"Of course everything gets harder at our age," Meilan said. Ten years could be an abyss when one was twelve, and what a relief one did not have to stay twelve all her life. She adjusted her necklace of cultured pearls and sipped the tea. "So if you ask me, I'd say you're the smartest. It's better just to have a few dances together. Beyond that things get complicated."

"So you've always been single?" Mr. Chang asked with some curiosity. The woman, uninvited and at ease in his home, was different from his friends. Was it because she owned the patch of roof above her?

"Married twice, lost twice to mistresses," she said. "No, you don't have to feel sorry for me. The way I look at it-a bad marriage is like a bad tooth and it's better to remove it than to suffer from it."

Mr. Chang leaned forward. He had some vague recollection of her from years ago, but hard as he tried, he could not connect the woman to the young girl, whom his wife had once commented on as being intense and sad for her age. He had never doubted his wife, for whom the world seemed to be more transparent, many of its secrets laid out for her to see, but could she have made a mistake about the girl, or had time alone been able to transform a sad and serious girl into a loud and graceless woman?

"Come to think about it, at least I don't have to grieve over the death of a spouse," Meilan said. She was insensitive, she knew, but why should she pretend to be someone other than herself, even for him?

"That's to be congratulated," he said with sincerity, but perhaps she took it as a sarcastic comment, as she shrugged without replying.

The light dimmed in the flat. Evenings in Mr. Chang's unit, as they were in Meilan's, came earlier in all seasons, their windows shadowed by the high-rise next door. In the soft light Meilan fixed her eyes on his face, unscrupulously. "What would your wife have said about your lady friends?"

She had told him that he needed another woman in his life so she could rest in peace; would she have less peace had she known that not one but many had been in his life, coming and going? Mr. Chang shook his head. "The dead is gone, the live lives on," "The dead is gone, the live lives on," he said. The same saying must have been quoted by all the widows and the widowers in this city when they accepted a subst.i.tution. he said. The same saying must have been quoted by all the widows and the widowers in this city when they accepted a subst.i.tution.

"The live lives on only to ignore a longtime neighbor," Meilan said. She wondered if she sounded like a hurt woman. What she meant, she explained, was that they were both good dancers, and wasn't it a surprise that they had never danced? Unless it was more than a dancing partner he had been searching for, she added with laughter; she herself had no interest in anything other than dancing, she said, dancing being all that mattered to her.

The woman, with her cunning smile as if she had seen through him, looked familiar. Mr. Chang felt a moment of disgust mixed with fascination. Then it came to him, not the woman in front of him but another one, with her hand between his legs, not moving it much but nevertheless applying pressure from each of her fingers. He had been thirteen then, taking a train ride for the first time in his life, to the provincial capital for middle school; the other pa.s.sengers, his uncle included, had been dozing off in the dimming light of the northern plain. He could have gripped the fleshy wrist and removed the hand from his lap, he could have yelled for her to stop, or at least stood up and moved to another seat, but in the end, he had done nothing, because when he looked up she was smiling at him, her teasing eyes saying that she knew all about his secret, and that he was as sinful in this little game of theirs as she was.

Mr. Chang shifted in the chair. The phantom limb of a youthful swelling from half a century ago and the wetness afterward made him unable to breathe in the twilight. He had never told his wife about the incident; she had not been the kind of woman who would make a man relive a humiliating memory like that.

She did not mean to embarra.s.s him in any way, Meilan said; only she was curious why he had not thought of dancing with her. Mr. Chang shook his head. Some people were destined to be friends, he said, and others strangers.

A man could break a woman's heart with that reply, and Meilan had to tell herself she was lucky that she had not had a heart for all of her adult life.

Neither spoke for a moment, and when Mr. Chang asked if Meilan needed another cup of tea, she knew that her time was running out. "Do you still play music?" she asked, eagerly grabbing the first topic that occurred to her.

"The one who understands the music has ridden the wings of the crane to heaven," he said. he said.

She thought of telling him how she had listened to the music coming from his unit years ago, through open windows in the summer evenings, behind piled coal outside his unit on winter nights. But a love story told forty years too late could only be a joke. Instead, she asked him about the strange instrument she had never seen. She might as well solve one mystery if this turned out to be her only chance to talk with him.

