A Free Life

by Ha Jin

  At the beginning of the previous spring, Pingping had planted some garlic and scallions in the semicircles formed by the monkey grass, but a few days after the sprouts pierced the loam, the geese had pulled them up and eaten them all. The backyard could have been cultivated into a vegetable garden, but the piggish waterfowl would have devoured all the seedlings.

  To Nan’s amazement, when the sweltering summer set in, the geese didn’t leave for the North as they were supposed to do. Instead, they perched in the shady bushes on the other shore and came out only in the evenings and early mornings. The families living on the lake fed them, mostly bread and popcorn, so there was always plenty of food for them. Nan realized that these Canada geese had grown fat, lazy, and comfortable, no longer possessed of the instinct for migration.

  That thought irked him, and a trace of disdain crept over his face. Just for easy food, the geese had chosen to live a riskless, stranded life. Nan noticed that seldom would they fly off to another body of water nearby. To the north, just ten miles away, there spread Lake Lanier, which abounded in fish and algae. It was reported that a catfish named Little Bobbie, weighing at least eight hundred pounds, lived in there, and every fall the radio would urge people to go catch him so that the captor could win a million dollars at the catfish derby. What’s more, that lake’s water was clean and vast, but these Canada geese wouldn’t go there and confined themselves to this pond as long as food was offered to them. They had grown heavy and clumsy, yet their appetite remained gluttonous, as if they were no longer wild birds that were supposed to spend a part of their lives in the air.

  “What losers! These geese live like millionaires,” Nan would say to his wife whenever he saw them paddling in the water.

  Pingping would smile, saying he was just an angry man. Why couldn’t he let the birds have an easy life? What was wrong with their inhabiting this lake?

  “Nobody should feed them from now on,” Nan continued. “Totally spoiled, they’ve lost their animal instinct. No wonder they’re so fat.”

  “By nature, who doesn’t like comfort and ease?” asked his wife.

  “But they’ve lost their wild spirit.”

  “Why are you so serious about them?”

  “They’re not supposed to live like domestic fowls.”

  “You act as if they’re humans. Bear in mind that they’re just geese.”

  “We mustn’t feed them anymore.”

  In spite of his complaints and disdain, he still brought back leftovers for the waterfowl. The geese and mallards liked the Wus’ backyard so much that a few ducks even nested in the thick monkey grass near the waterside.

  Over the railing of the deck a bird feeder, caged in steel wire, hung on a goosenecked steel bar. The Wus had once used another feeder made of a white plastic tube, a gift Janet had given Taotao the spring before. The Mitchells also loved birds, and they had six feeders around their house. In the summer the Wus had often brought home leftover rice and noodles for the waterfowl and birds. All species of them would come: blackbirds, jays, cardinals, robins, golden finches, orioles, and even crows. Sometimes so many of them landed in the lawn that the grass changed color, and the Wus’ deck was always scattered with bird droppings. Among the birds, cardinals seemed the most stupid, especially the females, who often merely searched the ground for seeds dropped by the males eating at the feeder. In the oak trees in the backyard lived two families of squirrels. Acorns were plentiful, so there was no need to feed them; yet the squirrels would come to steal the bird feed.

  On this winter day, before Nan set out for work, he refilled the bird feeder with sunflower seeds. He liked songbirds, which would delight his heart whenever he saw them perch on the feeder, pecking at the seeds. At first he’d treated the birds like little visitors; feeding them had given him a kind of satisfaction, like playing the role of a friendly host. But he hadn’t had that frame of mind for long and had stopped feeding them for several months when it was still warm. In the beginning, he had bought seeds mixed especially for mead-owlarks, finches, warblers, tufted titmice, but every day they’d eat up a whole tube of the feed. He was baffled by their voracious appetite and switched to sunflower seeds, which were cheaper—for six dollars he could buy twenty-five pounds at Wal-Mart. Still, every morning he found the feeder empty. One day he saw a squirrel stretch upside down on the white tube, eating the seeds from the holes. He shooed it away, but the squirrels would come to attack the feeder when nobody was around. Soon the holes on the tube were ripped wider, as if the rodents had intended to eat the plastic as well. Nan bought a new feeder caged in steel wire, which the ad claimed was “indestructible by squirrels.”

