Vagabonds

by Hao Jingfang

  Gielle looked lost. “But … why?”

  Eko knew he had her. “Let me ask you: How do you determine the price you charge for clothes?”

  “The cost of the material plus the machine time.”

  “That’s not how things work on Earth. He gets to decide the price, and he can charge as much as he likes.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It isn’t as long as he can find customers willing to pay.”

  “Why would anyone pay that much for clothes?”

  “Oh, some will.” Eko had the absurd sensation that he was telling a terrifying fairy tale to a child. “He has ways of persuading people to cough up the price he demands.”

  “Like what ways?”

  “No other company will be allowed to produce Mystify, and he’s going to make the price so high that only a small number of people will even be able to contemplate buying it. That, in turn, will turn Mystify into a status symbol and make it even more desirable. Customers will be knocking down the door. This is classic Theon.”

  “But it’s not fair.” Gielle’s expression was determined. “Everyone should be equal.”

  “Equality is nice in theory, but if everyone were equal, who’s going to buy? Disparity drives desire. It’s only by keeping Mystify out of the reach of most people that they’ll covet it. Theon is going to say that Mystify represents a sense of who you are. To wear Mystify clothing makes you noble, elevated, full of ideals; it turns you into a princess of Mars.”

  “But that’s a lie!” Brenda broke in.

  “I know, and I agree with you,” said Eko. He felt the pleasure of denouncing something he’d long despised. “But many people, some of them girls like you, will believe the lies. They follow his direction and think only of jewelry and clothes, of famous brands. Their hearts are empty, but they think by buying and buying they will possess a soul.”

  “That’s enough.”

  Eko wasn’t expecting Luoying to break in.

  “Mr. Lu, I think you exaggerate. I’ve lived with other girls on Earth. Sure, many of them love to shop, but they haven’t lost their souls because of it.”

  “You have your perspective,” said Eko, quickly recovering, “and Theon has his. Gielle, listen to me. You told me that you want more people to wear your designs, that you care the most about your citation rate. You’re going to be disappointed. Theon will not allow your invention to be enjoyed by everyone. He’s going to wield it like a weapon: a weapon for manufacturing desire, a weapon for generating a sense of status envy and feelings of inadequacy. He’s going to use the weapon to control the girls on Earth, to make money from them, to give himself power.”

  “That’s despicable!” Gielle looked shocked. “It’s evil. I won’t allow him to have my invention.”

  But Luoying gazed at Eko, a stubborn look in her eyes. “I believe this invention will be shared on Earth, and Mr. Theon isn’t going to exploit it in the manner you describe.” She turned to Theon. “I have faith in this.”

  Eko was surprised. Sure, he had deliberately simplified the issues and spoken in an exaggerated manner, but he hadn’t lied. Everyone knew the gospels of consumerism. The techniques of merchants were well understood and, in fact, they took pride in them and called them “consumer psychology.”

  “You have faith in him?” he asked Luoying. “Fine, let’s ask him.”

  He gazed at Theon, confident that he would be vindicated. Theon was not the type to lie on such matters.

  Theon nodded. “I will indeed inject some sense of status disparity into the marketing of Mystify. But I don’t think there’s anything unfair about it.” He looked relaxed, as though commenting on a stage play that had nothing to do with him.

  “How can you sound so cold?” Gielle turned to Luoying. “We can’t give him the invention. We can’t.”

  Eko had achieved his goal. His only plan for the day had been to throw a wrench into Theon’s mercantile gears, to let him know that many creators cared more about worth than profit. He had achieved his goal but he couldn’t celebrate, because at the moment of his success, he saw Luoying’s eyes.

  She didn’t talk but she stared at him, her eyes full of accusation, as well as exhaustion and helplessness. Under her bangs, her long lashes resembled thin reeds by a spring deep in a valley, swaying noiselessly. She bit the bottom of her lip, and her expression seemed to say, Why are you doing this? You understand nothing.

  Eko’s heart skipped a beat. He wondered if he really didn’t understand. Her eyes were like ice-cold pools that cooled off his will to fight. He hesitated.

  Luoying patted Gielle’s hand and nodded gently. Then she sat down without saying another word.

  THE GALLERY

  Luoying walked very fast. She was headed in the general direction of home, but not directly toward it. She was walking by instinct, without a specific goal in mind. She knew all the roads in the district and wasn’t going to get lost.

  She paid so little attention to her surroundings that she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her.

  Why did I fail? she thought. Have I thought of everything as too simple? Was my plan doomed? Should I have explained everything to Gielle first? But how would that have helped?

  Why did Eko prevent a deal? I thought he was Theon’s friend. Was there some misunderstanding?

  Maybe my whole idea is absurd. It’s like trying to stop a warship with a flower, to prevent a war with a fluttering dress. Maybe these men think of me as a little girl, a naïve, ridiculous girl.

