The Vagrants (36 page)

“Nonsense. Why would she want to kiss you? She's an old woman.”

“Then do you want to kiss me, young woman?”

Nini punched Bashi on his arm. He jumped aside, which made the baby shriek with happiness. Nini opened both arms, trying to catch Bashi, and he hopped around, all three of them laughing.

Nini was the first to calm down. She was tired now, she said, sitting on Bashi's bed. Little Sixth pulled Bashi's hair, demanding more rides. He marched around in the bedroom, singing a song about soldiers going to the front in Korea, the baby patting his head and Nini humming along. When he finished the song, he lowered the baby and put her next to Nini. Then he took the baby's kerchief and folded it into a small mouse and played tricks with his fingers so that the mouse jumped onto Little Sixth as if it had a life of its own. The baby screamed with joy; Nini was startled and then laughed.

“What a lucky man I am to have a pair of flower girls here,” Bashi said.

Nini stopped laughing. “What did you say?”

“I said with one trick I made both of you laugh.”

“No, you said something else,” Nini said. “What did you mean?”

Bashi scratched his head. “What did I mean? I don't know.”

“You're lying,” Nini said, and before she knew it, tears came to her eyes. She sounded like the bad-tempered women she saw in the marketplace; she sounded like her own mother, and she was ashamed.

Little Sixth chewed on the tail of the kerchief mouse and watched them with interest. Bashi looked at Nini with concern. “Do you have a stomachache?”

“What ideas do you have about the baby?” Nini said. “I tell you— she's not yours. She'll have the best man in the world.”

“A man even better than I?”

“A hundred times better,” Nini said, though already she was starting to smile. “Don't ever set your heart on Little Sixth.”

“For heaven's sake, she's only a baby!”

“She won't always stay a baby. She'll become a big girl and by then I know you won't like me, because she'll be prettier and younger. Tell me, is that your scheme, to marry me so you will one day get Little Sixth?”

“I swear I've never schemed anything.”

“And when the baby is an older girl—”

“I'm her big brother so of course I'll watch out for her. Pick for her a man a hundred times better than I.”

“Brother-brother,” Little Sixth said, the kerchief still between her teeth.

She did not believe him, Nini said, trying to keep her face straight.

“I'm serious. If not, all the mice of the world will come and nibble me to death, or I will be stung by a scorpion on my tongue and never talk again, or some fish bone will stick in my throat and I will never be able to swallow another grain of rice,” Bashi said. “I swear I only have you in my heart.”

Nini looked at Bashi and saw no trace of humor in his eyes. “Don't swear so harshly,” she said in a soft voice. “I believe you.”

“No, you don't. If only you knew,” Bashi said, and took a deep breath. “Nini, I love you.”

It was the first time he had said love, and they both blushed. “I know. I love you too,” Nini said in a whisper, her arms and legs all in the wrong place, her body a cumbersome burden.

“What? I can't hear you. Say it louder,” Bashi said, with a hand on his ear. “What did you just say?”

Nini smiled. “I said nothing.”

“Ah, how sad. I'm in love with someone in vain.”

“That's not true,” Nini said, louder than she'd intended. Bashi looked at her and shook his head as if in disbelief, and she panicked. Did he misunderstand her? “If I were not telling the truth, the god of lightning would split me in half.”

“Then the goddess of thunder would boom me to death,” Bashi said.

“No, I would die a death a hundred times more painful than you.”

“My death would be a thousand times more painful than yours.”

“I would become your slave in the next life,” Nini said.

“I would become a fly that keeps buzzing around you in the next life until you swat me to death.”

Neither spoke, as if they were each entranced by their desire to demonstrate their willingness to suffer for the other. In the quietness they listened to the baby babbling. Nini wondered what they would become now that they knew how much they desired each other. When Bashi touched her face, it was only natural for his lips to touch hers, and then they let the rest of their bodies drag them down to the bed, onto the floor, without a sound, and they held tight to each other until their bones hurt.

