Frontier

by Can Xue

  “After we moved to this bungalow, the wind has been even stronger. Is it because there’s no cover anywhere around us?”

  “Liujin, you mustn’t think of such things. You have to go to school tomorrow.”

  “I didn’t mean to, Dad. The wind woke me up. Should I cover my face with a scarf when I go to school?’

  “Don’t be silly, the wind will stop before dawn. It always does.”

  “Okay.” Liujin seemed reassured and returned to her room.

  He didn’t look at that hole, but he sensed something—maybe shadows, maybe rats—sneaking out of the house through it. He named these little things “the native residents.” He thought they should be classified the same as the gecko. What was genuine sleep? Living in this kind of room, could he catch some genuine sleep? Nancy was concerned about Liujin’s health, particularly her sleeping. Neither of them knew what to do about it. Liujin still seemed healthy, though. Maybe she slept better than most people did. She frequently said, “I slept like the dead.” Her manner was odd for a child her age.

  Not until the wind gradually died away did José go back inside and sleep. First, he lay on the recliner in the living room, and every once in a while went to the window and looked out. In the courtyard, the animals prowled in silent solitude. They were probably only shadows, yet José preferred to think of them as real animals. He didn’t go out for a better look. He had tried before, and they had always vanished the moment he opened the door.

  Liujin looked out the window. Her father was standing under a poplar talking with a sturdy middle-aged man. The man seemed aware that someone was peeping at him, and retreated behind the poplar tree. Liujin couldn’t see his face, but guessed that it was dirty and travel-stained. When José went back inside, Liujin asked who that was. José said it was a vagrant who had come by to panhandle. He had given him some change. José said all of this without looking at Liujin. Instead, he looked at the wall in front of him and kept moving about restlessly.

  “He can’t be a vagrant, can he? You seem to know him well.”

  José was taken aback by his thirteen-year-old daughter’s acuity. But he didn’t feel like talking about it, so he said nothing. Liujin wasn’t pleased with her father—because the man seemed familiar, and yet she couldn’t place him.

  “Some people and some things have vanished from my memory,” she grumbled to Nancy.

  “That’s impossible. They’ll always be there,” said Nancy.

  As time passed, Nancy felt more reassured about her daughter. She thought, Despite so many hardships over the years, coming to the frontier was the right thing to do. Liujin is truly one hundred percent a child of the frontier.

  Liujin was happy with her mother’s answer. She picked up the watering can and went off to water the flowers. As she walked into the courtyard, she suddenly noticed that the vagrant hadn’t left: stepping out from behind the tree, he glowered at Liujin. Liujin was afraid and stopped in her tracks. But the man quickly exited the courtyard. Liujin followed him to the gate and saw him climb into a small broken-down truck and drive away in a cloud of smoke. As Liujin watered the flowers, she unconsciously repeated the words her mother had said: “That’s impossible. They’ll always be there.” She was startled, as she realized that her tone of voice was precisely the same as her mother’s. What on earth? She had always thought she wasn’t at all like her mother, and sometimes even thought she was the opposite.

  “I saw him. Hunh,” she said to Dad.

  “I don’t understand. Maybe you’re the one he came here for.” José was disconcerted.

  “What do you think? Don’t you know?”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  Liujin looked regretfully out the window. Then the old black cat appeared in her line of vision, and her expression softened. With one leap, the cat landed on the windowsill, and Liujin rushed to find some dried fish. When she returned, she saw her dad go out the gate. The black cat solemnly ate the dried fish. It had always been a well-behaved cat.

  “Mama, who is that man?”

  “I didn’t see him, but I think he’s probably an old friend of the family—the one we lost track of.”

  “Oh?”

  “He left a long time ago without saying goodbye.”

  Liujin waited for her mother to say more, but her mother walked away. Was she hiding something that was hard to talk about? She sat in front of the window and smelled the black cat. That smell always reminded her of the forest and the animals’ dens. The cat’s eyes were apricot-yellow, and its fur was lovely. Liujin guessed it belonged to this building. She was agonizing a little, because she couldn’t remember when and where she had seen that middle-aged man. He stood there, one hand resting on the tree trunk. He talked at length with her father. Liujin faintly heard him repeat one word: “Roses . . . roses . . .” Was he talking of the roses in their courtyard? Years ago, when she had just been born, many black people had come to Pebble Town. And then they had left. She had heard Mother talk of this. But this person clearly wasn’t black. Father had stopped up the hole at the foot of the kitchen wall. Even so, when Liujin stood in the kitchen at night, she felt the wind blowing against her feet, frigid air rising from her soles.

  She walked to the backyard, bent over the well, and looked in. This well was very deep—much deeper than the many others in this city. One time, Liujin thought that the prowling animals had emerged from here. Of course, she had no proof. Her mother called for her, but she felt aggrieved and didn’t answer. The incident today had left her in agony. She shouted down into the well. The gigantic resounding roar scared her. She retreated rapidly and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the black cat was disappearing silently around the end of the courtyard wall. Just then, she saw her mother looking all around, and so she stood up and shouted, “Mama, do we still have that small duck that I played with when I was little?”

