LATER, WHEN MRS. Luo, a neighbor in her late forties who had been laid off by the local electronics factory, came to sit with Teacher Fei's mother, he went to a nearby Internet cafe. It was a little after two, a slow time for the business, and the manager was dozing off in the warm sunshine. A few middle school students, not much older than twelve or thirteen, were gathered around a computer, talking in tones of hushed excitement, periodically breaking into giggles. Teacher Fei knew these types of kids. They pooled their pocket money in order to spend a few truant hours in a chat room, impersonating people much older than themselves and carrying on affairs with other human beings who could be equally fraudulent. In his school days, Teacher Fei had skipped his share of cla.s.ses to frolic with friends in the spring meadow or to take long walks in the autumn woods, and he wondered if, in fifty years, the children around the computer would have to base their nostalgia on a fabricated world that existed only in a machine. But who could blame them for paying little attention to the beautiful April afternoon? Teacher Fei had originally hired Mrs. Luo for an hour a day so that he could take a walk; ever since he had discovered the Internet, Mrs. Luo's hours had been increased. Most days now she spent three hours in the afternoon taking care of Teacher Fei's mother and cooking a meal for both of them. The manager of the Internet cafe had once suggested that Teacher Fei purchase a computer of his own; the man had even volunteered to set it up, saying that he would be happy to see a good customer save money, even if it meant that he would lose some business. Teacher Fei rejected the generous offer-despite his mother's increasing loss of her grip on reality, he could not bring himself to perform any act of dishonesty in her presence.

Teacher Fei located the girl's blog without a problem. There were more pictures of her there, some with her mother. Anyone could see the older woman's unease in front of the camera. In her prime she would have been more attractive than her daughter was now, but perhaps it was the diffidence in her face that had softened some of the features which in her daughter's case were accentuated by rage. Under the heading "Happier Time," Teacher Fei found a black-and-white photo of the family. The girl, age three or four, sat on a high stool, and her parents stood on either side. On the wall behind them was a garden, painted by someone without much artistic taste, Teacher Fei could tell right away. The girl laughed with a mouthful of teeth, and the mother smiled demurely, as befitting a married woman in front of a photographer. The father was handsome, with perfectly shaped cheekbones and deep-set eyes not often found in a Chinese face, but the strain in his smile and the tiredness in those eyes seemed to indicate little of the happiness the daughter believed had existed in her parents' marriage.

Teacher Fei shook his head and scribbled on a sc.r.a.p of paper the man's name and address and home phone number, as well as the address and number of his work unit, which were all listed by the girl. A scanned image of his resident's ID was displayed, too. Teacher Fei calculated the man's age, forty-six, and noted that on the paper. When he went to the message board on the girl's website, Teacher Fei read a few of the most recent posts, left by sympathetic women claiming to have been similarly hurt by unfaithful husbands or absent fathers. "Dearest Child," one message started, from a woman calling herself "Another Betrayed Wife," who praised the young girl as an angel of justice and courage. Teacher Fei imagined these women dialing the father's number at night, or showing up in front of his work unit to brandish cardboard signs covered with words of condemnation. "To all who support this young woman's mission," he typed in the box at the bottom of the Web page, "the world will be a better place when one learns to see through to the truth instead of making hasty and unfounded accusations."

"A Concerned Man," Teacher Fei signed his message. A different opinion was not what these women would want to hear, but any man with a brain had to accept his responsibility to make the truth known. A girl among the group of middle schoolers glanced at Teacher Fei and then whispered to a companion, who looked up at him with a snicker before letting herself be absorbed again by the screen. An old man with wrinkles and without hair. Teacher Fei a.s.sessed himself through the girls' eyes: bored and boring, no doubt undesirable in any sense, but who could guarantee the girls that the flirtatious young man online who made their hearts speed was not being impersonated by an equally disgraceful old man?

LATER THAT EVENING, when Teacher Fei had wrung a warm towel to the perfect stage of moistness and pa.s.sed it to his mother, who sat on another towel on her bed, a curtain separating her partly undressed body from him, he thought about the two girls and their youthful indifference. One day, if they were fortunate enough to survive all the disappointments life had in store for them, they would have to settle into their no longer young bodies.

"Do you remember Carpenter Chang?" Teacher Fei's mother asked from the other side of the curtain. Three times a week, Mrs. Luo bathed Teacher Fei's mother, and on the other evenings Teacher Fei and his mother had to make do with the curtain as he a.s.sisted her with her sponge bath and listened to her reminisce about men and women long dead. Half an hour, and sometimes an hour, would pa.s.s, his mother washing and talking on one side of the curtain, him listening and sometimes pressing for details on the other side. This was the time of day they talked the most, when Teacher Fei knew that although his mother's body was frail and her mind tangled by memories, she was still the same graceful woman who, with her unhurried storytelling, knew how to take the awkwardness out of a situation in which she had to be cared for by a grown son who had remained a bachelor all his life.

