The Vagrants (17 page)

“This is my invention of mouse poison,” Bashi said. “Mice love honey, like you, don't they? So they'll eat the ginseng root without thinking and then they'll get such a fire in their stomachs they will wring themselves to death regretting they took that sweet bite of stolen food.”

Nini shuddered. She looked at the jar in her hands. “Did you put poison in the honey?”

“Why would I?” Bashi said. “You thought I would poison you? What a funny thought. You're not a mouse. You're my friend.”

Nini looked at Bashi's grinning face and felt slightly uneasy. “Do you have many friends?” she asked.

“Of course,” Bashi said. “Half the people in Muddy River are my friends.”

“You have other girls as friends too?”

“Yes. Men and women. Young and old. Dogs, cats, chickens, ducks.”

Nini could not tell if Bashi was joking again. But, if he did have other girls as friends, did they ever come here? The way he had behaved on the way here, making sure people did not see them together, made her suspicious. “Do you bring girls to your house often?” she asked.

Bashi shook his hand at her, his face taking on a serious look.

“Are you all right?” asked Nini.

Bashi wiggled a finger at Nini. “Don't make a sound,” he whispered. “Let me think.”

Nini looked at Bashi. With his pouting lips and knotted eyebrows, he looked like a small child pretending to be an adult. He was a funny person. She could never tell what he would do next. She had heard neighbors warn their daughters not to talk to strangers; her parents had told her sisters too, but the warning had never been issued to her, as nobody seemed to think she would ever be in danger. Nini studied Bashi again. If he ever did anything very bad, she had a voice to warn his neighbors. But perhaps her worry was unnecessary. He was not a stranger. He was a new friend, and Nini decided that she liked him, in a different way than she liked Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu. They made her want to be better, prettier, more lovable, but what difference would it make now? They hated her and wouldn't allow her back into their house. Bashi made her forget she was a monster. Perhaps she was not.

“Yes,” Bashi said, clapping his hands after a moment and smiling. “I've got the whole plan worked out.”

“What plan?”

Bashi beckoned Nini to follow him into the bedroom. The curtain between the two beds was not pulled up. He sat her down on his unmade bed. “Can you keep a secret for me?” Bashi asked her.

Nini nodded.

“You can't tell anyone,” he said. “Can you do that?”

“I don't have other friends besides you,” Nini said.

Bashi smiled. He drew the curtain and Nini saw the old woman, eyes closed as if in sleep, the blanket pulled up all the way and tucked tight under her chin. Her thin gray hair was coiled in the style of an old woman's bun, with a few strands escaping the hairnet. She looked like an old woman Nini might have liked, but maybe death made people look kind, as none of the old women she met in the marketplace was nice to her.

Bashi put a finger underneath his grandmother's nose for a moment and said, “Yes, she's as dead as a dead person can be. Now you take a
vow
in front of her.”

“Why?”

“Nobody fools around with dead people,” Bashi said. “Say this: I swear that I'll never tell Bashi's secret to other people. If I do, his grandmother's ghost will not let me have a good death.”

Nini thought it over. She did not see much harm in it, as her parents reminded her often that, with all the pains and troubles she had brought to the family, there would be nothing beautiful in her death. For all Nini cared, there was nothing good in her life either, so why should she be fearful of an ugly death? She repeated the words and Bashi seemed satisfied. He sat down next to Nini and said, “I'm going to kill Kwen's dog.”

“Because Kwen beat you yesterday?” Nini asked. She was disappointed. A dead dog didn't seem to fit with a solemn
vow
in front of a grandmother's body.

“More than that. He's a devil, and I'm going to make the whole town see it. There's a lot I'll tell you later. For now, you just have to know that I'm going to kill that black dog of his before I can go on with the rest of my plan.”

Nini nodded. She did not know if she wanted to hear more of Bashi's plan. The old woman, no more than five feet away, distracted her.

“So here's how it will work. Dogs are not old women and they don't take a liking to ginseng roots, right? What is to a dog as a ginseng root is to an old granny?”

Nini looked at Bashi, perplexed.

