A Map for the Missing(14)

Yitian saw his father little for the first three days after he arrived home. He slept through lunch and was often out visiting neighbors during the day. At dinner, he drank a few shots of baijiu with the food. His father had developed a new habit, Yitian discovered, of massaging his hurt leg absentmindedly while he ate. He would use one hand to lift his chopsticks to his mouth, while the other kneaded circles into his thigh.

“Is it very painful, father?” Yishou asked, one night at dinner.

“The alcohol helps,” his father said.

He’d always liked to drink, but this was much more than Yitian remembered. His grandfather never drank, one of the many differences between the two men. His grandfather wanted to preserve the clarity of his mind; his father enjoyed the haziness, believing it could ferry him into a more radiant version of the world.

“How have we raised you?” His grandfather’s eyes were bright and sharp with meaning. Yitian felt like he had been slapped across the face. He had only been trying to be sympathetic. He hurried out of the courtyard and spent the rest of the morning wandering in the hills surrounding their village, morose and resentful.

Now, Yitian wondered if his grandfather’s death would at last reveal some wellspring of emotion in his father. But still, it did not rise. His father hardly even mentioned the passing other than his dutiful words at the funeral. This was not an indication of any genuine care—Yitian knew his father would never abandon filial traditions, these being as important to his stature in the community as his ability as a farmer.

It didn’t seem possible how little his father cared, although his behavior was not dissimilar to the indifference he’d always shown Yitian’s grandfather, which was not even broken to show disdain. When his father was home from the barracks, the two men passed food across the table in silence, slipped next to each other in the rooms of their home without so much as an acknowledgment, even their shadows barely crossing.





Six



He decided that night to review the contents of the Twenty-Four Histories. Parts of it would surely be on the history section. His father and Yishou were out visiting with neighbors, drinking and playing cards, and he would have the room to himself.

He positioned the brazier under his knees and gathered two benches around him, fanning his notes out on one and placing the lamp upon the wobbly other. He stretched out his legs and sighed contentedly, thinking of the night of reading ahead of him. In his lap he cradled the bag of roasted sunflower seeds his mother had given him from her trip into town that morning. He pressed his face deeply into the bag, inhaling the rich fragrance of the roasting machine that still lingered on the shells. He planned to eat them while he studied.

When he heard his father and Yishou returning home, just as he was opening his books, Yitian could hardly believe it. He hadn’t expected them back until much later, when he hoped he would already be asleep.

They were accompanied by Second Uncle and Old Seven, who greeted Yitian with a nod. Yitian wondered if he would be kicked out of the room, but his father began calling for his mother to make dinner for the guests, ignoring him entirely.

“I didn’t realize that you’d be coming back to eat!” she exclaimed. She poured out all the peanuts in their home and set them on a dish on their table. As his mother rushed about preparing dishes, Yitian tried to make his body small in the corner. It was a gift to be ignored by his father now, but one he knew from experience could easily be taken away.

He began to read from his notes:

The Tang Dynasty rose to power after overthrowing the Sui . . .

Emperor Taizong went on to greatly expand the nation’s borders by engaging in war with the Turks and the Tibetans . . .

Wu Zetian took over the throne to establish her own dynasty, but soon had it taken back . . .

No matter how he tried, he couldn’t wholly concentrate. One part of his mind remained half alert to his father and the guests, who were now beginning to drink, his father pouring the shots and suggesting toasts.

“Not too much for me,” Old Seven protested. “I’m an old man. I can’t drink like I used to anymore. It would be awful for me in the morning.”

Had it been anyone else, his father would have insisted, but Old Seven was a respected village elder. When Japanese armies had invaded the village during the war, it was Old Seven who’d devised the strategy to hide the villagers in the hills, so crucial to their survival that the story had now become the stuff of legend. He’d maintained the strength of his body—he was often sighted carrying full buckets of water on poles balanced across his shoulders, at which point younger villagers would run to help him and scold him for endangering his health. Yitian thought it unlikely his protests about the alcohol were true.

“Fine, then Second Uncle will take your drink,” his father said. Second Uncle grabbed the shot glass eagerly. He was widely known to be a gambler and a drinker, always on the verge of having nothing, the signs of his lifestyle showing on a fatigued face that looked older than his thirty-five years.

“You know, I’ve actually gotten much better at drinking as I’ve gotten older,” Yitian’s father said. “We drank a lot in the army. It was so boring there—how else could we manage to entertain ourselves? We’d go months without seeing a single woman.”

They looked into Yitian’s corner, where his mother would usually have sat, knitting by low lamplight in the evenings. Tonight, she’d already retreated to the bedroom, promising to return for the dishes.