The Vagrants

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.

TEN

         Kai walked alone to the city square, a tired sadness taking hold. In the falling dusk the street was gray and empty. By now most people had returned home after their outing in the mountain, Ching Ming ending, like all holidays, a bit too soon.

An official at the courthouse had been assigned duty and was waiting for them when they had delivered, at midday, a copy of the petition with the transcribed signatures, requesting an investigation of Gu Shan's trial and the restoration of her posthumous reputation; the official, an acquaintance of Kai's, had pretended not to recognize her and, without further comment, had signed the official paperwork for receipt of the petition.

The enlarged picture of Gu Shan remained untouched on the pedestal of Chairman Mao's monument, the black mourning ribbons around the frame loose in the evening wind. The paper flowers gathered earlier in the day had been made into three wreaths, and in the dim light they bloomed like huge pale chrysanthemums. Underneath the wreaths was the white cloth that bore more than three hundred signatures, the four corners weighed down by rocks. Wild-flowers and new twigs of pine trees, brought back from the mountain by people Kai had or had not met in the rally earlier, had been left in bouquets on the cloth. Kai studied the improvised memorial to Gu Shan; no order had come from the government for a cleanup, which seemed another confirmation of their achievement.