He looked at her as if surprised by her memory, and without a word withdrew from the living room. A moment later, he came back with a round-bellied instrument. He plucked the strings and shook his head at its off-key tuning. "My father-in-law brought it from America but neither he nor my wife knew how to play it," he said. "It's a banjo."

"Where did you learn to play it, then?"

"I figured it out myself. It was not that hard. My wife used to boast to her friends that I was the only banjo player in Beijing."

"Was that true?" Meilan asked, watching him smile dreamily, remembering an old joke, perhaps, between husband and wife.

"I've not met another one in my life."

"Am I not a lucky one to meet the only banjo player in this city, Uncle Fatty?"

Mr. Chang nodded, trying to recover some old tunes. Meilan stood up and swung slowly to the music. In the soft twilight her face looked beautiful in a strange way that reminded him of his wife, but the woman, with her blind cheerfulness and loud voice, would not feel in his music what his wife had once felt. Perhaps this was what his wife had wanted for him, a woman who understood little, an antidote to death and loneliness.

"I have a great idea," Meilan said when the music stopped. It had taken forty years for him to play the banjo for her once, and neither of them had forty more years to waste. "We should move into one unit and sell the other."

Why? he asked, aware that he had not appeared as shocked or offended as he should have. If he told the story of the train ride to the woman in front of him, would she laugh at him? Or perhaps she would tell an equally unseemly story, a joke that would crack them up like a pair of shameless oldsters at the Twilight Club.

"Garden Road is hot now, and we'll make good money."

"What should we say we are if the police come to check our household register cards?"

"Neighbors, roommates, coinhabitants," Meilan said. "How much s.p.a.ce does one need at our age?"

Indeed, he thought. In the semidarkness he plucked the strings again. Sooner or later one of them would have to stand up and turn on the lamp, but for now he would like to think of himself as happily occupied, playing an old song on an older banjo.

Sweeping Past

THEY HAD BECOME sworn sisters in Ailin's backyard fifty years earlier, Ailin being the oldest of the three and the one to come up with the idea. They were twelve going on thirteen, their bodies just beginning to fill the gray Mao jackets handed down from their mothers. By then sworn sisterhood, like many other traditions, had been labeled as a noxious feudal legacy, and they had to bribe a neighbor's daughter to take Ailin's younger siblings to the marketplace for sugar canes so that the three girls could be free of prying eyes-it would take the little ones a sweet long time to chew from one end of the sugar canes to the other. Mei had stolen some yam liquor from her father's cabinet, and they each took a sip of the strong liquid before pouring it on the ground. sworn sisters in Ailin's backyard fifty years earlier, Ailin being the oldest of the three and the one to come up with the idea. They were twelve going on thirteen, their bodies just beginning to fill the gray Mao jackets handed down from their mothers. By then sworn sisterhood, like many other traditions, had been labeled as a noxious feudal legacy, and they had to bribe a neighbor's daughter to take Ailin's younger siblings to the marketplace for sugar canes so that the three girls could be free of prying eyes-it would take the little ones a sweet long time to chew from one end of the sugar canes to the other. Mei had stolen some yam liquor from her father's cabinet, and they each took a sip of the strong liquid before pouring it on the ground. "Let the heaven and the earth be the witnesses of the beginning of the rest of our lives," "Let the heaven and the earth be the witnesses of the beginning of the rest of our lives," Ailin read a pledge she had adapted from old novels in which men and women chose their sworn brotherhood and sisterhood beyond the bond of blood, and Mei and Lan repeated after her that they, sworn sisters from now on, would stick through thick and thin till the day they were to leave the earthly world together. Ailin read a pledge she had adapted from old novels in which men and women chose their sworn brotherhood and sisterhood beyond the bond of blood, and Mei and Lan repeated after her that they, sworn sisters from now on, would stick through thick and thin till the day they were to leave the earthly world together.

Later they went to the only photographer in town to have a picture taken. They were in their best outfits: moon white blouses with bows of the same color tied on the ends of their braids, pants with soft-colored floral prints. The photographer, a bachelor in his late thirties, watched the three girls giggle with excitement as he adjusted the lamps, and was moved by something in the girls' faces that was beyond their understanding. In the final prints, he wrote, with a fine-brush pen, a line from an ancient poem: As innocent as new blossoms, unaware of the time sweeping past like a river As innocent as new blossoms, unaware of the time sweeping past like a river. Embarra.s.sed yet unable to bring themselves to confront the photographer, the girls pretended that they did not notice the annotation to their sworn sisterhood.

