A Free Life

by Ha Jin

  With a feeling of forced pride and a mind in turmoil, Nan went to Hampden Park in the afternoon. He didn’t patrol the parking lot but instead leaned against a resident’s SUV with two bullet holes in its door. He wasn’t supposed to rest like this, but today he didn’t care. As he was still musing about his revoked passport, Maria, the thirtyish Latina living on the third floor of the north building, appeared and beckoned him over. Reluctantly Nan went up to her. “You need help?” he asked.

  She beamed, batting her dark eyelashes. “One of my lightbulbs is dead—can you replace it for me?”

  “Sure, my pleasure.”

  It was a warm day, and she wore jeans and a pink wrap-over top that revealed her belly button, under which bulged a small fold of flab. Nan had never seen such a navel, an innie almost two inches across. He followed her upstairs. Her wide behind swung provocatively as she was going up, and he observed her shapely waist, partly naked and well tanned. Her hip-hugging pants were held only by a button on the front. At the gooseneck of the handrail she told him, “My mother’s coming to visit, so I need to tidy my place up a bit.”

  “Where’s she coming from?”

  “New Mexico.”

  The defective light was in the kitchen, where the north-facing window let in a flood of sunlight. The ceiling was so high that Nan had to place a stool on a tall chair, then climbed onto them.

  “Be careful, dear. Don’t fall,” she crooned.

  “I won’t.” Though he said that, his right leg was shaking a little.

  The lightbulb was covered by a scalloped fixture, and he unscrewed the nut and handed the glass shade to Maria. The incandescent bulb was half black, burned out. “Can you turn zer switch off?” he asked.

  She flicked it off and came over to hand him a new bulb. “Let me hold you, dear, so you won’t fall,” she said, smiling and showing her even teeth. She hugged his calves from behind and pressed her nose between them. “Hmm, you smell good. You have strong legs.”

  “And also strong arms.” He was screwing on the shade. “Can you open zer light?” He caught himself using the wrong verb.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Turn on zer switch.”

  “Sure.”

  The light came on. Before she could sidle back to him, he jumped down with his right hand holding the top corner of the refrigerator. As he landed on the ceramic tile, his dictionary fell out of his pocket and spread facedown at Maria’s feet. She picked it up and flipped through some pages. “My goodness, you’ve marked the entire book!”

  “Almost. I have to stahdy English whenever I can.” His face was reddening.

  She handed it back to him. “I used to read books, but I don’t have the time anymore.”

  Without another word he put the stool and the chair back to their original places. She asked, “Can I give you a glass of wine?” She looked him in the face, her eyes intense and unblinking.

  “No, sanks.”

  “Why are you always so polite, Nan?”

  “I’m supposed to be.”

  “C’mon, just have some wine and loosen up a bit. It’s not busy out there.” She poured half a glass of zinfandel and handed it to him.

  “No, sanks. It will make my face red and Sandy can see it.”

  “You’re such a serious guy. I’m sure you don’t talk to your girlfriend like this. Are you afraid of me or something?”

  He smiled, rather embarrassed. “I’m not afraid of anyone.”

  “Not even a woman?”

  “I have a wife and a son. When I don’t work, of coss I can relax at home.”

  “So you’re trying to be professional here.” She tittered, then kept on, “I don’t mind if you have a family. Can’t we be friends, just friends?” She sipped her glass of wine, probably to cover her edginess, while her eyes held him as if pulling him toward her.

  “Sure, but I must leave.” He turned to the door. “Sorry, Tim needs me in zee office.” In his confusion he forgot that Tim had just quit as a result of a lung problem, which Tim told others was pulmonary emphysema but Sandy suspected was cancer. Without enough hands, Sandy had to work in the front office these days.

  “Thank you for the help, Nan,” Maria said damply. “You’re a sweet guy.”

  “It’s my pleasure.”

  Though he didn’t feel attracted to Maria, his heart was racing a little. But in her eagerness and affected manner he had seen a lone-some, flighty woman. She wasn’t a bad person, but he wouldn’t get entangled with her.