Having his mother as his only companion in old age was not how Teacher Fei had envisioned his life, but he had accepted this with little grievance. He enjoyed conversations with her, for whom things long forgotten by the world were as present as the air she shallowly breathed: two apprentices pulling a giant paper fan back and forth in a barbershop to refresh the sweating customers, the younger one winking at her while her grandfather snored on the bench, waiting for his daily shave; the machine her father had installed in the front hall of their house, operated by a pedaling servant, which cut a long tube of warm, soft toffee into small neat cubes that, once hardened, were wrapped in squares of cellophane by her and her four sisters; the cousins and second cousins who had once been playmates, fed and clothed and schooled alongside her and her sisters when they were young, but who later claimed to have been exploited as child laborers by her capitalist father; her wedding to Teacher Fei's father, attended by the best-known scholars of the day and lamented by most of her relatives, her mother included, as a bad match.

Teacher Fei's father had been the oldest and poorest of his mother's suitors. Twenty years her senior, he had worked as a part-time teacher in the elite high school that she and her sisters attended, and when she rejected him a renowned scholar wrote to her on his behalf, a.s.suring the sixteen-year-old girl of what was beyond her understanding at the time: that Teacher Fei's father would become one of the most important philosophers in the nation and, more than that, would be a devoted husband who would love her till death parted them.

Teacher Fei had always suspected that his mother had agreed to see his father only to appease the scholar, but within a year the two had married, and afterward, before Teacher Fei's father found a university position, his mother used her dowry to help her husband support his parents and siblings in the countryside. Unable to become pregnant, she adopted a boy-Teacher Fei-from the long line of nephews and nieces who lived in close quarters in her husband's family compound, which had been built and rebuilt in the course of four generations. She had never hidden this fact from Teacher Fei, and he remembered being saddened after a holiday in his father's home village when he was eight and finally understood that he alone had been plucked from his siblings and cousins. His relatives, birth parents included, treated him with respect and even awe. It was his good fortune, his mother had said, comforting him, to have two pairs of parents and two worlds.

Poor man, she said now, and for a moment, lost in his reverie, Teacher Fei wondered if he had told her about the avenging daughter. Then he realized that his mother was still talking about the carpenter, who had once carved five coffins for his children, all killed by typhoid within a week. The carpenter's wife, who had been hired as a wet nurse for Teacher Fei when he first left his birth mother, had returned to the house years later with the news. Even as a ten-year-old, Teacher Fei could see that the woman had been driven out of her mind and would go on telling the story to any willing ears until her death.

It's the innocent ones who are often preyed upon by life's cruelty, Teacher Fei replied, and when his mother did not speak he recounted the girl's story from the magazine. He paused as his mother, dressed in her pajamas, pulled the curtain aside. All set for the dreamland, she said. He did not know if she had heard him, but when he tucked her in she looked up. "You should not feel upset by the girl," she said.

He was not, Teacher Fei replied; it was just that he found the girl's hatred extraordinary. His mother shook her head slightly on the pillow, looking past his face at the ceiling, as if she did not want to embarra.s.s him by confronting his lie. "The weak-minded choose to hate," she said. "It's the least painful thing to do, isn't it?"

She closed her eyes as if exhausted. Rarely did she stay in a conversation with him with such clarity these days, and he wondered whether she had chosen to neglect the world simply because it no longer interested her. He waited, and when she did not open her eyes he wished her a night of good sleep and clicked off the bedside lamp.

"The weak-minded choose to hate," Teacher Fei wrote in his journal later that night. For years, he'd had the habit of taking notes of his mother's words. "I have nothing to say about this world," he wrote, the line most often repeated in the journal. Twenty-five years ago, his father, after a long day of musing in his armchair, had said the same thing, his final verdict before he swallowed a bottle's worth of sleeping pills. Teacher Fei's mother had not sounded out of sorts when she had called him that evening to report his father's words, nor had she cried the following morning on the phone with the news of his father's death. Teacher Fei suspected that if his mother had not been an active accomplice, she had, at the least, been informed of the suicide plan; either way it made no difference, for the border between husband and wife had long been obscured in his parents' marriage. What surprised Teacher Fei was his mother's willingness to live on. He visited her daily after his father's death and, within a year, moved in with her. He recorded and a.n.a.lyzed every meaningful sentence of hers, looking for hints that the words were her farewell to the world. He was intentionally careless about his pills, and hers, too, as he believed she must have been in his father's final days-they had always been a family of insomniacs-but by the fifth anniversary of his father's death, Teacher Fei stopped waiting. She had nothing to say about the world, his mother told him that day, more out of amus.e.m.e.nt than resignation, and he knew then that she would not choose to end her life.

