The Season of the Stranger Page 8

  A door at the side of the room opened and he looked quickly away from the window. The old face in the lamplight was the color of dust, thin and loose and wrinkled, crosswrinkled and with a bony nose. Girard could not see the eyes. The old man lowered his face briefly and raised it. Girard rose and imitated him. The old man walked toward him and stopped, still looking at the floor, the length of a man from him. He raised his eyes. They studied each other. The old man turned away and manipulated the lamps into greater brightness. He looked up at Girard when he was finished and said, “Sit.” Girard sat on the k’ang. The other remained standing, his hands touching the tabletop.

  “We would have been happier,” the old man said, very quietly, “all of us, if you had never come to this country.” He did not move.

  “This is not the customary greeting,” Girard said.

  “Or,” the old man said, looking down at a point above Girard’s eyes, “perhaps you were destined to come here. If that is true then it would have been better if you had never been born.”

  Girard stood up and dropped his hands to his sides and said, “It is not necessary that I remain in this house.”

  “Sit,” the old one said. “You were born; you came here.” He sighed and straightened his back. “Something must be done.” Girard walked to the table and picked up his hat. “Perhaps after you have eaten,” the old man said. “Come.”

  “I am not sure that I am hungry,” Girard said.

  “I have invited you to dinner,” he said. “You have come. Now follow me.” Girard put his hat down and walked behind him out the door at the side and into another hallway. At the far end of the hallway stood a man with a lamp. As they approached him he opened a door and stood holding the lamp above his head to make room for them to pass him. When they had passed he came in and closed the door and set the lamp on a table. There was a cloth on the table and on the cloth were two ricebowls and two porcelain spoons and four sticks.

  They stood on opposite sides of the table with the lamp between them. “I see that we are eating alone,” Girard said. “If your daughter is at home I would be honored to be permitted to greet her.”

  “I know,” the old man said. “She is at home. I did not, however, call you here in order to prolong the life of a thing which is, I hope, about to die. Neither did I call you here to investigate your conduct, with or without her. I called you here to discuss her. She does not know that you are here. Her knowing would contribute nothing. Be seated.”

  “I am sure now,” he said, “that I am not at all hungry.”

  “I have invited you,” the old man said. “I cannot share much of your meal with you. I am the victim of a malady which was first reported in the Chou dynasty. It is a malady of the stomach. I eat very little. But I have invited you.”

  “I regret my impoliteness,” he said, “but I am sure that it would be a waste of excellent food. My mood is not a hungry one.”

  The old man looked for something in Girard’s face. “You are hardly subtle,” he said. “Even in the ancient dynasties enemies often ate together.”

  “Perhaps it is one of the many ancient customs which have fallen out of use.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Another small tragedy.” He smiled. “Perhaps it is better. Would you prefer to go to a teahouse not far from here? We can converse in the privacy of a crowd.”

  “It would be more agreeable,” Girard said. The old man’s smile was a grudging tension of the lips; he drew back slightly the corners of his mouth and the lips flattened, wrinkles disappearing from the skin beneath his nose and bunching in incredible complexity on his cheeks.

  He stopped smiling and said, “You will not need your hat.”

  “It would be better if I took it.” The old man called a servant and told him to bring Girard’s hat from the other room.

  The servant returned with it and accompanied them to the side gate. Girard heard him lock it behind them as they started down a narrow filthsmelling alleyway. The alleyway was walled in, high stone barricades on either side, with neither windows nor lamps to look down on it. It curved and twisted without meeting another road. It ended in a blank wall. Near the wall and to its left there was a door. The old man pulled a key from the pocket of his gown and opened it.

  The smell of the alleyway was gone, and in its place there was a sick sweet reminiscence of burnt caramel or cheap incense, and when he closed the door and they stood in darkness the crawling sweetness hung on Girard’s clothes and skin. The old man moved then, walking swiftly to a door on the other side of the room, and stepping through it into the teashop. When he opened the door the figures sitting against the dark wall were briefly illuminated and the oily flowing smoke took dim form in the light. Girard followed him to the center of the teashop and saw that the voices raised when they came in were for the old man and that the silence which followed was for himself; that one or two bowed and all looked and that teacups were suspended motionless in strong hands. He looked around meeting eyes. When the old man moved off he followed him again, this time to a table. The old man ordered tea and the sweating and happy proprietor ran the length of the room to the kitchen. Against the wall behind which he disappeared were four raggedly dressed men, squatting with dice and old bones.

  The old man laughed. “I enjoy this place,” he said. “It has an air.”

  “Yes,” Girard said. “It has an air.”

  The proprietor brought the teapot and cups and served them and bowed. “Peanuts,” the old man said. The proprietor ran.

  “You are very fond of my daughter,” the old man said. Girard sipped his tea. “I find it harmless to tell you that she reciprocates. I am afraid that it has become a large thing with her.”

  “It is a thing full of humanheartedness,” Girard said. “And mutual sympathy. There are many of the classic virtues in it.”

