A Free Life

by Ha Jin

  “No, but he made me feel better, much better. I’m cleaner now.” Danning sounded serious and meditative, as if exhausted.

  “Do you believe in Christianity?”

  “Not really, but I like to attend the service once in a while. In Beijing I can’t go to any church or temple because I’m a petty cadre at the writers’ association. I’d get into trouble if I went.” He sighed. “Ah, like a small fish I too yearn for clean water.”

  Slowly Nan followed the traffic on Beaver Run Road, still puzzled by Danning’s claim to be cleaner than before. On the other hand, he was convinced that if his friend had often gone to a church or temple or mosque, Danning might indeed have become a better man.

  Nan was broody after seeing Danning off on a quarter-filled Greyhound bound for Oxford, Mississippi. He felt he might not see his friend again. Danning seemed tormented by a kind of desperation, which might not subside as long as he lived in Beijing and held his official position. Nan had never thought that his friend would go downhill as a result of his fame, which seemed to have let loose the demon in him.

  Danning’s visit had upset Nan. For the following week he went on telling his wife that success was the mother of failure, transposing Chairman Mao’s famous quotation “Failure is the mother of success.”

  20

  EVER SINCE his return from China, Nan had been restless for another reason as well. He couldn’t make any progress in his writing. As he had failed in his search for an ideal woman, his project on a bunch of love poems had come to a halt. He wondered if he was suffering a writer’s block. One afternoon, when the busy lunchtime was over, he was sitting at the counter and had his nose in a book entitled Good Advice on Writing. Both Pingping and Niyan were taking a break, seated at a booth, drinking tea and cracking spiced sunflower seeds. Janet was with them and from time to time lifted her cup and blew away the tea leaves. She was talking excitedly about how happy she and her daughter were in the weekend school at Emory, which, managed by a Chinese graduate student, had more than 160 pupils now. Time and again she uttered a word or phrase in Mandarin.

  Nan stopped at a quotation from Faulkner. It stated: “The writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.”

  The first part of the sentence jolted Nan, who suddenly understood the real cause of his predicament. For all these years he had bumbled around and shilly-shallied about writing because of fear: the fear of becoming a joke in others’ eyes, of messing up his life without getting anywhere, of abandoning the useless, burdensome part of his past in order to create a new frame of reference for himself, of moving toward the future without looking back. It was this fear that had driven him to look for inspiration elsewhere other than in his own heart. It was this fear that had misled him into the belief that the difficulties in writing poetry in English were insurmountable and that he couldn’t possibly write lines that were natural and energetic. Now this realization overcame and disgusted him. He read Faulkner’s words once more. His mind hardly registered the meaning of the second part, but the first half again astounded him. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. How he hated himself! He had wasted so many years and avoided what he really desired to do, inventing all kinds of excuses—his sacrifice for his son, his effort to pay off the mortgage, his pursuit of the American dream, his insufficient command of English, his family’s need for financial security, the expected arrival of a daughter, and the absence of an ideal woman in his life. The more he thought about his true situation, the more he loathed himself, especially for his devotion to making money, which had consumed so many of his prime years and dissolved his will to follow his own heart. A paroxysm of aversion seized him, and he turned to the cash register, took all the banknotes out of the tray, and went to the alcove occupied by the God of Wealth, for whom they had always made weekly offerings. With a swipe he sent flying the wine cups, the joss sticks, and the bowls of fruit and almond cookies. Around him were scattered pistachios and salted cashews. The three women in the booth stopped chatting to watch him. He thrust a five-dollar bill on the flame of a candle and instantly the cash curled, ablaze.

  “My God, he’s burning money!” gasped Janet.

  They all got up and rushed over. Niyan clapped her palm over her mouth as Nan was setting aflame a whole sheaf of banknotes. “What are you doing?” his wife cried, and yanked his shoulder from behind.

  His fell on his bottom, the cash still blazing in his hand. He looked entranced and dewy-eyed. Pingping yelled again, “Don’t burn our sweat money!”