THE MESSAGE THAT Teacher Fei had left on the girl's website was not there when he checked the next day at the Internet cafe. Why was he surprised? Still, his hands shook as he composed another message, calling the girl "a manipulative liar." A young couple, seventeen or eighteen at most, cast disapproving glances at Teacher Fei from another computer, seemingly alarmed by his vehement treatment of the keyboard. Teacher Fei had left on the girl's website was not there when he checked the next day at the Internet cafe. Why was he surprised? Still, his hands shook as he composed another message, calling the girl "a manipulative liar." A young couple, seventeen or eighteen at most, cast disapproving glances at Teacher Fei from another computer, seemingly alarmed by his vehement treatment of the keyboard.

The chat rooms he normally frequented held little attraction for him today. He was leaving on a business trip abroad, he told a friend in one chat room who called herself "Perfume Beauty," and then repeated the news to similarly named women in other chat rooms, knowing that they would find other idling men to flirt with. The night before, he had imagined the reaction of the girl and her female allies to his message, and had composed an eloquent retort to throw at these petty-minded women. But no doubt the girl would again erase his comment, and he could not stop her, nor could he expose her dishonesty. Teacher Fei logged off the computer and watched the boy sneak a hand under the girl's sweater and wiggle it around, perhaps trying to unhook her troublesome bra. The girl looked at the screen with a straight face, but her body, moving slightly in cooperation, betrayed her enjoyment.

The girl noticed Teacher Fei's attention first and signaled to her boyfriend to stop. Without withdrawing his hand, he mouthed a threat at Teacher Fei, who lifted his arms as if surrendering and stood up to leave. When he walked past the couple, he raised a thumb and gave the boy a smile, as though they were conspiring comrades; the boy, caught off guard, grinned disarmingly before turning his face away.

Teacher Fei had never cupped his hands around a woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and for an instant he wished that he possessed the magic to make the boy disappear and take his place next to the girl. What stupidity, Teacher Fei chided himself, after he had gulped down a can of ice-cold soda water at a roadside stand. It was that angry girl and her fraudulence-that was what was depriving him of his peace. He wished that he had been his mother's birth son, that he had her n.o.ble and calm blood running through his veins, guarding him against the ugliness of the world.

The good fortune that his mother had once a.s.sured him of had not lasted long. At eighteen, he had been an ambitious art student about to enter the nation's top art inst.i.tute, but within a year, his father, an exemplary member of the reactionary intellectuals, was demoted from professor to toilet cleaner, and Teacher Fei's education was terminated. For the next twenty years, Teacher Fei's mother accompanied his father from building to building, one hand carrying a bucket of cleaning tools and the other holding her husband's arm, as if they were on their way to a banquet. Yet, in the end, even she could not save her husband from despair. Teacher Fei's father had killed himself two years after he was restored to his position at the university.

The next day, Teacher Fei saw that his second message to the girl had also been confiscated by the cyberworld. A different message, left by a woman who hailed the girl as a guardian of the morality of modern China, taunted Teacher Fei in bold type.

He hastily composed another post, and then spent twenty minutes rephrasing it in a calmer tone, but a day later, when that message had also been deleted, his rage erupted. He called her "a scorpion girl" in a new message, saying that he hoped no man would make the mistake of his life by marrying her and succ.u.mbing to her poison; he took great pity on her father, since an evil daughter like her would make any father live in a h.e.l.l.

Her father ... Teacher Fei paused in his typing as the man's unhappy face in the photo came back to him. He decided to call the man's work unit, an inst.i.tute affiliated with the Ministry of Propaganda, from a phone booth in the street. A woman answered, and when Teacher Fei asked for the man by name she inquired about the nature of his business. An old school friend who had lost touch, he said, apologizing that he did not have another number for him and so had to make the initial contact through the work unit.

The woman hesitated and then told him to wait. When the phone was picked up again, Teacher Fei was surprised by the voice, which sounded as though it belonged to a much older man. It didn't matter what his name was, Teacher Fei replied when the girl's father asked for it; he was merely calling as a man who was sympathetic to a fellow man's situation. He then asked if there was a chance that they could meet in person. The line clicked dead while he was in mid-sentence.

WHEN MRS. LUO came the next day, Teacher Fei begged her to stay till later in the evening. He would pay her double for the extra hours, he said, and Mrs. Luo, after complaining about the inconvenience, agreed, adding that a man like Teacher Fei indeed deserved an occasional break from caring for an elderly woman. Mrs. Luo had not lowered her voice, and Teacher Fei glanced at his mother, who sat in the armchair with her eyes fixed on a square of afternoon sunshine on the floor. She was obedient and quiet in front of Mrs. Luo, who, like everybody else, believed that Teacher Fei's mother had long been lost in her own world of dementia. came the next day, Teacher Fei begged her to stay till later in the evening. He would pay her double for the extra hours, he said, and Mrs. Luo, after complaining about the inconvenience, agreed, adding that a man like Teacher Fei indeed deserved an occasional break from caring for an elderly woman. Mrs. Luo had not lowered her voice, and Teacher Fei glanced at his mother, who sat in the armchair with her eyes fixed on a square of afternoon sunshine on the floor. She was obedient and quiet in front of Mrs. Luo, who, like everybody else, believed that Teacher Fei's mother had long been lost in her own world of dementia.

