in my house?”
“You look enough like a man but fuss like a girl,” one man said, shaking the handcuffs again. “We have other houses to visit. We don't have the whole night to entertain you.”
“Please, just one minute. I have to tell my grandmother that I will not spend the night at home. You know how it goes with old women—they worry all the time even when there's nothing much going on.”
“Now don't fool us. Here it says you're the only resident in this house, isn't that correct?”
“True for the household register, but think of the ghost of my grandma—she raised me and she wouldn't leave me here all by myself so I talk to her every day and let her know where I am. If you take me away without informing her, what if she followed me to the station? What if she made a mistake and followed you two home instead and disturbed your children's sleep? Don't say you're from out of town and you don't worry about such things. Ghosts travel faster than you and me.”
Nini shivered in the darkness. She looked up at the ham hanging just above her head. What if the ghost was watching her? But what kind of a ghost was she if she didn't come to rescue her own grandson? Nini said a low prayer to the old woman and asked her to understand who her real enemies were.
“Are you bluffing? You know this is a new society where superstition has no place.”
“Well, if you don't trust me, take me away now. The thing is, you never know. Ghosts don't read newspapers and they don't listen to government broadcasts.”
“That's all right,” the voice that belonged to the older of the two men said. “Let's give him a minute. It's not like he can run away from us.”
“No, I won't run away from you,” said Bashi. “You have my word—I'll only be a minute.”
“What do you mean by that? We're coming in with you.”
“But my grandma hasn't invited you.”
“We'll be good houseguests.”
The gate opened and the three men came into the yard. Nini, squatting behind a jar in the storage cabin, remembered Little Sixth fast asleep in the bedroom, and her heart began to pound. “Do you smell that?” she heard Bashi say, after the door was open.
“What's the smell?”
“My grandmother's floral water,” Bashi said. “How long has it been since I smelled it? The last time she used it I was still a child going into the street without my pants.”
The two men coughed uneasily and one of them said, “Now hurry up.”
“You're not coming in with me? Perhaps my grandma knew you were coming and prepared some food for you.”
“Let's go now,” one man ordered suddenly with a sharp voice. “I'm tired of your superstitious nonsense.”
“Are you scared, comrade?” Bashi said, but his laughing was interrupted when one of the men yanked him back and made him stumble down the steps. He cried out loudly, but the two men grabbed him and dragged him out the door. “Nana,” called out Bashi. “Did you hear the gentlemen? I need to be away for a night. No need to worry, Nana. I'll be back in a blink and you be good and stay here. Don't ever think of being naughty and following the gentlemen here, all right? I don't want you to get lost.”
Someone cursed and then Bashi screamed in pain. Nini squatted in the darkness and cried. She heard the neighbors’ gates open with creaks and then close. After a while, she came out of the storage cabin. A crescent moon was halfway up the sky, reddish gold. The gate to the alley was open just a crack. Nini walked quietly to the gate and looked out. The neighbors had returned home, every gate closed in the alley. She pushed Bashi's gate, inch by inch, until it shut soundlessly. There was no ghost in the world, she thought; the old woman was buried, cold in the dirt, and she would not come to rescue Bashi or be offended by Nini. They were at the mercy of strangers, as always.
THE WATER DRIBBLED in a slow, hesitant rhythm, as the raindrops had done many years earlier in his grandparents’ garden, dripping from the tips of the banana leaves to a small puddle beneath. Any moment now his nanny would come, and he would have to shut his eyes, but she was always able to tell that he'd been crying. Look at your pillowcase, his nanny would say, and stroke his wet eyelashes with a finger, the light from the red lantern in her other hand warm on his face, but they were never able to expel his gloom, just as he was never able to find an explanation for his tears. Young Master has been crying again, he heard her say to his grandparents after she walked out of the bedroom, and his grandmother would explain, once again without losing her patience, that children cried so that all the sadness they had to carry from their last lives would leave with the tears.
A perfect cycle it was, Teacher Gu thought, one's life starting with the pain carried from the previous life, growing up to shed the burden only to accumulate fresh pain for the next life. Slowly the world came back to him, and with great effort he turned on the bedside light. He was in his shirt and underwear. His jacket and pants-soiled by his vomit, he supposed—had been washed and now hung on the clothesline, dripping into a small puddle on the cement floor. Gousheng had left a pot of tea by his bedside, still warm to the touch. How long had he been unconscious? Teacher Gu opened his mouth but no sound came from his scratchy throat. So this was what he was reduced to, an old man hung over, from nothing other than his own illusion of staying alive. Staying alive had been his faith since his divorce, and for this he had given up dignity, hope, anger, and his loved ones; but where did this faith lead him except back to this cycle that no one could escape?
Underneath the bed was the old wooden chest where his wife had kept their precious possessions, and it cost Teacher Gu a great effort to drag it out. There was a Western-style suit in the chest. The suit had belonged to her grandfather, Teacher Gu told Shan the night before she and her comrades planned to come and cleanse him of his bourgeois possessions; the umbrella next to the suit, a souvenir of his parents’ love story. He would appreciate it if she could spare the few things he had kept from his parents. At the time, Shan sneered at his pleading, but the next day she decided to overlook the suit and the umbrella while she threw the other stuff into the fire, including her mother's silk blouses and Teacher Gu's college graduation robe.
Teacher Gu buttoned the suit and tidied his hair; it was one's responsibility to leave the world as a clean person.
