The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

position of mothering the baby. Ming-Ming probed Kai's face with his plump and soft fingers, unconscious of his mother's love or of her resolution to depart from the world fenced in by that love.
    Backstage, people were busy with last-minute preparations. A colleague went over the procedure with Kai, and then invited her to rest in a small room where a mug of fragrant tea was waiting for her. A moment later a secretary of the propaganda department came in and said someone was looking for her at the side gate. Was it Han, Kai asked, and the other woman said that it was not Kai's husband but a stranger. A secret admirer, the secretary said with a grin, and Kai dismissed the joke, saying that she had no need for an admirer in her life now. The secretary said she would go and tell the man that Kai was already a happy wife and mother if that's what Kai preferred. Kai thanked her and said no, she would go tell him herself. The secretary was called then to some small task, her laughter trailing her in the hallway. The world could be as trusting and oblivious as an unsuspicious husband.
    Across the street from the stadium, Jialin stood under a tree, his gray jacket blending in with the wall behind him. An old Soviet-style cotton cap sat low on his eyebrows, the earflaps let down and tied under his chin; a white cotton mask, the kind worn by men and women alike in Muddy River in the long season of winter, covered most of his face. If not for his glasses, the frames broken and then fixed by layers of surgical tape, Jialin could be as inconspicuous as a worker coming home from a night shift or a shop owner on his way to his cagelike store. Still, it was unlike him to ask to see her in public on this day.
    “Is there anything I can do for you?” Kai said. In the world outside the library where they occasionally met, he and she could only act as strangers.
    He had come to make sure everything would be all right, he said, and then, caught in a bout of coughing, he turned his face away. She did not know what he meant, Kai replied when his coughing passed, and she wondered if he could catch the falseness in her voice.
    “I was wrong to worry, then?” Jialin said. “I wanted to make sure you didn't have some secret plan to carry out all by yourself.”
    “Why?”
    “Any premature action equals suicide.”
    “I meant why did you think I'd do something without telling you.”
    Jialin studied Kai and she did not shy away from his gaze. Behind her she heard a whistle, the security guards shouting at some passerby. Soon she would have to finish this conversation with him; soon she would be expected onstage, and he, already deemed more than half-deceased by the world, would not be in the audience.
    “You said something the last time I saw you,” Jialin said, and then shook his head. “I hope I was wrong.”
    A revolution required some impulse, was what she had said two weeks ago, when she had been informed of the date set for Gu Shan's execution. She had come to his shack, an unplanned visit. It's time for them to act, she said, her hope to save Gu Shan's life transforming her into a more passionate speaker than she had been after leaving the theater troupe. The masses had to be motivated, public attention had to be drawn to the case; with the right action they should be able at least to impede the execution, if not reverse the sentence. The whole time she was talking, Jialin listened with a frown. It was an impulsive and unwise proposal, Jialin said afterward, and for the first time they argued.
    “I want to act as much as you do,” Jialin said now.
    Kai looked at his eyes behind the glasses. They seemed perplexed, as if he could not find the right words. Outraged by his reasoning, which she had not been able to argue against, she had called him a coward that afternoon two weeks ago. He was closer to his grave than most people he had known in this world, Jialin replied then, and it was not his life or his death he was concerned about