The Vagrants

Recently, I have been going over the Buddhist scriptures. No, they are not in front of my eyes—the scriptures my grandfather left me, as you may imagine, did not survive the revolutionary fire, started by none other than my own daughter. The scriptures I have been reading, however, are written in my mind. I am sure that this is of little interest to you with your Communist atheism, but do imagine with me, for one moment, the Buddha sitting under the holy tree and speaking once and again to his disciples. He who was said to be the wisest among the wise, he who was said to have vast and endless love for the world—who was he but an old man with blind hope, talking tirelessly to a world that would never understand him? We become prisoners of our own beliefs, with no one free to escape such a fate, and this, my dearest friend, is the only democracy offered by the world.

Teacher Gu stopped writing when he heard someone walk into the yard through the unlocked gate. He looked out the window and saw his neighbors, the young revolutionary lunatic and her husband, coming to his door. The wife raised her voice and asked if there was anyone home. The door to the house was unlocked too, and for a moment, Teacher Gu wondered if he should move across the room quietly and bolt the door from the inside. But the distance to the door seemed a long, exhausting journey. He held his breath and closed his eyes, wishing that if he remained still long enough, they would vanish.

The couple waited for an answer and then the woman tried the door, which she pushed open with a creak. “Oh, you're at home,” the woman said with feigned surprise. “We heard some strange noise and thought we would come to check.”

Teacher Gu replied coldly that things were perfectly fine. Discreetly he moved a newspaper to cover his unfinished letter.

“Are you sure? I heard you had a stroke. We'll help you check,” the woman said, and signaled for her husband to come into the room from where he stood by the door, his two hands rubbing each other, as if he was embarrassed. “Is your wife home?” the woman asked.

“Why should I answer you?”

“I was just wondering. It's not a good thing for a wife to leave her husband home.”

“She's at work.”

“I know, but I'm talking in general. When you were in the hospital, I saw her leaving home after dark at least twice,” the woman said, and turned to her husband. “Why don't you check and see what that noise is? Maybe it's a litter of rats.”

The man stepped up unwillingly and looked around, avoiding Teacher Gu's eyes. The woman, however, did not conceal her interest as she walked around the room and checked all the corners. When she took the lid off a cooking pot and looked in, Teacher Gu lost his patience. He hit the floor with his cane. “You think we're too old to take care of a rat in our cooking pot and need you snakes for that?”

“Why, it's not good manners to talk to your neighbors this way,” the woman said, throwing the lid back on the pot. “We're here to help you before things get out of hand.”

“I don't need your help,” Teacher Gu said. He supported himself with one hand on the table and stood up, pointing to the door with the cane. “Now leave my house this very instant. You don't happen to have a search warrant, do you?”

The woman ignored his words and moved closer to the table. She lifted the newspaper, uncovered the half letter, and smiled. Before she had a chance to read a word, Teacher Gu hit the tabletop with his cane, an earsplitting crack. The cup of untouched tea jumped off the table and spilled onto the woman's pants; the saucer, falling onto the cement floor, did not break.

The husband pulled his wife back before she could react; her face remained pale when he assured Teacher Gu that they did not mean him any harm. The husband's voice, a polite and beautiful baritone, surprised Teacher Gu. The man was a worker of some sort, as he wore a pair of greasy overalls and a threadbare shirt. Teacher Gu realized that he had never heard the man speak before. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine a more educated mind for that voice.

The wife, her face regaining color, stepped from behind the man. “What do you think you are doing? This is a civilized society.”

The woman's voice was shrill. Teacher Gu could not help but feel sorry for the husband, whose beautiful voice—were it to have a life of its own—would probably be disappointed beyond words by the mismatch of the other voice, blade-thin and ugly.

“Don't think you can scare me with that Red Guard style of your daughter's,” the wife said. “Let me tell you, truth is not to be enforced by violence in our country.”

Teacher Gu pointed his cane at the woman's face, his whole body shaking. “Do not come and shit in my house,” he said slowly, trying to enunciate every word.

“What vulgarity for a schoolteacher,” the woman said. “The earlier you are fired, the better for the next generation.”