Bashi picked her up and put her on his grandmother's bed. Little Sixth watched and then, when the curtain was drawn, she lost interest. She crawled on Bashi's bed, from one end to the other, exploring the new territory, enjoying the freedom without the rope that bound her to the bed. Soon she rolled off the bed, but the pillow she had been dragging along cushioned her. She cried halfheartedly and then crawled to the other bed, past the curtain that threatened to tangle her, around a pair of big shoes and then another pair, bigger, and finally she reached the place she had set her mind to, under the bed where her big sister and big brother were panting in their inexperienced joy and agony. She picked up half a stick of ginseng from under the bed and chewed it. It was sweet at first but then it tasted awful. She took the stick out and threw it as hard as she could, and it landed in one of the big shoes.

“Bashi,” whispered Nini.

Inches away, Bashi gazed at Nini, and then buried his head into the curve of her neck. “Let's wait until we get married,” he whispered back. “I want you to know that I'm a responsible man.”

Nini looked at her undone clothes and smiled shyly. He buttoned her shirt and together they listened to the baby talking to herself.

“I'm going to find Mrs. Hua and Old Hua right after you go home,” Bashi said.

“Tell them we want to get married tomorrow,” Nini said. “My parents won't care.”

“How lucky I am,” Bashi said.

“I am the lucky one.”

They lay in each other's arms. From time to time one or the other would break the silence and talk of plans for themselves and the baby, their future life. After a long time Bashi looked at the clock and looked again. “It's near noon now,” he said.

Nini looked at the clock and then listened. It was quiet for the time of the day, when normally schoolchildren and grown-ups would be going home for their lunch break. She sat up and said it was time for her to go; she moved slowly, as if her body were filled with lazy dreams too heavy for her to carry. She might as well let her parents and her sisters wait.

“Are you coming in the afternoon?” Bashi asked. “I'll have talked to Old Hua and Mrs. Hua by then.”

“I'll come after lunch,” said Nini. She turned her back to him and straightened her clothes. Before she left she put a small bag of fried peanuts in her coat pocket. For Little Fourth and Little Fifth, she said, and Bashi added some toffees.

When Nini left Bashi's yard, two old women stared at her and then exchanged looks. It was the first time she had left his door in broad daylight—she used to be careful, sneaking in and out of Bashi's house in the semidarkness of the early morning—but let the women suffer in their nosiness and jealousy. She was his, and he was hers, and Old Hua and Mrs. Hua were going to marry them very soon. She had nothing to fear now.

The street was eerily empty. The marketplace was locked, and in the main street, most of the shop doors were shut. When Nini walked past an elementary school, the school gate opened and out ran children of all ages. School was letting the children go home late, she thought, and quickened her steps. She wondered if she could get home before her parents and sisters came back. They might not even discover her absence.

A few blocks away from her house Nini saw the smoke rising. People with buckets and basins ran past her. When she entered her alley, a neighbor saw her and cried out in relief, “Nini, thank heaven you're not in the house.”

Nini looked at their house, engulfed by fire. The smoke was black and thick against the blue sky, and the orange tongues of fire, nimble and mischievous, licked the roof. The neighbor shouted for her to stay at a safe distance; her parents were on their way, and so were the fire engines, he said.

A few schoolchildren ran past Nini. They cried warnings at anyone passing by, more out of excitement than alarm, and soon they were ordered by the grown-ups to leave the alley. Nini looked at the neighbor who was running toward the house and who had, she hoped, forgotten her by now. She held the baby tight and slipped into a nearby alley, against the running crowds, wishing she could turn herself into a wisp of air.

TWICE BASHI HAD WALKED PAST
Nini's alley, but none of the neighbors who answered his knocking would provide him with any clue when he inquired about the whereabouts of Nini's family. The brick walls remained standing, but the roof had collapsed. The front room of the house, with its blackened holes where the two windows and a door had been, reminded Bashi of a skull, and he spat and scolded himself for the unlucky connection. An old woman who was probing the ruins with a pair of tongs, upon hearing his steps, looked up with alarm. Thinking that she was a neighbor, Bashi tried to start a conversation, asking her if she knew the family stricken by the disaster, but she seemed to be caught in panic and hurried away with a straw bag of knickknacks. It took Bashi a moment to realize what the woman had been doing, and he shouted at her to return what did not belong to her, but she was soon out of sight.

