Frontier

by Can Xue

  “In fact, the real director is the gardener,” she said.

  Then she suggested walking over to the fence. She moved slowly to the side. When they looked in through the iron bars, they saw a sky filled with colorful butterflies. Then they looked down: dead bodies of butterflies were scattered everywhere. The director said that she and the gardener had secretly bred these butterflies in the suburbs for years. All at once, Nancy remembered the strange things that had occurred years before in the farmhouse courtyard.

  “These butterflies are poisonous, but they aren’t a threat to human beings or small animals.”

  “Why did you breed short-lived, poisonous butterflies?”

  “Nancy, if you look closely you’ll know why. Do ordinary butterflies have such beautiful colors?”

  Nancy stared blankly, as though in a trance.

  “It’s a miracle—an absolute miracle!” she said foolishly.

  The director started to laugh. She seemed invigorated.

  For a long time, even after Nancy had left, the director was still thinking of the butterflies. Since the night that the male nurse had taken her to the tangerine orchard and she’d seen the scenery there, she’d gone back to the garden twice by herself. She’d gone in the afternoon the first time and stood between the flowerbeds, for she wanted to find the tangerine orchard. She had looked and looked without success. The second time, it was morning, and she had again run into the young man who was freeing butterflies. After learning that he’d been sent by the gardener, she was exhilarated. The two of them released many butterflies, and her eyes sparkled with excitement.

  Someone had come in. The director got up and saw a rather old man. He was filthy and he had a shock of messy hair. She recognized him from his expression, but for the moment she couldn’t remember his name.

  “I saw that the door was open, so I came in. You haven’t tried that perpetual dialog yet, have you?”

  He smiled, shamelessly exposing his black teeth.

  The director’s head slumped weakly to her chest. After a while, she finally mumbled in a low voice, “Haizai, I’m no longer able to confront you. I’m going to die soon. Did you come because you smelled the tangerine blossoms’ fragrance on the wind?”

  Haizai was a little panicked, but he calmed down and said, “No. You can’t die yet, ma’am. We can resist together . . . We can continue this if you don’t give up lightly.”

  But something seemed wrong with the director’s neck: she couldn’t straighten it. Haizai took something out of his pocket, pressed it into her hand, and left.

  Not until it was time for her injection did the director relax her right hand and look at its contents. It was a crude old watch. The hands no longer moved. She shook it and then listened closely, but it still didn’t run. The nurse’s mouth twitched, and he took the watch away, threw it on the floor, and then stomped on it. Then he picked it up and returned it to her. The director stared at it: she saw the hands finally tremble a few times and start to move.

  “That man is a hoodlum, an old one. The charge nurse and I both know him. Did you enter into an agreement with him? We both did.”

  “I guess so. I’ve forgotten.”

  “That’s the problem, ma’am. He won’t forget you.”

  The director put the pocket watch under her pillow. She heard the hands moving more and more energetically. Probably the whole room could hear this. Puzzled, she thought maybe this was the watch that Qiming used in the past. For some reason, she was a little disappointed. She asked the nurse, “If I play dead, will this Haizai come and talk with me?”

  “Of course. The charge nurse asked him to come. He lives in the basement over there.”

  “Oh.”

  After her injection, the director was cold all over. She felt unspeakably lonely. It was very quiet in this part of the hospital. No one was here. She passed by many large wards—all empty. Where had everyone gone? She arrived outside and saw a door leading to the basement. On an impulse, she went in. Going down long flights of steps, she reached the bottom and entered a large room.

  A light was on. Under the light, Haizai was working on a pistol. He had disassembled it and placed the parts on the table. Seeing the director walking in, he turned on two more lights, each one illuminating a narrow bed with someone sleeping on it. One was a man, the other a woman. Their eyes were closed.

  “Ah, director! Please take a seat. I’ve been here several days. And these two people? They both now have end-stage kidney disease.”

  “Are you treating them?”

  “Me? No, this is only end-stage palliative care.”

  He walked around the room with his hands behind his back. The director waited apprehensively.

  “Do you want to lie down, ma’am?” Haizai turned on a third light in the corner.

