Frontier. Can Xue

granny?) smoked cigarettes. She had a little turtle in her pocket. Grace wanted to look at the little turtle, so Granny pulled it out and placed it in her hand, warning her, ‘Careful—it bites people.’ One day, it did bite her palm. It was gory, for it broke her skin. She cried. As Granny bandaged it, she kept saying, ‘Didn’t I warn you?’ Grace still had a scar on her palm. When Granny lay in her coffin, they put this living turtle in with her; they put it in her pocket. Afterward, Grace thought about it for a long time: How long could the little turtle live underground if it ate Granny’s flesh?”

      The book is full of these vignettes and stories within stories, that operate with more autonomy than they would in another book. Reading Frontier is not unlike reading the Old Testament, where stories are strung together by some other logic that is not always apparent to the reader, though you are still left with some thematic impression. And the stories have their own arcs and narratives and stand up on their own. But their relation to each other is often the mystery.

      But unlike the Bible’s eschatological semiotics, the issue here is something more straightforward: the nature of Pebble Town, or the Frontier. Where are we exactly? Is this heaven? Is this hell? Is it earth? A land of the past or present? China at times gets mentioned alongside the Gobi Desert. The placelessness of our destination is what carries this curious tale.

      Can Xue seems very interested in this. On the one hand, Pebble Town is everything: “Our Pebble Town is a huge magnetic field, attracting people who are fascinated with secret things . . .” And on the other hand, it is nothing: “When we went to the frontier years ago, we couldn’t see the road ahead clearly then, either. Since we couldn’t see the road, we just walked. Sometimes we could tell we were walking on flat land, sometimes on rubble. Later, at daybreak, we found we had circled back to where we had started. We had gone nowhere.”

      In the end, we are left with something like a message in a bottle, a beautiful compelling thing that might, like a frontier itself, take endless readings to crack. I know I haven’t done it yet. But like that message in a bottle, the interior is greater than the exterior—the book indeed expands as you go on. I wasn’t crazy in finding it only got longer, and I fear that I will have many decades to go before this book gets to its conclusion with me. I guess in the end, I too—sitting here, book in lap, computer on porch, within a still twilight in the middle of this unknowable frontier of my own that I’ve come to know year after year—am one of the denizens of the Frontier: “Between cracks in the foliage, the steel-blue sky was divulging some information to them. Deep down in their hearts, they understood, but they couldn’t say what it was. They could only sigh repeatedly, ‘Pebble Town, oh. Oh, the frontier. Oh . . .’”

       Note on Names

       With Can Xue’s permission, we have changed some of the Chinese names to English names that are similar to the Chinese. For those who have read or will read the novel in Chinese, we provide this list.

      Sherman – Shi Miao –

      Amy – Ayi –

      José – Hushan –

      Nancy – Niansi –

      Lee – Zhou Xiaoli –

      Grace – Zhou Xiaogui –

      Little Leaf – Xiao Yezi –

      Marco – Ma-ge-er –

      Roy – Rui –

      Woolball – Maoqiu –

      Tulip – Yujinxiang –

       Chapter 1

       LIUJIN

      It was late. Liujin stood there, leaning against the wooden door. The ripe grapes hanging on the arbors flickered with a slight fluorescence in the moonlight. Blowing in the wind, the leaves of the old poplar tree sounded lovely. The voice of someone talking blended with the rustling of the poplar leaves. Liujin couldn’t hear what he was saying. She knew it was the man who had recently been coming here late every night and sitting on the stone bench near the courtyard gate. At first, this had frightened Liujin and she hadn’t dared to go outside. Time after time, she had peeped out the window. Later on, realizing that this bear-like old man was harmless, she worked up the courage to approach him. He had good eyesight: even in the dim light, his eyes were as penetrating as sharp glass. He was busying his hands twisting hemp. He didn’t like to talk with people; his answers to Liujin’s questions were always vague: “I’m not sure . . .” He wasn’t one of her neighbors; where did he come from? Although he didn’t talk with her, he seemed to enjoy talking to himself. His words kept time with the sound of the wind and the leaves. When the wind stopped, he stopped. This was really strange. Tonight, his voice was louder, and pricking up her ears, Liujin made out a few words: “At noon, in the market . . .” Liujin tried hard to imagine the scene in this indoor market: piece goods, gold and silver jewelry, raisins, tambourines, foreigners, and so on. But she had no clue what the old man meant. Even though it was late, a woman was actually singing piteously and plaintively on the other side of the street; the woman seemed to be young. Could she be singing for the old man? But he apparently wasn’t listening; he was talking to himself. These days, Liujin had grown accustomed to his voice. She thought the old man looked a little like the poplar tree in the courtyard. The poplar was old, and so this man must be old, too. Liujin asked: Are you twisting the hemp to sell it? He didn’t answer. Sleepy, Liujin went off to bed. Before she fell asleep, she heard the young woman’s song turn sad and shrill. When she arose in the morning, she saw that the old man had left without a trace—not even a bit of hemp had been dropped on the ground. He really was a strange person. When she inquired of the neighbors, they said they didn’t know of such a person. No one had seen him. This made sense, for people generally didn’t go out so late. Liujin knew that she went to bed later than anyone else in the little town: she had formed this habit a long time ago. Still, what about the young woman singing?