The Season of the Stranger

by Stephen Becker

  At the theatre Cheng paid, still bubbling about what they would see, and they walked into the lower lobby to wait for the beginning. When Cheng reached for a cigarette he elbowed the man beside him and when he turned to apologize he elbowed a woman on the other side, and by the time he had finished apologizing and had lit his cigarette more people had come in and he could not easily drop the match without letting it glance off someone’s gown. Holding the dead match in his left hand he shepherded her to the wall. They stood against it, with more room now. He went on talking and she went on liking him and wondering if she would like the kind of a life that would let her come here, to the theatre, two or three times a week. She saw a man she thought she knew and this time there was no emotion at all, just the idea that here was someone she knew. She could not remember where she had seen him and she was not sure that she really knew him because he was of a type, heavy and tall and broad-shouldered, and she had not seen him too well and there were many of that type in the City. Cheng was worried about the changes that might take place in the world of drama if the City fell. It might be better, he said. A little man came up to them and greeted Cheng and Cheng introduced her. It was the manager’s son and he himself must have been sixty, silver-haired and with a fine pointed beard. Cheng asked him what would happen if the City fell and the old man waved a careless hand, looking confident. He saw someone else then and said, “Watch out for pickpockets,” and went away.

  “How does he know you?” she asked.

  Cheng looked embarrassed again. “I used to come here often. And I asked him once if he could sell me a subscription for the season, because it was too expensive paying the full price each time. So for six months he would not take my money at all. Then I changed to engineering and stopped coming.” He looked up toward where the man had disappeared. “I think he is disappointed in me. Anyway, I had to pay tonight.”

  There it was again, this about the money, but she laughed and looked fondly at him. Then a boy came into the lobby and began beating ferociously on a cymbal, stopping at every third beat to scream that the performance was beginning. They flowed through the door with the others and took their seats. Before everyone was seated a woman came onstage and sang, tragically and nervously, of having murdered her husband. No one paid much attention to her. The woman next to Li-ling was saying to her neighbor that some husbands deserved it, which was why she liked this particular opera so much. A man came down the aisle asking if anyone wanted tea. In front of her two children were quarreling. Cheng explained to her the significance of the costumes and the makeup. The woman onstage had a meeting with her lover. Then they were accusing the brother of the murdered man of having killed the woman and Li-ling knew that she had missed something, but she knew too that she had seen the opera before, and then the costumes became familiar and the music was the repetition of an old score; she knew how the actors would move, and even the balcony and the walls of the theatre and the people around her were part of an old picture she had seen before; well before, when she was very young, but there it was; and here came an old man onstage and she knew that he was the servant. An excitement started in her, spreading down through her body, tingling the way she could sometimes feel hot tea tingle from her throat to her stomach. The children in front of her had stopped quarreling and the woman on her left was quiet; now everyone was quiet, waiting for the sadly pitched song of despair and hope. It came quivering and shifting, sweetly hopeless, and before the tones had died they were shouting, “Good, good!” The servant left the stage and a man came out to move the benches. The audience relaxed and murmured. Conversation leaped to life.

  “That was lovely,” she said.

  “He is a new young actor,” Cheng said. “This is the first time I have seen him.”

  “What happens next?”

  “A fine scene. The best of the opera. There, the beginning.”

  The murmuring stopped. The scene ran to its climax before a tightly attentive shrinking eager audience; bright gazes followed the wavering knife; a woman wept quietly. Onstage the servant’s daughter, seeing death in the room with her, sang in resignation and calm happiness, her voice reaching out almost visible to pull them to her; then the stage was closer, the actors larger, the song falling in linked tumbling words from above, behind, beside, everywhere, the audience strung stiffly on one thread of dying hope, futile hope, the hope that exists only to make more poignant an inevitable poignancy. The knife dropped from a thousand hands; a thousand girls stooped swiftly, seized it; the thousandthroated audience felt the sting of its point. The binding, uniting thread snapped, vanished with the life of the girl. The last lines of the scene were lost in the roaring of the audience.

  When he could speak Cheng said, “Amazing. Not since Ma Lien-liang have I seen anything like this.”

  She wiped her wet hands on the gown. “I thought this was Ma Lien-liang.”

  He laughed. “No. But the servant’s name is Ma in the play.” He looked serious again, and spoke quickly. “Did you ever see an audience so taken? This man is great. Possibly the greatest in the history of the theatre.”

  “I believe it,” she said. Ma, Ma, Ma; it must be the name.

  “To kill in anger must be easy,” he said. “To kill for another reason, even when you want to …” He shook his head.

  The next scene began.

