A Free Life

1

JANET and Dave were worried about their daughter's health these days. Hailee, already three years old, caught cold continually and often lost her appetite. She ate so little that she seemed to have stopped growing. Even when she cried, which she often did, she no longer screamed gustily as she used to, and neither would she kick her legs or flail her arms, where the skin was so pale that the blood vessels were visible. One night her nose bled; the blood stained the front of her wrap-over vest and frightened her parents.

The next morning Janet took her to the hospital. Dr. Williams, a tall, haggard-looking woman, listened to Hailee's chest, palpated her abdomen, and discovered that her liver and spleen were tender, probably swollen. Immediately she sent her to the lab to have her blood tested. A nurse drew three tubes of blood from Hailee's arm and said the result would be available in two days. On her way back to the jewelry store, Janet stopped at the Gold Wok and chatted with Pingping. Pingping held Hailee in her arms, cradling her and cooing at her, but the girl was subdued, her eyes dim, and a line of drool flowed out of the corner of her mouth, which seemed partly collapsed. With tears in her eyes Janet told Pingping, "I've prayed and prayed and prayed, hoping she'll be okay."

"Don't worry before it's time. I'm sure Hailee will be all right. Babies always have problem. If they don't get sick often, they won't be smart."

"What kind of logic is that?"

"I tell truth. My younger sister is always sick when she's little, so she's smartest in our family."

"I would rather have Hailee healthy than smart." "She will be fine."

Hailee looked sleepy, so Janet left a few minutes later. Nan had been busy working in the kitchen and had overheard their conversation; he said to Pingping about the Mitchells, "Now they know what it's like to be parents." Over the years Nan had grown to be very fond of Hailee. For some reason, whenever the girl saw him, she'd raise her little arms and cry, "Baobao [Hold me]," as if to claim a special tie with him. And without fail Nan would take her into his arms. If the Mitchells asked him to be Hailee's nominal father now, he would agree happily, but they never asked him again.

_•

Dr. Williams called Janet two days later and in a soothing voice told her the result of the blood count. An abnormal number of white blood cells had been found, which might indicate leukemia, but she'd have to give Hailee a bone marrow biopsy to get enough information for an accurate diagnosis. She advised the Mitchells not to panic.

The next morning Janet took Hailee to the hospital again. A brow-less male nurse gave the child a local anesthetic on her hip and said she wouldn't feel any pain, so Janet, who covered her daughter's eyes with her palm, was not to worry. Then he inserted a long needle into Hailee's hip bone. Slowly the crimson marrow appeared, filling the syringe. Janet averted her head in terror, feeling as though a hand were yanking and twisting her insides. The girl let out a feeble groan but didn't kick her legs.

The result of the biopsy was the same. Dr. Williams told the Mitchells that Hailee had acute leukemia. From now on, the girl would be treated by a group of doctors in the hospital, though Dr. Williams would remain her primary pediatrician. She insisted that the child be hospitalized without delay. She also said that Janet and Dave shouldn't feel hopeless, because almost seven out of ten leukemia patients had been cured in the United States and the cure rate was even higher among children.

Still in disbelief and confusion, the Mitchells wanted to consult another doctor for a second opinion. Dr. Williams encouraged them to do that and had the results of Hailee's blood test and bone marrow biopsy faxed to an expert, Dr. Caruth at Emory Hospital. The following day Dr. Caruth sent back his diagnosis, which was also leukemia.

After crying in each other's arms, Janet and Dave took their daughter to Gwinnett Hospital, where the child went into chemotherapy. A transparent tube was put into a vein in Hailee's chest, through which anticancer drugs were pumped into her bloodstream. Her initial response to the treatment frightened her parents. Her face turned greenish and she often vomited, unable to stop groaning. She seemed too tired to cry loudly. No matter how Janet and Dave coaxed her, she'd hardly eat any solids, though she still drank fruit juices and milk. Then the girl's hair began falling out, but Dr. Williams said this was normal. She assured the Mitchells that these side effects would go away and that her hair would grow back once the chemotherapy was stopped.

Pingping and Nan went to see Hailee one morning in mid-March, bringing along a jar of fresh fruits for Janet, who often forgot to eat these days. Hailee smiled at Pingping and called her "Aunt"; then she called Nan "Uncle," but was too ill to raise her arms to let him hold her.

"Do you still feel pain here?" Pingping asked, and patted her forearm, pricked by needles. "No," she mouthed.

Nan was about to stroke her cheek, but Janet stopped him-the girl's immune system had been so weakened by the medication that nobody was supposed to touch her face without wearing a glove.

Despite Hailee's good spirits, she looked withered and had lost weight, her skin tight over her strong bones. "Eat more food," Ping-ping told her. "You will recover soon, like new."

The girl smiled again, as if she had grown a few years older in just two weeks. Her mother told the Wus that Dave would come in the evening to attend to Hailee. They had a foldaway cot in the closet, so Dave could sleep beside their daughter at night. Before coming to the hospital he had to change and shower at home, as the doctor had instructed.

An old nurse came in to put some medicine into the intravenous line. The Wus took their leave, having to get to the Gold Wok before ten a.m.

Afterward they called the Mitchells now and then to see how Hailee was faring. Three weeks after the chemotherapy had started, another blood test showed a remarkable reduction of white blood cells. Apparently her leukemia was in remission. The girl was regaining her strength and began to eat solids; her pulse was stronger and even her voice sounded lively again. Both Janet and Dave were grateful and hopeful, though they were told that it would take a long time for their daughter to recuperate fully.

Once in a while Janet would come to the restaurant to talk with the Wus about Hailee, asking them how to locate the child's biological parents so that she could know something about her family's medical history. Pingping even called Seattle and talked to Ruhua, the fruity-voiced agent, and begged her to help the Mitchells. Ruhua promised to inquire into this matter, but she phoned back a week later, saying there was no way she could find any trace of Hailee's biological parents-the Chinese side had just hemmed and hawed without answering her questions. On behalf of the Mitchells, Nan wrote directly to Mr. Peng, the head of the orphanage in Nanjing. The man replied in less than a month and apologized for his inability to assist the adoptive parents, because the baby girl had been found near a local pig farm and there was no way they could identify her biological mother, who could have lived in any one of the two hundred villages in the county. He expressed the solicitude of the orphanage's leaders and staff, saying Hailee was still their daughter.

₂

NAN had read and reread all the poetry books recommended by Dick. He liked them but felt Robert Frost and W. H. Auden were more to his taste, so these days he resumed reading Frost. In addition, he had been writing poetry in English whenever he could. Lately he had focused on a longish poem entitled "Heaven," which he planned to dedicate to Dick, as a surprise. Hard as he tried, he couldn't produce anything he liked. His lines were devoid of gravity and verve, and he could tell he was getting nowhere if he continued this way. He had to find a different angle from which he could recon-ceive his project, which had the ultimate goal of making his poems dark, luminous, and starkly elegant, a quality he vividly remembered from the paintings by Kent Philips. He knew that, living in Georgia, he couldn't possibly present that kind of landscape in his poetry, but he didn't have to avail himself of the physical world. What he should have was a restless soul from which vibrant lines might originate.

For months he couldn't feel excited about what he wrote, as if his mind hadn't wakened from a dormant state yet. He rented some movies and watched them late at night, but they didn't help create any poetic impulse either, and he got tired of them soon. He went to downtown Atlanta on a Saturday afternoon in April to attend a celebration of the imminent reversion of Hong Kong to China, but he felt more lonesome among the large crowd, though a soprano, singing at the proscenium with the curtain behind her, moved him to tears with two songs that brought back the memory of his childhood. He wondered whether this inert state of his mind might be connected to the fact that for many years he hadn't met a woman he loved wholeheartedly and with the passion from the depths of his soul. Of course there was Beina, who still bewitched him. But he had no idea where she was now, perhaps still in Harbin. If only he knew how to get in touch with her.

By now he honestly loved his wife, but in a steady and mundane way. With Pingping he felt peaceful. He took care of the restaurant and the yard work while she spent more time with Taotao, cooking breakfast for the boy and supervising him in his study. What's more, she kept their books, wrote checks, went to the bank to deposit or transfer money every day, and paid taxes by the end of each season. Their solitary life had strengthened their mutual dependence and emotional attachment, which had ripened into love and trust. Still, the marriage didn't offer the kind of excitement that Nan hoped could spur him into song. He imagined that what he needed was an overpowering emotion that could become an inspiration.

His desire for poetic stimulation often made him think of those women in literature who inspired poets and even became the subject of poetry, such as Petrarch's Laura, Dante's Beatrice, and Yuri Zhivago's Lara. If only there had been such a woman in his life! A woman just the thought of whom would set his soul on fire. He believed that if he had met such a woman, he might have written like a possessed devil and his mind could have turned into a fountain-head from which lyrical lines would overflow. Sometimes he realized this was silly, but he couldn't help himself and kept indulging in the illusion.

Out of this secret sentiment he rented the film Doctor Zhivago. He and Pingping watched the movie until two a.m. The picture touched them so deeply that they both felt sick for several days. They recommended it to Niyan and Shubo, who also enjoyed it. It reminded all of them of the life they had led in China, where, similar to the turbulent Russia, human lives had been worthless, where hatred and blind rage had run amok, and where the gun ruled the law. For days Pingping had a stuffy nose, and whenever they talked about the scenes in the movie the Wus would mist up a little.

Yet they were also moved by the beauty and strength of the film. Nan wished it had shown how Dr. Zhivago managed to write poetry when forced to serve the Bolsheviks. The poet in the story wasn't shown trying hard to develop his art. Once, in a deserted ice-clad mansion, he did take up his pen and write while Lara was sleeping and wolves were howling. Still, that couldn't explain how he became an accomplished poet.

Nan borrowed the novel from the town library. Fifteen years ago he had read it in the Chinese translation and had been underwhelmed, mainly because he couldn't grasp it structurally. This time he worked through it carefully and found it magnificent. Pasternak wrote as if no novels had existed before. The loose structure of the book seemed improvident, yet after finishing the last page, Nan felt everything hung together, uncannily unified. What an amazing book! Still, he wished it had shown how the protagonist struggled to write poetry, the development of which was hardly mentioned in the novel. He pondered over the poems at the back of the book and couldn't see how they were related to the content of the prose. He recommended the novel to Pingping. She read a few pages, then gave up. She didn't like the way the story was told, and preferred Steinbeck, whose books she would read whenever she had spare time. Sometimes even if she didn't understand a paragraph fully, she still loved to be lulled by that great author's natural, colloquial voice, just like listening to a wise friend talking.

Over the years Janet, a big fan of Stephen King and Anne Rice, had tried to persuade Pingping to join her book club, but Pingping wouldn't participate. She had very little time, and besides, she liked reading older books.

₃

BOTH Nan and Pingping had gingivitis, a problem common among Asian immigrants because there was little dental care in their native countries. Without dental insurance, the Wus couldn't go to the dentist regularly. Ever since Taotao came to America, they'd had at most one dental cleaning a year. Recently two molars bothered Nan a lot, and the gums in the back of his mouth were inflamed, giving him a sore throat, though he'd had his tonsils out sixteen years before. He went to see Dr. Morell at Sunrise Square near the Lilburn public library, and the dentist suggested Nan have his four wisdom teeth extracted, or he might lose them and some other molars in the near future. The doctor told him, "They won't last, to be sure. All have deep pockets, seven or eight. We should take steps to save your other teeth."

"I don't have dental insurance."

"I'll charge you only two hundred dollars for it."

"Let me talk wiz my wife."

"Sure. Give me a call if you want to do it."

Nan didn't agree on the spot because Pingping disliked Dr. Morell, a pudgy man in his mid-thirties. In the beginning the dentist hadn't been good to the Wus. Once, right before he performed a minor surgery on Pingping's gum, he had said, "So, thirty-seven, eh?" He smirked, his face rippling with flesh. Apparently he'd gotten the information from the form she had just filled out. She angled her head in disgust but said nothing. Throughout the procedure she shut her eyes so she wouldn't have to see his ugly face. Despite that bad experience, she admitted that Morell was skilled, so she would let her family see him once a year.

This time Pingping urged Nan to have his wisdom teeth drawn without postponement. She feared he might fall ill, since the bad teeth often gave him a low fever. He went to the dentist a week later. The extraction wasn't very painful and took less than an hour. Dr. Morell told Nan that his teeth had unusually deep roots. That was why the last tooth alone had taken him almost twenty minutes to pull. Gingerly the tip of Nan 's tongue probed the holes left in the back of his mouth, each of which reminded him of a smoldering bomb crater or volcano. Before leaving the dentist's, he asked for his teeth, which a nurse wrapped for him in a wad of gauze.

Coming out of the office and still in a haze, he looked at his four molars, each of which was ringed with tartar and stained with blood. One still had a tiny piece of flesh attached to it, and another had split in two along the middle, thanks to the force used to extract it. As Nan 's tongue searched the cliffs and valleys in the back of his mouth, a warm pain filled his mind with a strange sensation, which reminded him of a passage in Nabokov's Pnin. Pnin did the same after his dental surgery. The author described his tongue as a fat, sleek seal "plunging from cave to cove" under icy water. In an end-note to the novel provided by the Chinese translator, Nan had read that this passage reflected Nabokov's own experience of having his teeth pulled. Somehow the memory of that passage distressed Nan and made him feel more wretched.

Having parked his car behind the Gold Wok, he unwrapped the gauze and observed the teeth again. Should he keep them? What for? To show them to his wife and son and later to his grandchildren?

Strangely enough, his mind went off on a tangent. He remembered the hearsay that Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, had left two of his teeth on earth. In fact, their whereabouts were still discussed and disputed today. Every few years someone in Asia would proclaim a new discovery of the relic. In China some pagodas were erected to store the sacred teeth said to be Sakyamuni's.

Then Nan 's anesthetic-inspired reverie ran wilder. He envisaged that teeth left by Nabokov, Joyce, Yeats, Frost had all become relics displayed in libraries together with their manuscripts and letters. How precious would their teeth be? How many visitors would pay homage to those tiny things? Some might even touch them in hope that the divine inspiration might rub off on them. This bizarre vision brought tears to Nan 's eyes. He remembered that Keats died at twenty-five, but his gorgeous poetry was still read today. By comparison, he himself had lived only in the flesh. Why should he live like this? What was the meaning of an existence that was altogether bodily?

The more he thought, the giddier he got, something hammering his temples without letup. He looked pale and ill, and he leaned his shoulder against a bit of graffiti on the back wall of the restaurant, a circle of red hearts with a huge lip print in the middle. How valueless his rotten teeth were, because he had accomplished nothing in his life! How ludicrous and megalomaniacal he was to think of the value of his teeth!

Beside him a black lizard with a blue tail zigzagged down the wall and got into a hole beneath the back door of the Gold Wok. A moment later, Nan curbed his teeming mind and warned himself, "This is crazy. Stop this self-pity! These teeth are no different from a dog's." He walked across to the Dumpster and tossed them into it, then went into the restaurant.

At the sight of him Pingping asked, "How do you feel, Nan?"

"All right, a little woozy."

"Your face is narrower now. My God, let me look at you. You're more handsome now!"

Niyan put in, " Nan, you really look better."

He observed himself in the mirror in the men's room. Indeed, with the four big molars gone, his jawline was less squarish than before, and the new smooth contour gave a touch of maturity to his face. Even his chin had a clear angle now. How extraordinary this was! As if he had just received cosmetic surgery-a chin job. He scrunched up his face, then gave himself a mocking grin.

₄

HAILEE suffered a relapse and was hospitalized again. This time the doctor said chemotherapy might not be effective, because after three months' treatment, the cancer cells would have developed resistance to the medicines. Indeed, despite the use of combined drugs, the sign of remission had diminished and then stopped. Instead, a large number of leukemic blasts, young and immature white blood cells, were found in Hailee's blood. The group of doctors in charge of her case recommended a bone marrow transplant, which would have to be done at a larger hospital.

For weeks the Mitchells looked in vain for a donor, who would have to have the same white blood cell proteins as their daughter did. Dr. Caruth at Emory Hospital faxed the description of Hailee's tissue details to the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry in St. Paul, Minnesota, which kept a list of more than a million potential donors, but the center couldn't find a match, partly because only a very small percentage of the registered donors were Asians. According to the literature Dr. Caruth had given the Mitchells, the match rate was much higher among people of the same ethnicity, so Janet asked the Wus if China might also have a program that listed potential bone marrow donors. Pingping called around and even talked with an official at the Chinese consulate in Houston, but nobody had ever heard of such a registry in China. If only the Mitchells could find Hailee's biological parents. They were certain that one of her siblings or cousins might have the tissue type that matched hers.

Both Nan and Pingping volunteered to have their blood drawn to see if they could be a donor, and later Taotao did the same, but none of them was a match. The Mitchells were quite touched nonetheless. Dave said to Nan, "We appreciate you trying to help her. You're a good man."

"Sure. Eef you or Janet had leukemia, we'd do the same. Don't sink I volunteered only because Hailee's a Chinese girl." "I understand."

Then Nan hit on an idea. Why not contact the local Chinese community and see if they could help? Both Janet and Dave liked the suggestion, but they didn't know many people except the few whose children attended the Sunday Chinese classes at Emory. Nan didn't have a lot of contacts either, yet he nerved himself to call Mei Hong and ask her to help, though he believed she must still hate his guts. To his surprise, she eagerly agreed to spread the word among the Chinese students and the people in Chinatown. Also, she was going to contact all the Chinese churches in the Atlanta area and plead with them for help. She even said she'd go to Emory Hospital and have her own blood drawn.

As it turned out, she didn't need to go there, because after the local Chinese-language newspapers wrote about Hailee's case and published the Mitchells' plea for help, so many people offered to have their blood tested that a temporary clinic was set up at the Chinatown Plaza in Chamblee. A week later, to everyone's amazement, a thirteen-year-old girl in Duluth, named Moli, was found to be a match. At first, Moli's parents were unsure if they should let their daughter donate her bone marrow, but Mei Hong convinced them, saying that if they didn't help to save Hailee, they'd be despised by all the Chinese here. She also told them that a bone marrow transplant was similar to a blood transfusion, with no harm done to the donor's health. So the girl's parents, both recent immigrants working at Peace Supermarket, yielded and even let Mei Hong take their daughter to an interview with a reporter.

When the good news came, the Mitchells were overjoyed and broke into tears. Dave hugged Nan and wept like a little boy. With trepidation he and Janet spoke with Mei Hong on the phone and were reassured that the girl's parents wouldn't go back on their promise. In fact, Mei Hong had become the spokeswoman for the girl's family, since her parents couldn't speak a word of English. To

Nan, that woman had simply taken the whole thing into her own hands as if she were Moli's aunt.

Nan was puzzled. To him Mei Hong was just a jingoistic firebrand who couldn't think straight. He wondered whether she'd have let her own daughter be a donor if her child had been a match. When he talked with her about Moli, she said with her eyes fixed on him, "You think I'm a hypocrite, huh? Let me tell you, if Moli were my daughter, I would let her do the same. Every member of my family had our blood tested. Hailee is a Chinese girl, so we must do whatever we can to save her. Wouldn't you donate your bone marrow if you were a match? No?"

"Of course I would. I had my blood drawn too," Nan said.

After a thorough exam, which ascertained that Moli was healthy, Dr. Caruth explained to the girl's parents the process of marrow donation through Mei Hong's interpretation. The couple was fully convinced that it wouldn't impair their daughter's health, and they signed the paperwork. Nan and Pingping wondered why the girl herself hadn't said a word about the decision made for her by others. Did she want to donate her bone marrow or not? Wasn't she scared? Pingping asked Moli once, but the pumpkin-faced girl just replied, "Aunt Hong says I should help save Hailee, and if I were sick, others would do the same for me." Asked further, she'd say no more. Pingping felt for her so much that she packed a box of assorted appetizers for her, but Moli wouldn't accept it, not until Mei Hong told her to take it home and let her parents know it came from the Gold Wok.

