The Vagrants (30 page)

“Are you cooking a mud pie with the hedgehog?” Nini said.

“Close,” Bashi said. He went into the room and brought the box out. The hedgehog was still a frightened small ball. Bashi lifted it out of the box and put it in the mud dough. “Do you know how beggars cook the chickens they steal?” Bashi said. “They wrap the chicken up in mud and put the whole thing into hot ashes. When the roasting is done, you break the mud shell and eat the tender meat. The same with hedgehog, I heard.” Bashi rubbed mud onto the hedgehog until it was totally enclosed. He rolled the ball in the mud a few more times and worked to make it perfectly round.

The fire in the stove hissed. Bashi tried in vain to blow on the fire to put it out; Nini laughed at him and slammed the damper shut. Soon the fire went out, smoldering quietly. Bashi poked the mud ball into the amber ashes. Together they stood and watched the mud ball in the belly of the stove, the outside drying into a crust. After a moment, Nini sighed and said, “What do we do now?”

Bashi turned around with his two muddy hands sticking out like claws. “We can play eagle-catching-the-chick,” he said, and bared his yellow teeth. “Here I come.”

Nini limped away with a happy scream, and Bashi followed her, always two steps behind, making a funny screeching noise with his grinding teeth. They circled the living room and then Nini ran into the bedroom. She threw herself onto Bashi's bed and panted. “I don't like this game,” she said, with her face buried in the pillow.

Bashi did not reply. Nini rolled over and was surprised to see him standing by the bedside, gazing at her with a strange half smile. “Don't stand there like dead wood,” she said. “Think of something better to do.”

“Do you want to marry me?” Bashi said.

For a moment, Nini thought he was joking. “No,” she said. “I don't want to marry you.”

“Why not?” Bashi said. He looked hurt and disappointed. “You should consider it before you decide. I have money. I have this place all to myself. I'm your friend. I make you laugh. I'll be good to you— I'm always good to women, you know?”

Nini looked at Bashi. His eyes, fixing on her face with a seriousness that she had never seen in him before, made her nervous. She wondered whether her face looked especially crooked. She turned and hid the bad half from his gaze.

“Think about it,” Bashi said. “Not many men would want to marry you.”

Nini did not need him to remind her of that. Anyone who had eyes could see that she would never get a marriage offer. She had blindly hoped that Bashi would not notice her deformed face, but of course, like everyone else, he could not get it out of his mind. “Why do you want to marry me then?” she said. “Aren't you one of them?”

Bashi sat down by Nini and ran a finger through her hair. She did not move away even when she saw that he had mud on his hand. “Of course I'm different,” Bashi said. “Why else do you think I'm your friend?”

Nini turned to look at Bashi, and he nodded at her sincerely. She wondered if she should believe him. Perhaps he was what he said, a man different from everyone else in the world; perhaps he was not. But what harm was there even if he was lying? He was her only friend, and even if he did see her as a monster, he seemed not to be bothered by it. She had no other choice; he was not a bad one, in any case. “Will you marry me if I agree to marry you?” Nini said.

“Of course. What do I need other women for if you agree to marry me?”

Not many women would want to marry him, Nini thought. She wondered if she herself was his only choice, but no matter how strange a man he was, she was on the bottom rung when it came to marriage and he was somewhere higher up. “What do we do if we agree to marry each other? When do I get to move out of my parents’ home?” she said.

Bashi circled Nini's eyes with his muddy finger and then sat back to look at the effect. “Look in the mirror and see what a silly girl you are,” he said. “If people heard you say this, they would all laugh at you.”

Nini felt the tightening of her skin around her eyes. “Why would they want to laugh at me?” she asked.

“No girl should express such eagerness to marry a man, even if you can't wait for another minute.”

