by Ha Jin
13
BAO knew a famous poet, Sam Fisher, who lived in the Village. He had invited Fisher to be on the honorary board of New Lines and the poet had agreed. The journal listed his name, together with several others, on the inside of its back cover. Bao also requested poems from Fisher, who was so generous that he said he’d give him three or four. One Sunday morning Bao and Nan set out for the poet’s place to get the poems.
Fisher lived in a yellow-brick building on West Tenth Street. He greeted Bao and Nan with a little bow, his arm opened toward the inside of his apartment. He looked sleepy, but his droopy eyes were intense, as if they could bore into your mind when he peered at you. His crown was entirely bald, yet the hair at his temples curved upward like two tiny horns. His home was rather crowded, the walls lined with bookcases and many large photographs, some of which showed naked young men in different postures. One displayed a teenage boy sitting on his haunches and holding his erected member with his hand as if masturbating. Sam Fisher was also an accomplished photographer, selling his pictures to collectors regularly. In addition, he was a Zen Buddhist. On the wall of the corridor hung a long horn, the type used at Tibetan temples. He led the visitors into the living room, which smelled bosky and had a shiny floor, and then he called to his boyfriend to brew tea.
To Nan’s surprise, a young Chinese man stepped in with a tray that held a clay teapot and four cups. “This is Min Niu, from Changsha,” Fisher introduced him to the guests.
They greeted his boyfriend in Mandarin, and then Nan resumed speaking English with Sam. He observed the young man pouring tea. Min was rather effeminate and had a smart face with a smooth, hairless chin. He must have been in his mid-twenties. How could he and Sam be lovers? Sam must have been at least thirty years older than he was.
On the glass coffee table lay two biographies of Sam Fisher, one almost twice as thick as the other. Sipping the piping hot jasmine tea, Bao pointed at the books and asked Sam, “Which is more true?”
“Neither,” Sam said. “This one is from a Marxist point of view, and that one is Freudian. They’re interesting, but the man they describe is not me.” He laughed, a sparkle in his eyes. He got up and went into his study.
Nan turned to Min Niu. “How long have you been in America?”
“Since last autumn.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a graduate student at NYU.”
“Studying science?”
“No, Asian history.”
“Really? What period?”
“I’m not sure yet. Probably I’ll write a thesis on homosexuality in ancient China.”
Sam returned with a few sheets of paper and handed them to Bao, saying, “You can use these.”
Bao glanced through them as if able to read English while his eyes brightened. He said, “Thank for your help.”
“Your poems will make a huge difference to our journal,” Nan added.
Sam nodded without speaking. Someone knocked on the door, and Min went to answer it. In came a tall young man with Beatlescut hair and high cheekbones. “Hey, come and meet my friends,” Sam shouted, waving at the new arrival.
“Dick Harrison,” the man introduced himself, and shook hands with Bao and Nan. He sat down across from Sam, and Min put a cup in front of him. As Min was about to pour tea, Dick stopped him and asked Sam, “Aren’t we going out?”
“Yes, we’re going to have lunch at Lai Lai.” He turned to Bao and Nan. “Let’s go out together, okay?”
Min whispered in Chinese, “He’s in a sunny mood today.”
“What did he say about me?” Sam asked.
“You’re high-spirited,” said Nan.
“Yes, I am happy. Let’s go out for lunch.”
“I have homework to do, Sam,” Min said. “I can’t join you.”
“Stay home, then. We’ll go without you.”
After Nan called Ding’s Dumplings and told Chinchin he’d be an hour late, the four of them went out of the building and headed east. As they passed a small bookstore called Smart Readers, a young woman with penciled eyebrows waved at Sam and cried, “Hey, Mr. Fisher, how are you doing?”
“I’m well.”
She blew him a kiss and turned away, pulling a cart loaded with used books. Then a young man with a widow’s peak stepped out of the bookstore, and at the sight of Sam, he said, “Wow, Mr. Fisher! Please wait a sec. Let me go in and buy a book of yours. Can you autograph it for me?”