  “What?”

  “I used to have a toy—a little duck that could float on the water.”

  “Oh! You do remember, after all. It was probably tossed out long ago. We couldn’t save everything.”

  Liujin thought Mama was certainly looking for her, and yet she pretended she hadn’t been.

  “The man said something about roses, but I couldn’t hear the rest of what he said.”

  “Oh.”

  They went inside together. Nancy told Liujin to clean sand from the mung beans. Liujin did this until she was dizzy; she couldn’t concentrate. After Liujin had washed the beans, she slipped out to the street. She strolled for a while and then turned at the fork in the road and went to the riverside. It was a great day, and the river water was clear. Liujin drew two deep breaths, and then was startled: not far ahead, her father and the vagrant were talking as they stood shoulder to shoulder in the river. The middle-aged man was striking the surface of the water with a willow branch. Viewing them from behind, Liujin sensed that the two men were close.

  “Dad—Dad!”

  José turned around in surprise and saw Liujin. Leaving the other man behind, he stepped out of the water and onto the shore. Liujin saw that the other man was still standing in the river, looking up at the sky, absolutely carefree. José sat on the grass and put on his socks and shoes. He made a face and didn’t look at Liujin. He was angry.

  “Mama said that maybe this person is an old family friend.”

  “You mustn’t follow me around all the time.”

  “I don’t, Dad. I saw him leave in a truck. How can he be back here?”

  “That’s the way he gets away from prying eyes and ears.” José burst out laughing.

  The man was still looking at the sky. Liujin thought, With neither clouds nor eagles in the sky, what’s he looking at? Still, the sky in this season is the softest blue, perhaps because there’s a little moisture in the air? Who is he? Liujin wished her father would tell her himself, because after all she was already grown-up. There was nothing he couldn’t tell her.

  José seemed to hesitate, but finally
he spoke.

  “He used to adore your mama. But one day he left all of a sudden.”

  “Then, were they lovers?” Liujin’s expression turned serious.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. There’s no way to know what’s in another person’s heart.”

  “Dad, I want to go back.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. You stay here. See, he’s waiting for you.”

  At first, Liujin walked away quickly without looking back. Her father didn’t catch up with her. She was very depressed, because she couldn’t remember a thing about this man. She saw the black cat on the riverside with a sparrow in its mouth. It was gruesome—the most hideous scene she had ever seen. She felt she shouldn’t have asked her father these questions, but—like a silly girl—she had.

  Like other kids, Liujin went to school every day. There, she learned all kinds of things. But for some reason, she wasn’t interested in school life, and it left no impression on her. Although she was gradually learning more and more, and getting to know her teachers and classmates better and better, in the bottom of her heart she wasn’t interested in school. The school at the end of the poplar grove occupied only a little space in her mind. She much preferred working in her family’s courtyard, or going for walks in the suburbs, or watching people fish in the river. She also liked spending time with her father. The two of them had once gone by car to the Gobi Desert. That experience left a deep impression on her. She matured a lot during that summer vacation.

  It seemed that the medium-sized inn next to the Gobi Desert had something that manipulated people’s moods. Father and daughter got up in the morning and had breakfast in the restaurant where a breeze was blowing. They listened to birds singing outside the window; it was as if they were in a utopia. Then they went outside for a stroll. Sometimes they returned at noon, sometimes at dusk. When they came back at noon, it was very hot in the inn. All the guests lay on bamboo recliners in the corridor panting for breath. The waiters’ sweat rained down; they walked back and forth, their heads wrapped in white towels. If someone accidentally dropped a plate or ran into a cart, everyone flew into a rage. Liujin saw a waitress stick a fork into a woman’s back. Liujin was so frightened that she hid behind her father and didn’t dare make a sound. She and her father took turns going to the bathroom to shower. Then they changed into black robes provided by the inn and lay in the corridor as the other guests did. Liujin was adapting and fell asleep soon in the torrid weather. At night, the inn was like an ice house. Despite their heavy quilts and robes—and even padded slippers—they were incredibly cold. The faraway sound of a woman weeping continued intermittently throughout the endless cold night. Liujin struggled and struggled and finally fell asleep. She dreamed several times that she was frozen stiff. Although they were in the same room, she didn’t know if her father was asleep or not. He lay motionless in bed. One night, he suddenly had an odd idea and took Liujin out to the courtyard. Liujin saw their shadows on the ground: they looked like ghosts. Her mouth was numb from cold; she couldn’t speak. She wished they could return to their room soon. But her father seemed to be looking for someone. After finding him, he stood next to the flowerbed and talked with him for a long time. Because the person’s face was hidden by a black cotton hat, Liujin couldn’t see him. On the way back, she nearly lost consciousness; Dad pushed her from behind.

