Frontier

by Can Xue

  “Oh, the Gobi Desert!” Roy looked through the magnifying glass and gasped, “There are meteorites here, too!”

  Liujin took the magnifying glass and looked, but all she saw was a large centipede climbing out of a crack in the wooden power pole. She was so scared she nearly dropped the magnifying glass.

  “Roy, do you want to go to that hostel?” Liujin asked.

  “Let’s go. I think we’ve arrived.”

  Liujin was a little afraid and also a little relieved. What will be will be, she thought, as she walked ahead.

  The Peculiar Hostel was a multi-leveled wooden building on a high slope. When Liujin climbed to the entrance, she was perspiring a little. When she looked down, the small county seat seemed to have vanished. Everything was blurred. Looking harder, she could dimly make out a few belt-like roads.

  “It’s so high here!” Liujin said.

  “It’s so close to the sun.” Roy was glorying in this.

  The hostel’s lobby was desolate: only a few male staff members sat behind the counter. Liujin glanced around and saw watercolors of that rock hanging on all four walls. She felt hot all over. After she booked two adjoining rooms on the first floor, she and Roy parted ways to rest.

  Liujin showered and fell asleep. She was really tired. But before long she was sweating so much that she awakened. She was too hot to fall asleep again. Liujin recalled that the hostel where she had stayed with her father was just as hot. She was amused by this. There was a fan on the table. She changed clothes and, fanning herself, went out to see Roy. Strange—Roy wasn’t in his room. His bag was there, unopened. She withdrew, and a maid came up. She made an apologetic gesture and said, “I can’t stop and chat with you. The moment I stop, I start to sweat. Excuse me.”

  She walked past. Liujin fanned herself and reflected. Some paintings also hung in the corridor—oil paintings, all of centipedes. Some depicted one centipede, some a swarm of them. Liujin gazed out from the east window and saw several people squatting in the courtyard, staring at something on the ground. Everybody from the hostel was here!

  As she exited the area of guest rooms, the sun was so bright that she grew dizzy and nearly tripped. She felt pinpricks of pain at her temples. When she looked down the slope, it was a vast expanse of white. She hurried back to the guest-room corridor and stood there for a while until the pain vanished. She shouted, “Roy! Roy!” Her voice echoed in the corridor, embarrassing her. She walked over once more to the east window and looked out: those people were still squatting on the ground. There were many trees in the courtyard. It was very quiet, and everything was shaded by the trees. As she considered climbing out the window to look for Roy, someone spoke from behind her.

  “You mustn’t jump from the window. You think it isn’t very high, but actually there’s an abyss tens of thousands of feet deep below this.”

  The speaker was the maid. She spoke as she walked. When she finished speaking, she was far away. Liujin gave up the idea of climbing out the window and just stood there, fanning herself and watching. In an instant, she saw the black-swathed headless man. He seemed to be explaining something to the crowd of people. He was sketching directions on the ground with his walking stick. Ah, it really was he!

  “Have you seen the guest staying in this room?” Liujin asked the maid who was coming over.

  “He jumped down. It was his choice. The hostel takes no responsibility.” The maid didn’t stop walking as she said this. She was like a robot walking back and forth in the corridor.

  Liujin leaned against the window, waved her hand, and shouted, “Manager! Manager!”

  She heard her own voice grow feeble and weak. No one down in the courtyard heard her.

  A guest came by. He probably also wanted to look out from this window. Not until he came closer did Liujin realize that it was the cart driver. He was dressed entirely in black, as if in mourning. He became more amiable.

  “Some people never want to leave once they get here.” The driver grimaced, “I don’t think you’re one of them. On this high slope, one can have whatever one wants. Someone noticed this right away.”

  Liujin wondered if he was alluding to Roy.

  “But the Gobi is where I want to go.”

  “Then where are we now? Didn’t you see the headless man? When you locate your companion, he’ll tell you everything. I think he’s a sensible person.”

  Everyone in the courtyard stood up. The driver wanted Liujin to take note of their faces. Liujin saw centipedes climbing over each person’s face. One person even had some centipedes on his eyelids—he had to keep one eye open and close the other.