“All right.”
The man rushed back into the store while the four of them stood waiting. “Well, I’m often stopped on the street,” Sam told Bao and Nan, apparently amused. His hands hung against his abdomen, his fingers interlaced.
In no time the man returned with a volume of Sam’s poetry entitled Oh—Oh—Oh—, his thumb in between the cover and the title page. “Please sign this for me, will you? This will make my day.”
“Sure.” Sam took the felt-tip the man handed him and began inscribing. Nan craned to see him drawing a Buddha with a drum-like belly. Next Sam put several stars around the Buddha’s head and wrote “Ha Ha Ha!” Then with a flourish he signed his name below the figure.
The man looked at the drawing and the signature. “This is awesome! Thank you.” He held out his hand and Sam shook it.
They went on their way to Lai Lai on Sixth Avenue, which Dick told them was a noodle house Sam loved. Sam walked with his hands in his pants pockets and every once in a while kicked something on the sidewalk: a beer can, or a pebble, or a cigarette pack, or a paper cup. After another turn they arrived at the eatery, but before they could enter, an overweight man greeted Sam. “Mr. Fisher, I enjoy your new book. I’m a big fan.”
“So,” Sam looked annoyed, “you want me to fuck you in the ass?”
“No, no, please.” The man backed away, but turned his head to smile at Sam.
Nan was flabbergasted by Sam’s words. Dick explained, “That’s Sam. People know him well and won’t be offended.”
“Damn it,” Sam grunted. “I just don’t want to be stopped every five minutes. If he’d bought my book, that would’ve been different.”
They all laughed and went into Lai Lai.
14
THE NOODLE HOUSE was full of people. A young waitress, looking Vietnamese, piloted them into an inner room that had only two tables in it. She asked Sam with a knowing smile, “What would you like today?”
“Ask my friends first,” Sam said.
“Sure.” She turned to Bao. “What will you have?”
“Shogun Noodle.”
Nan ordered the same; not having eaten the Japanese noodle before, he wanted to try it. Dick and Sam chose Pad Thai.
While waiting for their food, they talked about religion. Sam said he knew the Dalai Lama personally, and in fact his master was a distant cousin of His Holiness. “Do you practice Buddhism?” Nan asked him.
“I meditate every day.”
“We go to Ann Arbor every fall,” Dick put in.
“Why?” Bao asked.
Sam smiled mysteriously. “My master’s temple is there, so we go there to pray every year.”
“We also listen to our master preach,” added Dick.
The noodle and the Pad Thai came, giving off a spicy scent. Nan was fascinated by their involvement with the Buddhists. He spooned a shrimp out of the soup and took a bite. It tasted fresh but a bit rubbery. He asked Sam, “Why do you study Buddhism?”
“It can calm me down. It also helps my constipation.”
Nan burst out laughing, while Bao looked bewildered. Dick said, “It can also enlighten the mind.”
“Does your master impose any restriction on your life?” asked Nan.
“No, we’re free,” Sam said. “You can do anything in our branch of Buddhism. Drugs, sex, marriage, alcohol, you name it, anything but violence.”
“We’re a radical group,” Dick said, “so lots of people are against us.”
“I don’t give a fuck about what they think of us.” Sam
thrust a bundle of rice noodles into his mouth. “Do you know when Tibet will be open to tourists?” he asked Nan.
“I have no idea.”
“I hope I can go there next year. I’ve been trying to get permission from the Chinese consulate, but every time those bureaucrats turn me down.”
“You must be on their list,” Nan said.
“I’m a crazy Jew, on every government’s list.”
“Including zer U.S.?”
“You bet. My FBI file must be able to fill a whole cart. I’m an enemy of authorities.”
Bao broke in, “If you go to China, you know what happen?”
“I know, some undercover agent will put a bullet into the back of my head and the government will claim I committed suicide.”
