The Vagrants

Teacher Gu picked up the bottle and studied it. Gousheng pushed the food toward him. “Eat and drink,” he said. “Teacher Gu, I'm a man who doesn't know many words in books, and you are the most knowledgeable person I've met. Please, you tell me, Teacher Gu—is there something we could do better? I worry that my wife is mean to too many people and we're being punished because of her behavior.”

Teacher Gu drank carefully from the bottle and braced himself for the coarse liquid. “Scientifically speaking,” he said, and then cringed at his words, which would probably alienate the man who was saving him from a lonely night. “Have you been to the doctor's?” he asked.

“My wife doesn't want to go—we've been married for three years. It's enough that she can't get pregnant—if we go to the doctor, the whole world will know our trouble.”

Teacher Gu thought of explaining that she might not be the one fully responsible for the situation, but then why would he want to release her from her shame and humility? He drank and popped the peanuts into his mouth the way Gousheng did. “There's no other way. Just try again. But you have to know that some hens never lay eggs,” Teacher Gu said, disgusted and then exhilarated by his own crass metaphor.

Gousheng thought about it. After a few gulps he nodded. “I would be doomed, then,” he said. “My parents didn't agree with our marriage when they saw her picture. They worried that she looked too manly for a wife.”

“And you liked her?”

“She was already a branch leader of the Youth League, and I was only a common worker. How could I reject such a match? A blind man could see how lucky I was, especially since she was the one who initiated the matchmaking.”

“Why did she choose you, then?” Teacher Gu said. “But, of course, you are a handsome man,” he offered unconvincingly

Gousheng shook his head. “She said she wanted someone trustworthy, someone from the proletarian class, someone who earned a living with his own hands. But why on earth did she choose me? There are many men who would have fit her standard! Sometimes I wish she had not chosen me—to think I could have had a more obedient wife instead of being the obedient one!”

Teacher Gu looked at the young man, in drunken tears. “Women are unpredictable,” agreed Teacher Gu. “Men certainly want to understand their logic, but let me tell you, they act with little sense. Why don't you divorce her? Let her suffer. Don't suffer with her. They are all the same—they don't know how to make men's lives easier!”

Gousheng seemed to be shocked by Teacher Gu's sudden vehemence, but Teacher Gu drank and talked on with new energy. “Take my wife, for example—look at where she's gotten herself!”

Gousheng drank quietly and then said, “Teacher Gu, your wife …”

“Don't feel you have to defend her in any way. I know what she did.”

“She's probably an accomplice at most,” Gousheng said. “She's older and they probably won't be too harsh on her.”

Teacher Gu ignored Gousheng's effort to comfort him. He drank now with a speed that matched Gousheng's. “Let me tell you, the worst thing that ever happened in this new China—not that I'm against the new China in any way, but to think of all these women who get to do what they want without men's consent. They think they know so much about the world but they act out of anything but a brain! Your wife, forgive me if I offend you—she is the same creature I have seen in my own wife. And my daughter too—you may not know her but she was just like your wife, full of ideas and judgments but no idea how to be a respectful human being. They think they are revolutionary, progressive, they think they are doing a great favor to the world by becoming masters of their own lives, but what is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? Let me tell you—history is, unlike what they say on the loudspeakers, not driven by revolutionary force but by people's desire to climb up onto someone else's neck and shit and pee as he or she wants. Enough bad things are done by men already, but if you add women to the equation, one might as well wish not to bring a baby into this world. What do you see in this world that is worthwhile for a baby to be born into? Tell me, give me one good reason.”

Teacher Gu felt his heart spill out onto the table like the rolling peanuts that his fingers were now too clumsy to catch. He had never felt such passion about the world. Why should he remain respectful and humble when he had to suffer, not only from the men he hated but also from the women he loved? Why did he have to love them from the beginning, when the Buddha had made it clear that every beautiful woman was only a bag of white bones in disguise? How could he be deceived by them, wives and lovers and daughter—who were they but creatures sent to destroy him, to make him live in pain, and die in pain?

“Teacher Gu, don't get too loud,” Gousheng said in a whisper. “You're being imprudent.”