  “Are there also poisonous insects in the guest rooms?” Liujin asked.

  “Yes. They come out at night. You’ve seen the pictures. Do you think they’re oil paintings? No, they’re photographs! Someone went all over taking photos, including photos of all of these insects. See: one is in the corner of this wall. In the daytime, it seems dead, but at night . . .”

  Without finishing his sentence, the driver left to answer someone’s call. The centipede in the corner was huge. It scared Liujin. She turned around and hurried into the room.

  There, she carefully inspected the bedding, the bed, the drawers, and the wardrobe, and killed two centipedes. As she struck them, she felt despair rising in her. She was afraid to sit on the bed or the sofa, so she sat on the table. She did her utmost to remember everything that had happened today. She thought about her idea of “repeating the trip Father had taken.” How had she come up with this idea? Had her parents urged her to do this? Recently she’d received a letter from her mother that had mentioned desert birds. Yes, it was the mention of desert birds that had made Liujin nostalgic, and that’s why she had decided to “repeat Father’s trip.” But this road was surely not the one she’d taken with her father when she was a child. They had rocketed straight along on the wasteland and suddenly had reached this small county seat. Now, she seemed stranded in this guest room. And then there was Roy, this young scamp, who had actually gone into hiding.

  Liujin opened the curtains. All she saw was a small plot of muddy land in front. Farther ahead was a steep slope. Everything below the steep slope was chaotic. Roy’s torso appeared in her field of vision. He was carrying a black umbrella and hurrying past the slope. Liujin shouted at him loudly. He jumped a few times and quickly disappeared. What had Roy discovered here? What had attracted him? She felt very hot; her perspiration drenched her clothing and soaked the table. She remembered this small county seat as being pleasantly cool. How could it be so hot up here? Was it because “it was close to the sun” as Roy had joked?

  Liujin showered again and changed her clothes. Just then, the maid knocked on the door.

  “Our manager invites you to join him in the tea room on the second floor for tea. Can you come with me now?”

  As she talked, the maid bent and picked up a centipede, tossed it into her mouth, and chewed and swallowed it. Seeing this, Liujin went weak in the legs and nearly fell.

  The tea room was dark, closed up tightly. There was only a small green light on an inner wall. A small table and three chairs were set up below the light. The manager was sitting on the middle chair. Sure enough, he was the headless man. But maybe he wasn’t really headless: it just looked that way because a scarf was wrapped around his head. His voice was low and stiff. He apparently wasn’t the manager from twenty-some years earlier. After making the tea, the maid withdrew.

  “Is someone else coming?” Liujin asked, pointing at the empty chair.

  “Not sure yet. He’s a man who doesn’t make up his mind easily.”

  Liujin heard a metallic tone in the manager’s voice as it came from the scarf. This made her suspicious.

  “I’d like to talk with you about Roy. In these short few hours, this young friend of yours has become acquainted with everyone in the hostel. This is a good thing. Our Peculiar Hostel encourages the guests to get together. But I’m a little uneasy about him because I happe
ned to see him looking at the large oil painting on the wall of my office with his magnifying glass. It’s a painting of the Gobi rocks.”

  Liujin couldn’t help laughing. But the manager writhed nervously under his black robe.

  “My office has never been locked, but this doesn’t mean that guests can go in whenever they please and look at everything with magnifying glasses. What do you think?”

  “I’m sorry that my friend disturbed you so much. You must know that my motivation for coming here stems from my dear dad—oh, I’d better not go on. We’ll leave right away, okay?”

  Liujin thought she was about to cry, though she didn’t know why.

  “Oh, Miss Liujin, you’re mistaken! I told you this, not because I wanted the two of you to leave. Actually, it’s quite the opposite! I mean that I’ve become very much interested in your friend.”

  The manager rose and lit a cigarette. Liujin craned her neck to look at him curiously. Holding the cigarette, he paced back and forth in the room. Liujin wondered if a demonic face was hidden in the black scarf. Her gaze shifted to the doorknob, which someone was turning as though intending to enter. But the person never came in. When she looked again at the manager, she noticed that the cigarette had burned down to the end, but he didn’t feel any pain.