A man like him. In the street, Teacher Fei pondered Mrs. Luo's words. What did that mean-a man like him-a bachelor without a son to carry on his blood, a retired art teacher whose name most of his students had forgotten the moment they graduated from elementary school, a disgraceful old man who purchased fashion magazines at the newsstand and wasted his afternoons alongside teenagers in a cyberworld, making up names and stories and sending out romantic lies? What did he deserve but this aimless walk in a world where the only reason for him to live was so that his mother could die in her own bed? There must be places for a man like him to go, inexpensive foot-ma.s.sage shops where, behind an unwashed curtain, a jaded young woman from the countryside would run her hands where he directed her while she chatted with a companion behind another curtain. Or, if he was willing to spend more-and he could, for he had few expenditures beyond his magazines and the Internet cafe, and had long ago stopped buying expensive brushes and paper and pretending to be an artist-one of the bathing palaces would welcome him into its warmth, with a private room and a woman of his choice to wait on him.

IT WAS A few minutes after five when Teacher Fei arrived at the inst.i.tute, betting that the girl's father was not the type to leave work early, since there would be little reason for him to hurry home. While Teacher Fei waited for a guard to inform the man of his arrival, he studied the plaque at the entrance to the inst.i.tute. few minutes after five when Teacher Fei arrived at the inst.i.tute, betting that the girl's father was not the type to leave work early, since there would be little reason for him to hurry home. While Teacher Fei waited for a guard to inform the man of his arrival, he studied the plaque at the entrance to the inst.i.tute. THE a.s.sOCIATION OF MARXIST DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM THE a.s.sOCIATION OF MARXIST DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM, it said, and it occurred to Teacher Fei that had his father been alive he would have said that it was the parasites in these inst.i.tutes who had ended hope for Chinese philosophers.

"Please don't get me wrong. I am a serious man," Teacher Fei said to the girl's father when he appeared. "A man most sympathetic to your situation."

"I don't know you," the man said. Had Teacher Fei not known his age, he would have guessed him to be older than sixty; his hair was more gray than black, and his back was stooped with timidity. A man closer to death than most men his age, Teacher Fei thought. But perhaps he would have more peace to look forward to in death.

A stranger could be one's best friend just as one's wife and daughter could be one's deadly enemies, Teacher Fei replied, and he suggested that they go out for tea or a quick drink. A small group of workers, on their way from the inst.i.tute to the bus stop across the street, pa.s.sed the pair of men; two women looked back at them and then talked in whispers to the group. The girl's father recoiled, and Teacher Fei wondered if the daughter knew that her father already lived in a prison cell, its bars invisible to the people in the street.

They could go to the man's office for a chat, Teacher Fei offered, knowing that this was the last thing he would want. The father hurriedly agreed to go to a nearby diner instead. He was the kind of man who was easily bullied by the world, Teacher Fei thought, realizing with satisfaction that he had not sought out the wrong person.

At the diner the girl's father chose a table in the corner farthest from the entrance, and in the dim light he squinted at the bench, wiping off some grease before he sat down. When the waitress came, Teacher Fei asked for a bottle of rice liquor and a plate of a.s.sorted cold cuts. He was not a drinker, nor had he ever touched marinated pig liver or tongue, but he imagined that a friendship between two men should start over harsh liquor and variety meats.

Neither spoke for a moment. When their order arrived, Teacher Fei poured some liquor for the girl's father. A good drink wipes out all pain for a man, Teacher Fei said, and then poured a gla.s.s for himself, but it soon became clear that neither of them would touch the drink or the meat, the man apparently feeling as out of place in the dingy diner as Teacher Fei did.

"What are you going to do?" Teacher Fei asked when the silence between them began to attract prying glances from the diner's middle-aged proprietress, who sat behind the counter and studied the few occupied tables.

The man shook his head. "I don't understand the question," he said.

"I think you should sue your daughter," Teacher Fei said, and immediately saw the man freeze with hostility. Perhaps someone had approached him with a similar proposition already. Or perhaps that was why the young girl had sued her father in the first place, egged on by an attorney, a manipulative man using her rage for his own gain.

Not that he could offer any legal help, Teacher Fei explained. He had been an art teacher in an elementary school before his retirement. He was in no position to do anything to hurt the girl's father, nor did he have the power to help him in his situation. It was only that he had followed his daughter's story in the media, and when he had seen the family picture he had known that he needed to do something for the girl's father. "'How many people in this world would understand this man's pain?' I asked myself when I saw your picture."

The girl's father flinched. "I am not the kind of man you think I am," he said.

"What?" Teacher Fei asked, failing to understand his meaning. He was not into other men, the girl's father said, so could Teacher Fei please stop this talk of friendship? The proprietress, who had been loitering around the nearby tables checking on the soy sauce bottles, perked up despite the man's hushed voice.