“Think, girl. A sausage, or a ham, no? Dogs like meat, so do you and I, but we are smarter than dogs,” said Bashi. “This is what I'm going to do: I will give the dog a sausage a day until he wags his tail at me whenever he sees me, and then, bang, a sausage cured with pesticide. The poor dog will never imagine that his only friend in this world has killed him. How does that sound?”

Nini fidgeted. It seemed that Bashi could sit here talking to her, or to himself, all morning. If she did not return in time to cook before her parents came home for lunch, as she hadn't the night before for dinner, her mother would let that bamboo broomstick rain down on her back again.

Bashi looked at her. “Don't you like my plan?”

“It's not good to think of other things before taking care of your grandmother,” she said. “I don't have all day to sit here talking to you.”

“The business of the living comes before that of the dead,” Bashi said. “But you're right. I need your help to get her into the casket before you leave.”

“You don't want to hire some professionals?”

“I'd have to burn her for them to be hired,” Bashi said. “It's all right. We can do it ourselves.” He pulled a trunk from the corner of the bedroom. “I think she got everything ready here. Find what you need and dress her up well. I'll get the casket.”

Bashi left for the storage cabin before Nini replied. She opened the trunk. Silk and satin clothes lined the inside in orderly layers: coats, jackets, blouses and pants, shoes, and caps. She touched the one on the top with her good hand and her chapped palm caught a thread. What a waste, to bury such fine clothes with a dead woman, Nini thought. She rubbed her hands on the outside of her pants hard before she touched the clothes again. Piece by piece she took them out of the trunk and piled them neatly next to the old woman on the bed. When she reached the bottom of the trunk, she saw several envelopes, each bearing a number. She opened the first one and saw a stack of bills, mostly of ten or five yuan. Nini had never seen so much money. She bit her lips and looked around. When she was sure Bashi was not in sight, she put the money back into the envelope, folded the envelope once in the middle, and slipped it into her pocket.

“The casket is too heavy for me,” Bashi said when he came in a moment later. “I wonder if the carpenters put some lead in it. Let's not worry about that part now.”

Nini's voice quavered when she pointed out the envelopes to Bashi. He checked their contents and whistled. “I thought she saved everything in our bank account,” he said. He pulled out two ten-yuan bills and handed them to Nini.

She shook her head and said she did not want the money.

“Why not? Friends stick together, so why don't we share the good fortune?”

Nini accepted the money. She wondered if the ghost of the old woman was around supervising her afterlife business like old people said, and if so, whether she would be outraged by the envelope in Nini's pocket. But why did she need to worry about a ghost? Nothing could make her life worse than it was now, with Mrs. Gu and Teacher Gu turning their backs on her. Nini pulled back the blanket and peeled off the old woman's pajamas. There was a strange smell, not pungent but oily sweet, and Nini felt nauseated. When her hand touched the old woman's skin, it was leathery and cold. So this was what it would be like when her parents died. The thought made Nini less scared. After all, it would be her job to care for her parents when they got old, and eventually clean them up for burial. She wondered who would see off Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu. She had more trouble imagining them dead and naked in bed than her own parents. She wished things could be different for the Gus—perhaps the wind would carry them away like smoke before someone's hand touched their skin—but why would she let them off so easily, when they had thrown her out without hesitation?

Bashi loitered on the other side of the curtain without helping Nini. She thought it strange until she realized that perhaps it was not good for a boy to see the naked body of his grandmother. He was a good and honorable person, after all, despite his oddness.

When it came to cleaning the body, Bashi suggested that they use the cold water from the tap in order to spare unnecessary trouble. Nini disagreed. The folded envelope threatened to jump out of her pocket and reveal itself to Bashi and to the world—she wished she had thought of a better way to hide it, in her shoe so she could step on it firmly—and out of guilt, she insisted on starting a fire so she could bathe the old woman with warm water one more time. Bashi followed her to the kitchen, leaned against a cabinet, and watched her stoke the fire. “What a nice granddaughter-in-law you would make!” he said with admiration.

Nini blushed and pretended that she had not heard. Bashi placed a chair by the stove and sat astride it, both arms hugging the back of the chair. “Have your parents arranged someone for you to marry?” he asked.