  He said abruptly, “I’m blind.” He aimed the cigarette butt precisely into an ashtray. “The year that I was stranded in the Gobi, the sun blinded me. This place is a miniature Gobi that I’ve fabricated. What can a blind person look forward to?”

  Liujin vaguely recalled the night that was as cold as an ice house. She recalled Dad’s anxiety. For some reason, when she saw this headless man, her hair suddenly stood on end, and she nearly cried out. Who—who was he!?

  The manager reached the door in one stride and wrenched it open. “It’s the wind.” Then he closed the door and started smoking again. The smell was rather strange, and Liujin felt a little dizzy. She stood up suddenly and rushed toward the door, opened it, and bolted down the stairs.

  No one stopped her. No one chased her. There was no reason to rush. The building was quiet. Liujin walked involuntarily once more toward the entrance to the guest rooms. But she immediately drew back—the air seemed to be burning, and it was so bright that her eyes stung. When she remembered that Roy was carrying a black umbrella and wandering around, she started to worry about him.

  Was this really a test? After more than twenty years? What kind of gentleman’s agreement had Dad had with this man? Or had Dad betrayed this man? Liujin noticed that the maid was no longer in the corridor, and the guest rooms were all wide open and vacant. She went over to the window again to look out. No one was in the courtyard. Only a lot of centipedes were still crawling around on the cool ground.

  She returned to her room. The maid was sitting on the table, crying.

  “I miss my mama.” She lifted her coarse face, which was wet with tears.

  Not in the mood to deal with the maid’s troubles, Liujin angrily assailed her, “Why on earth is your manager looking for me?”

  At this, the maid forgot her problems at once, jumped down from the table, and said to Liujin, “It’s because of something wonderful, truly wonderful. You’ll benefit from it all your life.”

  Liujin watched her leave, wide hips swaying. Looked at from behind, this woman was very attractive and sexy. All of a sudden, Liujin grew interested in the maid’s life experiences. She dashed to the door and called to her to stop.

  “Is your mama from the south?”

  “How did you know?” the maid goggled. “Yes. My parents raised flowers for a living. They were both risk-takers who chased after the latest thing. One year, they planted the whole flower garden in imported tulips that didn’t suit tropical conditions. They went bankrupt. You understand flowers, don’t you? I just knew it as soon as I saw you. I’d like to talk with you. It’s so hot, what else can we do but talk?”

  Liujin was surprised: the corridor had been empty, but the maid dragged a chair over with one foot, and she was now sitting on that chair. The maid’s actions were intriguing—like a sorcerer’s. Just then, Liujin remembered all at once that the old director of the Design Institute had owned a flower shop. Was this maid somehow connected with the director? Liujin asked if she’d seen Roy. She said yes, but there’d been no time to talk with him because he was too busy scurrying back and forth all around.

  “Do you know what he’s doing?” Liujin asked.

  “Attending meetings,” she said and rolled her eyes. “Meetings are held every day here. This young man isn’t afraid of sunlight. I knew this as soon as I saw his eyes. He scurries everywhere with a black umbrella. Our manager wants me to protect him.”

  “Are people who stay here all in danger?”

  “You could say that. You can see the poisonous insects on the ground, but nobody has actually died here.”

  Liujin noticed something ruthless in this woman’s expression: it didn’t give people nearly as good an impression as the view of her back did. Evidently she was the same sort of person as the headless manager. Liujin wondered what the other guests were like. Why didn’t she see them anywhere? The maid took a comb from her pocket and ran it through her thick dark hair. She said she was much better now. She stood up and kicked the chair. The chair disappeared. The move was indelicate, yet dexterous.

  As soon as Liujin returned to her room and sat down, a guest came looking for her. She had gray hair and seemed to be a manual laborer. Because she was afraid of centipedes, Liujin didn’t invite her to have a seat. The two of them stood and talked.

  “I’m a mother,” the woman said.

  “Oh!?” Liujin asked dubiously.