  To his bewilderment, even this feeder still couldn’t keep the seeds from disappearing at night. True, the squirrels could use their tiny hands to scoop out seeds and drop them to the ground so that they could pick them up during the day, but how could they eat so much? Every night a good four pounds of sunflower seeds would be gone. Nan talked with Dave about this, who was also perplexed, having run into the same problem. Dave called the squirrels on his property “a pain in the ass” and had trapped a number of them and released them in the woods three miles away near Snellville (one of the critters had even managed to return to the Mitchells’, according to Dave); but for Nan that was too much because he could see no point in robbing the rodents of their current habitats. Besides, there were only four of them living in his backyard. Another family of three nested in Gerald’s roof, and sometimes they also came to steal bird feed.

  Then one night, as Nan was reading Tu Fu’s poetry, suddenly a racket broke out on the deck as if some animals were tussling with one another. He went over to take a look, but it was too dark for him to see anything nearby. Only a car was flitting noiselessly behind the trees on the opposite shore. Nan flicked on the lamp under the back eaves and found a fat raccoon crouching on the top bar of the railing. Regardless of the light, the animal went on pulling and twisting the feeder, tossing the sunflower seeds helter-skelter. Nan knocked the glass back door with his knuckles, yet the rascal wouldn’t scare, its bushy ringed tail flapping and swaying while its jaws clamped the cage and kept rocking it. Nan slapped the door pane; still it wouldn’t pause. Not until he rushed out with a broom did the raccoon jump off the deck and vanish into the darkness.

  From that day on, Nan would bring in the feeder every night and hang it out in the morning. A tube of seeds would last three or four days now, and a lot of birds gathered on the deck and around the feeder in the daytime. Even when it rained, some of them would stay around. Nan was not pleased that they had grown lazy and plump and taken the deck as a habitat of sorts, but he still fed them.

  When he mowed the lawn in the backyard he noticed that there seemed to be more and more insects jumping out and darting away, and there were also more toads, frogs, and lizards in the grass. Then one day he was frightened to see a green snake, about three feet long, slithering away to the lakeside while the lawn mower was snarling and flinging bits of grass aside. He wasn’t sure if it was poisonous, but he was positive it had come into the yard to hunt for toads and lizards. The thought came to him that lizards, frogs, and toads must have gathered here because insects were teeming in the yard. The insect proliferation must have been due to the fact that the birds he fed had quit searching for food in nature and let insects multiply in the grass. As a result, more frogs and lizards frequented here, and they in turn attracted snakes.

  This realization made Nan stop feeding the birds. He didn’t want snakes to lurk and crawl in the backyard, even if most of them were nonpoisonous. The birds would have to catch insects from now on. As the number of toads and lizards decreased in the grass, fewer snakes came around, although sometimes Nan saw them zigzagging in the lake, their tiny heads raised above the water. They probably lived among the rocks under the short bridge in the east.

  In the winter the birds had to be starving, so Nan resumed feeding them. To his dismay, not many of them showed up now; still, he kept th
e feeder full every day and took it back in at night.

  16

  ONE MORNING Mrs. Wang called and begged Nan to come to her house immediately. Her husband had suffered a heart attack and had to be rushed to Gwinnett Hospital. She asked Nan to accompany her there because she wouldn’t be able to understand some of the medical terms the doctors and nurses used. Nan set out after telling Pingping that if she and Niyan couldn’t handle the business by themselves, they should close up for a few hours until he came back. As he was approaching the Wangs’, an ambulance pulled into their driveway and two paramedics hopped out. Nan hastened his pace and caught up with the men. Mrs. Wang let the three of them in. Her husband was lying in bed, his eyes closed and his papery hand resting on his abdomen. But he was aware of the people around him and nodded as his wife told him that they were taking him to the hospital. Somehow Mr. Wang had lost his English and murmured Chinese in response to the paramedic who spoke to him while carrying him out.