It took Teacher Fei a moment to grasp what the man was hinting at. Nor am I who you think I am, he thought of protesting, but why should he, when he had long ago made the decision not to defend himself against this ridiculous world?

The proprietress approached the table and asked about the quality of the food and drink. When the man did not reply, Teacher Fei said that they were very fine. The woman chatted for a moment about the weather and returned to her counter. Only then did the man insist that it was time for him to go home.

"Who is waiting at home?" Teacher Fei asked, and the man, taken aback, stood up and said he really needed to leave.

"Please," Teacher Fei said, looking up at the man. "Could you stay for just a minute?" If he sounded pathetic, he did not care. "You and I ...," he said slowly, glancing over at the entrance to the diner, where a pair of college students, a girl and a boy, were studying the menu on the wall. "We are the kind of men who would not kick our feet or flail our arms if someone came to strangle us to death. Most people would a.s.sume that we must be guilty if we don't fight back. A few would think us crazy or stupid. A very few would perhaps consider us men with dignity. But you and I alone know that they are all wrong, don't we?"

The man, who was about to leave some money on the table, tightened his fingers around the bills. Teacher Fei watched the college students take window seats, the boy covering the girl's hands with his own on the table. When the man sat back down, Teacher Fei nodded gratefully. He did not want to look up, for fear that the man would see his moist eyes. "When I was twenty-four, I was accused of falling in love with a girl student," he said. "Pedophile" had been the word used in the file at the school, the crime insinuated in the conversations taking place behind his back. The girl was ten and a half, an ordinary student, neither excelling among her cla.s.smates nor falling behind; one often encountered children like her in teaching, faces that blended into one another, names mis-recalled from time to time, but there was something in the girl's face, a quietness that did not originate from shyness or absentmindedness, as it usually did in children of her age, that intrigued Teacher Fei. He envisioned her at different ages-fifteen, twenty, thirty-but there was little desire in that imagining other than the desire to understand a face that had moved him as no other face had. "No, don't ask any questions, just as I won't ask whether you indeed kept a mistress while being married to your wife. It doesn't matter what happened between your cousin and you, or my girl student and me. You see, these accusations exist for the sake of those who feel the need to accuse. If it wasn't your cousin, there would have been another woman to account for your not loving your wife enough, no?"

The man took a sip from his gla.s.s, spilling the liquor when he put it down. He apologized for his clumsiness.

"My mother used to say that people in this country were very good at inventing crimes, but, better still, we were good at inventing punishments to go with them," Teacher Fei said.

When he and his cousin were young, they had vowed to marry each other, the man said; a children's game mostly, for when the time came they had drifted apart. She was widowed when they met again, and he tried to help her find a job in the city, but she was never his mistress.

"You don't have to explain these things to me," Teacher Fei said. "Had I not known to trust you, I would not have looked for you." The man could say a thousand things to defend himself, but people, his own daughter among them, would just laugh in his face and call him a liar. The crime that Teacher Fei had been accused of amounted to nothing more than a few moments of gazing, but one of the other students, a precocious eleven-year-old, had told her parents of the inappropriate attention the young teacher had paid to her cla.s.smate; later, when other girls were questioned, they seemed to be caught easily in the contagious imagining. He had just been curious, Teacher Fei said when he was approached by the princ.i.p.al. About what, he was pressed, but he could not explain how a face could contain so many mysteries visible only to those who knew what to look for. His reticence, more than anything, caused fury among the parents and his fellow teachers. In the end, he chose to be called the name that had been put in the file: A man's dirty desire was all his accusers could grasp.

"One should never hope for the unseeing to see the truth," Teacher Fei said now. "I could've denied all the accusations, but what difference would it have made?"

"So there was no ... proof of any kind?" the man said, looking interested for the first time.

"Nothing to put me in jail for," Teacher Fei said.

"And someone just reported you?"

"We can't blame a young girl's imagination, can we?" Teacher Fei said.

The man met Teacher Fei's eyes. It was just the kind of thing his daughter would have done, the man said. "She'd have made sure you lost your job," he added with a bitter smile, surprising Teacher Fei with his humor. "Count yourself a lucky person."

Teacher Fei nodded. He had won the district mural contest for the school every year, his ambition and training in art making him a craftsman in the end, but shouldn't he consider it good fortune that his ability to paint the best portrait of Chairman Mao in the district had saved him from losing his job? The time to think about marriage had come and then gone, his reputation such that no matchmaker wanted to bet a girl's future on him. Still, his parents had treated him with gentle respect, never once questioning him. But as cleaners of public toilets they could do little to comfort him other than to leave him undisturbed in his solitude. Indeed, he was a lucky man, Teacher Fei said now; he had never married, so no one could accuse him of being an unfaithful husband or a bad father.