Nine years later, the photographer, with his German-made cameras as evidence for his being a capitalist spy, was the first one in town to be beaten to death by the young Red Guards. By then Mei and Lan were both expecting their first babies, and Ailin, pressured by the other two's achievements, rushed into marriage with a man whom she had barely known and would take years to fall in love with. He was not the first man the matchmaker had introduced to her, nor was his family the one best able to afford good betrothal gifts, but it was like the old saying: The one to show up at the right time beats the earlier risers The one to show up at the right time beats the earlier risers.

On the morning of the wedding, while her two sworn sisters helped Ailin make up her face, she remembered, to her surprise, where the long and gentle fingers of the photographer had touched her chin when he had adjusted the angle of her face years ago. If she closed her eyes she could almost feel the momentary coolness when she was shielded from the bright light of the lamps, big and small, by his raised arms. Remember what the photographer wrote on our picture, Ailin asked, and then said how true it was that time swept past when they were the least prepared. Mei and Lan, both glowing in their new motherhood, laughed at Ailin for being a sentimentalist. Wait until this very night to discover what you haven't known about life, said Mei, always the most outspoken one, without lowering her voice; Lan blushed but then agreed with a coy smile, and for a moment Ailin was intimidated by a looming void of which her two sworn sisters seemed unaware.

THE PICTURE WAS buried with a few pieces of her maiden clothes in a trunk that had been rarely opened in her married life, and when it was uncovered again, it was not by Ailin but by Ying, Ailin's fourteen-year-old granddaughter on her summer holiday from Lisbon. Who were these girls? Ying asked her grandmother as she put aside the picture and tried on a blouse from the trunk. The moon white silk fabric had taken on a dull yellow hue, just like the faded picture from fifty years ago, but she seemed to be impressed by herself in the old-fashioned blouse. She parted her hair, dyed reddish yellow, in the middle and braided it, but the hair was unruly from her perm, and after a few trials she let go and focused on a tortoisesh.e.l.l comb missing a few teeth. buried with a few pieces of her maiden clothes in a trunk that had been rarely opened in her married life, and when it was uncovered again, it was not by Ailin but by Ying, Ailin's fourteen-year-old granddaughter on her summer holiday from Lisbon. Who were these girls? Ying asked her grandmother as she put aside the picture and tried on a blouse from the trunk. The moon white silk fabric had taken on a dull yellow hue, just like the faded picture from fifty years ago, but she seemed to be impressed by herself in the old-fashioned blouse. She parted her hair, dyed reddish yellow, in the middle and braided it, but the hair was unruly from her perm, and after a few trials she let go and focused on a tortoisesh.e.l.l comb missing a few teeth.

They had been best friends, she and the other two girls, Ailin said, but did not explain the ritual of sworn sisterhood for fear of being laughed at, which happened sometimes when she talked about the past with her granddaughter. Ying picked up the picture again and studied it. Sweet, she said, as one would speak of a puppy.

If her granddaughter was home for stories Ailin would tell her stories, but she knew that even though the girl acted nonchalant when her childhood friends admired the pictures she brought home, in which she posed in an exotic city with stately buildings, grand statues, and blue harbors with white boats, Ying already had too many stories of her own to shoulder. Five years earlier, after the death of Ailin's husband, her only son had decided to emigrate to Portugal, and Ailin, knowing that her opinion was the last thing sought from her, had given him the money he had requested without voicing any doubt. Ailin had thought of suggesting that they could leave their only daughter for her to raise, but Ying had been the one most eager to leave for a foreign life.

She was a good helper in the restaurant, Ailin's son soon called to report, and became even more useful when she picked up Portuguese and learned to deal with the paperwork and officials for her parents. Every summer she came back to Ailin's home for two weeks of vacation, an award for her contribution to the prospering restaurant, but apart from quietly showing off her new life to friends and neighbors, Ying was also in charge of purchasing handmade tablecloths and napkins, decorated with the embroidery the province had been known for in the past thousand years and still cheap if one knew which village to go to.

Life was good, and the business had never been better, Ying reported every summer, with fewer details each year, and Ailin learned not to ask for more than what was provided. If the girl wanted to tell stories, Ailin was all ears, but Ying was at an age where the line between the real and the imagined was blurred, and the tales she thought impressive invariably bored Ailin, though she was careful not to show it.