  Later, a long time after they returned from the Gobi Desert, Liujin was still unable to come back to earth. In the daytime, she often asked herself, “I was dreaming, wasn’t I?” She frequently forgot to do homework. In school, her teachers criticized her, and everyone gaped at her, but still she thought about other things.

  She asked her dad about the person with the invisible face at the inn. Her dad said it was the inn’s owner, who had also emigrated from the south. He had worked with him. Later on, he’d had problems at home, and had abandoned everything and gone to the Gobi Desert. His inn was so special that it was well-known throughout the country. People came from far away to enjoy the unusual experience there.

  “There’s a place in the Gobi Desert: as soon as people walk into it, they get burned. The people lying in the inn’s corridor had all been burned. The owner uses an herbal ointment to help them recover quickly,” José said.

  Liujin asked why they hadn’t gone to that place. It must be really interesting. José said, “Because you’re still too young.” Liujin wondered why children couldn’t go there. Then she told José that she didn’t want to go to school; she wanted to stay home. This shocked him for a moment, but he quickly responded that this wasn’t a good idea. “You may be in school and not in school at the same time. You shouldn’t be all alone. That can’t be good for you.” As José said this, he himself wasn’t at all sure of it, because he didn’t know, either, what was better. They dropped this subject without reaching a conclusion, and Liujin never brought it up again. She gradually mastered her father’s maxim: “You may be in school and not in school at the same time.” Her various teachers seemed to be urging her in this direction, for their lectures grew increasingly boring. Sometimes they ended their lectures by repeating two or three sentences again and again. As she listened, Liujin finally understood, and so her thoughts flew to a certain faraway southern city. She learned how to think in the midst of crowds of people. Thus, her teachers’ mechanical teaching midwifed her imagination.

  In the dusk one day, the gecko fell from the doorframe to Liujin’s feet. Liujin picked it up and placed it at the base of the wall. She turned around and asked Nancy, “Is it looking for something, too?”

  “I think so. Are you?”

  “Me? I think I’m still too young.”

  Nancy began laughing. She motioned for Liujin to look at her father sitting among the rose bushes, with his head propped up heavily in his hands. “Your dad is at the riverside watching the steamboat,” Nancy whispered to her daughter. Liujin thought her dad looked a little nervous, and she felt nervous, too. What was that? Nancy patted her on the shoulder and pointed overhead. There, the gecko was stuck, motionless, to the ceiling. Maybe it was lying in wait for mosquitoes. Liujin was sure this little creature felt the urgency, too.

  Liujin had gone to the Design Institute once and stayed for a day. It didn’t leave a good impression on her, and she never wanted to go again. The first day of summer vacation, Liujin weeded the courtyard in the morning. While she was concentrating on her work, a woman entered the courtyard. Saying nothing, she stood to one side observing Liujin. She looked approving. Liujin wondered if this person was a relative. The woman sat down on a stone stool and said slowly, “This is a great courtyard; it has everything. Don’t you ever think of going out and looking around?”

  “Where?” Liujin asked, perplexed.

  “The place where your parents work. It’s very interesting.”

  “What would I see there?”

  “Ha! It’s a wasteland, with countless little black birds in the weeds—the kind of bird that comes and goes, filling the sky and earth. Many black people walk out of the office building. They are very kind and gentle people. Day after day, they keep getting lost in the wasteland. When the setting sun lengthens their shadows, they grow anxious and scurry around.”

  “Do you mean the Design Institute is in the wasteland? That isn’t very far; I can get there by bus.”

  After this odd woman left, Liujin changed her clothes, went out, and boarded the bus.

  She got off at the entrance to the Design Institute, but she didn’t want to go in right away: those gray buildings looked boring. Strolling on the hill overgrown with weeds, she noticed green snakes and little black-colored birds, but not nearly as many birds as the woman had said. Walking downhill, she came to some flat land. She stood there and looked up: she saw one black building after another. How had these buildings turned black? She looked again at the weeds underfoot: they were all dried up. The feathers on the little black birds seemed scorched. Overcome by fatigue, she suddenly longed to go home.
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br />   When the middle-aged black man walked down from the slope, Liujin was bending over tying her shoelaces. She saw him when she looked up. She had never met a black person and couldn’t help feeling a little on edge. The black man smiled: his teeth were very pretty.

  “Every year, fewer and fewer birds come here. That’s because of fires. See these dried-up weeds: every few months, they ignite spontaneously. That’s not unusual in a wasteland. Your ma wants you to hurry home.”

  Liujin wondered if the black man might also panic at dusk. He seemed so unflappable. How had Mama known she was here? Had the strange woman told her?

  “But now I want to hang around and see some more. Do you know why—when you look up—these buildings turn black?”

  “The buildings are simply black. We used to call them the black buildings. Over the years, they turned gray because of the wind and sun. Still, when you look up from the foot of the slope, you see their original color.”