They all cracked up. When lunch was over, Sam paid for everyone. “I make more than the three of you put together,” he said, refusing to go Dutch.
It was getting cloudier and looked like rain. As they were saying good-bye at a street corner, Sam embraced Nan and gave him a loud smack on the cheek. Nan was surprised and a little embarrassed. Dick Harrison wrote down his phone number for Nan and said he might send along some poems too. They promised to see each other again.
Nan and Bao headed for the subway station. “Sam is really fond of you,” Bao said, and squinted at Nan.
“Come now, I’m not gay. I’m drawn to women, can’t stop thinking about them.”
Despite that unsettling kiss, Nan was quite moved by their meeting with Sam Fisher, in whom he had seen the free spirit of a poet who wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, a complete individual. Nan hadn’t read Sam’s poetry, but he liked his personality. If he were gay, he wouldn’t have minded seeing Sam more often.
Bao told him more about Min Niu. Min had been an English major at Hunan Normal University. He wrote to Sam to express his admiration for his poetry, and then a relationship developed between them through correspondence. As his sponsor in the United States, Sam helped him get his visa and even paid tuition for him at NYU. Min came and lived with Sam, working as the manager of his home. In fact, he also cooked for Sam and sometimes served as his secretary. Bao had once eaten dinner in Sam’s apartment, and Min had made four dishes and a large bowl of soup within an hour. And everything he cooked that evening was delicious. Sam also paid Min a decent salary.
Nan was impressed, saying, “What a lucky fellow Min Niu is.”
“I think you can replace him if you want.” Bao winked at Nan.
“No, I’m dying to work for a pretty woman poet as famous as Sam Fisher. Do you happen to know anyone?”
“What makes you think I’ll provide the information gratis?”
They both laughed. An old woman walking by turned to look at them. They stopped laughing and went on chatting about the poetry world in New York.
15
PINGPING phoned Nan at Ding’s Dumplings and begged him to come back immediately. She had bickered with Heidi and was thinking of moving out. What had happened was that Nathan couldn’t find his new calculator and suspected that Pingping had taken it upstairs for Taotao to use. Heidi went up and asked Pingping, “Do you have Nathan’s calculator?” “No,” Pingping said. She took Heidi to Nathan’s room on the second floor and found the calculator lying on the windowsill behind his desk. Then she told Heidi to her face that however poor she was, she wouldn’t steal.
Her words rendered Heidi speechless, for she knew that was true. Many times Pingping had come upon banknotes and coins when laundering their clothes, and without fail she had given the money back to Heidi, sometimes even thirty or forty dollars. Yet as Pingping’s boss, Heidi wouldn’t apologize and just went away without a word. That angered Pingping more, and she planned to quit, though she hadn’t mentioned it to Heidi yet.
Nan told her on the phone not to think of moving out right now, because Taotao couldn’t find a better school. They could not afford to leave Woodland until the school year was over. “I’ll come back soon, all right?” he said to her.
“How soon?”
“I’ve got to make arrangements before I go back. I can’t just leave without notifying my boss.”
“All right, come back as quickly as you can.”
For a whole afternoon Nan was absentminded at work and even nicked his fingertip while dicing a cucumber. He was angry with Heidi, who seemed to have mistreated Pingping because he wasn’t around. Probably she feared that his wife and son might stay at her home forever, so she created some difficulties for them to chase them out.
Toward the end of the day, Nan told Chinchin that he wouldn’t come for the rest of the week because there was an emergency at home and he had to go back. His fellow workers all thought he was just taking a few days off and would return the next week. He wanted them to think that way too, since he wouldn’t burn his bridges.
But he decided to quit his job at New Lines. He didn’t enjoy the editorial work and was afraid that sooner or later, Bao would ask him to translate his entire memoir if he continued editing the journal.
The next morning he went downstairs to explain his decision to Bao. As he was approaching the door of their bedroom, he heard Wendy berating her boyfriend. She sounded furious today. “You’re just a sponge!” she cried.