TOWARD THE END of Ying's stay the girl brought home a poster-sized print of Ailin's picture with her sworn sisters. The store had Photoshopped it for better effect, Ying explained. The three girls in the sepia-toned print smiled dreamily, as if a shared mystery had cast a mist that separated them from the rest of the world. What was this for? Ailin asked, and the girl replied that the picture was to be part of the new decorations for a section of the restaurant divided from the main floor. There were other pictures she had gathered, too, Ying said, old photos she had sought from her friends' parents, and the store would have them ready in a day or two. of Ying's stay the girl brought home a poster-sized print of Ailin's picture with her sworn sisters. The store had Photoshopped it for better effect, Ying explained. The three girls in the sepia-toned print smiled dreamily, as if a shared mystery had cast a mist that separated them from the rest of the world. What was this for? Ailin asked, and the girl replied that the picture was to be part of the new decorations for a section of the restaurant divided from the main floor. There were other pictures she had gathered, too, Ying said, old photos she had sought from her friends' parents, and the store would have them ready in a day or two.

Ailin looked at the picture. She was sitting on a stone bench, her knees drawn to her body and clasped in both hands, as directed by the photographer. Look slightly upward as if being summoned, he had told her, though by whom he had not said. Mei and Lan stood behind her, each placing a hand on her shoulders and pointing the other hand to where all three were expected to look. All of it had been staged, and the painting of bamboo trees and waterfall on the background curtain, already faded fifty years ago, was recognizable perhaps only to Ailin's eyes now. Still, the long-forgotten details came back with the enlarged images: The coiled ends of her braids, slightly burned even though it was hard to see in the picture, were the result of impatient curling with a pair of hot tongs; the jasmine blossoms in their top b.u.t.ton holes were from Mei's neighbor, a boy their age with a shy smile who liked to offer Mei the blooming flowers from his mother's garden, but before any fruitful connection could be made from all the fragrant presents, the boy had to move away when his widowed mother remarried into another province; Lan, the prettiest of the three, had to be begged once and again by the photographer not to turn her face away, though if looking closely, one could detect the shying away of her face from the lens, and the photographer had skillfully caught her eyes just before she had averted them.

"How much does it cost to make this?" Ailin asked as she fingered the fabric of the print.

Ying gave Ailin a number that took her aback, and Ailin commented that despite the amount of money spent, the picture looked even older than it was.

"That's the effect I need."

"Did you talk to your parents before making this?"

"Why should I?" Ying said. "They'll love it if I tell them that this is what the guests have been asking for. Besides, they say the restaurant will be mine someday, so why can't I make the decision now?"

Ailin thought about lecturing her granddaughter on filial respect, but Ying would only roll her eyes and laugh at her outdated and useless wisdom. "I don't see why anyone wants to look at some girls from ages ago while eating at your restaurant."

"All three of you look very young and innocent. Very Chinese."

"We certainly didn't take the picture to entertain some foreign devils," Ailin said dolefully.

"But you don't mind, do you?" Ying said. "And your friends-will you not tell them about this? I don't want them to come to me and ask to be paid."

The girl was too young to worry about such things, Ailin thought, saddened by the fact that her granddaughter had less s.p.a.ce and time to dream than Ailin herself had once had at this age. She would not let the secret out to her friends, Ailin replied, but Ying looked doubtful.

"But you may forget," she said. "I know what it's like with old people. You make a promise one day and the next day the promise means nothing because you have all this time on your hands and you need to tell them every bit of news."

"I'll never see them again."

"Are they dead?"

They did not live in town, though neither had moved very far away. The distances could be covered easily by a two-hour bus ride, but Ailin had not sent word to Mei and Lan about her husband's funeral. It had occurred to Ailin before that similar losses might have been kept from her as well, though she had always believed that in the case of a death among the three, the news would find its way to the other two. On what ground to be so blindly confident? she pondered now, and Ying, studying Ailin with a detached sympathy, asked again if her friends had died on her. They were probably still in good health, Ailin replied; only they no longer talked. But why? Ying pressed. Circ.u.mstances, Ailin said, and added that fifty years was a long time to keep up.