  After that day, she continued to ask him to carry grocery bags for her and still wouldn’t tip him. He was always polite, however cold she was to him.

  Maria’s calling him “a sweet guy” reminded Nan of his experience with another woman, Heather Burt, who had been a girlfriend of Maurice Fomé, Nan’s fellow graduate student at Brandeis. Maurice, a slim black man often wearing a broad smile, was from Sudan and had attended the Sorbonne before coming to the United States. He was fluent in both French and English in addition to several African languages, and would call a car “means of conveyance” and water “dihydromonoxide.” He had many girlfriends, both white and black, some of whom had come from England and France to visit him. Usually they stayed just a few days, then left and never came again. Heather Burt differed from the other women and would come to see him every other month, driving her old sky blue sedan all the way from Youngstown, Ohio. Since Nan and Maurice lived in the same building and had the same professor as their advisor, Nan got to know Heather quite well. She was in her late twenties, with fair skin and facial hair like peach down, and she had a sonorous voice almost like a man’s, though she was delicate and short, just five foot one.

  She came to see Maurice again in late July 1986, intending to stay two weeks and get engaged to him. But when she stepped into his apartment, Maurice was in a trance, sitting in a beanbag chair with foam at his mouth, murmuring something nobody could understand. He wouldn’t talk to Heather or anyone and didn’t even recognize her. His eyes were milky, the pupils almost invisible.

  That evening, having nowhere to go, Heather stayed at Nan’s apartment, her eyes red and her face crumpled. Sitting at the table in the living room, she told Nan that Maurice’s father, a tribal shaman, was calling to him from a mountain in Sudan. “He’s not himself anymore and didn’t understand what I said,” she sighed, dragging at a cigarette.

  “You mean he can communicate wiz his father in Africa?” For all his fondness for Maurice, Nan suspected he was shamming.

  “Yes, he can,” she replied in earnest.

  “Do you believe zat?”

  “I do.”

  She took a swallow of the green tea Nan had poured for her, then told him that her father, an auto mechanic, after opposing the idea of her being engaged to a black man, had finally given her his approval and blessing. But some of her friends still disliked the idea. “They asked me,” she said, “‘You really don’t mind having a black guy in your bed?’ I told them, ‘It makes no difference. He’s good.’ See now, I’m in the doghouse.” Two whitish tears fell out of her eyes, and she blew her nose into a paper towel, then raised her hand to tuck a strip of ginger hair behind her ear.

  “You mean you’re cornered?” Nan had never heard that idiom.

  “I mean I’m in serious trouble.”

  Several days in a row Maurice didn’t recognize Heather, who continued to stay at Nan’s apartment, in his roommate Gary’s room. Gary had gone back to Israel for the summer. During the day Nan went to work in the library and in the evenings cooked dinner for both himself and Heather. Sometimes they’d converse for hours after dinner, sharing tea and ice cream. She seemed to have calmed down some.

  One night, the moment he turned in, Heather knocked on his door, which he hadn’t locked. “Come in,” he said.

  She stepped in and, with a misshapen face, asked him, “Can I spend the night with you?”

  “You—you don’t know me zat well.”

  “Please!”

&n
bsp; In spite of the surprise, Nan did feel a stirring rush and waved her to come over. For a whole year he hadn’t touched a woman, and sometimes he was afraid he might have lost his potency, so he was eager to have her. She dropped her nightgown and got into his bed.

  After caressing him for a while, she asked, “Do you have a rubber?” Her silk panties fell on the floor.

  “You mean candy?” he guessed, thinking of chewing gum. His fingers kept fondling her breast.

  She laughed. “I love your sense of humor.” She wrapped her arm around his neck and kissed his mouth hard as if to suck the breath out of him.

  So they made love and even tried soixante-neuf in the way shown in Gary’s copy of Penthouse. Nan didn’t like it, though he made her come, crying ecstatically as if in pain. He was glad he still could have sex with a woman like a normal man. How relieved he was after he came. Soon he fell into postcoital slumber.