"Unwise of me to start a family, wasn't it?" the girl's father said. "Before my divorce, my daughter said there were three things she would do. First, she would sue me and put me in prison. If that failed, she would find a way to let the whole world know my crime. And if that didn't make me go back to her mother she would come with rat poison. Let me tell you-now that she has done the first two things, I am waiting every day for her to fulfill her promise, and I count it as my good fortune to have little suspense left in my life."

Teacher Fei looked at the college students paying at the counter, the boy counting money for the proprietress and the girl scanning the restaurant, her eyes pa.s.sing over Teacher Fei and his companion without seeing them. "I have nothing to say about this world," Teacher Fei said.

Neither did he, the man replied, and they sat for a long time in silence till the proprietress approached again and asked if they needed more food. Both men brought out their wallets. "Let me," Teacher Fei said, and though the man hesitated for a moment, he did not argue.

In the dusk, a thin mist hung in the air. The two men shook hands as they parted. There was little more for them to say to each other, and Teacher Fei watched the man walk down the street, knowing that nothing would be changed by their brief meeting. He thought about his mother, who would be eager to see him return, though she would not show her anxiety to Mrs. Luo. He thought about his girl student: Fifty-two she would be now, no doubt a wife and mother herself, and he hoped that he had not been mistaken and she had grown into a woman like his mother. She-the girl student, whom he had never seen again-would outlive him, just as his mother had outlived his father, their beauty and wisdom the saving grace for a man like him, a man like his father. But for the other man, who would be watching the night fall around the orange halo of the streetlamps with neither longing nor dread, what did the future offer but the comfort of knowing that he would, when it was time for his daughter to carry out her plan of revenge, cooperate with a gentle willingness?

Prison

YILAN'S DAUGHTER DIED at sixteen and a half on a rainy Sat.u.r.day in May, six months after getting her driver's license. She had been driving to a nearby town for a debate when she had lost control. The car traveled over the median and ran into a semi. The local newspapers put her school picture side by side with the pictures from the site of the accident, the totaled black Nissan and the badly dented semi, the driver standing nearby and examining the damage to his truck, his back to the camera. The article talked about Jade's success as an immigrant's daughter-the same old story of hard work and triumph-how she had come to America four years earlier knowing no English, and had since then excelled in school and become the captain of the debate team. It also quoted Jade's best friend saying that Jade dreamed of going to Harvard, a dream shared by Yilan and her husband, Luo; and that she loved Emily d.i.c.kinson, which was news to Yilan. She wished she had known everything about Jade so she could fill the remaining years of her life with memories of her only daughter. At forty-seven, Yilan could not help but think that the important and meaningful part of her life was over; she was now closer to the end than the beginning, and within a blink of the eyes, death would ferry her to the other side of the world. at sixteen and a half on a rainy Sat.u.r.day in May, six months after getting her driver's license. She had been driving to a nearby town for a debate when she had lost control. The car traveled over the median and ran into a semi. The local newspapers put her school picture side by side with the pictures from the site of the accident, the totaled black Nissan and the badly dented semi, the driver standing nearby and examining the damage to his truck, his back to the camera. The article talked about Jade's success as an immigrant's daughter-the same old story of hard work and triumph-how she had come to America four years earlier knowing no English, and had since then excelled in school and become the captain of the debate team. It also quoted Jade's best friend saying that Jade dreamed of going to Harvard, a dream shared by Yilan and her husband, Luo; and that she loved Emily d.i.c.kinson, which was news to Yilan. She wished she had known everything about Jade so she could fill the remaining years of her life with memories of her only daughter. At forty-seven, Yilan could not help but think that the important and meaningful part of her life was over; she was now closer to the end than the beginning, and within a blink of the eyes, death would ferry her to the other side of the world.

The year following Jade's accident, however, stretched itself into a long tunnel, thin-aired and never-ending. Yilan watched Luo age in his grief and knew she did the same in his eyes. He had been a doctor in China for twenty years; they had hoped he would pa.s.s the board exam to become an American doctor, but, too old to learn to speak good English, he now worked in a cardiology lab as a research a.s.sistant and conducted open-heart surgery on dogs twice a week. Still, they had thought that the sacrifice of both their careers-Yilan had been an editor of an herbal medicine journal-was worthwhile if Jade could get a better education.

The decision to immigrate turned out to be the most fatal mistake they had made. At night Yilan and Luo held hands in bed and wept. The fact that they were in love still, despite twenty years of marriage, the death of their only child, and a future with little to look forward to, was almost unbearable in itself; sometimes Yilan wondered whether it would be a comfort if they could mourn in solitude, their backs turned to each other.

It was during the daytime, when Luo was at work, that Yilan had such thoughts, which she felt ashamed of when he came home. It was time to do something before she was torn in half into a nighttime self and a crazier daytime self, and before the latter one took over. After a few weeks of consideration, she brought up, at dinner, the idea of adopting a baby girl from China. They would get a daughter for sure, she said, for n.o.body would be willing to give up a son.

