was walking.”
Liujin’s heart leapt. Could this be a messenger from her father?
The person looked comical. He wore green canvas pants, and a “shirt” plaited from elm leaves. He appeared to be only about sixteen years old. Just now, he’d been squatting in the salvia. If you glanced at him quickly, you might take him for a shrub.
“Who are your parents? Your clothes are really funny!” Liujin said good-naturedly.
“I’m not a child, sister Liujin,” he said seriously, and then all of a sudden he smiled, revealing small, white, protruding canine teeth. “As for my clothes, I traded with someone at the foot of the snow mountain. I gave him all of my bricks of tea—a full load of tea. I came here from the interior to sell tea.”
“My god. What will you tell your parents when you go home?” Liujin wrinkled her eyebrows.
“I like it here so much that I’m not going back.”
“How did you know my name?”
“It’s a secret. But don’t worry. I won’t bother you. I just came to take a look at you. Goodbye!”
When he walked off, the elm leaves rustled. He looked really funny. Liujin followed him and watched from the gate: he crossed the street to Meng Yu’s home. Was it a coincidence that he also went to Meng Yu’s? Five or six cellophane candy wrappers littered the area near the salvia. Liujin thought, This kid really likes candy!
While she was deep in thought under the grape arbor, Mr. Sherman entered the courtyard with a basket of groceries. Liujin thought back to the commotion at the market and tried to guess where he had gone then. Mr. Sherman sat down, took off his glasses, and wiped them with a handkerchief. Because he was very nearsighted, Liujin assumed he couldn’t see anything without his glasses, but—pointing at the candy wrappers—he asked who had thrown them there. Liujin told him it was a kid whom she didn’t know, probably an outsider.
“An outsider?” Mr. Sherman’s voice became sharp and unpleasant. “I’m an outsider, too.”
Liujin thought this was ridiculous. What was wrong with Mr. Sherman?
“I used to live on the other side of the snow mountain.” His voice softened. “Our family dyed cloth. We didn’t have a dye-works business. It was only a hobby. Do you understand?”
He put on his glasses and watched Liujin’s reaction.
Liujin nodded her head vigorously and said, “I think I understand. I sold out of the cloth you were looking at in no time. What kind of blue was it? I can’t remember the word. You must know.”
A frog jumped a few times in his grocery basket, then leapt out and away. It had never crossed Liujin’s mind that such a gentle man would eat frogs—how strange, how barbaric. As the two of them sat in silence, the wagtail that she hadn’t seen for a long time reappeared. Taking small swift strides, it shuttled through the flowers, but it didn’t sing. Liujin felt awkward and impolite, so she forced herself to say something, “Your frog . . .”
“Did it run off?” A smile floated on his face. “Then water is flowing underground here. It heard it. Frogs are very intelligent.”
He slammed the basket upside down on the ground, and all the frogs struggled to free themselves and hopped off. They were everywhere. He laughed innocently. Liujin felt tense.
“I hear that you not only sell cloth, but help your boss stock it—that you know a lot about the merchandise. The snow mountain has been melting slowly for years. On clear days, I can see the snow mountain better by taking off my glasses. I wonder what sort of myopia I have.”
Liujin hadn’t realized that this person had paid so much attention to her, and so her heart fluttered a little. His protruding eyes were really a little unearthly. He seemed able to see some things, and was blind to other things. What sort of person was he? Was the young woman—the one who had quarreled with him—his lover? It seemed so. So why did he come here? Maybe he was lonely and just wanted someone to talk with. Just then, the wagtail ran up next to her feet, and Mr. Sherman enjoyed this scene from behind his thick lenses. Liujin even felt love radiating from his eyes, but she warned herself: this can’t be true!
He bent over, picked up the basket, and said he must go. “Your courtyard is really nice.” He looked greatly refreshed.
After he left, Liujin wanted to find the frogs, but she couldn’t, not even one. They were hiding. Liujin envisioned the chorus in this courtyard on a rainy day: she was enchanted by this image. Did his behavior suggest affection, or was this a prank? Liujin could never distinguish between the two. It was like the night in the poplar grove. Mr. Sherman was an unusual person. He said the snow mountain was melting; this was probably true. The climate was certainly getting warmer and the environment was becoming polluted. In the market, she always smelled the rotting corpses of animals. Once, in a corner, someone had swept out a large nest of dead rats. No one had poisoned them; they had simply died. It was scary. Liujin felt that everyone smelled of corpses.
Liujin missed Mr. Sherman. She hadn’t thought of him before, though she had known him for a long time. Although she tried hard, she could only recall the twinkling gaze behind his thick lenses. Sometimes, when she came upon Mr. Sherman abruptly, she felt he was ugly and unbearably vulgar. Sometimes, she felt he was manly, gritty, and decisive—making him attractive in an unusual way. Outside the window, the wagtail resumed singing. Liujin thought, This little bird is a messenger between us. The scene under the grape arbor just now had struck her heart like a warm current. The woman who did odd jobs for the Meng Yu family started to sing again: “Snow lotus blossoms, the snow lotus blossoms that open deep in the mountains . . .” Her hoarse voice was an inauspicious omen. Where had this beautiful woman come from? Had both of the Meng Yu geezers fallen in love with her? Did both of them want to control her? One day the year before, Liujin saw her appear silently in the flock of sheep in Meng Yu’s courtyard. She had thought she was a visiting relative of the family. Somehow, Liujin felt that Pebble Town had a big heart. All kinds of strange people could find places to fit in. Liujin, who had been brought up here, didn’t know whether other cities (for example, her parents’ large city) were the same. Was this a virtue? Perhaps it was—if she could solve the puzzle about those people.
Liujin bent down next to the girl and asked, “What are you looking at, Xiyu?”
“Your courtyard wall. You don’t know that someone has made a hole on it, do you? It was that boy.”
“I know. Don’t worry about it. I’ll give you some grapes to take back with you.”
“Thank you, sister Liujin.”
The little girl hopped when she walked, much like a frog. The frogs had disappeared from the courtyard without a trace. Or maybe they had gone into the groundwater that Mr. Sherman had mentioned. When the girl reached the gate, she turned around and stood there looking at her. When Liujin asked her what she was looking at, she said someone was standing behind Liujin.
“Xiyu, your imagination is running wild. Who do you see?”
“I don’t see. I hear him.”
Frowning, Liujin thought this over. When she was about to ask her again, the child had already walked away. She started examining the courtyard wall, looking at it section by section, but she didn’t notice anything suspicious. The little girl must have been teasing her. What did she think of Liujin? In her eyes,