  Niyan wrenched a few unburned banknotes out of his other hand, and he tossed the rest at the smiling God of Wealth. Pingping shoved him aside and tried to save the flaming bills while Nan flung up his hands and cried, “I want to burn it all, all zis ‘dirty acre.’”

  “He must be having a breakdown,” Janet said.

  “I hate this mahney, this ‘dirty acre’!” he yelled in a voice verging on a sob. His eyes gave a flare.

  “What he talking about?” Pingping asked Janet, who shook her head, having no clue either.

  Nan had meant to say “filthy lucre,” but in the throes of frenzy he got the idiom wrong. He picked himself up from the floor and stamped on the half-burned cash, saying through his teeth, “Dirty acre! Dirty acre!” His face was misshapen, his eyes smoldering with pain.

  The women were too confused to respond. He turned and stormed away to the kitchen. Pingping was wiping her eyes while Niyan clucked her tongue and said as if to herself, “Why he hate money so much?”

  Janet wagged her chin. “Maybe his mind just snapped. It often happens to people who have too much stress.”

  “He’s really crazy,” Niyan said, as if out of schadenfreude.

  “He’s just sick man,” Pingping wailed, and doubled over, her face twisted. “Now you see this is real Nan. He always want to torture me.”

  Nan thundered from the kitchen, “Yeah, I’m sick, sick of everysing here, sick of myself, sick of every one of you, sick of zis goddamned restaurant!”

  They were stunned. None had expected he had such a harsh, menacing voice. “Maybe he should go see a shrink,” suggested Janet, patting Pingping on the back as she continued to convulse with sobs.

  Nan went out the back door to traipse around the shopping center awhile, his mind still whirling. The sun was scorching overhead, and in no time perspiration soaked the back of his T-shirt. The walk calmed him down some, though he still couldn’t focus on any thought. Near the entrance to the photo studio toward the east end of the plaza, a mottled gray pigeon that had to be a crossbreed of a pigeon and a dove limped over, walking on the back of its crippled left foot. Its head kept bobbing at a cockeyed angle as it tottered toward Nan, who had often fed it. Nan fished in his pockets but found only a handful of coins, so he stepped aside to avoid obstructing its path. Before the pigeon passed by, it paused to flutter its wings, which suddenly gleamed in the sunlight. If only Nan had had some crumbs or leftovers on him. He liked this lone bird, which was tough, unafraid of people.

  When Nan went back to the Gold Wok twenty minutes later, he became himself again, and without a word set about cutting a basket of eggplants, which were all tender and seedless, handpicked by Pingping at the Cherokee farmers’ market. For the rest of the day he was very quiet and did everything he was supposed to do.

  21

  PINGPING was still angry with Nan for burning the money. For three days she’d avoid rubbing elbows with him at work, and neither would she speak to him. However hard he tried to induce her to talk, she’d compress her lips. At most, she’d give a faint smile if he said something funny or silly.

  On Monday morning the truck that delivered groceries came as usual and left two crates of celeries and napa cabbages and a b
ucket of tofu at the back door to the restaurant. Without telling Nan, who was supposed to move them, Pingping began carrying them in by herself. As she was lifting a crate, suddenly a tearing pain shot through her back and her knees buckled. She fell on the cement doorstep, unable to pick herself up. “Nan, come and help me!” she called out. Two flies, startled, took off from the tofu, whirling around at a high pitch.

  Nan rushed out with a towel over his shoulder and saw his wife lying on her side. Her face was contorted while her hand covered the small of her back. “What happened?” he panted, bending over her. “Why didn’t you use the hand truck?”

  “Oh, I broke my back!”

  “Can you move?”

  “I can’t. My back snapped.” On her eyelashes tears glistened.