Bashi decided to go to the city hospital to find any news. Someone there must have information if the two sisters, as Nini believed, had been caught in the fire. He had found Nini curled up in a ball in front of his locked door earlier that afternoon when he had returned from his visit to the Huas. Wake up, girl, he had said, saying he had brought great news, but when she opened her eyes he was struck by how, in less than an hour, she had become a stranger—Nini always had everything on display in her small face, hunger and anger and curiosity and determination, but now the blankness in her face frightened him. Little Sixth, hearing him, crawled out of the storage cabin and smiled.

Did he still want to marry her, a bad-luck girl who had murdered her sisters and left her family homeless? Nini asked. It took Bashi a few minutes to understand the question. He tried to think of something to lighten Nini's mood, but his brain seemed frozen by her unblinking eyes. The Huas had agreed to take her in if her parents agreed to the marriage proposal, Bashi said, the news delivered with less confidence and joy than he had imagined. They could have been in heaven, Nini said; they could have been so happy. They could still be happy, Bashi said, but Nini shook her head, saying she was being punished for her happiness. Heaven was the stingy one, taking back more often than giving—Bashi remembered his grandmother's favorite saying and told it now to Nini. Heaven was the mean one, Nini said, and Bashi replied that, in that case, he would go to hell with her. For a while after that they watched Little Sixth crawl in the yard, their hands clasped together. They were two children for whom the world had not had any use in the first place, and in each other's company they had grown, within half a day, into a man and a woman who would have no more use for that world.

On the way to the hospital, Bashi saw unfamiliar faces loitering in twos and threes in the street. If not for the fire he would have been talking to these strangers, trying to strike up conversations, but now Bashi watched them with detachment. The world could have been collapsing but it would not have made any difference to Nini or to him.

The receptionist at the emergency room was unfriendly as always, and when Bashi could not pry any useful information from her, he thought of the two strangers in front of the hospital. “A busy day, brothers,” Bashi said when he approached them.

The two men looked Bashi up and down and did not reply. He offered them a pack of cigarettes. The younger one, not much older than Bashi, held out a hand and then, taking a quick glance at his companion, shook his head and said they had their own cigarettes.

“How disappointing. No offense, but I think it's unacceptable to refuse a cigarette offered to you. At least here in our town.”

The older man nodded apologetically and brought out two cigarettes, one for himself and one for his companion. The younger man struck a match and lit the older man's cigarette first. When he offered Bashi the match, already burning to the end, Bashi shook his head. “So, where are you from?” he said.

“Why do you ask?” the older man demanded.

“Just curious. I happen to know a lot of people in town, and you don't look like one I've seen.”

“Yes? What do you do?” the older man said.

Bashi shrugged. “Have you heard anything about this fire?” he said.

“There was a fire?”

“A house was burned down.”

“Bad luck,” the younger man said.

“So you haven't heard or seen anything? I thought maybe you would know, the way you have to stand here all day.”

“Who told you we stand here all day?” the younger one said. The older man coughed and pulled his companion's sleeve.

Bashi looked at the two and smiled. “Don't think I'm an idiot,” he said. “You're here because of the rally, no?”

“Who told you this?” the two men said, coming closer, one on each side of Bashi.

“I'm not a blind man, nor deaf,” Bashi said. “I can even help you if you help me.”

The older man put a hand on Bashi's shoulder. “Tell us what you know, Little Brother.”

“Hey, you're hurting me,” Bashi said. “What do you want to know?”

“All that you know,” the older man said.

“As I said, you need to promise to help me first.”

“You don't want to bargain on such things.”

“Oh yes? Do you want to know what that person did?” Bashi pointed to a middle-aged man, who exited the hospital and crossed the street.

The older man gave the younger man a look, and the younger man nodded and went across the street, running a few steps to catch up with the middle-aged man.

“If you can go into the ER and ask them if there was anyone hurt in the fire, I'll tell you what he did,” Bashi said, when the older man pressed again.