The Vagrants

Kai walked on without replying. She had always convinced herself that the decision to marry was not much different from serving a meal to a tableful of guests, with different people to consider: her parents’ elation at being taken more seriously by those who had previously treated them with little respect, the futures of her two younger siblings—a brother whom Han had arranged to send to Teachers College in the provincial capital, and a sister who had been delighted to be courted as the relative of an important figure in the government. The heroines Kai had once played onstage had all given up their lives for higher callings, but it was not for a grand dream that she had decided to marry Han, but for a life with comfort and convenience.

When they arrived at the studio, Han assured Kai that there was no pressure. He handed her the mug of herb tea he had carried for her. “Sometimes a man can talk like an idiot when he is dreaming.”

Kai smiled and said she was only tired. She had no right to stop a husband from dreaming up a future to share with his wife. She wondered if the foundation of every marriage was made up of deceptions, and whether to keep the marriage from collapsing the deceived party had to maintain a blind confidence or a willingness to look away from the unwelcome truth. In his last year of life Kai's father had admitted, in one of his few private conversations with Kai, that marrying Kai's mother had been the most unfortunate decision he had ever made, and that he had stayed in the marriage only for the sake of the three children; this confession was not to be shared with her mother, as both father and daughter understood without having to make any promises to each other.

“I know I may not be the perfect husband for you,” Han said. “But I also know that you may not find someone who wants to do as much for you as I do, or someone who can do as much as I do for you.”

“Why are we talking like a new couple who needs to prove our love to each other?” Kai said, trying to make her voice light. “Isn't Ming-Ming enough for what we are to each other?”

Han gazed at Kai with a strange smile. “How many children do you think would make you settle down?”

She had never been unsettled, Kai said.

She had not been the only girl, Han said. Kai had never asked him about other suitable matches, and he had questioned little about her own past, though she knew he had the connections to investigate if he had wanted to. There was little mystery about what the other girls wanted, Han said, and there was little doubt that he could easily give them what they were after. “But you were different. I knew it the moment I saw you. You were more ambitious than all the other girls, and I thought maybe even I couldn't get for you what you wanted.”

Kai had never seen Han speak with such candor, nor had she expected his insight, and this alarmed her. She had thought that there was little in him beyond the spoiled boy, and she had found it suffocating to tend the boy both as a mother and a playmate. Now she wished that was all he was. She looked at her watch. She needed to get ready now, she said, and Han nodded. In a lighter voice he told her to forget their conversation. Spring fever, he said of himself, and promised to recover from the illness by the time he saw her for lunch.

IT TOOK BASHI A FEW SECONDS to realize that the night had long been over. The patch of sky in the high bedroom window was blue and cloudless, and through the half-open door of the bedroom he could see the living room filled with bright sunlight. He had missed the best time to see Nini. He wondered if the girl had looked for him. It had been a restless night for Bashi. He had been going over the different ways he could reveal Kwen's crime to the town, but none of them seemed right. In the meantime, he had a feeling that the woman's ghost was perched at the foot of his bed, and when he shut his eyes and refused to acknowledge her presence, she took over the space inside his eyelids. After an hour of tossing and turning, he masturbated. The woman's ghost retreated, taking with her his usual joy in the activity. In the end, he exhausted himself, in pain more than enjoyment, and fell into a series of dreams. In one, a double wedding was taking place, Nini and himself the first couple, the executed counterrevolutionary and Kwen the other. What a horrifying dream, Bashi thought now, but perhaps it was a sign that justice would send Kwen to his dead bride.

His grandmother did not answer when Bashi asked her for the time. He raised the curtain between them and found her in her bed. What dreams had kept her in bed? he asked. Had his grandfather come for a visit? Bashi thought of joking, but before the words came out, he noticed that there was something odd about his grandmother, her cheeks ashen-colored.