  As Nan tried to help her get up, she gave a loud moan, which frightened him. He left her there and hurried to the parking lot to fetch their van. He wasn’t sure if she had really broken her back, but she looked partly paralyzed. He must take her to the hospital immediately. He told Niyan to ask Shubo to come in and help. If her husband was unavailable, she could just close the restaurant for the morning.

  Pingping was rushed into a small room in the ER at Gwinnett Hospital. A lanky male nurse said she couldn’t have broken her back. “Maybe she slipped a disk, you know,” the fellow told Nan.

  Then a tall, rugged-faced man stepped in and introduced himself as Dr. Gritz. He looked at the bruise on Pingping’s elbow, already bandaged by the nurse, and then began pressing her back here and there. “Does it hurt here?” he kept asking in a soft voice.

  The injury was on her spine, just above the small of her back, but to the naked eye there seemed nothing abnormal. The doctor said to Nan, “I’m going to give her an X-ray to see if there’s any bone injury.”

  “Sure. Do whatever is necessary, please.”

  The X-ray showed everything was normal, so Dr. Gritz decided to use MRI, which could reveal muscle and ligament damage. Following the male nurse pulling the gurney with his mealy hand, Nan pushed Pingping through a long corridor to the scanning lab. In the semidark room, a woman technician and Nan helped Pingping lie on a narrow table. Before sliding her into the tube of a stout MRI scanner, the woman told Pingping, “If it bothers you too much, just raise your leg to let me know.” Pingping nodded, then her head disappeared into the tube. The technician began to produce the images of her lower back.

  The machine made rumbling noises like a rickety washer while Pingping lay still as if asleep. Nan wondered whether she was hurting. That was unlikely, as she seemed at ease.

  The film of the MRI indicated that a disk was protruded, pressuring some ligaments between two vertebrae. Dr. Gritz said this didn’t look like a ruptured disk, so it wasn’t an emergency case, and all Pingping should do was rest in bed for a few weeks. He prescribed ibuprofen and a steroid and told her not to move around too much until the pain subsided. She could walk a little when she felt up to it, but she mustn’t do any hard exercise. Gritz also referred her to Dr. Levin at a clinic in Norcross. “I’m an orthopedic surgeon,” he said to Pingping. “A back pain specialist can do more for you.”

  Though their substandard medical insurance covered a larger part of the cost, the first hospital bill surprised the Wus, altogether more than three hundred dollars. Both Nan and Pingping were unsettled, knowing this was just the beginning. If only they had bought a better policy. Nan took his wife to Dr. Levin two days later and paid another eighty dollars for the visit. From now on she’d have to see Dr. Levin twice a week. If her pain persisted in two months, the specialist said, they should seriously consider a surgery that helped most back pain patients recover fully. Despite the professional assurance, Nan and Pingping didn’t believe it necessary for her to undergo an operation, fearing that any mishap might mess up her spine and paralyze her.

  Besides that fear, they had no idea how much they’d have to spend for her medical bills, which became a concern because the restaurant hardly made any money these days—most of the profit went to Niyan and Shubo. What’s more, Pingping might have to see a physical therapist or chiropractor, according to Dr. Levin. Goodness knew how long those therapeutic sessions would take. Every day Nan wrapped a hot water bottle with a towel and tucked it against Pingping’s back. He also gave her massages, manipulating her spine gently in hopes of restoring the slipped disk fully to its original position. She groaned whenever he touched the injured area, yet after each massage she felt slightly better, so she let him work on her twice a day. She was easily depressed, irritated at herself, and often said she was a total nuisance.

  “That’s all nonsense,” Nan would tell her.

  He was afraid Pingping might never be normal again; worse still, that she might suffer sciatica even if the injury healed. Dr. Levin had said that Pingping’s long working hours had taken a toll on her lumbar muscles, which must have precipitated the disk prolapse. This also meant it might be difficult for the Wus to continue running the restaurant as before. These days Nan had been thinking of looking for a full-time job that provided full health care benefits. If he found such work, he’d sell the restaurant. He talked to his wife about his thought, and she agreed to let go of the Gold Wok, though she wept afterward, hating to part with their business. Yet both of them knew this might be the only sensible thing to do.