Ying seemed dissatisfied with the answer. "You don't stop being a friend because of circ.u.mstances," she said. She herself stayed close to a couple of friends through Internet phone calls, birthday cards, and days spent together on her holidays. Every summer she gave the friends presents she bought with money she earned, clothes and shoes said to be in fashion in Europe.

Life was crowded with many small worries that could replace a friendship with indifference-meals to be prepared, diapers to be changed and washed, critical in-laws and bosses to appease, illness and exhaustion to recover from-and beyond that there was what the photographer had called the sweeping past of time, but Ying was right that one did not discard the sworn sisterhood due to some minor changes in circ.u.mstances. "Something happened to us a while ago," Ailin said finally. "I told a very bad joke, and neither of them wanted to be my friend anymore."

"A triangle can be unforgiving and unstable for friendship," Ying said. "What kind of joke was it?"

"They both had their first babies before I had your father-a boy and a girl, so I suggested that they arrange a marriage between the kids," Ailin said. "It was meant to be a joke."

"And of course one of the families took it more seriously than the other. It was a silly joke, if you ask me, but it was sillier to stop being friends because of the joke. So don't blame yourself, Nana," Ying said. Ailin had never seen her granddaughter act brusquely protective, but perhaps it was what was required of her when she had to speak for herself as well as for her parents. "There would've been no trouble in the world if not for the stupid people who make stupid mistakes," "There would've been no trouble in the world if not for the stupid people who make stupid mistakes," Ying added. Ying added.

Only it had not been proposed as a joke, nor had it been received as one. The two babies were born a day apart, both as beautiful as their mothers. There would be more children coming to the three families, but the first two were special. Their mothers were sworn sisters, and what could be a better destination than a marriage, so that the two children would continue loving each other beyond playmates, beyond brother and sister? It made sense when a marriage was semiofficially arranged for the two babies; it made Mei and Lan happier that Ailin had been the one to propose it-they worried about her feeling left out, she could see, and with more enthusiasm than either mother she prepared a lavish meal for the small ceremony. None of the three husbands attended the ceremony, treating it with dismissive amus.e.m.e.nt, as a harmless feminine fantasy. The three men got along all right, but they would not have chosen to be friends if not for their wives; none of them had been told about the sworn sisterhood.

"What happened?" Ying asked. "Did one of the families change their mind?"

"Something horrible happened," Ailin said. "The boy killed the girl by accident."

Ying gave a low cry but the shock was at once replaced by fascination. "When did that happen? Why did he do that? How old were they?"

"Not much older than you," Ailin said, and right away regretted making the connection. "They were sixteen. They went out for a field trip all by themselves and he strangled her by accident."

Ying made some exclamation in a foreign tongue. "That could not be an accident. He could've pushed her into a river by accident, but strangling? How could that happen by accident?"

Ailin shook her head. There had not been much to ask from the boy. The fact that he had ripped her blouse had been enough. The two children had known all their lives about the existence of a marriage arrangement; naturally the boy had expectations, but the girl fought and scratched his face and arms, perhaps out of fear of the urgent rudeness that had turned the boy into an unrecognizable creature.

"Did he rape her?"

The girl's ease with voicing the word unsettled Ailin. At fourteen, she and her sworn sisters had not known much of the cruelty life had in store. "He didn't mean to harm her," Ailin said in his defense. She had always loved the boy, a most generous big brother for her own son, six years younger; she had been selfishly relieved that he was not old enough to understand the situation when the scandalous murder filled the local newspapers.

"But he killed her. I bet this was how it happened. He wanted to have s.e.x, and she didn't want to. He got out of control," Ying said. "Did he get a death sentence?"

Ailin nodded.

"He made a stupid mistake but perhaps not enough for a death sentence," Ying said. "But of course this is China-a life for a life."

It was the same thing Lan had said when Ailin had begged her to show some leniency toward Mei's son. A life for a life, Lan said, not meeting Ailin's eyes; why should she think of giving the boy a future when her daughter had no future left? Unable to reply, Ailin lit some incense in front of the girl's black-framed picture and prayed to her for a change of heart on her parents' side; in the picture the girl had Lan's beautiful features and bashful smile, and Ailin wondered if there had been another boy whom all three of them had not been aware of to account for the girl's vehement resistance.