  The light illuminated another bed—wider than the first two. On it was a quilt with a black-and-white pattern of lovebirds. The director hesitated and then lay down. A tangerine fragrance came from the quilt, and the director felt joy rise within her. She was going to say something but then she fell asleep. In her dreams, Haizai was whispering to her. He spoke urgently and passionately.

  Nancy spent two more days worrying, but still heard no news of the director’s death. In other words, the director was still alive. But at noon, José brought word that the director had been kidnapped.

  “It was that worker named Haizai,” José said, looking uneasy.

  Nancy sat on a small stool in the kitchen. Everything went black before her eyes.

  “I often think that maybe the director’s avoidance of Haizai isn’t really avoidance. What do you think?” José asked.

  “Of course it isn’t.” Nancy looked at her husband in surprise. “You knew this, too.”

  They walked out to their courtyard and watched for a long time. In each of their minds one door was closing little by little, and another door was opening softly. They spotted the magpie simultaneously. It was singing gleefully in a tree.

  “It’s a good omen, isn’t it?” Nancy asked hesitantly.

  The sound of a carriage drew near. Nancy listened closely, and her worried expression gave way to a carefree one. She saw Liujin’s slim figure swaying at the window and heard José making noise in the kitchen. The sounds of real daily life made her even more sentimental, yet also aroused a faint desire. She thought, A new era is beginning.

  Later, in an uncertain tone, she told José, “There’s a place where poisonous butterflies fill the sky, and a shepherd boy plays a flute under the trees. Have you been there?”

  José said he’d gone there several times.

  “Then I won’t worry about the director anymore. Neither of us will forget it, and she knows we love her. Isn’t this true?”

  “Yes.” José’s eyes glittered. “When you have time, we’ll take Liujin over there. She’s also very interested in butterflies.”

  Just then, they heard Liujin’s excited voice, “Dad, Dad! The magpies are building nests under our eaves! Wow!!”

  Chapter 11

  LIUJIN AND AMY, AS WELL AS QIMING

  Late at night, when that mournful song rose once more from the small house across the street, Liujin walked from the courtyard to the middle of the road. The night was so still and clear. As she concentrated to listen, the singing stopped abruptly. In the lamplight, some large cat faces seemed to be hiding amid the sandthorn leaves. They vanished when Liujin drew closer and reappeared when she withdrew. All the cats seemed to be in heat. Liujin looked to her left and saw that the house was dark. A figure stood in the open space in front of the courtyard. Liujin tensed up and headed over there right away.

  “He’s the sort of old man who comes and goes without a trace. When you bathe in the river at dusk in the summertime, you might see the likes of him. They stand alone in the river,” said Amy, answering Liujin’s unspoken question.

  “Amy, did your parents know him?”

  “Yes, of course. He was my mother’s dream-lover when she wa
s young, though in reality she didn’t love him. Look, things are so strange. It was only after Mama died that I came to this city with Uncle Qiming.”

  “Uncle Qiming!? When I was little . . . Now I don’t recognize him at all.”

  “I know, I know! He’s adorable, isn’t he?”

  Amy leaned close to Liujin and gripped her hand. Amy’s hand felt stiff and callused. In the courtyard behind them, a sheep began to bleat. The light went on in the house. Meng Yu was coughing. Amy quietly asked Liujin to crouch down with her and whispered, “We’re like sisters.” This warmed Liujin’s heart. Liujin wanted to respond with something similar, but—afraid the sheep would hear her and start bleating—she held back. At this moment, Liujin realized from the bottom of her heart that this Pebble Town below the starry sky was not quiet at all. Human desire seethed in it. The sheep were nothing but the incarnation of lust.

  Meng Yu shouted from the doorway, but not for Amy. Yet, Amy jumped up and ran in.

  Liujin stayed where she was, suspecting that what had happened just now was only a dream. Why did Uncle Qiming want Amy to stay at Meng Yu’s? Was this sheep dealer’s home the best choice for a beauty like Amy? Liujin recalled that in the past—always early in the morning—she had seen old Meng Yu herding a large flock of sheep back home. In the golden light of morning, the old man and the sheep looked flushed with excitement. Liujin, her bookbag on her back, had stood beside the road and stared in awe. At dusk when she came back from school, Liujin would go peek at the sheep: now, all the sheep looked sorrowful.

