The Vagrants

Tong accepted the letter from the old man and was surprised by its weight. He glanced at the envelope, which bore several stamps. “No peeking!” the old man shouted, and then changed his mind and asked Tong to hand the letter back.

“I can help you, Grandpa. There's a mailbox there.”

“I know it perfectly well. Call me Teacher Gu. I'm no one's grandpa.”

Tong returned the letter to Teacher Gu, who patted it and then put it in his coat pocket. Tong held the old man's free arm with both hands. “I'll help you to walk,” he said.

“Thank you, but no, I can walk perfectly well,” Teacher Gu said, and he pushed Tong aside and let his cane lead him forward.

Tong followed Teacher Gu, for fear the old man's cane would catch in the gutter. Teacher Gu, however, stumbled forward without paying attention to Tong, as if all of a sudden the boy had ceased to exist for him. When they approached the mailbox, Teacher Gu studied the collection schedule, in small print, on the side. “What time does it say?” he said after a long moment of frowning.

Tong read to Teacher Gu, who looked at his watch. “Twenty past ten,” he mumbled aloud. “Let's wait then.”

Tong thought it strange that someone wanted to wait for the postman. Wasn't that the reason that a mailbox was installed in the first place, so that people could just drop their letters in and not have to wait?

“Why are you standing here?” Teacher Gu said after a while. “Were you sent by someone to spy on me?”

He thought he had been asked to wait, Tong explained, but Teacher Gu acted as if he had forgotten his own words. He checked the street and then tapped a finger on his watch for Tong to see. “Whoever is responsible for this mailbox is late,” he said. “Don't ever believe in what's written down.”

NEVER BEFORE had the midday break seemed so long. Teacher Gu drummed on the table with his fingers and waited for his wife to finish her lunch and go back to her bank teller's window. Near the end of the previous week, his school had sent a request for his early retirement, due to health reasons, and seeing that he was qualified for three-quarters of his pension, Teacher Gu had signed the paper without a moment's hesitation, or consultation with his wife. There were plenty of educated youths returning from the countryside; he might as well leave his position, no longer fulfilling to him anyway, to a young man for whom the dream of a family would make the long hours among noisy, pestering children endurable.

“You don't have to sit here and wait for me,” Mrs. Gu said. “Or do you need more rice?”

“I'm fine as I am.”

Mrs. Gu finished her lunch. When she cleaned up the table and washed the dishes, she poured a cup of tea and left it by his drumming hand. “Do you want to take a nap?” she asked.

“Don't you need to go to work now?”

“Yes.”

“Then go. I can take care of myself perfectly well.”

Mrs. Gu, to his disappointment, took a seat at the table. “Do you think we need to hire a girl from the mountain to help with the housework?”

“Are we rich people?”

“Or perhaps Nini? I've been thinking—you need a companion. You may need help too,” said Mrs. Gu. “Nini would be a good person in many ways.”

“I thought you hated her.”

Mrs. Gu looked away from his stare. “I know I've been unfair to her,” she said.

“She'd better learn to live with that then,” said Teacher Gu. “You won't be the last person to treat her unfairly.”

“But we could make it up to her,” said Mrs. Gu. “And her family too. I saw in the street that her mother was expecting again. They will need some extra money.”

Teacher Gu thought about how his wife had been brainwashed by her young comrades. Her desire to do good and right things disgusted him. “Don't we have enough spying eyes?” he said. “No, I would rather be left alone.”

“What if something happens to me?” Mrs. Gu looked at him and then shook her head. “I'll go to work now.”

“Yes. It's good not to ask questions we don't have to answer now,” Teacher Gu said to his wife's back, and when she closed the door behind her, he retrieved his fountain pen from the drawer and found the page in the notebook that contained another halfway-composed letter to his first wife. He reread it, but hard as he tried, he could not resume the thought that had been interrupted when his wife came home for lunch. He ripped the page off and put it in an envelope that already contained three similarly unfinished letters. Let her decide how she wanted to sort these out. On a new page he began writing: