When his father gets home, Bird decides, he will ask. He’ll ask him to look at work for a copy of the book. He is certain that somewhere in the university library is a book of Japanese folktales with this story in it. They still have thousands of Asian texts, he knows, because every so often, there are petitions to purge all of them—not just those from China and Japan and Cambodia and other places, but those about them, too. The news calls China our greatest long-term threat, and politicians fret that Asian-language books might contain anti-American sentiments or even coded messages; sometimes angry parents complain if their children choose to study Mandarin, or Chinese history. I sent him to get an education, not to be brainwashed. Each time it makes the college paper, then the news; a congressman or sometimes a senator delivers an impassioned speech about universities as incubators of indoctrination; the provost issues another public statement in reply, defending the library’s collection. Bird has seen it in the newspaper as his father turns the pages. If we fear something, it is all the more imperative we study it thoroughly.
He’ll ask his father just to check. Just to see if this book still exists, and if it does, if he’ll bring it home so Bird can see it. Just for a day. He doesn’t need to tell his father about the letter, or about his mother. It’s just a book he’s interested in; it’s just a story, just a folktale about a boy and some cats, surely there’s no harm in it. It’s not even Chinese, after all. When his father gets home, he will ask.
But his father doesn’t come, and he doesn’t come, and doesn’t come. They don’t have a telephone; no one has a landline anymore, the dorms ripped out all those wires years ago, so all Bird can do is wait. Six o’clock arrives, then seven. They’ve missed dinner; in the dining hall the workers will be lifting the pans from the steam baths, tipping dried-out leftovers into trash cans, scouring the stainless steel clean. Through the window Bird watches the lights of the dining hall turn off, one by one, and a thin tentacle of dread slithers through him. Where is his father? Could something have happened? As eight o’clock ticks by, he thinks suddenly of his trip to the library that afternoon, of the computer at school blinking No results. Of Mrs. Pollard, clicking her pen over his shoulder; of the librarian pocketing her mysterious note. Of the policeman at the Common, tapping his baton against his palm. Of Sadie, and her mother, asking questions, nosing into dark corners. There is always someone watching, he realizes, and if someone has seen him, might his father be blamed, might his father—
It’s almost nine when he hears the stairwell door creak open and slam shut—the elevator still not working, after three days—then footsteps in the hall. His father. Bird has a sudden impulse to run to him, the way he did as a small child. When his arms barely circled his father’s knees, when he still thought his father was the tallest man in the world. But his father looks so tired, so sweaty and defeated from all those stairs, that Bird hesitates. As if he might knock his father down.
What a day, his father says. The FBI came in just after lunch.
Bird flashes hot, then cold.
They’re investigating a professor over at the law school. Wanted a list of every book she’s ever borrowed. And then, once they had the titles, they wanted to take every single one. Took me six and a half hours to pull them all. Four hundred and twenty-two books.
Breath rushes into Bird; he hadn’t known he was holding it.
Why did they want them, he asks cautiously.
It is a question he would not have asked a week ago; a week ago, he would not have found this ominous, let alone unusual. Maybe, he thinks suddenly—maybe it isn’t unusual at all.
His father sets his bag on the floor, drops his keys with a clatter on the counter.
She’s writing a book on the first amendment and PACT, apparently, he says. They think she might be funded by the Chinese. Trying to stir up unrest over here.
Slowly he pulls the noose of his tie free from his collar.
Is she? Bird asks.
His father turns toward him, looking more tired than Bird has ever seen. For the first time he notices the gray threading through his father’s hair, the lines etched from the corners of his eyes, like tear tracks.
Honestly? his father says. Probably not. But that’s what they think.
He checks his watch, then opens the cupboard, which contains nothing but a half-empty jar of peanut butter. No bread.
Let’s get some dinner, he says to Bird.
They hurry down the stairs and out to the pizza place just a few blocks away. Bird’s father doesn’t care for pizza—too greasy, he tells Bird, all that cheese—but it is late and they are hungry and this is the closest place, open until nine.
The man behind the counter takes their order and slides four slices into the oven to heat up, and Bird and his father lean against the sticky wall, waiting. His stomach is growling. Cool dark air wafts in through the propped-open door, and the handful of notices taped to the store’s window flutter in the breeze. Found cat. Guitar lessons. Apartment for rent. Down in the corner, right above the health inspection sticker, a star-spangled placard: god bless all loyal americans. The same placard nearly every store displays, sold in every city, proceeds benefiting neighborhood-watch groups. The few stores that don’t hang it are viewed with skepticism. Aren’t you a loyal American? Then why the fuss over a little sign? Don’t you want to support the neighborhood watch? The huge steel oven ticks and steams. Behind the counter, the pizza guy rests one elbow on the cash register, scrolling on his phone, smirking at a joke.
It is 8:52 when the old man comes in. An Asian face, white button-down and black pants, silvering hair neatly clipped. Chinese? Filipino? Bird can’t tell. The man sets a folded five on the counter.
Slice of pepperoni, he says.
The pizza guy doesn’t even look up. We’re closed, he says.
You don’t look closed. The man glances over at Bird and his father, who half steps in front of Bird like a screen. They’re here, he says.
We’re closed, the pizza guy repeats, louder. His thumb flicks upward across the phone, and an endless river of pictures and posts whizzes by. Bird’s father jostles him on one shoulder. The same jostle as when they pass a policeman, or roadkill in the street. It means: Turn around. Don’t look. But this time Bird doesn’t turn. It’s not curiosity; it’s a need. A morbid need to know what’s been crouching behind him, unseen.
Look, I just want a piece of pizza, the old man says. I just got off work, I’m hungry.
He slides the bill across the counter. His hands are leathery and tough, the fingers knobbled with age. He looks like someone’s grandfather, Bird thinks, and then the thought arrives: if he had a grandfather, he might look like this man.
The pizza guy sets his phone down.
You don’t understand English? he says calmly, as if commenting on the weather. There’s a Chinese restaurant over on Mass Ave. Go get yourself some fried rice and spring rolls, if you’re hungry. We’re closed.
He folds his hands like a patient teacher, and stares squarely at the old man. What are you going to do about it?
Bird is frozen in place. He can only look and look: at the old man, jaw set, one leg squared behind him as if braced for a push. At the pizza guy, the oil spots speckling his T-shirt, his large meaty hands. At his father, the lines on his face making whiskery shadows, his eyes fixed on the flyers on the window, as if nothing is happening, as if this is just an ordinary day. He wants the old man to deliver a biting comeback, he wants the old man to punch the pizza guy in his smirking face, he wants the old man to back away before the pizza guy says—or does—something worse. Before he lifts those hands that pound and flatten thick dough into compliance. The moment tautens and tightens, like an overtuned string.
And then the old man plucks the money from the counter again, wordlessly, and tucks it back into his pocket. He turns, away from the pizza guy’s grin, and looks at Bird instead, a long hard look, then at Bird’s father. And then he murmurs something to Bird’s father, something Bird doesn’t understand.
He has never heard these words before, has never even heard this language before, but it is clear from the look on his father’s face that his father has, that he not only recognizes the language but understands it, understands what this man has said. He has the feeling, somehow, that they’re talking about him, the way the man looks at him and then at his father, that meaningful gaze that cuts right through Bird’s skin and flesh to scrutinize his bones. But his father doesn’t reply, doesn’t even move, just quickly glances away. Then the old man strides out, head held high, and is gone.
A timer dings and the pizza guy turns to open the oven. The hot smoky air shrivels Bird’s throat.
Some people, the pizza guy says. I mean.
He slips the long wooden paddle into the scorching oven and extracts their slices, slips them into a waiting box. For a moment he stares through narrowed eyes at Bird, then at his father, as if trying to place their faces. Then he slides the pizza across the counter.
Have a good night, Bird’s father says, and he takes the box and guides Bird toward the door.
What did he say, Bird says, when they’re back on the sidewalk. That man. What did he say?
Let’s go, his father says. Come on, Noah. Let’s get home.
At the corner, a police car glides by, lights off, nearly silent, and they wait for it to pass before crossing. They reach the dorm just as the church tower across the way begins to strike nine.
It’s not until they’re back in the apartment that his father speaks again. He sets the pizza down on the counter and pries off his shoes and stands there, his eyes very far away.
Cantonese, his father says. He was speaking Cantonese.
But you understood him, Bird says. You don’t speak Cantonese.
Even as he says it, he realizes he does not know this is true.
No, I don’t, his father snaps. And neither do you. Noah, listen to me very carefully. Anything that has to do with China, Korea, Japan, anything like that—you stay away from it. You hear someone talking in those languages or talking about those things, you walk away. Understand?
He pulls a slice from the box and hands it to Bird, then takes one himself and settles wearily into a chair without even getting a plate. It is the second time, it occurs to Bird, that his father has climbed all those steps in the past hour.
Eat your dinner, his father says gently. Before it gets cold.
He knows then: even if he asks, his father won’t track down this book. He’ll have to find another way.
It is difficult to sneak into the university library; it always has been. There are old books in there, valuable books. A Gutenberg Bible and a first folio of Shakespeare, Bird’s father told him once, though Bird has only a hazy idea what this means. Countless irreplaceable old documents. Even—his father wriggled his fingers creepily in the air—an anatomy book bound in human skin. He had just transferred over—linguistics professor to book shelver—and Bird, age nine and newly cynical, had decided all of this was an attempt to make his job sound more impressive, and had ignored it.
What he does know is that he needs a keycard to enter the building, huge and impressive, a marble paperweight pinning down one end of the college yard—and even then, only staff are permitted to pass further into the warm labyrinth of shelves where all the books are kept. But when he was younger, on days off school, he’d trotted along after his father into the reshelving room, where carts of books sat waiting to be set back in place. You can help, his father had suggested, and once or twice Bird had, pushing the cart through the narrow aisles until they found the right one, pressing the antique switch in the corridor to flick on the lights. While his father scanned the shelves, sliding the books one by one into the gaps from which they’d come, Bird ran his fingertips over the embossed spines where gilt lettering had long been rubbed away, breathing in the peculiar smell of the library: a mix of dust and leather and melted vanilla ice cream. Warm, like the scent of someone’s skin.
It soothed him and unsettled him at the same time, the murky hush like a wool blanket thrown over everything. Underneath, something large lying in wait. It never ended, the stacks of books needing to be set back in place, the constant insistent reiteration of order, and the thought was dizzying: that just beyond this shelf there were hundreds more, thousands of books, millions of words. Sometimes after his father had nestled one book into its spot, lining up the spines, Bird had the impulse to sweep the whole rack clear with one arm, to send the whole shelf dominoing into the next and the next and the next, to shred the smothering silence. It frightened him, and he made excuses for not coming into the stacks. He was tired, he would rather sit in the staff room and have a snack, he would rather stay home and play.
He hasn’t come to the library in years; the last time, he was ten.
That evening, while his father is brushing his teeth, Bird rifles through his briefcase. His father is a creature of habit; after he comes back to the apartment he always stores his keycard in the outside pocket of his bag, ready for the next day. Bird slips the card into his back pocket and zips the bag shut again. His father never checks for it in the morning: for the past three years it’s been right there when he arrives at work, exactly where he put it the night before. Tomorrow, just this once, it won’t be. But the security guard knows him, has seen him every day for years, will let him in for the day, just this one time. Tomorrow evening, when Bird’s father arrives home and does a thorough search for the keycard, he’ll find it right there on the floor beneath the table, right where his briefcase always sits. Must have slipped it next to the bag rather than into it, he’ll think, and that will be that.
At first the plan works perfectly. After school, Bird heads to the college yard, climbs the huge mountain of stairs to the library’s front entrance. In the lobby, he copies the impatient and vaguely annoyed look the students always wear and swipes his father’s card quickly through the reader. The turnstile turns green and he passes through without stopping and without looking back. As if he has somewhere to be, on the trail of important knowledge. The security guard doesn’t even glance up from his monitor.
The next problem: how to get into the stacks. Long ago, his father told him, they’d been open to anyone. You could go in and wander, exploring whatever came your way. Now they don’t let just anyone in. Now you have to fill out a slip of paper at the counter, explain why you need the book, show your ID. And if your reason is good enough—a treatise on the failures that led to the Crisis, perhaps, or new strategies for detecting internal enemies—someone, like his father, will venture into the stacks and retrieve it for you. He doesn’t say what changed, but Bird understands: it is PACT, of course, that changed everything. That deemed some books dangerous, to be kept only if they were kept out of reach.
Bird heads into the circulation room and eyes the entrance to the stacks at the other end. A squeaky cart comes around the corner and he recognizes the woman pushing it: Debbie, one of the other shelvers. Long ago she’d given him gold-wrapped butterscotch candies, those times he’d come to work with his father. In fact, she looks exactly the same—long billowy dress, frizzy gray hair pinned in an improbable cloud around her head—and though he’s older and taller now, he’s sure she’ll recognize him, too. Quickly he darts behind one of the computer carrels, and Debbie and her cart squeak their way past, leaving a lingering smell of cigarette smoke in their wake.
This reminds him of something. Debbie is a chain smoker; the minute she came into the room, sometimes, the other librarians would lift their heads, sniffing, as if suddenly remembering the possibility of fire. Officially, smokers must leave the premises and stand at least fifty feet from the building before lighting up, but no one ever seemed to do this. Instead Debbie and the other smokers ducked out the side door of the stacks and then out a side door of the building, propping each open with a brick, huddling beside the huge library until their furtive cigarettes were gone, then ducking back inside. His father often complained about the smell drifting into the hall, had combined it with a lecture on the evils of smoking. You see what a slippery slope it is? Once you start, you can’t shake free.
After Debbie and the cart have gone, Bird heads downstairs, where the side door to the stacks lets out. Despite the lack of a sign, he’s certain this is the right place. There, just across from it, is an emergency exit, clearly marked keep closed. Most tellingly, just beside it is an old, weatherworn red brick. All he has to do is wait and hope for a stroke of luck. He stations himself around the corner, where—if anyone comes by—he might conceivably be heading into or out of the men’s room nearby.
For twenty minutes no one passes, and he understands why the staff use this spot for smoke breaks: upstairs people come and go, but down here, it’s practically deserted. Then, just as he’s debating giving up, he hears a hinge creak, the scrape of brick on stone flooring, the soft thud of a heavy door coming to rest. A second later, another clicks open and the faint sounds of the outside rush in: a whoosh of wind, birds chirping, someone laughing far off in the distance, across the yard.
Bird peeks around the corner. The door to the outside is propped open: someone must be out there, sneaking a quick smoke, and just as he’d hoped, the one leading back into the stacks is propped open, too. He doesn’t have much time. As quietly as he can, he creeps down the hallway and pries the stacks door farther open. It emits a faint creak, and he glances back over his shoulder to see if the smoker has noticed. No movement. Bird takes a deep breath and slips inside.
It takes him a minute to get his bearings. All the titles around him are in a language he doesn’t know, in words he has no idea how to say: Zniewolony Umysł. Pytania Zadawane Sobie. He darts into one of the aisles and heads upstairs, away from the door. Whoever is out there smoking will be finished soon, and he shouldn’t be anywhere nearby when they return. The stacks are incredibly silent—an absorbent, watchful, almost predatory quiet, waiting to suck away any noise you dared to make. A staffer comes by, paper in hand, one book lodged in her armpit as she scans the shelves for the next. Bird waits for her to turn away before he passes. Somewhere there must be a search terminal, and eventually he finds one in a corner, taps at the keyboard. The Boy Who Drew Cats. A long pause, and then a number pops up on the screen. He scribbles it on a slip of paper and consults the charts posted beside the monitor, running his finger down the list of call numbers: D level, the bottom floor. Four levels below ground. Southwest corner.
Before he leaves, he can’t resist typing in one more search.
Our Missing Hearts.
Another pause, longer this time, and then instead of a number, a notice: DISCARDED. Bird swallows and clears the screen. Then he grabs the slip of paper and sets off for the stairs.
The stairs bring him down on the wrong end of the library, northeast instead of southwest. But at least D level is deserted. Only the main corridors are lit, and those dimly; the aisles crisscrossing them are pitch black. He’s never appreciated before just how big the library is: a full city block, hundreds of feet by hundreds of feet with miles of shelves in between. Something his father once said comes back to him: the shelves around him are not just book holders but the iron skeleton of the building itself, holding the library upright. The easiest way, he decides, will be keeping to the edges; zigzagging his way across, he’ll get lost for sure. Cautiously he picks his way along the wall, heading south. It isn’t as straightforward as he’d hoped. Sometimes, a stack of old chairs or tables looms up in his path and he has to turn aside, go over a few aisles, and then find his way back. Somewhere, overhead, footsteps thump across C level. A furnace clicks on and a breath of warm air, like a thermal geyser, flows through the grated floor.
Bird passes shelf after shelf, slotting his fingers into the spaces where removed books once stood. There are fewer missing here than at the public library, where some shelves had been more gap than books. But still nearly every shelf is missing one, sometimes more. He wonders who decided which books were too dangerous to keep, and who it was that had to hunt down and collect the condemned books, like an executioner, ferrying them to their doom. He wonders if it is his father.
At the correct shelf he slows, then pauses, tracing the call numbers along the neatly squared spines as they count down, fraction by fraction. And then: there it is. Slim and yellow. Hardly a book at all, barely bigger than a magazine. He’d nearly missed it.
With one finger he tips it from the shelf. The Boy Who Drew Cats: A Japanese Folktale. He’s never seen this particular book before, but as soon as he sees the cover he knows it’s the same story. A Japanese folktale, but his Chinese mother had heard it or read it somewhere, had remembered it and told it to him. On the front is a watercolor drawing of a boy, a Japanese boy, holding a brush. Painting a huge cat on a wall. The boy looks a bit like Bird, even: dark hair grown shaggy over his forehead, the same dark eyes and slightly rounded nose. It’s coming back to him, the way his mother told it, a story buried in Styrofoam packing long ago that he’s digging out, pulling back into the light. A boy, wandering alone and far from home. A lonely building, in the darkness. Cat after cat after cat springing from the bristles of his brush. His fingers shake, struggling to peel the cover from the cloth-soft pages beneath. Yes, he thinks. It’s almost there, like something edging out of the shadows, just starting to take its shape; as soon as he reads it, he’ll remember it, remember what happens, this story from his mother, in a moment he’ll understand everything.
It is at this point that someone sets a hand on his shoulder, and he whirls around to find his father.
They let me come to find you, his father says, instead of security.
He should have known: of course the library has security cameras, of course they would have noticed that someone swiped in with his father’s card just hours after his father—responsible and rule following as ever—had reported his card was lost.
Dad, Bird begins, I just needed to—
His father turns around without responding, and Bird follows his straight, angry back all the way through the stacks and up the stairs to the staff room with its endless rows and rows of carts, where two security guards are waiting. In the instant before the guards turn around, he shoves the book into the back waistband of his jeans, beneath his T-shirt.
It’s okay, Bird’s father says, before the guards can speak. Just my son, like we thought. I left my card in his bookbag by mistake, and he came in trying to find me to give it back.
Bird studies the linoleum floor, holding his breath. His father has not asked him a single question about what he’s doing there, and to him this story sounds implausible. Why would he search for his father in the stacks, how could he possibly expect to find one man in that labyrinth of shelves? The security guards hesitate, teetering on the edge of belief. One of them leans closer, squinting at Bird’s face. Bird blinks, trying to look innocent, and inside his balled-up fists, his fingernails bite into his palm.
His father lets out a chuckle, a loud, insincere whinny that gallops around the room and then vanishes. Just trying to be responsible, right, Noah? he says. But don’t worry. He understands now.
He claps Bird on the shoulder, and grudgingly, the security guards nod.
Next time, one of them says to Bird, just stop at the front desk, okay, son? They’ll call your dad down for you.
Bird’s legs go quivery in relief. He nods, and swallows, and squeaks out Yes, sir, because from his father’s taut grip on his shoulder, he understands this is what he needs to do.
When the security guards have gone, Bird reaches to the small of his back, plucks the book from beneath his T-shirt.
Dad, he whispers. His voice quivering. Dad, can I—
His father barely glances at the book. In fact, he doesn’t look at Bird at all.
Put that on the cart, he says quietly. Someone will reshelve it. Let’s go.
Only once has Bird ever been in trouble. Mostly, he listens to his father’s advice: Don’t attract attention. Keep your head down. And: If you see any trouble, you go the other way, understand?
It had driven Sadie crazy. Sadie, at the first scent of trouble, would follow it like a bloodhound to its source.
Bird, she’d said. Don’t be such a pussy.
It was the posters that caught her eye that time, the ones that hung and still hang all around town, in grocery-store windows and on community bulletin boards and sometimes even in the windows of houses, reminding everyone to be patriotic, to watch over each other, to report the merest sign of trouble. Each designed by a famous artist to be eye-catching and collectible. A red-white-and-blue dam over a huge yellow-brown river, with a hairline fracture: Even small cracks widen. A blond woman peeking through curtains, cell phone at her ear: Better safe than sorry. Two houses, side by side, a pie passing hand to hand over a white picket fence: Watch over your neighbor. At the bottom of each, four bold capitals: PACT.
That afternoon, Sadie had paused by a row of posters pasted to a bus shelter, ran her fingers over the glue. It flaked away under her fingers like chalk.
That evening, a pair of policemen arrived at their apartment.
We were told, said one, that your son was part of a group defacing public-safety posters earlier this afternoon.
Sadie, pulling a Sharpie from her jeans pocket. Scribbling out the slogans of watchfulness and unity.
A group, his father said. What group?
Naturally we’re very concerned, the officer said, about why he might have felt the need to do this. What kind of messages he’s getting at home that make him feel this kind of unpatriotic and, frankly, dangerous behavior is appropriate.
It was that Sadie, wasn’t it? his father said, to Bird this time, and Bird swallowed.
Mr. Gardner, the officer said, we’ve looked into your file, and given your wife’s history—
His father cut them off.
That woman is no longer part of this family, he said brusquely. We have nothing to do with her. We have had nothing to do with her since she left.
It was as if his father had struck his mother, right there in front of him.
And we have absolutely no sympathies for the radical stances she supported, his father went on. Absolutely none.
He gave Bird a look, and Bird stiffened his spine into an iron bar and nodded.
Noah and I both know PACT protects our country, he went on. If you doubt my sincerity, just take a look. I’ve made steady donations to security and unity groups for the past two and a half years. And Noah is a straight-A student. There are no unpatriotic influences in this house.
Be that as it may, the officer began, your son did deface a sign advocating for PACT.
His gaze rested on Bird’s father, as if waiting for a reply, and then Bird spotted it: the quick flick of his father’s eyes to the kitchen drawer, where they kept their checkbook. The pay at the library wasn’t much, he knew; at the end of each month his father spent a good hour hunched at the table over the check register, painstakingly tabulating the balance. How much, he could see his father calculating, would it take to make them go away? Already he knew it was more than they had.
It’s the influence of that girl, his father said. The re-placed one. Sadie Greenstein. I understand she’s a tough case.
Shock sizzled through Bird.
We’ve encountered her before, the officer admitted.
That’s where it’s coming from. You know how boys start to get around this age. Girls can get them to do anything.
He put a hand on Bird’s shoulder, firm and heavy.
I’ll make sure it comes to an end. There are no questions about loyalty in this household, officer.
The officer hesitated, and Bird’s father sensed it.
We’re very grateful to folks like you who are protecting our security, he said. After all, if it weren’t for you, who knows where we’d be.
Not anywhere good, the police officer said, nodding. Not anywhere good, that’s for sure. Well. I think we’re all set here, sir. Just a misunderstanding, obviously. But you keep out of trouble, son, okay?
When the police had gone, Bird’s father put his fingers to his temples, as if he had a migraine.
Noah, he said, after a long, long pause. Don’t ever do that again.
He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say more, but all the air seemed to have gone out of him, like a tent whose poles had collapsed. Bird wasn’t sure what that was: Destroy posters? Talk to the police? Get in trouble? At last his father opened his eyes again.
Stay away from that Sadie, he said, as he headed into the other room. Please.
So Bird didn’t sit with Sadie the next day, and he didn’t have lunch with her the next day, and a week later he still wasn’t speaking to her when she stopped coming to school and didn’t come back, and no one seemed to know where she’d gone.
Today his father doesn’t say anything all the way down the steps of the library, all the way out of the college yard to the street. Bird follows him home in silence, though it’s the middle of the afternoon and his father would usually be at work for another two hours at least. Even from behind he knows his father is furious from the rigid rectangle of his back. His father only walks like that—stiff, angular, as if his joints are rusted—when he’s too angry to speak. Bird lags behind, letting the distance between them stretch out to a few yards, then half a block. More. If he slows down enough, maybe they’ll never reach home, they’ll never have to talk about this, he’ll never have to face his father again.
By the time they reach the Common, his father is nearly a full block ahead, so far distant that from where Bird stands, he could be a stranger. Just some man in a brown overcoat, carrying a briefcase. No one he knows. There was something else in his father’s voice in the library, not just anger but an acrid thing Bird can’t quite name, and then, suddenly, he knows. It’s fear. The same loud, blustering fear that he’d heard that day with the posters, when his father spoke to the policemen. A hot metallic musk, the hiss of claws drawn.
Bird’s eyes go again to the three big trees that just days before had been red, to the jagged scars running down their lengths. A wound like that, his father had once told him, will never fully heal. The bark will grow over, but it’ll stay there, under the skin, and when they cut the tree down, you’ll see it there, a dark mark slicing through the rings of the wood.
He’s so busy thinking about this he runs smack into someone coming the other way. Someone large, and in a rush, and angry.
Watch where you’re fucking going, chink, he hears, and a big hand catches his shoulder, shoves him to the ground.
It happens so quickly then that he doesn’t piece it together until later. It only becomes clear in the aftermath, as he lies there on the damp grass, winded, cold smudges of mud caked to his palms and knees. There is the man who pushed him, running away, one hand clutching his bloody nose. There on the sidewalk is one fat red droplet, like a splash of paint on the concrete. There, standing over him, is his father, looking down at him as if from a very great height.
You okay? his father says, and Bird nods, and his father reaches down a hand, its knuckles red and raw. His father, he realizes, is a big man, too, though he doesn’t seem it: soft voiced, bashfully stooped, he seems smaller than he is, but in college he ran track, he’s broad and tall and sturdy. Fast enough to race back to a son in danger. Strong enough to punch someone threatening his child.
Let’s go home, his father says, helping him to his feet.
Neither of them speaks until they’re back at the dorm.
Dad, Bird says, as they enter the lobby.
Not now, is all his father says, heading for the stairwell. Let’s get upstairs first.
When they reach their own floor, his father shuts and bolts the door of the apartment behind them.
You have to be careful, he says, grabbing Bird by the shoulders, and Bird bristles.
I didn’t do anything. He pushed me—
But his father shakes his head. That man, he says, he’s not the only one like that out there. They’ll see your face and that’s all the provocation they need. And this library stunt—
His father stops.
You usually follow the rules, he says.
It was just a book.
I’m responsible if you get in trouble, Noah. Do you know how bad this could have been?
I’m sorry, Bird says, but his father doesn’t seem to be listening. He has braced himself for shouting, for parental rage, but his father’s voice is a seething hiss and somehow Bird finds this more terrifying.
They could have fired me, he says. The library isn’t open to just anyone, you know. You have to be a researcher. They have to watch who they let in. The university gets a lot of leeway because of its reputation, but they’re not immune. If someone caused trouble and they traced it back to a book they got here—
He shakes his head.
And if I lost my job we’d lose this apartment, too. You know that, right?
Bird hadn’t, and a chill washes over him.
Worse than that. If they realized you got it, and decided to take a closer look at us—at you—
His father has never hit him, not even a spanking, but he stares at Bird with such violent intensity that Bird flinches, preparing for a blow. Then with a jerk his father yanks Bird into his arms, so hard the breath flies out of him. Holds him tightly in a shaking embrace.
And suddenly, a door clicks open in Bird’s mind. Why his father is always so cautious, why he’s always nagging Bird to follow this particular route or that, to not go off on his own. How his father reached him so fast. It isn’t just dangerous to research China, or go looking for Japanese folktales. It’s dangerous to look like him, always has been. It’s dangerous to be his mother’s child, in more ways than one. His father has always known it, has always been braced for something like this, always on a hair trigger for what inevitably would happen to his son. What he’s afraid of: that one day someone will see Bird’s face and see an enemy. That someone will see him as his mother’s son, in blood or in deed, and take him away.
He puts his arms around his father, and his father’s tighten around him.
That man in the pizza place, Bird says, slowly. What did he say?
He’s one of us. His father’s voice is half muffled against Bird’s hair and buzzes inside Bird’s skull. And he’s right. What he meant was, these kinds of things—they might happen to you, too.
