These secrets were tightly sealed away. The first time she had known they existed was in 1977, when she was eleven. More winter, more haystacks. Eight teenaged students from the cities, sent down to be reeducated by peasants, had departed, leaving only one, a boy of nineteen. He often would lounge atop a haystack, playing his harmonica, and when he tired of that, he would regale the village children with stories of Nanjing, Shanghai, America. He’d be talking away, then suddenly stop, sometimes halfway through a sentence. He looked bizarre at these moments, staring at them through dirty glasses out of first one eye and then the other, as if he’d just landed among them a minute ago. Then, in a completely different tone, he’d say, “You’re all so lucky—if you grow up in ignorance, then you can’t even tell how ignorant you are.” He said that if only there could be a fire to burn up all the haystacks, then this little village that had trapped him wouldn’t exist anymore. He stayed a full year after all his comrades had left, cursing and raving, his beard scraggly, lying in bed half the time, claiming to be ill. That year Hongmei the little girl heard many stories escape from his lips: Lincoln of America, Bacon of England, Byron and Shelley. No matter what he told the kids, there was always that moment when he suddenly switched, using the topic to show how insignificant, pathetic, and uninformed this village was. Just as he was starting to resign himself to his fate, something awful happened: he was burned to death in a haystack. Several of the mounds on the threshing grounds went up in flames that night. Perhaps the fire wasn’t an accident. People had seen him grabbing a village girl, more than once, and disappearing with her into the soft embrace of a haystack.

5

The village children were sad for a long time about the boy’s permanent disappearance, though on the surface they appeared to hate him. Girls would hum the tunes he’d played on his harmonica, not knowing those were all Russian folk songs.

Hongmei typed, The strange thing is, you see, when I first saw Glen, I suddenly thought of this educated youth.