A few days later Moli's bone marrow was injected into Hailee. The child's initial reaction was disheartening. She ran a high fever, and fluid was building up in her lungs, which made her wheeze. An X-ray showed her heart was enlarged considerably. She had to be kept in intensive care. The doctors at Emory Hospital, where Hailee stayed, said these problems were normal after a bone marrow transplant and it was too early to conclude that the treatment had failed. The Mitchells kept their fingers crossed.

Then, a week later, Hailee's fever subsided some and a soft sheen returned to her cheeks. When she smiled, a sparkle appeared in her eyes again. Her lungs began to clear and the size of her heart was shrinking. All the tests indicated that the transplanted bone marrow had been producing new blood cells. Now, positively, her leukemia was in remission.

Hailee's leukemia was cured eventually, and Mei Hong became another of her godmothers, though the Wus still avoided her.

₅

IN EARLY JUNE, Nan had won a prize in a raffle at Grand Panda Supermarket. He was offered the plane fare for a round trip from Atlanta to Beijing. By now he had become a U.S. citizen and would have no difficulty getting a tourist visa from the Chinese consulate in Houston. Should he go back to visit? He asked his wife, who disliked the idea. Then should they let the tickets, worth $650, be wasted?

Nan begged Pingping to allow him to go back for a short visit. It was so hot these days that the restaurant didn't have much business. With the help of Chef Mu, everything would be all right at the Gold Wok. But Pingping wouldn't let him leave. He continued pleading with her for a few weeks, to no avail. Finally he said he wanted to see his parents before they died. Those words made his wife relent.

Nan decided to depart within a week. He wondered if he should visit his parents-in-law in Jinan City as well, but Pingping, after giving thought to that, told him not to-she wanted him to come back as soon as possible. She planned to return and see her parents once she was naturalized. Nan promised he'd make a quiet trip and come back in just a week or so. She also warned him not to speak against the Chinese government publicly. In the past the police had often questioned his siblings about his activities abroad. Not until two years ago had they stopped harrying them, because his father had assured the authorities that Nan had "cleaned up his act" and was no longer a dissident.

What Pingping didn't know was that Nan wanted to return to China for another purpose also-to see Beina. He didn't intend to resume a relationship with her; he just needed that woman's face and voice to rekindle his passion so that he could write poetry. He needed the vision of an ideal female figure for his art, just like a painter who uses a model. Yes, he wanted to use her just as she had once used him.

Nan boarded a Boeing 737 bound for Beijing one morning in late July. As the plane taxied toward the runway, somehow he didn't feel excited. He looked around and saw that almost half the passengers were Chinese, and nobody paid heed to the imminent takeoff. He remembered the intense excitement he and the other passengers had experienced twelve years ago when he flew for the first time in his life, from Beijing to San Francisco. As the plane was taking off, many of them had applauded and some had leaned aside toward the portholes to catch through the ragged clouds a bird's-eye view of the cityscape of the capital, which tilted while the plane banked a little. He also remembered how he and his fellow travelers, most of whom were students, had been nauseated by a certain smell in the plane- so much so that it had made some of them unable to swallow the inflight meal of Parmesan chicken served in a plastic dish. It was a typical American odor that sickened some new arrivals. Everywhere in the United States there was this sweetish smell, like a kind of chemical, especially in the supermarket, where even vegetables and fruits had it. Then one day in the following week Nan suddenly found that his nose could no longer detect it. Another memory of his first flight brought a smile to his face. Like some of the passengers crossing the Pacific Ocean for the first time, after eating the lunch he had wiped the plastic fork and knife clean and noticed people looking at one another and wondering what to do with these things. Some of them put the knives and forks into their pockets or handbags, carrying them all the way to their destinations in America, because they couldn't imagine that all the plastic containers and tools were disposable. They had no idea what kind of plentitude and waste they were going to encounter in this new land.

This trip, however, excited Nan in a different way. He planned to visit his friend Danning in Beijing, then his parents in Harbin, where Beina must be living as well. He hadn't told any of them about his return and meant to give them a surprise.

He brought along a poetry anthology, The Voice That Is Great Within Us, which he read from time to time during the flight. But he dozed off frequently since he hadn't slept well the night before. He was glad he was seated in an exit row and had more leg room. On his left lounged a lumpy-faced man, who was on his way back to his job in Shanghai but would stop in Beijing for a day or two on business. The man introduced himself as Yujing Fang and complained he couldn't smoke the whole way. Because he was in a window seat, unable to talk to others, now and then he tried to converse with Nan. He said he had earned an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and worked for GE in China. But his wife and two children lived in New Jersey, and he could visit them a few times a year, plane fares paid by the company.

"That's hard," Nan said. "I mean, to be separated from your family."

"Yes, in the beginning just the phone bills would cost five hundred dollars a month, but now I use phone cards and we're accustomed to the separation."

"Why don't you find a job in the States?"

"My position in Shanghai is important and lucrative. I manage a branch of our company there."

"Do they pay you an American salary?" "Of course."

"Then you must be a millionaire."

"Truth be told, I don't count pennies when I go shopping." "Tell me, what are the fashionable gifts in China at the moment?" " Color TV sets are still presentable. Air conditioners, digital cameras, computers-ah, yes, vitamins." "Do people take vitamin pills?"

" Sure. Twenty bottles of multiple vitamins can grease a large palm. Wisconsin ginseng is always popular too."

"Life must be better for many people in China now. Few of them could afford those supplements ten years ago."

"Another very expensive present is just coming into fashion in Shanghai."

" Which is?"

"Enemas."

" What did you say?"

"Enemas, having your intestines rinsed once in a while."

"Why?"

"To prevent cancer and other diseases." "But how can they be a gift?"

"That's easy. You buy a book of tickets for enemas at a hospital and give it to another person who can go there for the treatment."

"I see." Nan chuckled, still thinking this was odd. Maybe only people in Shanghai would use such a present.

"It's expensive, though," said Yujing. "Only rich people, like entrepreneurs, athletes, and actors, can afford to have an enema regularly."

"Still, how could I give my dad a gift like that?"

"Oh, I thought you meant to bribe an official or some big shot. Actually, this enema thing might just be a passing fad. Last year electric shavers were all the rage, but they're already passe. By the way, for youngsters, brand-name clothes and shoes are always welcome."

"Like what kind?"

"Like Polo shirts and Nike sneakers."

Nan felt lucky that he hadn't bought any presents for his parents and siblings. If he had, he'd have picked two or three foolproof cameras, a few calculators, a pair of electronic keyboards for his nephew and niece, and a dozen wristwatches. According to his fellow traveler, most of those were no longer appropriate. Nan had $3,000 cash on him, planning to give each member of his family a few banknotes, real American dollars. That was a bad idea, according to Pingping, who feared that her parents-in-law would keep the money quietly and then tell people that Nan hadn't brought back anything for them. At most the old man and woman, both tightfisted, might spend some of the cash on food, for which no one could know they had taken money from Nan. It would have been far better if he had bought them some high-quality clothes so that everyone could see it plainly when his parents donned an American coat or jacket or hat. But Nan had left in too much of a hurry to visit any clothing stores. Besides, he knew nothing about brand names and wanted to travel light.

For the rest of the trip he was reluctant to talk more with Yujing, fearing the fellow might ask him about his profession. He wouldn't mind saying he was a restaurateur, but it would be embarrassing to admit he had only one employee. So whenever Yujing tried to chat again, Nan would appear tired and give a yawn. He kept his eyes shut and nodded off most of the time like the old woman with knotted hands seated on his right, who slept nearly all the way.

₆

BEIJING was now hardly recognizable to Nan. He got out of a taxi at the train station and found out the schedule of the train bound for Harbin. He planned to stay one day in the capital and depart for home the next morning. Outside the station, so many automobiles were running on the streets that he was a bit unnerved and stopped to observe the rushing traffic for a while. In the distance several cranes stood motionless, like dark skeletons, over buildings encaged by scaffolding. Around him people were hustling and bustling. To his surprise, there were yellow cabs here too, like in New York City. The plaza before the temple-like station was more crowded and more chaotic than it had been twelve years before when he had come to apply for a visa for the United States. Here and there gathered knots of young men in gray- or blue-collared T-shirts, some sitting on bedrolls and smoking pensively, and some lying on newspaper spread on the concrete slabs and dozing off. Apparently these country people had come here to seek work. Their leathery faces showed the kind of numbness that reminded Nan of the homeless in Atlanta. He wondered if there were soup kitchens in Beijing. Maybe not.

Nan called Danning Meng from a pay phone. On hearing of his arrival, Danning turned ecstatic and gave him directions to his home, insisting Nan stay with him. Nan agreed. He hailed a taxi and headed for Danning's place in the Hsidan area. There was so much traffic that bicycles seemed to move faster than automobiles. Now and then the cabdriver beeped his horn at the pedestrians who didn't step aside fast enough to make way for the car. At a red light a few vendors stepped over to hawk grapes, ice lollies, peaches, tomatoes.

To Nan 's amazement, Danning lived in a small traditional compound with a scarlet gate, which, topped with black ceramic tiles, was in the middle of a high brick wall. A leaf of the gate was ajar, so Nan went in unannounced. Inside was a small stone-flagged quadrangle, formed by four houses. He hadn't expected Danning to live in such a spacious home, which was old-fashioned, a rare find nowadays. Two crab apple trees stood beside the entrance to the main house, and several wooden pots planted with kumquats and bamboos sat alongside the wing houses. "Anybody home?" shouted Nan.

Danning Meng stepped out of his living room and hugged Nan so tightly that the guest almost let out a moan. "At last we're together again!" the host said with emotion. Though thicker and a bit gray now, he hadn't aged much.

" You live like the nouveau riche, such a nice place," Nan said, beaming.

"I paid thirty thousand dollars for this piece of property, but we may have to move soon." Danning couldn't stop looking at Nan, and his smiling eyes curved a little, their outside corners drooping. He took Nan into the living room furnished with antique carved furniture.

"Why give up this place? It's a luxurious home, better than any apartment," Nan said the moment he sat down on a sofa.

" A company wants to build a hotel in this area, so the entire neighborhood will be gone in a year or two."

"What a shame. This quadrangle is the real old Beijing."

Danning's daughter, Weiwei, stepped in, called Nan "Uncle Wu," and then told her father that she had dragged Nan 's suitcase into the guest room, which was in the east wing house and adjacent to Danning's study and their family room. The girl wore glasses and looked studious and undernourished. Though already fifteen, she was so thin that she seemed well under the age of puberty. Her father told her to prepare a basin of warm water so that Uncle Wu could freshen up.

As the two friends were talking, Nan felt an itch in his throat. Unconsciously he massaged the area below his Adam's apple with his thumb and forefinger. He didn't give more thought to this discomfort and just kept drinking the jasmine tea Danning poured him.

When Weiwei got the water ready, Nan went out to wash. On a stone bench under a crab apple tree sat a brass basin, beside which were a folded towel and a plastic case containing a bar of green soap. Nan soaked the towel in the water and rubbed his face and neck with it.

Quickly he went back into the house, eager to resume conversing with his friend. Although he felt refreshed after the washing, his throat still itched. His breathing went rough, but he tried to ignore it.

Over tea the two of them caught up with each other. Danning now worked at the Beijing Writers' Association and had been writing a script for a TV series. He disliked the show because the story was set in the Ming dynasty, six hundred years ago, but it paid well, much more than fiction. "Why write an ancient story?" Nan asked.

"It's safe to do that. Many, many writers are working on ancient stuff nowadays."

"Isn't it hard to make such work literary?" Nan said in earnest.

Danning slapped the top of his thigh and laughed. "If you lived here, Nan, you'd have to forget about literature. The higher-ups want us to write about dead people and ancient events because this is a way to make us less subversive and more inconsequential. It's their means of containing China 's creative energy and talents. The saddest part is that in this way we can produce only transient work."

"Isee, it's a trap."

Danning sighed and said he had been misusing his time for too long and must return to the real work soon. Nan didn't ask him what kind of writing he had in mind as "the real work" and instead expressed his admiration for the number of books (half a dozen) his friend had written. "None of them is any good," Danning insisted. "I've just been frittering away my life. Unlike in America, here I have no real struggle for livelihood. You see, I live comfortably. I just take up a project, finish it, and get paid." He looked languid, as if already an old man in spite of his relatively young looks. Nan noticed that his hairline had retreated quite a bit, giving him a larger forehead than before. Also, Danning had a double chin, but that was almost covered by his chin-strap beard. Despite his easy life, despite his spacious home, despite his success, Danning was definitely unhappy.

Nan drank more tea to soothe his throat; still he couldn't breathe easily, his windpipe tight. Danning called his wife at work to see if she'd like to join them for lunch at a cafe. She was delighted and said she would. Before they set out, Nan finally told his friend, "My throat feels dry and funny. Something is wrong."

"So you have trouble breathing, don't you?" Danning smiled quizzically.

"Yes, like having asthma."

"You know what? You must have an allergy."

"Really? An allergy to what?"

" To the air, the smog. When my wife came back from America she had the same problem. It took her a month to get used to the air here, to become a Chinese again." He tossed his head back and laughed. "Let me see if we still have some Benadryl." He went into a bedroom and came out with a brown bottle. "Here, take this." He shook out two caplets into Nan 's cupped palm.

Knowing the pills might make him drowsy, Nan swallowed them anyway. Then together they headed out. Weiwei, watching a movie on TV didn't come with them. She asked her father to bring back a meat pie for her.

₇

FOREVER LOVE CAFE was a very small place. Its side windows looked onto a man-made lake, which, ringed with white sand, was more like a pond, without any trace of fish or waterfowl in it. Two teenage boys were swimming near the opposite shore, their red and white caps bobbing on the green water. Danning knew the owner of the restaurant, a handsome, lean-faced man, and introduced Nan to him as his friend from overseas. "Welcome back," the man said warmly, waving the cigarette held between his fingers.

They sat at a table beside a window. The room had a faintly vinegary smell, emanating from the cold dishes contained in the enamel basins in the glass display case. A waitress with squarish shoulders came and put a porcelain teapot and two cups between them. "Their specialities are braised pork tripe and beef tendons," Danning told Nan. "They also serve panfried noodles and rice for lunch. But their offerings may be far below the standard of your restaurant, so please bear with them."

"Come on, you think I'm rich and finicky about food?"

"You're a businessman now."

"I'm still struggling to survive there."

"Yet you're rich."

" Only by Chinese standards. "

"That's what I mean."

Sirong, Danning's wife, appeared, a petite woman smiling with a broad mouth and bulging eyes. She reminded Nan of a giant goldfish, though she looked good-natured and carefree. She held out her hand to him and said, "It's so nice to meet you finally. Danning often mentioned you. When did you arrive?"

"Three hours ago." He shook her hand, which was small and soft.

" Well, what do you think of Beijing now?"

"There are more cars, more buildings, and more people."

The couple cracked up. "That's a very accurate observation," Danning said, turning to his wife. "I told you he's a sharp fellow. He's having the same kind of allergic reaction as you did."

"You are?" she asked Nan. "No wonder you look so pale. But don't worry. You'll be all right soon. It's just the process of getting readjusted. You'll feel normal within a month."

Nan thought of telling her that he'd be going back to the States the next week, but he refrained. He didn't feel like talking much and just enjoyed listening to them. The waitress came again and put a teacup before Sirong. Sirong ordered a wonton soup.

When the panfried noodles, the wontons, and the shredded beef tendons arrived, Sirong said to Nan, "I must confess I miss America, a lot."

"What do you miss most?"

" Things like big apples, big salmon, and big lobster," she said in all sincerity. "Also, I'm a chocoholic and miss all kinds of chocolates they have there."

Nan laughed and told her, "We serve salmon in our restaurant every day. You should come and visit us."

"I'd love to. Mmmm, I still remember the lobster and shrimp we had at a crab shack in Plymouth, near the Mayflower. You see, here fish are skimpy and fruit puny. We Chinese eat too much and have used up our land."

Danning added, turning to Nan, "Overeating is a big problem among children now."

Nan nodded. "I saw some big fat kids this morning, like in the States."

"Not just children who overeat, grown-ups too," said Sirong. " Danning goes to dinner parties at least four times a week. Look how fat he is now. Besides, he has high cholesterol and hypertension."

Indeed, Danning had gained at least thirty pounds. Nan said to him, "You've got to be careful about your health. You're no longer a young man."

"In fact," said Danning, "I'm doing better than most of my colleagues. Many of them have to battle diabetes and high blood fat levels, having eaten too much meat and sugar. My boss's triglyc-erides are over seven hundred. He often says he might have a stroke or drop dead anytime. Speaking of dinner parties, I'm supposed to attend one with a group of writers tonight. Nan, would you like to come with me? It'll be fun. You'll meet some important people."

"All right, I'll come."

Sirong had to return to work before one-thirty and left the moment she was done with her wontons. The two friends strolled back, Danning holding a thick pie stuffed with pork and chives for his daughter. At a clothing stand Nan bought a tartan skirt as a present for the girl despite her father's protesting, "She already has too much stuff."

While they walked, they chatted about people they both knew. Danning mentioned that Mr. Manping Liu had died a month before and that only one small newspaper had printed a brief obituary, because the old scholar had refused to retract his statement about the necessity of democratizing the Communist regime and write the self-criticism the Party committee of his research institute had admonished him to do. Danning had gone to his funeral service, attended by only thirty people. The two friends also talked about Bao Yuan, whose paintings had been exhibited in a gallery in Beijing last fall, together with two other artists' works; Danning wasn't sure how well his work had been received here, but some of his colleagues had liked the show. A high-circulation weekly, Art News, even published a long article on Bao, written by an American art critic named Tim Dullington. Without commenting on that, Nan realized that as before, his own name as the translator must have been suppressed.

Exhausted and groggy, Nan slept for the rest of the afternoon in the guest room. He snored loudly, which fascinated the girl in the next room, who had never met anyone who made such thunderous noise in his sleep. On her dad's instructions, she lowered the volume of the TV, yet when Nan 's snores penetrated the wall, interfering with the voice of the math teacher on the screen, she turned it up again. But whenever she did this, her father would come out of his study and order her to keep it down. Besides not wanting to wake Nan, he couldn't think clearly with the TV blasting.

₈

TOWARD EVENING, a midnight blue Audi with tinted windows came to pick Danning up. He and Nan got into the air-conditioned car, which rolled away noiselessly and headed for Haidian District. The chauffeur, wearing aviator glasses and a peaked cap, seemed savvy and apparently knew Danning well, but he was reticent while the two passengers in back were talking about Beijing 's real estate market, which had kept booming in recent years. The average home price had increased by twenty percent annually, and some people had unexpectedly become millionaires, having bought a couple of apartments for a song a few years before. Danning urged Nan to buy a pied-a-terre here, for which there'd be no realty tax, but Nan chuckled, saying he didn't have $30,000 to spare.

The chauffeur tooted the horn, urging a cyclist to make way for their car, which bucked again and again as if about to crush the bicycle, but its rider simply didn't respond. Not until the man rounded a corner could their car resume a normal speed. Dangling from the rearview mirror was a tiny oval portrait of Chairman Mao with a golden tassel. Nan wondered if that was some sort of amulet.

As they were approaching a crossroads, the light turned red, but their car didn't stop. The chauffeur signaled and drove left, ignoring the honking of other vehicles. A green motorcycle puttered up behind them, and a policeman in the side car shouted through a bullhorn, "Pull over to the side!"

"Fucking cops!" cursed the driver without moving his head. He clicked on the blinker, slowing down, and brought the car to a stop.

" Are they going to give you a ticket?" Nan asked him.

"Oh well, I've never paid a fine."

Nan turned around and saw the two policemen hop off the motorcycle and stride up to their car. But as they were approaching, one of them pointed at the rear of the Audi, then they both veered off to a newsstand as if to deal with a more urgent incident over there first. Nan was bewildered.

The chauffeur said in an undertone, "Bastards, they're not that stupid." He pulled away smoothly.

" Why did they change their minds?" Nan asked.

"This is an army vehicle," explained Danning. "They just saw the plate on the back." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the rear window.

"So army vehicles don't have to follow the traffic rules?" asked Nan.

The chauffeur said, "They can give me as many tickets as they like, but there's no way they can collect the fines."

Danning winked at Nan, then spoke in English so that the driver couldn't understand. "You see, power comes out of the barrel of a gun."

Nan said, "Zis is crazy, still like two decades ago." "Yes, things are basically the same."

They pulled into the yard of a medium-size hotel, and the chauffeur told them that he would come around nine-thirty to pick them up. Through a moon gate Danning and Nan entered the yard behind the building, where a two-story manor was half shaded by tall, dusty cypresses. In front of that house was a tiny pond, with a few mossy rocks erected in its middle and inhabited by orange carp and goldfish, whose tails and fins spread in the water like floating tulle. Dan-ning and Nan went into the house and then turned in to the restaurant on the first floor, in which sat only a few people. The dimly lighted room felt damp, four long-fluked ceiling fans revolving with a rasping sound.

"Welcome!" a roly-poly man cried at them. Obviously the host, he was wearing a herringbone suit and shiny oxfords. He showed them to a table in a corner where five men were already seated. At the sight of Danning, they all got up and stretched out their hands, which Danning shook one by one.

With pride he introduced Nan to them as his American friend.

They were all pleased to see Nan. On the table were two saucers containing condensed milk and a bamboo basket holding tiny steamed buns, both serving as an appetizer. They went on gossiping about some recent events in Beijing's literary circles: the nominations for this year's major prizes and what offices were involved; which one of the pretty young women writers had outsold the others; the two poets who had just been offered a trip to Paris the next spring; an editor who had been fired last week for publishing a book offensive to the authorities, which had changed the policy, punishing editors in place of authors; how there was going to be a conference on a first novel by a young man whose father was a high-ranking official in the State Council. Nan knew nothing about their world and just listened.

Mengfei, the loudest among them, was a lieutenant colonel in the air force and a well-known fiction writer. It was this fleshy-faced man with a bull's neck and shoulders who had sent the Audi to fetch Danning. Sometimes he taught literary theory and modern fiction at the Arts Institute of the People's Liberation Army. He had just published a novella in Flower City, a top-notch magazine, so he had gathered his writer friends here to celebrate. Among them there was another officer, a captain who was a poet, and the rest were all civilians. Nan vaguely remembered seeing in a newspaper the photograph of the bald man sitting across from him. The man had introduced himself as Fanlong, an editor in the Writers' Publishing House. Seated next to the colonel was a spare man who was a journalist specializing in reportage literature, but he didn't speak much because he'd stutter whenever he opened his mouth. Unlike them, Nan didn't touch the Luzhou whiskey, which was too strong for him; instead, he sipped Five Star beer from a tall glass.

A waitress came and handed them the menu. Nan was puzzled by the names of the dishes. There were so many unfamiliar items that he wasn't sure what to order. He asked Danning, "What is this- 'Parents and Children'?"

His friend grinned. "It's just pickled soybeans and soy sprouts."

"Then I won't eat the whole family." Nan chuckled but didn't ask about the other fancy names. The rest of the men didn't bother to open the menu and instead let Fanlong order for them. The man, well known for his ability to plan parties and dinners, mentioned a dozen dishes to the waitress and also asked for more liquor and beer for everyone.

"Nan, what are the hot novels published in the United States recently?" asked Mengfei, who seemed quite knowledgeable about contemporary American fiction. As a matter of fact, he had been to the States as a visiting scholar at Stanford, and in their conversation he often trotted out the phrase "when I was in America," which Dan-ning told him not to use just for this occasion, at which there was no need for him to impress others.

"A novel called Cold Mountain is very popular at the moment," Nan told Mengfei.

"Who wrote it?"

"A new writer named Charles Frazier, but I haven't read the book yet." Nan paused, then added, "I brought back a copy of American Pastoral for Danning."

The spare man with slanting eyebrows seated next to Mengfei spoke in a shrill voice. "Th-that's Philip Roth's ne-new novel!"

" Yes," Nan said.

Fanlong butted in, "I like Roth a lot, especially his Ghost Writer."

" I think Saul Bellow is better," mumbled the bespectacled man sitting next to Danning.

" Ah, Bellow is smart and funny," Mengfei said, and smacked his lips as if tasting his own words.

In addition to parading their knowledge of American literature, they also talked about Calvino, Kundera, and Duras, none of whom was familiar to Nan, though at present they were popular here. So when Mengfei asked his opinion, Nan said, "I don't read fiction very often. I read more poetry."

" Wonderful," the bright-eyed captain put in.

Fanlong added, "We just bought Derek Walcott's new book."

Nan was startled and realized that these men might be bureaucrats in the Chinese literary world. Now he should be more careful about what he was going to say. Probably they did indeed know a lot about American authors through translations.

The dishes came, loaded on a serving cart. Two young waitresses in pea green aprons began placing the courses on the table. "This is 'Trotting on a Country Path,'" declared one of them. Nan batted his eyes to look at the dish closely. Heavens, it was just braised pig trotters garnished with a few sprigs of parsley! Despite his bewilderment, he said nothing. Then together the waitresses lifted a large platter containing a fried flounder. There were also several cold cuts and sauteed vegetables. Finally the taller woman put the last plate on the table with both hands and said, "Here's your 'Whispers.'" Nan tried hard to stifle his laughter on looking at the dish, which was nothing but smoked beef tongues lying in aspic.

The waitresses had scarcely pulled the cart away when Nan burst out laughing, a bubbling sound in his nose. He said to the others, "Let's whisper, let's whisper." They got the joke and all cracked up.

"Lucky we still have our tongues," said Mengfei with a straight face.

They laughed more. As they were eating and chatting, more people appeared in the restaurant and most of the seats were taken. There were several gatherings in the room, but each group of diners paid little attention to the other tables. Nan liked the fish and ate several pieces of it. Everything else, though, tasted mediocre, but he tried to show his appreciation. By now he realized this place must be a kind of club for officials, businesspeople, and the cultural elite.

A moment later Nan mentioned to Fanlong, the senior editor, Dick Harrison's new book, Unexpected Gifts. The man looked blank, blinking his baggy eyes and saying, "I don't know enough about contemporary American poetry. Tell me more about this poet."

Without mentioning his friendship with Dick, Nan described him as a rising star in American poetry. He even recited the final stanza of Dick's poem "A Son's Reason," and they all laughed at the last lines-"Mother, I love you / only from far away."

"Dick Harrison just started teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop," Nan told Fanlong.

That soaked in. They all knew that workshop and the Iowa International Writing Program. The latter would admit two or three Chinese writers a year. The competition for such an opportunity was especially fierce among poets, because it was also a way to get a bit of money. After spending a semester at the University of Iowa, one could save $2,000 or $3,000 besides having the honor of attending such a prestigious program.

Danning declared to them, "In fact, Dick Harrison is a close friend of Nan 's."

The faces at the table changed visibly. Fanlong, who was also a published poet, began to listen to Nan more closely and went on asking questions about American poetry. He even said to Nan in an orotund voice, "I hope I can visit you in Georgia one of these days. Atlanta must be a big international city."

"Sure, you're always welcome." Nan felt like a fake, uncertain whether Pingping would like that. But he had to appear friendly.

Some people at the tables near a low platform started singing a song, following the karaoke machine that had just come on. Mengfei stood up and said, "Let's go have some fun." They all went over to watch the crowd.

Several young women who must have been on the waitstaff were among the singers. A moment before, everyone had been quiet and subdued, but all of a sudden the men and women were so clamorous that Nan wondered whether they were all depressed and desperate to vent their frustrations through singing. They belted out song after song-sometimes only one man and one woman sang together, and sometimes a number of people chorused at the top of their lungs. Fanlong went to the front and began to sing an old folk song with a woman with a bleached blond pageboy who wore a red cheongsam. They were singing:

In a distant mountain lives a beautiful girl. Whoever passes her cottage will turn, Hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

Her small pink face shines like the sun.

Her lovely eyes move

Like the moon in a cloudless night.

O I'm willing to give up all I have And just follow her flock of goats,

So every day I can see her small pink face And her pretty dress frilled with gold.

O I'm dying to be her little goat And always stay at her side, So she can flick her tiny whip To stroke my behind.

Having finished the song, Fanlong wagged his big ass and bleated twice, which set off whoops of laughter. He then held the woman's hands and did a little jig under the miniature chandelier, swinging his legs briskly while his cheeks glistened with sweat. The woman followed his steps, swaying her hips while holding her face up and straight. Despite the noisy audience, the two looked quite natural.

Nan was a little tired, but he thought he ought to keep his friend company. Danning was playing cards with Mengfei, the captain, and the journalist at their own table now. They had asked Nan to join them, but he had forgotten how to play One Hundred Points and just stayed around watching them.

Two girls, heavily made up, came over and sat beside the men. One of them said to Mengfei, "Colonel, don't you want some fun and comfort today?"

"Wait until I lose another five pounds." Mengfei rolled his bovine eyes. Except Nan, all the others cackled. Nan was puzzled by the colonel's answer, but said nothing.

The other girl turned to Danning. "Hey, big writer, you've forgotten me already? Where's the perfume you promised me?"

"Next time, Dailian, all right? I'm with my friend here." His chin jutted at Nan.

"Doesn't your friend feel lonely? He's so quiet."

"Ask him then."

The girl was all smiles. She scooted closer to Nan and asked coquettishly, "Don't you want to know me?" "Sure," Nan replied out of politeness. "Would you like to spend some time with me?" "For what?"

Mengfei gave a belly laugh and said, " Nan 's so innocent. Different from us. He's still uncorrupted."

"Just follow her," Danning told Nan. "She'll let you know for what."

"Who will pay for it?" Nan asked.

"You will, of course." Mengfei pointed at him. "Now I see that you're not so innocent as I thought. I pay for food and drinks but not for fellatio or sex."

The girl sitting near him pouted. "He's always so shameless and barbaric. "

Jokingly Nan said to the girl beside him, "I don't have money, unless you're willing to spend time with me for free…" "You don't have to pay now."

Danning intervened, " Nan, don't tease her. She knows you're from abroad. If you're not interested, just say you don't want it. She'll hold me responsible if you get anything free from her."

"All right." Nan turned to the girl. "I'm too tired today. I just flew all the way back from America, almost twenty hours, and I'm still jet-lagged."

" America? That's beautiful. Don't you want my phone number just in case?"

"I'm a married man."

That set the whole table roaring with laughter. "We're all married men," Mengfei said, and slapped his broad forehead three times with the heel of his hand. " Nan, please don't remind us of our depravity." He stared at the girls, who turned quiet at last. A moment later they both moved to a nearby table.

On their way back, lounging in the Audi, Nan asked Danning, "Why did Mengfei tell the girl to wait until he lost another five pounds?"

"Ah, he has a theory-the intensity of sexual pleasure is in proportion to the weight you have lost." "Strange. Do you believe him?"

"Too much body fat dulls the physical sensation, doesn't it?" " I see, you fellows are experts. By the way, why did the restaurant give those common dishes all the fancy names?"

"To get more business. Everybody wants to sell and sell and sell, to make money by hook or by crook. People don't call things by their names anymore."

Then Nan asked him what kind of place was that restaurant. "It's like a brothel," he said.

His friend laughed and told him that there were many bars, salons, and hotels like that in Beijing. Using women to attract business was common practice nowadays. Nan thought of asking him whether he had often spent time with the girls, but he checked himself. Without question Danning was a regular customer; so were his friends. Nan wondered whether he himself would have become one if he lived here.

₉

AFTER a whole night's train ride, he arrived at Harbin in the early morning. The train station had been renovated, and, with a new veranda and a massive gateway, it looked more welcoming than it had twelve years before. People here were dressed more colorfully than Beijingers, though they had much less money. The city appeared dormant and aged; the old Russian buildings in the southeast looked gray and shabby in spite of their copper cupolas. In the square before the station a few boys and girls in sweat suits were practicing martial arts, jumping around, or kicking and punching air, or directing their energy to different parts of their bodies while standing still with their knees bent at a right angle. On the west side of the square stretched a line of food stands that sold fried dough sticks, soy milk, sugar pies, jellied tofu soup, roasted beans and peanuts. Several customers sat on canvas stools there, eating breakfast while palavering or reading newspapers; a woman had a beagle on a long leash that kept wagging its docked tail. Nan flagged down a cab and set out for Nangang District, where his parents' home was located.

The city hadn't changed much. Indeed, there were more cars on the streets, but unlike in Beijing, not many of them here seemed privately owned. Nan liked the new tall buses, which looked roomy, like tourist coaches. Five minutes later he asked the taxi to stop at Friendship Boulevard, about three hundred yards away from Wind Chime Street, on which his parents lived, because he wanted to walk a little. He gave the cabbie, a young man with a missing front tooth, twenty yuan and let him keep the change. Then he headed toward his parents' home, lugging his wheeled suitcase without looking at the street signs as if his feet knew where to take him.

When he entered the residential compound, he heard a man chanting, "Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…" Accompanying those amplified singsong words was slow, dangling music that sounded ancient and listless. Rounding the corner of the first building, Nan caught sight of a group of old people, about thirty of them, doing morning exercises in the open space between two concrete tenements. They stepped around rhythmically, putting down heel first and swinging their arms left and right, all with their eyes half shut. They looked funny to Nan, as if sleepwalking or wrestling with shadows. Among them he saw his parents, who were swaying their shoulders indolently, his father wearing a flat brown cap while his mother was in purple slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt. To his amazement, neither of them had changed much; only their midriffs seemed thicker than before and their limbs looked a little stiff. All the people were expressionless, and their bodies moved in time with the male voice and the music as if they were in a hypnotized dance. Unconsciously Nan stopped in his tracks, his chest so full of feeling that he could hardly breathe. His eyes filmed over. Then he came around and decided not to address his parents, not to wake up the whole crowd. He went along and passed them with his face toward the wall of the building.

He climbed the stairs and reached his parents' apartment. The door was locked, so he leaned against the steel banister at the landing, waiting. His father and mother had retired several years ago with pensions equal to their full salaries, and they lived comfortably. Nan could see why, whenever he complained about the Chinese government in his letters, his father would write back upbraiding him and saying he was too naive and too rash. The old man, a staunch Communist, had never doubted the superiority of socialism to capitalism. He had once even condemned his son, saying that even though Nan lived in an American house, drove an American car, spoke American words, ate American food, and cut American farts, still all those privileges couldn't justify Nan 's "vituperation" against the Chinese government. Now Nan understood that his parents' livelihood depended on the support of the state.

"Who's there?" his mother shouted as she was climbing up the stairs.

"Mom, it's me."

" Nan! Are you really Nan?" She ran up, stumbled at a step and put out her hand to break the fall.

"Don't run." He hurried down to meet her.

She threw her arms around him and broke into happy tears. "Oh, my son, how I miss you! Are you back alone?"

In his arms, she was like a meatball with love handles. He said, "Yes, Pingping and Taotao couldn't come with me."

"Let me take a good look at you." She pushed him away a bit and observed him with creased eyes. " Nan, you're a middle-aged man now. You've changed so much. Life must be hard in America."

"It's not easy, but we've managed. You look great, Mom. I saw you and my dad outside just now, but I didn't interrupt you." They turned toward the door. Viewing her from the side, he found her more bent than before, but her hair was jet-black, apparently dyed.

"Oh, you should've stopped us," she went on. "We were doing this new breathing exercise. It's like magic and everybody feels better after doing it for a week. Hey, my old man, our son is home."

Nan 's father appeared in the stairwell. He saw Nan and hastened his steps. The moment he came in, he asked, "When did you arrive?"

"A few minutes ago."

"Why didn't you tell us beforehand?" He smiled, crinkling his weather-burned face and unable to contain his happiness.

Nan explained the raffle prize that had enabled him to fly back. His mother had already started making breakfast in the kitchen, from which the clatter of pots and bowls could be heard. Nan saw steaming water falling out of the faucet in there-that was something new.

The old man and Nan sat down on the sofas in the living room. He said to his son, "You were right not to come up to us when your mother and I were at the exercise. Uncle Zhao was right behind me. He's still unhappy with you."

"Because I didn't help him get his paintings exhibited in the United States?"

"Right."

"That was several years ago. He still bears a grudge?"

"Sometimes he complains that you're ungrateful, and I have to pretend to agree with him."

"But I'm nobody in America. How could I help him hold an art show?"

"I'm not blaming you, Nan. He's just pigheaded, but he's an old friend I don't want to lose. So don't go out during the day in case people in the neighborhood see you, because then Uncle Zhao will know you're back."

"All right, I'll remain indoors." Nan was tired and sleepy, preferring to stay home anyway.

" If you want to go out, use the back alley and wear sunglasses. Don't go by the front gate."

"You mean the alley is still there?"

"Yes, nothing really changed except for people getting older."

At breakfast Nan asked about his brother and sister. His parents said their family was lucky that neither of Nan 's siblings was out of work. There were so many unemployed people nowadays that pickpockets were everywhere in town. Nan had better be careful with his wallet on buses and in shops, especially in movie theaters, where the darkness could facilitate theft. His mother also told him that his younger brother, Ning, was addicted to gambling. Sometimes Ning would go out for a whole night. His wife griped about his bad habit all the time, but he wouldn't change. She had even threatened to leave him; still he wouldn't stop.

"Why is he like that?" Nan asked, remembering his brother fondly.

"Depressed."

"What? Depressed?"

"Yes. He just can't take heart from anything," chimed in his father.

Nan felt it strange that Ning, formerly a cheerful young man, had degenerated like that. Before he had left China, Nan had never heard the word depressed, which his mother now used like an everyday term.

Nan gave his parents each five hundred dollars, saying he'd had to leave Atlanta in a hurry, so was unable to bring them any gifts. At the sight of the green banknotes, his parents beamed. His father picked up a crisp twenty from the wad of cash and narrowed his weary eyes to observe it against the sunlight streaming in through the window, as if to ascertain its genuineness. "This is twenty dollars," he said. "I never saw American money before. " "It's real." Nan nodded.

"I've never thought the almighty dollar looks so ugly." His mother interjected, "What a silly thing to say. No money looks ugly."

The old man chuckled and sucked in his breath. "That's true. Just one of these banknotes can buy me a hundred noodle meals." He turned to Nan. "Now tell me, how much can your restaurant make on a good day?"

"Around a hundred?"

"Five of this!" He fluttered the twenty in his hand. "No wonder people say America is the richest land." The wrinkles around his snub nose turned into grooves as he grinned and clucked his tongue.

Nan didn't say more. Instead, he went to wash and brush his teeth. Then he undressed, got into bed, and slept eight hours on end.

₁₀

TOWARD DUSK Nan went out to the riverbank with his brother, Ning. He pushed his father's Phoenix bicycle through the back alley lined with piles of garbage, but when he came out of it and got on the bike, he couldn't ride it steadily anymore, and pedaling zigzag, almost ran into a young couple. His brother, tall and rawboned, shook his head, crying, "Use the bell!" Squeals of laughter rang out around them.

Nan dismounted instead, and together they walked to the Song-hua River. They turned onto Central Boulevard, which stretched north about a mile, all the way to the riverside. Nan had once been fond of this cobbled street built by the Russians in the nineteenth century, but somehow it was nothing extraordinary now. He felt the street rather confining, probably owing to the numerous business signs overhanging the buildings.

The Wu brothers entered the plaza that formed the center of Stalin Park, in the middle of which stood a slender monument erected in memory of the victory over a huge flood in 1957. A structure supported by stone columns, resembling a giant horseshoe, curved behind the monument. Somehow this piece of architecture that had impressed Nan greatly for many years now looked flimsy, no longer giving any feeling of magnitude. The two brothers went deeper into the park and reached the waterside. The riverbank was different from what Nan had remembered. This place had once been like a park, filled with flowers and trees, but now most of the plants were gone and there were booths and kiosks everywhere, selling foods, fruits, drinks, souvenirs. People were bustling around with their purchases in string bags carried in their hands or slung over their shoulders. There were also flocks of tourists strolling about, and some were cracking spiced watermelon seeds and spitting the shells on the ground. Not far away to the east rose a cluster of tall residential buildings that blocked the view of the grassland. In fact, the riverbank was now like a marketplace. The ground paved with concrete slabs was strewn with melon rinds, ice cream cups, crushed eggshells, Popsicle sticks and wrappers, cigarette butts. Nan and Ning leaned against the guardrail atop the embankment, watching a houseboat wobbling near the other shore, with a grapnel dangling over its stern and with foamy wavelets tumbling in its wake. The surface of the water had shrunk considerably, only about two hundred yards wide now, revealing a broad band of sandy beach. "Where are all the ships?" Nan asked his brother.

" There has been a drought. The water is too shallow for the ships to come up here." Ning licked his thick lips. His baby face, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, puffed up a little, his gaze focused on a moored rowboat.

" The river has changed so much. I never thought it was so meager," Nan said. He had dreamed of the Songhua many times and always seen it as an immense body of water like a lake. Now he guessed that the Hudson or Lake Lanier must have mingled with this river in his dreams.

"You should come and see what it's like here in the morning," said Ning. "It's thronged with people, like a sports ground. People exercise and dance everywhere."

"Didn't they build an amusement park over there some years ago?" Nan pointed at the wooded land in the middle of the river called Sun Island, over which a biplane was flying slowly, bobbing like a giant dragonfly caught in the wind.

"Yes, but if I were you I wouldn't go there. It looks better from here. It's too crowded there, just a tourist trap."

Indeed, viewed from this shore, the island was lovely, with picturesque buildings and bright-colored houses. It had been covered by bushes twelve years before. In his late teens Nan had often swum across the channel in the afternoons and napped on the warm beach that was now occupied by pavilions, boathouses, and a long platform on stilts which must have been a pier. He told Ning, "I thought I'd go and see the island, but there's no need now. The water is so narrow I feel I can wade across."

"Like this river, China has run out of strength. It's already rotten to the core. Brother, you made the right choice to stay in America." Ning took a swat at a horsefly hovering around his head but missed it.

" Life is hard there too," said Nan.

"Still, you have hope there, don't you?"

"Idon't know." Nan wanted to say "What hope?" but he held back, not wanting to upset his brother.

" Nan." Ning looked rather shy. "I'm thinking of going to Australia."

"For what?"

"To emigrate."

"That'll be very hard, Ning. It will take ages to get all the papers through. If you were a young woman, your life in Australia may be less difficult. Chinese men are often at a disadvantage compared with Chinese women in foreign countries."

"Why so?"

" Chinese women are more likely to be accepted because white males like them. Also, generally speaking, Chinese women can take more hardship than Chinese men. If you go to Australia with your wife, it'll be less difficult for her to adapt. To be honest, Minyan may not stay with you forever once you reach Australia. I've seen many broken marriages among the immigrants in America because the wives changed their hearts. I'm lucky. Pingping has been loyal to me. She can endure more suffering than I can. Without her I couldn't have survived there." He had to stop because a surge of emotion seized his heart and drove him to the brink of tears. Then it dawned on him that Minyan, his sister-in-law, might have wanted to take Ning to another country so that he'd have to give up his gambling friends here. Nan had met Minyan a few hours ago and liked her, but he didn't feel she was very reliable. She was a looker, also quickwitted. He was sure that if she and Ning went to Australia, she could make it there, whereas Ning, sensitive by nature, might get lost and lapse into his old ways, frequenting casinos and betting on horses.

His brother, the youngest in the family, had always been the baby and didn't have the strength to grapple with fortune in a foreign land.

Ning sighed. "I don't see any meaning in my life here. My job makes me go to parties almost every night. I hate alcohol but have to guzzle it, to get drunk a few times a week, or others would think I'm dishonest. I'm sick of this kind of life, sick of having to smile at the people I don't like to meet, sick of attending banquets at which I have to blab like a windbag. I want to go abroad for some peace and quiet."

" At least you have many friends here," Nan said. "Our life in America is very solitary. It would be hard for you to endure a lonely existence in Australia."

"I'm not afraid of loneliness, which is better than hopelessness. This place is totally ruined. You should see what it's like here in the winter-the smog is so thick that sometimes even the sun has changed its color, and whenever you go out, you have to wear a surgeon's mask, or your nose will be blocked by soot. I don't know if you've noticed that millions and millions of Chinese have lung problems, because China has no lungs anymore-all the forests are gone. Worst of all, there are lots of criminals roaming around. Too many people have lost jobs and are desperate to get along by any means. A colleague of mine was stabbed last spring under the bridge right outside our office building, because he didn't have enough cash on him for the mugger. In this place it's impossible to live honestly-you have to lie constantly because everyone else lies. If you don't, others will take advantage of you. In the marketplace more than half the scales are crooked. Our neighbor, Aunt Niu, bought a sack of sweet rice dumplings from a peddler one evening last January, but when she got home she found they were actually frozen donkey droppings. A friend of mine, a policeman, lost his marriage because he returned to the owner a full envelope of cash he'd picked up on a bus. His wife called him 'mental,' and even his parents-in-law said he was a dope."

"Look at it this way, Ning. You're almost thirty-five and don't speak any English. Even if you're lucky and get to Australia eventually after spending a fortune, it will take several years for you to settle down. In a foreign country it's almost impossible to restart your life once you're past forty, unless you have a lot of money or extraordinary talent. The struggle is too overpowering and can drive you out of your mind. Ning, you must think carefully before you decide to go to Australia. To my mind, you belong to this place. At least you have a comfortable job here and people respect you as a reporter."

"Actually, Minyan wants to go abroad more than myself. She's been attending a night school to learn English."

"I see. Think twice before you make up your mind, will you?" "I will."

A man began bellowing a folk song from a rowboat up the bank. A freight train blew its whistle, trundling across the dark, old bridge downstream built by the Japanese more than half a century ago. Numerous lights were already on, flickering lazily on the river. A moment later the two brothers turned back, each wheeling his bicycle with one hand on the handlebar. On their way home Nan gave Ning three hundred dollars and made him promise to let his wife keep the money.

₁₁

NAN gave the same amount of cash to his sister, Ying, who didn't really need the money since her husband owned a profitable landscaping company. But the dollars were a hard currency, which pleased her.

Nan told his parents not to buy braised chicken or fresh fish for him because he ate those things every day in America. He just wanted homely food, like millet porridge, cornmeal gruel, plain noodles with soy paste, fried toon leaves. These things were easy to make. His mother didn't even have to go to the marketplace to buy anything. His aunt, living in the countryside and having four toon trees in her backyard, would mail his parents a large sack of the leaves every spring. Although Nan had missed these foods, he didn't enjoy them as much as he had expected. Somehow everything tasted different from what he'd remembered. Maybe he'd lost some taste buds. Or maybe all the memories of those toothsome foods were just the remaining sensations of his childhood.

The next afternoon he and his mother were at home alone. His father had gone to a memorial service held for a former colleague of his who had just passed away. Putting a clay pot of chrysanthemum tea on the side table for Nan, his mother sat down and sighed.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I miss Taotao."

This was strange, because Nan remembered that she had never liked her eldest grandson and had once even refused to watch over the boy when he and his wife had to attend a meeting together. For that Pingping still held a grudge against her. Nan told his mother, "Don't worry about him. He's fine. He's a stellar student and will have a good future." "I want to see him."

"All right, I'll talk to Pingping and see if we can bring him back next summer. That way he can learn some Chinese from you and my dad. "

"No, I want to go to America to see him and Pingping." "Why do you have to go yourself? At your age it's not safe to travel that far."

"Why? I'm not that old." True, she had just turned sixty-five. "I'll try to send Taotao back to stay with you next summer, all right?"

" I want to see America myself. "

" Mom, you have a very comfortable life here. If you fall ill there, you could die abroad. Don't you have arteriosclerosis and dizzy spells?"

"I'm well now, and I'd like to see America before I die." "Truth be told, for old people life there is harder than here." "I don't mind. I can work." "Work, at your age?"

"Yes, there's no shame in working. Everybody knows how easy it is to make money in America. After you gave us the cash the day before yesterday, your dad said to me, 'Damn, we've never had so much money in our whole life. See how easy it was for Nan to toss out a thousand dollars. In just twelve years he has become such a rich man.' My son, you know, that amount you gave us is enough for us to live on for a whole year."

"We make more there but have to spend more too."

"Don't you own a restaurant?"

" Yes, I do. "

" I can work for you. I can make dumpling wrappers, wonton wrappers, noodles, all kinds of buns and pies. For five dollars an hour I can earn forty a day. In a year that'll be more than ten thousand, enough for your dad and me to spend in our remaining years. Nan, I'll stay with you just a year and then I'll come back. Please take me to America."

"How about my dad in the meantime?"

"He'll stay home."

"But he can't cook."

"He can always hire a maid."

Nan realized that his father wouldn't go because he had many friends here, because he could play mah-jongg every night, and also because he'd have to be around to collect their pensions and take care of this home. Nan said, "I'll have to talk with Pingping about this. I can't decide by myself."

His mother's face dropped and a few folds appeared on her throat. She said, "Who's the boss in your home? If you insist on your right as her husband, of course Pingping will obey you."

"Mom, I can't do that. She owns half the business too. We two are partners, like a team."

She seemed to intuit that Pingping wouldn't let her come to America because the two of them had never gotten along. She sighed and went on in a flat voice, "You're not your old self anymore. Having your wife, you no longer need your old mother, the same as your brother and sister. Heartless. Every one of you is heartless." She pursed her lips, her nose crinkled.

Nan wanted to say, "Where were you when Pingping suffered and struggled with me all these years? Did you ever weep with me when we lost our baby? Were you ever worried when we couldn't pay our bills? You only know how to take advantage of us and ask for money. Greedy. Both of you are greedy." But he held his tongue, lowered his eyes, and muttered, "Mother, you don't know how hard life has been for Pingping and me. If she were another woman, she'd have walked out on me long ago. She's the mainstay of our family."

" I see, your old mother is useless to you now. " She rose and shuffled away. Her shoulders sagged.

Nan rested his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. The conversation saddened him. He remembered how the day before, when he mentioned Pingping's miscarriage, his mother had merely said, "If you're more filial to your parents, no misfortune like that will strike again." Those words still rankled him. Now how could he make her understand that she was no longer a member of his immediate family? How could he convince her that Pingping was the only person he could rely on? Greedy and vain, his mother just dreamed of making a fortune and showing off to her neighbors and friends. Ning had told him that their parents often bragged to others about going to America for a vacation and to see their grandson. His mother had even promised some friends of hers that she'd persuade Nan to help their children study in the United States when the kids grew up. As a result, many people had begun to ingratiate themselves with his parents. Nan realized that the old man and woman couldn't possibly commiserate with him and Pingping over the fear and misery they had gone through in America. How lonely he felt in his parents' home, as though he hadn't grown up in this very apartment. Perhaps he shouldn't have come back in the first place.

₁₂

"I CANNOT imagine marrying a man younger than myself." That sentence, spoken by Beina sixteen years before, had been reverberating in Nan 's mind ever since he'd been home. In fact, she was just four months older than he. His memory of the proposal still stung him. Fat snowflakes had fluttered around as he proposed to her, saying he'd do everything to make her happy, including most of the household chores. He also promised her that they'd eventually live in a city south of the Yangtze River because she disliked the cold climate here. And with trepidation he waited for her answer. A few sleepy birds croaked in the treetops, whose branches had all caked into masses of snow. Her voice was flippant, which unsettled him, though he had steeled himself for the worst. When the final answer came, he felt crushed and wounded, leaning against the bole of a young birch crusted with ice. "I've got to go now. Good night," she said, and walked away, fading into the darkness. Tears, hot and unstoppable, coursed down his face.

If only he had cut his ties with her right then and there. But instead, he had returned to her later on and gotten enmeshed deeper and deeper in her maze.

For several days now he had been thinking about her. Has she been happy? What does she look like now? Like a middle-aged woman? That's unlikely. She always knew how to take care of herself. Does she still remember me? Does her husband, that fellow with a rabbit face, really love her? Would she like to see me? Will my reappearance disturb her? What does she do? Still working as a translator in the information office of the sewing machine factory?

He hadn't asked his siblings about Beina, and nobody had mentioned her either. But he was determined to see her before returning to America. He wouldn't expect to rekindle her feelings for him. All he wanted was to see her once more so that he could preserve her in his memory as a lovely woman beyond his reach, as someone who still possessed his soul, so that the flames of inspiration would blaze in him again.

On Sunday morning he set out for Daoli District, for Beina's home. He walked the entire two miles, first along Thriving Peace Street and then along Worker and Peasant Boulevard. The poplars on the sidewalks were twice as large as when he had last seen them, but most buildings alongside the streets were grimier as if coated with coal dust. Since coming back, he had taken some herbal boluses that helped relieve his allergy, so he could breathe normally now. He turned onto a small lane after he passed the sewing machine factory, which, according to one of the signs on the gate pillars, now manufactured motorcycles as well. He found Beina's bungalow easily, which was tucked away behind two rows of tenements and which he had thought might have been torn down. This Japanese-style house had appeared in his mind from time and time, usually surrounded by cherry blossoms and tulips, but now, standing before it, he saw only a few aspens that seemed to have withered. The grape arbor and espalier that used to shade the east side of the house were gone, replaced by a small garden grown with eggplants, bell peppers, tomatoes, fava beans. The large willow under which he had often watched Beina's window on the second floor looked ragged, as if it had been struck by lightning, its stringy branches floating in the breeze. He stood under the tree for a while to collect himself. Then with a throbbing heart he climbed up the brick steps and knocked on the door. He backed up a little, his stomach aflutter.

A noise came from inside, and a svelte young woman in a pastel sundress came out. She looked familiar, but Nan wasn't sure if he had ever met her. "Who are you looking for?" she asked in a voice full of sleep, her eyes fixed on him.

"Beina Su. This is still her home, isn't it?"

" Sure. Do I know you?"

"I'm Nan Wu."

The woman's eyes widened with a dreamy light. "Oh, I heard of you. Come in. I'm Beiya, Beina's half sister."

She showed him into the spic-and-span living room. Once he had sat down on a chintz sofa, she asked what he'd like to drink, tea or beer. The latter was a household beverage in Harbin, enjoyed by both men and women, even by children. "Just boiled water will be fine," Nan told her.

Having placed a cup of tepid water before him, she sat down and said, "So you went with Beina for some time, didn't you? In fact, she often mentioned you. Didn't you go to America in the eighties?"

"Yes, twelve years ago."

Nan scrutinized her face. Her little nose and thick-lashed eyes didn't resemble Beina's at all. A baby boy in blue open-seat pants was playing with a rubber ball in the room. He wagged his fleshy buttocks as he crawled and toddled around, chasing the ball. Beiya lifted him up and sat him on her lap.

"Your sister men-mentioned me?" Nan 's voice caught. He lifted the cup and took a gulp, the water reeking of chlorine.

"Yes. She said you must be a rich man by now."

"I'm just getting by."

"So you haven't met Beina in America?"

"What? You mean she's in the States too?"

"Yes, in Illinois."

"She's there alone?"

"No, with her family."

"When did she leave?"

"About five years ago."

"Oh, if only I had known." Stupefied, he suddenly felt drained. A strange emotion overcame him, as if he had been taken in. He asked for Beina's address and phone number, which her half sister jotted down for him with a red fountain pen. By her manner and knowing smile he guessed she knew Beina had once turned down his proposal. In her voice there seemed a touch of sadness and sympathy.

"How is she doing in Illinois?" he managed to ask.

"She complains a lot. She's working hard to support her family."

"In the beginning it's always hard. You have to struggle to put down roots in America. Usually it takes ten years to settle down."

" So you already have a green card?" "I'm naturalized."

"That's awesome. My sister hasn't got her green card yet."

"That shouldn't be difficult for her." He grimaced.

He wanted to ask more about Beina, but restrained himself. The baby was hungry and wanted to suckle, so Nan seized the moment Beiya turned to give her breast to her son and got up to take his leave.

On his way back he felt dazed, dragging himself eastward absent-mindedly. His hand patted the trunks of the poplars lined along the sidewalk as he passed them. Some pedestrians turned to look at him as if he were a lunatic. Approaching home, he forgot to enter the compound through the back alley. Instead, he walked into the front gate and even nodded at the people sitting in the guard office. One man recognized him and pointed him out for the others in the room. A few men gathered at the opened window to observe Nan, who was an overseas Chinese now. They whispered, "Look at his face, so pink. He must've drunk cow's milk every day."

Nan pretended he hadn't heard them. However, the moment he rounded the corner of the first building, Uncle Zhao appeared, holding a galvanized kettle. The mousy old man, pock-faced and beetle-browed, froze midstride, then approached Nan, saying, "Big nephew, you don't remember me? No? You have such a short memory."

Nan recognized him, but also remembered his father's admonition to avoid this old codger. He forced a smile, his face blushing blotchily. "Of course I know you, Uncle Zhao. How are you?"

"I'm good. When did you come back? Why didn't your father breathe a word?" He looked upset, a frown gathering on his bulging forehead.

"I didn't tell him about my return either. I'm on a business trip and dropped in to see my parents." " Have you been home for days?"

"No, I arrived yesterday." Nan had to lie to exonerate his father. "Uncle Zhao, I've got to go. My mother's waiting for me."

"I understand." Despite saying that, the old man looked sour, his face a little crumpled as if Nan had slighted him.

Uncle Zhao phoned early that afternoon to invite Nan and his father over for dinner the next evening. Nan's father kept thanking him while apologizing for Nan 's inability to come. He said, "He's leaving tomorrow morning. He didn't plan to come home. He just took a break from his business engagement in Beijing…No, this evening is out of the question. We're going to Peacock Pavilion for a family gathering. Nan hasn't seen his nephew and niece yet.…You see, he's really in a hurry… Ahem, why did you say that? Of course he's grateful. Only because he doesn't have time to see anybody here. Listen, Old Zhao, he brought back something for you. I won't tell you what it is now…Don't work up your temper like this, all right?… I'll see you soon." He hung up.

Nan was uneasy about his father's promise to Uncle Zhao and said, "What are you going to give him?"

" That will be up to you. How much do you want to spend?" His father grinned, a tea leaf on his eyetooth.

"I don't have time to get anything for him."

"No problem. You can leave some money with me, and I'll buy a gift for him and say you brought it back."

"But he'll be able to tell it's a hoax."

"Don't worry about that. Give me two hundred dollars."

"For what?"

"I can buy a small air conditioner for him. It isn't much, really. You owe him-he gave you four of his best paintings. Any one of them could be worth that amount. This is cheaper than to arrange his visit to America, isn't it? He always dreams of holding a one-man show there."

"All right, all right."

Nan took out his billfold and gave his father four fifties. He felt this was a good arrangement, since he'd have to repay the debt to Uncle Zhao one way or another. If he had gone to the old man's home for dinner, he was sure that the geezer would have tried every way to make him promise to help arrange a show of his paintings and calligraphy in New York, or D.C., or Atlanta. He was afraid of meeting that monomaniac again.

₁₃

AFTER a series of loud hisses, the train bound for Beijing thumped, threw Nan forward a bit, then began pulling out of the Harbin station. He waved good-bye to his parents and siblings on the platform. His mother and sister broke into tears while his eyes filled too. He felt he might never be back again.