  As she walked away, Liujin kept looking back. The lamp soon went out. The sheep were bleating softly. She couldn’t tell if these sounds came from their being satisfied or dissatisfied. “Oh, sheep. Sheep,” Liujin said to herself.

  She walked ahead along the main road, imagining the scene years ago when her parents had come here from the train station. This six-lane road had decided the layout of this small city, and had been here from the beginning. The housing and commercial districts were laid out along both sides of the road. Later, as the city grew, the road expanded to the east and west, and then expanded more. On the east, it now extended as far as the snow mountain. Why hadn’t a second and a third road been built? Why hadn’t a few north-south roads been built to intersect with this one? Liujin couldn’t understand. All the visitors who came here were astonished at the length of this road. They said, “It’s as if it connects with the ends of the earth.” She stopped in the middle of the road and listened closely: somewhere, an infant was crying. Sometimes, it sounded as though the child were inside a room, sometimes as if in the open country. But it certainly wasn’t two infants. When the crying stopped, a male voice lifted in song. But these sounds weren’t real: it would be better to believe they were figments of her imagination. How could she hallucinate like this?

  When Liujin returned to the entrance of her courtyard, she heard once more the bleating from across the way. This time, it sounded like pure contentment. One sheep bleated first, and many sheep responded. The light inside the house went out again. How long had Dad and Mama been away? Five years? Ten years? She was at a loss to answer. Back then, was the road this empty and quiet at midnight? Or was it filled with little animals running around? She had long ago taken Dad’s photograph down from the living room wall, because she had realized that hanging a large photograph of him made it seem that he had died. So it was inappropriate. Liujin knew her parents would never come back here. She still loved to imagine their present life: this consoled her. Maybe her parents felt this, too, so they kept writing odd letters to each other. Every time the mailman thumped a thick letter down on her table, Liujin felt a little surprised. She sniffed the envelope and sniffed it again: it didn’t smell at all like smoke. The stationery was always the same—gray-colored with a little light yellow, but why was a little person printed in the corner? It was an image of a young man holding up swords in both hands in a defensive pose, as if under attack. The living room looked quite natural without any pictures on the wall.

  Liujin fell asleep before dawn. Before that, she tried hard to imagine Smoke City and its iron drawbridge. She couldn’t picture what her dad would look like now. She rubbed her face sorrowfully and still couldn’t guess. The budgerigar spoke from its cage: “It hasn’t been ten years. It’s been five years.”

  It was eerie to hear these words in the dark. Had she said this out loud earlier today? She had bought this bird a few days ago. The bird seller had said she would “get rich” if she bought this bird and took it home. After the curly-haired salesman had opened the cage and let the bird fly out, it had landed on her shoulder and scratched her. She had almost cried. This was a fierce bird. Liujin hung its cage in front of the living room window. She hadn’t heard it say anything. Had she bought it because she had fewer and fewer little animals at home? This courtyard used to be so lively. If it was ten years ago, she must now be forty years old. The bird was right. Not ten years. Five! Looking at Amy, she could be sure of this. She was so youthful—far from being old. Two days ago, she had replenished her stock of merchandise and had encountered an unusual homespun cloth: it was snow-white stamped with black circles. Looking at it made one’s head spin. People said this cloth was very fashionable. For some reason, it seemed familiar. She had definitely seen it before and then had forgotten it. Only five years had passed, many more years lay ahead of her, and her parents were still alive and well. Consoled by these thoughts, she fell asleep.

  Across the street, Amy wasn’t sleeping. Once again, she slipped in among the sheep and crouched there. The next day, these sheep would be driven to market, and so she wanted to spend some time with them for now. This was an exciting time for her.

  Her coming to the city was a little strange, for her family had never discussed the move. It was as if they tacitly mulled over allowing her to leave the family: they wanted her to experience a different lifestyle. Just now, when Liujin had asked about Uncle Qiming, Amy had been a little distracted. She couldn’t think too much about things that were happening to her. They happened, that’s all. It was only afterward that she could think about them.

