A Map for the Missing(100)

Ever since Yitian had come back, she’d been thinking about her days in the village, wanting to return to that hopeful time. But what if she could go back to even earlier, to Shanghai? That was what she’d missed so much when she’d been sent down, wasn’t it? And she’d never really gotten to live in the city after the country had transformed. She wondered if it would be like the place she’d always heard stories of, the lights on the Bund shimmering at night, women made up beautifully in bars with dreams animating their dance steps—that sense of living as something that deserved to be enjoyed on its own. The wives of the other cadres went on long vacations, even international trips, and no one blinked an eye. This wouldn’t be any different.

“Ma—” She edged toward her question at last. “What do you think about going away for a while? Just you, Yuanyuan, and me?”





Thirty-eight



What will you do, after this visit?” Yitian’s mother asked.

“Let’s see what the shopkeeper says, first. Then I’ll decide, all right?”

They were sitting in the back of a wagon pedaled by the villager he’d hired to take them to Five Groves Township. These were the first words that she’d said this entire ride, jammed against him in the tight space and with her scarf pulled over her face to protect herself from the cold of the winter wind.

Unlike her, he left his face uncovered. He knew his cheeks would soon turn red, as if they’d been slapped, but now that he was about to leave, everything, even discomfort, had already transformed into the pleasant softness of a memory.

He thought about his mother’s question as the wagon’s wheels hummed steadily beneath them. After Hanwen’s call, he had asked Mali to delay his plane ticket two more days so he could visit the township. But what if the shopkeeper had some information that would lead further to his father? He’d heard from the village office that Mali had already called for him twice in the day since then—to verify some detail of his plane ticket, he supposed. He knew he should have been more concerned about the logistics of his departure. He hadn’t returned any of her calls.



* * *



—

The last time he’d been to Five Groves Township was when he was thirteen and Yishou had led him on an expedition here to steal books from the library, the only one within miles. At this hour of the day, the town was still sleepily awakening from the midday nap. A few shopkeepers were rolling up their steel doors, but most of the storefronts were either closed or empty.

He followed the directions Hanwen had given him to a building tucked behind the town’s three-road crossing. The sign above the storefront bore no name, only the word bookstore.

He double-checked to make sure he was in the right place, but there was no mistake. From Hanwen’s description of the shop, he was sure it would be some noodle stand, a dry-goods shop, perhaps. It made sense that his father would need to stop and eat.

He worried the store would still be closed, but when he pushed on the door, it swung open easily. Upon entering, he coughed immediately. Dust lay in a feathery layer upon every surface and floated in the air wherever it caught the sunlight. Unbelievably, the room was filled with books, stuffed from the top to bottom of every wall, soaking up every inch of space. The room couldn’t be larger than the courtyard of their home, but Yitian was sure there must have been thousands of books crowded into its four corners. They overflowed into the aisles and made the passageways so narrow that he had to sidestep them to avoid the jutting sharp corners. He’d never seen a place like this before. His gaze darted from book to book, unsure of the point where his eyes could finally settle.

They maneuvered around the narrow aisles. “Hello?” his mother shouted out. The sound was absorbed by the stacks of old pages.

Yitian examined the spines as they passed through the aisle. Some he recognized, the famous histories everyone knew. Many more bewildered him. Obscure family or county chronicles of places he’d never heard of, instructional manuals for agricultural tools, treatises on methods for planting tea. He couldn’t imagine who would come here to read all these books; some could not have more than a single reader in a lifetime. Behind the bookcases, pressed directly against the walls, were thousands of unbound sheets of paper piled one upon another.

They reached an empty cashier stand in the back of the shop. He looked over the counter to see a small notebook with columns recording sales numbers and dates. There hadn’t been an entry in four days.

A sudden rustling sound startled him. Surprised, his mother threw her arm back and toppled a stack of books that had been haphazardly placed directly on the floor. She rushed to fix them. The source of the noise seemed to have come from near his feet. Behind the wooden stand he noticed, for the first time, a shape—an old woman’s body, huddled there on a cotton pallet spread onto the floor. When Yitian’s gaze fell upon her, her eyes fluttered open.

Curiously, she didn’t seem to be frightened by their sudden appearance, despite the fact that he sensed visitors to this store were rare. She jumped up.

“Hello! Do you want to buy something? We have many books, yes!” she squeaked, brushing off her legs. Her voice was vigorous and as high-pitched as a baby’s. Standing up, she barely came up to his chin. Her arms appeared glued to her sides, frozen and curling into her torso. She moved with surprising speed for her size and age. The countryside could be deceptive about appearances, but she must surely have been older than his mother.