  The next morning he went to work without disturbing her, and left her breakfast in the kitchen—a blueberry bagel and two fried eggs, sunny side up on a white plate. When he came back in the evening, she was gone without leaving a word, though she had finished the breakfast and washed the dish. For days he was worried, fearing she might have gotten pregnant since they hadn’t used a condom. On the other hand, he felt she might have been on the pill. She would have herself ready for Maurice before coming to see him, wouldn’t she?

  Then the thought began to disturb him that he could have caught some venereal disease. A few years earlier he had read in a Chinese newspaper that more than a third of Americans and Canadians had gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis. The previous winter his mother had written to warn him not to have sexual contact with foreign women, saying that if he got syphilis, his nose would rot, he’d go bald and blind, and he would pass the virus on to his wife and children and grandchildren. She had told him that in the old China, every day people had to boil chopsticks and bowls used by syphilitics so that their families wouldn’t be infected. The more Nan thought about the one-night stand, the more he regretted it. If only he had observed Heather’s body carefully before having sex with her. She couldn’t have fled without a reason, could she? When he ran into Maurice, Nan couldn’t help but observe the whiteheads on his thin neck, wondering if they were herpes blisters.

  For three weeks he felt agitated and miserable, and even thought of going to the infirmary for a checkup, but he decided not to. Then right before school started, a letter from Heather arrived. She wrote in a scraggy hand that leaned slightly to one side:

  August 26, 1986

  Dear Nan,

  I hope this will reach you and find you well. I don’t have your address, so I’m sending this letter to your department. Thank you so much for accommodating me when I was in Boston. Without your help, I couldn’t have survived the crisis. I’m sorry to have dragged you into my personal trouble when I was there. You are a sweet man. That night you made me feel great, as if I became a woman again. But to tell the truth, afterward I felt guilty, so I left in the morning without saying good-bye.

  Don’t be angry with me, Nan. We both sinned, though I am the one who made you commit fornication. Last weekend I confessed everything at the church, and it lightened my mind considerably. God is large-hearted and has forgiven me. Perhaps you need to go to confession too. Try it. It really helps.

  Please don’t think ill of me. I know you’re a kind, generous man. I will remember you fondly.

  Yours,

  Heather

  Her letter bewildered him. Nobody had ever called him “a sweet man.” Neither did he know what “a sweet man” was like. Weren’t men supposed to be strong and fierce, full of spunk? How could he be sweet? He was baffled.

  He had never considered that, similar to himself, eager to prove the adequacy of his manhood with the one-night stand, Heather had been desperate to restore her womanhood. How could a woman have the kind of crippled feeling like a man’s fear of having lost his potency? Perhaps for Heather this was more psychological than physical, since she didn’t have to depend on an erection to perform in bed. She must have wanted to convince herself of being desired by a man or of her ability to make love to a man.

  Rather than feeling guilty, Nan was fearful and somewhat upset. He had promised his wife that he wouldn’t have another woman in America. But Heather was a different case. He wasn’t really fond of her. The yearlong celibacy had tormented him and made him feel he might not be adequate between the sheets anymore. The idea of sin hadn’t entered his mind until he read Heather’s letter. He couldn’t imagine kneeling in a box and exposing himself to a priest, though he had gone to a church in Waltham on two Sundays. He consulted his Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary to see the difference between “fornication” and “copulation.” Being a one-night fornicator didn’t bother him that much. What worried him most was whether Heather had carried any disease. Her letter sounded calm, with no trace of anxiety. Did this mean she was a clean and healthy woman?

  For the whole fall he was troubled by that question. He examined his genitals carefully whenever he took a shower, but noticed nothing abnormal. His body was still fine and vigorous; his vision and hearing were as clear as before. Everything was normal. Not until it snowed did he manage to put the worry out of his mind.