“I can't wait for another minute to move out of my parents’ house. I hate everyone there,” Nini said. As if to dispute her, the baby babbled on the other side of the curtain. Nini got up from the bed and peeked at Little Sixth. She was crawling to reach half a cracker she had missed earlier. She sucked her lips with satisfaction after she ate the cracker and then began to play with the rope. She was a good baby; as long as she was not hungry, she could entertain herself for a long time. Nini let go of the curtain and sat down next to Bashi. “Do you think I can bring Little Sixth with me if I marry you?” she said.

“Two at a time? I must be a man hit by good fortune right on the forehead,” Bashi said.

If she were not there to watch out for Little Sixth, who knew what might become of her, especially if her mother gave birth to a baby brother soon. If her parents did not like the idea, Nini thought, she would find a way to sneak the baby out of the house. But why wouldn't they be happy to get rid of two daughters without any trouble? The longer Nini thought about this, the more she was convinced that Little Sixth belonged to her more than to her parents. She could find a good husband for the baby when the time came. She turned to Bashi and patted his face to stop his grinning. “I'm serious,” she said. “When can I leave my parents?”

“Wait a minute,” Bashi said. “How old are you?”

“Twelve. Twelve and a half.”

“Honestly, I would like to get married now,” he said. “But there's a problem. You might be a little young yet to marry me.”

“Why?”

“Because there are people who might not be happy about it.”

“Who? What does it have to do with them?”

Bashi wagged a finger at Nini and hushed her. He knocked his forehead with his fist and Nini watched him. There was an unusual aroma in the room, and Nini twitched her nose hard to identify the smell. “The hedgehog,” she said finally. “It's ready.”

Bashi put a hand on Nini's mouth. “Don't distract me,” he said, and let his palm touch Nini's lips. The mud on his hands had already dried up. Nini thought about the hedgehog, roasted in the ashes. With Bashi there were always things unexpected that made her happy. Nini began to think that perhaps it was a very good idea to marry him.

“I know,” Bashi said after a moment. “Have you heard of child brides?”

“No.”

“Ask Mrs. Hua and she'll tell you about it. Sometimes people send their young daughters to live with their future husbands and their families, and when the girls are old enough, they get married. Maybe you can become my child bride.”

“Will those people you talked about be unhappy with this?”

“Why should they be, if you're my child bride? We can even ask Mr. and Mrs. Hua for help if your parents don't agree with the idea. You can live with the Huas, because they're good friends of mine. They won't mind having you around. I can pay them for your expenses. Will you be happier that way?”

Nini thought about the arrangement. Would her parents let her, a free maid, go so easily? But what could they do if she insisted on leaving for her own husband? People in the marketplace always said that a daughter who was ready to marry had a heart like the water splashed out of a basin—no matter how hard the parents tried, they would never get the water back. Of course her parents would understand this. Perhaps they would even celebrate her success in finding a husband; perhaps they would be generous enough to give her a tiny dowry. “Let's find the Huas and talk to them,” Nini said.

“What an impatient girl,” Bashi said. “They're burying my grandma at this moment. We'll see them later. We have something more important to do.”

“The hedgehog?”

Bashi smiled. “More important than that. Have you heard of the bride check?”

“No.”

“It used to be that the matchmaker checked the bride's body and made sure she was in fine shape for a wife,” Bashi said. “In the case of a
love marriage,
like ours, the husband does the checking himself.”

Nini thought about her crooked face, her chicken-claw hand, and her crippled foot. Was there a possibility that he could still reject her, even if he promised to take her in as a child bride?

“Don't look so nervous,” Bashi said, and moved closer. He pulled Nini to her feet and let her stand in front of him. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and worked his thumbs underneath Nini's old sweater. “Just like this,” he said, and rubbed her collarbone with his thumbs. “Does it hurt?”

Nini looked at his face, serious with a studying expression. She held her breath and shook her head. He moved his hands downward and cupped her rib cage in his two big palms. Tickled, she wiggled with laughter. He shushed her and said, “The sweater is a problem. Do you want to take it off?”

