A Free Life

by Ha Jin

  One day Bao showed Nan a chapter of his memoir, nineteen handwritten pages, and asked him to read it. It was about how his father, a high school chemistry teacher, had been forced to collect night soil in their rural town and pull a trash cart on the streets at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Because of his father’s disgrace, Bao, besides taking verbal insults every day, was often beaten by his schoolmates. The writing was rough, and the story too generic and too expository. As a result, the experiences remained opaque and dull, not substantiated by concrete details. After reading it, Nan told Bao, “I don’t think this is finished yet. You should make it fresher and more peculiar if not surprising.”

  “Heaven knows how hard I worked on it.”

  Then, to Nan’s surprise, Bao asked him to translate this chapter so that New Lines could print it. Grudgingly Nan agreed. The translation bored him and took him a whole week to finish. When working on it, he’d swear and slap his forehead as if he had been swindled. He’d rather dig ditches with a shovel than wrestle with this florid prose marred with clichés and clever but superficial jibes. How relieved he felt when he was finally done.

  On seeing the pages in English, Bao turned ecstatic and even bowed to Nan, saying he owed him a dinner. He looked at the translation over and over, though hardly able to understand it. But Wendy read it and told Nan that she was impressed by his way of using English, which was fluid, elegant, and slightly old-fashioned, but suited the subject well.

  These days Bao often said to Nan that he was terribly homesick. He even wondered if he should go back to visit his parents, though he didn’t have the money for the airfare and for the gifts for his family and friends. Nan admonished him to forget about that, because Bao was known as a dissident, already blacklisted, and would be either refused entry or apprehended by the police at China’s customs. “It’s not worth running the risk,” said Nan.

  “If only I were naturalized,” Bao sighed.

  “What difference would that make?”

  “The Chinese police won’t hurt you if you’re an American citizen. Have you heard of Weifu Cai?”

  “Yes, wasn’t he arrested last time when he attempted to enter China?”

  “Yes, but they released him a month later. He just got a huge grant from an American human rights foundation, thirty thousand dollars in total. See, he held a U.S. passport, so the Chinese government couldn’t really harm him. Otherwise they could’ve sentenced him to five years at least.”

  “I didn’t know he was back.”

  “I saw him a couple of weeks ago. He was a picture of health. If only I were an American citizen.”

  “Then you’d try to go back?”

  “Definitely.”

  Nan remembered a saying popular in the Chinese diaspora: “Only by becoming a citizen of another country can you be treated decently by the Chinese.”

  8

  AT DING’S DUMPLINGS, the waitstaff judged customers mainly by how much they tipped. Aimin and Maiyu often complained that some Americans were too demanding and too grouchy, and that if this restaurant had been Italian or French, they wouldn’t have been so surly. “They come here only because they’re cheap,” Aimin said, and bunched up her thin lips.

  “Or we’re cheap,” Maiyu added.

  A couple, an overweight white woman and a young black man wearing a Vandyke beard, came twice a week. They always bought wonton soup, Peking ravioli, and fish dumplings, but had never left more than one dollar for a tip, usually just some loose change scattered on the table. Whenever they showed up, the waitresses would avoid waiting on them, so Chinchin would assign Aimin and Maiyu to serve them by turns. Sometimes a whole family would dine here: tots crawled under the tables, and youngsters even snuck into the small banquet room upstairs when they used the toilets next to the landing. Two middle-aged gay men turned up every Wednesday evening and wouldn’t hesitate to neck in front of others. One afternoon a Caucasian couple came with their four daughters, who looked similar in features, all pretty though a little pallid. Nan was told that this family ate here once a month, right after the father, a dapper man, received his pay. Obviously they weren’t rich, but they had good table manners. Nan overheard the youngest girl, about six years old, ask for a walnut cookie for dessert, but her mother said no. The child didn’t make another peep. Once they were done with the meal, the father left a ten for tip.

  “They always give the same amount, very nice people,” Aimin said to Nan, smiling with her nose wrinkled.

  Compared with other customers, David Kellman was the most generous tipper. Usually he’d show up midafternoon, when diners were few, and would have Maiyu wait on him. He’d compliment Chinchin on her outfit, and then the two of them would tease each other in a friendly way. However, they’d stop their repartee when Maiyu brought over his order. He talked a lot to Maiyu, and once in front of everyone he invited her out, saying he’d take her to a Broadway show and then to a nice place where they could have a great time.

  “I’m already married,” she told him, simpering.

  “Really? You look so young, like a teenager, but it doesn’t matter. We’ll have fun.” He spoke so loudly that the other diners turned to look his way.

  Nan kind of admired Kellman, who seemed good-humored and at ease with himself, and who appeared so well off that even the cuffs of his tailored jacket were monogrammed. In addition, Kellman seemed unafraid of anything and anybody and never minced his words. He said to Maiyu again, “Tell me who’s your husband, the lucky guy.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “You’d better not, or I’ll strangle him.” He gave a belly laugh.

  Apparently Maiyu was attracted to this man. Her fondness for him often exasperated her husband, especially when she and he worked the same shift. Heng would fume, his eyes smoldering. Through his rage Nan could see the kind of desperation that often marked a man unable to find his way in this place. Nan had met a good number of these men, who, frustrated and disoriented and desperate, would vent their spleen on their wives or girlfriends, though almost without exception they all appeared taciturn in front of others. Deep inside, every one of them was like a keg of gunpowder, ready to explode. Intuitively Nan felt Heng and Maiyu’s marriage was floundering.

  Soon Kellman stopped showing up, and then Maiyu quit. Rumor had it that she had moved out of her apartment and shacked up with that black man. Nobody dared verify this with Heng, fearing he might go into hysterics, but it was an open secret that his wife had walked out on him. Heng sighed a lot at work and was more reticent than before, though once in a while he’d yell at the other workers without provocation.

  Howard, the boss, interviewed several people for the job left by Maiyu. He decided on Yafang Gao, a woman of twenty-four who had arrived in New York a week before. She had graduated from Fudan University and spoke English fluently. She smiled at everyone as if she had worked here for a long time. Her slightly chubby face showed some innate goodness, while her bulbous nose and tiny eye-teeth gave her a youthful look. Her geniality made Nan think she must have had a happy childhood. Howard hired her mainly because she could speak the Shanghai dialect, which none of the staff could understand but which matched the cuisine of the restaurant. Four decades before, Howard had lived in that metropolis too. So at the interview with Yafang he spoke the language, which sounded foreign and slick to Nan. At one point, he overheard Howard saying in English to the applicant, “I’m thrilled to speak our home dialect again!” The boss gave Yafang a copy of Practical English for Restaurant Personnel as well, and from then on called her “my hometown girl.”

  Because Yafang Gao had to settle in before she could start, Howard let Nan wait tables for a few days. When she began waitressing, Nan returned to the kitchen, where from then on he’d cook under Chef Zhang’s supervision. He liked the work and enjoyed seeing raw materials change into toothsome dishes. He tried to learn as much as he could, believing Howard might put him in the chef’s position someday.

  Yafang turned out to
know some of Nan’s former schoolmates who had continued to do graduate work at her alma mater in Shanghai. She and Nan often chatted and got along well. Both were amazed that China, though a vast country, was actually a small world. Many people who had come out of their homeland knew of one another. Most of Nan’s fellow graduate students had left China. As long as one could speak a foreign language, one would strive to go abroad. Some of them had even landed in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Russia, South Africa. “It took me three years to get the approval from my department for visiting America,” Yafang told Nan. She had taught English at a technical college in Shanghai.

  “Why so long?” he asked.

  “The chairman of my department said I was still young and should let the older comrades have a chance first.”

  “So you feel lucky?”

  “Certainly. You should have seen the long line of visa applicants outside the U.S. consulate in Shanghai. Some of them went there the night before their interviews, but the American officials turned most of them down.”

  “I don’t think people always know why they want to come to the United States.”

  “Sure they know, for a better life.”

  “But life here isn’t easy at all.”

  “Still, there’s freedom.”

  “Freedom is meaningless if you don’t know how to use it. We’ve been oppressed and confined so long that it’s hard for us to change our mind-set and achieve real freedom. We’re used to the existence defined by evasions and negations. Most of our individual tastes and natural appetites have been bridled by caution and fear. It’s more difficult to break the self-imposed tyranny than the external constraints. In short, we have lost the child in ourselves.”

  “Wow, you speak like a philosopher, so eloquently.”

  Heng Chen broke his habitual silence, saying, “Nan is also a poet.”

  “Are you really?” Yafang batted her glossy eyes, unconsciously licking her top lip.

  “I’ve been trying to write poetry,” admitted Nan.

  “That means you still have a young heart.”

  Heng butted in again, “Heh-heh-heh, Nan’s a young-hearted man indeed, also very romantic. More impressive, he doesn’t drink or smoke, absolutely a clean man, a model husband.”

  Nan wanted to call him “a loser” or “a new bachelor,” but feeling reluctant to continue the conversation, he merely said, “I’ve got to go down and cook some pot-stickers.” He hurried away to the kitchen.

  9

  NAN went back to see his family at the end of September. Pingping and Taotao were overjoyed to have him home again, though Heidi greeted him lukewarmly. Pingping had explained to Heidi several times that Nan had gone to New York just to take a job; perhaps Heidi was afraid she might have to shelter Pingping and Taotao if Nan abandoned them. Nan had promised Heidi on the phone that he would come back as soon as he went through his training at the restaurant. Now, to convince her that he had been learning to be a chef, he cooked a dinner—wonton soup, lemon chicken, and shrimp dumplings—for the Masefields and his family. His cooking was a complete success. Livia loved the wontons so much that she wanted Nan to teach her how to make and boil them. Nan told Pingping what he had put into the stuffing, and she promised Livia that she’d get the wrappers from the Chinese grocery store in Burlington and show her how to wrap and cook wontons. Both Nan and Pingping knew that the girl would forget her interest in a matter of a day or two. Livia rarely persisted in doing anything.