“Don’t cawl me that!” yelled Bao.
“You live like a parasite. I can’t stand you anymore. Get out.”
“It’s just couple dollars.”
“A couple of dollars? I only get seven hundred a month from Social Security, but you spent more than two hundred on alcohol, not to mention the phone bills you ran up. How dare you call that amount just a couple of dollars?”
“But you have rent money.”
“That goes to the mortgage. Stop arguing with me. I’ve made up my mind and want you to move out.”
“Okay, okay, I go out your house.”
“Good. Bring your gay friend along.”
“Damn you, Nan not gay!”
“Don’t tell me that. I know what he is.”
“You don’t want to marry me no more?”
“I’m sick of you. You’ve just been using me to get a green card. I can’t help you with that anymore. Get out.”
“Okay, I don’t carry old bag like you,” he said calmly.
Nan knocked on their door. He was incensed by Wendy’s remark and glared at her. She was taken aback by his fierce eyes and turned to the bay window. Outside, a few blackbirds were fluttering on the crown of a sycamore, and one of them was holding a strip of toilet tissue in its beak. Nan noticed a reddish patch rising on Wendy’s cheek. She used to be friendly to him, and he had helped her repair the front door and put up the picket fence in the backyard, but all of a sudden she had begun bad-mouthing him. This hurt him to the quick.
“I’m going home,” he told Bao.
“You mean for good?”
“Yes. My family has some trouble, and I have to go back without delay.”
“Well, I’m going to move out soon. Sick of this rotten cunt.” He pointed at his girlfriend.
Nan glanced at Wendy, who didn’t understand Bao’s curse. Then the two of them talked briefly about the journal. Bao hadn’t gotten the funding for the next issue, so this might be the time for Nan to leave after all. In his heart Nan couldn’t help but despise Bao. If he was going to become an artist, he would be a different type. He’d be a self-sufficient man first. Now it was high time for him to start his life afresh. New York wasn’t a place for a man like him; he had to return to his family and struggle together with them.
16
ON THE PHONE Pingping hadn’t told Nan the whole story, which involved Taotao and Livia as well. A few days earlier the two children had been doing homework together in the kitchen while Pingping was outside the house, fixing the lid on the wooden trash bin. The girl and the boy were quite close by now, and Livia often claimed that Taotao was one of her best friends, though he still wouldn’t join her pals when they were over. Several times Pingping told her son not to get
too attached to Livia, yet the boy couldn’t help but turn ebullient whenever the girl was around. Heidi didn’t like Taotao that much, though she admitted he was bright and handsome. Bending over the trash bin, Pingping hammered two nails into the holes on the hinge affixed to the lid, then opened and shut it a few times to make sure it was no longer loose. The job done, she turned to go back into the kitchen. But then she overheard the two children and stopped to listen.
“I just don’t think he’ll come back,” Livia said in a serious tone of voice.
“That’s not true. My dad is just working in New York.”
“Tell you what, grown-ups always lie.”
“My dad isn’t a liar.”
“How do you know he isn’t?”
“My mom told me so.”
“He lies to your mom too. He walked out on both of you, that’s what I heard.”
“You’re a big liar!”
“Don’t be mad at me. I don’t want you to lose your dad just because I don’t have my dad.”
“You’re not my friend anymore.”
“C’mon, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just told you what my mom and her friends said.”
Pingping stepped in and said to the girl, “They’re just buncha miserable rich ladies, have nothing else to do. They just want everyone else have bad luck.”
Livia gasped and winced. Pingping went on, “Don’t believe that kinda crap. Nan is learning to be chef. Don’t you eat the wonton he cooked?”
“I did. It was delicious, better than anything I ate in any Chinese restaurant.” Livia seemed to relax a little.
“He’s away just for short time.”
“He told me so too,” Taotao added. “He said we’d open our own business in the future.”