  In the ambulance Nan sat next to Mr. Wang, whose face was colorless and shriveled. The old man kept saying to his wife, “I’m bone tired.” His lips were bluish and his white hair wet and mussed up.

  Finally his wife gave way to her emotion, begging him not to leave her so suddenly. He opened his puffy eyes and murmured, “I want to go back.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Home.”

  “We’ll go home soon.”

  His mouth stirred as he tried to smile, obviously tormented by angina. He began gasping for breath again, a gurgling sound in his throat. One of the paramedics, a stocky fellow, put an oxygen mask on his face, which eased the patient’s breathing within a minute. Nan wasn’t sure whether by “home” the old man was referring to their house here or to Taiwan or Fujian, his native province on the mainland.

  Mr. Wang was rushed into a trauma room in the ER. His wife and Nan waited outside, sitting on orange chairs. Nan told Mrs. Wang to take a nap, since she might have to stay here a whole day and should rest some now. Soon she dozed off in spite of all the activity in the lounge. Meanwhile, Nan paced the floor and regretted not having brought along a book. He inserted two nickels into a pay phone and called the Gold Wok to check on Pingping and tell her about Mr. Wang’s condition, which seemed critical. His wife couldn’t talk with him for long because she and Niyan were overwhelmed with work there.

  About half an hour later, a young doctor with tired eyes and curly sideburns stepped out of the trauma room and said to Mrs. Wang, “He isn’t doing too well.”

  “Please save him!” she begged.

  “We’re doing our best.” The doctor handed his half-drained coffee cup to a nurse and returned to the patient.

  “Is he on Medicare?” the nurse asked Mrs. Wang.

  “Yes, here’s his card.” The old woman took the card out of her purse and handed it to her. The nurse gave her two forms clasped to a clipboard. Mrs. Wang didn’t know how to complete them, so Nan filled them out for her.

  Again she closed her eyes and tried to drop off while Nan sat there watching people milling around. His head was numb and couldn’t focus on any thought, partly because he had drunk two mugs of coffee that morning to gear himself up to the work in the kitchen. An hour later, a tall nurse wearing a laminated ID badge around her neck came out and said that Mrs. Wang could now go in and see her husband. The old woman and Nan followed her into the trauma room. At the sight of them, the young doctor smiled, his eyes sparkling and his bulky nose filmed with perspiration. “Well, he’s stable now,” he told them. “We’re going to move him into another room for observation. He can check out tomorrow if he’s still stable by then. The nurse will let you know how to take care of him at home.”

  “Thank you, doctor,” said Mrs. Wang.

  “Sure. I’m going to put him on medication before we decide if he needs an angioplasty. That’s a minor operation using a little balloon to clear the narrowed artery.” The doctor also said he wanted Mrs. Wang to bring her husband back regularly so that he could see him on an outpatient basis.

  Nan translated the doctor’s words to Mrs. Wang while she nodded agreement. He was surprised that they wouldn’t keep the old man in the hospital for a few days. He remembered that Uncle Zhao, his father’s painter friend in China, had once suffered a minor heart attack and had been hospitalized for a good month.

  Mr. Wang was lying on the bed and lifted his withered hand to wave at his wife and Nan. Color had returned to his face, and his eyes were animated again. A thin hose was still attached to his arm, and a yellow defibrillator perched beside the bed. He said almost naughtily to his tearful wife, “I thought I couldn’t make it this time. Thank heaven, they brought me back.”

  A nurse pulled over a gurney. They moved Mr. Wang onto it and pushed him away. Nan didn’t follow them to the ward, and instead told Mrs. Wang that he must go back to help Pingping and that she should call him when the old man was discharged so that he could come and drive them home. She looked a touch dismayed but didn’t ask him to stay. Nan hailed a taxi and headed back to the Gold Wok.

  Hearing that Mr. Wang had survived the heart attack, Pingping felt relieved. She was pleased that Nan had come back before midafternoon; otherwise she’d have had to put Taotao, who was just ten, to work at the counter as the cashier.

