The Season of the Stranger

by Stephen Becker

“Where is the pharmacy?”

  “The Western Gate Pharmacy,” he said.

  “Where?”

  He pointed. “To the left. One block, perhaps a block and a half.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now open the gate.”

  He looked at her. “Do you want to go out?”

  “Yes. Open the gate.”

  “But it is after midnight. And there is a curfew.”

  She took him by the shoulders. “Keep quiet. Do not say another word. Go and open the gate.”

  He opened the gate. “Do not go to sleep,” she said. “I may be back in a few minutes.” He shook his head. She left.

  Walking to the pharmacy she stayed close to the walls. It was unnecessary. The streets were empty. Somewhere nearby there must have been a policeman, but he was not in sight. The old man she thought. Something happens a month ago and he remembers it as last week. Last week. The stupid and then the anger left her and she thought Someday I will remember tonight as ten years ago.

  When she reached the pharmacy she pressed herself into the doorway and rang the bell. When nothing happened she went around to the side of the building to see if there was another gate. She never found out. A light went on inside the store and she ran back to the doorway.

  When the door opened she rushed into the store, past the proprietor, and called back that he should close the door and come immediately. While he closed the door she was looking for the telephone. Nothing. The proprietor came in and switched on more lights.

  “Turn them off,” she said.

  He was young, perhaps eighteen. He must have been the proprietor’s son. He was shorter than she was and his wrists were thin. “Who are you?” he asked her.

  “Turn off the lights,” she said. “I will not hurt you. I need the telephone.”

  “Why do you want the lights off?”

  “I … there is a curfew.”

  “It is not a blackout,” he said. “We may keep the lights on.”

  “They will know that I have been out after curfew.”

  He shrugged. “A light means nothing. No one will come looking.”

  “The student center is nearby. They worry about the students.”

  “Are you a student?”

  “No,” she said. “Yes.”

  He examined her without expression. He opened the door. “I think you had better go.”

  She walked up to him and stood very close to him, so that she would have to look down when she talked to him.

  “My name is Hsieh Li-ling,” she said. “My father’s name is Hsieh Ming-p’u. Perhaps you know the name. If you do not, I will tell you. Hsieh Ming-p’u is very important in the government. He has killed and lied his way to great power. I am not proud of that. But he could have you killed and your store demolished and not a word would be said. Now I need money and I will telephone for it and when it comes you will have some. Where is the telephone?”

  He backed away. “There,” he pointed, “behind the counter.”

  She went to it. After she had dialed she said, “Turn off the lights and close the door.” The lights went off.

  The ringing went on interminably. The boy was leaning on the counter. She could not see his face. The ringing stopped. A voice came over the wire.

  “Dean Chou?”

  “This is he,” the voice said.

  “This is Hsieh Li-ling.”

  There was silence. Then he said, “What must I do?”

  She told him.

  “All right,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “Do it quickly.”

  “Money,” the boy said.

  “Dean Chou.”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell him to bring extra money.”

  She hung up. The boy and she looked at each other. “You will wait here?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I am happy to have been of service. But I do not think that you will get your friend out of jail.”

  “That is not your business,” she said. “Keep quiet about it.”

  He shrugged.

  “Where can I sit down?” she asked him.

  He stepped behind the counter and came back with a small chair. He set it near the wall. She sat down and leaned her head back against the wall. She closed her eyes.

  In the darkness he said, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A cup of tea would be fine.”

  I wish Han-li could know she thought. That Han-li was unaware and probably asleep was suddenly very funny. All the world asleep, and I performing in a pharmacy. It was so funny. She was tired.

  He had laughed a long time and then he had said You can never again go home but now she was going home. What would he think of that. Would that cloud his clear untroubled eyes. I am going home.

  It was all so funny. When the boy came with the tea the tears were slipping into the corners of her smile.

  PART THREE

  18

  They brought him back at about five in the morning. Wen-li had been sitting in the kitchen smoking and drinking a little hot wine. It was a cold morning. Even in the kitchen it was cold. He was sleepy and hoping they would come soon. Then he heard the sound of the automobile coming up the road from the library and after a minute the light swept through the window and flickered across the opposite wall and then they were in the courtyard. He went out to open the front door. The boy was standing there with Mr Girard and the girl beside him and when the boy saw him coming he took a step toward him and put out his hand and said, “Glad to see you.” Wen-li took his hand and nodded. The boy looked as though he had been drinking yellow wine all evening, but when Wen-li took his hand he could feel the boy’s happiness and he knew that it was not wine, so he smiled at him and nodded again. He opened the door and they all went in and he followed. When they had settled themselves he said, “Would you like some tea?” Mr Girard nodded so he went out and made tea.

  The boy needed something to calm him, Wen-li could tell. Even that night Wen-li thought of him as “the boy”. He did not know what had happened to the boy and all he knew was that the government had had hold of him, that was bad enough, and still he was “the boy”. The boys and the girls, he always thought of them. And he was only thirtytwo himself. Anyway the boy needed something to calm him. So Wen-li put everything on a tray and put a small cup of hot wine next to the boy’s teacup and carried it all inside.