He was seated in a sleeper compartment and rested his cheek against the frame of the window. Outside, the grassland slid by. The convex plain stretched into a mist wavering in the distance. Along the railroad track a low fog was gathering, so thick that the nearby fields seemed covered by a layer of fresh snow. A moment later a swarm of town houses emerged, surrounded by vegetable fields in which women and old men were squatting on their haunches, tending seedlings or spreading manure with bare hands. Nan could tell that the ceramic-tiled houses, before which were parked some cars of Japanese and German makes, were inhabited mostly by rich people. Satellite dishes stuck out of the roofs like huge mushrooms. If he had moved back to this city, he could have afforded to live in such a place, but he'd have felt uncomfortable about the sight of the poor peasants who toiled in the fields in the same way as their ancestors had done centuries before. It seemed that the harder they worked, the poorer these people would get.

Villages and hamlets came up and flitted away. They hadn't changed, and some showed little life in them except for a few columns of cooking smoke rising from the thatched roofs. In front of a schoolhouse a bunch of children chased a soccer ball, all wearing nothing above the waist. Nan guessed that perhaps most of the able hands in the villages had left to seek work in towns and cities.

Indeed, many of the fields looked disused, as if the people had abandoned the land, whose dark soil is so rich that the plain is known as China 's "granary."

In the same compartment sat two other passengers, a bulky old woman and a trim salesman. They were chatting about bureaucratic corruption while smoking a pack of Red Pagoda Hill cigarettes. The heavy-faced woman, who must once have been a ranking official, kept saying she missed the leadership of Chairman Mao, who had been not only concerned about common people's livelihood but also cleaner than any of the current national leaders. Her words put Nan in mind of the memoir by Mao's personal doctor published in the United States recently, which debunked the myth of the great man's integrity and honesty. Evidently these people here didn't have access to a book like that. They had no idea of the huge royalties Mao had reaped from his own books, particularly the little red one, during the time when in the whole country no one else received royalties and all writers had been paid merely small contribution fees. Neither did they know that the great leader had bedded women like changing clothes.

The squint-eyed salesman sighed and said one of his cousins' families was so impoverished that they hadn't been able to send their son, whose stomach was perforated by an ulcer, to the hospital and instead had hired a sorcerer to chant and dance around to exorcise the evil spirit said to have possessed the boy. As a consequence, they'd lost their only son. But in their local county many officials had used public funds to build houses for themselves, some even for their mistresses, and one bureaucrat had constructed a mansion for his grandchild, who wasn't even conceived yet.

The woman sighed and told the man, "I've seen so many poor people these days that I often wonder why we Communists started the revolution in the first place. My maid's brother in the countryside named his little daughter 'Color TV,' because he and his wife always dream of having a television set."

Reluctant to join them in their conversation, Nan climbed to the top berth and lay down to doze off despite the clip-clop-clip-clop drumming of the wheels. To some extent, he regretted having come back to see his parents and siblings, who seemed more distant from him than ever before. He wondered why so many overseas Chinese would retire to this mad country where you had to bribe and feast others to get anything done. Clearly a person like him wouldn't be able to survive here. Now he wanted all the more to live and die in America. How he missed his home in Georgia.

₁₄

DANNING told Nan that Shaoya, Mrs. Liu, whose husband had passed away five weeks before, wanted to see him. Nan had liked Mr. Liu, though he didn't share his nationalistic zeal. He had always felt that the old man was partly blinded by his patriotism. Danning called a cab and together the two of them set out for the Lius'. Although the distance was less than three miles, it took them almost forty minutes to get there. The streets were jammed with traffic-automobiles, bicycles, tricycles, and even a few horse carts. Nan wondered why so many people wanted to buy cars in Beijing. He had seen a row of Cadillacs and BMWs parked before a multistory apartment building. Beyond doubt, some of the families had put more money into their vehicles than into their housing.

Shaoya received Nan and Danning warmly and brewed a pot of Puer tea for them. Wearing a puce tunic, she looked slightly older than she had eight years ago, but her face was sunny, as if she enjoyed living alone. She had a favor to ask Nan. Her husband's dying wish was to have his ashes taken to Canada, where their daughter was studying chemistry at the University of Alberta. Shaoya wanted Nan to help realize Mr. Liu's wish-once he took the ashes to the United States, he could mail them to their daughter from there.

The request surprised Nan and evoked mixed feelings in him. Mr. Liu had been a fervent patriot, but why would he want to have his cremains shipped out of their native land? Had he changed his mind about China? Didn't he love this country anymore? He must have been bitterly disillusioned. Nan 's mind was spinning with questions, yet he said to Shaoya, "I can take his ashes with me, but I can't guarantee you that they'll reach your daughter."

" China 's customs may confiscate them," added Danning.

She said, "I've thought about the risk too, but I can't mail them from here. Our mail is monitored."

"How about letting me take half his ashes?" Nan suggested. "Just in case the customs seize them."

"That's what my husband desired-he wanted a part of him to remain in China. I packed only half the cremains."

She got up and went into an inner room. Nan sighed and sipped the hot tea, which tasted a little grassy. Danning whispered to him, "Mr. Liu used to say he wanted to be buried in a clean place."

"Do you think he missed North America?"

"Probably. He once said he wanted to 'uncage' his soul."

Shaoya returned with a package the size of a brick, tightly wrapped with blue plastic cloth, a small envelope taped to its top containing a letter for her daughter, and she placed the parcel on the tea table. Nan lifted it with both hands. It was light, less than a pound. Carefully he put it into his shoulder bag.

They went on talking about some common acquaintances living in New York City. Shaoya said she wished she could have lived in America three more years so that she could have earned enough points to qualify for U.S. Social Security, but she'd had to return with her dying husband the year before. Now she depended on the remittances her daughter sent from Canada, because her salary was just enough for food and rent. She planned to leave China, but it looked as though she might not be able to do that in the near future. The police had kept her passport and wouldn't return it to her.

Coming out of the Lius', Danning took Nan to a nearby street, saying they should see another person before heading home. Nan followed his friend into a brick building that housed the headquarters of an American fast food company named Cheers. They went up in an elevator to the third floor and found the accounting department. In a stentorian voice Danning greeted the secretary, a young woman wearing eyeliner so thick that it appeared as if her lids had grown into multiple folds. He told her, "I want to see your boss."

"She's on the phone."

"Tell her an old friend is here to see her."

"All right." She turned away as if eager to interrupt her boss.

Suddenly the silver cell phone on her belt chimed and she switched it off.

"Heavens, that sounded like a fire alarm and scared a sweat out of me," said Danning.

Tittering, she nodded at him, then went into the office.

To Nan 's astonishment, Yafang Gao came out, smiling and waving at Danning. "Welcome," she said pleasantly in English. She wore wire-rimmed glasses, a beige Peter Pan-collared pantsuit, and open-toe stilettos. Though trimmer than before, she looked aged and had laugh lines. At first she didn't recognize Nan, but then her face lit up and she held out her hand. " Nan Wu! When did you come back?"

"A few days ago."

" Are you going to work in Beijing?"

"No, I'm leaving for the States tomorrow morning." As he spoke, he saw a shadow cross her face. She kept fluttering her eyelashes.

She took them into her office. Walking behind her, Nan noticed that one of her high heels was shorter than the other one. The moment they sat down on the sectional leatherette sofas, the secretary came in with a tray holding three cups of coffee. Yafang was the director of the accounting department here, and her company had a number of fast food chains in China. As she lifted her cup with her left hand, Nan saw a diamond ring on her finger and remembered she was a lefty. Obviously she was engaged or married, but he wasn't sure if he should ask her about that. They talked about life in Beijing and about those who had returned from abroad. Many of them had made a fortune, owning houses, cars, and even companies, but the pressure was tremendous as a result of cutthroat competition in the business world. Nan didn't say much about his life in Georgia and just told her that he still ran his tiny restaurant and still tried to write poetry, but in English now. He expected she'd comment on his persistency in writing, but she didn't respond to that. He felt a little mortified and believed that to her he must be a poor man and probably a failure.

Although she invited them to lunch at a nearby Korean restaurant, Nan declined, saying he had to go shopping for his family in the afternoon. She didn't insist and rose to see them leave. In the hallway, Danning went into the men's room, leaving Nan alone with Yafang. She stepped closer and whispered to him, "I was a silly girl when I went to America seven years ago. I'll appreciate it if you don't talk to others about what happened to me."

"I'm not a chatterbox. My lips are sealed." Indeed, Nan had never mentioned Heng Chen's assaulting her to anyone except for Pingping.

"I've tried so hard to forget that nightmare, but I can't. It still hurts."

"Think of it this way: Heng Chen has got what he deserves and is totally ruined. You're doing so well now-that's the best revenge."

She smiled, this time gratefully. "I know you're a gentleman, Nan. Sometimes I miss New York, but this is home."

"I wish I could say that." His throat contracted, his voice a bit shaky.

She looked him in the face, her eyes radiating a tender light. She said, "You must have a happy family. Few men who come back from America are as calm as you."

"I'm lucky that my wife prefers a solitary life."

Danning appeared down the hall, coming up to them. Yafang hugged Nan and said, "Take care. Good luck with your writing."

"My, that's really close," Danning said to her. "You always just shake my hand."

Before she could respond, the elevator jingled and opened, and they both stepped into it. On their way out, Danning told Nan that Yafang's husband was a senior official in the Trade Ministry, a man about town who had earned a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. The husband and wife were popular and influential figures in the business circle in Beijing, also notable for their private foundation that funded several elementary schools in the countryside. Danning had known them for just about a year. In fact Yafang had said a lot of good things about Nan.

₁₅

NAN returned to Atlanta bone tired and with a stomachache. Ping-ping massaged his back to help him get the gas out, but she couldn't stop his fits of hiccups. As she was working on him, she asked, "What did you eat that gave you so much gas?"

"Nothing indigestible. I was just disappointed."

He told her how his mother wanted to come to work for them and how Uncle Zhao still set his sights on holding a one-man show in America. The whole trip had been mostly torture, and he should have listened to Pingping, who had warned him not to go. He had just wasted time and money. "I felt out of place wherever I went in China," he told her. "Trash, trash everywhere, so many places were like a garbage dump. I had an awful time, awful."

Pingping was relieved that he hadn't promised his mother anything. She not only disliked the old woman but also was frightened of her. Every once in a while she'd have nightmares in which her mother-in-law jabbed her fingers at her face, sneering or calling her names. From the first days of their marriage she had wanted to live as far away as possible from Old Yulan, Nan 's mother, yet Pingping could never break off with her completely, no matter where she was. Whenever she opened a letter from her, she couldn't help but shudder a little, and she often heard her abrasive voice at night. If only she could banish that old woman from her mind altogether. On the other hand, she liked her father-in-law and felt grateful to him because the old man had often carried Taotao astride his neck and allowed the boy to play in his large office. Once Taotao squeezed his grandfather's toothpaste all over his desk and sofas, but the old man didn't throw a fit and just made him promise not to do it again. So the five hundred dollars Nan had given his father didn't bother her, and even the money for an air conditioner for Uncle Zhao was well spent, having cleared the debt they had owed him.

With more devotion Nan resumed working at the Gold Wok, and the long hours didn't bother him as much as before. He was grateful to Pingping, who had over the years spent more time at the restaurant than himself. For better or worse, this place was their own, and with it they could make an honest, decent living. But a few weeks later Nan grew restless again, scribbling poems whenever he had free time. A new concern began to trouble him as well. By now they had saved almost $30,000, and the money, sitting in the bank, would hardly accrue. Should they buy another restaurant? He and Ping-ping talked about this but couldn't decide what to do, because a new business would mean they'd have to hire some people, whose wages would consume most, if not all, of the profit.

Then Janet suggested that Pingping consider buying some stocks. She loaned her a few issues of Money magazine. Through reading them Pingping began to understand what mutual funds were. Janet also told the Wus that Dave's retirement money had been invested entirely in mutual funds, so Nan and Pingping were convinced that it wouldn't be too risky to buy the stocks. They bought $20,000 worth of 500 Index. From then on Pingping would pay close attention to the Dow Jones, but Nan didn't bother to think about money. He was occupied with work and some poetry books.

Recently he had fallen in love with a volume of poems, The Lost Geography, by Linda Dewit, who lived in Vermont according to the biographical note on the back of the book. He liked her dark lyricism, which reminded him of Kent Philips's paintings. How strange this coincidence was. That man painted landscapes in Montana, whereas the old poet wrote about people and things in New England, but their works seemed to have some kindred spirit. Perhaps the dark luminosity had stemmed not from without but from within, from the depths of their souls. Nan also believed that the beauty of Dewit's poetry might be due to the always present awareness of mortality in the speaker's mind, even when she celebrated nature and life. Her lines were elegant, supple, honest, and always intelligent, for example, "Imagine, in a northern dusk / even a breeze brings you extra light," and "I hate the erosion of your affection / and will stop wearing smiles." Nan was fascinated and pored over Linda Dewit's poems whenever he was free. He even hand-copied the pieces he liked most.

One day he was surprised to receive a letter from Bao Yuan. His friend had written on the inside of a card bearing a pair of swans in rippling water:

August 26, 1997

Dear Nan,

By the time you read this letter I'm already on my way back to China. Life in America is too difficult for me, and I am reluctant to have my wife live here. She is the youngest child of her family and might not be able to endure the loneliness or survive the struggle we would have to wage if I stayed. Besides, her parents wouldn't let her live far away from home. Also, they are obssessed with their granddaughter, my baby girl. Now that I am a U.S. citizen, I can travel back and forth, so I made up my mind to settle down in our homeland. I'm sure I will miss the Blue Ridge Mountains, but I plan to stay and work on the mountain for three or four months a year. That's to say, from now on I will live as a world citizen. When I come back, I'll let you know beforehand. Meanwhile, may your business and writing both flourish.

As ever,

Bao

To Nan, Bao had been a remarkable success, so the letter threw him deep into thought. What had made Bao retreat to China? Hadn't he already bought a building lot for his future home in Cobb County? Why had he changed his plan all of a sudden? He seemed to have given up too easily. Clever, that man was too clever.

Nan couldn't picture Bao's actual situation, but he was sure that the reasons his friend mentioned in the letter might not be the real ones. He suspected that Bao must have suffered a setback in his art. Perhaps his agent, Ian Bernstein, had lost interest and confidence in him after the debacle of Bao's Shanghai series. In retrospect, Nan could see that this had been bound to happen, since Bao rushed too much and fell prey to moneygrubbing instead of aspiring to a higher order of artistic achievement. Even in this capitalist land a true artist ought to spurn the temptation of money. Indeed, China was probably more suitable for a man like Bao. Nan thought of writing back, but his friend had given no return address. Bao must have left in a hurry.

Later Nan heard that Frank, the lawyer, had sold the piece of land on which Bao's studio sat to a developer, which all of a sudden rendered his teacher homeless in this country.

₁₆

ONCE in a while Nan would call Dick using phone cards he had bought at the World Bookstore; calls within the United States were only three cents a minute, and they didn't show up on the phone bill, so Pingping couldn't complain or suspect that Dick might mislead Nan into something shady or even take him away from her. In the fall Dick invited Nan to visit him, saying that if Nan liked the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he would try to get a scholarship for him, provided Nan worked hard on his poetry and came up with some strong writing samples with which Dick could convince his colleagues of his talent. Despite his distrust of such workshops, Nan was intrigued and eager to see his friend. Pingping wasn't happy about the idea and said to him, "You just came back from China two months ago. You can't leave this place to me again."

"Only this once, please. I won't do it again, I promise."

"No."

"Please let me go and see what the writers' workshop is like." "I've said no."

That topic came up every day, and a week later Pingping caved. They asked Shubo to stand in for Nan and he agreed readily. Shubo was unemployed again because the marble quarry had shut down. Mr. Mu, the backup chef, had left for Alabama to work for his nephew who had just opened a restaurant in Mobile. Though Shubo couldn't cook as well as Nan, Pingping could give him a hand in the kitchen if need be. Nan promised his wife he would be away for just five days at most.

There was another motivation he hadn't revealed to Pingping, namely that he planned to visit Beina on this trip. He knew this was crazy and that the woman might not be pleased to see him, but he couldn't help himself, as if a supernatural force possessed him, driving him toward her. To his mind, even if she wasn't happy about his reappearance, the sight of his first love in this land might rekindle the intense passion he needed for writing poetry, for which he wouldn't mind exposing himself to new wounds.

He knew he was acting like a reckless, love-crazed youth, but despite his uneasiness, he couldn't wait to see her-as if his sanity depended on such a meeting. He was going to drive the hatchback he had bought secondhand the previous winter after his old Ford's clutch had gone. This reliable Dodge should make the trip enjoyable and less tiring.

He set out before daybreak on Monday, September 22, and drove northwest along I-75 and then switched to I-24. He enjoyed driving through the mountains and forests in Tennessee, but Kentucky was a bit too flat to him, although the cruise was smooth and pleasant, there being little traffic. Now and then a shower blurred the view of farmsteads-the corn, soybean, and tobacco fields, some of which had just been cut, were a dappled brown. At some places kudzu had engulfed abandoned farmhouses, shacks, and barns. Nan disliked this kind of lush vegetation because it suggested there were snakes and animals lurking in it. He often missed the forests in the North, which had a sparse undergrowth. Toward evening, a fog began gathering and even obscured the road signs along the way, so he got off I-57 and checked into the Thrifty Inn at Mt. Vernon, Illinois. The motel was in a three-story brick building, its rooms having wide windows. A plump woman at the front desk gave Nan a clean, comfortable room on the top floor, which was five dollars cheaper than those below. Nan cooked himself noodle soup for dinner and ate it directly from the pot, with a jar of kimchee, while watching a CNN interview with a blue-helmeted general of the U.S. peacekeeping force in Bosnia. After a hot shower, he went to bed and slept nine hours on end.

He didn't make breakfast the next morning and just ate two chocolate cookies and drank a large mug of coffee provided by the motel in its lobby around the clock. He set off rather late, after eight, because there were only about four hundred miles left.

It was a fine day and the farmland was dark, loamy, and boundless. The land was so flat that even the sky seemed lower than the day before. At one place a swarm of windmills was scattered among prairie grass like a flock of giant birds in flight. Nan especially enjoyed seeing the corn and soybean fields, in some of which combines were rolling, often accompanied by trucks. He was amazed to see cascades of the kernels pour into the backs of the trucks directly so that the farmers wouldn't have to do threshing and winnowing afterward. He had seen harvesters of a less advanced type back in the northeast of China, but they had all been owned by the state farms, each of which consisted of at least five hundred people. In contrast, here every individual family used such a machine.

Pulling up on the roadside, Nan stepped out of his car and sat down on the grass to watch a combine reaping corn. The sight touched him as he remembered that in middle school the students of his grade had once gone to the countryside to help the peasants gather in crops. After all the ears of corn in a field had been plucked off by hand the previous day, each of his grade-mates took charge of a row and sickled down the plants, which the villagers would peel and use the skins to weave mats. How tedious and backbreaking that work was! Within two hours most of them began to complain of backaches and had blisters on their hands, yet they had to continue for a whole day to finish cutting that field of corn plants. By comparison, here the combines shredded the stalks and left them in the fields to fertilize the soil. Furthermore, a regular-size field here, much larger than those in China, could be harvested by two people in just a few hours. As Nan was observing the rolling machines and remembering how human labor had been wasted back in China, tears welled in his eyes and blurred his vision. He wished he could tarry longer to watch the harvesting some more.

The vast land was so sparsely populated that occasionally it looked desolate. Some farmsteads were decayed-the red barns with gam-brel roofs, the silos topped with silver domes, and even the white farmhouses seemed to have fallen into disrepair, though beyond them meadows were dotted with fresh hay bundles and with milk cows grazing indolently. Nan couldn't help but wonder how lonesome those farmers living far away from the highways must have felt, especially in the wintertime when they were snowed in.