Nini looked at Bashi suspiciously and he smiled. “You don't have to,” he said, and squeezed his hands beneath her sweater and undershirt and enclosed her washboard body again, his hands hot on her cool skin. She shuddered. He moved his fingers up and down, as if he was counting her ribs. “A bit on the skinny side,” he said. “But it's an easier problem to solve than having a fat hen.”

Nini looked up at Bashi's face, close to her own. It wasn't right for a stranger to touch a girl this way, Nini knew, but Bashi was no longer a stranger after their talk of marriage. His hands on her skin made her feel good. She wasn't nervous now, yet her body still shivered as if it had its own will. When his hands wiggled downward she did not protest. He let his hands stay around her waist for a moment and said with a hoarse voice, “I need to check you down there too.”

“Do you think the hedgehog will be overdone when we finish?” Nini asked. The aroma of slightly burned meat from the kitchen was getting stronger and she was surprised that Bashi did not notice it.

Bashi did not reply. He picked Nini up and laid her on his bed. She felt his hands working on her belt, a long and threadbare piece of cloth she had ripped from an old sheet. Let her do it, she said, and pushed him slightly aside, feeling embarrassed in front of him for the first time. She untied the knot and he helped her take her pants and underpants down to the crook of her knees. She looked up at Bashi but he seemed to be shaking more than she was. Was he cold? she asked curiously. He did not answer, and covered her exposed body with a blanket. He needed a flashlight to go under there so she did not catch a cold, he said in a hushed voice, and he left the bedroom.

Nini waited. The hedgehog would be badly burned when they were finished, she thought. She wondered what Bashi would do to her—the
bedroom business,
as the men and women in the marketplace talked about? Whatever it was, Nini believed that it was a good thing, because those shameless women always pretended to be uninterested but their flushed faces and giggles told a different story.

Nini wondered why it was taking Bashi so long to find a flashlight. Little Sixth started to cry on the other side of the curtain. “I'm here,” Nini said in her gentlest voice, and when the baby did not calm down, Nini started to sing Little Sixth's favorite lullaby, a song Nini had made up herself and sang to the baby when she was in a good mood. Little Sixth stopped crying and babbled to herself; Nini continued singing, lost in the wordless song of her own creation.

When Bashi finally returned, he seemed less flustered.

“Where were you?” Nini asked. “It took you so long.”

“Ah, I just suddenly needed to go to the outhouse,” Bashi said. He shone the flashlight on her face. “The best one a detective could have,” he said, and crawled underneath the blanket, his legs dangling by the bedside. Nini felt him gently move her legs apart. She was about to ask him what he was doing under there, when a finger tentatively touched her between her legs. She badly felt a need to pee but she held it in and waited. The finger moved around a little, so gentle she almost did not feel it. After a long moment, Bashi emerged from beneath the blanket. “You're great,” he said.

“Are you done?”

“For now, yes.”

Nini was disappointed. She had once heard her mother and father panting at night for a long time, and only later did she realize that they had been engaged in their
bedroom business.
“Why didn't it take you long?” she said.

“What didn't take me long?”

Nini got up from the bed and got dressed. “I thought husband and wife did more than just looking,” she said.

Bashi looked at Nini for a long moment before he stepped closer and held her in his arms. “I didn't want to frighten you,” he said.

“What would frighten me?” Nini said. “We're husband and wife now, aren't we?”

Bashi smiled. “Yes, you're perfect for a wife, and of course we will be one day soon.”

“Why not now?”

Bashi seemed baffled and unable to answer her question. “People need a wedding ceremony to become husband and wife,” he said finally.

Nini shrugged. She did not care about a ceremony. He had checked her body and he had said everything was fine. That was all she cared about now that she had finally found herself a place to go. She was eager to make it happen. After a moment, she said, “How's your hedgehog now?”

Bashi was startled, as though he had only just now remembered the roasted animal. He ran to the kitchen, and when Nini followed him there, she was not surprised to see that when Bashi knocked open the dried mud ball, the hedgehog was a ball of charcoal, no longer edible.