His father’s arms loosen, and he holds Bird at arm’s length.
Noah, he says. That’s why I keep telling you, keep a low profile. Don’t do anything to call attention to yourself.
Okay, Bird says.
His father goes to the sink, begins to run cold water over his bruised knuckles. And because it feels like the door between them is still ajar, Bird sets his palm against it. Pushes.
Did my mother like cats? he asks.
His father stops. What, he says, as if Bird has spoken in another language, one of the few he doesn’t know.
Cats, Bird repeats. Did she like them.
His father shuts off the water. Where is this coming from? he says.
I just want to know, Bird says. Did she?
His father glances quickly around the room, his habit whenever Bird’s mother comes up. Outside, all quiet, only the occasional siren passing.
Cats, he says, looking down at his raw and reddened hand. She did. She adored them.
He looks at Bird searchingly, with a gaze more pointed than Bird has seen in a long time. Like he’s spotted something unusual in Bird’s face, like a sheath has been removed.
Miu, his father says slowly. Her surname.
He writes the character in the dust on the top of the bookshelf: a square crisscrossed to represent a field, two smaller crosses sprouting from the top.
苗
It means seedling, or sometimes crops. Something just beginning to grow. But it sounds like a cat’s meow, doesn’t it? Miu.
And, he says, his voice warming the way it does when he grows excited, when he’s talking about things that he loves, like words. It has been a long time since this happened. And, his father goes on, if you put this, which means beast, in front of it—
He adds a few more strokes, a pared-down suggestion of an animal sitting at attention:
貓
—this whole thing means cat. The beast that makes the sound miu. But of course you could think of it as the beast that protects the crops.
His father is in his element, as Bird hasn’t seen him in years. He has almost forgotten his father could be like this, that his father had this in him. That his eyes and his face could light up this way.
The story, his father says, is that once there were no cats in China. No house cats, anyway. Only wildcats. Classically, cat was written like this—he sketches another character—
貍
—which really meant a wild creature, like a fox. Then Persian traders taught them to domesticate their wildcats, and they added this—
He begins to write a third character, made of two halves. First, the character for woman. Then beside it, so close they almost overlap, the symbol for hand.
奴
Slave, his father says. Wildcat plus slave, a domesticated cat. See?
Together they look down at the characters written in the dust. Miu. His mother. Beast plus seedling meant cat. What kind of beast would she have been? A cat, for sure. Woman plus hand meant slave. Had his mother ever been domestic, or domesticated?
With one swipe of his palm his father wipes the top of the bookshelf clean.
Anyway, he says. We used to talk about these kinds of things, your mother and me. Long time ago.
He rubs his palm against the thighs of his pants, leaving a faint gray streak.
She liked that idea, he says after a moment. That the only thing separating her from a beast was a few little strokes.
I didn’t know you knew Chinese, Bird says.
I don’t, his father says absently. Not really. But I can understand some Cantonese. I studied it, for a while. With your mother. A long time ago.
He turns to go, and then, just as suddenly, turns back.
That book.
And then, after another long pause: Your mother used to tell you that story, didn’t she.
Bird nods.
I remember, his father says.
And as he begins to speak, it comes back to Bird, all of it: not the words on the pages of the book, not the few bare-bones sentences his father uses to tell it to him now, but the way he remembers hearing it, in his mother’s voice. Painting a picture with words on the blank white wall of his mind. Long buried. Crackling as it surfaced in the air once more.
Once, long ago, there was a boy who loved to draw cats. He was a poor boy, and most of the day he worked in the fields, planting rice with his parents and the others in his village in the spring, harvesting the paddies beside them in the fall. But whenever he had a spare moment, he would draw. And what he most liked to draw, what he drew most often of all, were cats. Big cats, little cats, striped and calico and spotted. Cats with pointy ears and skinny eyes, cats with black paws and black muzzles, cats with white patches on their chests like eagles. Shaggy cats, smooth cats, cats leaping, cats stalking, cats sleeping or cleaning their fur. On the flat rocks by the river, he sketched them with a burnt stick. He scraped them into the sand on the shores of the nearby lake where the fishermen pulled in their nets. On dry days, he scratched them into the dust of the path to his house, and after the rains he carved them into the thick mud where puddles had once glistened.
The others in his village thought this was a waste of time. What use is it to draw cats, they scoffed. It doesn’t put food on the table or bring in the grain. The richest man in town had beautiful scrolls on the walls of his house: paintings of fog-tipped mountains and elegant gardens, far-off things no one in their village had ever seen. But you could simply step outside and see a cat; they were everywhere. They had never heard of an artist choosing to draw cats. What was the point?
The boy’s parents, however, did not agree. Although they had to work many hours in the field—and the boy often had to help—they were proud of his talent. After the day’s work was done, the father collected pieces of bamboo the length of his hand and gave them to his son for brushes. The mother cut the tips of her own hair and bound them into tufts for the bristles. The boy gathered stones—every color he could find, from deep red to pure black—and ground them to dust to make his paints. And every night, he painted cats—on flat pieces of bark, on scraps of paper and worn-out rags—until it was time for bed.
