The Vagrants (41 page)
Kai listened to the new announcer, her voice as perfect as her own had once been. A young boy with a slight rustic accent came onto the stage and read his script aloud, followed by a few others, every one of them having assisted in one heroic way or another to cleanse Muddy River of its most dangerous enemies. Han was the last to speak, of his struggle and then awakening at finding his ex-wife to be a leader of the uprising against his mother country.
It was only when the sentences were read that Kai was surprised for the first time that day. Hers was the last to be announced, the only death sentence among the ten. She was too young to die, Mrs. Gu shouted, breaking down before she was dragged off the stage. Only then did Kai realize that her sentence had been kept secret from her companions, for the greatest shock effect, perhaps, or just for mere protocol. Despite the two officers who tried hard to push her head down, she managed to look up at Jialin, who had turned to her, his eyes behind his glasses filled with a strange look of longing. Before either of them could speak, Jialin was pushed off the stage. Kai was the last one to be taken offstage, and for a moment, she remembered an essay her father had drafted for her when she was in the fifth grade.
A man with a revolutionary dream is never a lonely soul—
she remembered the title, and when she closed her eyes, she could almost see the essay, posted as the top winner of the provincial contest, her father's perfect words in her less than perfect handwriting.
OLD HUA AND MRS. HUA
left Muddy River the evening before the May Day celebration. There was little left for them to cling to in the town, or anywhere else in the world, their hearts rekindled by the hope of going back to the freedom of a begging life. Leaving with them was Nini, who had been disowned by her parents and who had pleaded with the beggar couple to take her along. It did not matter that she no longer remembered her daughters’ faces, Mrs. Hua thought; Nini would be their last daughter. They did not know that Nini had taken out all the cash from Bashi's trunk and hidden it in her socks; the stacks of bills rubbed the soles of her feet now, hardened into calluses from many days of blistering, but nobody found her limping suspicious.
She would take care of the couple, when they were too old to work, with the money in her socks, Nini thought. There was no reason for her to linger in Muddy River, though she knew she would be back in seventeen years, after Bashi served his sentence for molesting and kidnapping a young child. She had tried to visit him once, but the guards said only families and relatives were allowed. There was no point in making them understand she was his child bride; there was no point in explaining anything to anyone, the Huas included. The only thing to do was to count the days and years to come.
For raping and mutilating a dead woman's body, Kwen was sentenced to seven years. The morning of May Day, when the music and slogan shouting came from the loudspeakers outside the high walls of the prison, Kwen signaled for Bashi, who had been curled up in his narrow cot, to listen. They had both been beaten repeatedly by their cell mates, on account of their being newcomers as well as their women-related crimes. They were considered lower than the lowest creatures. The beatings seemed not to bother Kwen, and it would not take long before he became the one who organized such beatings, but at this moment, when Kai was driven in the police van to Hunchback Island, both Kwen and Bashi were slow in moving around because of their fresh wounds. Hear that? Kwen said to Bashi; another life on the way to the otherworld. Bashi did not reply, looking up at the old man with fear and disgust. Remember the other day, when we became friends over the woman's body? Kwen patted Bashi's shoulder and told him not to look so frightened. Heaven's door is narrow and allows only one hero at a time, but those going down to hell, Kwen said, always travel in pairs, hand in hand.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to: Elizabeth McCracken and Edward Carey, who gave sunshine and water and plenty of love to the novel when it was only a seed; Richard Abate, Chen Reis, Katherine Bell, Jebediah Reed, Barbara Bryan, Timothy O'Sullivan, John Hopper, and Ben George, for reading and rereading the manuscript; the Lannan Foundation and the Whiting Foundation for their generous support; Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfant, and Scott Meyers, for their hard work; Mitzi Angel and Kate Medina, for their insights.
And also to:
Brigid Hughes and Aviya Kushner, for their friendship, which makes my small world big;
James Alan McPherson and Amy Leach, for their beautiful minds;
Vincent and James, for keeping their mother from living solely in words; and Dapeng, for making the maps and the curtains, for keeping the memories, and for love.
Mr. William Trevor, for stories and hope.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
YIYUN Li is a recipient of the Frank O'Connor Inter national Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/ PEN Award, the
Guardian
First Book Award, and a Whiting Writers’ Award. She was also selected by
Granta
as one of the best young American novelists under thirty-five. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons.
Copyright © 2009 by Yiyun Li
All rights reserved.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Random House, Inc., for permission to reprint seven lines from “The Shield of Achilles” from
Collected Poems
by W. H. Auden, copyright © 1932 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Li, Yiyun.
The vagrants : a novel / Yiyun Li.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-773-0
1. City and town life—China—Fiction. 2. China—Politics and
government—20th century—Fiction. 3. China—Social
conditions—20th century—Fiction. 4. China—History—
20th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PL2946Y59V34 2008
813′.6—dc22 2008023467
v3.0