  She turned onto a side road, crossed a trail, followed another narrow lane, crossed a plaza, until she was in the community park. She was surrounded by layers of green. Since it was almost noon, very few people were around. The winding footpath stayed in the shade of the pagoda trees. The park was so quiet that she calmed down, immersed in the water-like verdant light.

  “Luoying!”

  She stopped and turned. Eko emerged from the turn in the footpath behind her. He ran up to her and said apologetically, “I’m sorry. I called your name several times, but you were walking so fast that you didn’t hear me.”

  Luoying nodded without saying more. The silence between them stretched awkwardly.

  “I …” Eko struggled to find the words. “I think I must have offended you somehow. I’m sorry. I don’t understand—”

  “It’s all right,” said Luoying. “It’s not your fault.”

  “You wanted a deal to be made?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Luoying looked at him. “Why are you opposed to it?”

  “Because I despise his monopolistic manipulations. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t care about that.” Luoying began to turn away.

  “Wait! When you were on Earth, did you buy the fashion brands sold by the Thales Group?”

  “Very few pieces.”

  “But many of the girls in your troupe liked them, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so you have positive emotions toward his commercial empire?”

  “I don’t care about that!”

  Luoying stared at him and then said emphatically, “The problem isn’t whether someone should or shouldn’t make a profit; the problem is Mars and Earth.”

  “But profit is the difference between how people live on the two planets.”

  “I don’t think that’s it at all.”

  “You should be even more aware of this than I,” said Eko. “Look at the girls here, your friends: you discuss creation, prize what you can invent or compose or design. The girls on Earth, the ones you know, on the other hand, pursue nothing except the chance to buy the next outfit. Don’t you consider this a great difference?”

  “So what?”

  “It’s the religion of consumerism, where human nature has been turned away from agape and debased into covetousness.”

  “That’s simplistic.” Luoying was tired. She found Eko’s discussion style exhausting, pointless. “You’re just throwing a
bunch of abstract jargon at me.”

  “Are you saying I’m wrong?”

  “You’re not wrong … but abstractions and lives are different. Fundamentally, what’s the difference between designing clothes and buying clothes? Do you really think Gielle and my friends were born artists? No! There is no difference between girls on Earth and girls on Mars. No difference between people.”

  “Of course. We are the products of our environments.”

  Luoying shook her head in frustration. “No … or at least that’s not all. Do you know why my friends on Earth buy clothes? To express themselves. Even though they were shaped by their surroundings, they want to be unique. Whether designing clothes or buying clothes, the fundamental impulse is the same. They can’t choose the world they live in, or how that world operates, but they want to live their own lives, to find out who they are. That is all.”

  Her friends’ faces appeared in her mind. The looks of joy, shyness, pride, anxiety—craving for praise—were so similar, and they melded into one. They lived on different planets and pursued different lifestyles, but they experienced the same pleasures and disappointments. She remembered those faces; they were her dance. She didn’t want to debate him anymore and continued her walk.

  But Eko followed her, unwilling to let go. The low-hanging branches almost touched the tops of their heads, and the dappled shadows caressed their faces. For a long while they didn’t speak.

  “Your dance troupe on Earth … they were very contemporary in style, weren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember you telling me that you stayed with them for only two years?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just got up and left?”

  “Our instructors were hired only to give us lessons. No one cared if we stayed or not. The artistic director didn’t care either. When our room-and-board contracts ran out, any of us were free to leave. I wasn’t even one of the principals. There were so many other dancers who wanted to join the troupe that as soon as I left, someone else took my place.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I want to understand why you left.”

  Luoying said nothing.

  “You didn’t like the noisy city pyramid?”

  “That didn’t bother me.”

  “Then you didn’t get along with the other dancers?”

  “No, I liked them.”

  “Then why?”

  Luoying paused before answering. “Because I wanted to feel like I was creating.”

  “Oh … but the last time I asked you if you wanted to be a great dancer, a star, you said no.”

  “I want to create, but I have no interest in greatness.”

  “Can’t you create as part of the troupe?”

  “The troupe preferred to dance from a repertoire or to prepare choreography based on specific requests, but I wanted to create my own dances.”

  “I understand. Didn’t Camus say that to create is to live twice?”

  Luoying smiled at him. She no longer felt so anxious.

  “You must be overjoyed to be back on Mars,” said Eko, “where you’re free to create.”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “I …” Luoying lowered her eyes. “I don’t want to register with an atelier.”

  “Are you dissatisfied with something?”

  “That’s not quite right,” said Luoying. She was thinking of her mother. “I’m just full of doubts about the world around me, unable to imagine myself living the life I was assigned to. You don’t know that an atelier is for life. Though switching isn’t forbidden, it’s extremely rare for anyone on Mars to change ateliers. Everyone climbs the career ladder rung by rung, spending a whole life within the confines of two parallel lines. If I had never been to Earth, I suppose it wouldn’t bother me. But I have been there. You know the lifestyle of everyone on Earth: free to come and go, free to hop from profession to profession. I’ve grown used to that kind of life, filled with fluidity and experiments. I don’t want to live in a pyramid.”