  They were all sitting there talking, with a brightness in their eyes. While Wen-li put the tea on the table the boy was moving his hands telling them how the soldiers had taken him to the North Central Barracks and put him in a room by himself. He said he had heard them walking around outside his door and talking and the only word he heard clearly was “treason”, and then there had been more arguing but he could not hear much of it. Wen-li took his time pouring tea and placing a cup next to each of them. He was glad that he had always served slowly and carefully and not been in people’s way, because tonight no one noticed that he was slower and more careful than usual. Then the boy said they had taken him out of his room and to another room. It had been dark in the first room and in the second room there was only one kerosene lamp. There was a man sitting at a desk in the second room and a soldier standing inside the door with a rifle. They made the boy stand in front of the desk. Then they asked him questions about the plot. He said to Mr Girard and the girl that he had not known about the plot but that the more questions the man asked him the more he wished he had known about it because he kept feeling that he would have liked to be in it. But he kept telling the man that he did not know anything and the man began to get angry.

  Wen-li finished placing the tea and then he went to the door. He stood near the door. No one noticed him so he stayed where he was. He was trying to look as though he would ask if they wanted anything more, as soon as he could interrupt politely. Meanwhile the boy was saying that they had threatened him. They had said that he was lying and that they knew he was lying and if he did not tell the
truth by morning they would put him in jail for treason. Then the boy said something that surprised Wen-li. He said that the man had said there were several hundred students in jail in the City who had been in jail for four or five years, and there were even some who had been in jail before the Japanese came and had been kept in jail and were still there. The man had asked him how he would like that to happen to him. Wen-li was figuring. The Japanese came in the twentysixth year of the republic and it was now the second month of the thirty-eighth and if the students had been in jail for one year before the Japanese came that would make twelve or thirteen years in jail. Some of them would be older than he was by this time.

  He must have moved or made a noise while he was figuring, because the boy was just finished telling how they threw him back in his dark room and left him there when Mr Girard looked up and smiled and said, “If you are so interested you had better sit down. Get yourself a cup of tea first.”

  Now there was a problem. He never knew what to do when he said something like that. He supposed he meant it, because he was a foreigner and strange anyway and he would not joke too much about things like that; and he knew the girl did not mind; but he did not think Mr Girard should do it in front of the boy that way. He remembered when he was a boy and they sent him to lower school. Sometimes he would have to stand up and repeat rules from Confucius.

  So he stood there feeling foolish and not knowing which way to move and then Mr Girard said, “Do not worry so much about face,” and that embarrassed him so he had to move.

  He said, “I will get some tea,” and went out to the kitchen. He got the tea and came back quickly. The boy was still talking. Wen-li took a chair and put it a little away from them where he could drink and listen. Then Mr Girard passed over an ashtray and some cigarettes. Wen-li took them and took a match from his gown and lit the cigarette and then he was embarrassed and so he did not look at Mr Girard but at the boy.

  The boy was saying that they had left him alone and he had been frightened, very frightened, with all these thoughts running through his head about what they would do to him. And then he had thought of the girl and that maybe she was doing something outside, and that had made him feel much better. And then nothing else had happened until about an hour later, when he heard noise in the room outside and a great deal of shouting and then he had heard the girl’s voice and he had known it was all right. And since that time he had been shaking, he said. Trembling. His legs and his arms. He held up his hand and they could see it shake.

  Then the girl told how she had gone to the student center and gotten out to telephone. She said the old man at the student center almost made her crazy because he took so long to remember where a telephone was. Then she had trouble with a boy at the place where the telephone was, a pharmacy, she said. Finally she had called Dean Chou and told him to get Mr Girard. Wen-li remembered Dean Chou’s cook coming to his room looking very sleepy and waking him and telling him that the dean wanted Mr Girard. Then after she had telephoned she had waited in the pharmacy, and she said it was strange the way she could feel herself getting stronger and stronger while she waited until when Mr Girard, she called him Andrew, came in the dean’s automobile she thought that she was in charge and the first thing she said to him was, “Give this man money and drive me to the Central Barracks and do it quickly.” And she had not even smiled. But when she told about it now they all laughed and the boy looked embarrassed and the girl and Mr Girard looked at each other very warmly so Wen-li smiled.

  Then the girl looked at him and he stopped smiling and she said, “One of the men who took Cheng away was the lieutenant who was here.”

  He nodded and Mr Girard looked at him and he nodded at Mr Girard and said, “The one I told you about.”

  Mr Girard nodded. Then he said, “When we got to the Central Barracks the trouble began.”