One year, sickness struck the village, and the boy’s parents died. No one in the village would take him in: he had a reputation. A boy who wasted time, a boy who did useless things. Besides, the villagers had little to spare. They had been sick, too; there was little food, nothing left for one who wasn’t their own. Each family took a handful of rice from their stores, bound it all in a cloth, and gave it to the boy. Good luck, they said. May fortune smile on you. He thanked them and shouldered the bundle, tucked his brushes in his pocket, and set off on his way.
It was winter, and bitterly cold. The boy wandered for hours through the dark until he came to a small village, where every door was shut tight. Though he could see the glow of firelight through the windows, no one would answer his knock. A harsh wind began to blow; snow began to whirl around him in the air like ghosts clawing at his face. At the last house, an old woman peered out. I’m sorry, she said. If I let you in, my husband will kill me. We dare not take in strangers. This whole town is afraid. Afraid, the boy said, afraid of what? But the woman simply shook her head.
In desperation, the boy looked around the deserted street. At the end, just past the outskirts of town, he spotted a small building he hadn’t noticed before. What about that, he said, that deserted house? Surely I can stay there just for the night.
The old woman seized his hands. That place is dangerous, she said. Cursed. It is said that a monster lives there. No one who enters at night ever returns.
I am not afraid, the boy said, and anyway, I may as well be eaten by a monster as freeze to death out here in the street.
The old woman bowed her head and gave him a torch lit from her cooking fire. Take this, she said. And keep to the small. Then she blessed him and wiped a tear from her cheek. May you see tomorrow, she said. And if you do, I beg you forgive us.
The boy made his way to the deserted house. Snow had begun to stick to the ground and to the bare branches of the trees, and when he reached it he found a small drift just beginning to form at its door. But it was unlocked, and he let himself inside. He lit a fire in the fireplace and looked around. There was only one room, with only one piece of furniture: a small cupboard, the kind that his mother had once kept their blankets in. There were no carpets on the floor, no decorations on the walls: only whitewashed walls, a plain dirt floor swept clean.
Well, he thought, this place may be cursed, but at least it’s dry and warm. He was about to unroll his blanket on the floor and go to sleep when the white walls caught his attention. They seemed so bare, so empty. Like a face without features. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his brushes, and before he had thought it through, he had painted a cat on one of the walls. Just a little one, a small striped gray-and-white thing. A kitten, really. There, he thought, that’s better. And again he prepared to go to bed.
But the cat seemed lonely, all by itself on the wall—and there was so much wall. He painted it a friend, a bigger cat, a tabby sitting beside it, licking its paw. Then he forgot himself completely. He painted another cat, a big orange tom, asleep by the fire. A black cat ready to pounce, a white cat watching with big blue eyes, a calico clambering among the rafters. He painted cats until all the walls were covered, a whole coterie of cats to keep him company, and only when he ran out of space—and the fire was sputtering down to embers—did he put his brushes away.
The boy was tired—who wouldn’t be, after conjuring a hundred cats out of nothingness? He unrolled his blanket, but despite all the cats, he was lonely. He missed his parents, and he wished he were at home again, in his own house, in his own bed, with his parents sleeping beside him. He thought of his brushes, made from his father’s bamboo, his mother’s hair. He remembered the small gestures about them he missed the most: the way his mother raked her hand through his hair, smoothing it from his face; the way his father had hummed while he worked in the field, so quietly it might have been the buzzing of bees. He felt small, and suddenly he remembered the old woman’s words: keep to the small. He took his blanket and opened the cupboard and made his bed inside it. It was as close to his own little bed as he could get, and he crawled inside, with all of his things, and pulled the door shut behind him.
In the middle of the night he awoke to a terrible wordless wailing. It was an unearthly shrieking: like the groaning of old trees splintering as they fell, like the howling of a hundred winter winds, like the screeching of the earth as it shifted and tore itself apart. Even his eyelashes stood on end. He put his eye to a tiny crack, but all he could see outside was a ghastly red light, as if the whole room were full of blood. He shut his eyes and held his breath and pulled the blanket over his head. Whatever you do, he thought, don’t make a sound.
After a long time—he didn’t know how long—it was quiet again. Still he waited in silence. An hour passed. Two. He put his eye to the crack again and this time, no red: only a faint sliver of sunlight. Hands shaking, he pushed his way out of the cupboard. His cats were still there, on the walls, just as he’d painted them. But every cat’s mouth was red. All over the floor: the prints of hundreds and hundreds of cat feet, pressed into the dirt, scrapes and smudges and marks of a battle. Flecks of blood and foam sprayed on the walls. And there, in the corner—a huge dead shaggy thing. Still now, clawed half to shreds. A rat the size of an ox.