  “I am sure of that.” The animated proprietor placed peanuts at the elbow of the old man, bowed, was gone. “It is an unusual thing in this city.”

  “What is unusual?”

  “That … mingling.”

  “Yes. Of no less value because unusual.”

  “You are right,” the old man said. He blew on his tea. “It is difficult, is it not?”

  “It is more difficult than not mingling. But the difficulties disappear before intelligence.”

  The old man nodded. “And do your own … do the members of your race comment?”

  “I do not know,” Girard said. “I rarely see them now.”

  “Ah? Why?”

  “I work far from them. And I am not happy with either business or religion.”

  “But politics,” the old man said. “Politics is closer to you, is it not?”

  “Yes. Politics is closer to me.”

  “Do you visit the representatives of your government here?”

  “Yes,” Girard said. “The young ones. I visit them often. They are congenial and intelligent. And they are honest.”

  “And they have said nothing of this affair?”

  “Am I a small boy, or an emperor, to be running through the streets with tales of a woman? There has been no occasion to mention this to my friends. I was not really aware until tonight that it was a problem.”

  The old man scooped up a handful of peanuts and twitched them one by one into his mouth as he spoke. “And your Chinese friends?”

  Girard waved a tired hand. “You should know that this is a thing of great magnitude with you alone. The rest of the world either knows nothing or feels that it is not a public affair. I have not discussed it.”

  “Good,” he said. “There are delicate social tensions in a thing of this nature.”

  “If there are, they are artificially created. I do not think it is necessary to have social tensions.”

  “Yes,” the old man said, digging peanuts from the bowl. Girard drank more tea. “Have you had any misunderstandings with her?”

  “No,” Girard said. “Did you expect them?”

  The old man nodded sever
al times rapidly. “Yes. There is a difference between the eastern and the western minds. I had thought that it might create difficulties.”

  “The difference is not so great,” Girard said. “In my country, too, much is made over the difference. But the difference is largely myth. Social myth. I do not deny that centuries of habitude have created slightly different responses here.” He looked up at the old man’s chewing face. “For example, in my country the custom of formally giving and taking bribes would not be condoned. It is done, and often; but it is done in the knowledge of its illegitimacy. Here the bribe is given usually for permission to carry on a normal life-giving activity. In my country this permission is granted by birth. With exceptions, I admit.”

  “I have heard of the exceptions,” the old man said. His old voice was higher and harsher. “It is entirely a matter of native mentality.”

  “No,” Girard said. “Every man should be able to use his mind and body legitimately without having to buy permission. You would like me to believe that the eastern mind is by nature happier when surrounded by this sort of thing. In refutation I say that the flour merchant or the farmer or the driver of a threewheeler does not enjoy paying his annual, monthly, weekly, or daily tribute to the officials. Some of them have said to me in their own words that there is evil in a society which forces a man to work every day only in order to live to work the next day, and this for an infinity of days; and to be required to pay for this generously bestowed privilege is against the nature and wishes of men in any country.”

  “You have taken a very special case,” the old man said.

  “You have asked me to believe that because I have a western mind China can be nothing but special cases for me. But I have shown you that it is not only westerners, with their naïve and provincial moral codes, who protest against what those codes call immoral. There are Chinese too who protest.”

  “Then you think the differences can be reconciled?”

  “I do not think that there can be any irreconcilable differences between members of one thinking species.”

  “You are an idealist,” the old man said.

  “No,” Girard said, hunching toward him. He flattened his hands on the table. “If you want to divide men into idealists and realists I will tell you this: A man must be an idealist who believes in the myriad myths which restrict us: myths of difference in kind, and myths of false difference in degree. Only a man of imagination, a man capable of dreams, could believe in those myths. Men are idealists and impractical when they believe in what can be proved false; they are honest and real when they recognize nature and do not attempt to disguise it.”

  “Possibly,” the old man said. “We are in a kind of metaphysics now that I do not enjoy.” He turned in his chair and called the proprietor. “More tea,” he said. “Hot. And two or three bowls of peanuts.”

  “You eat many peanuts,” Girard said. “Do they help your stomach?”

  “Yes. My ailment is of that kind.” They sat without speaking until the tea and peanuts were on the table. When the proprietor left the old man started again.

  “Have you considered children? I understand that there is the possibility of bringing out the worst traits in each race.”

  Girard set his teacup on the table and breathed deeply, sitting back against the wall. He offered the old man a cigarette and when he refused lit one for himself. “Listen,” he said, “and listen well. Up to this point no one has mentioned either marriage or children. You have imagined something. It does not exist outside of your imagination, and now you are trying to make it exist in order to avenge yourself upon it. There is no reason,” he said slowly and emphatically, “to be speaking of marriage.”

  “Ah,” the old man said. He laughed. “We have proved my point. The difference between the minds.” He tapped the table. His finger was bony and the fingernail was almost an inch long. The fingernail of the small finger was almost two inches long. “To me there is reason to speak of marriage. To me there is reason to speak of the entire relationship.”

  “Why to you?”

  “Because to me and to most of my friends the attention you have given my daughter amounts to a courtship.”