  They had gone to the Central Barracks and Mr Girard had talked quickly and used money. At first the soldiers had not trusted them at all, but when the money began to be passed here and there they became more friendly. But all they told him was that it could be any one of the Barracks in the City. So then Mr Girard asked for the location of all the Barracks and they gave him a list of addresses. Mr Girard said he did not think the list was complete but the soldiers only smiled and said that was all they could do for him. So he and the girl left and they decided to try first at the Northwest Barracks, nearest the student center, but nothing was happening there and the officer in charge was asleep and even money failed to rouse interest, although the soldiers accepted the money. So then they tried the North Central Barracks. They had luck because they spoke first to a sergeant who took the money and said, yes there was a student here, in fact three or four had been brought in. So then Mr Girard went to the officer in charge and threatened and stormed and finally mentioned money and after a halfhour of arguing and dealing it had all been arranged and they had brought the boy home.

  When Mr Girard finished talking they all looked at one another. It was as though they were all amazed and miserable and happy at one time. They sat like that for a minute and then Wen-li decided he had heard all there was to hear so he stood up and asked if he could get them anything else, and when they said no he said goodnight and thank you. When he said thank you they all looked surprised. Then he went to bed. He slept very well.

  The boy was gone the next morning. He had gone to the dormitory to sleep and perhaps tell his friends about it. Mr Girard and the girl got up late and had breakfast late, and then the morning passed quickly with little pieces of work around the house, so Wen-li did not start working on lunch until almost one o’clock. At one o’clock he was standing in the kitchen chopping beef and thinking about a moving picture that was going to be shown at the auditorium. He knew Mr Girard would get tickets for it because he was a teacher, but he did not know how he himself would get tickets and he wanted to see it very much. He had a friend in the City who had already seen it and had said that he must not miss it.

  When the kitchen door opened he looked up and told himself he should have known that anyone who would open the kitchen door without knocking would be a soldier. The soldier stood there and then looked around the kitchen. Wen-li put down the knife and said, “Yes?”

  The soldier looked straight at him and said, “Is this where Mr Girard lives?”

  Wen-li said, “Yes.”

  “I would like to see him,” the soldier said.

  He was only a corporal. Wen-li picked up the knife and started to chop again. “Mr Girard is about to eat,” he said. “You can come back later.”

  “No,” the soldier said. “I must see him now. I have not much time.”

  Wen-li shook his head and went on chopping. “I am sorry,” he said. “He has left orders not to be disturbed at mealtimes.”

  “Then I take the responsibility,” the soldier said. He started toward the house.

  “I would not,” Wen-li called after him. He came and stood in the doorway.

  The soldier stopped. “Why not?”

  “Mr Girard is an influential man,” he said. “You must know that he is involved with the police and the army. And at a high level.” He watched the soldier. The soldier was only a corporal and he felt very good about talking to him this way.

  The soldier hesitated. “Is that true?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If you have a message for him you may leave it in writing and I will take it to him with his lunch.”

  The soldier shook his head. Then he thought for a while. Then he said, “Aaah. I will come back later.” Wen-li bowed to him and smiled. The soldier went out of the courtyard. When he was outside he turned around and shouted, “There is no need to smile.” Wen-li smiled at him and went back into the kitchen.

  In half an hour lunch was ready so he went in and set the table. Mr Girard said, “Good. I was getting hungry.” The girl just smiled. She had been smiling all day.

  “I will bring it right in,” Wen-li said.

  He waited until they h
ad eaten and when he brought the tea he told Mr Girard. “There was a soldier here to see you,” he said.

  Mr Girard frowned. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him you were going to eat and that he must come back later.”

  Mr Girard smiled. “And he went away?”

  “Yes. He went away. He was only a corporal.”

  “I have lost face,” Mr Girard said. “They formerly sent lieutenants.” Then he said, “Will he come back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will talk to him.”

  Wen-li nodded and cleared away the meat dishes and ricebowls.

  After lunch he wrapped a towel around his head and went down into the shelter to bring up coal. This was a good house to work in. In the courtyard, off to one side, there were two big air raid shelters dug down into the ground, with concrete steps going down and concrete walls and floors. The Japanese had built them when the American large planes had started coming over. Now they had coal in one and canned food in the other and they had a place to put the extra tools and the ice-cream bucket. They had a coal shed above ground, too, but it was almost empty. So he went down with two big sacks and filled them and brought them up and put the coal in the shed and then did it again five or six times, and then there was enough coal above ground to last a week. He put the sacks away and went in and cleaned the kitchen, and then he washed himself and did the dishes and ricebowls and cooking bowls and put everything away. He took out the English book and had a cigarette and studied.

  Then the door opened again without a knock. He closed the book and not looking at him said, “I will show you in.” He closed the kitchen door behind him and went across the court and opened the front door. “Wait here,” he said. He went inside and said, “The corporal is here.”

  Mr Girard smiled and the girl went into the bedroom. “Show him in,” Mr Girard said. Wen-li turned to the soldier.

  “Come in,” he said.

  The soldier walked in and stepped in front of him. Before he had a chance to leave the soldier said loudly to Mr Girard, “Your servant is insolent.”