Luo was silent for a long moment before he said, "Why?"

"All these stories about American parents wanting their adopted girls to learn Chinese and understand Chinese culture-we could do at least as much," Yilan said, her voice falsely positive.

Luo did not reply and his chopsticks remained still over his rice bowl. Perhaps they were only strangers living an illusion of love; perhaps this idea would be the gravedigger of their marriage. "Another person's unwanted child won't replace her," Luo said finally.

Even though his voice was gentle, Yilan could not help but feel a slap that made her blush. How could she expect that a girl not of their blood-a small bandage on a deep, bleeding wound-would make a difference? "Such nonsense I was talking," she said.

But a few days later, when they retreated to bed early, as they had done since Jade's death, Luo asked her in the darkness if she still wanted a child.

"Adopt a baby?" Yilan asked.

"No, our own child," Luo said.

They had not made love since Jade's death. Even if pregnancy was possible at her age, Yilan did not believe that her body was capable of nurturing another life. A man could make a child as long as he wanted to, but the best years of a woman pa.s.sed quickly. Yilan imagined what would become of her if her husband left her for a younger, more fertile woman. It seemed almost alluring to Yilan: She could go back to China and find some peace and solace in her solitude; Luo, as loving a father as he was, would have a child of his blood.

"I'm too old. Why don't I make room for a younger wife so you can have another child?" Yilan said, trying hard to remain still and not to turn her back to him. She would not mind getting letters and pictures from time to time; she would send presents-jade bracelets and gold pendants-so the child would grow up with an extra share of love. The more Yilan thought about it, the more it seemed a solution to their sad marriage.

Luo grabbed her hand, his fingernails hurting her palm. "Are you crazy to talk like this?" he said. "How can you be so irresponsible?"

It was a proposal of love, and Yilan was disappointed that he did not understand it. Still, his fury moved her. She withdrew her hand from his grasp to pat his arm. "Ignore my nonsense," she said.

"Silly woman," Luo said, and explained his plan. They could find a young woman to be a surrogate mother for their fertilized egg, he said. Considering potential legal problems that might arise in America, the best way was to go back to China for the procedure. Not that the practice was legal in China, he said-in fact, it had been banned since 2001-but they knew the country well enough to know that its laws were breakable, with money and connections. His cla.s.smates in medical school would come in handy. His income, forty thousand dollars a year, while insufficient for carrying out the plan in America, was rich for the standard in China. Besides, if they brought the baby back to America, there would be less worry about the surrogate mother later wanting to be part of the baby's life, as had happened to an American couple.

Yilan listened. Luo had been a surgeon in an emergency medical center in China, and it did not surprise her that he could find the best solution for any problem in a short time, but the fact that he had done his research and then presented it in such a quiet yet hopeful way made her heartbeat quicken. Could a new baby rejuvenate their hearts? What if they became old before the child grew up? Who would look after her when they were too frail to do so? An adopted child would be a mere pa.s.serby in their life-Yilan could easily imagine caring for such a child for as long as they were allowed and sending her back to the world when they were no longer capable-but a child of their own was different. "It must be difficult," Yilan said hesitantly, "to find someone if it's illegal."

Luo replied that it was not a worry as long as they had enough money to pay for such a service. They had little savings, and Yilan knew that he was thinking of the small amount of money they had got from Jade's insurance settlement. He suggested that they try Yilan's aunt, who lived in a remote region in a southern province, and he talked about a medical-school cla.s.smate who lived in the provincial capital and would have the connections to help them. He said that they did not have much time to waste; he did not say "menopause" but Yilan knew he was thinking about it, as she was. Indeed it was their last chance.

Yilan found it hard to argue against the plan, because she had never disagreed with Luo in their marriage. Besides, what was wrong with a man wanting a child of his own? She should consider herself lucky that Luo, with a practical mind and a methodical approach to every problem in life, was willing to take such a risk out of his love and respect for her as a wife.

YILAN WAS SURPRISED, when she arrived at her aunt's house in a small mountain town, by the number of women her aunt had arranged for her to consider. She had asked her aunt to find two or three healthy and trustworthy young women from nearby villages for her to choose from, but twenty thousand yuan was too big a sum for her aunt to make a decision. What she did, instead, was to go to a few matchmakers and collect a pile of pictures of women, with their names, ages, heights, and weights written on the back. Some pictures were even marked with big, unmistakable characters about their virginity, which made Yilan wonder how much these women, or her aunt and the matchmakers, understood the situation. Even she herself felt doubtful now that she saw all these faces from which she had to pick a hostess for her child. What was she to look for in these women?

"No virgins, of course, or first-time mothers," Luo said when she called collect and told him of the complications they had not expected. He was waiting for his flight, two months later than Yilan's, to the provincial capital, where, with the help of his cla.s.smate, Yilan would have already finished her hormone therapy for the ovulation. It would have been great if he could have accompanied her to pick out the surrogate mother, and to the treatment before the in vitro fertilization, but he had only a few weeks of vacation to spare, and he decided that he would wait till the last minute to travel to China, in case the procedure failed and he needed to spend extra time for another try.

