“No matchmaker would visit a couple of dead parents in their graves. My husband—he had been an orphan since before he could remember.”
Bashi was elated by Mrs. Hua's answer. He himself was an orphan, and Nini was nearly one. Of course they needed no blessings from their parents, alive or dead. “What do you think of Nini?”
Mrs. Hua looked at Bashi with an intensity that frightened him. He wondered if he had made a mistake bringing up the topic. Would the old woman become suspicious and turn him over to the police?
It was the boy flutist, Mrs. Hua thought. The boy who had once come and begged to become their son. Mrs. Hua looked up at the sky and counted. What year was that? The year that she and her husband had first thought of their deaths and the girls’ lives without them—1959 it was, when the famine had just begun, a hard blow for everyone but hardest for beggars. They had four daughters then, Morning Glory at thirteen, Peony at ten, Lotus at eight, and Hibiscus, seven. The flutist was not older than twelve himself, an orphan who went from village to village, as they themselves did, and begged with his flute.
“Do you play flute?” Mrs. Hua asked Bashi.
“Who is Flute? I don't know him. Does he know me?”
The boy twenty years earlier had talked in this glib way too, but the music he had played could make a stone weep, such was the sadness that his flute had carried; he could make a dead man laugh in his coffin too, when he was in the mood. The boy had made much older girls fall in love with him; even some married women, when their husbands were at the fair or in the field, stood in front of their doors and teased him with jokes usually meant only for married men and women, behind closed doors. Despite all the attention he got, the boy came and begged Mrs. Hua and her husband to adopt him; he would call them Baba and Mama and would support them with his flute, he promised, but her husband refused. With his flute and his sweet words, he would put all their daughters through hell, Old Hua said to Mrs. Hua afterward; she agreed but not without regret, and now the boy had come back to her in another incarnation, flute-less, yet she recognized him.
“What do you think of Nini, Mrs. Hua?”
“Why do you ask, Son?”
“What do you think of my marrying her?” said Bashi. “Mrs. Hua, don't look at me like I have two heads. You're scaring me.”
“Why do you want to marry Nini?”
“She'll be so much better off with me than with her own parents,” said Bashi. “And I'd be the happiest man in the world if I could spend my days with her.”
Mrs. Hua looked hard at Bashi. For a year after the flutist boy had left them, Lotus had been in a cheerless mood, unusual for an eight-year-old. Among the sisters, she had been the closest to the boy; she had learned to sing to his accompaniment, and he had joked that they would make the best beggar couple, with his flute and her voice. Mrs. Hua had wondered then whether they had made a mistake by refusing the boy, but Old Hua, upon hearing her doubt, shook his head. Lotus was the plainest of the four girls, and the boy, with a face too smart for his own good, would one day shatter her heart. Besides, Old Hua said, did they want their daughter to repeat their own fate, married to another beggar, without a roof over her head?
“I'm serious,” Bashi said. Mrs. Hua's silence made him nervous and eager to prove himself. “I'll treat her well.”
“I've seen you grow up these years, Bashi,” Mrs. Hua said. “I've known you enough not to suspect you as a bad person, but anyone else who hears you say this will think you crazy.”
“Why?”
“She's still a child.”
“But she'll grow up,” Bashi said. “I can wait.”
Indeed, why couldn't the boy have the right to think of marrying Nini? What if they had let the young flute player be part of the family—they might have more now to their names, a daughter and a son-in-law to see them off to the next world, music that added color to their dull lives, grandchildren to love.
“Who would marry her and treat her well if not for me? I love her,” Bashi said, and he stood up straighter as he made the bold claim. “She's never happy in her own house. Can you be my matchmaker? Can you talk to her family on our behalf? They can't get a better offer.”
“She's too young,” Mrs. Hua said.
“You married your daughters young to other families, didn't you?” Bashi said. “I can wait for her to grow up. I can pay for Nini to live with you. I just need to have their word that Nini will be mine.”
Mrs. Hua looked at Bashi. The wheel of life, with its ruthless revolving, could be merciful at times. The boy had come back to her, giving her a second chance, but what was the right thing, for any mother, any woman, to decide? “Let me talk to my husband,” she said. “Can you come to our place in the afternoon? We'll have an answer for you then.”
IT TOOK TONG a long walk to gather his courage for school. He imagined his teacher asking for an explanation about the previous day. He would never get the red scarf now that he was a dishonest boy, pretending to be sick and skipping school. The teacher had once said that a small crack in the bottom of a ship would wreck it in the open sea, and Tong imagined himself a deteriorated soul heading toward a sinful life, and the thought made his eyes fill with tears. He would admit his wrongdoing first thing this morning, before the crack widened and made him into a young criminal.
The teacher, however, was in no mood to question Tong. Classes had been canceled from the first through the sixth grades. The principal had announced an emergency meeting for all teachers and staff, and the students were herded into the auditorium, watched by nobody. Soon the unsupervised auditorium exploded with noise. Boys from the upper grades ran wild along the aisles, and the younger boys, even though they dared not leave their seats, hurled paper planes at one another. Girls shrieked when they were bumped or hit by the boys, and some brought out colorful plastic strings to weave key rings in the shape of goldfish or parrots. No question was asked about why they were kept there, or how long it would go on; as far as the children could see, this day of happiness would last forever.
Tong sat among a few quieter classmates, boys and girls who could sit still in their seats for hours when required by their teachers. There was a war coming, the girl sitting next to Tong whispered to him. What war? Tong asked, and the girl did not answer, saying only that she had overheard her father say so to her mother. She was the kind of girl who blushed at every word she said, and Tong looked at her crimson face, finding it hard to believe
