberia; and when it comes it brings with it the yellow desert dust of Mongolia, of the Gobi. It comes quickly and on it rides the cold, the cold that we will know until the third month of next year. It is really nothing more than that, but for some who hold to their superstitions it means evil and death, the denial of green. Logically. For the farmers of north China it could mean nothing else, and among the children of two hundred generations of farmers there are some who must believe.”

  “Ah,’ Girard said. “That explains a great deal.”

  Ma Chi-wei dropped Girard’s hand and padded calm and erect across the court.

  2

  Girard ate slowly in the evening. He had bathed and worked, alone and wanting to be alone, until Wen-li called him to the table. Girard ate silently, stilly, eating and enjoying the tastes but trying not to think. Wen-li carried the meal across the court on a tray, covering it with a clean towel. The pork strips were lean and peppery, hot, with a good smell, and the potato was soft and clean, crisp-jacketed. Girard left the red wet tomatoes in their dish. The wine lay cold in his body.

  Wen-li, bringing the coffee, said that they would have to wear the heavy gowns tomorrow; and feeling the cold cross the doorsill with him Girard agreed. Girard took the coffee to the small table and left it there to cool while he sorted the week’s papers; he took a marksheet from the bookcase and when he had the papers arranged he sat on the sofa correcting them. The coffee was hot and after the second cup he had no trouble keeping his mind where it belonged.

  Working, he could hear the wind, stronger now, breaking against the unwindowed north wall, slipping into the corridor between the hill and the east window, behind him, then expanding, shrieking into the court and throwing itself against the wall and window of Wen-li’s room. The electric light stayed on until eight-thirty, snapped weakly with a sound like shaken tinsel, and dimmed out. Girard lit the kerosene lamps and ranged two of them on the table. Wen-li came in, saw the curtains he had forgotten, and pulled them to. At nine Girard was cold; he removed his light gown and pulled on a heavy sweater.

  The papers were like most of the papers that he had been correcting now for a year. One of them proved that Lady Macbeth was a woman and not a fiend. He was becoming tired of the work when the door opened suddenly and hung on its hinges flapping. He went to it and leaned out into the cold wind, quieter on that side of the house, and reached for the handle. He saw nothing in the blackness. He pulled the door toward him and she said, “You will not ask me in?” and when he heard the voice he saw her plainly, still in the darkness but seeing her plainly as though her voice had been a torch.

  He said, “Yes; I did not see you. Come in,” and backed away from the door to give her room. She went by leaving an odor of jasmine which the breeze took quickly. He closed the door and stood waiting for the sudden sharp warmth to die away from the backs of his legs. When he was calm he tu
rned and followed her in.

  She was putting her coat on the back of a chair, and when she had finished she stood rubbing her hands together. Her cheeks were a deep and soft red on tan and her hair was black with rust-crested waves and silvered streaks where the lamplight touched it. He liked it in the lamplight.

  “Sit down,” he said. “I am glad to see you.”

  She sat in the large chair near the phonograph. “What were you doing?”

  “Correcting papers.”

  “Are they stupid papers?”

  “Some of them.” He picked up an ashtray and emptied it into the basket, tapping it on the edge to dislodge the last cigarette.

  “Are they more stupid than mine of last year?”

  “Most of them,” he said. “I have very few students who know Shakespeare as you do.” She laughed.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “I came yesterday and spent the night at the dormitory.”

  “You chose the wrong time. It will be cold here tonight.”

  “It is cold here now.”

  He looked at her and felt again the warmth behind his knees. She smiled briefly keeping her lips together. They listened to the wind. He went to the small table and gathered his papers and the marksheet and put them away. Then he stood looking at the wall hangings. He straightened one of them and picked a match from the reedmatted floor and put it into the basket. He could sense her following his movements.

  He cleared his throat and asked if she would like to hear music. She said yes. He crossed the room and knelt and took an album from the shelf beneath the phonograph. He put the first record on the turntable and snapped the switch. While he waited for the motor to warm up he pushed the turntable with a finger and when nothing happened he pushed again and became aware that she was laughing quietly. He put the album very carefully on the small table and smiled vaguely and said, “What is it?”

  “Your foolishness,” she said. “It is very enjoyable.” He put his lips together. “How can we have music when there is no electricity?” She looked at him happily.

  “Oh,” he said. “I forgot.”

  Still smiling, she took a ravel of hair in her fingers and pulled her hand along it; she curled the end of it and ran her hand around the side and nape of her neck, finally throwing the hair up and away from her shoulders and letting it settle again slowly. The muscles on the underside of her arm twined under the skin.

  She rose and went into the bathroom, saying as she passed him, “I want to wash my hands and comb my hair. There is too much dust outside,” and closed the door behind her. He put his feet on the table and slumped into a corner of the sofa with his eyes closed and remembered the movement of her skin. When she came in again he noticed the dress for the first time. It was blue and tight, like all the dresses he had been used to now for many months, and had the high Prussian collar and the hem above the knees that most of them had. She crossed the room to the chair near the sofa. The cloth along her hips stretched and folded as she walked and at the waist were loose wrinkles where there was too much cloth for the body. When her back was toward him his eyes followed the line of her body over the bound hips down the cloth to the hem and then to the skin behind the knees, flat and cool and unwrinkled.

  “How long will you stay?” she asked.

  “As long as I am happy here.”

  “Do you still like the teaching?”

  “Yes. Although the students are not quite the same this year.” He looked at the table between them, seeing her white bent knee over the edge of it; as he looked she moved, and her hand came lightly to rest on his cheek.

  “You have not shaved for me?” The voice was wondering and then her face was suddenly droll. To shave and to lose face are said the same way, he remembered.

