The Season of the Stranger

by Stephen Becker

  “She sounds nice. She must be very rich.”

  “She is. I think her father operates a brothel in Shanghai. A very large splendid brothel.” She shook her head. “It is the only safe vocation left.”

  “Prostitution?”

  “No. Operating a brothel.” She went to her desk and took a package of cigarettes from the drawer. “Would you like one?”

  “All right.”

  “Do you smoke much now?”

  “Not much,” Li-ling said. “Hardly at all. But this is an occasion.”

  “It is?” She took a plate from the drawer and put a cigarette on it and handed it toward Li-ling, bowing. Li-ling took the cigarette and bowed back. Han-li put the plate away.

  “I regret having to give you this particular brand,” she said. “At the emporium they had Elephants, Antelopes, Tigers, and Hup’us. The hup’u, you will remember, is a famous and widely traveled bird. He was known to the Greeks, historians tell us, by the same name: hup’u. Knowing, as we all do, that our cigarettes are made of droppings, and that the kind of droppings varies with the brand name, I bought a package of Elephants. I expected a strong, meaty, leathery flavor, but I find that they taste more like Hup’us.”

  She would probably be like that all her life, Li-ling decided. Now Han-li flopped onto the bed and sat with her back to the wall, smoking and squinting at Li-ling.

  “So,” she said, “you are well mixed up with your foreigner.” Li-ling nodded. “It is a difficult thing,” she went on. “The war does not help much either.”

  “In some ways it does,” Li-ling said. “People have not the time to worry about us.”

  Han-li flicked ashes down between the bed and the wall. “Use the floor,” she said. “But what if the City falls? How will the Communists like him?”

  “I do not know. But they cannot dislike him more than the present government does. So it may be that the important question is How will he like the Communists.”

  “True,” Han-li said. She sighed. “He is a nice boy. How far has it gone?”

  Should I tell her, Li-ling wondered briefly. But Andrew might not like it. “We are reasonable,” she said. “We like each other. But we are reasonable.”

  “Have you made any plans?”

  “No. Not that far.”

  Han-li looked at the water in the pan. It was beginning to boil. She said: “Have you taken him to bed?”

  There it was again, the blush. It was coming to be very convenient. She must have looked virtuous. “No.”

  “Do not misunderstand the question.”

  “It is all right,” Li-ling said. “It is a natural question for you, I suppose. But no one has ever asked me before.” Soon, she was thinking, there will be no need for me to know the truth because even knowing it I will not be able to speak it.

  “It is a natural question,” Han-li said. “And it may be asked again. I think there is a trace of envy to be reckoned with in the people who speak of him to you. Even among the women who disapprove in principle, and there are many, there is this envy.” She smiled. “The fact that opposition exists makes you neither right nor wrong. You should not take offense. And you should not be embarrassed.”

  “I have so far done neither.” Li-ling hesitated. “How much … opposition is there?”

  “Much. And it is not so much opposition as it is fear, coupled with the envy I speak of.”

  “Fear of what?”

  “Fear … I do not know, really. But part of it is a nationalism. Fear that a Chinese girl, by compromising herself with a foreigner, will compromise all Chinese girls in the eyes of all foreigners.”

  “Then I am a symbol.”

  “Yes. And I wish it were someone else.”

  “Because you worry about me?”

  “Partially. And partially because you are too calm. Another girl in the same position would weep and rage and drive herself to a nervous crisis. She would give the critics reason for self-satisfaction, and once the critics felt that, they would be inclined to sympathy. But you are calm; you like your friend, and there are no tears and nothing to be nervous about, and the girls will call you callous and the foreigners will call you wanton. So I wish it were someone else.”

  I may not be calm for long, she thought.

  Han-li took two cups from the drawer. “Do you ever think about marrying him?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but I do not talk to him about it.”

  “Do you want children?”

  “By him?”

  “In general.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is a bad world into which to bring them.”

  “You mean if they were by him.”

  “Yes.”

  Li-ling shrugged. “Perhaps the world will get better.”

  “Perhaps. But you know what it is today. The Europeans do not care for the ‘Asiatic’ Eurasians and the Asians do not care for the ‘European’ Eurasians. It is like being half bird and half horse. You cannot fly and you cannot pull a wagon.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Han-li dropped her cigarette to the concrete floor and left it burning. Li-ling did the same. “What about your father?” Han-li said.

  Li-ling could feel a change inside her when Han-li said it, something shifting upward in her chest and fighting to break out. But today she would be all right. There would be nothing of that today. She could see her father sitting in his study, old and alone. “He is against it,” she said.

  Han-li grunted. “I thought he would be.”

  “I do not know yet what to do.”

  “Go slowly. Let the problem exhaust itself. Perhaps when the City falls.” Han-li frowned. “You did not mean what you said about his forcing you to leave, did you?”

  “No,” Li-ling said. “He could not force me to leave. I would run away from him.”

  “If he leaves you will be free.”

  “And I will have lost a father.”

  “And gained a husband.”

  “If he wants me.”