  22

  NAN told Shubo and Niyan of his decision to sell the restaurant, and to his relief, they wanted to buy it provided the price was reasonable. Nan said he would let them have it for $25,000, the same as the original list price, if he found a full-time job elsewhere. He knew he could have sold it for a few thousand more, but the two were friends and the Wus wanted to leave the Gold Wok in their hands.

  That settled, Nan began reading ads in newspapers and hunting for a job. There were many openings advertised, but few offered medical insurance. In two days he went to nine places—three restaurants, four stores, and two offices, and filled out forms and questionnaires and was told to wait for them to call him. The working hours at all the places were in the daytime, and only one of the jobs offered decent health care benefits, but he wouldn’t be entitled to them until he had worked three months at the store. He was frustrated, convinced that none of those places would hire him. What he needed was a job that provided full medical insurance right away.

  At last he went to Sunflower Inn on Buford Highway, a motel owned by James Lee, a Korean man. It had advertised in World Journal for a front desk clerk. Nan was offered the job on the spot, probably because Mr. Lee was impressed by his English. The boss, licking his arched lip, said, “We only have night hours at the moment.”

  “Zat’s all right,” Nan replied. “As long as you offer good health insurance I’ll take zer job. I have a child and can’t run zer risk of not having my family cahvered.”

  “We do provide that, but you’ll have to pay about three hundred dollars a month. Actually, some of our employees don’t join the policy even though we offer them that. It’s too expensive for them.”

  “I understand, but I would love to buy zee insurance from you.”

  So Nan started to work at the front desk the following night. His shift was from eleven p.m. to seven a.m. He’d be alone in the motel until six o’clock when the cook, Genia, a middle-aged Korean woman, came in to prepare the continental breakfast. Nan liked the job very much. After midnight it was quiet in the lobby and he could read and think, though his mind often turned to Pingping, who was still housebound. These days she, despite her pain and weakness, would cook for the family when Nan wasn’t home. She herself could hardly eat anything other than a few spoonfuls of the grain porridge she made for herself. Her calves were so cold that she had to wear leg warmers all the time. Nan urged her to rest well and eat more, saying she might die if she didn’t have normal meals. He couldn’t imagine himself functioning without her. She had become an integral part of his life, having suffered silently and sacrificed unconditionally for the family all these years. The more he thought
about her life, the more remorseful he felt. He hoped it wouldn’t be too late for him to make atonement, to cherish and love her devotedly. He even prayed to God for her recovery.

  23

  HAVING followed the physical therapist’s instructions, Pingping exercised lightly every day and began to feel better. The small of her back was less numb and painful than before, all the symptoms somewhat alleviated. She had also regained her appetite and color. At length Nan and Taotao were relieved to see that she was on the mend.

  “I want to work at the restaurant when I’m well again,” Pingping said to Nan one afternoon. She regretted having sold the business in a rush, but she too had thought she might not recover at all. Two days earlier, despite Nan’s objection, she had phoned Niyan, who had assured her that, after her recovery, Pingping was welcome to work at the Gold Wok.

  “That’s fine,” Nan told her. “I’ll talk with Shubo. They may need your help, but you should rest at least a few weeks more. I’m done with the restaurant myself. I like my job at the motel. Besides, I must have the health insurance for us.”

  A week later Nan went to talk with Shubo about Pingping’s wish. To his astonishment, Shubo said Nan should have sold him the restaurant for less money if he had intended to leave Pingping at the Gold Wok, so now Nan mustn’t interfere with his work. Infuriated, Nan blasted, “This is really low. I let you have this place at a big discount because I thought you were my friend. But when I need your help, you just give me a bunch of hogwash. What kind of friend are you?”

  “Business is business,” Shubo snorted, but he avoided looking Nan in the eye.