  “Foolish,” Girard said. “Foolish. Your old customs.”

  The old man put both hands on the table. “Not foolish. Not to the Chinese.”

  “Then the students and the artists and the writers are the foolish ones, is that it? Or perhaps they are not Chinese?”

  “Both,” the old man said. “Not Chinese, and foolish therefor.”

  “Then why did you send your daughter to them?”

  He snapped his teeth together and looked away from Girard. “I thought she would study the classics,” he said. “I thought she would help me.”

  “Help you with what? To restore the human nature of three thousand years ago? Except for a hard immutable core human nature changes every day. Look around you. It is changing faster in our time. You want the impossible.”

  “It may be impossible. But I have nothing else to fight for. And you must know that ten years ago, not three thousand but ten, to see a woman three times was to announce intentions.” His lower lip shook. “I cannot tolerate promiscuity,” he said. “Remember. I cannot tolerate it.”

  Girard watched his yellowed dull eyes. The old man picked up his teacup. Girard said, “Then you wish to force me to marry her?”

  The old man replaced the teacup and sighed, puffing the breath through dry rough cheeks. “I have not been very subtle,” he said, “but it seems that I must be even more direct.” In the pause they watched each other like Japanese wrestlers. “Your intellectual evasions do not interest me. I have no wish to argue. There is no need to argue.” His voice rose again on the word need. “Simply understand this: I refuse to allow you to see my daughter again. Refuse. Refuse.”

  “And if, in spite of this mild disapproval, I see her?”

  “I cannot threaten you now,” the old man said. “You have a nationality which is difficult to deal with.” His eyes swung quickly in their sockets. “Look around you.” Girard did. “It is an assorted company,” the old man said. “They work for me. All of them.”

  Girard had forgotten about the others in the room. Some of them glanced up from their dice and cups. They were not boisterous. They looked to Girard as though there were nothing of fear or pity in any of them. There were no women in the room.

  “This is too much fuss,” he said. “The problem is not one of boy and girl. Perhaps if you explained it further I would understand.”

  “It is not too much fuss,” the old man said. “To avoid pollution is the duty of a family-proud individual.”

  “Pollution,” Girard said. “Then you would prefer to have her marry a fat and syphilitic pockmarked tax commissioner. You would prefer to see her perhaps with a man who had three concubines and used her as housemaid. You would prefer that?”

  “Yes. I would prefer that. Her children would be sons of the land that fathered me. Syphilitic they might be; but bastards and unfilial they would not be.”

  “And if I see her?”

  The old man closed his eyes again. “I will tell you. You asked if there might be something else. There is something else.” He ate peanuts. “You were intelligent enough to sense that; perhaps you will be intelligent enough to cease meddling.”

  “What is it?” Girard asked. “Something involving money, perhaps.”

  “Yes. There is no need to be above the thought. It involves money and prestige. It involves what the people of the street like to call face. It involves all that I have built for myself since the revolution.

  “I am in the government. You know that. My work requires loyalty. It requires silence. It requires devotion. It hardly requires the distractions imposed by adolescent theorizing. Thanks to you, my daughter has come to question me. Publicly. She criticizes. She embarrasses me. Ten words to the wrong person and I would be asked, politely but firmly, to explain her.

  “And in addition t
here is the bad, very bad, publicity you would bring me. Hsieh, they would say, Hsieh, friend of the republic. Hsieh who gives his only living daughter to the first barbarian that asks for her. More than that: Hsieh’s daughter has married a professor.” He spat the word. “She has become a thinker. She marches in parades. Perhaps Hsieh is not as devoted as we had thought to his and our ideals.

  “Now do you see?” He was trembling, sitting erect with his fingers folded and the nails lying along his wrists.

  “Yes, I see,” Girard said. “I see very clearly. Your old fashioned indifference to the fate of a womanchild is overcome by your grasp. Perhaps you will be president of the republic if you do not die first. Perhaps you will marry your own daughter, thus keeping the blood pure.”

  The yellowgrey left the old face and red came into it. He sat with his front teeth together, his mouth half open, glaring at nothing and breathing noisily. He was squeezing his teacup in both hands. When he was in control of himself he spat at Girard’s feet at the side of the table. “I could have you killed,” he said rapidly. “Now. But I will not.” Girard knew suddenly that it was true. When the old man said it to him he could feel sweat come. The old man smiled, ugly, insectlike. “Perhaps I will, someday.” The red was draining from the old man’s face. He reached again into the bowl of nuts. He was still smiling, his face set in lines and wrinkles of genial dominating hate. “Let me tell you who I am. Let me tell you why I am that man. Let me frighten you further.” Girard lit another cigarette with the orange end of the first. His wet hands stained the paper.

  “I started a long time ago,” the old man said, munching as he spoke, with minute bubbles of saliva in the corners of his mouth. “I was an official of the examination board of the empress. I was the youngest to have held the position since the founding of the dynasty. I was handsome. I was favored. The empress herself had given me audience. I saw before me fifty years of work and luxury, promotions and titles. I was pleased with myself and with my life.