What a strange question, Nini thought, shaking her head.

“Have you heard of the saying that the bird with the weakest wings needs to take off earlier?”

“No.”

“You should think about it. You don't want to wait too long before looking for a husband.”

Nini said nothing and wondered if Bashi was right. Her parents had no wish to marry her off; they would have no one else to wash them before their burials. Had she been the daughter of Mrs. Gu and Teacher Gu, would they have started to worry about her marriage by now, so that when they exited the world, she would not be left alone?

“I'll keep my eyes open for possible candidates, if you like,” said Bashi.

Nini watched the fire without replying. The water hummed. When he pressed again, she said, “Let's not let your grandma wait too long.”

Bashi laughed. “She won't know now,” he said. He helped Nini carry the kettle to the bedroom and then sat down on his own bed on the other side of the curtain. Nini wiped the old woman gently, trying not to study the dry and creased skin, the eerily long and sagging breasts, the knotted joints. If not for the stolen envelope in her pocket she would have finished the job in a minute or two. When she finally did, she tried to slip the silk clothes onto the body, but the old woman, completely still and stiff, would not cooperate. Nini yanked one of the old woman's arms out of her sleeve when she felt a small crack. She must have broken the old woman's arm, Nini thought, but she did not care anymore. It took her a long time, with her one good hand, to fasten the coiled buttons of the robes. When she finished with the sleeping cap and silk shoes, she said to Bashi, “Now you can come and see her.”

The two of them stood side by side. The old woman looked serene and satisfied in the finest outfit for the next world. After a while, Bashi circled an arm around Nini's shoulder and pulled her closer to him. “What a nice girl you are,” he said.

“I need to go home now,” she said.

“Let's get whatever you need from the storage cabin.”

“Not too much,” Nini said when Bashi put several cabbages in her basket. “Otherwise, my parents would question.”

“I'll walk you home.”

Nini said she would rather he did not walk with her.

“Of course,” Bashi said. “Whatever you prefer. But when do I get to see you again? Can you come this afternoon?”

Nini hesitated. She would love to come to this house again, with food and coal and a friend, but it was impossible. In the end, Bashi found the solution—Nini could spend an hour or so every morning in his house and she could get the coal from his storage bin; later in the day, she could come to see him at least once, with the excuse of going to the marketplace.

Nini was sad when they said goodbye. On the way home, she turned into a side alley and took the envelope out of her pocket. Her parents would certainly discover this by the end of the day. She wondered if they would send her to the police because she was a thief, or just happily confiscate the money. She disliked either possibility, so she changed direction and walked toward the Gus’ house. When she reached their gate, she could not help but hope that they would throw the door open and welcome her into their arms.

A man walked past Nini and then turned to her. “Are you looking for Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu?”

Nini nodded, a small hope rising—perhaps they had known she would come, and had asked a neighbor to watch out for her.

“Teacher Gu is ill, and Mrs. Gu is taking care of him in the hospital. They won't be back for some time.”

Nini thought of asking for more details, but the man went on before she could say anything. She waited until he was out of sight and slipped the envelope beneath the gate. They would never guess that the money had come from her, but perhaps they would change their minds, when they realized that they were well treated by the world while they themselves had mistreated her; perhaps they would come and look for her when Teacher Gu was released from the hospital.

TONG LEFT HOME
after lunch. His parents were taking their midday nap, and Ear was running around somewhere in town. Tong's father was not fond of Ear, and thought it a waste of Tong's life to play with the dog. Tong was happy that Ear found places to wander about until sunset, when the darkness made him less of a nuisance to Tong's father, who would by then have begun his nightly drinking.

It was early for the afternoon class, and Tong took a longer route to school. In the past six months he had explored the many streets and alleys of Muddy River, and he never tired of watching people busy with their lives. The marketplace, where many mouths seemed to be talking at the same time without giving anyone the time to reply, was an exciting place, while the back alleys, with men and women gossiping in different groups, were full of overheard tales about other people's lives. Only an old man pondering over nothing or a loitering cat mesmerized by the sunlight at a street corner would make Tong feel lost, as if they belonged to a secret world to which he had no access.