  “I understand.” Eko’s voice was infused with certainty. “You grew up on Mars, and so you identify with the lofty values here. But you’ve also lived on Earth, where you became used to constant change. Although you seem to be arguing for both sides, in reality, you have faith in neither.”

  His words wounded her. She knew he was right. Lack of faith—that was her problem. She couldn’t identify fully with either side. When she was on Earth, she missed home; and now that she was home, she missed Earth. This was her problem and the problem of everyone in her group.

  “Why do you care so much about what I think?” she asked.

  “Because I want to understand you.”

  She was thinking about how to respond when she noticed the button on the strap of his backpack: a glowing green light. A camera was in operation.

  Instantly she realized she had been tricked. Her heart sank, and tears came unbidden to her eyes. She had not wanted to speak with him at all, but he had worn down her defenses. Everything she had told him had come straight from the heart, but he had only been trying to capture her on film.

  “I don’t want to be understood by you. Did you ever think of that?”

  Her tone was rude, but she found his violation far worse. What right had he to “understand” her? He was curious; he spouted biting criticisms; he enjoyed probing into the minds of his subjects, like solving an intellectual puzzle. But was that enough for him to understand her, to understand her friends? How could he know their heartrending pain, their youthful anxieties, their authentic confusion, and their yearning for answers as a result of growing up on two worlds? Even if he really wanted to, how much could he empathize?

  Ultimately, he stood on the other shore. What he said was correct, but he did not feel her pain. An observer never suffered like the subject. All problems in life were problems of the subject; the instant you began to observe, you had no more problems.

  “Do you find it interesting to see someone lose her faith?” Tears welled in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

  She turned and ran away, stranding him in the garden as he watched her vanish down the path.

  * * *

  It was night by the time she woke up. Luoying continued to lie in bed, turning over the encounter in her head. She was still agitated, the garden and the path still fresh in her mind.

  She asked herself why she was so sensitive to comparisons between the two worlds, to the point where she couldn’t live a normal life while she sought commonality between them. Humans had the capacity to adjust, and if she could just adapt to the difference in the social order, she would be fine.

  But doing so wouldn’t be right. She couldn’t articulate the impetus in her heart that pressed her forward to consider the difference between the two worlds as not merely a difference in institutions and arrangements but a difference between two entire philosophies.

  On Earth, everyone had told her that they were free and taken pride in such freedom. She had experimented with their freedom and knew that they were right; she had loved that sense of being untethered, of being adrift. But she also remembered that when she was a child in classrooms on Mars, she had been told that only Martians were free. To be free from worrying about the basic necessities of life, to have an atelier of their own, meant they didn’t have to sell their creative freedom for money. Her teachers told her that when a person had to sell their thoughts for money to buy bread, then that person was doomed to be enslaved by the struggle for survival, and what they created no longer represented them but the will of money and commerce. Only on Mars was humankind free. She remembered seeing Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Slave Market, and the painting had made such a deep impression on her that for a long time on Earth she dared not sell herself on the web.

  Now that she had lived in both worlds, she wasn’t sure which chains were heavier: the system that ensured everyone had no more and no less than what they needed, or the poverty that resulted from the
struggle for survival. But she did know that all humans loved freedom, and the more their ways of life differed, the more that fundamental commonality prevailed.

  Freedom! Life is art, and the nature of art is freedom.

  She suddenly heard her mother’s voice, that gentle, passion-infused voice. Her mother had said this to her when she was only five.

  Luoying’s heart melted. Her mother had always indulged her, including the little girl in all her artistic events. Luoying remembered the time when she had been in a pink dress and her mother had carried her as she laughed and talked with her friends in the study. The sun had poured through the window like a waterfall, seeped through the books, and washed all the excited adult faces. Some were holding forth while others listened politely, but even little Luoying could sense in them an unrestrained wildness. Even the arches of her mother’s brows spoke to her of freedom as she laughed. Luoying had felt that she was in a different world, a world in which she was happy.

  You were born with the Light, my darling. Your very birth was a miraculous act of art.

  The four-year-old Luoying had been too young to really understand what that meant. She sat on her mother’s lap, gazing up at her mother’s smiling eyes. She knew only that she was loved, and she was full of joy and pride.

  The memories came back to her bit by bit. Brightly lit fragments and scenes, they didn’t cohere into a plot. They had been lying dormant at the bottom of the ocean that was her mind, untouched by light for years. But they had never vanished. As she probed and explored, the ice melted inch by inch, and the ocean was roiled by waves.

  Pure white moonlight streamed through the window. Her bed, which was next to the window, seemed to meld with it. Outside, ivy draped like a natural curtain. The window was a seashell at night, and the moonlight was like the glow of an angel.

  She wanted to see her parents’ study again.

  Jumping off the bed, she dressed, padded through the quiet hallways, and returned to the study.

  The room was as dustless as the last time she had been there, but she saw that the bouquet of lilies was gone.