Frontier. Can Xue

back in the pocket of the suitcase, and asked José to help remember where it was. José thought and thought, but still couldn’t remember when he had seen this old diary. Just then, something knocked at the window. This happened time after time, and José went over to take a look. What he saw was fog; one corner of it had dispersed, revealing a coconut tree. Ah, this was the garden, wasn’t it? But the fog quickly rolled over the coconut tree again, and everything was shrouded from sight. He told Nancy that the weather in Pebble Town was very unpredictable. “That’s why I reminded you not to jump to conclusions,” said Nancy, glancing reproachfully at him.

      This was their second night in the small frontier town. Although it was chilly, Nancy insisted on opening the skylight. As they lay on the wide bed, they felt the building swaying beneath them. Above them a flock of wild geese flew by; their lingering honks were fascinating. “Is it an earthquake? The director told me that Pebble Town has a lot of earthquakes.” Nancy’s voice seemed to be coming from far away, and the wall reverberated. The past was crowding into José’s mind; he couldn’t fall asleep. He tried to insert the ill Lee’s image into several different phases of his own life, but failed again and again. The more he thought, the more he felt that he knew this man well. Finally, he had to get up and go over to the window. A little fog still hung in the night air, yet a faint outline of the flower garden appeared. José noticed the pavilion in the flower garden. The gardener was lying on the pavilion floor, a black cat beside him. This scene felt unreal. Behind him, Nancy was talking. Her voice still stirred up buzzing echoes. She continued talking of earthquakes, asking him to prepare for their escape. “We can escape to the flower garden.” José thought her idea was rather bizarre. In fact, they couldn’t find this flower garden—so how could they escape to it? Something suddenly rapped on the window, like thunder. José turned, ran in fright, and threw himself onto the bed. He hadn’t yet recovered from his panic when Nancy said, “That was the wind.” The sound of Lee’s hysterical weeping came from the corridor. What a noisy night.

      “Should we help them?” Nancy asked as she turned on the light.

      “How? Move their dying dog over here? They would never agree.”

      Lee was talking about something, and his voice came through distinctly. It seemed to be about the dog, yet it also seemed to be about events in the distant past—something about the ocean. Had he once been a sailor? José didn’t want to go out and comfort him. If he did, he might as well forget about sleeping tonight. Lee smelled strange—like sandalwood but also unlike it. Whenever José talked with him, he felt himself withdrawing from the world—and floating like a feather. It was an uncomfortable feeling. He needed to rest now, so he told Nancy to turn off the light, and he lay down again. In the dark, he heard two people weeping. Grace’s was sharp and reverberating; Lee’s was like roaring and was punctuated by periodic complaints. He mentioned the ocean in his complaints. Nancy cuddled up to José and said in a trembling voice, “The ocean drowned a man’s dream.” Holding each other tightly, they fell asleep. It was hard to know when the weeping stopped. Later they awakened because their hands were numb. The room seemed darker than usual; after a while, they realized the skylight had closed automatically. How could it close by itself? Was it the wind? Nancy said, “We’re at the bottom of the ocean.” José reached to turn on the light. Damn, the power was out. When he got up, he felt his feet weren’t touching the floor; rather, he felt like a fish swimming. He swam in a circle and went back to bed when Nancy called to him.

      It was much darker than usual, and José turned to Nancy to tell her about his decision to move here. He said it was hardly a decision—but more a matter of the conditions being ripe for success. Maybe he’d reached this decision ten years ago. When they had been abandoned on the hill, he had felt something solemn and stirring. Time and again, he repeated these words: “How could I finally fully carry this out?” He realized this was an unanswerable question, yet he couldn’t help but raise it repeatedly. “Oh, the frontier!” Nancy responded irrelevantly. José started thinking of the orientation of their house in Pebble Town—that is, what the institute director had called “its geographical position.” All of a sudden, his mind was alight with radiance. The entirety of Pebble Town appeared in his mind, and he saw that their house was situated in the northwest corner. But there was a problem with this northwest corner: there was something confusing and dark, like a swamp. Inside it a miniature puppy was swimming energetically toward the bank from the mudhole. It wanted to climb up, but it couldn’t. Time after time, it fell back into the water as if something were preventing it from succeeding. He was vexed, and—all unaware—he said, “Is it Lee’s dog?” He had no sooner said this than his hallucination vanished, and everything turned dark. Had the two neighbors exhausted themselves with their crying and turned into fish just as they had done? He was trying to imagine the situation in the rooms to the east. When he started doing this, those rooms all dropped. That’s right: they dropped into a void and no longer existed. The old gardener was shouting something indistinctly in the garden below. “That often happens.” Nancy whispered, “We have to get used to it eventually.” José said, “Okay.” They tried hard to sleep some more. Before dawn, they struggled between sleep and wakefulness. They dreamed simultaneously of the poplars, though they didn’t know this until they woke up. The poplars were a symbol. It was only the light from behind the poplars that made their silhouettes visible. Later, they moved away from each other, each occupying one side of the bed. They slept soundly.

      When they awakened, it was noon of the third day since they’d arrived in Pebble Town. After washing up and getting dressed, they went to the Design Institute’s canteen for breakfast. On the way, Nancy kept looking back. She said she saw the gardener from the tropical garden. Yet, when José turned around, he saw no sign of him. “You always see something that I can’t see.” “That’s because you’re distracted.”

      The last time they’d come here to eat, hardly anyone else was here. Now the canteen was crowded, and they had to line up for a long time to buy food. After José had stood in line for a while, he noticed that all the employees who’d come here for breakfast looked out of sorts, and no one greeted anyone else. Thus, although crowded, it was as silent as a school of fish. He saw the institute director come out after buying her breakfast. Just as he was about to greet her, the man in front of him backed up and stomped on his foot. “Ouch!” He clapped the other person on the shoulder. But the person ignored him and kept standing on his foot. “What’s wrong with you?!” José said angrily. When the man turned around, José saw a heavily pockmarked face. He moved his foot away and whispered, “I’m not being rude. I want to remind you of some things. Don’t you know that people are watching you?” José sensed that this man was friendly, and his anger dissipated. He evidently shouldn’t have considered greeting the director. Now she was seated alone far away in the back of the canteen, eating her food in silence. Maybe she held a peculiar position in the Design Institute. But what was Nancy up to? How had she gotten along with that old woman? Nancy had bought her food and was sitting at a round table waiting for him. When he carried his food over there, he noticed that no others were sitting at this table, yet the other tables were crowded. “I think things are very well organized here,” Nancy said quietly as she ate. She was satisfied. José thought, he and Nancy were becoming more and more distant from one another. Still, no one had joined them by the time they finished eating,. Everyone else was crushed together, and many people even stood as they ate. The director and the two of them were isolated in this canteen.

      While they ate, many pigeons were flying outside the window. Some flew in; others perched on the windowsill. The ones that flew in perched on the cupboard. They weren’t afraid; they looked curiously at the people filling the canteen. A rather large gray pigeon stood on the director’s table, pecking at the bread she held. She was happy: she ate a bite and then gave the gray pigeon a bite. José stared blankly, even forgetting to eat. It wasn’t until Nancy nudged him that he came to his senses. Nancy said, “I like pigeons. The director truly has the presence of a frontier woman!” When the director finished eating, she got up and washed her dishes. For some reason, the pigeon followed and assaulted her, pecking at her hair, mussing it, and flapping its wings wildly. Just then, José realized that almost everyone had stopped eating to watch this scene. Qi, the janitor, showed up, set his bowl down on their table, glanced furtively at the scene, and said, “You think this is bizarre,