  “Put yourself in my position—I stay in the same hostel with my son, but there’s no way to communicate with him. I made inquiries all the way from my hometown and ended up here. I heard that my son came here with you. Will you let me see him? My home is in the interior, and I work in a factory. But my son always says he’s a mountain man and lives in a cave. He hallucinates . . . He’s shrewd. We aren’t worried about him. But I miss him and so I hurried over here.”

  “Did you ask the maid for help? The one over there. I think she can help you.”

  The woman’s cloudy eyes brightened, and she said, “Great.” When she walked outside, she stretched out her hand and plucked a black umbrella from the empty air. She tucked the umbrella under her arm and went out. Liujin stared, amazed. Then she heard that woman shout outside the room, “Woolball! Woolball! Come out! I’ve brought your hoop—your favorite plaything! Look: it doesn’t tip over no matter where it’s rolled—such a wonderful hoop . . .”

  Liujin stood on the table and looked. She saw Roy below the slope. He was holding a black umbrella in one hand and waving to his mother with the other, as though imploring her to leave. His mother stood on the slope, holding a black umbrella as protection against the sun. She looked blank. Then she walked away, probably returning to the hostel’s lobby. Liujin looked at Roy again: he also disappeared. The black umbrella was sticking up in the ground. She heard the maid’s voice in the corridor.

  “I really envy you. You have such a good son.”

  The mother was crying, saying she wanted to go home. Liujin craned her neck and looked out. She saw the woman’s face age a lot all at once. The maid was supporting her and the mother was saying, “No one can anticipate his movements. He’s always been like this. When I see him, I feel much better. Sometimes I wonder if I really do have a son or not. Of course I do. You’ve all seen him.”

  The mother wept brokenheartedly as she left. The maid wept with her. Looked at from behind, the two of them cried in much the same way. Liujin wondered if they were sisters.

  The sun finally set. Someone called Liujin for dinner. She said they would “be treated to a dinner party.”

  The dining room was in another building. It was very large. Hanging from the ceiling were straw, tufts of cotton, beanpoles, and corn. People were eating together at more than
ten tables. Liujin thought they looked a little familiar: they were the ones who had been squatting in the courtyard. She threaded through the tables looking for Roy. A few times, she thought she saw him, but when she looked closer, it was never he.

  When the manager came in, everyone stood. He toasted them. Liujin saw that he really did drain his glass, but she couldn’t see his face. There was plenty of food on the table, but Liujin stopped eating after two bites. She had a headache, and it was hard to breathe, as though the dining room lacked oxygen. What was happening to her? She saw people swaying. Countless winged insects flew out from the straw and beanpoles. They buzzed and hit her in the face. Flustered, she hid her face in her sleeve. She couldn’t eat. The more she hid, the more these winged insects attacked. Covering her face with a napkin, she hurried out. Not until she left the dining room could she take a breath.

  There was a pavilion outside the dining room. Sitting there and looking down, Liujin was astonished. The county seat seemed to have disappeared. It was pitch-dark everywhere. The hostel had evidently become a tiny island. Or it had been transformed into several structures floating in midair. Out of curiosity, she went over to the slope, thinking she would walk down the steps. She looked and looked, but could never find the path. She felt that if she stepped forward blindly, she would plunge into a void, yet she didn’t believe that there would be a void at the bottom. All of a sudden, she saw Roy walk over from below. He was illuminated by the dining room lights. He looked hurried.

  “Roy! Roy!” Liujin waved and shouted.

  Her voice was so feeble and weak that it had seemingly been cut off. Maybe she was the only one who heard it. Roy disappeared. Liujin thought: He just keeps patrolling around the hostel. Was he playing a game? Just then, the manager—wearing a black robe—appeared at the entrance. He walked toward the pavilion. His silhouette moved up and down, as though he were drifting in the dark. He was actually whistling; maybe he had drunk too much. Liujin heard him whistle a children’s song. He was very good at it, and it was pleasant to listen to. A swarm of white-winged insects flew around the dim light, as if they were dancing along with the tune. Liujin could now see his head, but his face was still a blur.