"You mean we want to pick someone who has already had a child?" Yilan said.

"If we have options, yes. A second-time pregnancy will be better for our child," he said.

Luo had arranged to rent a flat for a year in the provincial capital, where Yilan and the surrogate mother would spend the whole pregnancy together. They had to be certain, he said, that the baby they got in the end was theirs-he could easily imagine them being cheated: an unreported miscarriage and then a scheme to subst.i.tute another baby, for instance, or a swapping of a baby girl for a baby boy. It surprised Yilan that Luo had so little trust in other people, but she did not say anything. After all, it was hard for her to imagine leaving her child to a stranger for nine months and coming back only for the harvest; she wanted to be with her child, to see her grow and feel her kick and welcome her to the world.

Yilan had expected a young widow perhaps, or a childless divorcee, someone who had little to her name but a body ready for rent. A mother would make the situation more complicated. "We can't separate a mother from her child for a year," she said finally.

"Perhaps it's not up to us to worry about it if someone is willing," Luo said. "We're buying a service."

Yilan shuddered at the cold truth. She looked out the telephone booth-the four telephone booths in the main street, in the shape of fat mushrooms and colored bright orange, were the only objects of modern technology and art in this mountain town, and to protect them from vandalism as well as probing curiosity, the booths were circled by a metal fence, and one had to pay the watchperson a fee to enter. The watchperson on duty, a middle-aged man, was dozing off in his chair, his chin buried deeply in his chest. A cigarette peddler across the street sat by his cart with his eyes turned to the sky. A teenager strolled past and kicked a napping dog, and it stirred and disappeared among a row of low houses, behind which, in the far background, were the mountains, green against the misty sky.

"Are you there?"

"I'm wondering." Yilan took a deep breath and said, "Why don't we move back to China?" Perhaps that was what they needed, the unhurried life of a dormant town, where big tragedies and small losses could all be part of a timeless dream.

Luo was silent for a moment and said, "It's like a game of chess. You can't undo a move. Besides, we want our child to have the best life possible."

Our child, she thought. Was that reason enough to make another child motherless for a year?

"Yilan, please," Luo said in a pleading tone, when she did not talk. "I can't afford to lose you."

Shocked by the weakness in his tone, Yilan apologized and promised that she would follow his instructions and choose the best possible woman. It saddened her that Luo insisted on holding on to her as if they had started to share some vital organs during their twenty years of marriage. She wondered if this was a sign of old age, of losing hope and the courage for changes. She herself could easily picture vanishing from their shared life, but then perhaps it was a sign of aging on her part, a desire for loneliness that would eventually make death a relief.

The next day, when Yilan brought up her worries about depriving a child of her mother, Yilan's aunt laughed at her absurdity. "Twenty thousand yuan for only one year!" her aunt said. "Believe me, the family that gets picked must have done a thousand good deeds in their last life to deserve such good fortune."

Yilan had no choice but to adopt her aunt's belief that she and Luo were not merely renting a woman's womb-they were granting her and her family opportunities of which they would not dare to dream. Yilan picked five women from the pile-the first pot of dumplings, as her aunt called it-to interview, all of them mothers of young children, according to the matchmakers. Yilan and her aunt rented a room at the only teahouse in town, and the five women arrived in their best clothes, their hands scrubbed clean, free of the odor of the pigsties or the chicken coops, their faces over-powdered to cover the skin chapped from laboring in the field.

Despite her sympathy for these women, Yilan could not help but compare them to one another and find imperfections in each. The first one brought the household register card that said she was twenty-five, but she already had sagging b.r.e.a.s.t.s under the thin layers of her shirt and undershirt. It did not surprise Yilan that the village women did not wear bras, luxuries they did not believe in and could not afford, but she had to avert her eyes when she saw the long, heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s pulled downward by their own weight. She imagined the woman's son-two and a half, old enough to be away from his mama for a year, the woman guaranteed Yilan-dangling from his mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s in a sling and uncovering her b.r.e.a.s.t.s whenever he felt like it. It made Yilan uncomfortable to imagine her own child sharing something with the greedy boy.

The next woman was robust, almost mannish. The following woman looked slow and unresponsive when Yilan's aunt asked her questions about her family. The fourth woman was tidy and rather good-looking, but when she talked, Yilan noticed the slyness in her eyes. The fifth woman was on the verge of tears when she begged Yilan to choose her. She listed reasons for her urgent need of money-husband paralyzed from an accident in a nearby mine, aging parents and in-laws, two children growing fast and needing more food than she could put in their mouths, a mud-and-straw house ready to collapse in the rainy season. Yilan thought about all the worries that would distract the woman from nourishing the baby. Yilan was ashamed of her selfishness, but she did not want her child to be exposed so early to the unhappiness of the world. Not yet.