The Season of the Stranger

by Stephen Becker

  He called into the living room: “What is it?”

  “They want you at the gate,” the man said.

  Girard held the curtain away from the window and saw that it was still dark. “Wait for me,” he called. “I will dress.” He swung himself out of bed. He was stiff and his head hurt. Without turning on the light he found his clothes and put them on. He dressed slowly. With every movement he felt the sleepy ache of his body. One shoe was under the bed and he had to reach for it. When he was dressed he rubbed his face and pushed his hair back with his fingers. He took a comb from the bureau and slipped it into his pocket. With it he put some money and then feeling that he had forgotten something he stared around into the darkness until he remembered to take a handkerchief. Comb, handkerchief, money. “I will be out immediately,” he called.

  He sat on the bed and leaned over her. He whispered softly: “Are you asleep?”

  “No,” she breathed.

  He found her shoulder and left his hand on it. “Poor lost Li-ling,” he whispered. “She never gets a chance to sleep.” She brought her arm up and pulled his face down to hers. He rubbed his forehead against her cheek. He could feel the warmth of her against his chest. She turned her head and kissed his eye. He patted her hip. “Sometime soon an entire day in bed,” he said. She stroked the back of his head with her hand, and then she turned his face and softly put her warm mouth against his lips. He squeezed her lightly and stood up. “I will be back soon.”

  “Hurry.”

  He went into the living room and closed the curtained doorway to the bedroom. The man was standing dimly against the glass of the front door. He was tall and in uniform. “It would be better to hurry,” he said.

  “Yes,” Girard said. “I am ready.” He took a package of cigarettes from the bookcase. The man opened the door and Girard followed him outside.

  As they crossed the courtyard Wen-li’s door opened and Wen-li looked out. “I will be back soon,” Girard said to him. “They want me at the gate.” Wen-li nodded and stood there watching him leave the court. The soldier was already at the road.

  When Girard reached him, the soldier pointed. “I left the automobile down the road. I did not want to wake anyone unnecessarily.”

  “It was polite of you,” Girard said. “But an automobile seems luxurious.”

  The soldier chuckled briefly. “We will not have the use of them for too long. It is better to exhaust the fuel while we can.”

  At the automobile the soldier held the door for him. When Girard was in the soldier closed the door quietly and walked around to the driving side. He got in and closed his own door just as quietly. He started the motor and drove without lights until they had passed the library. Then he felt along the dashboard and turned a knob. The road and dashboard lights went on. In the dashboard light Girard could see that the soldier was a captain and that he was young and stronglooking. Girard opened the package of cigarettes and offered him one. The captain shook his head. When Girard had lit his own he asked, “What has happened since one-thirty?”

  “The western airfield has fallen,” the captain said, “although the airfield in the City remains in use.” Off to the left now Girard could hear distant slow rifle fire. “And the university is almost surrounded. There is one road left open to the City. It is like a triangle with its base at the City and its point at the university.”

  “I am surprised that you remain here,” Girard said. “Have you orders to hold out to the end?”

  “No,” the captain said. “We will leave soon. But there may be negotiations at the gate. They want you for that. They think that the presence of a foreigner will make it look more like a real truce.”

  “I am flattered,” Girard said. The captain turned to him and smiled and then looked back at the road. Girard saw something like a sabre scar on his far cheek. He thought that the captain was very calm for a man in this kind of trouble. There had been no bitterness in the captain’s voice.

  “I must report to the command post at the south gate,” the captain said. “We will go from there to the main gate.”

  “All right,” Girard said.

  He was fully awake now and remembering last night. His headache was disappearing and his body felt looser. They had all been excited last night. He had been excited too. Now another hour and the sun would be up and it would be all over and he was no longer excited. He was neither tense nor happy. He was not the way he had exepcted to be. But it was an important day.

  He thought it took a long time to get to today. Probably take a longer time to get past it. But it’s a step and all you can ever take is a step. Like walking in a fog.

  The houses and trees loomed quickly into the headlight and faded strangely, falling away to the side quietly and darkly. He watched them.

  The fog clears for a moment and it looks like the right direction so you take the step, always trying to see a little further. You never reach the end, though. All you can do is go on looking for the clear moments and taking the small steps. If you could see beyond the fog.

  Watching the houses and trees he felt some of the excitement coming back into him, as at the edge of a cliff or the entrance to a tunnel.

  Someday I will. Maybe I can now. But if I can’t now, someday I will; see beyond it, know tomorrow today. It takes a while. You have to keep looking and learning and taking steps. Someday, though. You just have to stay with it, never leave it, never forget it.

  The automobile moved swiftly along the road. The first trace of dawn was in the east. The dust of the road was stirring in a light spring breeze.