He didn't reach Iowa City till six p.m. as a result of an accident near Davenport -an eighteen-wheeler sideswiped a pickup and caused a standstill on the highway. Without difficulty he found Dick's apartment in a brick building with a mansard roof. Dick was relieved to see that Nan had arrived safely. He had to moderate a students' reading that evening, and Nan was too exhausted to go with him. Instead, Nan took a shower, then cooked himself a simple meal. After dinner, he looked through Dick's collection of poetry books, most of them hardbacks, which filled four tall bookcases. Dick also had hundreds of CDs and DVDs, some of which were Hong Kong kung fu movies. Nan was fascinated but too tired to go through all the disks stacked against the wall. He made his bed on the long sofa in the study and lay down to sleep, having left the floor lamp on.

A frost fell that night, and the city was blazingly bright the next morning, the warm sun shining on the streets, roofs, electrical wires, and trees, though the sidewalks were plastered with wet leaves. Nan loved the cool weather and took a walk in the bracing air. Dick didn't accompany him because he had to prepare for the afternoon poetry workshop and would have meetings the whole morning. Nan enjoyed seeing a few white houses with red roofs, red jalousies, and red porches, as if they were gigantic toys. Passing a small pond, he came upon some yellow lotus flowers, which he had never seen before and which, though wilting, delighted him. A few lotus pads were as big as coffee tables. And with a flashing plop, a tiny fish skipped out, disappeared, and left behind expanding ripples. Strolling on such a fall morning in this midwestern town, he felt rejuvenated and full of expectations, as if he were a graduate student again. The dark soil of the roadside fields smelled familiar and brought Manchuria back to his mind. Now and then one or two cyclists passing by would greet him heartily or give him a cheerful nod.

Early in the afternoon he went to Dick's workshop. He found the Creative Writing Program easily, in a white wooden colonial on North Clinton Street, its shutters, windows, doors, and eaves all blackish green. Before its front entrance stood a young oak and around the house were maples, their leaves showing their pale undersides whenever a wind ruffled them. The interior of the house was much nicer than its exterior, with fine woodwork and a few stained-glass windows. The seminar room was in the back of the first floor, and Nan went in without saying a word to anyone. Sitting against a wall, he quietly observed the students seated around two large tables pushed together. At the other side of the room stood a tall metal cabinet. Dick didn't introduce Nan to the class and just mentioned they had a visitor today, then he went ahead to conduct the workshop. Behind him two chalkboards hung on the wall; one of them still bore three lines left by a past class illustrating the metrical pattern, marked with alliterative ticks. Nan liked the ambience of the seminar, which was cozy and informal. Most of the aspiring poets were smart and articulate, full of nervous energy, but he wasn't impressed by the poems being discussed, which were too light and too arty to him. One piece addressed the speaker's own breasts as a pair of little friends, and another was about the palatal sensations produced by mint chocolate.

These beginning writers seemed quite fragile and seemed to be writing poetry mainly for themselves or for an elite readership. True, they argued heatedly with reddened cheeks, flashing eyes, and sly smirks, but the passion seemed to have originated more from personal feelings and the obsession with linguistic devices than from the love for ideas and deep emotions. To a degree, poetry had become an esoteric art here, somewhat deprived of its vitality and earnestness. It was hard for Nan to imagine fitting in such a group. He was afraid they might laugh at his ineptitude for English and attack him where he was weak.

A passionate exchange broke out between a Latino man and a myopic blonde over whether it was music or meaning that gave poetry the power to captivate the audience. The man, wearing a crew cut and an earring, emphasized that genuine poetry must sing, like the blues, and that meaning must come secondarily, whereas the woman argued that melodic sounds without meaning would be empty and valueless, so semantics ought to take priority in poetic composition. While she was speaking, she kept glancing at Nan over the top of her rimless glasses as if she expected him to disagree with her. Dick intervened and talked about "the auditory understanding," saying that sometimes even though we didn't get the meaning of a poem, we could still be moved just by listening to it, so there must be some inherent connection between the sound and the meaning. Ideally speaking, the sound should echo the sense, as Alexander Pope said three centuries ago. Despite the teacher's explication, the two students didn't seem reconciled, staring at each other from time to time. Nan wondered whether there had been some personal friction between them. Dick announced a ten-minute break, and Nan left without returning to the second half of the workshop.

Late in the afternoon, over a glass of Merlot, Dick asked Nan, "What do you think of my students?"

"Very impressive, especially zer nearsighted blonde."

"You mean Samantha, the tall one?"

"Yes. She's smart."

"Samantha knows more than the rest of the class. Actually, she's published a chapbook. Don't you want to come and join us here?"

"I cannot decide now. I have to be very careful about zis. You know I have a family and a business to take care of."

"As I told you before, you should try to become a professional poet eventually." Dick's voice then turned solemn. " 'The intellect of man is forced to choose / Perfection of the life, or of the work.' "

Nan knew he quoted some poet, but whom he couldn't say. He asked, "Why does it have to be one way or zee other? Why can't one have a middle way?"

"Like how?"

"Do you have to live a literary life to produce literary work?"

"Well, poetry has its own logic. If you want to be a poet, you may not have perfection of both the work and the life. It all depends on how much you're willing to sacrifice."

"Is zat why you don't have a family?"

"To some extent, yes."

"Zis is too much for me. Let me think about it, okay? I will let you know my decision soon, very soon."

"All right. Keep in mind that you have talent, but you need to give up a lot in order to develop your talent."

"I can see your lawgic, but I cannot rush to a decision."

"I understand. Some of our students had good jobs before they enrolled in our program. Remember the black guy with a mustache?"

"Yes. He's smart too."

"He used to be a physician in Milwaukee, with an M.D. from Duke. He came to the workshop because he wants to be the next Langston Hughes."

"Well, he would be better awff if he worked as a sailor or waiter."

Dick didn't seem to catch the irony. Yet at his own word "sailor" Nan 's lungs constricted. Before he met Pingping and after Beina had jilted him, he had dreamed of joining the merchant marine and sailing around the world, just as Langston Hughes had once worked on freighters. As a sailor he could have had a lot of time to read and write, which would have been a good way of becoming a writer. He sent query letters, together with his one-page vita, to several marine shipping companies, but none of them bothered to write back. People must have thought he was a freak, since they never expected applications for jobs, which were all assigned by the state regardless of personal preferences.

Dick offered to take Nan to a French place that evening, but Nan preferred not to dine out. He was tired of restaurant food and wanted to have something simple and wholesome. There was some long-grain rice in Dick's cupboard, so Nan boiled porridge and scrambled four eggs with diced tomatoes and panfried a pack of Polish sausages. Dick enjoyed Nan's cooking, which he said was the only thing he missed about Atlanta. They drank two bottles of wine between them and talked deep into the night.

₁₇

DRIVING back by I-74, Nan got off at Red Cedars, Illinois, where Beina was living. On entering the town, he stopped at a food mart and bought a bag of beef jerky for Taotao. He asked a saleswoman for directions, and she said Huron Road was in the north, about half a mile away and close to a cemetery. Without further delay he drove into Red Cedars. It was almost midmorning, yet the town, more like a big village, seemed still asleep, white clapboard houses wet with rainwater and some partly obscured by gray bushes. After Nan passed a traffic light, a cafe appeared, but it looked empty inside despite four cars parked before the yellowish cottage. In some front yards of the homes along the streetside, apples and pears were strewn under trees, half eaten by birds and animals, and yellow jackets buzzed into or exited from the holes in the fruit the birds had made. With little difficulty Nan found Beina's place, a pinkish house with peeling paint and an overhanging second story. It sat on a slope at the end of the narrow street. His heart was thumping. Would she be in there? It was Thursday and she was probably out at work. He went up to the front door and rang the doorbell, but it was either broken or disconnected, no sound coming from inside. So he clanked the brass knocker shaped like a horseshoe, hoping her husband wouldn't be the one to come out.

An old Chinese woman in a powder blue housedress appeared, holding the door ajar. "Who are you looking for?" She sized Nan up, her eyes glassy and shrewd.

"Does Beina Su live here?" asked Nan.

"Yes. You are…?"

"I'm a former classmate of hers, back in China, I mean. Is she home?"

"No." Her face didn't change. "She's at her office, at Fifty-seven Chauncy Street, near McDonald's. Go down the road and take a left at the second light. That's Chauncy. You won't miss it." She pointed at a large orange sign in the south that claimed amazing bargains!

Nan was surprised that she treated him as if he lived nearby. He asked, "Aunt, are you her mother-in-law?"

"Yes. I'm taking care of their kids. My son is in-he's correcting his students' homework. Won't you come in and talk to him?"

" No, no need to trouble him. I have to go along without further delay."

He thanked her and drove away slowly, feeling lucky that he hadn't run into Beina's husband, that rabbit-faced man, who might have been able to guess who he was.

Having taken two turns and passed a few stores and a McDonald's with a fenced-in playground for children, Nan found 57 Chauncy Street, which was a two-story brick building housing several business offices. He regretted not having asked the old woman what kind of work Beina was doing, but looking through the directory in the vestibule, he saw "Oriental Healing Arts Studio" and "Yoga Workshop." He decided to go to room 206 first, where the studio was. As he climbed up the stairs, the wooden steps edged with cleated iron sheets, sharp creaks shot up from under his feet. He tried to walk lightly; still the noise wouldn't go away. He looked up and could tell that the building must once have been a factory, the ceiling at least fifteen feet high and massive wooden pillars visible in places.

For some reason his heart was calm, as if this were a regular visit to an insurance agent or a physician. Beside the frosted-glass door of room 206 stood a small artificial pear tree in blossom, planted in a plastic pot. Nan knocked on the door, but no one answered. He turned the handle and went in.

At the sound of the door chime, a woman cried from an inner room, "I'll be with you in a minute." Nan recognized Beina's voice, which sounded lively but a little forced, neutral in the tone adopted for business use. She then asked someone in a subdued tone, "How do you feel when I twist this needle?"

"The tingling is gone," said a man.

"And this?"

"Don't feel a thing."

"Good. I can take out the needles now."

Wordlessly Nan sat down on a high-backed bench like the kind in a train station and closed his eyes, his legs crossed at the ankles. On the right-hand wall hung an old oil painting of a windjammer surrounded by rowboats, and on the desk near the window stood a lamp capped with a white metal shade. Again Nan tried to imagine what Beina looked like, but somehow he couldn't conjure up a clear image. He put his thumb on his wrist to feel his pulse, which was unrushed, about seventy a minute. He wondered what was wrong with him.

A tall whiskered man in a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots ambled out of the inner room while saying over his shoulder to Beina behind him, "This really helps me relax. I can sleep much better now."

"I told you so" came her sugary voice.

At the sight of Nan the man called out, "Howdy."

Nan returned the greeting and stood up as the patient made for the door. Beina saw him and came over, stretching out her hand, smiling as if she were expecting him. She wore a pink dress that gave her a flattish figure, and on either of her wrists was a jade bangle. It dawned on Nan that her half sister must have informed her of his appearance at their home in Harbin, and that her mother-in-law must have called her just now; otherwise Beina couldn't possibly have been so at ease. Still, he was puzzled. Hadn't she played fast and loose with his heart? Didn't she feel bad for the wound she had inflicted on him? Didn't she assume he might hate her? Why was she so placid?

" Come sit here," she said with a smile that revealed her tiny canines, and patted the back of a chair next to her desk. After making two cups of tea, she proceeded to sit down in her swivel chair. "What brings you to Red Cedars?" she asked.

"I went to visit a friend at the University of Iowa," Nan said, seated beside the desk. On its mahogany top spread a trapezoid of sunlight. He observed her closely. She was almost a middle-aged woman now, her face slightly sallow, and her bangs had begun to gray. A few thin wrinkles appeared on her neck as she lowered her head. Despite her smiling eyes, despite her full lips, somehow she seemed subdued-the fire, the coquetry, and the insouciance that had once set his entire being aflame were no longer there. Even her voice had lost its crisp, bright timbre. She was just an ordinary woman with listless eyes and an incipient double chin.

Nan tried to appear natural but felt his jaw go stiff whenever he attempted to smile. He kept lifting the tall teacup to his mouth so that he didn't have to face her all the while. He didn't talk about himself and just listened to her. She said she envied him because he had gotten a green card without spending a fortune on an immigration lawyer. If only she and her husband had come to the States before the Tiananmen massacre. That way they too could have been granted permanent residency automatically. Nowadays it was so hard to get the papers that she wasn't even sure if their lawyer could really help them.

Then she offered to take Nan to McDonald's, where they could talk over lunch, but he declined, saying he ate restaurant food every day and the cup of oolong tea she'd made for him was good enough. Also, he'd have to hit the road soon. "Do you like it here?" he asked, hoping she'd say something negative.

"I don't know-I guess I do. Hongbin, my husband, is studying toward his degree, so I have to work to support my family."

"What's he studying?"

"Public health."

"Related to Japan?"

"No, he has almost forgotten his Japanese, which he doesn't use here."

"I see. Does he help you in this studio?"

"No. I do acupuncture by myself, just to make a couple of dollars. I spent a whole year learning how to do it before we came to America, so I passed the exam and got the license here. How about you? I heard you owned several restaurants."

"We have only one, very small, and I don't like running it. I've been writing."

"Nan, I can see you haven't changed much, still a dreamer. Your heart is still young." She smiled and shook her head as if in disapproval.

"I guess so. Besides dreams, what else can I have?" He said that as if to himself, realizing he could no longer share his thoughts with this woman for whom he had almost lost his mind sixteen years ago.

She lifted her teacup and took a sip, then went on telling him more about her life in this town. "Hongbin and I won't mind settling down here. The town has good public schools, well above the average in the state. On top of that, real estate is cheap here. For a hundred and fifty thousand dollars you can buy a big house, even with a pool in the backyard. You saw my mother-in-law just now. She's all right and takes good care of my kids, especially the younger one, just two years old. Did you see my son Michael, the younger boy?"

"No."

"He's absolutely adorable. The problem with my mother-in-law is that she's too stingy and always translates dollars into yuan when she spends money. She can never get accustomed to American life. But she loves my kids and I appreciate that. My kids are the center of my life. Now I know what parental love is like and why Confucius taught people to be filial to their parents. I would do anything for my kids, even die for them. See, I'm a dutiful wife."

"Also a good mother."

"You're right."

"Still, you must rule the roost at home." He managed a smile as a twinge tugged his insides. He raked his fingers through his thick hair.

"Tell me, why did you come to see me?" She curled her lips, her round cheeks coloring a little.

"To see if you're like the Beina I often dreamed of."

"Well, you came too late, to be honest. Eleven years ago I asked you to help me come to the United States, but stupid you, you didn't seize the opportunity. I had no children then and I was thinking of leaving Hongbin. "

"You mean, you might have come to join me here?"

" Well, that was a possibility. I always had a soft spot in my heart for you because you hurt me." "I hurt you?"

" Yes. You gave up on me too easily, as if I was not a woman worth your effort to compete with Hongbin. Worst of all, you burned all the poems you'd written for me. That's like you gave me a gift and then took it back. You humiliated me, you know."

"Wait a minute. I was a poor man you despised, and I couldn't buy you anything like the red scooter Hongbin got for you from Japan. "

"But later you came to America. Couldn't you promise me a red car? Even just lie to me?" She forced a titter in an attempt at levity, her thumb rubbing her ring finger.

" I see. I became a man of means to you, but what made you think I'd be willing to buy you a car?"

"Because you loved me."

"So you believed I would abandon my wife and child for you?"

"Wouldn't you? Didn't you come all the way just to see me? I bet your wife has no idea where you are." Her eyes flashed, and for the first time since he came a familiar vixenish look crept on her face. Then she lifted her chin with annoyance, apparently aware of Nan 's eyes riveted on the pocket of flesh hanging under it.

He said in a half-flippant voice, "Don't assume I'll come and slobber over you whenever you whistle from far away. I'm too old to be a slave of love anymore. Besides, how can you be sure I'm still smitten with you after so many years?"

"I'm your first."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"For a man like you, the first love is always the flame consuming your heart. You cannot stop your torch song."

"You've underestimated me. I know what true love is like now. You've never loved any man devotedly, whereas my wife loves me and is always ready to suffer with me."

"Still, you don't love her, do you? I'm pretty sure you'll come to see me again. But don't take this as an invitation."

" Well, you think you still have your hooks in me?"

"Try to get them out."

"We'll see." He chortled but couldn't laugh it off. His chest tightened.

Deep down, he knew this trip was a mistake-all the years' longing and anguish had been caused by a mere illusion, and all his pain and sighs had been groundless, wasted for the wrong person. What an idiot he had been!

But this disillusionment was perhaps necessary for him to sober up and begin to heal. Indeed, he didn't feel the old numbing pain anymore despite sitting so close to Beina. Something tickled his throat and made him want to laugh, but he checked himself lest he go into hysterics. He felt as if there were a wall between her and him. Probably she had already set up such a barrier in her mind before he came, or such a wall might be just another ploy of hers. Even without her doing that, he could no longer imagine getting closer to her.

A few minutes later he took his leave. A wind swept through the empty street and tossed up a tuft of his hair from behind. He stepped into his car and pulled away. Beina hadn't asked for his phone number or address but had given him her business card, on which a pair of cranes was flying to the realm of longevity. In his heart he knew he wouldn't contact her again. Coasting along the on-ramp to I-74, he rolled down the car window and flung out her card, where it blew into the wild grass.

₁₈

NAN had been ill for several days, though he went to work as usual. The trip to Iowa had plunged him into a depression, also a bone-deep exhaustion. In a way he hated Beina, who had changed so much, or was so different from whom he'd imagined, that she had shattered his vision of her. He felt sick at heart, but he began to be extraordinarily considerate to his wife. Pingping was alarmed by his sudden change and urged him to get some medical attention-at least go see an herbalist, who wouldn't charge a lot. She feared he might be having an early midlife crisis, a sort of male menopause. But he replied, "I have a heart problem no cardiologist can diagnose and no drug can cure. "

Despite his despondency, he resumed working on his poetry, with greater effort. He mailed out another batch of poems to a small journal called Yellow Leaves, which he had noticed published some Asian American authors. He had no hope of acceptance and just submitted his work routinely. He called Dick and told him that he wouldn't be coming to study with him because he preferred to stay with his family. Dick said this would be a huge loss to Nan, who was already forty-one, and that it would be too late to develop his talent if he didn't concentrate or make the necessary sacrifice soon. Nan thanked him, but was adamant about his decision. He knew that from this point on he'd have to be on his own, and that probably Dick and he would drift apart in the future, since as a famous poet Dick always had a crowd around him. In other words, Nan would have to accept isolation as his condition and write for no audience, speaking to emptiness.

One afternoon the phone rang at the Gold Wok; Nan picked it up and heard Danning Meng's hearty voice. "Hey, Nan Wu, I want to see you," his friend said.

"Where are you?" Nan was thrilled.

"I'm in Washington, D.C. "

"Doing what?"

"Attending a writers' conference and doing a tour. A playwright was supposed to come originally, but she had a stroke, so I filled in for her."

"Can you come to Atlanta?"

"Of course. That's why I'm calling."

Danning would stay with the Wus for two days, then go on to catch up with the rest of the Chinese writers' delegation in Oxford, Mississippi, to see the town, the prototype for the capital of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, and to visit the great novelist's home, which was said to have been the biggest house in his hometown when he was alive. Both Nan and Pingping were excited about their friend's visit. That night they tidied up their home a little, though, exhausted by a whole day's work, they couldn't do as much cleaning as they wished. Danning would stay in Nan 's room. Nan was happy to give up his bed to sleep two nights with Pingping, but she frowned when he grinned at her meaningfully. Despite loving him, she didn't like sharing her bed with him, since he'd turn in late, often in the wee hours, and snore loudly. She had to rest well to work the next day and didn't want to have sex too often.

