The Vagrants

her.

Half an hour later, the principal led the teachers into the auditorium. He blew his whistle with all his might, hurting everyone's eardrums. The students quickly returned to their seats, and the auditorium soon became quiet. The principal stood at the podium and, as usual, cleared his throat several times into the microphone, which cracked and magnified the sound, before beginning his speech.

“An outbreak of a counterrevolutionary epidemic has caught Muddy River unprepared,” he said. “I want you all to understand that the situation is urgent, and if we don't watch out for ourselves, we may be the next ones infected by this virulent disease.”

Some children shifted in their seats, a few coughing and others rubbing their noses.

“It is time that we cleanse our hearts and our souls with the harshest disinfectant,” the principal said, banging on the podium to emphasize each of his words, the children's hearts pounding along with his fist.

“You've all been born under the red flag of revolution and grown up in the honeypot the party has provided,” the principal continued. “Sometimes this privilege may be the exact reason that one forgets to appreciate one's happiness in this country. Now answer me, children, who has given you this happy life?”

It took a moment of hesitation before some upper-grade students answered, “The Communist Party.”

“I can't hear you,” the principal said. “Say your answer louder if you have confidence in it.”

A few teachers stood up and signaled to the auditorium, and more voices joined the chorus. It took several rounds for the principal to be satisfied with the roaring answer. “Long live the greatest, the most glorious, and the ever-correct Chinese Communist Party,” he said again with a thump-thump of his fist. “Do you all understand these words? What does this mean? It means our party has never been wrong and will never be wrong; it means that anything we do will not escape the scrutiny of the party. I know you've all been taught to respect your parents, but what are they compared to the party, our foremost parents? You are the party's children before you are the children of your parents. Everybody is equally loved by the party, but when someone makes a mistake, just as when a child makes a mistake, the party will not let a single wrongdoer slip by. No one will be spared; no crime will be tolerated.”

Tong's eyes were swollen and hot. How could he, a child loved by the party, skip class only because of a missing pet? How could he have forgotten that he was destined to become a hero? Softhearted-ness would make him useless, as his father had said; he was meant to be a special boy, and never again would he allow himself to forget it. He shouted the slogans with the other students—he could not hear his own voice, but he was sure his voice would reach the party, asking for forgiveness.

After the meeting, the students lined up and went back to their homerooms. The upper grades were required to write down in detail what they and each member of their families had done on the day of Ching Ming. The smaller children were given the time to think and recollect, their teachers patrolling the aisles so those boys and girls who tended to daydream in class would be constantly reminded to focus.

His dog had disappeared the evening before so he had been looking for his dog on the day of Ching Ming, Tong told the teachers in the separate classroom, when it was his turn to confess. The two interrogators, sitting behind the desk with notebooks open, were both strangers—they had been called in from another school, as the school district had instructed that schools swap staffs so the children's answers wouldn't be influenced in any way by their own teachers. The younger one of the two, a woman in her thirties, took notes and then said, “What's your dog's name?”

“Ear.”

The two teachers exchanged looks and the other one, a man in his fifties, asked, “What kind of name is that?”

Tong wiggled on the chair, made for an adult, his feet not reaching the floor. The chair had been placed in the middle of the room, facing the desk and the two chairs behind it. Tong tried to fix his eyes on his shoes, but having their own will, his eyes soon wandered to the four legs underneath the desk across the room. The man's trousers, greenish gray, had two patches of a similar color covering both knees; the woman's black leather shoes had shiny metal clips in the shape of butterflies. Tong did not know how long he would be questioned—even though the principal and teachers had said nothing of the signed petition, he knew that it was one of the things he had to hide.

“Who could prove that you were looking for your dog?” the male teacher asked.

“My mama and my baba,” Tong said.

“Were they with you when you looked for the dog?”

Tong shook his head.

“Then how could they know what you were doing?” the male teacher said. “What were they doing when you were looking for the dog?”

“I don't know,” Tong said. “I went out early. They always get up late on Sundays.”

“Do you know what they do on Sunday mornings?” the male teacher said in a particular tone, and the female teacher looked down at her notebook, trying to hide a knowing smile.

Tong shook his head again, his back cold with sweat.

“What did they do after they got up?” the male teacher asked.

“Nothing,” Tong said.

“Nothing? How could two adults do nothing?”

“My mama did some laundry,” Tong said, hesitantly.

“That's something. And then?”

“My baba fixed the stove,” Tong said. It was not exactly a lie—the damper of their stove had been broken and his mother had asked his father many times before he had fixed it the week before. It was something that a father would do on a Sunday.

“What else?”