  Moving into the street they shattered briefly the midnight emptiness and then lapsed, with the thronging wrung and purged theatre audience, into a stiff, cold, unaccustomed silence. For a moment they stood motionless, quiet in deference to the absence of threewheelers and bickering shouting threewheeler men and to the barely stirring patches of dust and the narrow unpeopled alleyways, quiet because whatever had tonight demanded a strange silence of this never silent theatre street would demand their own silence; and then still uncomprehending they walked into it, into the unnaturalness, knowing that if this road, this square, could be dead this night then somewhere in front of them there might be a wall where no wall had been before or perhaps a door unlocked for a century that this night would be locked. In the dust were the footprints of people who had preceded them on the road, and there were almost-obliterated threewheeler tracks, but no hint of an answer, nothing to tell them why tonight they could hear their feet scrape the ground when all other nights even conversation would be drowned in the life around it. Nor in the darkened mystery of shuttered shopwindows or evacuated spotless stalls was there an answer; only the distant glow of a high streetlamp offered a point of arrival, a possible point of departure.

  They hurried to it, leaving the others behind. She took Cheng’s arm.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I do not know.” He looked around him. “There is no one. No one at all, except from the theatre. It must be a curfew.”

  She shivered. “Hurry.”

  At the streetlamp they stopped. “Still nothing,” he said. “Another lamp, that way.”

  “It is toward the student center.”

  “Yes. We might as well go.”

  They went to it; they were alone now. As if it had been a giant game, or the last frivolous test of playful gods who would admit them to their heaven only when they had found it, they saw only another streetlamp. Then standing in the echo of their heartbeats they heard a sound; distant, faint, but a sound, the rattle of a moving vehicle. Soon even that was gone. They went to the third street-lamp.

  When they arrived they stood in its glare looking at each other. They had seen no one but the people at the theatre: no pedestrians, no peddlers, no threewheelers, not a man or woman or a child; they had heard only the one unreal sound of the distant moving vehicle; and the unreality became staggering in the absence of soldiers and policemen. It was as though they who had gone to the theatre had been spared, and the others had been taken, all of them, bodily, with their belongings, and sent to another planet. She thought of that, and then the sister thought came to her: what is going to be done on Earth that requires the emptiness?


  Because they were bathed fully and for the first time in many hours in the eye-straining glare of a white light, neither of them noticed the automobile until it had come to where they could hear the motor. There was a bad moment then and Cheng became Han-li and she turned to her; but the fear on Cheng’s face stopped that, and she was cold and clear inside, no trouble, knowing herself perfectly, and then the automobile whispered to a stop beside them.

  The door opened on the far side and the driver came around the automobile toward them. It was the man she had seen in the theatre, but she had seen him only briefly and incompletely then and she had not recognized him because of his clothes; she saw that now, as he came toward them with the streetlight shining from the scar on his cheek. She had never seen him in a gown. He could have been anyone, except for the scar. He walked quickly to them and smiled amiably when he saw that there was no need for haste.

  He bowed. “Good evening, Miss Hsieh,” and nodding, “and Mr Cheng.”

  She said, “Good evening, Lieutenant.”

  Cheng said nothing.

  The lieutenant looked at the shoulder of his gown and smiled again. He was quite handsome. “Of course you could not know. I am a captain now.”

  She smiled back. “I am sorry. I remember too well our first meeting. You will always be a lieutenant to me.”

  “As you wish,” he said.

  “It must be nice to be a captain,” she said. “Your clothes seem much more comfortable.”

  A low laugh came from the automobile and the near door opened. A tall thin man in uniform stepped out. He looked almost sixty. There was something odd about his appearance, even in uniform. He removed his hat and bowed, showing them very white hair. “The young lady is amusing,” he said. “Not funny in her words, but amusing in the way she says them.”

  She could tell from Cheng’s face that he was having a bad time. “I do not believe I know you,” she said to the white-haired man.

  “No,” he said, “and I do not believe that you will. We have not the time, unfortunately, for amenities.”

  The lieutenant looked embarrassed. “I thought it would be better to conduct the interview politely,” he said.

  “You were right,” the other said. “But you were not conducting the interview. You were discussing your new rank, were you not?”

  The lieutenant was silent.

  The white-haired man turned back to them. “What are you doing here?”

  Cheng said, “We were on our way to the student center.”

  There was a brief pause. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  “Then you have not heard?”

  “You know that we were at the theatre,” she said. “It must have been you who followed the bus. No announcement of anything was made at the theatre. The lieutenant knows that.”

  “Captain,” the lieutenant said.

  The white-haired man said, “Yes. Captain.” He smiled at her. Then he turned to the lieutenant. “Captain,” he said, “would you do me a great favor?”

  “Yes,” the lieutenant said.

  “Get into the automobile. Remain there.”

  The lieutenant blushed in the lamplight and turned away quickly. The automobile door slammed behind him.

  Cheng was not doing well. He was constantly wetting his lips. The shine had left his eyes and his head was forward and low.

  “You were at the theatre,” the man said, “and you are now on your way to the student center.” He considered. “Hardly sufficient excuse.”

  “For what?” She knew that he had done his considering a long time before. There was nothing to do now but talk and wait.

  “For breaking curfew.”

  “Then we were right. There is an early curfew.”

  “Yes.”

  “At what hour was it announced?”

  “Nine.”

  “To go into effect when?”

  “Ten o’clock. I answer your questions only so that you will see that there is no injustice being done.”