  20

  AT HAMPDEN PARK, Ivan often talked to Nan about women, complaining that it was too expensive to have a date here. In Russia, he said, women would take care of the expenses when they went out with him. Nan doubted whether that was true. Ivan claimed that he had been a junior officer in the Red Army in the late 1970s and that Russian women were always enamored of uniforms and epaulets. Nan wondered why the cost of dating a woman would nettle Ivan so much if he was a successful businessman. Didn’t he own real estate on Lake Geneva? He must already be a millionaire. One night, when Ivan talked about American women again, Nan asked him, “Are you not afraid of catching AIDS?”

  Ivan let out a bray of laughter. “I’ve known lots of girls and can take care of diseases.”

  “So you like American women?”

  “Not particularly. I need female company sometimes.”

  “How about your wife?”

  “She lives in Paris. I don’t need to pay attention to her.”

  “You mean you two are separated?”

  “No. She’s bossing a business there. She’s Frenchwoman by birth, you know.”

  “So she let you have anozzer woman when she is away?”

  Ivan smiled without answering. The expression on his face seemed to indicate that he was good at handling women. It reminded Nan of the saying “A brazen face is a man’s great leverage with ladies.” He then noticed that Ivan’s laptop wasn’t there. “Where’s your computer?” he asked.

  “Its hard disk busted dead. I left it home.”

  “You do oil exports still?”

  “Well, I changed my profession.”

  “Doing what now?”

  “That’s top secret.” Ivan laughed again. “By the way, don’t you like Maria? She talked very much about you.”

  “Maria is all right, but I’m too tired to sink about women.”

  “You’re smart. Maria goes nutty sometimes. What an appetite she possesses. She ate two rib-eye steaks when we dined together last time.”

  “And she drinks a lawt too.”

  “Like a cow whale.”

  “So you’re dating her?”

  “Not really. We visited a restaurant last weekend. God, I won’t do that again. It’s just too much.”

  By now Nan saw that Ivan wasn’t very different from himself, a mere nighttime drudge, though this man from Vladivostok appeared to be confident and thriving here. Unlike him, Ivan must still believe in the dream of becoming a man of means.

  A few days later Sandy called Nan into his office and told him not to carry his dictionary to work again. He insisted that personally he wouldn’t have minded as long as Nan did his job well. But someone at the recent residents’ meeting voiced the complaint in
front of others, so he had no choice but to stop Nan from reading anything at work. “No hard feelings, Nan,” said Sandy. “As the manager here, I have to let you know.”

  “I understand.” Nan promised he wouldn’t bring any book with him again. He knew it must be Maria who had bitched about him. But why? Only because he wouldn’t flirt with her, or take her out, or bed her? Or simply because she could hurt him? He felt outraged and disgusted. From now on, he’d turn his back on that woman whenever she came to the parking lot.

  21

  THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of the Tiananmen massacre was approaching, and the Yenching Institute at Harvard University was holding a memorial meeting in its auditorium. Several Chinese dignitaries, ranging from celebrated historians to the student movement leaders who had recently fled China, were to speak at the conference, so on Saturday morning Nan and Danning went there to hear those famous people talk. Among them, Nan was particularly interested in a poet, Yong Chu, who had lived in the United States for more than two decades, teaching at a private college in Rhode Island. What was amazing about this man was that he had made his name in Taiwan, in mainland China, and in the Chinese diaspora as well, although he had lived in North America. Nan remembered being very touched by some of his poems, which were written in a slightly archaic style that reflected the influence of the lyrics of the Song dynasty. The poet was especially known for the famous lines: “The jenny donkey under me is unaware / She’s trotting into a mistaken serenade.”

  The conference wasn’t as interesting as Nan had expected. Two student leaders talked about their experiences in fleeing China through an underground channel. Because some of the audience couldn’t understand Chinese, a young woman, a graduate student, sat on the stage interpreting. Her voice, however, was too soft, aggravated by her shyness, which kept her eyes downcast when she spoke. After the student leaders’ speeches, a Yale professor, an expert in Chinese intellectual thought, began expounding on the necessity of the Confucian values for contemporary China, a country that, chaotic and ruined, was on the brink of a moral meltdown because there was no religion to guide its populace. Nan was bored and said to Danning, “I shouldn’t be here. What a drag!” He definitely would skip the panel discussion in the afternoon.