  “Not yet,” he said. She laughed and breathed loudly the end of the laugh and removed her hand from his cheek. He sat where he was, thinking if she had not graduated she would still be a student and there would be rules, no problem; and this night; this night of all nights.

  “When will you have the stove?” She was standing, peering in the low light at a wall hanging she had seen many times before.

  “Tomorrow, I think. It is in the shelter now, ready.”

  “Where will you put it?”

  “I thought here,” he said, pointing to the square formed by the arm of the sofa and the phonograph table and the corner of the room. He walked to it. “I could move the table out a little. And then I could run the pipe the entire length of the room. It would give heat through all its length. The important thing is not to use too much coal, because there will be a bad shortage again this year. If I put the stove near the outlet I will have to burn too much coal in order to keep the house warm. This way I can use little coal and great length.” He stopped. She said nothing. “And if the war comes closer there will be even less coal, not even for those with much more money than I have. I think here would be best.”

  “No,” she said. “Too much heat will be absorbed by the walls. Put it in the middle of the room, where the heat will not run off.”

  She was beside him then. His shoulders stiffened and he held his legs rigid and was still when her shoulder touched his arm. “Yes,” he said, smelling the jasmine and seeing for the first time the short row of minute yellow blossoms pinned like a fan of silk to her hair. The red of her face ended abruptly above the cheekbone with no fading, not dying through rust to tan, but clearly, like the line of red sandstone he had seen disappearing into the sand of the northern beaches; and from the tan to the ivory white of the eye, shadowed sometimes into a trace of orange by the hair above and the cheek, was another sharp change, so that for the time her shoulder warmed his arm everything was in these colors, bright and clean; until in the sound of his breath the other room was there, the cell with the lamp wirehung from the ceiling spilling yellow over the naked hairless head, the lieutenant and he, the two, hating and motionless in the late afternoon light, the two watching those other, bloodfilled eyes.

  He sat then, loosely, on the arm of the sofa, not seeing anything until she looked down at him sorrowfully, the look (like the touch of her hand on his face) tentative and hopeful, like the glow of a barely fueled lamp. She bent and touched his sweater at the neck and let her hand come coolly to his jaw and the side of his mouth and the terrible warmth came to his legs; she dropped her hand from his face and they heard again the stream of air rushing and chaotic and persistent, pushing on the hill, draining violently through the court, drumming on the windows of the kitchen.

  He stepped over the low table and walked to the door. In the court the leaves spiraled, swooping against the kitchen wall to rest or twisting upward, gone then on the rush of northern air. He walked onto the hard dirt, closing the door, and out beyond the kitchen where there were no trees or buildings he looked for a star, but the only lights were in the library, a long way off through the night.

  The wooden door shivered open in the court. Her voice said, “One of the lamps has burned out.”

  He said he would be in immediately and went to Wen-li’s door. When he knocked Wen-li opened it. “A bad night,” Girard said.

  “Yes,” Wen-li said. “Do you need anything?”

  “Kerosene. And will you make some tea? If there are any small cakes left from lunch we will have those too.”

  “Quickly,” Wen-li said. “There are several cakes still.”

  Girard turned back to the house and went in. She was sitting in the cool lonely light, shadowed like a tinted carving in white jade. Wen-li followed him in with the kerosene and said “How are you”; she greeted him and they exchanged smiles and when the lamp was full he said, “Tea will be right in,” and grinned at Girard and went out. Girard walked to the table and lit the lamp.

  “Do the girls at the dormitory talk about the war?”

  “Not much,” she said. “There has been too much of it; this one presents nothing really new.”

  “And if it comes closer?”r />
  She shrugged. “They will go south.”

  “And if the war goes south?”

  “They will learn to live with it.”

  “But not to stop it.”

  “Stop it?” she said, and then: “how can twenty girls stop it?” She stood. “Do you remember when you asked me to read Lysistrata?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even that would not stop it.”

  “What will?” He was smiling.

  “The war will stop when one side defeats the other.” She was near the bookcase. “And then there will be another. If there are no more political issues there will be at least a remnant of the losing side which will rebel. And if there are no remnants they will go back to the old periods and surnames will fight surnames, the Mas against the Lins, Kansu against Fukien.” She came back to the chair with a box in her hand. “I may be wrong. You will argue me into other thoughts. But not now. Now we drink tea and play cards. I like to score against you.”

  “And after that,” he said, “it will be the men against the women. An uneven battle.”

  Wen-li entered with the tea and set it on the table. He put cups in front of them and bowed deeply toward Girard. “Shall I pour, master?”

  Girard looked up quickly. “I shall pour,” he said. “Go back to the amusement of your turtles, old one.”

  Wen-li’s mouth opened and he stopped smiling; then he laughed loudly and from the stomach and went to the door and fumbled for the handle; he went out and crossed the yard still laughing. Girard was laughing himself.

  “You should never use language like that before me,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “But it was very funny.”

  “Thank you.”

  “When I was a child my father would not allow me to use the word turtle. It is doubly funny for me.”

  “Deal the cards,” Girard said. He thought he had never been so happy. “A professor has no time for frivolity.”

  They played slowly and quietly, speaking little. Wen-li knocked and came in to see if there was anything more they would need, and when they said no he wished them goodnight and went off to sleep. The room became cooler as they played; soon she was wearing her coat. He showed her his heavy gown and new winter shoes. She remembered him in the winter of the year before, just arrived, standing behind the lectern in the cold eight o’clock classroom in suit, leather shoes, and overcoat, shivering as he spoke and pausing often to overcome the spasms; and later, more relaxed with all of them, stamping and flapping his arms, lecturing loudly and interrupting the lecture a dozen times in the hour to prod the stove, muttering Elizabethan profanity to please them. He laughed.