  Nan could stay only the weekend and would have to take Greyhound back on Monday morning. He didn’t sleep in the same bed with Pingping, though they made love while Taotao was napping in the other room. She sighed afterward, saying she had missed him terribly and felt handicapped without him around, because there were many things she couldn’t handle by herself. “Why can’t we stay together?” she asked. “When you’re not home, I’m restless and can’t sleep well at night.”

  “I can’t sleep well in New York either. Too noisy.”

  “Heidi asked me if we were separated.”

  “I’ll come back soon. Honestly, I don’t care about the editorial work, but the job at the restaurant is an opportunity for me to learn a trade. Just take my absence from home as a stint I’m doing, all right? I’ll come back like a real chef in a few months.”

  “Taotao misses you too.”

  “I know.”

  “If you meet another woman you like in New York, you can spend time with her, as long as you don’t catch disease and come back to us.”

  “Drop it! I’m too tired to have another woman. One’s enough.”

  That stopped her. Nan remembered that before he left for America, she had said the same thing. Somehow she always thought he could make women weak in the knees. In reality he believed he wasn’t attractive at all and was too quiet and too introverted to be a lady-killer. Worse, he had never been good at flirting or sweet-talking. Before coming to the States, he had heard that American colleges offered all kinds of bizarre courses. When he enrolled at Brandeis and got a copy of its curricula, he had thumbed through it to see whether there was a course in flirtation or seduction. If there had been such a class, he’d definitely have taken it.

  Nan sighed, still fingering the tip of Pingping’s hair while she was lying on her side, facing the back window. After the lovemaking, he still felt numb in the heart. This numbness made him gloomy. He knew she sensed his state of mind and must be feeling hurt.

  What he didn’t know was that she sometimes hated to go to bed with him, because sex made her feel miserable and degraded. “Cheaper than a whore,” she’d chide herself afterward. Despite her undoubted love for him, despite her great effort to hold the family together, she simply couldn’t always reconcile herself to the feeling that to have sex with a man who didn’t love her was somewhat like self-violation. That was why she wouldn’t mind that much if Nan slept with another woman, though she did fear losing him. If only he could understand how she actually felt.

  She gazed at the sheets of rain rolling down the widowpanes as she listened to Nan snoring lightly.

  The next morning Nan drove Taotao to the town library, where the boy checked out a stack of books. On their way back, father and son chatted about Taotao’s pals at school while Nan was driving rather absentmindedly. The boy was on the math team now, but he disliked the practice for the future tournaments, which he said were more about the speed of your response than about your knowledge. There was a small traffic jam near the old town cemetery caused by an accident—a pickup had broadsided a white station wagon. Approaching the site, Nan swerved into the newly opened lane marked by orange pylons. As he was coming out of the stopgap way, somehow the right-hand side of his car touched the rubber-coated front shield of a coupe, but the contact was so light that Nan wasn’t even aware of it. He continued driving away.

  The bottle-nosed coupe honked, then sprang forward, following him. Nan ignored it as road rage and didn’t stop. He drove faster. A moment later the car overtook him and beeped again. “Pull aside!” the driver yelled at Nan, who still didn’t know what was going on.

  He stopped before a speed bump and stepped out of his car, his son remaining inside. A stocky man in a trench coat leaped out of the coupe and rushed over. To Nan’s astonishment, the man produced a police badge and flashed it at Nan’s face, though his unbuttoned coat revealed that he wasn’t wearing his uniform. His hawkish eyes blazing, he shouted, “I’m a police officer. Why did you hit my car and run?”

  “When…when did I do zat?”

  “Just now. Don’t argue with me!”

  “I reelly don’t know what happened.”

  “Stop arguing. You committed a crime, d’you understand?” He slapped his flank. “I have a gun here.” Indeed, he wore a pistol, though he was off duty. “Give me your driver’s license!” he ordered.

  “Why?”

  “I said so. Give it here!”

  Nan turned to look at Taotao, who was still in the car, unaware of the troub
le outside. He handed his license to the policeman, who began to jot down the information while saying, “You’re lucky today. If you don’t stop next time, I’m gonna shoot you.”

  Seized by a sudden surge of heartsickness and self-pity, Nan begged, “Why don’t you do it now? Keel me, please!”

  “I can do that if I like.” The officer kept writing without raising his eyes.

  “Come on, awfficer, pull out your gahn and finish me off here. I’m sick of zis miserable life. Please shoot me!”

  His earnestness surprised the man, who looked him in the face and muttered, “You’re nuts!” Then he went on in an official tone of voice, “Stop bluffing! I’ve seen lots of wackos like you who don’t give a damn about others’ property.”

  At this point Taotao came over and stood by his father. The officer handed the driver’s license back to Nan and said, “This is revoked. You can’t drive anymore. You’re in deep shit.”

  “Why not keel me instead? Come on, put me out of this suffering! I’m sick of zis uncertain life. Please fire your gahn!” Nan gulped back tears, his face twisted with pain.

  “Get a grip here, man. We all have a cross to carry, and only death and taxes are certain in America. You gotta be more careful when you’re driving, especially when you have your kid in your car.” He glanced at Taotao, whose eyes were watering too. Without another word he turned and strode away.

  On their drive back, Taotao said, “Dad, you shouldn’t talk to the cop like that.”