Danning arrived two days later and thanked Nan on behalf of Mrs. Liu for having mailed her husband's ashes to their daughter in Canada. He presented Pingping with four of his books, which didn't impress her much, but she gave him a hug for the gesture. She still couldn't enjoy his fiction. Over the years she had read a number of his novellas and short stories published in magazines and disliked most of them, so she knew what kind of books these were. Despite her low opinion of his writings, she was glad and hospitable since he had come all the way to see them. Also, she was happy in Nan 's happiness.

Danning was very impressed by the Wus' restaurant and brick ranch, and by the lake in their backyard. He walked around the house and said to Nan, "Your home has great feng shui. Look at those trees, absolutely gorgeous. And you own them all. I won't have a blade of grass in Beijing that I can call mine after we move into an apartment building next spring." At the sight of the waterfowl he exclaimed, "My goodness, what a peaceful haven you have here. How nice this all is! I could never dream of living in such a tranquil spot. Nan, you're a lucky man and have everything you want. I'm burning with envy." He sounded sincere, genuinely moved.

At lunch he told Nan, "Your life here is so clean and decent. You made the right choice to remain in America. I wish I hadn't gone back and had stayed to make an honest living like yours."

"But you've become a famous author."

"Others can say that, but I know what I've accomplished- nothing. Serious writings are a kind of extension of one's life. But I've just been wasting my life and making noises that will disappear in the blink of an eye. What price fame? Just more troubles. The only meaningful thing, the only salvation, is your work, but significant work is impossible in China at present. Besides the censorship, the country's too hectic, and everyone is in a rush to grab off something. People are all obsessed with getting rich, and money has become God." He sighed, looking tearful.

Nan said, "You don't know how hard Pingping and I have worked."

" Of course I can imagine that. But you got your reward. You have your own business and your home, and even two cars. You're a solid businessman. Here you do hard work but live comfortably. What's more, Taotao is a fine boy, and you won't have to worry about his education. My daughter is going to take the entrance exams for high school next spring, and she has already started cramming day and night. She loves painting, but we have to dissuade her from planning to major in the fine arts at college. At most she can specialize in ad designing. By contrast, your son can follow his own interests, his own heart. This is a fundamental difference in our children's lives. "

"My son is doing well because his mother has helped him every day."

"You're such a lucky man. Your wife is not only pretty and hardworking but also loyal." Somehow Danning's voice choked. He swallowed and wiped his teary eyes.

"What's wrong?" Nan asked with a start.

Danning heaved a long sigh. "Sirong just had an affair with a colleague of hers. Nowadays it's so common, even fashionable, to have a lover outside your marriage."

Nan ventured, "Does she mean to leave you?"

"No, that's the hardest part. My daughter is very attached to her, more than to my parents, so we have to stay in this marriage."

Later Nan thought about their conversation. He knew Danning had told only his side of the story. He was sure that his friend had seen other women, at least some of the girls in the bars, hair salons, and nightclubs. Indeed, his own philandering might have driven his wife to have the affair, and nobody but himself should be to blame.

The next day Danning wanted Nan to take him to Chinatown. Ping-ping again asked Shubo to stand in for Nan, so after dinner the two friends drove west along Buford Highway toward Chamblee. Entering Norcross, they saw a road gang in orange vests and caps gathering garbage on the roadside, where stood a blue van hauling a trailer loaded with shovels, rakes, and barrels. Danning wondered who these young men were, still working at this hour. "Prisoners," Nan told him.

"This is a good way to reform them. I didn't know American prisoners also work."

" Some of them do. I once saw a prison detail planting trees and flowers."

The sight of the convicts reminded Nan of their mutual friend Hansong, who had gone crazy and shot an old man eight years earlier in Massachusetts after he heard that his girlfriend had disappeared in Tiananmen Square. Nan knew Hansong hadn't completed his prison term when he was deported three years ago. He asked Danning, "Do you happen to know how Hansong is doing?"

"You haven't heard he's married?"

"You mean, he was released from jail?"

"Yes, but he can't find a regular job in China. Nobody wants to take English lessons from him, so he's been a freelance translator." "He was a smart man. What a waste."

Nan felt sad as a lull set in. The traffic light turned red and he hit the brakes. Somehow he caught every red light today, which gave him a premonition that there might be trouble this evening.

As they passed a shopping center near the Korean supermarket, Danning cried, "Stop! Double back. I saw a strip bar over there. Let's go have some fun."

Nan hesitated but jammed on the brakes. He did a U-turn and pulled into the plaza. The parking lot was full, so they left their car behind the building of the strip club, in front of an adult movie theater. Nan wondered if he should go in first to scout this place out, but his friend was already heading toward the bar's front entrance, so he followed him. The second they stepped in, a brawny, hard-faced man boomed at them, "Five dollars a head."

Nan gave him a ten. It was foggy and clamorous inside. They took a table near the passageway to a small room blazoned with vip on its door, since all the tables in front of the dance platforms were occupied. From where they sat they could watch the performances from the side. Along the walls stood some Mexican workers wearing cowboy hats and nursing beers. They seemed reluctant to take a seat at the tables, which would amount to inviting a girl to do a lap dance or table dance. A short-haired barmaid in a lavender skong came and asked Nan and Danning, "What would you like to drink?"

Though he'd already downed a few glasses of wine at dinner, Dan-ning ordered a shot of bourbon and a mug of lager. Nan asked for a Molson. He was afraid his friend might have had a drop too much, but he said nothing. Among the tables several topless girls were doing lap dances. In a corner, a girl in a blue bikini raised her bony rear end, swaying it at a stocky Mexican man, who, holding a tall can of beer, seemed intimidated but couldn't retreat further, his back already against the wall. On the string of her briefs several dollar bills were flapping as she thrust her backside at him. She was so thin that her ribs showed. Unlike the standing Mexicans, the white men sitting at the tables seemed at ease, though naked girls were wriggling in front of them or gyrating on their laps. None of them looked excited, and at most some were amused.

With a twang the metallic music resumed, and two young women wearing high heels went onto the central platform and began dancing. One of them jumped up and gripped a chrome pole and with one leg spread out revolved around it. The din was so deafening that Nan 's eardrums itched.

He was giddy, never having been to such a place before. He had passed this club every Monday morning on his way to the World Bookstore to buy the Sunday newspaper and had thought that it must be stylish in here and that at most the girls would be topless when they stripped. Now he was astonished to see that some of them didn't have a stitch on, and that a few women, already over thirty, wagged their wide, ungainly bottoms tagged with a bunny's tail as they walked around bartending. He looked at Danning, who was ecstatic, grinning, his eyes aglitter. Danning tapped the table gently with both palms as if playing a drum to accompany the music. The room looked so hazy and so crowded that Nan felt as if he were in a ship's cabin.

A tall brunette came and asked them while batting her dark eyes, "Would yuh care for a lap dance?" Her accent betrayed that she must be a recent Eastern European immigrant.

Nan lowered his head and saw a tattooed butterfly on her inner thigh. "How much?" he mumbled, and felt his cheeks flushing.

"Ten bucks."

Before Nan could say another word, Danning banged the greasy tabletop with the heel of his palm and crowed, "Yes, dance for us."

The girl turned around, swaying her hips, and began slipping out of her bra little by little. Nan lifted his eyes and saw her youthful breasts, the nipples erect and the areolas pink, flecked with a few pimples; he forced his eyes farther up, to her face. She was affectedly ogling him, the tip of her tongue wiping her teeth and lips, while she raised her rump at Danning, wagging it from side to side. She craned her neck, gently kissed Nan below his ear. He wondered if she'd left a smudge there. She groaned in a whisper, "Don't you want me?" Smiling, she opened her mouth, a tiny pearl sitting at the center of her tongue. Nan was breathing hard, his mouth dry, and he had no idea how to answer. He wondered whether the pearl had been fixed to her tongue permanently. How could she eat with that thing in her mouth? It wouldn't be easy for her to brush her teeth either. What did it stand for? Why did it have to be kept in there? As he was speculating, she lifted her upper body a little and began grinding her behind against Danning's lap. The music went faster and noisier while her gyration turned wilder. Danning's laughter grew louder and louder as her bottom kept revolving.

"Ouch!" she cried, and straightened up. "No tarching!"

Danning laughed, baring his buckteeth. "Keep going!" he grunted.

She resumed lap dancing, but a moment later stopped again. She looked annoyed and sputtered out at Danning, "If you tarch me again I'm gonna tell security."

Danning grinned and kissed the tips of his plump fingers. "You're delicious," he said.

Nan glanced at the front entrance, where a big hulk of a man, wearing a flattop, was looking in their direction, flexing his corded arms and bulging pectorals; the top of his right ear was missing. But Danning was already too befuddled to care. He said in Chinese to the girl, who refused to dance anymore, "You, little whore, you want to throw me out? Do you know who I am? Look at this face." He pointed at his nose. "Don't you know me? I'm a major novelist, an award winner, famous in the whole country. Give us a good dance. We want the same service for our money. You danced for that man longer and better just now. Why don't you smile at us like you smiled at him?" He pointed at a hairless white man, whose eyes were half closed while a girl leaned supine over him with her arms raised backward, hooked around his neck.

"Stick to English," the lap dancer fired back. "I don't know Korean."

Nan was frightened. He stood up and handed a twenty-dollar bill to her. "Take zis, miss. Keep zer change. I'm sawrry, he's drunk. I'm taking him away."

The girl stretched out her right leg and pulled open the elastic string around her thigh, with which some singles and fives were already attached. Nan inserted the twenty, but a bill fell on the floor.

He picked it up and put that in as well. She smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek, whispering, "Thank you, sweetie." Then she went away to the bar counter to join the girls perching on the mushroom seats.

Danning took out a business card that bore his official titles as a committee member of the Beijing Writers' Association and an adjunct professor at Peking University. "Let me give her this, all right?" he said to Nan, grinning, then turned to the girl.

"Please, let's go!" Nan grabbed his upper arm.

The hulky bouncer came and helped Nan support Danning toward the door. The business card dropped on the floor, faceup.

₁₉

IT WAS Sunday the next day, and Danning wanted to go to the morning service. The request puzzled Nan, but he drove his friend to the Chinese church in Duluth where Mr. Shiming Bian had been a pastor. There was little traffic on the street, and most of the shops weren't open yet except Dunkin' Donuts. A shower had poured down the night before, so the trees and roofs looked cleaner, their colors fresh and sharp. Nan pulled into the church's hedge-bordered parking lot, which was partly filled, and backed into a space. Walking toward the front entrance, he chaffed Danning, saying, "Are you going to the confessional box?"

" No, just to attend the service. I feel awful. I was out of my head yesterday evening."

Nan made no comment, still troubled by the scene at the strip club. Together they entered the foyer of the church, but to Nan's surprise, the schedule had changed-the service in Mandarin wouldn't start until eleven and they were one hour early. However, the English service was about to begin in a chapel next to the nave, so they decided to go to that. In the chapel there were rows of chairs in lieu of pews, and in a corner was a black organ at which sat a small woman. On the chancel, which was just a regular platform below a large cross on the wall, stood a soft-faced young woman wearing a bob, as well as two young men, one holding an electric guitar and the other, the bespectacled one, a sheaf of paper. As soon as Nan and Danning sat down in the last row, the nearsighted man invited the congregation to rise and the three young people at the chancel started a hymn, the words projected on the front wall for the worshippers to follow. The three singers sang into the microphones with their eyes half closed. From the front ceiling hung a pair of Yamaha amplifiers. The music was expansive and uplifting, played by both the organist and the guitarist, while the entire room sang: "Come, now is the time to worship, / Come, now is the time to meet God…"

The song moved Nan. Danning, caught by the music, was singing loudly with the others. His baritone voice was as distinct as if he were leading a choir. Nan was amazed that his friend could sing the hymn with such abandon. Danning shook his head from side to side as he was chanting. After the song, they belted out another one. Then Mr. Bian went to the front and read out his prayer in English. He spoke haltingly as if his tongue were stiff and his nose blocked, but his voice was charged with feeling. He begged God to bless the parish, to forgive the sinners among them, to console a family who had just lost a child in a traffic accident, to provide strength for everyone in this community so that they could fight evil and do more good. Mr. Bian was thinner than he had been two years earlier, but his face was radiant and his manner more dignified, as if he were no longer a dissident but a pure clergyman. He looked energetic and even his hair seemed thicker than before. Unlike the others, who all bowed their heads, Nan lifted his eyes from time to time to observe the pastor. Mr. Bian had published several articles in the past two years to revise his political views and urge people always to differentiate China from the Chinese government. He argued that with such a distinction in mind one could resist the Communist propaganda and avoid letting patriotism dominate one's life, because there were values higher than a country or nation.

After Mr. Bian said the prayer, Reverend Robert MacNeil, tall and skeletal, took the lectern and delivered a sermon entitled "Take Advantage of Our Opportunities." He read out Ephesians 5:8-20, then elaborated on the phrase "making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil." He said God's mercy was like a big party to which everyone was invited. Whenever a sinner repented, God would delight in his return to him. But the sad truth was that the majority of people wouldn't attend God's party because they were like sleepers who wouldn't wake up, too lazy and too foolish. That was why the Lord announced, "For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." The reverend declared that the genuine way to rejoice in God's love and generosity was to avoid evil and spread the words of the Lord. Every real Christian must work constantly to lead others to Jesus Christ. Nan was impressed by the preacher's eloquence. The old man quoted from the Bible without touching the book and even pointed out the exact numbers of chapters and verses. He urged the congregation to seize every day to follow the Lord's way. He also mentioned that Sir Walter Scott had gotten these words carved on his sundial: "I must home to work while it is called day; for the night cometh when no man can work." Because Scott was always aware of the approach of death, he had never wasted his time and managed to finish his books.

Nan listened, fascinated. Yet unfamiliar with the New Testament, he couldn't understand everything Father MacNeil said. Meanwhile, Danning was totally engrossed, his eyes glued to the reverend's shriveled face. As Nan glanced sideways at his friend, a red offertory bag was handed to him. He hadn't expected this and hurriedly pulled a dollar out of his pants pocket and put it into the bag. To his amazement, the instant he passed the bag on to Danning, his friend thrust his fist into it. Obviously Danning had prepared his offering like a regular churchgoer.

When the reverend was done with the sermon, people rose to their feet and sang another hymn, following the lines projected on the wall. As they were singing the last refrain of the song, Nan saw Danning's face bathed in tears. His friend was genuinely touched and chanting with the others:

And we cry holy, holy, holy And we cry holy, holy, holy And we cry holy, holy, holy Is the Lamb!

Father MacNeil raised his leathery hand and gave a benediction in a sonorous voice: "May God grant us the wisdom as bright as daylight. May God give us the courage to expose ourselves fully to the Holy Spirit so that we can make ourselves new every day. May God bless us with joy and love so that we can spread his love to everyone in the world!"

"Amen!" the whole room cried.

The dark-complected woman struck up the relaxing postlude on the organ, and the reverend announced, "Now you are dismissed."

Once in the foyer, Nan asked Danning, "Do you want to attend the Mandarin service as well?"

"No, I've had enough for today."

Through the opened door to the nave Nan saw hundreds of people sitting in the pews in there and waiting for the service. Mr. Bian was seated on the chancel, about to deliver his sermon in Mandarin. In the lobby a few men stood around engaging in small talk, and two women at a long table were handing out flyers to new arrivals. Nan and Danning went out of the church. The pavement was glinting a little in the sunshine, and the air seemed brighter than it had an hour before. Pulling out of the parking lot, Nan asked his friend, "Could you understand everything the old preacher said?"

"No, but he made me feel better, much better. I'm cleaner now." Danning sounded serious and meditative, as if exhausted.

"Do you believe in Christianity?"

"Not really, but I like to attend the service once in a while. In Beijing I can't go to any church or temple because I'm a petty cadre at the writers' association. I'd get into trouble if I went." He sighed. "Ah, like a small fish I too yearn for clean water."

Slowly Nan followed the traffic on Beaver Run Road, still puzzled by Danning's claim to be cleaner than before. On the other hand, he was convinced that if his friend had often gone to a church or temple or mosque, Danning might indeed have become a better man.

Nan was broody after seeing Danning off on a quarter-filled Greyhound bound for Oxford, Mississippi. He felt he might not see his friend again. Danning seemed tormented by a kind of desperation, which might not subside as long as he lived in Beijing and held his official position. Nan had never thought that his friend would go downhill as a result of his fame, which seemed to have let loose the demon in him.

Danning's visit had upset Nan. For the following week he went on telling his wife that success was the mother of failure, transposing Chairman Mao's famous quotation "Failure is the mother of success."

₂₀

EVER SINCE his return from China, Nan had been restless for another reason as well. He couldn't make any progress in his writing. As he had failed in his search for an ideal woman, his project on a bunch of love poems had come to a halt. He wondered if he was suffering a writer's block. One afternoon, when the busy lunchtime was over, he was sitting at the counter and had his nose in a book entitled Good Advice on Writing. Both Pingping and Niyan were taking a break, seated at a booth, drinking tea and cracking spiced sunflower seeds. Janet was with them and from time to time lifted her cup and blew away the tea leaves. She was talking excitedly about how happy she and her daughter were in the weekend school at Emory, which, managed by a Chinese graduate student, had more than 160 pupils now. Time and again she uttered a word or phrase in Mandarin.

Nan stopped at a quotation from Faulkner. It stated: "The writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."

The first part of the sentence jolted Nan, who suddenly understood the real cause of his predicament. For all these years he had bumbled around and shilly-shallied about writing because of fear: the fear of becoming a joke in others' eyes, of messing up his life without getting anywhere, of abandoning the useless, burdensome part of his past in order to create a new frame of reference for himself, of moving toward the future without looking back. It was this fear that had driven him to look for inspiration elsewhere other than in his own heart. It was this fear that had misled him into the belief that the difficulties in writing poetry in English were insurmountable and that he couldn't possibly write lines that were natural and energetic. Now this realization overcame and disgusted him. He read Faulkner's words once more. His mind hardly registered the meaning of the second part, but the first half again astounded him. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. How he hated himself! He had wasted so many years and avoided what he really desired to do, inventing all kinds of excuses-his sacrifice for his son, his effort to pay off the mortgage, his pursuit of the American dream, his insufficient command of English, his family's need for financial security, the expected arrival of a daughter, and the absence of an ideal woman in his life. The more he thought about his true situation, the more he loathed himself, especially for his devotion to making money, which had consumed so many of his prime years and dissolved his will to follow his own heart. A paroxysm of aversion seized him, and he turned to the cash register, took all the banknotes out of the tray, and went to the alcove occupied by the God of Wealth, for whom they had always made weekly offerings. With a swipe he sent flying the wine cups, the joss sticks, and the bowls of fruit and almond cookies. Around him were scattered pistachios and salted cashews. The three women in the booth stopped chatting to watch him. He thrust a five-dollar bill on the flame of a candle and instantly the cash curled, ablaze.

"My God, he's burning money!" gasped Janet.

They all got up and rushed over. Niyan clapped her palm over her mouth as Nan was setting aflame a whole sheaf of banknotes. "What are you doing?" his wife cried, and yanked his shoulder from behind.

His fell on his bottom, the cash still blazing in his hand. He looked entranced and dewy-eyed. Pingping yelled again, "Don't burn our sweat money!"

Niyan wrenched a few unburned banknotes out of his other hand, and he tossed the rest at the smiling God of Wealth. Pingping shoved him aside and tried to save the flaming bills while Nan flung up his hands and cried, "I want to burn it all, all zis 'dirty acre.' "

"He must be having a breakdown," Janet said.

"I hate this mahney, this 'dirty acre'!" he yelled in a voice verging on a sob. His eyes gave a flare.

"What he talking about?" Pingping asked Janet, who shook her head, having no clue either.

Nan had meant to say "filthy lucre," but in the throes of frenzy he got the idiom wrong. He picked himself up from the floor and stamped on the half-burned cash, saying through his teeth, "Dirty acre! Dirty acre!" His face was misshapen, his eyes smoldering with pain.