Look what you've got us all into, Mei yelled to Ailin outside the courthouse after the sentence had been read. As Mei was screaming in Ailin's face, Lan, winning yet having nothing to share with her sworn sisters anymore, hastened past them with averted eyes. It was the last time Ailin had seen either of her sworn sisters. The news of both families moving away was reported to her by her husband long after they had left; he had clumsily frolicked with their son in the backyard afterward so that she could remain undisturbed in her mourning.

Ying studied the girls in the picture again and asked Ailin to point out the one with the murdered daughter and the one with the murderer son. "I wonder which one of your friends hates the other more," she said.

"They don't hate each other as much as you imagine," Ailin said. She had owed Mei a son and herself a daughter-Lan had written back ten years later when Ailin had sent her a letter, hoping to renew their connection-and no matter what excuse Ailin would find for herself, she was the only one of the three to be indebted. "They both blamed me," Ailin finished.

Ying replied that it was ridiculous for Ailin's friends to think so, and that Ailin herself must be crazy to take on responsibilities that she had no business claiming. Ailin shook her head and did not argue with the girl, who, despite having acc.u.mulated wisdom beyond her age, was too young to understand that hatred, as much as love, did not come out of reason but out of a mindless nudge of a force beyond one's awareness. That Mei and Lan had lost their children would not be enough for them to keep their hatred alive. It had been Ailin's idea to arrange the marriage; it had been her idea to become sworn sisters in the first place.

Ying seemed eager to continue the argument with Ailin, yet Ailin was not in the mood anymore to offer the girl a chance to dispute what she did not understand. Had Ailin not been stubborn in holding on to her girlhood so that no man could replace her sworn sisters, she might well have got married and had a baby at the same time as Mei and Lan; it could have been Ailin's son who was arranged to marry Lan's daughter, and he might or might not have got the three families into the tragedy even if the girl decided not to honor the arrangement. Ying might have not been born but there might've been another girl in her place, with her name, who would perhaps be content in living her life out in the provincial town, but how could Ailin make the girl understand that all the existences surrounding her, solid and reasonable though they seemed to be, could be changed if the fantasy of a lifelong sisterhood had not occurred to Ailin on that spring afternoon fifty years ago?

After waiting in vain for a long moment, Ying looked defeated. "Well, if they hate you as much as you say, the more reason there is to put up the picture so they will be looked at in my restaurant while they don't know it," she said.

And they could smile on the wall into the indifferent eyes of foreign strangers, as if time had stopped at the photographer's cramped studio fifty years ago, Ailin thought, and turned away from the poster before her sworn sisters caught a glimpse of her moist eyes.

Souvenir

THE MAN NOTICED the girl first, moving cautiously from one storefront to the next, not glancing even once at the shop windows. She wore a white dress, more like a smock, with a pink and purple floral print, and her bare arms and ankles were innocent as a small girl's, bony and smooth. The man watched her walk past him on the roadside bench and stood up. You remind me of my wife when she was your age, he practiced in his mind. His cane b.u.mped into the backpacks on the ground, which belonged to the two college students sitting next to him on the bench, and they looked at him with disapproval before resuming their intimate conversation, the boy's lips touching the girl's earlobe. They had hinted, when he had first taken the seat next to them on the bench, at their unhappiness at his intrusion, but he had refused to leave, having every right to the bench as much as the young couple did. the girl first, moving cautiously from one storefront to the next, not glancing even once at the shop windows. She wore a white dress, more like a smock, with a pink and purple floral print, and her bare arms and ankles were innocent as a small girl's, bony and smooth. The man watched her walk past him on the roadside bench and stood up. You remind me of my wife when she was your age, he practiced in his mind. His cane b.u.mped into the backpacks on the ground, which belonged to the two college students sitting next to him on the bench, and they looked at him with disapproval before resuming their intimate conversation, the boy's lips touching the girl's earlobe. They had hinted, when he had first taken the seat next to them on the bench, at their unhappiness at his intrusion, but he had refused to leave, having every right to the bench as much as the young couple did.

You remind me of my wife when she was your age, he said now to the girl. It was not the first time he had started a conversation with a young woman with the line, but he meant it more than any time before. The way she maneuvered through the late-afternoon street-vigilant, as if she was aware that anyone, anything, could run her over without the slightest idea of her existence-was how he remembered his wife-not only as a young woman when they had first met but also as an older woman in the next forty years of their marriage. She had been taken advantage of by many unfriendly strangers cutting into the lines in front of her, colleagues getting promotions that belonged to her, three miscarriages, and a tumor in her liver.