  25

  Shortly after six o’clock the armies marched in. The sun was on their left and glinted from cartridge belts and rifle barrels. The uniforms were unimpressive patchworks, the jacket and trousers padded heavily, bulky, more bulky when the cartridge belts had been slung sometimes three and four at a time over the padded shoulders, the caps dusty and streaked and wet, occasionally a pair of boots, more often cloth shoes, rarely a man with no shoes at all, but the left shoes hit the earth together and the right shoes hit the earth together and the dust rose in thin even puffs all along the line. The slung rifles were grimed, the stocks cracked, often a bolt handle or the side of a barrel catching the slant sunlight.

  What the watchers watched was the faces. Faces like their own, but some of them bearded now, muddy, the eyes bleared, the hair hanging clotted with dirt. Faces so weary that the first watchers, seeing them enter, thought almost together it is impossible that they walk, but when they had entered further, the soldiers, and seen that it was theirs, that no one was waiting, that scouts were not necessary, when they had seen that, some of the weariness left them; and when they passed the last of the watchers near the main gate some of the soldiers were smiling.

  They marched, some of them still in step, others not caring now that the gate was behind them. They marched to the square of buildings, past the administrative offices where old men with filmy beards stared down in fascination, past the low outlandish class buildings, past the sparking remains of a bonfire, past the auditorium (whose porch was lined with students of both sexes; and that was when the cheering began, when the female students saw it, saw the faces and the dirty rifles and sometimes the bare feet and more often now the smiles), and out onto the soccer field, where they stopped. The officers stepped forward (and now the watchers felt the real surprise: that one with the dirty bandage and that one with no shoes and that one with the broken rifle stock and the young, unbelievably young one with the torn boots and the deeply carved scratches on the shining stock of his rifle, he too, these were the officers; later they found out that the young one was twenty and not fifteen as they had believed, but they were to find too that he had been killing men for eight years, and that was why he was an officer, he could do that better than the others could) and gave commands. The men straightened and one of the officers spoke; and when he was through speaking he gave them another command. They relaxed then, completely, some leaning on thei
r rifles, some dropping as though only now giving in to wounds, some sitting slowly and searching for cigarettes. Then the watchers would not be restrained and came running; the teams came with tea and cigarettes, too excited and too solicitous but it did not matter much that day; most of them were women because the men were embarrassed now, but the men stayed, too, at the fringes of the mass of soldiers, until the soldiers called them over to drink with them. When they were all drinking, spread across the soccer field like a moving many-colored carpet, the noise began, the talking and laughing, sometimes the shouting, the stories of battles and riots and how it was over now and later the stories of what tomorrow would be.

  It went on like that, the cheerful noise and the excited faces; it went on because there was no reason for it to stop, no one wanted to stop. The soldiers were relaxing for the first time in many weeks, really relaxing now, not simply catching breath, and they gave in slowly to the fact that they were heroes, gave in at first in bewilderment and then happily, realizing what they had meant to these students. And the students too began now to realize what this meant. It meant the end of waiting, the end of hoping and despairing, the end (but this they did not realize until later) of uncertainty, uncertainty about the war or about their work or about their status, their standing as Chinese or true Chinese or renegade Chinese or not Chinese at all. (Later they saw that the crystallization had begun this morning, had begun slowly and warmly in a fusion of the soldiers and the students with the soldiers the freers and the students the freed, so that later when the soldiers were administrators and the students were students the loyalty was transferred easily, smoothly, and immediately; but the loyalty existed only because the uncertainty was gone and finally there was something to be loyal to, something which would not soon alter, a fixed relationship; all of which had been impossible before.)

  A very few of the students (the quicker; those who left the happy circle of laughing warriors and went off to be alone for a few moments, to think) saw that they might have spared themselves months of hot speech and thought, months of convincing themselves and others that this was the moment to be awaited; because it did not happen because of them and it would have happened in spite of them, and all that their work meant was that they belonged (which was important too) but it did not tell them where they belonged. Those few (alone momentarily: to think) saw themselves as a noisy reception committee, saw themselves replaced as heroes, and, worse than that, saw themselves fully committed to their own replacement and at least for the time being to the cessation of their own activity, until the relationship was defined, until the uncertainty was finally gone.

  But these were very few. The others worshiped. They had not known it would be like this, but they had waited for it, and now they were happy; it was what they had wanted, and they had wanted it for many years. It was the end of their war, and if the end had come in the quiet tired tramp of conquerors’ (liberators’, they said) feet, in the sun and soft wind of a day in early spring, in the low laughing chatter of heroes’ voices, if it had come that way and not in the immediate unmanning roar of falling shells, not in the scream of a bayonet attack, not in the waving of a bloodied banner, not in the foolish bravery of proud sweeping cavalry charges (and some of them, but few, had thought that it would be like that), it was still the end.

  The officers dismissed the men after a time, and the field cleared; groups wandered through the grounds, the blue-clad men and women and the khaki heroes, and the sound of voices thinned, spread. Now the field was bare and tan and breeze-swept again, empty and cold and flat, empty except for three or four quiet students who sat at its edges seeing nothing, their minds turned inward; seeing not even tomorrow, sitting still and silent on the bare ageless earth, glimpsing dimly what this mild morning of birds and running streams might mean to history.

