Frontier. Can Xue

them. Liujin noticed that in the blink of an eye the golden-red sun had darkened and the wind had picked up. Many people were shouting her and her father’s names. That was the first time that she, at the age of twelve, had found herself surrounded by a lot of invisible people. Waving her hands, she vigorously drove the birds away. She felt completely at a loss. As for her father, he unexpectedly left her and walked alone toward the west. An inner darkness struck her: she thought she was going to be abandoned in this rough, barren land. The birds had arrived suddenly, and they vanished just as suddenly. “Hey—” she shouted desperately. Thank God, Father reappeared before long: hands behind him, he walked calmly toward her, as though nothing had happened. Now, as she wrote this sentence, she heard a reverberation at the earth’s core. She felt that Pebble Town was a slumbering city. Every day, some people and things were revived in the wind. They came to life suddenly and unexpectedly. That’s right. Liujin recalled her neighbors, she recalled her several lovers who were struggling in loneliness, she recalled Mr. Sherman whom she hadn’t known long. It was as though each of them had emerged from the earth’s core: they came with some features of old times that were incomprehensible to her. Thinking of these enigmas, she didn’t know how to go on writing her letter. “The wind blows as usual, the sun rises as usual.” As if in a fit of pique, she wrote, “How many more things will emerge from the grottoes in the snow mountain?” With this inexplicable question, she ended the letter. Someone entered the room. It was the girl Xiyu. In profile, there was nothing wrong with Xiyu’s lips. How come? And looking again from the front, you still didn’t notice anything wrong until she started talking.

      “Sister Liujin, have you ever seen Mongolian wolves?”

      Liujin noticed the dark hole in her little mouth and turned her head away so that she wouldn’t have to see it.

      “I, I have to go to the post office,” she said as she tidied the desk.

      Xiyu climbed onto the desk, and turned her mouth toward Liujin again, as though forcing her to look at it.

      “A Mongolian wolf carried my little brother off in its mouth.”

      “You’re hallucinating.” Liujin glanced at her and went on, “There aren’t any Mongolian wolves here. Mongolia is far away. As for your little brother, I saw him this morning. He was nursing at your mother’s breast.”

      “He was nursing? I was thinking just now that a wolf had carried him off.”

      She dangled her two thin legs from the desk, and cupped her chin in her hands and worried. Earlier, Liujin had wanted to ask her about the boy wearing leaves. Looking at her now, she gave up that idea.

      What immense, weighty worries were packed into this little girl’s heart? How did she get through each day? But Liujin also felt that the little girl wasn’t pessimistic.

      “Oh, sister Liujin, I saw them. A lot of them are in your house!”

      “Who?”

      “Mongolian wolves. Their shadows are all over the wall on this side. One is really large. It’s like a hill squatting there.”

      “I have to go to the post office.”

      The girl jumped down and ran out. Lost in thought, Liujin sealed the letter and stamped it, but she didn’t feel like going out to mail it. This little imp Xiyu had reminded her of something. Liujin had never seen Mongolian wolves, but as a child, she had heard many legends about them—most about carrying off children and bringing them up in a pack of wolves. She wondered if the wolves seen recently in the market had been Mongolian wolves. Had they crossed the snow mountain and come here? The children of Pebble Town were always fooling around on the streets, even late at night. So it wouldn’t be surprising if they had been carried off by wolves. Perhaps the older children had been eaten, and the little ones had become wolf children. Liujin found these thoughts fascinating and began imagining the lives of the wolf children.

      The letter lay conspicuously on the table. Looking at it, Liujin started connecting it with the wolves. In her imagination, Mongolian wolves also showed up in Smoke City. What fun it would be if her wizened father galloped on a wolf’s back. “Dad, Dad, you mustn’t get down!” she shouted to herself. This vision gave Liujin some faith in the letter she had just written. She slipped it into her handbag and made up her mind to go to the post office. When she locked the door, something stirred inside the house. No matter, she thought. Without turning around, she went out to the street.

      After dropping the letter into the mailbox, she ran into a neighbor, Auntie Lu. Auntie Lu was her mother’s good friend.

      “Why do I always think your mother has come back?” As she talked, Auntie Lu massaged her swollen eyes, as if she wasn’t awake.

      “She hasn’t. Auntie Lu, where are you going?”

      “Me? I’m walking all around to have a look. I’m thinking of these children’s problems. Those wolves really did come in the night. My granddaughter didn’t come home all night. This morning, she rushed in and yelled that she was hungry!”

      Auntie Lu disappeared around the corner, and all at once Liujin felt empty. Auntie Lu seemed to think that her mother still showed up frequently. Liujin didn’t know what Auntie Lu, who was a local, thought of Mother. The sight of Mother and Auntie Lu wearing headscarves and walking together to work flashed out from Liujin’s memory. Back then, Auntie Lu was a little neurotic: she kept turning back to see what was behind her. Why did this old auntie feel that Mother had come back? Was it . . . She didn’t dare continue this thought. She felt her words were incomprehensible. She wanted to recall what she had written to her mother, but she couldn’t remember a single sentence.

      When she was almost home, Liujin saw the woman from Meng Yu’s staring idiotically at the passersby on the street. This didn’t happen often, since she ordinarily did all she could to avoid other people. Curious, Liujin walked over at once to greet her. “Are you homesick?” Surprised by her own words, Liujin felt awkward. With a slight smile, Amy shook her head. “No.” Liujin thought that Amy’s Mona Lisa smile could easily captivate men. She asked, “Where is your home?” She was surprised that the woman wasn’t evasive and talked on and on. She said her home was on the other side of the snow mountain, and that she had a father and brother. Her home wasn’t a regular house, but just a few thatched rooms. The family cut firewood for a living. Woodcutters had nearly disappeared now, but her father and brother loved working deep in the mountain and didn’t want to give it up. Back then, her mother worried every day at dusk, for she was afraid that the snow leopards had attacked father and son. It was difficult to imagine how impoverished her family was. Sometimes they couldn’t even afford lamp oil. For years, she had thought of coming out to see the world, but she was afraid. This went on until one day Uncle Meng Yu had come to her home, and brought her here.

      “You’re lonely here, aren’t you?”

      “No, no!” she vehemently retorted. “I like this place best of all!”

      Amy’s eyes opened like two flowers, and Liujin saw purity surging up in them. Remembering her shrill sad singing at night, Liujin sensed an even more immense enigma. She didn’t know what to talk about, so she said goodbye and left. The whole time, Amy was smiling slightly—a smile with the faint scent of pine trees after rain. Liujin felt that she herself had acted like an idiot.

      For no reason, Liujin thought that Mr. Sherman would come, and so she tidied the flower garden. It was odd that she didn’t find even one frog. Now she recognized that Mr. Sherman’s letting the frogs out was premeditated. Even though they were already good friends and the two of them had drunk tea together many times in her garden, Liujin still didn’t have one solid feeling about this man who attracted her. Nor had she dreamed of him. She took note of one thing: whenever guests sat in her cane chair, the chair creaked for a long time. The heavier the person was, the more the chair creaked. But Mr. Sherman was different: when he sat down, he and the chair fused into one. The old, old chair just groaned a little and then fell silent. He harmonized so perfectly with it that it was as though this burly middle-aged man had grown into the chair. Because of this, Liujin couldn’t help the deepening affection she felt for him. The grapes had almost