She pa.s.sed away six months ago, the man added now. We don't have children.

The girl looked at the old man, unconvinced by his widower's sorrow. This was not the first time she had been approached this way, older men claiming that she reminded them of their dead wives and first loves. She was never harsh with them. Even with her physics professor, who took every opportunity to touch the arms and backs of his female students, she did not flinch as the other girls did; the graze of his hands was no more harmful than another man's recognition of his own dead wife in her. They were in as much pain as she was, and they did not add to her suffering.

Have you tried the chrysanthemum tea? the man said, pointing to the window display of the pharmacy where the girl had stopped. My wife used to say it helped to get any poison out of someone's system.

The girl sighed noticeably. She would learn every bit of information about his wife if she did not stop him; not that she minded being told about and compared to a dead woman, but she had her own love to take care of on this evening. She nodded to the man and went for the door of the pharmacy, wishing that he would take his leave and find another girl in the street.

The man followed her into the store. Fluorescent lamps lit the place from the ceiling and from underneath the gla.s.s counters. Two middle-aged women, one sitting behind the cash register and one behind the counter at the opposite side of the store, exchanged information about their husbands' annoying habits, agreeing and encouraging each other as if they were deeply engaged in a verbal Ping-Pong game. Another customer listened while studying pairs of reading gla.s.ses but then left without buying. It was one of those long evenings, the man thought.

The girl walked from counter to counter and feigned interest in various products. She did not know how to stop the man from following her, since he had every right to be standing in the same store that she was, but soon it would be nightfall and the women would close the shop without asking her what she needed. The girl looked at the clock on the wall and panicked. It was all as she had planned it, that the pharmacy would be free of prying eyes in the last ten minutes before closing and she would be spared embarra.s.sment; she did not foresee the tenacity of a lonely man.

There's a good wonton stand across the street and I'll buy you a bowl of wonton soup, the man said to the girl.

His wife must have liked wonton soup, or else she must have cooked good wonton soup for him. The girl thought about being old and having few comforts to hold on to. She was twenty-two and found it hard to be comforted by the little things in life. For the past two years she had seen bigger events than she had been prepared for, protests that led to bloodshed that led to arrests and interrogations; the tragedies would not be personal if not for her having fallen for a boy hero-she had not been the only one to admire his flamboyant gestures in front of Western reporters' cameras, but two years later, she was the only one to go to his parents' flat and sit with him every night. Don't keep your hope high, his mother had warned the girl earlier on, but she had not believed that the spirit he had shown in the square would be so easily crushed by the interrogations. She had gone to his parents and begged to see him until they had to accept her presence; still, they told her that the boy, officially a madman now, would not pa.s.s the test for a permit to get married.

Marriage is for those who still believe in the mundane, she replied and later told her parents so. She went to sit with the boy and listen to his long monologues on history and philosophy and the fatality of humankind; she noticed repet.i.tions but did not point them out to him, nor did she ask what he thought of her presence in his bedroom. Perhaps she blended in with the furniture well, but even a piece of good furniture might save someone's life by miracle. He touched her face and arms sometimes, absentmindedly, as someone deep in thought would stroke a cat. The tenderness of his hands kept her hopeful of his recovery; after all, he had not been handled with any consideration in the two-month detention.

It's just a bowl of wonton soup, the old man said, more vehemently than he had intended. The girl's quiet rejection shamed him; his wife would have smiled and thanked him because she knew the invitation bore no ill intention. Even if she were indeed unable to join him, she would have given him a good excuse instead of letting him stand in the middle of the shop like an idiot. The world is not as bad as you think it is, he said to the girl. Enough young women these days were treating him as if he were as old and non-feeling as a-half-dead tree, but he could not stand that she, who reminded him of his wife in another life, was being one of them.

The girl looked at the man. His sudden rudeness was a relief. She did not have to be responsible for his feelings, after all, even if he had not lied about his wife. The girl moved closer to the cash register, where in a locked gla.s.s case packs of condoms were on display. The girl glanced at the half-naked men and women, all foreign with blond hair, printed on the packages. A pack of those, comrade, she said, and wished that only she herself noticed the trembling in her voice.

What are those? We don't sell "those" here, the woman behind the cash register said.

The condoms, the girl said.