by Ha Jin
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. Pingping 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, Danning 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 n
ipples 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 day-light. 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?”