  Although Mr. Wang could walk around afterward, the Wangs had been shaken by his heart attack and decided to move back to Taiwan, where free medical care was available to everyone. They had thought of joining their daughter in Seattle, but her airline job there was temporary and she might be transferred elsewhere. Soon they put their house on the market, selling it for $145,000. The price had been drastically reduced, so a lot of people stopped by to look at the brick bungalow. Niyan and Shubo went there to see the property too. They loved it, especially its convenient location, but the price was still too steep for them. What’s more, Shubo Gao hadn’t defended his dissertation yet and might go elsewhere to take a job. Nonetheless, his wife said to Mrs. Wang, “We’ll buy your house if you lop twenty thousand off the price.”

  “No way.” The old woman shook her full head of gray hair. “We’ve already underpriced it for a quick sale. Ask Nan and Pingping whether we offered them the home for a hundred and fifty. That was two years ago.”

  Niyan and Shubo did ask Pingping, who proved that was true, so they gave up coveting the bungalow. A week later a retired couple from Illinois bought the house, and within a few days the Wangs left for good.

  Their departure was a quiet affair that few people in the neighborhood noticed, but it saddened Nan and Pingping. The Wangs didn’t like Taiwan that much; still, they could return to it. By contrast, the Wus, having no recourse to a place they could call home, had to put down roots here. They liked Georgia, yet they could see that life might be lonely and miserable here when they were old. They often talked to Niyan about the isolation the Wangs had experienced, but Niyan thought the old couple had asked for that kind of life, saying they could always have joined a community. Niyan said in a crisp voice, “They should have gone to a church. That could’ve made them feel more or less at home here. If they didn’t think Taiwan was a safe place, they should never have gone back to it. Your homeland is where you live and die.”

  Niyan’s words made Nan and Pingping think a good deal. Husband and wife talked between themselves about joining a church, but decided not to rush. By any means they mustn’t make light of the matter of religion, and neither should they go to God’s house just for human companionship. Nevertheless, isolation and loneliness often made Nan ill at ease. Unlike him, Pingping was unusually calm, saying they wouldn’t need others as long as their family stayed together. “Who has many friends?” she said to him. “Most people only have associates. We have no need for lots of friends.”

  Nan was abashed as he realized she was much more enduring and solitary than he was. She didn’t even miss her parents and siblings that much, although she’d write them regularly. He wasn’t attached to his parents either, bu
t he was unaccustomed to an isolated life and couldn’t yet differentiate loneliness from solitude. By nature he was gregarious and had liked noisy, bustling crowds, but life had placed him at a spot where he had to exist as an individual completely on his own. How lucky he felt to have Pingping with him.

  17

  NAN also felt fortunate to have Dick Harrison as his friend, whose presence in his life had intensified his interest in poetry. One day Dick invited Nan to a reading given by a famous poet. At first Nan was reluctant to go, because whenever he was away, he’d have to ask Shubo to help at the restaurant. Shubo had been writing his dissertation in sociology at home, so he was available most times when the Gold Wok needed him. Still, Pingping would be unhappy about Nan’s absence, which would cost them six dollars an hour to Shubo, who would work at the counter. This also meant Pingping would have to cook in the kitchen. Yet fascinated by Dick’s praise of the poet, Edward Neary, Nan begged his wife to let him attend the reading at Emory University. Pingping didn’t want him to go at first, but she later yielded.

  The reading was held in White Hall on campus, where many buildings had marble exteriors and roofs of red ceramic tiles. At the entrance to the auditorium stood two folding tables, on one of which were stacked Edward Neary’s books for sale, the table manned by a strapping man from the university’s bookstore. Nan, in a double-breasted blazer, went into the auditorium, which had already filled up with students, faculty, and people from the city. The crowd overflowed onto the steps alongside the walls. There were more women than men among the audience. Unable to find a seat, Nan stayed in the back and leaned against the steel banister of the stairs that led up to the projection booth.