  When Andrew was gone Li-ling had tried to go back to sleep. Her eyes closed willingly and the warmth soothed her. She was dropping off into nothingness when a sharp almost audible tick snapped her brain awake and her eyes open. She could not remember what she had been thinking, or dreaming, of to rouse her like that and force her heart into an exaggerated beating. She lay thinking, remembering in the softness of the bed. After a time the thinking slowed and stopped and she was at the edge of sleep when the tick came again. This time she sat up and when the blanket slipped away from her shoulders a chill touched her. Shivering, she remembered that Andrew was at the gate. It was not that; but something related to Andrew’s being at the gate was keeping sleep from her. She forced thoughts through her slowed mind. The chill touched her again and she shivered again, and then in the shiver she had a feeling, and the feeling became a thought. It was the voice of the man who had come for Andrew. It had not been Cheng. Now, awake and cold, she remembered that, and it was not greatly important. She had heard the voice before, whoever it was, and she would not be kept from sleep by it. She slid beneath the covers.

  She must have fallen asleep quickly. Now there was another voice, and she was waking slowly. The voice came again, “Andrew. Andrew,” and she recognized it as Cheng’s.

  “Cheng,” she called. “Wait. Andrew is not here.”

  He was quiet for a time and then he said, “Is it you, Li-ling?”

  “Yes,” she said. She hurried out of bed and into her gown. She found shoes and put them on and went into the living room. She loosened her hair and ran her fingers through it and smoothed it and then she turned on the light.

  He smiled shyly. “Excuse me,” he said. “Excuse me.”

  She smiled back. She felt a little sad. “Do not apologize. Sit down.”

  He walked to the large chair and sat. She offered him a cigarette and he shook his head. “We have smoked too much tonight.”

  She nodded. “Andrew is at the gate,” she said. “A man came for him a short time ago.”

  “I suppose they needed him there,” Cheng said. “There was negotiation.”

  “Of what kind?” She sat on the sofa.

  “The Nationalist troops left. There was a conference before they left. The Communists agreed to let them reach the City without interference, in return for their abandoning the university without a battle.”

  “When did they leave?”

  “Half an hour ago.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “Almost six o’clock.”

  Outside it was grey. To the east it was lighter and pink. “He should be home soon,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Nothing very exciting happened at the dining hall. We just heard that the Nationalist soldiers had left. I came to tell him that.” He smiled. “I should have known that I would be too late.”

  “I will tell him you were here,” she said. She heard Wen-li banging at the stove in the kitchen.

  “Good,” Cheng said. “It has been a tiring night. And before I forget, there will probably be a ceremony of some sort at about noon. The official change of hands. Tell him that. Although I suppose he will know.”

  “I will tell him.”

  He stood up. “Good. Then I will see you later.”

  She got up and went to the door with him. “See you later,” she said.

  When he had left she looked out through the courtyard again. She stood at the door for a few minutes watching, and then she turned and went in to bed. She fell asleep immediately.

  When she woke again she felt new and clean. She leaned to the curtains and pulled them apart. A line of sunlight shone on the blanket. She put her hand into it and felt its warmth. She got out of bed and put her shoes on and called into the living room, “Andrew.” He did not answer. She wrapped her gown around her and went into the bathroom and washed. Then she came back to the bedroom and dressed. When she was dressed she went out to the kitchen.

  Wen-li was inside. He had his back to her. He was leaning on the far windowsill, and he looked as though he had been staring down the road for some time. She knocked. He turned and came and opened the door. “I am awake,” she said. “What time i
s it?”

  “Nearly ten o’clock, I think.”

  “And he is not back?”

  “No.”

  They looked at each other and then they looked down the road. She shrugged. “No one knows what conferences and meetings they may be having. But he must be tired. I wish he would come.”

  “I too,” Wen-li said. “I will bring breakfast.”

  She ate and then sat for a time waiting. She wanted to go looking for him and to see what was happening with the new troops, but she did not want to embarrass him by interrupting a conference, and she wanted to be here when he returned. He would be tired and probably hungry, and before he went to sleep she would want to hear what had happened. She read for a few minutes but with only half her attention. She put the book away and went outside and up on the hill. There might be activity near the railway line.

  There was nothing. The only soldier in sight was a sentry at the blockhouse far off, the one the Japanese had built. Over it a new flag was flying. Otherwise it was nothing more than a day in early spring. She watched the sentry walk back and forth. Then she went down into the courtyard, and back into the house.

  At eleven o’clock a man came into the courtyard and she jumped up from the sofa, but through the window she saw that it was Cheng again. He came to the door and knocked and she let him in. “Is he back?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I thought you might know where he was.” He shook his head. “I do not.”

  “Are they still having meetings?”

  “The students are not,” he said. “I saw the dean walking with a group of soldiers, but I have not seen any of the professors.”

  “Perhaps there is a faculty meeting,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “How are the soldiers?”