  “Ah,” she said. She got up and looked into the teapot. Then she poured water into it. “Then you are not sure of him.”

  “I am almost sure of him,” Li-ling said. “But there is always doubt.”

  “Perhaps you should go to bed with him.”

  She laughed. She was becoming afraid of something and she did not know what it was, so she laughed. “That would not mean enough,” she said. “And even if it did, I would not want to force him.” For a moment Han-li was silent and in the moment Li-ling could feel it, not knowing what it was for, the fear, beginning in her chest and unfolding through her like quick coldrunning blood.

  “No,” Han-li said, “it would not do any good. It might be the quickest way to lose him. And then you would have neither of them.”

  Then I would be alone, that is what she means. Inside her it was bigger and sharper suddenly and then she caught it and squeezed and compressed it, knowing that somewhere she had made a mistake and that now she might lose everything. She told herself again that today she would be all right, today she would resist, tonight she would not dream the dream. So she caught the feeling and squeezed and compressed it and drove it out of her and when she knew it was gone she looked at Han-li and smiled.

  “Here,” Han-li said. “Have some tea.”

  14

  It would begin like this: a thundering blackness, and out of the blackness the swift naked man rushing on horseback. The train would move. The horse would follow, white against the blackness. There on the rear platform holding the iron gate she would know he had come for her. In the thunder of the blackness the fear began; the horse neared the train and the fear rocketed hammeringly in pushing bursts exploding against her heart and when the rider smiled her father’s smile she was sure of death and then the rider disappeared and someone was with her on the platform and the darkness was silver and angry; silver and angry and not black, he again with no head; someone with her on the platform, perhaps Andrew, and hopefully futilely she
would twist to see. It was never Andrew; it was the cold smiling trunkless face of the rider (trunkless; hanging; bobbing); the silver close and warm and nothing from her throat, no sound, no needed scream as she reached, sobbing, wet-bodied, grasping Andrew, waking.

  Waking and breathing, but too early: sleep clutched him hard and thoroughly, and she would wake, he still asleep, his back to her. So she would hold him in the ebbing of the dream and lie wakeful until he moved. When he was awake it would all be gone and she would be well. He never knew what was happening to her. She never told him. The first time it happened she was frightened but later she laughed. Then when it came twice again she was not sure. Now today was the fourth time.

  They got out of bed. He kissed her reluctantly in a wet-eyed stuporous resistance to rising, and went in to wash. After the kiss the fear left her. After breakfast she could not remember the dream so well and there was nothing left but a sluggish worry.

  When he had left the house she went into the kitchen. Wen-li was teaching her to cook. He knew that she did not like being alone. She was happier near his strength, and he smiled often. So she went into the kitchen and sat down.

  “So,” he said. “What do you want to do today?”

  “Onion cakes,” she said. “He likes onion cakes.”

  “All right. Let me finish the dishes.”

  While he finished the dishes she read his fingerworn account book. Andrew had never asked to see it; and Wen-li did not steal; but Wen-li kept an account book nevertheless. Somewhere he had learned the English names for different foods, and there, in a child’s angular handwriting, she found the expenses listed the way they were listed in bookkeeping texts.

  “Why do you keep accounts?”

  He shrugged. “In part for practice, in part for caution. When I started with him I never knew if he would ask about expenses or not, so I kept a book. Then it came to be a habit. Also I do not want to forget the English words.”

  “Do you know what the letters mean, or do you just copy?”

  “I know what the letters mean,” he said. “I know the alphabet and how to say the letters. But the only words I know are for food.” He looked up from the dishes. “You read English very well, I suppose.”

  “Fairly well,” she said.

  He looked at her and squinted. “I would like to learn.”

  She smiled knowing his shyness and said, “It would be very useful,” meaning that she would speak to Andrew. He smiled too and bent over the dishes again.

  When they were dry and gleaming he hung up the towel and said, “Let’s go.” He took the flour from the cabinet, and the salt and pepper, and gave her four onions. “Peel them and chop them,” he said. “You know already how to make the dough. The same as for dumplings. But you cook it differently.” He made the dough and she chopped the onions. They made her cry terribly.

  He took the jar of oil from the shelf and said, “Pay attention. This is difficult.” He pointed to the tabletop. “You see what I have done?” He had patted the dough into circles about four inches across and half an inch thick. “Watch,” he said. He took a stick from the drawer and cut a groove into the dough, all around it, about half an inch in from the edge. Then he cut a cross into the inner circle. “What is that for?”

  “The oil,” she said.

  “Correct.” He took the onions and scattered some of them over the dough and when they fell in the grooves he picked them out and put them on the raised part. He crowded them. Then he took another piece of dough just as big across but not as thick and laid it beside the first one. “Watch,” he said again. He poured oil on the first piece of dough. It wetted the onions and when the onions were soaked the oil ran off into the grooves. He poured until the grooves were full. Then he took the other piece of dough and curved it, like a shallow bowl, and put it on top of the first piece with the inside of the bowl down, so that it touched only around the edge, and he squeezed the dough together where the two pieces met until the line between them disappeared and instead he had a nice row of small scallops. “There,” he said. “Finished. Ready to bake.” He grinned. “Go ahead. Make one.”