  She raised her head a little and saw a dim light in the old woman’s bedroom—it was Mrs. Meng’s. She had an odd relationship with this old woman. Mrs. Meng seemed acrimonious, yet Amy knew that she genuinely cared about her. And so she said to Liujin, “It’s as if the old grandma is putting on an act for other people.” Her words astonished Liujin. Seeing Liujin’s heavy-hearted expression, Amy felt even closer to her. In the past, before she came to the city, was Liujin like this, too? At night, Amy saw many people with double images. Sometimes one person looked like an entire squadron. But Liujin was simply Liujin—real and clear. Even so, Amy still couldn’t understand her. Perhaps she was genuinely “unreal.” Amy felt several sheep pressing tightly against her, looking at her bluntly—or maybe not looking at her, but rather looking at something inside her. She said to herself, “Something new should emerge on a night like this.”

  She knew many people were thinking of the snow leopard descending the mountain. She had seen that caged leopard at the Snow Mountain Hotel. She thought Snow Leopard City might be a fitting name for Pebble Town. Yes, it should have two names—Pebble Town as the external name and Snow Leopard Town as the inner name. Uncle Qiming didn’t have double images at night, either. He and she both belonged to “the inner.”

  At daylight, Amy stood up and looked at the white pagoda ahead of her. The rays of light always fell first on the white pagoda. In the blurry light, the structure stood there like a giant. Just then, the street-washing truck sped by.

  “Good morning, Amy. It was a really long night. I thought I’d slept a long time, but when I looked at my watch, I realized it was only a little more than an hour!”

  Liujin yawned. She didn’t have to go to work today.

  “It’s a new day, Liujin. Can you hear it?”

  Liujin did hear it—a bird chirping in the white pagoda. It was a large bird,
but they couldn’t see it. Amy said they could call it “nameless bird.” Amy grabbed Liujin’s hand, and the two of them stood together breathing the refreshing air in the first glimmer of dawn. Liujin thought, Amy is really charming. If I had a sister, would she be like Amy?

  “Amy, why do you always go barefoot?’

  “It’s comforting to touch the earth with bare feet. I’m afraid to look at the sheep’s expressions.”

  “I know. I’m afraid, too. When I’m in bed at night, I tremble with fear.”

  Somebody pushed open the courtyard gate and entered, but he stood there without moving. He was tall, like a tree. Amy said quietly that he was her brother and that he didn’t like to talk with her. “I don’t know why—he falls silent as soon as he comes to the city.”

  He glanced at them for a while, then turned and left. In the dim light, Liujin couldn’t see him clearly. Amy said he had gotten a good look at them. “He has a mountain man’s vision.” Liujin was curious. She wanted to know more about this tree-like man, but Amy dropped the topic.

  Before Liujin left, Amy told her that it was Uncle Qiming who had given her a second life. If it weren’t for him, she’d still be feeling her way in the dark. It was light when she said this. Sure enough, a bird was on the white pagoda—a large bird, but barely visible because it too was white. Its nighttime chirping seemed to be summoning something—but what? Liujin was afraid Meng Yu and the others would see her, so she hastened away. Just then, Amy began her workday. What an energetic person she is, Liujin thought.

  “What’s mountain life like?” Liujin was talking to herself as she entered the courtyard. Before this, she’d had no contact with people like Amy and Amy’s brother. Maybe they were sort of like Roy, but greatly different, too. When she thought of Roy, Liujin perked up.

  Amy loved city life, but she was still a little lonesome. At dusk here, she would sit and wait under the elm at the doorway. She thought Uncle Qiming might come to see her. The old woman—Meng Yu’s wife—always jeered at this because she loathed Qiming. Once, she had even beat him with a steel pipe until he bled from the head and fainted. The old woman had walked away, leaving only Amy in the house with him. When he came to, Amy helped bandage his head. He said it didn’t hurt at all and that he had only pretended to faint so the old woman would leave and he and Amy could be alone in the house. Amy looked at him, hoping he would say something. She stood up and peered outside, afraid the old woman was hiding there. But he just asked indifferently how she was doing, and then took his leave.