  “I do not follow your reasoning,” she said. She looked at Cheng and back at the man. “Why was the curfew called?”

  “Because of the war,” the man said. “There was a breakthrough this afternoon. The enemy bandits are at a distance of one hundred fifty li. In addition to that we have discovered a plot, here in the City, against the government.” He paused. “We are not police. The only crime which concerns us is treason. Violation of the curfew is an insignificant and uninteresting misdemeanor. But it becomes our problem when it may involve political activity. We are trained to cope with political problems. Is that satisfactory?”

  She considered. Then she said, “My father’s home is closer than the student center. If you will escort us to his home, I guarantee that we will observe the curfew from the moment we arrive.” Cheng smiled faintly and lifted his head.

  The man thought. They waited. The man’s face showed nothing for a moment and then he was laughing.

  He stopped laughing and shook his head at her. “You know he would not admit you.” He was still amused. “You yourself cannot return to his house. And as far as I know a student has never crossed its threshold.” He shook his head again. “I am afraid you have the wrong solution.”

  “You could leave us at the student center,” she said.

  “I do not know,” he said.

  They stood in the pool of light, all of them silent. In the brightness the man’s face looked young and smooth. She could see clearly the fine diagonal twill of his uniform. She saw what had been odd about his appearance: he was wearing no overcoat. He showed no sign of chill. His quiet and his immobility were at first impressive, as though here were the kind of man to whom nothing was sufficient cause for impropriety, for haste, for vulgarity. The pause wore on. The gravely thoughtful look remained on his face, and no movement disturbed the graceful balance of his body; and then the moment was outlived and the time for impressiveness was gone, and what had been dignity became posturing, the empty meaningless conduct of a man who was directed by other men and who thought that the fact of his subordination could be hidden and who tried to hide it by arrogating what he thought were the universally admirable qualities of his directors. He saw her eyes and the change in her face, and perhaps he knew what she was thinking. His body relaxed, and when he spoke his voice was tired, almost apologetic.

  “There were some students, you see, in the plot. So we must be very careful. You, Miss Hsieh, will be escorted to the student center. You, Mr Cheng, will come with us.”

  “Where?” Cheng asked.

  “It does not matter,” the man said.

  “What will you do to him?” she asked.

  “To him?” Now the voice was mild, objecting. “Not ‘to him’. He will be questioned, and if his answers are satisfactory he will be released.”

  She took Cheng’s hand. “Then there is no need for further talk.”

  “No,” the man said. “No need at all.” He turned. “Captain,” he called.

  The door opened and the lieutenant trotted around the automobile to them. “Yes?”

  “Will you take Miss Hsieh in the front seat with you?”

  “Of course,” the lieutenant said.

  “You can discuss ranks and promotions with her,” the man said. “If you will come with me, Mr Cheng.”

  The lieutenant took her arm. The thin grip frightened her until she remembered about the missing fingers. He opened the door for her and closed it behind her and walked around the automobile to get in on the driver’s side. The white-haired man and Cheng were in the back seat.

  During the ride she watched Cheng. He sat huddled back in darkness. She could not see his face except when they passed a streetlamp; then he would lean forward slightly and stare up at the light until it was gone. There were tears in his eyes. Next to him the man appeared to be asleep.

  At the student center she reached over and pressed Cheng’s hand again. He did not react at all except to let her see the tears in his eyes. She nodded. The whit
e-haired man got out as she did, saying, “I will see you safely inside.”

  She rang the bell. The caretaker must have been sleeping; she had to ring three times. Finally he came, and they heard the bolt being drawn back. She looked up at the white-haired man. “I will wait until you have locked the gate,” he said. “There may be dangerous people in the streets tonight.” He smiled. “Your safety is very important.”

  “You mean you were ordered to see that I was unharmed?”

  He continued to smile.

  “I was not to be allowed to return home, but I was not to be harmed.” The gate swung open. “Is that it?” The caretaker blinked stupidly at them.

  “Good night, Miss Hsieh,” the man said.

  She went in. She tried to look back at the automobile while the caretaker was closing the gate, but the white-haired man was standing where she had left him, smiling and blocking the view. The caretaker shot home the bolt and started walking off. She followed him and took his arm. A moment later they heard the automobile leave.

  She swung the caretaker around and looked at him. “Where is there a telephone?”

  He said, “What?”

  “Do not be old and stupid,” she said. “A telephone.”

  “A telephone,” he said. “Well.” He thought.

  Cheng would very soon be wherever they were taking him, perhaps fifteen minutes. “Hurry,” she said. “Tell me where I can find a telephone.” She articulated clearly and slowly. “Has no one ever asked you before?”

  The worried look left his face. “Of course,” he said. “A man asked me just last week. A student. He missed the last bus and he had an examination in the morning. So he wanted to call to tell them he might be late.” He beamed at her.

  “Fine,” she said. “Now listen closely. Where did the student go to telephone?”

  It will take half an hour to arrange everything, but they will not deal with Cheng immediately. Unless it is already too late and they have dealt with him in the automobile.

  “The pharmacy,” he said. “That was it. The pharmacy.”