The women were too confused to respond. He turned and stormed away to the kitchen. Pingping was wiping her eyes while Niyan clucked her tongue and said as if to herself, "Why he hate money so much?"

Janet wagged her chin. "Maybe his mind just snapped. It often happens to people who have too much stress."

"He's really crazy," Niyan said, as if out of schadenfreude.

"He's just sick man," Pingping wailed, and doubled over, her face twisted. "Now you see this is real Nan. He always want to torture me."

Nan thundered from the kitchen, "Yeah, I'm sick, sick of every-sing here, sick of myself, sick of every one of you, sick of zis goddamned restaurant!"

They were stunned. None had expected he had such a harsh, menacing voice. "Maybe he should go see a shrink," suggested Janet, patting Pingping on the back as she continued to convulse with sobs.

Nan went out the back door to traipse around the shopping center awhile, his mind still whirling. The sun was scorching overhead, and in no time perspiration soaked the back of his T-shirt. The walk calmed him down some, though he still couldn't focus on any thought. Near the entrance to the photo studio toward the east end of the plaza, a mottled gray pigeon that had to be a crossbreed of a pigeon and a dove limped over, walking on the back of its crippled left foot. Its head kept bobbing at a cockeyed angle as it tottered toward Nan, who had often fed it. Nan fished in his pockets but found only a handful of coins, so he stepped aside to avoid obstructing its path. Before the pigeon passed by, it paused to flutter its wings, which suddenly gleamed in the sunlight. If only Nan had had some crumbs or leftovers on him. He liked this lone bird, which was tough, unafraid of people.

When Nan went back to the Gold Wok twenty minutes later, he became himself again, and without a word set about cutting a basket of eggplants, which were all tender and seedless, handpicked by Pingping at the Cherokee farmers' market. For the rest of the day he was very quiet and did everything he was supposed to do.

₂₁

PINGPING was still angry with Nan for burning the money. For three days she'd avoid rubbing elbows with him at work, and neither would she speak to him. However hard he tried to induce her to talk, she'd compress her lips. At most, she'd give a faint smile if he said something funny or silly.

On Monday morning the truck that delivered groceries came as usual and left two crates of celeries and napa cabbages and a bucket of tofu at the back door to the restaurant. Without telling Nan, who was supposed to move them, Pingping began carrying them in by herself. As she was lifting a crate, suddenly a tearing pain shot through her back and her knees buckled. She fell on the cement doorstep, unable to pick herself up. " Nan, come and help me!" she called out. Two flies, startled, took off from the tofu, whirling around at a high pitch.

Nan rushed out with a towel over his shoulder and saw his wife lying on her side. Her face was contorted while her hand covered the small of her back. "What happened?" he panted, bending over her. "Why didn't you use the hand truck?"

"Oh, I broke my back!"

"Can you move?"

"I can't. My back snapped." On her eyelashes tears glistened.

As Nan tried to help her get up, she gave a loud moan, which frightened him. He left her there and hurried to the parking lot to fetch their van. He wasn't sure if she had really broken her back, but she looked partly paralyzed. He must take her to the hospital immediately. He told Niyan to ask Shubo to come in and help. If her husband was unavailable, she could just close the restaurant for the morning.

Pingping was rushed into a small room in the ER at Gwinnett Hospital. A lanky male nurse said she couldn't have broken her back. "Maybe she slipped a disk, you know," the fellow told Nan.

Then a tall, rugged-faced man stepped in and introduced himself as Dr. Gritz. He looked at the bruise on Pingping's elbow, already bandaged by the nurse, and then began pressing her back here and there. "Does it hurt here?" he kept asking in a soft voice.

The injury was on her spine, just above the small of her back, but to the naked eye there seemed nothing abnormal. The doctor said to Nan, "I'm going to give her an X-ray to see if there's any bone injury."

"Sure. Do whatever is necessary, please."

The X-ray showed everything was normal, so Dr. Gritz decided to use MRI, which could reveal muscle and ligament damage. Following the male nurse pulling the gurney with his mealy hand, Nan pushed Pingping through a long corridor to the scanning lab. In the semidark room, a woman technician and Nan helped Pingping lie on a narrow table. Before sliding her into the tube of a stout MRI scanner, the woman told Pingping, "If it bothers you too much, just raise your leg to let me know." Pingping nodded, then her head disappeared into the tube. The technician began to produce the images of her lower back.

The machine made rumbling noises like a rickety washer while Pingping lay still as if asleep. Nan wondered whether she was hurting. That was unlikely, as she seemed at ease.

The film of the MRI indicated that a disk was protruded, pressuring some ligaments between two vertebrae. Dr. Gritz said this didn't look like a ruptured disk, so it wasn't an emergency case, and all Pingping should do was rest in bed for a few weeks. He prescribed ibuprofen and a steroid and told her not to move around too much until the pain subsided. She could walk a little when she felt up to it, but she mustn't do any hard exercise. Gritz also referred her to Dr. Levin at a clinic in Norcross. "I'm an orthopedic surgeon," he said to Pingping. "A back pain specialist can do more for you."

Though their substandard medical insurance covered a larger part of the cost, the first hospital bill surprised the Wus, altogether more than three hundred dollars. Both Nan and Pingping were unsettled, knowing this was just the beginning. If only they had bought a better policy. Nan took his wife to Dr. Levin two days later and paid another eighty dollars for the visit. From now on she'd have to see Dr. Levin twice a week. If her pain persisted in two months, the specialist said, they should seriously consider a surgery that helped most back pain patients recover fully. Despite the professional assurance, Nan and Pingping didn't believe it necessary for her to undergo an operation, fearing that any mishap might mess up her spine and paralyze her.

Besides that fear, they had no idea how much they'd have to spend for her medical bills, which became a concern because the restaurant hardly made any money these days-most of the profit went to Niyan and Shubo. What's more, Pingping might have to see a physical therapist or chiropractor, according to Dr. Levin. Goodness knew how long those therapeutic sessions would take. Every day Nan wrapped a hot water bottle with a towel and tucked it against Pingping's back. He also gave her massages, manipulating her spine gently in hopes of restoring the slipped disk fully to its original position. She groaned whenever he touched the injured area, yet after each massage she felt slightly better, so she let him work on her twice a day. She was easily depressed, irritated at herself, and often said she was a total nuisance.

"That's all nonsense," Nan would tell her.

He was afraid Pingping might never be normal again; worse still, that she might suffer sciatica even if the injury healed. Dr. Levin had said that Pingping's long working hours had taken a toll on her lumbar muscles, which must have precipitated the disk prolapse. This also meant it might be difficult for the Wus to continue running the restaurant as before. These days Nan had been thinking of looking for a full-time job that provided full health care benefits. If he found such work, he'd sell the restaurant. He talked to his wife about his thought, and she agreed to let go of the Gold Wok, though she wept afterward, hating to part with their business. Yet both of them knew this might be the only sensible thing to do.

₂₂

NAN told Shubo and Niyan of his decision to sell the restaurant, and to his relief, they wanted to buy it provided the price was reasonable. Nan said he would let them have it for $25,000, the same as the original list price, if he found a full-time job elsewhere. He knew he could have sold it for a few thousand more, but the two were friends and the Wus wanted to leave the Gold Wok in their hands.

That settled, Nan began reading ads in newspapers and hunting for a job. There were many openings advertised, but few offered medical insurance. In two days he went to nine places-three restaurants, four stores, and two offices, and filled out forms and questionnaires and was told to wait for them to call him. The working hours at all the places were in the daytime, and only one of the jobs offered decent health care benefits, but he wouldn't be entitled to them until he had worked three months at the store. He was frustrated, convinced that none of those places would hire him. What he needed was a job that provided full medical insurance right away.

At last he went to Sunflower Inn on Buford Highway, a motel owned by James Lee, a Korean man. It had advertised in World Journal for a front desk clerk. Nan was offered the job on the spot, probably because Mr. Lee was impressed by his English. The boss, licking his arched lip, said, "We only have night hours at the moment."

"Zat's all right," Nan replied. "As long as you offer good health insurance I'll take zer job. I have a child and can't run zer risk of not having my family cahvered."

"We do provide that, but you'll have to pay about three hundred dollars a month. Actually, some of our employees don't join the policy even though we offer them that. It's too expensive for them."

"I understand, but I would love to buy zee insurance from you."

So Nan started to work at the front desk the following night. His shift was from eleven p.m. to seven a.m. He'd be alone in the motel until six o'clock when the cook, Genia, a middle-aged Korean woman, came in to prepare the continental breakfast. Nan liked the job very much. After midnight it was quiet in the lobby and he could read and think, though his mind often turned to Pingping, who was still housebound. These days she, despite her pain and weakness, would cook for the family when Nan wasn't home. She herself could hardly eat anything other than a few spoonfuls of the grain porridge she made for herself. Her calves were so cold that she had to wear leg warmers all the time. Nan urged her to rest well and eat more, saying she might die if she didn't have normal meals. He couldn't imagine himself functioning without her. She had become an integral part of his life, having suffered silently and sacrificed unconditionally for the family all these years. The more he thought about her life, the more remorseful he felt. He hoped it wouldn't be too late for him to make atonement, to cherish and love her devotedly. He even prayed to God for her recovery.

₂₃

HAVING followed the physical therapist's instructions, Pingping exercised lightly every day and began to feel better. The small of her back was less numb and painful than before, all the symptoms somewhat alleviated. She had also regained her appetite and color. At length Nan and Taotao were relieved to see that she was on the mend.

"I want to work at the restaurant when I'm well again," Pingping said to Nan one afternoon. She regretted having sold the business in a rush, but she too had thought she might not recover at all. Two days earlier, despite Nan 's objection, she had phoned Niyan, who had assured her that, after her recovery, Pingping was welcome to work at the Gold Wok.

"That's fine," Nan told her. "I'll talk with Shubo. They may need your help, but you should rest at least a few weeks more. I'm done with the restaurant myself. I like my job at the motel. Besides, I must have the health insurance for us."

A week later Nan went to talk with Shubo about Pingping's wish. To his astonishment, Shubo said Nan should have sold him the restaurant for less money if he had intended to leave Pingping at the Gold Wok, so now Nan mustn't interfere with his work. Infuriated, Nan blasted, "This is really low. I let you have this place at a big discount because I thought you were my friend. But when I need your help, you just give me a bunch of hogwash. What kind of friend are you?"

" Business is business," Shubo snorted, but he avoided looking Nan in the eye.

" I never thought you were such a businessman. " Nan slapped the top of the karaoke machine Shubo had just installed.

"We're living in America now and should be coolheaded about this sort of thing." Shubo's voice was harried, while his fingers were thrumming a table. Behind him a carpenter was busy building a bar.

Niyan said to Nan, "We don't have an opening right now. When we need Pingping's help, we'll let her know." Unconsciously she combed her upper lip with her teeth. Beyond her, on the beverage machine was taped a bottomless-cup sign.

"Yes, you can let Pingping fill in for you when you have to go to a party," Nan sneered.

"Wait a second," Shubo butted in. "Was I not a handy stopgap for you for several years?"

" So? That was how you learned this trade. That was a procedure for your apprenticeship!"

" Nan, you have a penchant for going ballistic. Truculence is your Achilles' heel, you know." Shubo sucked his cheeks, his wispy mustache bristling.

"Only because I'm too gullible about people. With a good buddy like you, who needs an enemy?"

"We really don't have an opening now. You're being unreasonable."

"At least I'm not out of character-haven't forgotten how I started. All right, thanks a million!" Too sick to argue with Shubo anymore, Nan wheeled around and stalked out of the Gold Wok.

"Such a hothead," Shubo said to his wife, and cracked the joints of his fingers.

"I did promise Pingping to let her work here."

"So what? We've changed our minds. We own this place now and must run it in our own way. Once Pingping is here, Nan will poke his nose into our business for sure." He passed into English: "Too many dragons cause a drought."

"The right American idiom is 'Too many cooks spoil the soup.' "

"You know what I mean."

"But aren't Pingping and Nan our friends?"

"No friendship is unconditional."

Niyan breathed a sigh and said no more, believing he was right. In this place one had to take care of oneself. Friendship was largely based on mutual usefulness-only personal interests could bind people together.

₂₄

EVER SINCE Nan began working at the motel, he had kept a poetry journal, which was a traditional practice of ancient Chinese poets. On the first page of his blue spiral notebook he had copied these lines from Frost's "Oven Bird":

The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.

At night he often read those lines before writing down his ideas and reflections on poetry and writing. He regretted not having started the journal earlier, which helped him organize his thoughts and also provided material for his poems. When he sat at the front desk alone, he felt at peace with himself. At long last he could sit like this, thinking and writing devotedly. How mysterious and miraculous life was! Even Pingping's back injury had done him a service, forcing him to change his life. He couldn't help but wonder whether it was the working of some supernatural power that had lifted him out of his old rut. How fortunate he was to have Pingping as his wife and fellow sufferer.

Every day he told her she must concentrate on her recuperation and mustn't work too hard on her paper cuttings, which she had begun making for Janet's store and which she enjoyed doing very much. She and her friend would split the money from the sales of her artwork, and Pingping wanted to study many patterns, improve her scissor work, and develop her craft. She imagined that someday she'd show her mother the cuttings, which would force the old lady to admit that her oldest daughter was superior to her in the art. Nan fully supported Pingping's plan and bought her rolls of paper of different colors and a set of scissors, large and small. But he advised her to take the paper cuttings mainly as a hobby, not as a profession. In other words, she mustn't give herself any pressure and must rest well, not sit too long and hurt her back again. He also told her to avoid going to the Gold Wok, which she might hate to see now. Shubo and Niyan had reorganized the business, and nowadays many Chinese customers, including a foursome glee club, would go there and sing karaoke songs until midnight.

The Wus talked about what Pingping might do after she recuperated. Ideally, she thought she'd like to get a degree in library science and work as a librarian eventually, but that was not feasible. Besides being unable to write in English and having to pay high tuition, she couldn't leave her family for college. Taotao would need her help in the next few years, and she'd feel restless when away from home. As a compromise, she thought she'd like to open a clothing store at Beaver Hill Plaza. They could import fashionable clothes from China and other Asian countries and sell them here for a good profit. They had known people in this business doing quite well in Massachusetts. So Nan went to see the owner of the plaza, who agreed to rent the Wus the suite next to Janet's store, which had been vacant for more than half a year. The Wus planned to open their shop in two or three months.

At last free of the restaurant, Nan somehow felt wary of food and had deliberately curbed his hearty appetite. These days he ate just one meal a day, usually in the evening. If he was hungry at work, he'd drink a cup of coffee with a lot of milk and sugar in it, and if hungry during the day, he'd eat a banana or an orange, as though reducing his food intake could strengthen his body and mind. He didn't know how long he could continue to do this, but he wanted to exercise his willpower fully so as to live a life different from before.

One morning, as Nan was about to leave the motel, Mr. Lee called him into his office. His boss narrowed his small, kind eyes and said, " Nan, would you like to be the manager of this place? I will give you a big raise for that."

Without thinking twice Nan replied, "No, I want to work zer night shift so zat I can take my son back from school in zee afternoon. He has some extracurricular activities." True, for the first time Taotao could join the chess club, though he wasn't good at any real sports thanks to lack of participation over the years. Before Nan had changed to his current job, the boy had had to return home immediately after school, by the bus. Now Nan would pick him up late in the afternoons, and on Thursday evenings he'd drive him to the Red Cross office in Lawrenceville for public service. Sometimes father and son talked about where Taotao would go to college. The boy, already a freshman in high school and half a head taller than his mother, always said he'd go to the Northeast for college, partly because he was still a Red Sox fan. These days he had been talking about sociology as his college major. Nan, knowing Taotao might again switch to another subject in the humanities or social sciences, didn't discourage him and just asked him to come back to see his mother at least twice a year. He suspected that his son might want to meet Livia again, and worried that she might still do drugs, but he didn't ask him. He was sure they still had e-mail contact. In time he'd try to dissuade Taotao from going to college in the Northeast, since Pingping would prefer to have him closer to home.

Mr. Lee, having expected that Nan would jump at the offer since almost a third of his wages went to health insurance, was moved by Nan 's explanation and said, "You're a good daddy. I understand."

The offer saddened Nan in a way. It reminded him of his interview seven years ago with Howard, the owner of Ding's Dumplings in Manhattan. Howard too had meant to make him a manager eventually. Nan 's life now seemed to have come back in a circle to the starting point. Yet he could see that he was no longer the same man. He had been toughened by the struggle, by the mistakes he had made, by the necessary process of acclimatization that a regular immigrant like himself would have to go through. What's more, his family had a relatively stable life. He could even say he was a better man now, wiser and more capable, and determined to follow his own heart.

When sitting at the front desk in the small hours, he'd think about his life, especially about his twelve and a half years in America. Many things previously unclear to him had become transparent. The notion of the American dream had bewildered him for a good decade; now he knew that to him, such a dream was not something to be realized but something to be pursued only. This must be the true meaning of Emerson's dictum "Hitch your wagon to a star." To be a free individual, he had to go his own way, had to endure loneliness and isolation, and had to give up the illusion of success in order to accept his diminished state as a new immigrant and as a learner of this alphabet. More than that, he had to take the risk of wasting his life without getting anywhere and of becoming a joke in others' eyes. Finally, he had to be brave enough to devote himself not to making money but to writing poetry, willing to face failure.

On Christmas Eve, which was a Friday, he wrote a poem for Ping-ping for the first time in his life. The lines came naturally and effortlessly as he jotted them down in his notebook. Seeing the words on the paper, he was moved, also awed, his vision blurred a little. The poem went:

Still, I went on scouring the clouds for a face that might blow the shimmer of my brain into blazing lines. With a seething heart I wobbled through the air, chasing a sublime haze.

Having read the poem once more, he wept, tears wetting his fingers. Never had he been able to write with such fluency and feeling. He revised the poem numerous times, rearranging some lines and replacing a word here and there. He worked hard at it.

After four o'clock sleep finally claimed him. He rested his head on a rubber pad on the counter and dozed off. His Collins Cobuild Dictionary sat beside his elbow, on top of which was a volume of Linda Dewit's poems. By now he used only monolingual dictionaries so that he could understand the definitions of words more accurately and learn the language faster.

"Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas to you too!"

Nan was wakened by the joyous greetings in the corridor leading to the kitchen. The low-pitched lobby smelled of fresh coffee and muffins. He rubbed his eyes and smiled as Mr. Lee, in a gray anorak, stepped in to replace him. Even though he had to work on the holiday, Nan felt genuinely happy. "Merry Christmas!" he said to his boss.

Mr. Lee looked at him in perplexity, though he greeted him back. "I thought you'd be upset about working tonight," he said inquiringly.

"No, I'll be happy to work here every night." Nan beamed despite his tired face.

As Nan headed for his car, a homeless man, Jimmy, who was a veteran of the Vietnam War and often mooched cigarettes from passersby, was sitting on his heels with his back against the wall of the motel. He stood up, grinning at Nan, and said, "Merry Christmas, sir. Can you spare some change?" He put out his dark-skinned hand, his ring and little fingers missing.

"Merry Christmas!" Nan cried back. He thrust his hand into his hip pocket, pulled out four singles and some coins-all the money in there-and gave them to Jimmy.

Jimmy said, "You gave me a real holiday, sir. Thank you!"

"Buy yourself a cahp of coffee and a doughnut."

"I will."

Nan could feel Jimmy's eyes following him all the way to his van. The sky was overcast and the wind chilly. It threatened snow. He lifted his head to watch the low nimbus clouds. Snow would make today more like Christmas, and Pingping and Taotao might roll a snowball again in their backyard. Nan felt sleepy, his forehead numb, yet he was strong in spirit. He pulled out of the parking lot and turned on the radio, which was playing a swelling carol. He reminded himself that he mustn't nod off on his way home.