A Map for the Missing(11)
“One task at a time,” she said, if he was distracted while feeding the stove’s flame. “How will you get bigger things right if you can’t do one small task correctly?” Or, “Look, if you hurry through a task, you’ll certainly get it wrong and have to do it twice,” holding up a stone she’d found in the rice he was supposed to have picked over.
Yitian pretended to assent and then quickly forgot everything she said. Her advice was useful, perhaps, for her time and world, but not for the one in which he wanted to live. Now that his grandfather was gone, the labor seemed particularly trivial against the majestic stories of Beijing and history that his grandfather imparted upon him.
He was just about to rise when he saw a shape coming toward him, dashing through the short copse of spikenards casting their late-afternoon shade. Her jacket flapped as she ran down and the scarf she’d tied around her head fell open so that her braids tumbled out across her shoulders. When she waved, her arm unfurled loosely like a kite string. It had been one of the first things he’d noticed about her, how long her limbs were, elegant and lithe like a dancer’s.
He’d been waiting to see her ever since his grandfather’s death, but now, as the very outline of her implied a smile, his words caught in his throat. He couldn’t come up with even a single thing he could say to that smiling face.
“Yitian,” Hanwen called out.
He squinted at her hand. Now that she was closer, he could see that she hadn’t been waving at all. There was a small rectangular object in her palm, which she was holding up to the sky.
A transistor radio. She stopped in front of him, panting and out of breath, and held it out.
“Listen! Listen to what they’re saying!” She rolled the volume dial between her fingers.
. . . the session will be held at high schools in December. Provincial committees will release the precise dates of the examination in the following weeks . . .
The radio announcer’s voice was suddenly overtaken by a crackle of static, so loud that Yitian jumped back in alarm.
“What is she talking about?” he asked.
Hanwen shook the radio, but the announcer’s voice didn’t return.
“It was fine earlier. This thing! It never works when I need it to. Never mind.” She tossed the radio into the grass. “They just announced they’re reinstating the gaokao!”
A beat inside Yitian’s chest thumped in recognition, but he pushed it away. He didn’t dare acknowledge a hope that grand.
“How? It can’t be.”
“I couldn’t believe it either. We were bringing in our tools when Hongxing ran in and told us to turn on the radio. It was the first announcement of the broadcast.”
“Come on, you’re not excited?” She nudged his leg with her toe. She took one of the burlap bags, spread it on the ground beside him, and leaned her shoulder against his. The feeling electrified him, but he tried to tamp it down. It was wrong to think in such a way about a girl so soon after his grandfather’s death.
“How can you be sure it’s true?” he asked. “I’ll believe it when I hear it for myself.” He wasn’t deliberately trying to be difficult. Even if he heard the announcement himself, he wasn’t sure how much he’d believe. He’d long since given up trying to understand the maneuverings of the government in faraway Beijing. New policies and new leaders, what difference would it make? The news every day was so coded that it was impossible for him to decipher what was really happening in the outside world. Chairman Mao had died, and the Gang of Four had fallen. Hua Guofeng had replaced Mao and there was a new campaign with a name that was supposed to mean something. In hardly a year, Deng was purged, then rehabilitated. Trying to predict the erratic weather was much easier than following Beijing.
“So you’re saying you believe those people on the radio more than you would believe me. Is that right?” Her tone was sharp.
He looked up from the peanuts, startled. The stern expression on her face broke, her mouth stretching into a large smile that allowed peals of laughter through, joy alighting upon her crinkled eyes. Her pleasure overtook her and she threw her head back, so that a strip of pale skin revealed itself above the collar of her jacket.
It was this look of unbridled happiness that at last convinced him. Hanwen was a serious person, not given to such displays of spontaneous laughter. He’d seen her, at times, in a more consuming joy, but there always came the moment after when she would catch herself. A few months ago, on a summer evening made long and sleepless by the heat, Yishou had secretly stolen a chicken for the three of them. She’d yelped at the sight of his brother holding the chicken upside down by its feet, stuck her finger out to caress the prickled feathers of the wing, jumped back when she felt the warmth of the animal’s body. But by the time they sat down to eat later, she’d been so stoic amidst the others’ glee that Yishou had commented afterward, “Your girlfriend’s not easily impressed, huh? Better be careful she doesn’t leave you for someone else.” His brother was trying to protect him from some idea of a gold-digging girl, who Yitian knew Hanwen wasn’t.
“What does it mean for us?” Yitian asked her now. “When will it be?”
“I don’t know. The others are trying to get more information from people they know in the city. They said on the radio that the date would be this year.”