  She made one, badly. She made the grooves too shallow and scrimped with the oil. He told her that it would not be wet enough inside after cooking. The second was better, but she dented the edge of the circle carelessly and when she raised the cake oil spilled through the dent. After that she had no trouble. His scallops were neater than hers, but he said that hers would be better after practice.

  They made twelve of them and she ranged them on the baking sheet. They looked like little boys’ faces and she was thinking that they should make bodies of dough and cook them as little men. Wen-li was poking at the fire. “We will cook them now,” he said. “It does not matter when we cook them, but he prefers them cold.” She took some of the leftover dough and made a boy’s body and joined it to one of the cakes. She laughed. Wen-li came to see what she was laughing at and when he saw it he laughed. In the middle of the laughing she looked up and out the window and saw a soldier coming toward the house.

  Wen-li heard her stop laughing and saw her face. “What is it?” he said. She shook her head. She looked down at the cake with the legs and arms and noticed then that the legs and arms tapered to a blunt rounded end but she had put no hands and feet on him. No hands, no feet. She thought she would scream but her throat was dry and cottony. Then she was sitting on the cold hard floor and the soldier was with her father and she was the beggar lying dead. There was something about a dream, too, but there was no time for it because there he was in the doorway.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Wen-li said, “Hello.” She was not on the floor. She was sitting in a chair. She had been sitting in a chair all the time. The inside of her head stopped expanding. She could feel it contract sharply and the clear images come into it and then cunningness stealing over all of her.

  “Mr Girard is not at home?”

  “No,” Wen-li said.

  “Ah,” the soldier said. “Too bad.” Then he said, “Do you think I could have a cup of tea? I apologize for intruding, but I am very thirsty.”

  “Yes,” Wen-li said.

  The soldier saluted her and bowed. He came in and sat in the chair across the table from her. “You were cooking,” he said. “I have interrupted.” She did not say anything. The soldier looked at his hands and sighed. He was hulky but she saw that he was clean and that his uniform was clean. “Am I right in thinking that Mr Girard lives here? Andrew Girard?”

  Wen-li said, “Yes.”

  The soldier took off his stiffly wired cap and said to her, “Excuse me. I had forgotten.” He put the cap on the table. He had shaved his head and now there was a little growth, a stubble of perhaps two weeks. She was glad that she did not have to stand up. She examined him, cleverly, slyly, marking him, knowing him. He had white teeth and a scar on his cheek, high up. She had seen a scar like that before. In the library there was a book with a picture in it of a slender, confident nobleman from Europe. He wore a uniform with a collar something like the collar of her gown and he wore an eye-glass. She had never forgotten him because of the scar he had, a scar like this one that she was looking at.

  “Cold today,” the soldier said. “Mr Girard is out teaching?”

  “Yes,” Wen-li said.

  “Ah, well,” the soldier said, “vacation will be here soon. Six weeks of it.” He rubbed his hands. “Good to be in the kitchen. That is a big stove you have. Warm.”

  When he rubbed his hands she saw that he lacked the last two fingers on his left hand.

  “The war is coming closer,” he said. “Slowly, but coming closer.” Wen-li put a cup of tea on the table near him. “Ah, thank you,” he said. He looked at her. “You will not join me?”

  She shook her head.

  “A pity,” he said. “Forgive me if I go ahead.” He drank a little. “Good, good. Hot.”

  The drawer was partially open and she could see the cleaver lying with the blade toward h
er. She closed her eyes.

  “I regret that Mr Girard is not at home,” he said. “I would enjoy talking to him. Is he usually at home later in the day?”

  Wen-li said, “Yes.”

  “Yes, of course,” the soldier said, looking past her toward the house. “It is a lovely little house. How many rooms?”

  Wen-li said, “Three.”

  “Three,” the soldier said. “Three and a kitchen and the cook’s room. Very nice.” He stood up and walked to the door with the teacup in his hand. “Which is the bedroom?” he asked, looking across the court. “On the left or the right?”

  Wen-li said, “Left.” Wen-li was shaking down the fire. His hands were white around the poker and sweat rested trembling on his eyebrows.

  “And the room on the right is the living room.” The soldier nodded to himself. “Cozy.” He turned and looked at the boiler next to the stove. “And hot water,” he said. “Marvelous.” He looked in the soap dish and then at Wen-li. “How would it be if I washed my hands?” he said. “We have no hot water at the garrison.”

  “All right,” Wen-li said.

  The soldier took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He ran the hot water and took off his watch and then put both hands under the hot water, plunging them quickly beneath the faucet as though he were afraid the water would stop running before he got to it. He grunted. The water splashed into the sink, sounding like rain. There had been no rain for a long time. He turned off the water and reached for a towel. When his hands were dry he rolled down his sleeves and put his watch on. Then he put his jacket on. She did not want to look at him but she had to see what he did.

  “Not many neighbors here,” he said. “Mr Girard does not get along very well?”