The Season of the Stranger (10 page)

He gave Wen-li the envelope. “What is the name of the street?”

“Tsung Pu Alley,” Wen-li said.

“Thanks,” he said. “I can read the rest.” Wen-li turned and started out. “I will not eat at home tonight,” Girard said.

Wen-li slapped lightly his thigh. “When am I to have the honor? And I have already chopped the meat.”

“Invite a friend,” Girard said.

“What time will you leave?”

“Before six.”

Wen-li nodded. “I will. Thank you.” He left.

At five-thirty Girard walked away from the house in the best clothes he had been able to find: new and tight shoes, clean shirt, and a pressed unspotted thin outer gown over the winter gown. He had brushed the fur hat. At the fork of the road he went to the right, through the trees. It was almost dark in the long shadows of late sunlight. He left the road and walked over a small hill and down into the lighter clearing where the bus stood. He went around the bus to the driver's window and asked him where Tsung Pu Alley was.

“Near the four eastern posts,” the driver said. “About ten minutes from the last stop by threewheeler.” He thanked the driver and climbed into the bus and took a seat near the front. When the man came with the tickets he asked him what the price would be today. The man said that the price had not changed for two weeks and that this was very unusual. Girard said that he was right and paid him.

Tsung Pu Alley was fifteen minutes from the last stop and it took them five minutes more to find the number. He paid the threewheeler man and knocked at the gate. It was almost seven. There was no sound in the courtyard, over the wall. He knocked again. Footsteps came into the courtyard and the gate rattled and opened. A face looked out at him.

“It is I,” he said.

“I perceive it, sir,” the face said. The gate opened farther. “Come in.”

He walked into a large courtyard planted with thickly grouped shrubs. The man closed the gate and they walked forward into the light of window lanterns. They went through the first building and came into the second court. The man pointed.

“Go across this courtyard,” he said. “That is the door. Knock.”

Girard went and knocked. The door opened immediately. He stepped into the hall. A man stood with an oil lamp, looking up at Girard's face. “This way,” the man said. They walked down a corridor lighted solely and badly by the lamp. He could see large polished jugs and several wall hangings with much red in them. At the end of the corridor the man knocked at a door and a voice answered. The man opened the door and bowed to Girard and went back down the corridor.

Girard crossed the doorsill and stood looking at the third man. Neither of them moved for the space of five breaths. Then the man said:

“You are Girard.”

Girard said: “Yes. And you are—”

“His secretary,” he said. “You may remove your hat and place it on the table at your left. He will be here shortly.”

Girard put his hat on the table and looked around him at the room. There was a cold stone fireplace in front of him. The ceiling was high and completely darkened. There were three tables, more wall hangings, and two oil lamps; and from the wall on either side of the fireplace extended two platforms of the shape and dimensions of double beds. They were of stone and uncovered.

“You may be seated,” the secretary said, pointing to one of them. “I shall leave you.” He bowed and left by the door through which Girard had come. When he was gone Girard went to the stone platforms and sat on one of them and discovered that it was warm. He recognized it then as a k'ang, a stone couch with hollows winding through it and heat from some central fire in the hollows. He rested his hands flatly on it. He looked into the courtyard and wondered which building she was in.

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 several 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.